The Mammoth Book Of Steampunk Part 35

My news about the Margravine's catalogue did not impress her "We all have our lullabies, don't we, m'sieur?" was her cryptic response but my report on the clocks seemed to plunge her into melancholy.

"No," she said in response to my enquiry, "it is not new, though it seems to be accelerating. How terrible ..." She closed her eyes and laid a hand across the lids. "Do you miss your wife, M'sieur Saint-Pierre?"

I literally choked on my wine. "Madame, you may as well ask if I breathe."

"She doesn't haunt you, then?"

"No," I said, remembering my thoughts from last night. "Forgive me, but I don't think-"

"Do you know that the carousel is broken? It hasn't worked in twelve years." She lifted her hand from her eyes. "It's a terrible thought, isn't it, M'sieur Saint-Pierre, that all their work dies with them?"

Involuntarily, I shuddered.

"There are days you wish, don't you, that you had something of hers a letter, a lock of hair something you could hold and say, this is her. This exists because she did." Porphyrogene stood and began pacing between the parlor windows. "The rhymes didn't lie entirely, you know. I did leave her blankets turned down. As if that was all it would take to keep her here."

Keep her here, she said not bring her back. There was a brief silence. I said, quite softly, "I understand."

She turned to me, and I felt my face heating. "Violeta could have moved the world," I said. "When she died, I could only watch as it rolled back into place."

"The cruelest things on earth," Porphyrogene said, "are that it never changes and it never stops. Grief, M'sieur Saint-Pierre, is a carousel. You get on and you ride as fast and as hard as you can, but it only brings you back to where you started."

We finished the meal in silence. It must have been clear from my eyes, as I know it was clear from hers, that neither of us was whom the other wanted to see across the table.

30 September That dream again. I am standing on the sh.o.r.e as the sea rolls in, staining the bleached stones with all the colors of a jewel box. Suddenly, the smell of lavender and fever. I turn and see the Margravine of Blois.

This time, I reach for her. Her face becomes Violeta's the moment before it slips through my fingers like foam.

1 October I have found the bedroom of the Margravine of Blois.

It is at the end of a long corridor in the north wing, which I discovered by means of a concealed pa.s.sage behind one of the library shelves. I cannot say the existence of the pa.s.sage surprises me very much. From what I have seen of Summerfall, and of Jean-Baptiste's miraculous powers of apparition, I'd expected to encounter one sooner or later. On emerging behind a standing clock of prodigious size, I had planned merely to look around, perhaps trying the keys from Porphyrogene's ring; but upon seeing in one room the distinctive handwriting of the Margravine of Blois, I abandoned caution and went to investigate.

The writing, incidentally, which arches over the bed and would normally be hidden by the curtains, quotes only a line of poetry: Here I took my rest; my joy came in other places. I cannot imagine why, as the chamber itself seems cheerful enough, I was going to say, but truly a great deal more than that. The walls and bedclothes are covered in golden silk, painted, in the case of the former, with emerald branches that serve as perches for dozens of painted birds. A portrait over the dressing table shows Porphyrogene seated on a garden bench, the Margravine of Blois kneeling at her feet. There is only one clock in the room, standing on a window ledge, its hands formed by a pair of racing blood bays.

As I came closer, I saw that there was a slip of paper wedged into the door of the pendulum box, yellowed and ratty, as though it had been taken out and stuffed back in many times more times, indeed, than its contents seem to warrant. Here they are, transcribed from the writing of the Margravine of Blois: 13 April Ha! You see, madame, that I bow as always to my lady's request. Though your sad little jest alone could not tease laughter from these lips, your command shall be to me as G.o.d's.

19 April Another, my love? Are all your riddles so miserable? Pray bring something more cheerful, lest I am forced to drastic measures to steal a smile from your sweet mouth.

24 April I am forced to reply in kind: what goes on scales in the morning, on feathers at noon, and sleeps at the end of the day on flesh and bone?

24 April A ring, madame: the jeweler's scale when it is made, to the down box in which I purchased it (at no small cost, I might add), to my lady's finger, if she is clever enough to undo the knot with which it is bound to Phosphorus's neck!

And indeed, the miniature bay on the hour hand still wears a silver ring. Though tempted, I did not try the knot.

2 October I had been hesitant to pull the golden cord, but curiosity, as always, had finally gotten the better of me. For days I had pondered a question to which, it seemed to me, Jean-Baptiste would know the answer.

"Why did she ask me to come here?"

He blinked, his large pale eyes moving slowly down and up. "Monsieur?"

"Be honest, Jean-Baptiste you know there is no ghost in Summerfall. Certainly no ghost of the Margravine of Blois."

He nodded slowly. "I suspected so, monsieur. She was not the sort to linger. I myself have seen nothing nothing but the clocks, and while they are haunting enough in their own way, I daresay Monsieur Christopher of Cloud could put them in their place."

It occurred to me to wonder how familiar a servant could be with Monsieur Cloud, but I let it pa.s.s. There is no denying that the Margravine of Blois was a genius Clockmaker; perhaps it permeated her conversation, even with her lover's valet.

Jean-Baptiste was watching warily as I paced the room. "Monsieur? Will that be all?"

"No," I said. "I know Porphyrogene is no fool. What did she expect to gain from me, if this place isn't haunted?"

"Perhaps she wants to be haunted, monsieur."

It took every ounce of self-control I possess to limit my reaction to a raised eyebrow.

"I beg your pardon, monsieur." He waited until I gestured for him to go on. "Porphyrogene is not grieving for the Margravine of Blois. It seems to me she cried all her tears for the woman twelve years ago. But for the artist, the builder of the carousel? That is a hard thing to let die."

"I suppose it is," I said. And weak fool that I am, I began to cry.

2 October, later In the northernmost room of the library, there is a book by the Margravine of Blois called Clockwork Souls. I have always thought it was a silly concern, and a quintessentially artistic one what happens to automata after they die? In all probability, they are simply gone, vanished as if they never were. With all my experience, I have never met a clockwork ghost.

Nor have I met the ghost of the Margravine of Blois. Does this mean that she, too, is simply gone? And even her clockwork is vanis.h.i.+ng the carousel is broken, the clocks are dying or dead.

Isn't it a terrible thought, that all their work dies with them?

And here is a worse thought: The night Violeta died, I climbed up to the rain-slick roof and looked up at the sky. One by one, the heavy clouds were clearing and the stars emerging from the darkness. In a feverish fantasy, I imagined that there had been a time, when the world was young, that stars filled the sky made it a solid sheet of light arching over the earth. But one by one, the stars began to die and Man, having a poor memory, began to believe that the sky had always been black.

I am a widower. I am the black spot left in the sky when a star has guttered out.

9 October For a week, I have been gone with fever. I need not detail my dreams, save to say that they were the haunting grounds for more than one ghost. I woke this morning to find Porphyrogene standing over me, a moist cloth in one hand and a look of profound unease on her face.

"You were calling for Violeta," was all she said.

I flopped back on my pillows, and found myself staring at the portrait of the Margravine of Blois hung over my head.

"Why did she leave?" I asked.

Porphyrogene followed my gaze, her lips pressed thin. "An accident," she said finally. "On the carousel. The simple fact, M'sieur Saint-Pierre, is that all clockwork goes mad eventually, and she built that carousel too big. We thought it was going to be Phosphorus first he was such a violent, crazy thing, and wouldn't be tame for anyone but me but it wasn't. It was his brother."

She chaffed her wrists, heedless of the cloth in her hand. "Hesperus was carrying evariste of Blois the Margravine's cousin, son of the famous composer. The carousel had stopped, and the Margravine was helping me down from Phosphorus's saddle. Hesperus reared suddenly. She managed to roll out from under his hooves, but evariste fell."

"Was he ... ?"

"Trampled. The corpse was unrecognizable." Porphyrogene looked down at her hands, then swiftly dabbed at my forehead with the damp cloth, as if that glance had brought it back to her mind. "I begged her to stay, of course. It was a nasty scene all around. She said Hesperus's madness had been a much-needed awakening, showing how enslaved she had become to me a gelding, like Phosphorus when I held his reins. Those were the last words she spoke to me. She did something to the carousel before she left, and it hasn't worked since."

"You said she died here because of the carousel."

"I think ..." Porphyrogene frowned, biting her lip. "I think she wanted to reawaken it. She was terribly sick by then consumption she knew she was dying. I think she wanted to leave something behind."

I sat up. It was a slow, laborious process, and it left the room buzzing around me like a swarm of bees. "Why is it so hard," I asked when I'd caught my breath, "to believe she came back for you?"

Porphyrogene shook her head, smiling or grimacing.

"I'm serious. Why does it have to be the carousel some unfinished business, left behind for you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. You should get some rest, M'sieur Saint-Pierre, after your fever ..."

"I want to be haunted, Porphyrogene." She looked at me as if I had gone mad as if I were about to trample something, or go battling songbirds. "I told you that Violeta doesn't haunt me, and it's true. Horribly, unbearably true. When I think of everything she was, the quick ripostes over dinner, the magnificent letters she wrote when we were away from each other, her way with languages ... it makes me sick. All of it is gone." I felt a moistness on my lip, and licked it away, thinking it was sweat; but it tasted sweet, the briny sweetness of tears. "Anything that could remain of her, I would take. A disembodied footfall, a slip of mist, a cool breeze in the night. A book that could not stay shut. And if I thought here was a man who could draw ghosts to a house-"

"How dare you," Porphyrogene interrupted, "compare your flippant little wife to the Margravine of Blois?"

"You're trying to build a ghost, Porphyrogene. You want to be haunted."

She flung the cloth at me and ran from the room.

10 October All this time, she has been going down to the carousel.

It explains the persistent reopening of the Margravine's catalogue, and Jean-Baptiste's familiarity with Christopher of Cloud what valet, after all, is not familiar with his mistress's reading? For six years, perhaps longer, she has been trying to reawaken the carousel of the Margravine of Blois.

The rain let up sometime over the seven days of my sickness, and I went down this afternoon to the gardens. Years of neglect have left them as barren and white as salt flats. In the center of the desolation, as red and black and golden as the Margravine herself, is the carousel and its twenty-four clockworks. Even from a distance, I could see their characters from their poses and expressions: clever Antigone, balanced nearly on her tail, and graceful Ambrosias with his trunk held high, and proud Clytemnestra striding firmly across the metal stage. Closest to me, the bays Phosphorus and Hesperus lay peaceful and dormant on folded legs.

I did not stay long, as I knew Porphyrogene would be coming down shortly. But I will confess, there is something terribly captivating about the carousel. When I lay my hand against Phosphorus's flank, it felt as warm as living flesh or as warm as metal that living hands had touched.

13 October This shall be my last night in Summerfall. As I said to Jean-Baptiste, there is no sense in me staying on when the only ghosts are made of metal.

"I understand, monsieur," he said, then looked at me oddly. "I know she has done little to show it, but the lady Porphyrogene is grateful that you came. It was good to have this bed filled again, if you understand me."

"I beg your pardon!" I exclaimed, leaping up from the furniture in question.

"That bed, monsieur. It was Porphyrogene's, while the Margravine of Blois lived in Summerfall."

"The very bed whose blankets poets satired, I don't wonder." Weariness came over me then, and I leaned heavily against the wall. "You know, Jean-Baptiste, I wish I had followed Porphyrogene's example. The last thing my wife touched was a silk blanket, to pull it closer around her. I wish I had never moved that blanket, so that something could remain as Violeta had put it."

"Ah," Jean-Baptiste said, eyeing the bed pensively. "But then where would monsieur have slept?"

14 October, early morning In my dream, Violeta is riding the carousel of the Margravine of Blois. I am watching her from the gravel walkway, my heart pounding in my throat, and she waves each time she pa.s.ses me, standing gracefully in the blood bay's stirrups.

But something is wrong. With each cycle, her color drains a little more. Soon she is nothing but a streak of white, like a tearstain... and then she is gone.

Still, the carousel turns.

14 October I found Porphyrogene out in the gardens before dawn. She had a sheaf of papers spread across Clytemnestra's broad back, and a stack of tools piled at her feet. I crossed the gravel walkway in two strides and leapt onto the carousel stage with a reverberant clang.

"What are you doing here?" Porphyrogene snapped, not looking up from her book. From where I stood, I could see that the page was rimmed with slanted marginalia. I came up on the other side of the ox and flipped the treatise closed.

"I have a gift for you," I said, and when Porphyrogene looked up at me, I held out a silver ring in the palm of my hand.

The change in her was sudden and terrible. Her eyes widened, her lips pressed thin and pale, the long bridge of her nose tightened into a web of wrinkles. "How dare you!" she said, s.n.a.t.c.hing the ring from my hand. "How-"

"How dare I what, Porphyrogene? She bought that ring for your finger, not for a clockwork horse."

"I thought you of all people would understand." Her fingers closed into a fist around the ring, as though she could crush it. "What harm could there be in keeping everything the way it was, before ... ?"

"Are you happy, Porphyrogene?" I interrupted.

She shook her head, not looking at me. "How can you even ask?"

I circled around Clytemnestra, past Antigone's silver tail, and crouched down by Hesperus's head, where the pile of tools gleamed. A steel pike lay across the top, its slender tip designed to pry open the nearly seamless clockwork. I took it in my hand, feeling its cool weight up through my arm like the trail of a phantom finger.

"There are three things in the world you can never change," I said. Turning from Hesperus's wild eyes, I found myself facing the paper-thin membrane of Antigone's tail. "The first is that the Margravine of Blois lived."

Swiftly, before Porphyrogene could stop me, I drove the spike through the silver dolphin.

"No!" Porphyrogene shouted, but I continued over her protest.

"She lived, she built this carousel and a thousand brilliant clocks besides, and she laughed at your riddles because you told her to. She loved color and she loved this house and she loved you." I punctuated each phrase with a blow to one of the clockworks: Clytemnestra's smooth flank, Zephyr's outspread wing, Lucien's undulating tongue. Porphyrogene made no move to stop me, though her eyes were darkening with fury. I could only hope she was listening to my words.

"The second," I said, "is that the Margravine of Blois died, and her genius died with her."

Was it my imagination, or did a look of relief come into Boreas's snarling face as I drove the spike into his belly?

Porphyrogene caught my wrist as I turned to Ariel. Tears brimmed unchecked in her eyes. "And the third?" she said.

"The third is that you cannot bring the Margravine of Blois back from the dead, and it's killing you to try. That's the thing with ghosts even metal ones." I broke her grip and slashed at Ariel's claws. "There are things the living and the dead cannot share. The Margravine of Blois isn't any more dead because her clockwork no longer runs, and she wouldn't be any more alive if it could. But we have a choice, Porphyrogene between me and a ghost, between you and a carousel. The living or the dead."

I held out the spike to her, as I had held out the ring. "Choose however you want," I said, "but you must choose. You cannot jump on Phosphorus's back and hope the world doesn't change anymore while you're going in circles."

For a long moment, Porphyrogene looked at me. She opened her palm, slid the silver ring onto her finger. Then she took the spike.

That, madame, is the tragedy of the celebrated carousel of the Margravine of Blois. The remains are buried in Summerfall where, as you may see from the address on this package, I have decided to stay on. Porphyrogene has begun to expand her library, Jean-Baptiste is designing some small clockworks, and I am continuing my investigations, but the house seems large enough to accommodate all these imperialistic pursuits.

Though there is one room, at the end of a long corridor in the north wing, whose purpose we have agreed upon; it houses a pair of clockwork bays, their elegant legs folded beneath them in repose. Should these be of interest to you, madame, you are most welcome to come some day to Summerfall and we shall introduce you. They are really quite beautiful, a testament to the enduring genius of the celebrated Margravine of Blois.

Antoine Aristide de Saint-Pierre.

Biographical Notes to "A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-planes" by Benjamin Rosenbaum.

Benjamin Rosenbaum.

On my return from PlausFab-Wisconsin (a delightful festival of art and enquiry, which styles itself "the World's Only Gynarchist Plausible-Fable a.s.sembly") aboard the P.R.G.B. ri George Bernard Shaw, I happened to share a compartment with Prem Rama.s.son, Raja of Outermost Thule, and his consort, a dour but beautiful woman whose name I did not know.

Two great blond barbarians bearing the livery of Outermost Thule (an elephant astride an iceberg and a volcano) stood in the hallway outside, armed with sabres and needlethrowers. Politely they asked if they might frisk me, then allowed me in. They ignored the short dagger at my belt presumably accounting their liege's skill at arms more than sufficient to equal mine.

I took my place on the embroidered divan. "Good evening," I said.

The Raja flashed me a white-toothed smile and inclined his head. His consort pulled a wisp of blue veil across her lips, and looked out the porthole.