Timepiece (13 page)

A short distance away stood a building like nothing so much as a great crystal palace out of a fairytale, but there was no time to scale the fence and hide there. She could hear the constructs. They had circled around somehow and were in front of her. They were coming. She could hear them—but why could she not see them? The fog had broken finally—she ought to be able to see them—where were they?

The sound was higher-pitched and faster than she had been expecting, and she still could not see a construct anywhere. A burst of sulfur struck the back of her throat and set her coughing. The noise was now distinctly a clatter rather than a stomp, and even as she thought this, it grew rapidly into a roar. Clouds of black smoke poured down the street in front of her, enveloping her in a brimstone embrace, and she stumbled away from the iron fence. Someone caught her—Katarina caught her, murmuring reassuring and senseless words. Elizabeth watched something enormous and black hurtle into the space between the iron fence and the crystal palace, and her teeth chattered with the force of the jolting ground beneath her feet. The thing rushed along the fence line, seemingly without end.

It squealed to a stop finally, with one last shriek and then a series of shudders. A flash of white smoke split the black clouds and a shrill whistle screamed in reply. Then the worst was over. Elizabeth, peering through the fog and smoke, could see a door in the side of the thing swing open and a man in green uniform descend from it. It was a conveyance. A carriage? Or a great many carriages, strung together? A wave of people poured out of it, and a different wave of people hurried and jostled toward it.

Katarina turned her around and held her, right hand gripping firmly enough that Elizabeth knew she would not be able to escape a third time, but left hand rubbing comforting circles on Elizabeth’s back. “It’s all right,” Katarina said. “It’s all right. This one’s nothing to worry over. I didn’t think to warn you. Of course you’ve never seen a locomotive.”

Elizabeth jerked away from the soothing fingers. “We should have helped her! We should have done
something.
But you ran away!”

“Because there was nothing I could do for her,” Katarina said, dark eyes steady, voice unwavering, hand still firm on Elizabeth’s arm. “Not one thing. And there are other people I can still help, but only if I’m alive to do it.”

“But they shot her—a woman—they killed her in the street, and no one did anything! What could she have possibly done, to deserve—?”

“She was a reporter for the
London Gazette.
She wrote what they did not want to have read. And she was a friend of Lord Seward’s.” Katarina sighed. “She did nothing to deserve it. I didn’t say I liked it, Elizabeth! God, I
knew
her, I’ve known her for two years, we—But there wasn’t anything we could do for her. There are things I can fix, but that wasn’t one of them.” On the other side of the wrought-iron flowers, the crowd went about its business, women in dresses like cages and men in tailored suits with loose trousers and too-long coats, paying no attention to the two wanton women quarrelling and crying in the alleyway. Elizabeth watched the parade of hats and boots and brass-tipped umbrellas, feeling vaguely sick. And then more than vaguely, and then she found herself crouched over and vomiting while Katarina rubbed her back.

“I did that too, after the first day I walked through London,” Katarina murmured. “And again the first time I saw someone die. You’d think I’d learn to carry gin on me, but I’m afraid I haven’t any.”

Elizabeth slumped against the wall, not even pausing to consider how filthy the ground must be. She accepted Katarina’s handkerchief to wipe her face, and then she closed her eyes.

She jumped when the great iron monstrosity behind her gave its piercing whistle again. “What—” She cleared her throat. “What did you say that was?”

“A locomotive. A steam-train, actually; the locomotive is the part on the front that makes it go.”

“It’s not a construct.” Elizabeth felt the need for pedantic clarification. “Nor a monster. It’s a third thing.”

“A third thing,” Katarina agreed. “Not dangerous unless you stand in front of it. The first locomotive was demonstrated in, oh, 1830-something, if I recall correctly. It caught on very quickly, and now there’s scarcely a hamlet in Britain where the train lines don’t run. Every morning gentlemen come up from fine country houses to transact their business in the City. At night, they go home again. Yes, every day,” she added, though Elizabeth had not spoken. Her throaty voice was calm, soothing, slightly sing-song in a way that evoked Trevelyan’s Welsh accent or a lullaby. “Every morning, trains bring the daily newspaper from London out to the country, and other trains bring fresh milk and vegetables from the country to London.” Elizabeth felt herself relaxing, almost unwillingly, in response to the easy tone. She closed her eyes again and listened. It sounded like a bedtime story, a fairytale of a fairy kingdom. “There isn’t any place in England you can’t get to by train in a day or less,” Katarina said. “I don’t remember a time when it was any other way, but Lord Seward spoke of the journey to London being a long slow one by coach, when his father was a boy. He said that the folk who lived in on his father’s estate never left it their whole lives. Now there’s hardly a coach to be found—private carriages, yes, but not public coaches—and it’s commonplace to take a weekend trip to the seashore or a day trip to London.”

She fell silent then, and after a time Elizabeth opened her eyes to find the gypsy woman crouched in front of her, watching her. “Do you realize,” Elizabeth said, mumbling a little, feeling that the words came from a long distance, “that I myself have hardly ever been out of Hartwich?”

 “I know,” Katarina said. “The old folks do say the railway changed the world as surely as the constructs did. Not so destructively, though; as I said, it can’t hurt you unless you stand in front of it.”

“Because it can’t think for itself,” Elizabeth said.

Katarina gave her a surprised look. “The constructs can’t either. I thought you realized. It takes three men each to make them go. Each one has a pilot inside driving it, a second managing the fuel, and a third—” She broke off.

“—firing the artillery,” Elizabeth said.

“Yes.” Katarina’s mouth twisted. “Makes it worse, doesn’t it?”

“Who are they?”

“Englishmen. Which—” Katarina sighed. “—makes it worst of all.”

Behind them, the steam-train shrilled again, and began the ear-piercing business of getting itself underway. There was a long while where the sound of jerking wheels and squealing metal and cumbersome moving weight made conversation impossible. Finally the clickety-clack noise resumed, and the train sped away from them, belching out a last burst of black as it went.

Elizabeth licked her lips and started to speak, but stopped when she heard a child’s voice raised. Craning around, she made him out—standing on the other side of the gate, on the other side of the track where the train had sat, in front of the crystal palace. He was waving a folded paper and chanting in a voice nearly as shrill as the train whistle, “Lord Seward arrested for treason! Read about it in
The Times
!”

A gentleman handed the boy a coin and took a paper. The crowd that had arrived by steam-train had now mostly streamed out of the street and onward to whatever business brought them to London. In the aftermath of their departure, the people who remained were so comparatively few that true silence might as well have descended.

“Seward plotting to bring down Parliament!
Read about it in
The Times
!”

Elizabeth turned back to Katarina, who was still crouched and watching her. The unnatural position did not seem to trouble the gypsy woman, and her eyes had an odd luminous quality in the shadows. Elizabeth took a breath. “Was Lord Seward really going to bring down the House of Parliament? Like...like Guy Fawkes?”

“Not exactly like Guy Fawkes,” Katarina said, but her tone had the quality of “yes” rather than “no.”

“What good would that have done, if he had succeeded? Would it have fixed—” Elizabeth gestured. “—all this?”

“No,” Katarina said, sighing. “In the short term, it probably would have made things worse. But no one can dislodge this government from power, you see. The constructs work for Gladstone, enforce his authority, and, well, you saw what happens to those who oppose him. If we could ease his grip on the country’s throat, then the reformers would have a fighting chance to change the laws that need changing. They could speak, write, agitate, pressure Members of Parliament, and not fear reprisal.”

Elizabeth nodded. “‘We.’ So you are part of Lord Seward’s...conspiracy? You and Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Trevelyan.”

“Yes.” Katarina watched her. “Are you going to give me away, Miss Elizabeth?” She didn’t seem to find it likely, but there was a certain tension in her posture as she asked the question. “Throw your lot in with—” She gestured at the train and the paper-boy, then back down the alley. “—them?”

“No,” Elizabeth answered slowly. “But...but I need to understand it, and I don’t. You need to tell me more about Lord Seward. And all the rest of it.”

“I will,” Katarina promised. “There’s one more place we need to go first, and then we’ll talk.”

London, August 27, 1885

Their last visit was to a part of London that proved surprisingly pleasant—fine houses, wide streets, even a bit of green in the form of a park. At one end of the park rose a marble arch, the entrance to something a signpost proclaimed to be the “zoological gardens.” The hollow beneath the arch was comfortably large, and pillars around it comfortably spaced, and the sound of machinery had muted back into a drone nearly possible to ignore. You would never know Spitalfields was half a mile away, Elizabeth reflected, and felt sick at the thought.

A cluster of men in neat suits, plus two women in cage-dresses, stood before the arch. Each of them held a notebook and a pencil, and they were engaged in calling questions to a young man with curly dark hair and overalls embroidered with the words “LONDON ZOO.”

“...can assure you ours is safe in his cage where he belongs,” the young man said in cheerful Cockney tones as Katarina and Elizabeth reached the back of the crowd. “What happened last night is no failure of the London Zoo.”

“Do you have any idea where Seward got the monsters that terrorized the East End?” one of the women asked.

“Haven’t a notion, ma’am. They do say he’s a dreadful wicked man, but it wasn’t from here he got his monsters. And I’d be pleased to prove it to you. Step right this way, and you can see the Wellie in his cage. On the house, just this once, for members of the Empire’s news-agents only. Right down that path there, sir, ma’am, and turn to the left.” He waited until the last of them had filed past them before he looked over to where Elizabeth and her guide still stood.  “’Afternoon, Madam Katherine,” he said then. “Surprised to see you here.”

“Missed me?” Katarina asked, turning a dazzling smile upon him as she crossed the lawn.

He chuckled. “Every day, love. But it’s not every day I have the pleasure of seeing you, even if I am missing you. Long walk from the Shoreditch. Why today?”

“This is Elizabeth,” Katarina said. “She’s just joined us, up from the country. Don’t suppose you could let us slip in and have a peek at the animals?”

He choked on the chuckle. “In the middle of the afternoon? Beg pardon, sweetheart,” he added to Elizabeth. “Bill Ellis, at your service. Come back when you’ve a night off, and I’ll—”

“Oh, come,” Katarina coaxed, “just one peek? You’re taking that lot to the monster house, aren’t you? Can’t we tag along just that far?”

“I—” Ellis looked at the finely dressed crowd, which had nearly reached the bend in the path, and then snatched a glance over his other shoulder. Elizabeth followed his eyes to where a sour-faced old crone sat, hemmed in on all sides by the fabric of her skirt and the metal of a small enclosure with a window. She was taking the shillings of a pair of school-aged children, and seemed to be lecturing them against misbehavior as she did so. “Oh—oh, all right, Meacham’s not looking. Come on, now. Quiet, or you’ll get me the sack.” He hustled Katarina and Elizabeth under the arch, keeping his body between them and the curdled-looking woman.

It was easier to breathe than it had been all day, Elizabeth reflected. Perhaps the grass and trees unclenched the iron fist that had been forming around her insides. Katarina had fallen into step at Ellis’ right hand, so Elizabeth trailed along at by his left, waiting for Katarina to say something about storms.

Beyond the arch, the path was lined with small buildings formed of brick and iron bars, and the first sight of them clenched the fist tight again before Elizabeth realized what she was looking at and what this place must be. She had heard of the Tower Menagerie, of course, but she had never visited it, and this was clearly a much larger establishment. “Bengal tiger,” Mr. Ellis murmured, directing Elizabeth’s attention to a cage with a nod. “Just about the thrillingest thing we have here.” The great striped beast lifted its head as they passed, fixing Elizabeth with its tawny eyes, then got to its feet in one smooth movement and came to the bars to investigate. Elizabeth found herself wanting both to sink her fingers into its thick fur and to retreat as expeditiously as possible. Fortunately, Mr. Ellis and Katarina were already walking on, so she did not have to choose.

They passed an equally fearsome lion from Africa and a dromedary from the Arabian deserts, and Katarina still did not say anything about the weather. As they reached the bend in the path, Ellis detached her hand from his arm with an apologetic half-smile. “Got my job to do,” he said, and strode around to face the well-dressed crowd he had been shepherding. “So you can see it for yourself, ladies and gents, and I do hope as how you’ll tell your readers there’s nothing for them to fear from the London Zoo. Got our Wellie locked up tight where he can make no trouble, safe as houses.” The monster house sat a little ways away from the rest of the cages, surrounded by white columns like a Grecian temple. “The other beasts don’t care for the monster,” Mr. Ellis explained. “So we have to keep him separate. We’ve only got the one, can’t have no more, or they fight. Or worse yet, they plot together, and we here at the Zoo wouldn’t risk the safety of our guests. So there’s only the one, and him safe behind a wall and a moat, as you can plainly see for yourself. Couldn’t get out even if he could bend the bars, which he can’t do neither. Right then, when you’ve seen all you like, I’m to invite you to the refreshment area. Our own Mr. Chelton will be there to meet you, him that runs the office part of the Zoo, and he’ll be pleased to answer any other questions you might have. Oh, it was my pleasure, ma’am, and thank
you
kindly for setting the record straight about us here. Thank you, sir. Ma’am. A good day to you, sir...Have a peep,” he added in an undertone to Elizabeth as the crowd filtered away, “and then the both of you better cut back to the Shoreditch before someone here notices you never bought tickets.”

Elizabeth hesitated.

“It’s a’right,” Ellis reassured her. “It’s Gospel truth what I said, he can’t hurt you. You go right up to the wall and have a good look.”

Elizabeth went up to the brick wall. It came about to her waist, and she could rest her hands comfortably against it. But the other side dropped down sharply into a pit twelve feet deep—a moat, as Ellis had said. On the other side of the moat rose an island upon which the white stone monster house sat, surrounded by Grecian columns and iron bars. Behind the bars stood a creature with a dead face, looking back at her.

She’d had no opportunity for careful examination the night before. Seen in daylight rather than in lightning flashes, the face was less fearsome, though no less repulsive. Elizabeth shuddered at the overlong limbs, the slack and drooping skin, the thrust-forward head, the nonsensically moving lips. But the longer she studied the face, the more she thought she could discern an expression, and the more the expression looked to her like sorrow. She could not help but remember how one of them had tried to drag another out from the feet of a construct.

“It doesn’t look so fearful,” she murmured.

“I ’spect you’re too young to remember,” the keeper said, “a little slip of a girl like you, but I mind the days when they were the terror of the countryside. No joke, they weren’t then. And it wouldn’t have been a joke if that Robert Locksley had let his whole pack loose on us, either. Lucky he was caught ’fore he could.” Ellis shivered a little, not an act. “I mind those days,” he said. “They were awful.”

“They were,” Katarina said softly. “I remember them too.”

“Before Her Majesty sent the constructs to save us,” Ellis said.

Katarina murmured an agreement. And did not say anything about storms.

“You wanted me to see the monster,” Elizabeth said. “That’s why we went to the zoo.” Katarina looked up, met her eyes, and nodded.

They were back within the alleyways and courtyards of Spitalfields—not far from the warehouse, or so Katarina said at least, and Elizabeth had no reason to doubt her word, though she could not tell for herself. The little watch pendent that hung around Katarina’s neck proclaimed that it was now late afternoon. Elizabeth similarly was obliged to take the timepiece’s word for it, having no way to verify for herself. It was not possible to tell the time from a sun one could not see—the fog had thickened again the closer they got to the stews—and any internal instinct Elizabeth might possess was badly confused. She had been awake nearly a day and a night by now, and was thoroughly undecided as to whether she ought to have been eating breakfast or dinner.

It was not until she found herself phrasing it that way in her thoughts that Elizabeth realized she was hungry, despite the periodic clenching in her middle. Small wonder, really. She’d had nothing but a few mouthfuls of watery tea since dining with her family some...she tried to work out how long ago. Twelve hours? Seventy years and twelve hours? She felt a momentary return of the hysterical desire to laugh mingle with the raspy air tormenting the back of her throat. Now that she was thinking about it, rather than having all her attention focused on outside things that were bizarre or horrific or both, she found that her legs had begun to tremble with weariness and the bottoms of her feet felt bruised with standing on cobblestone.

Katarina had glanced over at her as those thoughts occurred, and seemed to read them. “Suppose we get a bite to eat on our way home.” She changed direction abruptly, and Elizabeth almost stumbled trying to keep up with her. “There’s a fish and chips shop this way. Not gourmet food, I’m afraid, but better than starvation...”

The newspaper-wrapped cone Katarina put into her hands was slick with grease, and the breaded and fried contents glistened like the surface of the Thames, but Elizabeth was too hungry to care. She did wonder how and where they were to eat the food it contained, before Katarina answered the unasked questions by picking a chip out of her cone with her fingers. It seemed one ate fish and chips without the aid of knife or fork. While walking.

Katarina ate neatly, with no overt enjoyment but no apparent disgust. Elizabeth watched her sideways, tasting the fish and the potatoes and the lard they had been fried in and the bitterness of the air. She turned the events of the morning over in her mind as she chewed, and slowly came to a realization. “You wanted me to see the monster,” she said, and Katarina admitted that this was so.

Elizabeth took another chip from the wrapping and considered further. “You wanted me to see all of this,” she said. “That’s why you let me come with you.”

Katarina gave her another long look from her luminous eyes. “Yes.”

“So that I would understand why you want to bring it all down?”

“In part, yes.”

“I could have betrayed you to the authorities.”

“You could have,” Katarina agreed, “but I didn’t think you would.”

“How can you know what to think?” Elizabeth demanded. “You don’t know anything about me!”

Katarina only smiled and took another chip.

Elizabeth returned her attention to the fish. After a long while, she went on, “You said ‘in part.’ Why else?”

 “Because it hasn’t happened yet,” Katarina said, in a voice gone suddenly dark with passion. “I am—” Her mouth twisted a little, and she went on with a deliberately theatrical wave of one hand. “—I am the Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come, and these are the shadows of things that
may
be, only. Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, but if those courses be departed from, the ends must change... But you have no idea what I am quoting, do you? That tale must not be quite as old as I thought it was...Never mind.”

“You think I can prevent this happening?” Elizabeth said, stopping. “You think
I
can? My—my life isn’t—You have no idea how different my life is from yours. I’m not even permitted to walk unaccompanied through—I’m not like you!”