Legacy of the Clockwork Key (2 page)

“Meg!” Agnes the cook flopped a meaty hand onto the door frame and pulled her ample body into the kitchen from the passage that led to the pantry beyond. “Meg, could you be a dear and fetch me one of those icicles hanging near the steps?” she asked.

She moved toward the table with her eyes closed, like a great ox stumbling forward while half asleep.

Gracious, she was hungover again. Yet another thing that never seemed to change in this household. With a heavy groan, she fell onto a stool, then let her head fall back and heaved a dramatic sigh.

I snapped the rag away from my cut as I opened the door to the stairs that led up to the small kitchen garden and the courtyard beyond. A new dusting of snow already softened the trail of footprints leading to the garden pot. I stepped in one to save my foot from the cold. It didn’t take much effort to knock down one of the brittle daggers of ice and gather it in the rag.

“Thank you, dear.” Agnes took the rag then smashed
it against the cooking board with all the delicacy of an axe-wielding executioner.

“Should I track down a hairy dog?” The one that had bitten her had gotten her good. Its name was stale rum, and it wasn’t the first time the beast had unleashed its fury on poor Agnes.

Agnes laughed as she placed the ice-filled rag on her head. “Nay, I’m afraid I ran the poor mongrel off last night.”

“You drank it all?” Heavens, no wonder she was in a state.

“Don’t you fret. A bit of tea will straighten me up.”

I crossed the kitchen and carefully closed the heavy oak door that led to the servants’ stairs. Mrs. Pratt would be in a fearful mood after having to rearrange the shards. I didn’t want Agnes to suffer for it.

“Last night, Pratt had the gall to remind me that I should cook beef stew for this evening’s meal,” Agnes lamented, placing the lump of icy rag on a new part of her forehead. “As if I haven’t made bloody beef stew every Wednesday for nearly eighteen years.”

Eighteen years? Had this started so long ago?

What could have driven the baron to wish this on himself for a good third of a man’s life? Curiosity gnawed at my thoughts.

No one was supposed to talk about it, so I kept silent. Instead I poured the tea, trying not to think about why these strange souls had decided to remain in this madhouse for longer than I’d been alive. No wonder Agnes stewed herself in swill every night. And poor Mr. Tibbs. The butler wandered around the house as if he were a resident spook of the Tower of London. What had happened so long ago?

Agnes shook her head. “Never you mind.”

“I didn’t ask,” I protested.

“You didn’t have to. You had that look about you. This is how the baron wants things, and our purpose in life is to make sure this house is exactly as the baron wants it.” Agnes offered me a withered smile. “Best keep curiosity in your pocket. It killed the cat, you know.”

I stoked the fire, flinching when a log rolled forward, sending out a spray of embers onto the hearth.

“What’s the harm in curiosity?” I asked, though it was more of a thought for myself than a true question. I turned away from the fire and looked up at the cook. “Other than an overabundance of dead cats?”

“Meg.” Agnes flopped the ice over her eyes.

“When was the last time you actually saw the baron?” I persisted.

“Oh, I daresay it’s been close to seven years now.” Agnes leaned back in the chair.

“Seven years? And you never once questioned—”

She sat up, crooking her brow into a deep scowl. “I said, never you mind!”

“This is madness.” I turned my attention back to the fire.

“Aye, the madness of our betters, so we must abide it. Get to your chores. I’ll save you some tea.”

Resigned to the inevitable, I broke off a chunk of stale bread from the remainder of yesterday’s loaf and set to my day. Clean the grates, tend the fires, trim the candles, pull the drapes, dust, dust, dust, polish, polish, polish. On and on it went.

Late in the morning, I found myself in the study. I threw open the shutters and pulled back the heavy velvet drapes, letting cold light into the lifeless room. Large flakes of the early spring storm continued to drift past the swirls of frost on the windows. The remnants of the bleak and mournful winter had laid the world under a blanket of white.

I watched the quiet snowfall, wondering if light and happiness had simply abandoned England. Queen Victoria remained in mourning after the death of Prince Albert. She was no longer the queen I remembered from my childhood.
She had been solid, regal. So long as she reigned, all in the world was right and steady. Now she was gone too, hidden away. I didn’t know if she’d ever return. Somehow I felt that even if she did, it wouldn’t be the same.

Time was supposed to heal all wounds, but what was one to do when time stopped? My life had ground to a halt before it had a chance to begin.

There simply was no way out. Only one month shy of sixteen, I could marry, but whom? I had neither the means nor opportunity to leave the house. Even if I did, I was now a housemaid. Whom should I marry? A servant?

I was raised better. Before the fire, I’d been preparing for my introduction into polite society. Now no man of my true class would ever look at me.

All my education, my talents, had fallen to waste. I could read and write German and French thanks to my Swiss mother. I had a talent for the pianoforte and a good mind for numbers, thanks to my father, who seemed to enjoy teaching me the intricate nature of computation. Now my options were few. I couldn’t even find better work. I had no one to recommend me. Since my employer hadn’t shown his face in seven years, I doubted anyone ever would.

Escape was impossible. Where would I go? One day I’d
end up silent and dour like Mr. Tibbs, drunk and frustrated like Agnes, or just plain barking mad.

I was of half a mind that Mrs. Pratt maintained her rigid schedule only to keep herself from admitting she was no longer needed. Perhaps the baron had withered and died in one of the upper rooms and Mrs. Pratt was covering up the tragedy to keep her sense of purpose.

Then again, there was no hiding the stark fear in her eyes every time she mentioned our employer.

Her voice slithered through my mind.

He is watching.

An unsettled feeling crept across my shoulders and I looked up, noticing a carved wooden angel in the upper corner where the cornices came together. It had glassy black eyes like the lions at the gate. I didn’t know why I stared. It wasn’t as if the statue would start to waltz before my eyes. Its cherubic expression never changed. I needed to know things could change.

I needed it like air.

Letting my gaze fall, I moved toward the ornate clock resting in the center of the large mantel. The early spring sunlight glinted off the crystal face.

Its hands had stopped long ago, and the whole of the house had frozen in time when that pendulum came to rest.
I wanted to open the clock, wind it somehow, but I had yet to find the mechanism for bringing it back to life.

Something in my life had to change, but there was only one thing I could call my own. I pressed my hand to my bib, feeling the broken watch push against my heart as I silently left the room.

• • •

That evening I sat at the table drying and stacking dishes, thinking about my broken watch while Agnes lumbered around the kitchen like an arthritic goose. Strands of her dark gray hair peeked out from beneath her worn cap as she set the kitchen right for the evening.

“Did you enjoy the stew?” she asked as she straightened the shelves.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever tasted anything quite like it,” I teased.

Agnes guffawed. “It’s my specialty.”

I smiled. “Do you think the groom would be willing to perform a small task?” I asked. It was time to do something about the watch. Every time I touched it to my cheek, I longed to hear it tick.

A knife clattered on the cooking board. “Good heavens, Margaret. Don’t you dare go near that carriage house. Do you
hear me?” The cook’s words boomed in the kitchen, rattling the pots above.

My hand slipped on the dish I was holding. I wasn’t expecting so much vehemence. I only wished to repair my watch. “I have something that’s broken. Doesn’t the groom tend the pots and harnesses?”

“Aye,” Cook said, drawing the word out as if it had some deep importance. “He’s a
tinker
.” Her eyes widened as her mouth set in a frown. She gave me a serious nod.

“Is he dangerous?” I didn’t know much about tinkers, nothing at all really. Once again my head started spinning with curiosity.

Agnes threw up her hands and grabbed the old jug she kept near the basin. I wondered what was in it this time, but thought better than to ask. She was agitated enough. “He’s a traveler, dear, and a bleedin’ Scot at that.”

I tried to follow but still didn’t see how that should make him some vile creature. “I don’t understand.”

Agnes sighed and rested her elbow against the cooking board. She used her other hand to bat her apron. “You wouldn’t understand, living the way you did.”

Now at that, I took offense. “My father’s shop on Oxford Street was very respectable.”

“Aye, that’s the problem. Tinkers have naught to do with respectable. They’re wanderers, no better than Gypsies. A good girl like you should stay far clear of such associations. Why the good baron decided to take in a mongrel like that, I haven’t a notion. That tinker holds a candle to the Devil, you mark my words.”

The thrill of fear coursed through me. I’d never seen the groom. He lived in the carriage house and hardly ever came into the main house. If he did, he was like a shadow, passing silently before I ever caught full sight of him. In my mind he took on a beastly quality that I found strangely compelling.

“How did he come to work here?” I asked.

Agnes flopped onto a stool and leaned forward.

“The baron found him wandering down a road near Blairgowrie years ago. The whelp was calm as anything, just walking, covered in blood. Several miles down the road they came upon his family’s wagon, ransacked, the horse gone, and his father murdered in a ditch. Lord Rathford took him in and set him in the stables to help poor old John, God rest his sweet soul.” Agnes crossed herself and stared up at the ceiling beams with a wistful look on her crinkled face. Then her eyes turned as sharp as a hawk’s. “He is naught but trouble, mark my words.”

I couldn’t say anything for a moment. All I could think about was a lost and frightened boy wandering down the road alone.

“How old was he?”

“No one knows, exactly, but he was thin as a stick. He couldn’t have been more than six.” Agnes crossed her arms over her bosom and leaned back.

A deep sadness gripped me and didn’t let go. I knew what it was like to feel so alone.

“And he didn’t cry at all?” I had cried. I had cried until I had made myself sick with it. I hadn’t known how I would endure without the sweet patience of my mother or the cheerful wit of my father. I’d cried until I couldn’t cry any more.

Agnes shook her head, the ruffles of her cap swishing against her forehead. “It was unnatural. He couldn’t mourn proper for his own family. He didn’t talk, neither. Thought he was dumb for years. He’s a fair groom, good with horses, but you hear me right, child. He’s not to be trusted. You stay far away from that carriage house.”

I nodded, but it was an empty promise I already knew I wouldn’t keep.

THE NEXT MORNING WELL BEFORE DAWN, I STOOD AT THE
threshold, my fingertips touching the cold brass handle. Every moment I hesitated was another secret moment wasted.

I knew I didn’t have much time. If Agnes caught me sneaking off to the carriage house the morning after she told me not to, she would make my life miserable.

There was one rule every kitchen maid knew to the marrow of her bones. Don’t anger the cook.

Agnes had a hot temper and knew how to hold a grudge. If she petitioned Mrs. Pratt, she could have me sacked for my cheek. After the incident with the shards, it wasn’t as if I were in Mrs. Pratt’s good graces either.

The thought of being turned out onto the street terrified me.

A girl with no prospects could end up in the workhouse. Or worse, I could end up working as a dollymop on the street corner, something a proper girl shouldn’t even know about, let alone consider.

I shuddered.

Was it worth the risk?

Yes. I pulled the door open. Violent wind buffeted the mounds of snow piled against the ice-covered skeleton of the hedge near the back stairs. I gathered my shawl around my neck, but it was of little use. I shook as I stumbled up the steps and ran across the bleak gardens still shrouded by the thick veil of night.

I kept my head down, but the skin of my cheeks burned with the bitter cold. In the dark I managed to find the large curved handles of the carriage house doors, and struggled to push them open. They didn’t budge until I threw all my weight against them, and even then I only managed to squeeze through the gap.

The wind whistled through the door as I pushed it shut. It closed with an ominous boom, leaving me alone in the dark. My hands burned from the cold, so I tucked them under my
shawl. A dim light flickered from somewhere deep in the carriage house, outlining the form of an elegant old landau coach that probably hadn’t moved in years.

“Is anybody here?” I called into the empty dark.

A bit of ice melted into my boot, sending a shock of chill down to my ankle. I took a moment to shake the rest of the snow off my skirt.

“What are you doin’ here?” a low, calm voice asked, though there was no mistaking the subtle edge of anger.

I wheeled around but lost my footing on the damp stone and fell against the door.

A horse neighed, the sharp sound ringing off the stone walls. I stood and faced the man. He held a lantern in front of him, casting him in shadow.

“Are you the groom?” I asked as I stood straighter. Yes, it was early, but no earlier than a groom is expected to rise.

“No,” he answered with a very subtle Scottish lilt in his voice. “I’m the horse.”