The Cogspeare Conspiracy (The Cogspeare Chronicles Book 1) (26 page)

              Minerva could only shake her head.

              “Nothing! Not a bloody thing!” he shouted. “They sent me off to boarding school, like every other young lad, and everyone pretended that life could go blithely on; but it couldn’t! Not for a little boy who was burned and deaf!” His chest heaved, and he gulped for air. He ran both hands through his hair, making it stand on end. He had never so much resembled his mad scientist father as he did then.

              “It was four days before the other boys began to jeer at me, and the older ones beat me if I didn’t hear something they said. It escalated to the point where they would throw freezing water on me when I was asleep, then tie a sack-cloth around my head to keep me in the dark,” his voice cracked, but he didn’t seem to care. “They- they poured anything they could get their hands on into my barely-healed ear, so that even now Declan has to make special contraptions for me to even begin to hear.”

              “And the teachers?” Minerva whispered. Magnus coughed out what was meant as a laugh.

              “They were the worst! They whipped me when I couldn’t answer a question that I hadn’t heard, and they disbelieved me when I told them about the others. And I wrote and wrote and wrote to my parents, begging them to come and take me home, but they never came,” he hung his head. “They never came. For six months I rotted there, every day and night a hell, and they never came.

              “Of course, it came out later that the school had never sent my letters home, and had never delivered theirs to me. And when my mother and father came to pick me up for the holidays and saw the state I was in I believe my father swore that he would built a bomb made of spesium and torch the place,” he laughed, slightly more humanly. “But by then I was having nightly terrors, and even though the hearing in my right ear had returned, the scarring on my left side never healed as it should have done. So yes, Minerva, I am scarred and irreparable. I don’t want order; I need it so that I can have control over things as I never had it before. And if that makes me an inhuman beast, so be it.”

              She was quiet for a moment, but finally replied, “And what about me? Am I a rotten apple?” If she had asked it petulantly or defiantly, he might have just walked away. But with her simple gaze and naïve conviction, he could only swallow and hoarsely reply, “No. God, no.”

              He couldn’t stand to see her face, flushed with pity and anger. The woman he loved was disgusted by the automaton that his heart had atrophied to. He turned and practically ran up the stairs.

              Minerva stood in the hallway, overwhelmed by the information and emotions roiling through her, and the family she had suddenly found herself quarantined with.

Chapter 60:

Erasmus, Amadeus and Cornelius were crouched behind one of the laboratory workstations. They peered at the spesium-laden Petri dish through their large gas masks.

              “Are you sure this is going to work?”

              “What did you say?” Amadeus lifted his mask and repeated himself.

              “Of course I am!” replied his twin indignantly.

              “That’s what he said before he blew up the bathroom.”

              “Don’t exaggerate; it was only the upstairs loo.”

              “Well, boys, at least we learned to make toilet plungers without spesium-enhanced rubber. Now what say we get going, eh?”

              They replaced their masks and used a fishing rod to lower a severed finger from the late Mr. Craggs into the dish. They crouched and waited for the boom.

Chapter 61:

Some years ago Mr. Cogspeare felt that he needed to bond more with his fifth son, and so they had made renovating the mews their pet project. Since it was in their contracts that they would never reside in the house, the staff had been moved into the Dorchester Hotel.

              The result had been an utterly unremarkable exterior, and an interior decorated like a bordello. Dark plush velvet lined the floors and walls, and the chairs and settee in the common room were covered in black lace. Each of the six miniscule bedrooms off the common room were given coloured themes, and overall the entire place had an unreal air, enhance by the faceted luminescence tubing.

              At the end of that summer, when the staff had been shown their revamped quarters, Mr. Steamins had been at the brink of apoplexy.

              “But sir,” Mrs. Bunsen had exclaimed, “You know where our girls come from. It might give them ideas!”

              “It might give us ideas too,
cherie
,” Bongout had nudged her.

              “See what I mean?” she smacked him with her reticule.

              But eventually, everyone became rather fond of their plush little mews, even Steamins, though he would never admit to it.

The only concession to practicality was the pneumatic speaking tube installed in the wall of the common room. Upon her arrival in the wee hours of that morning, Edwina had installed herself next to it and hadn’t moved. Declan and Sebastian were always close by.

              “But Mr. Steamins, what should we do? They’ve taken over our house and home!” exclaimed Pansy, the first housemaid. She, Mrs. Bunsen, Chef Bongout and Steamins were huddled in a corner beneath a garish painting of the queen.

              “Quiet, Pansy,” Mrs. Bunsen commanded, suddenly looking uncomfortably like their monarch. “That’s no way to speak about Mrs. Cogspeare, after all she’s done for you. And be grateful that the two gentle boys are with her, and not the other hellions!”

              They all peeked over at the trio, standing by the wall of mullioned windows whose view of the house was obscured by a small grove of poplar trees. Edwina paced back and forth, her tasselled train in a tizzy.

              “What could be taking them so long? Truly, how long do a few simple tests take?”

              “Quite some time, I believe,” Declan, sitting next to Sebastian, replied calmly. “First they would have to retrieve viable samples, then they would have to construct the test, carry out the test, which might take a few hours-”

              “- Oh Declan, how can you be so reasonable at a time like this?!”

              Sebastian leaned over to his brother and whispered, “I knew the opera was a bad idea.”

              Steamins came over to the small group and stood straight. “Madam, you know that I and the entire staff are at your entire disposal as always, and will do anything to help you through this difficult time.” Edwina turned and managed a small smile.

              “Thank you Steamins. I just wish I knew what was going on in there.” She looked at the old standing clock, about to chime one o’clock. “I just hope that they remember to have luncheon. Magnus gets so huffy if he doesn’t eat on time. He gets that from his father, you know. Cornelius is utterly worthless without five small meals per day.”

              Just as she was about to begin pacing again, she looked up at Steamins, and then Mrs. Bunsen.

              “There are only four of you here. Where is Lily?”

              For a moment, Steamins may have been on the brink of discomposure. But he quickly reclaimed his sangfroid and replied,

              “I am most sorry I didn’t inform you sooner, madam. However, I didn’t wish to bother you with trivial domestic matters when you family is in dire straits. When I returned for my half-day off yesterday, I found her few belongings packed, and a note saying that she was permanently leaving your service.” He nodded, obviously ashamed for his dereliction of duty.

              “What a shame,” Edwina sighed, “I just hope that she doesn’t end up on the streets again.”

Chapter 62:

“Shouldn’t you be working, my dear?” asked Clinton in an oozing tone, leering over Lily. She was sitting in an armchair in front of his desk, and with James behind her, there was no escape.

              “Yesterday I came back early from the half day off and there was a dead man in front of the house, and then they closed it off! I’m not staying in a house that’s been closed off like a ward in a hospital! My mother was a nurse in the Crimea, so I knows I don’t want to be anywhere nears there!”

              At the mention of the dead body and quarantine, Clinton looks sharply at James. “So you took care of it, I see. Now we only need to control the fallout. My dear,” he looked down at the girl again, “do you have anything else to report?” She shook her head, feeling suddenly apprehensive.

              “Now that is a shame, because I am afraid you have outlived your utility.” He nodded at James, and turned away as his henchman dragged her out the door.

Chapter 63:

“Well, this is all I could dig up,” Amadeus announced as he hefted a tray of half-decimated poultry onto the dining room table. Everyone stared at it.

              “What the hell is that?” wondered Cornelius as he wandered in after visiting the sick-room.

              “It’s one of Bongout’s recipes that he’s trying to perfect,” explained Amadeus, picking up a scrawled note stuck under a half-feathered wing. “Roughly translated, it says that it’s reconstructed swan.”

              “How was it
deconstructed
, though?” As Amadeus shrugged, Declan reached for a thigh and yanked it out of its socket, the burnt feathers and skin crumbling and releasing the scent of cordite.

              “I think I’ll stay with the firework nuts,” replied Magnus as he pulled out the chair for Minerva, then seated himself.

              “Are they spicy?” she asked.

              “No. Bongout toasts them by putting them into a firework and shooting them off in the garden, and then retrieves them with a butterfly net as they rain down. Gives them a….” he crunched down on a handful, “breezy taste” he smiled. Minerva was almost taken aback. She had been sure that Magnus would have been more closed off than ever after his earlier confession, but instead he seemed to be opening up. She returned his smile, happy and flattered, but as much as she wanted to delve into her soft feelings for him, she quickly steeled herself with thoughts of the miners.

              “What are your plans for the morrow, Magnus?” she asked, taking a tentative nibble of a nut. Odd but true, the nut tasted of cool air and fire.

              Magnus chewed, thinking.

              “Usually in a case like this I would put forth the arguments that I used in the House of Lords, as there was no definitive answer as to whether or not the arguments were successful. But…”

              “But there hasn’t really been a case like this, has there?” He shook his head.

              After a few moments of silence, Magnus asked his father,

              “Did I ever want to do anything besides practice law?” Amadeus dropped his fork and Erasmus burst out laughing.

              “You! Do anything but be self-righteous and law-abiding for a living?” Minerva kicked him hard under the table. “Ow!” L.B. shot out from under the table.

              “Wondered where he’d got to,” Cornelius grumbled about the canine. “But as a matter of fact, Magnus, you were quite the thespian. Put on little shows for all of us, even wrote scripts. But you refused to pick it up again after you came back from school. Shame, that,” he munched on a swan wing, spitting out a few singed feathers.

              “But going back to the case,” Minerva continued, “Do you think that the prosecution has any better chance with the new judge?”

              Magnus shook his head.

              “Though the judge is much more liberal, I’m not particularly concerned. The judge must rule on the evidence alone. And short of someone coming forward and proving that Clinton knowingly let this accident happen, with malice aforethought, then the only possible outcome is in his, that is, our, favour.”

              “You don’t sound particularly happy about that,” Amadeus said around a mouthful of wilted greens.

              “I don’t have the luxury of being happy.”

              “Would you excuse me a moment?” Minerva suddenly pushed her chair away from the table and left the room in a flurry of white skirts.

              Brushing away a few rogue tears, she quickly went to the pneumatic speaking tube and rang over to the mews.

              “Yes?” gasped the tinny voice at the other end.

              “Edwina? It’s Minerva. I just spoke to Magnus, and for anything good to happen tomorrow you must, must find the aethonographer that works for Clinton.”