The Clockwork Three (3 page)

“Master Branch?” he called from the shop’s darkened front room. Light tumbled down a narrow staircase to the floor from upstairs. He shut the door behind him and locked it. “It’s me, Frederick.”

“You’re out late tonight,” came a voice from above. “Having fun, I hope?”

Frederick clomped up the stairs. “Some. How was your evening?”

“Usual.”

Frederick entered the wood-paneled main room of Master Branch’s home. It functioned as a kitchen, a living room, a dining room, and a library without any shelves. Stacks and stacks of books lined the walls and stood ready as if they hoped to be on shelves one day. The low ceiling made Frederick feel as though he always had to hunch, but somehow the effect was warm and comforting. Master Branch sat by the fire reading, a cup of coffee on the small table beside him. He looked up with his sharp eyes.

“Is that coal dust, Frederick?”

“Yes. A coal man dumped his load almost on top of me. Nearly choked me to death.”

“Hmm. Very inconsiderate.” Master Branch returned to his reading,
his thin white hair like a fuzz of hoarfrost on his head. “There’s some soup if you’re hungry. Split pea.”

“Thank you.” Frederick ladled up a bowl from the cookstove, grabbed what was left of a loaf of crusty bread, and sat down at the table. “A lot of commotion down at the docks today.”

“What’s that?”

“Commotion. On the docks.”

“Oh. So I understand. You went down?”

“Not for long. There wasn’t much left.”

“Too bad,” Master Branch said, but Frederick could see the old man had his eyes and his thoughts in his book. They fell silent, and the only sounds in the room were of the fire settling and popping, and Frederick chewing.

“I saw Mrs. Treeless today,” Frederick said.

Master Branch looked up.

“You remember her?” Frederick fidgeted with his spoon. “From the orphanage.”

The old man closed his book. “I remember her. A vile woman.”

“Yeah.”

Master Branch’s forehead was creased in worry. “Do you want to talk about it, lad?”

Frederick paused. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Better to shut tight the doors on those memories.

“All right, then.”

More silence, and a short while later, Master Branch stood up. He rubbed his eyes and stretched. “Well, I’m off to bed. Good work today. Very good work.”

Frederick did not thank him. “Good night, Master Branch.”

“I’ll be at the guildhall most of tomorrow. A few apprentices are presenting their works, hoping to make journeyman.”

“Can I come?”

“What for?”

Fredrick shrugged. “No reason.”

“Lad, you’re not fooling anyone. As bright as you are for your age, you are only thirteen. You are not ready, and when you get one chance to present yourself to the guild —”

“That’s not a rule.”

“Perhaps not, but in all my years I have never seen an apprentice make journeyman after failing his first examination.”

Frederick scowled, and his frustration compressed into a chunk of bitterness as gnarled as a peach pit.

“You will make journeyman,” Master Branch said. “But not for years.
Scandentes festini casus subitos patiuntur
.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s Latin. It means ‘Hasty climbers suffer sudden falls.’ Try to be patient, and remember that I’m only looking after your interests.”

Frederick nodded without accepting. The fact was, none of Master Branch’s previous apprentices had ever made journeyman. Not one.

The old man ducked into his bedroom. “Good night,” he said, and shut the door.

Frederick finished eating and cleared his plate. He brushed his crumbs off the table into the palm of his hand, and tossed them in the washbasin. He lit an oil lamp to take downstairs, where he had a bed in a small room behind the counter. Master Branch insisted he sleep down there to make sure no thief broke in and stole the merchandise during
the night. Frederick went down and waited a short while until he thought Master Branch would be asleep. When he heard faint snoring coming from the bedroom upstairs, he brought the coal chute in.

Frederick kept the clockwork man in the basement beneath the shop because Master Branch never went down there. The space was small and cramped, but there was a long workbench and an absence of windows so Frederick could spend his late nights there in peace.

He sized up the coal chute, satisfied with how well it fit. He would not be able to cut the metal tonight because of the noise it would make. He would wait until tomorrow when Master Branch was away on guild business, and then he would outfit the clockwork man with a chest. After that he would complete the head, the trickiest, most difficult component of the clockwork. But after that, freedom.

He would not fail as Master Branch feared. He was ready. Once he finished the clockwork man, and they saw how magnificent it was, they would have to let him work. Then he could finally be on his own, independent, self-reliant.

Then he would not have to count on anyone for anything.

A Strange Guest

I
N THE EARLY MORNING HOURS, HANNAH READ AT THE TABLE BY
the dim light of dawn. She leaned in close to the pages, chin resting on her folded arms, eyes racing over the words, like chasing butterflies over the hills, to catch as many as she could before going to work. She wondered at how such tales of magic could be contained by mere paper and ink for her to read again and again. Which she had.

Hannah kept the wick turned low and had to squint to read until the tender light of the new day filled the one room of her family’s shabby tenement apartment. With the dawn came noises from the street, wagon wheels creaking and knocking over the cobblestones as if the waking city were stretching and cracking its joints.

Her two younger sisters, twins, clutched each other in the bed Hannah shared with them. She watched their slow breathing, and then she glanced over at her parents. Her mother slumbered on her side, a slight swell that could almost be mistaken for a wrinkle in the dingy blanket. Her father lay on his back, like a mountain rising up from a plain, and his eyes were open.

That was how it was. Hannah would glance at him from her book,
and he would be asleep. The next time she looked, he would be awake, and she would wonder how long he had lain there.

“Papa,” she whispered.

She crept away from her stories, tiptoed across the room, and knelt beside the bed. She took his hand.

“Good morning,” she said, and kissed the knuckle above his wedding band.

He smiled, his fingers cold and damp, like twigs on the ground in winter. His hands used to be tough and warm and thick-fingered, and she used to feel safe when they held her.

“I was reading the story of a girl,” she said. “She traveled east of the sun and west of the moon to save her prince. And before that I read about a cat that wore boots, who … Are you hungry, Papa?”

He blinked once to say yes.

Hannah gave his hand a pat and got to her feet. She went to the coal stove, and the heavy iron door groaned as she opened it. She scooped out the previous day’s ashes, enveloping herself in a fine gray cloud, and snapped some kindling. Then she arranged the sticks inside the stove and followed that with a few black chunks of coal from a pail that was nearly empty. She struck a match against the iron belly of the stove to light the kindling and left the stove door open to let the fire suck air. Then Hannah set the large copper teakettle to boil, one of the few possessions from their previous life not yet sold to pay for coal or food or rent.

“I’ll watch it,” her mother said behind her. “You’ll be late for work.”

“Oh, Mama,” Hannah said. “I didn’t hear you get up.”

Her mother glanced at the book left open on the table.

“I was reading this morning,” Hannah said.

“You’ve been doing that a lot. I’m worried you’re not getting enough sleep.”

“I’m fine, Mama.”

“I know. You always say you are.” Creases appeared across her mother’s brow. She went to the cupboard and pulled down the coffee tin. It sounded hollow when she shook it and tapped the sides, but she stared into it as if she hoped more grinds might appear.

“I get my wages in a few days,” Hannah said.

“Yes. But they’re already spent.”

The teakettle whistled, and Hannah’s sisters stirred.

“It’ll be a relief when they’re old enough to start school,” her mother said. “And I can devote the attention to your father that he needs.”

Hannah looked away from her mother, jaw clenched. She snatched up the book from the table and held it to her chest. “I need to leave for work.”

“What? Oh, Hannah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean —”

Hannah shook her head. “It’s all right.”

“No, it isn’t. I know how much you loved school, how much you’d love to go back. You’re such a smart girl and —”

“Mama. It’s fine.” Hannah took the book to the small shelf above their bed. There had once been seven other books there. She had kept them in alphabetical order. And then she had sold them off for pennies. She bent and kissed her sisters, each one on the cheek. “If you’re up when I get home tonight, I’ll read you a story,” she whispered.

She went to her father and kissed him on the forehead. “See you tonight, Papa.” He smiled, and Hannah tried to imagine him telling her the same. She did not want to forget what his voice sounded like.

Her mother stood by the door with Hannah’s lunch pail in her hand,
packed the night before. “Have a good day,” she said. “Really, I didn’t mean … You do so much for our family.”

“I’d rather not talk about this.” Hannah took the pail and gave her mother a kiss that touched more air than cheek. “Don’t forget to turn Papa on his side.”

“I won’t.”

Hannah shut the door and climbed down the stairs. She turned up the narrow street and joined the other laborers on their way to work. They filed out from the dense alleys and tumbledown buildings like ants from a hole in the ground, fanning out once they hit Basket Street and the roads opened wide. Hannah nodded to a baker lumbering by, powdered with flour and bent under a hump of baguettes.

She headed up Basket Street, a short while later arriving on the square, where the Gilbert Hotel faced the world like a rich man posturing for a portrait. She stood there a moment, shoring herself up for the long day ahead. Then she sighed and went in through the service entrance.

The hours trampled her on their way through the day. Before the guests had even taken their breakfast, Miss Wool had scolded her something fierce. Then one of the other maids stole a tip left for Hannah. And she burned herself on a clothes iron. But around midday Hannah was in one of the linen closets folding sheets when she heard someone talking in the hallway just outside the door. She heard Mister Grumholdt’s rumbling voice, laying down words the way a mason lays bricks. Then she heard the raspy voice of Miss Wool, like feet crunching through dried leaves. Hannah held her breath and put her ear to the door.

“It must be on the top floor,” said Mister Grumholdt.

“Then why didn’t we find it the first time?” asked Miss Wool.

“We missed it somehow. It’s there. I’m sure of it. That’s where he had his suite.”

“How old are the hotel floor plans for that section?”

“They’re recent. The last renovation was only three years ago.”

“The treasure would have been hidden long before then.”

“Don’t you think I know that, woman?”

Hannah cringed and silence followed. Then Miss Wool spoke, her voice low and even. “I don’t tolerate that tone from my maids, and I certainly won’t tolerate it from you. Mind yourself, Hans.”

“My apologies. I suggest we meet in my office and look over the plans in case we missed something. Say, three o’clock?”

“It’s three now.”

A moment of silence passed, in which Hannah imagined Mister Grumholdt pulling out his gold watch, the one he kept on a heavy chain and checked throughout the day.

“No, it isn’t,” he said. “Miss Wool, your watch is off. See to that. For now, why don’t we just go to my office together. Agreed?”

“Lead the way.”

Their voices faded. Hannah let out her breath and resumed folding, spritzing each sheet with rose water.

Treasure
. Hidden. Just like the “Tale of the Forty Thieves” from her book.

In her mind she saw chests of gold coins and silver pendants. She saw jewel-encrusted goblets and combs of the most delicate ivory. Lavish silks and heavy brooches. Drooping pearl earrings, and necklaces bearing gems the size of robins’ eggs. Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and carbuncles. Like
the treasures that belonged to the wealthy guests who stayed in the hotel.

She had often been tempted to steal from the opulent hotel suites. She would be dusting, or polishing, and there it would be, a ring, a brooch, left so casually on the dresser, almost forgotten. The guests had chests of jewelry; surely they would not miss this one little earring, this one small trinket that would pay a year’s rent for Hannah’s family.

Hannah shook her head. Those thoughts sent guilt chewing up her insides with cold teeth.

She finished the last of the sheets and started on the pillowcases. The closet door opened and she jumped. Her friend Abigail peeked in.

“Hannah, have you seen Miss Wool?”

Hannah hesitated. “No.” She set down the linens. “Why?”

“That new guest on the top floor is asking for her.”

“The one with the tiger?”

“Have you seen it?” Abigail slipped into the closet and shut the door. “Does she really have a tiger? Do you think she actually travels with spirits?”

“I don’t know. Walter said he saw the tiger.”

“Walter.” Abigail snorted. “Walter would say anything to impress you.”

Hannah blushed. “He is nice, though.”

“I suppose.” Abigail took the rose water and sprayed some on her neck.

“If Miss Wool smells that on you …”

“You worry too much, Hannah.” Abigail turned with a little bounce and opened the door. “If you see Miss Wool, tell her the tiger lady is looking for her.” She shut the door behind her.

Hannah sighed. Abigail was nice enough, but she did not understand. Abigail’s father was a cooper and did all right by his family. They had
a small house down on the south side of McCauley Park, and Abigail worked only because she had no interest in school. Hannah finished her folding and put the rose water back on the shelf.

Mister Grumholdt and Miss Wool had seemed to be talking about a treasure hidden somewhere in the east wing of the hotel. But what kind of treasure was it? If it was lost, did it belong to anyone? The hotel was supposed to be full of hidden passageways and secret doors. Hannah imagined herself opening one and finding a shimmering mountain of money. She would take it and buy a home and move her family out of the tenements. She would hire a doctor to look after her father every hour of every day, so her mother could finally have some rest. Hannah would take her younger sisters and go back to school. There would be enough food on the table, and heaps of coal for the stove, and warm clothes and shoes without any holes in them.

Hannah opened the door to the linen closet and bumped right into Miss Wool. It was like running into a thornbush.

“Watch where you’re going!”

Hannah curtsied. “I’m so sorry, Miss Wool.”

“Stupid, clumsy girl,” the woman snapped, but without her usual force behind it. She seemed preoccupied, and kept looking past Hannah down the hall. She patted her gray hair, which was pulled up loose in an elegant swirl on top of her head. But then her eyes went to the closet door. She straightened her apron over her narrow, bony hips. “How long were you in there?”

Hannah swallowed. “Not long.”

Miss Wool’s face hardened. “Not long?”

“No, only a minute or two.”

Miss Wool tapped her toe on the carpet.

Hannah cleared her throat. “Ma’am, the new guest on the top floor was looking for you.”

“Was she? Well, I can’t be bothered with that circus sideshow right now. Go and see what she wants. You may be stupid and clumsy, but surely you can take care of that much.”

Hannah dipped another curtsy. “Yes, ma’am.” She turned away before Miss Wool could say anything more and hurried down the hallway. She came out on a landing and started up the hotel’s main staircase that rose, flight upon flight, around a central gallery, to the uppermost levels.

The staircase was under renovation again. A few months ago masons had broken out the plain white marble and replaced it with a dark stone the brittle color of burnt paper. Hannah thought the new stairs looked beautiful in a stark and dramatic way. But a week ago Mister Twine, the hotel owner, had insisted that they be replaced again, this time with a pink stone veined with ribbons of gold.

She scurried past the masons, careful of her steps around their tools and fresh work, hoping to avoid being noticed. But they looked up at Hannah, and one of them recognized her.

He set down his trowel, and took off his cap. “How’s your father, miss?”

She recognized him as well, and shored herself up. “As good as can be expected, Mister Cantwell. He speaks often of coming back to work, once he regains his strength.”

Mister Cantwell nodded. “We’d be glad to have him back. Finest stonemason I ever knew, your father. Finest in the whole city.”

“Thank you, sir. He says the same of you.” Hannah smiled and continued up the steps.

“You tell him there are still plenty of his holly leaves around.”

“I will.” There were exactly sixty-two holly leaves scattered through
the hotel. She had searched them out and counted them many times. Her father loved their scalloped shape, and he had carved them as a motif signature on his work. They were hiding everywhere, like little secrets left just for her.

With each landing the carpet became more luxurious, patterned like the intricate Turkish rugs in the best suites. As she climbed higher, tables cropped up sprouting seasonal flower arrangements that scented the halls with perfume. Alabaster statues rose up in the corners like ghosts, staring at Hannah with blank eyes. From above the gallery a domed-glass ceiling braided sunlight into rainbows, which fell sparkling over the statues and the stairs.