Steampunk! Part 8

The murderous hand has had a hard life since it escaped the doctors. Its nails are broken, rimmed with dirt. Its knuckles are bruised and its fingertips calloused. The wrist ends in a ragged, oozy wound. It looks more pathetic than horrifying. The hand throws itself upon the glove, clutches at it, tosses it up in the air, but, of course, one hand alone cannot put on a glove. Its anger and frustration is palpable.

"Poor thing," Dr. Elsinore says. "I think it needs medical attention."

"It killed four people," Etreyo says, gingerly hoisting the cage up. "Come on - we may still have time to save Nutter Norm."

"What the fike is that?" Once again Detective Wilkins blocks her way. But this time he's not looking at her; his attention is focused on the trap.

"The real murderer!" Etreyo says. "And I can prove it, too! Get out of my way!"

Now, though you may find it hard to believe, the physical perfection that is Detective Wilkins is not without flaw. It's a flaw that he takes pains to hide, and one that he has learned to work around. His eyesight is not very good. He can see distance fine, but up close, things tend to blur, and to bring them into focus, he must get very near indeed. He sees the cage perfectly, but the hand, now clutching at the bars of its prison, is not so distinct. He leans forward to get a better look. Etreyo pivots away from this lean, tries to go around him. Wilkins reaches for the cage; she sidesteps his grip and puts her foot down squarely on a duck that she didn't know was underfoot. The duck quacks angrily, and surprised by the sudden flutter of wings at her feet, Etreyo drops the cage.

The cage pops open, and galvanic quick, the Squeeze leaps from its prison, scuttles on fingertips, crablike, across the ground, and grabs ahold of Detective Wilkins's perfectly creased trouser leg. Detective Wilkins looks down and sees something crawling rapidly up his leg; he squints and thinks it's a squirrel, a rabid squirrel probably, for whoever heard otherwise of a squirrel attacking someone? Detective Wilkins stamps his feet and bats at the hand, trying to dislodge it. The Squeeze knows what it wants: the splendid diamond pinkie ring that Detective Wilkins wears on his left hand, and it is not going to be so easily dislodged.

"Hold still!" Etreyo shouts, tearing off her coat.

Detective Wilkins is doing the tarantella now, feet stepping mighty high, hands slapping ineffectually. The Squeeze is skittering up Detective Wilkins's splendidly embroidered weskit, heading for his snow-white cravat.

"Get it off!" Wilkins hollers. His straw skimmer falls off and he steps on it, putting his foot through the crown. Now he looks as though he's invented a new dance: the Murdering Hand Fandango. Choking back laughter, Etreyo throws all her weight against the dancing detective. He goes down like a ninepin.

"Use my cloak - it's bigger!" Dr. Elsinore cries.

Etreyo s.n.a.t.c.hes Dr. Elsinore's cloak and throws it over the thras.h.i.+ng detective, hoping to trap the Squeeze in its folds. Detective Wilkins's screams, m.u.f.fled in the heavy cloak, have become wheezes, and his thras.h.i.+ng is lessening. His head is tangled in the cloth; when Etreyo gets it free, she sees that the Squeeze has Detective Wilkins by the throat.

She grabs at the Squeeze, tries to pry it off, but the Squeeze has a death grip on the detective. His face has turned plum purple, and his eyes are bulging out. She dares not let go of what grip she has to reach for her pocketknife. Dimly, she hears Dr. Elsinore shouting. Dimly, she hears herself shouting. Wilkins's tongue is protruding; his face is almost blue. Desperately, she leans down and sinks her teeth into the Squeeze. She bites down as hard as she can, until her teeth grate on bone. The hand spasms and slackens its grip, and Detective Wilkins gurgles. A horrible rancid iron taste floods Etreyo's mouth, and she almost gags, but grimly she holds on. Her jaws ache and the taste is making her want to upchuck. But she holds on. The Squeeze's grip is growing weaker. With one last spasm, it lets go of Wilkins's throat. Etreyo raises up her head, tears the now limp hand out of her mouth, and throws it back into the cage. Dr. Elsinore slams the cage door shut. Someone helps Etreyo crawl off of Detective Wilkins's now limp form; dimly, she hears someone yell that he is still alive. Etreyo staggers over to the bushes, and spits and spits and spits, and rubs her lips against her sleeve until they are raw.

Like moths to a flame, they cl.u.s.ter around him, the great Detective Wilkins, his muscular throat wrapped in a silken bandage, silver sunshades hiding his bruised eyes. Just back from Saeta House, where he has received a commendation for bravery in subduing and capturing the Hand of Gory (as the press have redubbed the murderer). Not every detective is willing to revisit his own case, to admit that he might have the wrong man. Not every detective is willing to lay his life on the line to capture a murderer and save an innocent man. The station house throngs with well-wishers, and people are lined up outside to shake his hand.

What a trump!

The Hand of Gory has been booked and now resides, still in its cage, in a cell in the Califa City Jail. How a revivified hand can partic.i.p.ate in its own defense, understand the charges against, and make a plea, well, that's not the police's problem. The lawyers will have to figure that out. The police (who love lawyers not a whit) are sure that the lawyers will find a way. Nutter Norm has been released and now resides in the Palace Hotel's best suite, courtesy of the Warlady. Doctors Elsinore and Ehle have had an audience with the Warlady, the end result being that they have been appointed to her medical staff. The Warlady is canny; she sees great potential in galvanic energy, if it is harnessed to Califa's advantage. The not-quite-so-dead chorus boy has returned to the Odeon Theater, a chorus boy no longer, but now, with much ballyhoo, recast in the lead role of the Dainty Pirate. The run is already sold out.

But where is the true hero of the hour, Constable Etreyo? She's in the station house bathroom, brus.h.i.+ng her teeth for the hundredth time. No matter how hard she scrubs, she can't get the rancid taste of the Hand of Gory out of her mouth. As she brushes, she listens to the sounds of congratulation coming from the other room and tries not to feel bitter. Nutter Norm, standing on the scaffold with a rope around his neck, was reprieved. That's all that matters. Let Detective Wilkins have the glory. He's already been somewhat overshadowed by Doctors Ehle and Elsinore and their fantastic medical experiments, anyway. Once the revivified chorus boy makes his debut, Detective Wilkins will be forgotten.

But Etreyo does feel bitter. To the press, Detective Wilkins has credited his turnaround to the Bertillo System, the very system he had earlier ridiculed. The CPG has published a glowing account of his investigation, of his ferocious fight with the Hand. She has not been mentioned at all. Her report, contradicting Detective Wilkins's in almost every detail, has been ignored by Captain Landaon.

She spits into the basin one last time; she's out of Madama Tw.a.n.ky's Oh-Be-Joyful Tooth Polish. She's gone through two bottles already, and yet the taste still lingers. She should have bitten Detective Wilkins instead. She bets his flesh tastes just like chicken. It's almost midnight: time for her to go on s.h.i.+ft. She's already changed into her blue tunic with the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. She collects her truncheon and her helmet; on the way out of the locker room, she finds herself blocked in again.

"I want to thank you," Detective Wilkins says. He takes his sunshades off. The blue bruising brings out the golden glints in his eyes. "You saved my life."

"That's not what I read in the papers."

"Don't take it personally. The police must always appear as heroes; that is how we keep order. But I am grateful."

"Don't take it personally," she says. "I was after the hand."

"Happy for me, then, that you are so single-minded."

"What do you want?"

"To thank you," he says sweetly, sincerely. "And to invite you to join my team."

"Your team?" she says warily.

"Captain Landaon has agreed that it is time for the department to modernize. To that end, I'm organizing a team to study the Bertillo System. I thought you might have some interest in joining it. Am I wrong?"

Etreyo is torn. Finally - the Bertillo System is taken seriously. But to work under Detective Wilkins! She'd almost rather continue to patrol the Northern Sandbank. Wouldn't she?

"I'll think about it," she says.

Detective Wilkins grins gorgeously. "Do that. We'll be in the ready room. Oh, and here - a little token of my esteem."

Constable Etreyo waits until he's gone before she opens the beribboned box he has given her. Nestled inside is a small cut-gla.s.s flask. She holds the bottle up and reads: Madama Tw.a.n.ky's Mint-o Mouthwash: Polish Your Palate Until It s.h.i.+nes!

Constable Etreyo laughs and takes the bottle to the bathroom. The Mint-o mouthwash burns the awful taste away and makes her smile almost blinding. It would be a pity to waste that brilliant smile on the Northern Sandbanks. And anyway, doesn't Detective Wilkins always get what he wants? Who is she to stand in the way of the hero of the hour?

Etreyo puts her truncheon and helmet away, tucks the bottle of Mint-o in her locker, and walks down the hall to the ready room.

There was a ghost at Cwmlech Manor.

Everybody knew it, although n.o.body had seen her, not with their own eyes, for years and years.

"Ghosts have to abide by the rules," I remember Mrs. Bando the housekeeper explaining as she poured us out a cup of tea at the manor's great oak kitchen table. She'd been parlor maid at the Manor when Mam was a kitchen maid there. Fast friends they were, and fast friends they'd stayed, even when Mam left domestic service to marry. Mrs. Bando was my G.o.dmother, and we went to her most Sunday afternoons.

I was ten or thereabouts, and I was mad for wonders. Da had told me of the new clockwork motor that was going to change everything, from the mining of coal to the herding of sheep. Above all things, I liked to hear about horseless carriages and self-powered mechanicals, but I'd settle for ghosts at a pinch.

So, "How do ghosts know the rules?" I asked. "Is there a ghost school, think you, on the other side?"

Mam laughed and said there was never such a child for asking questions that had no answer. She'd wager I'd ask the same of the ghost myself, if I saw her.

"And so I would, Mam. But first I'd ask her where she'd hid the treasure."

"And she'd likely disappear on the spot," Mrs. Bando scolded. "That knowledge is for Cwmlech ears only, look you. Not that it's needed, may the dear Lord be thanked."

Sir Owen indeed had treasure of his own, with a big house in London and any number of mechanicals and horseless carriages at his beck and call. It was generally agreed that it was no fault of his that the roof of Cwmlech Manor was all in holes and the beetle had gotten into the library paneling, but only the miserly ways of his factor, who would not part with so much as a farthing bit for the maintenance of a house his master did not care for.

Which made me think very much the less of Sir Owen Cwmlech, for Cwmlech Manor was the most beautiful house on the Welsh Borders. I loved everything about it, from its peaked slate roofs and tiny-paned windows to the peac.o.c.ks caterwauling in its yew trees. Best of all, I loved the story that went with it - very romantic and a girl as the hero - a rare enough thing in romantic tales, where the young girls always act like ninnies and end up dead of a broken heart, as often as not.

Mistress Angharad Cwmlech of Cwmlech Manor was not a ninny. When she was only seventeen, the Civil War broke out, and her father and brothers, Royalists to a man, left home to join the king's army, leaving Mistress Cwmlech safe, they thought, at home. But in 1642 the Parliamentarians invaded the Borders, whereupon Mistress Cwmlech hid her jewels, as well as her father's strongbox and the family plate, dating, some of it, from the days of Edward II and very precious.

The night the Roundheads broke into the manor, they found her on the stairs, clad in her nightdress, armed with her grandfather's sword. They slew her where she stood, but not a gold coin did they find or a silver spoon, though they turned the house upside down with looking.

It was a sad homecoming her brothers had, I was thinking, to find their sister dead and in her silent grave, with the family wealth safely - and permanently - hidden away.

Her portrait hung in the great hall, over the mantel where her grandfather's swords had once hung. It must have been painted not long before her death - a portrait of a solemn young woman, her dark hair curling over her temples like a spaniel's ears and her gown like a flowered silk tea cozy, all trimmed with lace and ribbon-knots. A sapphire sparkled on her bosom, brilliants at her neck and ears, and on her finger, a great square ruby set in gold. There is pity, I always thought, that her ghost must appear barefoot and clad in her night s.h.i.+ft instead of in that grand flowered gown.

I would have liked to see her, nightdress and all.

But I did not, and life jogged on between school and Mam's kitchen, where I learned to cook and bake, and Da's forge, where I learned the properties of metal and listened to him talk of the wonderful machines he'd invent, did he only have the gold. On Sundays, Mrs. Bando told me stories of the parties and hunting meets of Sir Owen's youth, with dancing in the Long Gallery and dinners in the Great Hall for fifty or more.

Sometimes I thought I could hear an echo of their feet, but Mrs. Bando said it was only rats.

Still, I felt that Cwmlech Manor slept lightly, biding its time until its master returned and brought it back to life. But he did not come, and he did not come, and then, when I was fifteen, he died.

A bright autumn morning it was, warm as September often is, when Mrs. Bando knocked on the door in her ap.r.o.n, with her round, comfortable face all blubbered with weeping. She'd not drawn a breath before Mam had her by the fire with a cup of milky tea in her hand.

"There, then, Susan Bando," she said, brisk and kind. "Tell us what's amiss. You look as if you've seen the Cwmlech ghost."

Mrs. Bando took a gulp of tea. "In a manner of speaking, I have. The House of Cwmlech is laid in the dirt, look you. Sir Owen is dead, and his fortune all gambled away. The house in London is sold to pay his creditors and the manor's to be shut up and all the staff turned away. And what will I do for employment, at my age?" And she began to weep again while Mam patted her hand.

Me, I ran out of our house, down the lane, and across the stone bridge and spent the afternoon in the formal garden, weeping while the peac.o.c.ks grieved among the pines for Cwmlech Manor, that was now dying.

As autumn wore on, I wondered more and more why Mistress Cwmlech did not appear and reveal where she'd hidden the treasure. Surely the ruinous state of the place must be as much a grief to her as to me. Was she lingering in the empty house, waiting for someone to come and hear her? Must that someone be a Cwmlech of Cwmlech Manor? Or could it be anyone with a will to see her and the wit to hear her?

Could it be me?

One Sunday after chapel, I collected crowbar, magnet, and candle, determined to settle the question. Within an hour, I stood in the Great Hall with a torn petticoat and a bruised elbow, watching the shadows tremble in the candlelight. It was November, and the house cold and damp as a slate cavern. I slunk from room to room, past sheet-shrouded tables and presses and dressers and chairs, past curtains furry with dust drawn tight across the windows. A perfect haven for ghosts it looked, and filthy to break my heart - and surely Mistress Cwmlech's as well. But though I stood on the very step where she was slain and called her name three times aloud, she did not appear to me.

I did not venture inside again, but the softer weather of spring brought me back to sit in the overgrown gardens when I could s.n.a.t.c.h an hour from my ch.o.r.es. There's dreams I had boiling in me, beyond the dreams of my friends, who were all for a husband and a little house and babies on the hearth. After many tears, I'd more or less accepted the hard fact that a blacksmith's daughter with no education beyond the village school could never be an engineer. So I cheered myself with my ability to play any wind instrument put into my hand, though I'd only a recorder to practice on, and it the property of the chapel.

Practice I did that summer, in the gardens of Cwmlech Manor, to set the peac.o.c.ks screaming, and dreamed of somehow acquiring a mechanical that could play the piano and of performing with it before Queen Victoria herself. Such dreams, however foolish in the village, seemed perfectly reasonable at Cwmlech Manor.

Summer pa.s.sed, and autumn came on, with cold rain and food to put by for winter; my practicing and my visits to Cwmlech fell away to nothing. Sixteen I was now, with my hair coiled up and skirts down to my boot tops and little time to dream. I'd enough to do getting through my ch.o.r.es, without fretting after what could not be or thinking about an old ghost who could not be bothered to save her own house. Mam said I was growing up. I felt that I was dying.

One bright morning in early spring, a mighty roaring and coughing in the lane shattered the calm like a mirror. Upstairs I was, sweeping, so a clear view I had, looking down from the front bedroom window, of a horseless carriage driving down by the lane.

I'd not have been more astonished to see Queen Victoria herself.

I knew all about horseless carriages, mind. The inventor of the Patent Steam Carriage was a Welshman, and all the best carriages were made in Blaenavon, down in the Valley. But a horseless carriage was costly to buy and costly to keep. Hereabouts, only Mr. Iestyn Thomas, who owned the wool mill, drove a horseless carriage.

And here was a pair of them, black smoke belching from their smokestacks: a traveling coach followed by a closed wain, heading toward Cwmlech Manor.

Without thinking whether it was a good idea or a bad one, I dropped my broom and hotfooted after, ducking through the gap in the hedge just as the traveling coach drove under the stone arch and into the weed-clogged courtyard.

Loud enough to raise the dead it was, with the peac.o.c.ks screaming and the engines clattering and the wheels of the wain crunching on the gravel drive. I slipped behind the West Wing and peered through the branches of a s.h.a.ggy yew just in time to see the coach door open and a man climb out.

I was too far to see him clearly, only that he was dressed in a brown tweed suit, with a scarlet m.u.f.fler wound around his neck and hanging down behind and before. He looked around the yard, the sun flas.h.i.+ng from the lenses that covered his eyes, then raised an instrument to his lips and commenced to play.

There was no tune in it, just notes running fast as water over rocks in spring. It made my ears ache to hear it; I would have run away, except that the back of the wain opened and a ramp rolled out to the ground. And down that ramp, to my joy and delight, trundled a dozen mechanicals.

I recognized them at once from Da's journals: Porter models, designed to fetch and carry, a polished metal canister with a battery bolted on behind like a knapsack, and a ball at the top fitted with gla.s.s oculars. They ran on treads - much better than the wheels of older models, which slid on sand and stuck in the mud. Articulated arms hefted crates and boxes as though they were filled with feathers. Some had been modified with extra arms, and were those legs on that one there?

The notes that were not music fell silent. "Hullo," said a diffident voice. "May I help you? I am Arthur Cwmlech - Sir Arthur now, I suppose."

In my fascination I had drifted all the way from the hedge to the yard and was standing not a stone's throw from the young man with the pipe. Who was, apparently, the new Baronet of Cwmlech. And me in a dusty old ap.r.o.n, my hair raveling down my back, and my boots caked with mud.

If the earth had opened up and swallowed me where I stood, I would have been well content.

I curtsied, blus.h.i.+ng hot as fire. "Tacy Gof I am, daughter of William Gof the smith. Be welcome to the home of your fathers, Sir Arthur."

He blinked. "Thank you," he said. "It's not much to look at, is it?"

To my mind, he had no right to complain of the state of the house. Thin as a rake he was, with k.n.o.bby wrists and sandy hair straggling over the collar of his s.h.i.+rt, which would have been the better for a wash and an iron.

"Closed up too long it is, that's all," I said, with knives in, "and no one to look after it. A new roof is all it needs, and the ivy cut back, to be the most beautiful house on the Borders."

Solemn as a judge, he gave the house a second look, long and considering, then back to me. "I say, do you cook?"

It was my turn to blink. "What?"

"I need a housekeeper," he said, all business. "But she'd need to cook as well. No mechanical can produce an edible meal, and while I can subsist on sandwiches, I'd rather not."

I goggled, not knowing if he was in earnest or only teasing, or how I felt about it in either case.

"You'd be perfect," he went on. "You love the house and you know what it needs to make it fit to live in. Best of all, you're not afraid of mechanicals. At least, I don't think you are. Are you?" he ended anxiously.

I put up my chin. "A smith's daughter, me. I am familiar with mechanicals from my cradle." Only pictures, but no need to tell him that.

"Well." He smiled, and I realized he was not so much older than I. "That's settled, then."

"It is not," I protested. "I have not said I will do it, and even if I do, the choice is not mine to make."

"Whose, then?"

"My da and mam," I said. "And they will never say yes."

He thrust his pipe into his pocket, made a dive into the coach, fetched out a bowler hat, and crammed it onto his head. "Lead on."

"Where?" I asked stupidly.

"Your house, of course. I want to speak to your parents."

Mam was dead against it. Not a word did she say, but I read her thoughts clear as print in the banging of the kettle and the rattling of the crockery as she scrambled together a tea worthy to set before the new baronet. I was a girl, he was a young, unmarried man, people would talk, and likely they would have something to talk about.

"Seventeen she is, come midsummer," she said. "And not trained in running a great house. You had better send to Knighton for Mrs. Bando, who was housekeeper for Sir Owen."

Sir Arthur looked mulish. "I'm sure Mrs. Bando is an excellent housekeeper, Mrs. Gof. But can you answer for her willingness to work in a house staffed chiefly by mechanicals?"

"Mechanicals?" Mam's eyes narrowed. "My daughter, alone in that great crumbling house with a green boy and a few machines, is it? Begging your pardon, sir, if I give offense, but that is not a proper household for any woman to work in."

I was ready to sink with shame. Sir Arthur put up his chin a little. "I'm not a boy, Mrs. Gof," he said with dignity. "I'm nearly nineteen, with a degree in mechanical engineering from London Polytechnic. Still, I take your point. Tacy will live at home and come in days to cook and to supervise the mechanicals in bringing the house into better repair." He stood. "Thank you for the tea. The Welsh cakes were excellent. Now, if I may have a word with your husband?"

"More than a word it will take," Mam said, "before Mr. Gof will agree to such foolishness." But off to the forge we went nevertheless, where Sir Arthur went straight as a magnet to the steam hammer that was Da's newest invention. In next to no time, they'd taken it apart to admire, talking nineteen to the dozen.

I knew my fate was sealed.

Not that I objected, mind. Being housekeeper to Sir Arthur meant working in Cwmlech Manor, surrounded by mechanicals and horseless carriages, and money of my own - a step up, I thought, from sweeping floors under Mam's eye. Sir Arthur engaged Da, too, to help to turn the stables into a workshop and build a forge.

Before he left, Sir Arthur laid two golden coins in my palm. "You'll need to lay in provisions," he said. "See if you can procure a hen or two. I like a fresh egg for breakfast."