The Custodian of Marvels (12 page)

“Ten years?” I asked.

“Yes, miss.”

“But that means… Were you… Did you…”

“I’ve seen you before, miss, if that’s what you’re asking. Six years ago. You weren’t full grown. I was there with the duke that day.”

“You saw our show?”

“It was a marvel, and that’s no lie. To see that boy magicked across from one cabinet to the other. To tell the truth, you weren’t much on my mind, what with all the conjuring on stage. I hope you don’t mind me saying it.

“But after, when we were back at the Hall, the duke was changed – skittish, like a horse before a race. He couldn’t settle. And he was asking about you. Soon enough he was back in his coach, with me riding escort. We tracked back to where the circus had been pitched. On finding it gone, we were off again, following any gossip we could find, until we caught up with the wagons. But you’ll know the rest.”

Thoughts were coming to me so fast that I couldn’t order them. But that strange numbness of feeling was still on me. “I want to hear you tell it,” I said.

“Well, the duke spoke with your father. Asked to see the cast of the show again, every one of them. He’d give a purse of silver if all could be lined up and brought before his coach. So it was done just like that. That’s when I mostly remember you from. I was standing next to the coach when you came up. Everyone else, he’d seen and sent away. But you, he kept standing there. Even when you started to cry. I thought it a shame that he should treat a child so.

“After all that was done, he went to see your father again. Said what a bright girl you were. Asked how much he’d need to compensate to have the pleasure of you living in his household, a companion for the other children, he said. You’d be well fed and clothed.

“But your father wouldn’t have it. Said he needed you for his conjuring show. To which the duke countered that he’d pay a thousand guineas. But your father must have seen his real intent, because he said he wouldn’t be parted with you for any price. At which the duke said there was a price for everything, though it might not be to your father’s liking.”

A strange thing was happening to Fitzwilliam as he told my story. The soldier’s composure, which he’d worn so naturally through our journey, was crumbling. Or perhaps it had gone already and I hadn’t noticed because of the way he’d avoided my gaze. There was a hollowness about his cheeks and the skin sagged below his eyes.

“You know these things already,” he said. “Why must I say them? Isn’t it enough that there’s no blame on you? The duke’s a man of evil passions, and that’s all there is to it.”

“I could have left you there,” I said. “Tied and gagged with Reuben. You owe me this.”

I glanced over to where Fabulo sat, looking out at the valley. He was listening to every word.

“Did your master do such things before?” I asked.

Fitzwilliam rubbed his hands over his face, as if trying to wake himself up after a bad dream. “The duke is a man who gets what he wants. He was always that way. Whether it’s a painting or a horse, he puts down the money and that’s it. Or a girl. But you were different, miss, begging your pardon.”

“Different how?”

“Just different. He liked pretty girls before.”

“I wasn’t pretty?”

“I’m not saying that, though you weren’t dressed up in frills and satin. The thing was, you had a way about you different from his usual girls. When the men came up on stage to see the cabinets, you looked them straight in the eye. You acted so sure of yourself. It got him all fired up somehow. Then your father denied him. That was different too.

“No one’s ever made him angry like you did. Three times he’s thought he had you. But you got away. And each time it’s made him worse. He’s been mad with anger. I mean mad like he’s fit for the asylum. It’s not your fault. You did nothing to make him what he is. Except you got away. None of the others ever did.

“After you, there were girls he set out to get in the exact same way. Buying debts. Bribing judges. But each time it was like he was trying to stage a show. He was going through the self-same act. Like each girl was a stand-in. But none of them was you.

“That’s how I know Reuben’s dead. That’s why I couldn’t stay. It’s not just that the duke was brought low. But it was you that did it. You got past all of us. You put a knife to his throat. You, of all the people in the world. Every guard from that night will be flogged till there’s no skin on their backs.

“I’m sorry, miss, for my part in it. Sorry to you. Sorry to them. And to Reuben.”

I lay down again to rest, now knowing why he had been avoiding my gaze. It had been shame, not malice. For when he looked at me, it was his own sins that he saw.

The tiredness just came up and took me after that. I slept with no sense that time was passing. When I woke, the trees above me were lit up in the last sun of the day and the sky between the branches was pale.

The wind blew, causing a few leaves to fall. I fixed on one and watched it drifting down to the forest floor. All those years I had lived in exile, dwelling on the way one aristocrat had ruined my life and destroyed my family. Now it seemed that the disruption had worked both ways. It would never have occurred to me that the duke’s obsession could be corrosive to his life as well as mine.

Fitzwilliam was up and seemed to be readying himself to leave.

“What will you do?” I asked.

“I’ll need to steal clothes first. Then I’ll keep on east. I’ve family in Norfolk. Farmers. Good people. They can hide me till it all dies down. After that… soldiering is all I know. I might try my hand in the navy. Or on a whaling boat. They don’t ask where you’ve come from.”

I believe Fabulo would not have trusted him to go, but that had changed with the recounting of his tale. Before he slipped away, the two men shook hands. No words were said between them.

Having crossed the county boundary, we stopped in a copse near a river. There we found charred logs and ashes from a recent camp. Fabulo, who didn’t get on well with a diet of fruit and raw vegetables, said he was willing to take the risk if the result was a proper meal. So he sent Tinker out to buy food, whilst I gathered the driest sticks I could find and lit a fire.

Later, when I bedded down, it was with the smell of wood smoke in my hair and an unaccustomed sense of fullness in my stomach. My body relaxed into the soft moss. The side of my face nearest the fire felt warm. Tinker had curled up near me and was fast asleep. Fabulo sat, gnawing the last of the meat from a rib bone.

“Did you have a plan?” he asked. “For after you killed the duke? And what happened about that, by the way? You had him under your knife.”

Fabulo hadn’t spoken of anything but practicalities since Fitzwilliam left us, but the food had animated him and he seemed more himself. I considered the question before answering.

“I couldn’t do it,” I said.

“By all that’s sacred, girl, you should have thought of that before you set out!”

“I did. In my imagination it seemed a natural thing. Someone told me once that I wasn’t a killer. But that man I watched die, doing nothing to save him. So I thought… you know.”

“Not saving someone isn’t the same as killing them,” said Fabulo. “Least of all with a knife. You might get a philosopher to say it is, or a lawyer. But only if he’d never had to stick someone himself.”

“Have you ever killed?” I asked.

He gave me a sideways glance. “Well, isn’t this cosy? We’re like two old lovers and this is our pillow talk, eh? Well, forgive me, Elizabeth Barnabus, but I don’t feel like sharing that kind of story.”

“I didn’t mean to put you in danger,” I said. “I wasn’t looking for rescue.”

“You’re crazy – you know that? The duke’s got a private army and you’ve got… what? A knife and that antique pistol. He ruined your family, that I know. But he’s an aristocrat. His kind have been doing the same for a thousand years. You’re not the only one to suffer it. What makes you so special that you need to have your own private revolution?”

“I wasn’t going to come back,” I said.

He was quiet after that.

I had been looking up at the tree branches but now turned so that my back was to the fire and to Fabulo. Cloud shadows moved over the fields beyond the copse. The afternoon slipped away. The sun grew low enough for its rays to reach under the trees and touch us.

I had remained silent for so long that, when I spoke again, it was with no confidence that my voice would sound. “Why did you come to rescue me?”

“The boy asked it.”

“Before that. You were trailing me for weeks.”

“You’ve got something I need,” he said. “If you go to the gallows, I lose my only chance to get it.”

“What something?”

“That’s a thing I don’t feel like talking about right now. I’m not sure I trust you enough.”

This was a puzzle I should have been able to solve. I had few enough possessions, and only three of them unique – my father’s pistol, my boat the
Harry
and
The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook
. But the pistol he’d spoken of disparagingly and the boat he could have taken by force if he’d a mind to. He’d pressed his gun to my head that night. It would have been easy.

As for the book – he could know nothing of the dangerous power it contained. Professor Ferdinand had believed it a poison that might eat into the vitals of the Gas-Lit Empire. Fabulo had his own reasons for hating the Patent Office. I wondered if he’d use that power if it came into his hands. I still hadn’t decided what I would do with it.

I turned over to look at him. The firelight reflected in his dark eyes.

“Can you at least tell me your goal?” I asked.

“Now you’re asking the right kind of question,” he said. “When I came to you before and asked if you’d help me steal from the Patent Office, you said no. Well, I’m going to ask you again.”

“What makes you think I’ll change my mind?”

“We’ve travelled a fair few miles since then, don’t you think? And had a cosy pillow chat today. Seems like we understand each other better now. I thought you were mad to try to kill the duke. But then I heard Fitzwilliam’s story. And today I heard more of yours.

“I still think you’re mad. But it’s the kind of mad that I can’t argue with. You were going to your death. That’s an honour thing. I’m not one to stand in the way of a man who’s got a debt to pay.”

“I’m not a man,” I said.

He laughed then. It started as a chuckle and built until he was rolling on his back with his knees pulled to his chest.

“You’ll bring the constables on us with that noise!” I said, when he’d calmed enough to hear me.

He sat up and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. “Not a man! You’ve got bigger balls than most every man I ever met.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel good?”

“Yes, girl! Now will you listen to me? I asked before if you’d help. You said no because you were scared. And there’s no shame in that. You’d have to be mad to steal from them, right? But now you are mad. And you know it. You’re as mad as me. What have you got to lose that they haven’t already taken?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Like I said, help me steal something.”

“Steal what?”

“That’s a secret.”

“Then tell me how you’ll do it.”

“I’ll do it with your help. But you’re asking the wrong questions again. What you should be asking is this – what will
you
get out of it if we win?”

“There’s nothing I want,” I said. “Nothing that can be stolen, anyway.”

“Then how about this? You can have all the secrets of the International Patent Office. All the devices they’ve hidden away in a hundred and ninety years. Enough power to bring down your duke and a hundred like him.”

“Enough power to bring down the Patent Office?” I asked.

He laughed again. “You couldn’t stick a knife into a man who deserved it, Elizabeth. You’re not going to pull down the pillars of the Gas-Lit Empire.”

While I was still thinking, he said, “Stand up.”

I did as he instructed.

“Elizabeth Barnabus, will you join company with me and put that madness of yours to good use?”

“Yes,” I said.

He spat on his palm and held it out to me. I did the same and our handshake sealed it.

Sleeping in ditches and under hedgerows, I’d thought my clothes couldn’t become more soiled. But rolling into London on the back of a wagon, I found a different kind of dirt. Oily, metallic and sulphurous, it insinuated itself through the air, coating every surface. And, by stages, it worked its way into the very pores of my skin.

Our conversation had been sporadic on the journey, but passing through the suburbs of the great metropolis it dropped away to almost nothing. After the carter dropped us off, I found Tinker staying close by my side. Fabulo adjusted the canvas bag he carried over his back, retying the straps so they could not be slyly undone.

I didn’t recognise any of the streets through which we passed, though once, between houses and through smog, I saw the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, pale as the moon in the daytime. It was enough for me that Fabulo knew where we were going. It suited my mood to let him lead.

He kept us to the smaller streets and the poorer parts of town. Gradually the houses became more tightly packed and the stink of the river filled the air. At first people had stared at us because of our filthy clothes. Then we began to blend in. But, as we progressed along what a signpost proclaimed to be Commercial Road East, I noticed that we were being stared at once more. We were no more or less dirty than the population, but our clothes didn’t hang from us in rags.

“Listen,” Fabulo said, beckoning us closer. “We’ll soon be into the rookery of St John’s. Constables don’t much go there, so we’re safe from that. But that don’t mean they don’t have a law. It’s just a different kind. So don’t go looking them in the face. Just walk. And if they stop you, it’s me that does the talking.”

He looked to each of us, as if searching for assurance that we understood. Then he set off again and at the next junction turned right onto a road far narrower than the thoroughfare. The name Grove Street had been stencilled high on the wall of the first house in the row. There was no traffic. Indeed, none could have passed, such was the number of people milling about. Some sat on doorsteps, others huddled in groups in the roadway, their backs turned outwards like a wall. I kept my eyes downcast as Fabulo had instructed. Conversations dropped away as we approached and started again in our wake. I could feel their eyes on me.