The Clockwork Three (20 page)

The Archer Museum

G
IUSEPPE STUDIED THE METAL FIGURE. IT WAS A MAN, ASSEMBLED
from mismatched metal parts. Some pieces were recognizable, like the tin coal chute shaped to form a barreled chest, but Giuseppe could not even guess where many of the other components came from. The figure’s shiny brass arms and legs were jointed and looked heavily layered with metal muscles, while the hands appeared delicate, capable of refined movement. The figure looked to be about five feet tall, but ended at the neck.

“Where’s the head?” Giuseppe asked.

Frederick scowled. Then he balled the sheet up tight and threw it on the floor. “It doesn’t have one. Yet.”

“You made this?” Hannah asked.

Frederick stuck his chest out. “I did.”

“What does it do?” Giuseppe asked.

“When it’s finished it will do anything I want it to.”

“When will it be finished?” Giuseppe asked.

Frederick ignored Giuseppe’s question and beckoned to Hannah. He guided her to a place at the table near one of the arms. The metal clinked as he lifted the arm several inches. “Here, hold it,” he said.

Hannah put her hands under it, flat like she was about to receive a tray, and Frederick lowered the arm onto them. “Oh,” she said. “It’s heavy.”

“And strong,” Frederick said.

“When will it be finished?” Giuseppe asked again.

“I don’t know,” Frederick said to him. “The head is proving difficult. I think I may be the first clockmaker to ever attempt something like this.”

“Really?” Hannah said.

“I don’t think so,” Giuseppe said.

Frederick narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“I’ve seen a clockwork head before.”

Frederick’s eyes grew large. His mouth hung open. “Where?”

“In the Archer Museum,” Giuseppe said.

“Impossible,” Frederick said. “I’ve studied every display.”

Giuseppe shook his head. “It’s not on display. It’s in a storeroom.”

“How do you know that?” Frederick asked.

“I saw it from a window. On the roof.”

“What were you doing on the roof?” Frederick asked.

“That’s a long story.”

Frederick drummed his fingers on the worktable. “Could you show me?”

“What, tonight?” Giuseppe said.

“Of course.”

“Uh-uh.” This time of evening Giuseppe risked being spotted, and he had already taken his chances walking from Hannah’s apartment across town to Frederick’s shop. “Not for a few hours, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Look, Freddy, I shouldn’t be here with you. I shouldn’t even be in this city. I’m dead if Stephano catches me.”

“Who?”

Hannah stepped forward. “Giuseppe, tell him.”

So he did. First, he talked about his life in the lair on Crosby Street, the green violin and the theft from the cemetery, and then he told of his skyline escape from Stephano into the park. Gradually, the three of them settled on the cellar floor, and Giuseppe talked about Pullman and Alice.

“Alice is so wonderful,” Hannah said. “Pullman was rude.”

“He wasn’t rude,” Giuseppe said.

Frederick turned to Hannah. “You were there?”

Hannah smiled. “Yes, I was.”

“I was staying with Alice,” Giuseppe said, “and Hannah came out looking for clues. We met by accident.”

“Clues for what?” Frederick asked.

Giuseppe figured he would have to tell Hannah’s story, too, but she spoke up. She told Frederick all about Mister Stroop and his treasure, and about the memorial stone. She talked about her father, and the message he had written. She told him about how she had been fired from the hotel for stealing from Madame Pomeroy.

“But I had to,” she said. “I had no choice.”

Frederick leaned forward. “Is your father all right now?”

“He is,” she said. “Thanks to Alice’s medicine. She’s one of the only things I’ll miss about the hotel.”

Frederick sat up. “That reminds me. Madame Pomeroy gave me a message for you.”

“What message?” Hannah said.

“She’s leaving the city on a boat for Italy in ten days.”

Giuseppe caught his breath. A boat headed
home
.

Hannah held her stomach. “She’s leaving?”

Frederick nodded. “And she said she wants to understand.”

“Understand what?” Giuseppe asked.

“Why I stole from her,” Hannah said, eyes downcast. “I thought she didn’t want to speak to me.” She went quiet after that.

Giuseppe and Frederick looked at each other, then around the room, and no one spoke. A faint ticking drifted down from the shop upstairs. They all three sat there in the cellar, and Giuseppe thought about how they all three wanted something. Frederick wanted the clockwork head, Hannah wanted the treasure, and he wanted a boat ticket home. And Giuseppe realized that he needed Hannah and Frederick to get what he wanted, and they needed him to get what they wanted.

He cleared his throat. “Listen, you two. I’ll help you if you help me.”

“What do you mean?” Frederick asked.

“Well,” Giuseppe said, “I’ll help you get a look at that clockwork head, and I’ll help Hannah find her treasure. If you two help me get on that boat going to Italy.”

Hannah looked up. “It’s like the cards.”

“What cards?” Frederick asked.

“Madame Pomeroy’s cards. She read my future, and she told me that I would have to trust and help other people, for them to help me.”

“It’s settled, then,” Giuseppe said. “We’ll all help each other. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Hannah said.

“Agreed,” Frederick said.

“But I can’t go anywhere until the streets are quiet,” Giuseppe said. “We’ll have to lie low for a few hours.”

Frederick got to his feet. “Then let me show you some more of my automaton,” he said. He helped Hannah up and the trio walked around the worktable. Frederick pointed at particular parts, and explained where they came from and how they worked. He showed them a panel that opened in the chest, revealing the clockwork innards at the contraption’s heart.

Giuseppe wondered if making a clockwork man was such a good idea. What would happen if it disobeyed what it was told to do? If Frederick lost control of it?

After a few minutes, the threesome sat back down. Frederick and Hannah huddled together. Giuseppe thought he might steal a moment or two of sleep and leaned back against the wall with his eyes closed. Then Frederick whispered something, and Giuseppe listened.

“Her name was Maggie,” he said. “Margaret. She had consumption.”

“She was sick,” Hannah said. “That’s why she left you.”

Silence.

“How did you find out?” Hannah asked.

“I went back to the orphanage. But Master Branch helped me. He said she went to a hospital after she left me.”

“Do you know which one?”

Silence.

“I’m going to find out, though,” Frederick said.

“I’m happy for you.”

“Hannah? Would you — would you help me?”

Silence.

“Of course,” Hannah said.

After that, Giuseppe dozed off.

He awoke to Hannah laughing. Frederick stood at the head of the worktable talking into the metal man’s neck, his voice echoing around inside its chest.

“What time is it?” Giuseppe asked.

Frederick looked over at him. “Oh, you’re up. It’s after midnight.”

Giuseppe blinked and yawned. “What should we do first?”

Hannah rubbed her hands together. “The museum. It’s too late to go see Mister Twine.”

“The museum, then,” Giuseppe said.

Frederick picked up the stained white sheet from the floor and shook it out. He flipped it up into the air and it settled down over the clockwork man like a thin frosting of snow. “Let’s go,” he said.

They tiptoed up the stairs into the workroom, across the shop, and through the front door. Frederick held the bell again, and locked the door behind them. The streets were mostly empty. A dog barked somewhere on the next block, and a fine mist glittered under the streetlamps. The storm had left the air cold and wet, and Giuseppe shivered.

Frederick started to lead the way down Sycamore Street, but Giuseppe whistled and pointed down an alley. He knew the back ways to reach the square, the safer ways to avoid being seen. Hannah and Frederick followed him through the narrow passages, climbing over broken crates and ducking under clotheslines strung between windows.

He guided them to a building a few streets off the square, with a stairway to the roof.

“What are we doing here?” Frederick asked.

“This is the way I came down,” Giuseppe said. “There’s no way up from the square.”

So they ascended single file. Giuseppe in front, then Hannah, and
Frederick at the rear, climbing higher and higher into the night, from one rooftop to another, up ladders and shingled slopes, until they reached the roof of the Archer Museum where the massive dome arched into the sky.

“The windows are over here,” Giuseppe said, and they followed him around. When they reached the opposite side of the dome, they found the skylights dark.

Frederick shielded his eyes and peered into the room below. “I can’t see anything.”

“There was a man down there last time,” Giuseppe said.

Hannah walked to the roof ledge and looked out over the city. “It’s so beautiful up here.” She pointed at the Gilbert Hotel. “I think that window would have been Mister Stroop’s.”

Frederick stood up and turned to Giuseppe. “How can we get inside?”

Hannah turned around. “You’re not serious.”

“I need to get a look at that head,” Frederick said.

“But what if you get caught?” Hannah said.

“Let’s look around,” Giuseppe said. He scanned the roof, and spotted a small hatch near a corner on the other side of the skylights. He crossed to it, and Frederick followed him.

“Is it locked?” Frederick asked.

Giuseppe pulled on the trapdoor and it opened. A ladder fell away from them, down into the museum.

“I’m not sure about this,” Hannah said.

But Frederick had already disappeared down the hatch.

“Are you coming?” Giuseppe asked her.

Hannah twisted her hands together. “I don’t know.”

“You can wait here if you want. We’ll be back soon.”

“No.” Hannah stared at the opening. “No, I’m coming.”

“Let me help you.”

He held one of her hands until she got both her feet on the ladder.

“I’m all right now,” she said, and started down.

Giuseppe followed after her and descended into an immense room full of an emptiness that seemed to whisper. Columns of moonlight joined the floor to the ceiling, and the smell of dust stuck to the inside of Giuseppe’s nose. The climb down took longer than he had expected, but he eventually reached the bottom of the ladder where Frederick and Hannah waited.

He looked around and took a moment to get his bearings. Stacks of crates fifteen or twenty feet high leaned over them on either side. There was the long row of tables he had seen. The man with the dusty hair had been working on the bronze head about halfway down their length.

“I think it was over there,” Giuseppe whispered. Their footsteps echoed off the floor, making it sound as though a ghostly, moonlit army was closing in on all sides.

“Look at these crates,” Hannah whispered as they walked. “They’re stamped with the names of cities from all over the world. This one is from Prague.”

She stopped at an open box and peered into it.

“I think I see the head,” Frederick said, and raced ahead of them.

Hannah reached inside the box and pulled out a dried lump of clay. It had strange markings carved into it, and a paper tag tied to it with string. Hannah read the label. “It’s a piece of a golem.”

“A what?” Giuseppe asked.

“Madame Pomeroy told me about them. They’re —”

Before she could finish, Frederick called out. “I found it! Giuseppe, come here.”

Giuseppe left Hannah and wandered down the tables. He found Frederick holding the bronze head between both hands. Then Frederick lifted it up, arms outstretched, and peered at its closed eyes.

“I need light,” he said, his voice loud with excitement.

“Too risky,” Giuseppe said. He looked over his shoulder. “And keep quiet.”

Hannah walked up to them, still holding the lump of clay.

“So that’s the head?” she asked.

Giuseppe nodded.

Frederick set it back down amid the orderly stacks of papers and maps and strange objects that lined the table. There were statues and figures, some dressed and some naked enough to make Giuseppe blush. A black skull the shape of an anvil bore teeth as long as Giuseppe’s fingers. There were rust-colored pots painted with the black silhouettes of soldiers carrying spears and swords, and wearing fringed helmets.

Frederick held his chin and furrowed his brow. “How does it open?” he said to himself. He ran his fingers over the forehead, and then probed the wire hair. “There must be a latch.”

A moment later, there was a click, and the forehead fell open. “Aha,” Frederick said with a smile of triumph.

Giuseppe heard a scuff off in the darkness at the far end of the room, and all three of them looked in that direction.

“What was that?” Hannah whispered. “Giuseppe?”