Timepiece (8 page)

“Under other circumstances, perhaps, but as it is...” Maxwell left the sentence eloquently unfinished.

“Don’t worry about—about this other matter,” Katarina said. “I can see to it. To them. You
know
that’s true, Max. I can keep them safe just as well as you can—better, maybe—but no one can fetch one of our foot soldiers out of quod except
a gentleman, so for all the same reasons you shouldn’t have gone to the door just now—”

“A gentleman wouldn’t walk the streets for another hour or two,” Maxwell said. “It would be more natural to wait a bit.”

“Yes, but you don’t want Ernie and that lot coming in to see our guests in their vintage Regency fashions, do you?”

“Well—” Maxwell surrendered. “You’re right, of course. Take care of them, Katarina. Be very careful with them.”

“I understand,” Katarina said. In a different tone of voice, she added, “Here, take a latchkey with you—Trevelyan made ones for the new lock while he was waiting for you to return. Saves you knocking later.” Their footsteps returned to the entryway. The door creaked open, Maxwell and the owners of the high-pitched voices went through it, and Katarina did up all the bolts again before returning to the living room.

“All’s well,” she said to the corner where Elizabeth and William still stood, flicking a catch on her pistol and casting it onto the dining table. “Nothing to fear. Max has gone to...see to something that requires his particular talents, but I can look after the two of you well enough, and he’ll be back well before the twenty-four hours have passed.” She reached for a cup without a handle and took a long swallow of tea. Then she grimaced at the taste, took the cup to the bookshelf, and filled it from what Elizabeth could only assume to be a gin bottle. Katarina tossed back the entire cupful in exactly the manner of a man recovering from a shock and needing a restorative—but nothing else about her appearance gave that impression, Elizabeth thought. There was not the slightest quiver in her hands or quaver in her voice, though she had clearly thought them all in some danger not two minutes before.

Elizabeth found herself staring at the gin bottle and the pistol, and felt a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. It had never before occurred to her that a woman could toss back gin, stride to meet intruders with a pistol in her hand, or give orders that a man like Maxwell would follow. Oh, she had heard of adventuresses, but only vaguely, from cryptic mentions in the society papers that her aunt snatched out of her sight before she could properly absorb them. She had never actually met an adventuress or received a precise description of what it was one did. And of course there was that song about the girl who had cut her hair and pretended to be a boy and fought at Trafalgar—but that was a song. It had never occurred to Elizabeth, not imaginatively, to consider what such a woman must actually be like. Was
this
fashionable now too?

If it were...The tugging smile grew into something unrestrained and giddy. How wonderful that would be. Even with monsters, what a wonderful world this must be.
I wonder,
Elizabeth thought,
if I must go home after all?

She looked up to find William’s grave brown eyes upon her, regarding her as though he could read her thoughts. She blushed a little, more from being caught than from shame at the shape of them, and his lips drew into a thin, disapproving line.

She looked away and found that Katarina was watching her too, but with something like amusement, or possibly understanding. “As a first step toward looking after you,” the dark woman said, “perhaps I had better find you something to wear that isn’t soaked with mud and tea, and then we can see about getting the stains out of that before they set. Come with me, Miss Elizabeth.”

Chapter 5

London, August 27, 1885

The air of the stairway was thick and black, and grew hotter and heavier with each step. Katarina’s candle burned in a sullen sort of way and seemed likely to sigh out of existence at any moment, so Elizabeth kept her hand pressed tight to the plaster wall to be sure of her footing. “We divided the warehouse attic into bedchambers,” Katarina explained. “That’s Maxwell’s room, to the left there, and I sleep here.”

She turned to the right, drawing aside a thick red curtain that smelled strongly of mold. Elizabeth ducked underneath it, trying not to inhale too deeply as she did so, and Katarina came after, letting the curtain fall behind them. Elizabeth looked around as best she could by the candle’s guttering light.

The tiny chamber was as simply furnished and badly kept as the living room downstairs. The bed was only a mattress on the floor, unmade, pillows and coverlet lying limp and slovenly. Against the far wall sat two chests, one with the lid open and one with it closed. Katarina went and knelt in front of the closed one, setting her candle on the floor as she undid the clasp and opened the lid. The spill of candlelight showed quite clearly the layer of grime on the floorboards, as well as the dust cloud that rose in response to Katarina’s rummaging. Elizabeth stifled a cough.

Katarina turned and beckoned. “Come here,” she said. “I think this will fit.” Elizabeth crossed to her, skirting the tangled blanket that hung off the edge of the mattress, and Katarina held up a blouse of some sort, looking critically from it to Elizabeth and back.

“Well, it will have to do.” Katarina rose. “I haven’t anything more appropriate, I’m afraid, but it’s only for today.” She handed Elizabeth the blouse—and a pair of breeches. Elizabeth swallowed a wild flutter in her throat and tried to accept the gift with some semblance of dignity. She clearly didn’t manage it, for Katarina’s eyes crinkled again. But the older woman said only, “Here, let me have your dress, and I’ll see what I can do about the stains.”

“Is
there something you can do?” Elizabeth squirmed to undo the buttons down her back. Katarina had not even thought to ask if she would need help—well, obviously not if Katarina were used to wearing breeches—so it was perhaps just as well that Elizabeth was often too impatient to wait for her maid and had therefore perfected the art of undoing her own buttons without snapping any of them off. And that she almost never wore stays. “Is that something else that’s changed? In my—” She took a breath, and said the ridiculous and wonderful words. “In my time, we only brush gowns.”

“We could wait for the mud to dry, and brush that,” Katarina agreed, taking the soaked and muddy garment from Elizabeth’s hands. “What do you do for tea-stains, though? Or grass-stains?”

“I get a frightful scolding,” Elizabeth admitted, and Katarina chuckled.

“I can only imagine,” she said, and bent to examine the damage. “Well—it’s muslin. It will hold up to hot water or it won’t. At least it’s white and there’s no pattern to worry over, so I can use kerosene for the tea. Do you want to risk it?”

“I think I have to,” Elizabeth said. “Kerosene?”

“My mother used it for grass-stains.
After
she gave me a frightful scolding. It worked more often than not.”

“Is there grass to stain your skirt, in London?” Elizabeth wondered.

Katarina chuckled again, though now it was a hard sound, without humor. “Not hardly. I spent my childhood in Devon.”

“Oh,” Elizabeth said. She seemed to have walked right into something, though she could not imagine what. She hesitated, then fell back on tea-time manners, as ludicrous as those were when standing in one’s chemise in a strange woman’s bedchamber. “That’s said to be such a pretty place, isn’t it?”

“Once,” Katarina said—shortly, but not unkindly. “Right, then, I’ll be downstairs. Bring your shift once you’ve changed.” Without waiting for a reply, she was gone, crossing the room in a few long strides and hardly disturbing the curtain as she slipped around it.

Elizabeth let out a sigh.

She looked at the blouse and breeches, then set them down beside the candle. She wriggled out of her chemise—easy enough, no buttons to confound her fingers—and lifted it over her head. Naked except for shoes and stockings, she spent the time it took to draw two long breaths looking around at the dirty room and the unbelievable situation in which she found herself.

Then she picked up the blouse. It was of a coarser material than her chemise, rougher against her skin than she was accustomed to, but it hung loosely and so did not overly trouble her. The breeches were rougher yet, and Elizabeth hesitated before pulling them on—then noticed something that had been tucked between them and the shirt. She examined the white garment, deduced what it was for, and stepped into it. It was also too large, but it tied around the waist. Elizabeth knotted it firmly, then pulled the breeches on over it.

The cuffs hung past her ankles, and she nearly tripped trying to take her first step. She caught herself, biting back a giggle that was probably incipient hysteria. Well, that wouldn’t do. She thought about it for a moment, then sat down gingerly on the edge of Katarina’s chest. She reached under one floppy leg, undid the garter that held her stockings in place, and re-tied it over breech leg and stocking, hopefully securing both. She did the same with the other leg, and stood to inspect her handiwork. It looked ridiculous. She wanted to laugh out loud.

Katarina had left a final garment on top of the chest, another bodice such as gypsy women wore. Elizabeth avoided stays whenever possible, and even her mother admitted she was too slight to have any great need for them, but this once she thought she might prefer something extra between her person and the eyes that might light upon it. She laced it as modestly as possible, and though it would have been easy to tug down the blouse the way Katarina wore it, she was careful not to do so.

Only then did she realize that the breeches had
pockets,
and scooped up her watch with a barely smothered trill of delight. She could keep it. She needn’t give it to anyone else to hold. She could tuck it into her pocket just exactly as a young man would, and fasten the chain to her bodice—yes, just so. Elizabeth looked about for a glass in which to examine the effect, but there was none.

She gathered up her chemise, turned for the candle...and almost tripped over something left abandoned in the shadow. She righted herself, and reached curious fingers to investigate. A boot. She drew it closer. A man’s work boot.

Kicked off and left by the side of the bed.

Oh.

Elizabeth picked up the candle and stretched it toward the open chest. She saw a suit of man’s winter underthings, darned and patched. A shirt, much bigger than the one she had on and the twin to what Trevelyan had been wearing downstairs. Two handkerchiefs and a cravat, all of which looked as though they had been used as cleaning rags at some point in the recent past.

She looked over at the unmade bed.
Pillows,
plural. Each with a depression where a head was accustomed to rest.

Elizabeth cast her mind back, but she had not seen any glint of a ring on Katarina’s left hand. More to the point, she was “Madame Katarina Rasmirovna,” not “Mrs. Trevelyan.”

A pocket watch pulls me into the future, there are monsters on the street outside, and it’s consorting with a fallen woman that shocks me?
Elizabeth asked herself sardonically. Not that she was
shocked
, not exactly, only surprised. She had never actually met a fallen woman before, any more than an adventuress.
But perhaps that’s considered acceptable now as well?
And then, with another suppressed giggle,
In any case, it looks to be great fun.

She swallowed the third giggle and headed back for the stairs. These she took with great care, well able to envision the disaster of tripping with a candle and an armful of cloth. At least her garters seemed to be up to the task of holding the breeches in place. At the bottom of the stairs, she turned for the living room, hesitantly testing the length of her stride, slowly finding the rhythm of it.

The room was empty. The cold remnants of the tea sat abandoned in half-empty cups on the little table, but no one was there to drink them. Elizabeth poked her head around into the scullery and found it too uninhabited. Leaving her chemise draped over a chair that looked barely strong enough to support its weight, she ventured into the corridor.

It was filled with a humming sound. Or—not a sound, not exactly; she couldn’t hear it so much as taste it. She pressed her tongue against her teeth and the hum seemed to vibrate in all the bones of her face. In her hand, the candle-flame shivered.

She took a step toward the passageway fork that had seemed to lead to someplace large and hollow. The hum grew stronger. Had it been here before, and she just not aware of it between the artillery outside and the threat of violence inside? All of a sudden it was unnerving to stand in the dark with the almost-taste on her tongue, and she hurried forward. Her outstretched fingers touched a thick door, closed but unlatched. She pushed it open. On its other side was a hall absolutely unlike anything she had ever seen.

It was
bright
, blindingly so, as bright as a farmer’s field under midday sun. The ceiling seemed as high as the sky would be over that field, and she couldn’t imagine where the light was coming from. Squinting, she made out globes of lamps hanging from beams part-way up—but the globes brought tears and flashing colors to her eyes so that she had to look away.

The hum was a rumble now, a rhythmic rattling. It came from the far end of the hall, from a contraption that looked like—Elizabeth put her head to one side, studied it as best she could through her spotted vision, and decided it still looked like an enormous spinning wheel attached to a loom. Behind it glowed the red coals of what appeared to be a blacksmith’s forge. Tables lined two of the other three walls and boasted the most amazing assortment of litter on their surfaces—paper covered in sketches, models built out of wood, odd pieces of metal and the occasional tool.

In the middle of the floor sat something large and ominous—something halfway between a cannon and a rifle. Trevelyan crouched beside it, long-nosed tongs in one hand and eyes on the silver barrel, appearing to give it his full attention. Very angry attention it was too, Elizabeth thought, until she got closer and realized firstly that Katarina stood just behind Trevelyan and secondly that they were arguing.

“Well, they can’t stay here,” Trevelyan said, voice raised to be heard above the clatter. “I can’t be bothered childminding. I have work to do if we’re to—”

“Were you suggesting
I
ought to be childminding?” Katarina folded her arms and stared at the back of Trevelyan’s head, but he did not turn to look at her. “I have my own work to do to ensure tonight’s success.”

Trevelyan straightened from the contraption and reached to exchange his tongs for an even more unlikely looking tool. “Take them with you.”

Katarina rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes,
that
will be inconspicuous.”    

Elizabeth shifted from one foot to the other. They hadn’t seemed to notice her yet. Perhaps she ought to back away, and then make a bit of noise as she walked toward them? Although it didn’t seem to worry them to be having this conversation in William’s earshot—was he not here? She glanced around for him.

He stood where the bright lights fell away into shadows, holding a scribbled-over piece of paper in his hands and pretending to read it, but—judging by the stiffness of his posture—actually listening to the Welsh laborer and the gypsy woman discuss his care as though he were a pet dog inconveniently left on the doorstep. Elizabeth was sure she did not make any noise, but just then William looked up as though he had heard her. He opened his mouth in what she presumed was intended to be a greeting—then took in what she was wearing and coughed as though he had swallowed something the wrong way.