The Custodian of Marvels (7 page)

Seeing what was about to happen, I shouted, “Stay back!”

But Tinker was hot on the chase and would not hear me.

The launch made a violent turn towards the bank to avoid being run down. Seizing his chance, Tinker leapt towards it. He cleared the water and landed half on the awning over the thieves’ heads. The man with the pistol took aim. But Tinker had scrambled up and was a moving target. I saw a puff of smoke as the gun fired, then heard the crack of the shot. Tinker jumped or fell, I couldn’t tell which. He was among them. Then the wash of the barge hit, tossing the small launch from side to side. I saw Tinker fall, hitting the water, his arms flailing. The launch continued on its way. In moments it was around the bend and out of view.

I ran till my lungs burned and kept running after that. At the place where Tinker had fallen, reeds fringed the edge. At first I could not see him. Then a splash called me further up the canal and I found him clambering out. He lay on his back, panting and black with mud. I took hold of him and rolled him over, searching for a bullet wound. He wriggled free of my grip and sat up.

“You could have been killed!”

He shook his head and held out what appeared to be a clump of water weed. When he placed it in my hand, I felt the shape and weight of my father’s pistol.

“I got it back for you.”

It came to me that he was unharmed, though another of his lives must surely have been used. I hugged him then, and kissed his cheeks, though the mud on him stank of sulphur. He had lunged for my gun and snatched it from them instead of going for his own precious watch. And he was alive. For that moment it seemed that I was the richest woman in the Gas-Lit Empire.

We could have run back and confronted Zachary. But there was no proof to present and no force that I could use to press my accusation. So we took time to wash away the mud as best we could before setting off back around the bend of the canal. By the time we reached the
Harry
, Zachary’s boat had already steamed away.

The cabin was a mess. The drawers had been pulled out and emptied on the floor. Our hiding places had all been discovered. The money was gone. They had even taken the remaining sacks of coal. There wasn’t enough left in the bunker for us to steam after them and alert the river police.

“Pirates and thieves,” I said. “They must have stolen the letter from another boat. Probably they’ve a stack of others too.”

“Sorry,” said Tinker.

“Why?”

“I was hungry.”

“No. You were perfect. I should have seen. There were signs, but I didn’t read them.”

Tinker frowned at the mention of reading.

“Two pairs of boots but bedding for only one. I should have asked myself where the other man was. I didn’t think. And look what you did, you clever boy. You saved my gun. It’s all we’ve got left. Though I’m loathe to sell it. My father gave it to me for a purpose.”

“You can sell this as well,” said Tinker, scooping
The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook
from under a pile of clothes. He held it out for me, the leather hanging limp from the board.

I turned it in my hand. It seemed the damage I’d done to the cover had been its protection. The thieves had seen it as worthless. But then, so would others.

“Who’d buy such a wrecked thing?” I asked.

“Someone who can read,” said Tinker, cutting to the heart of the matter.

“We must collect firewood,” I said. “Enough for us to steam back to Nottingham. Then I’ll do as you say – find someone who can read. Someone who understands what it’s worth. We’ll see what they’ll give us for it, eh? And then we’ll eat. Sausage and mash and gravy till we can’t eat anymore.”

I don’t know if it was the mention of food or if it was the delayed shock of facing death, but Tinker chose that moment to give me a hug. It was the first time he did so of his own accord.

CHAPTER 7

September 2009

There is no lie but what they discover. There is no truth but what you can make them believe.

The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

Under scant moonlight, I picked my way through the gardens of the university. With a grand dinner underway, there was no one to challenge me. No need this time for me to carry a box on the pretence of making a delivery. The smell of roasting meat hung in the still air around the back door of the kitchens. I could hear the clatter of pans and a shouted order to plate up the puddings. Then I was through into the lawned quadrangle and quickly under the ink shadow of a pergola. All the windows of the ivy clad building were dark but one.

I had not yet knocked when the door opened and Professor Ferdinand drew me inside. His office felt different in lamplight. Objects that had been mere curiosities in the daytime now seemed menacing. Shadows made statues appear to lean forwards from their shelves.

The picture had been removed from the wall behind his desk. He stepped to the safe door and pulled it open, for it was already unlocked. I received the book.

“You tricked me into this,” he said.

“You were keen enough to have it.”

“It was still a trick.”

“I’d like to be open,” I said. “Lay my life bare for everyone to see. I just don’t have that luxury.”

“If you try to blackmail me again, I’ll say I’ve never met you.”

“So you do understand that the truth’s a luxury.”

“That’s different!”

I let his words hang. The silence became uncomfortable. He looked down to the floor, ashamed, I thought. Perhaps it
was
different. I was well used to living on the ragged edge. For him the experience must have been a shock.

At last he said, “This isn’t just dangerous for us. There are powerful men who’d use what I’ve told you if they knew it. People who’d rather the Great Accord had never been signed. You must burn the book. Please.”

I found myself holding it more tightly to my chest. “You’ve given me what I asked. So our bargain has been honoured. I won’t trouble you again.”

I had turned and was reaching for the door handle when he called me back.

“Miss Barnabus. Your story – it reminded me of something I’d read. I traced it and… Well, it’s here if you want it.” He held out a white envelope. “Read it later. I only hope it’ll bring more help than sorrow.”

I had intended to wait until I was back on the boat before examining the professor’s gift. But as I walked, a sense of foreboding grew, becoming unbearable. I speeded my step, hurrying to be home. Halfway there, I found that I had stopped. Then I was backtracking towards the sickly hiss of a streetlamp.

Under its yellow light, I ripped open the envelope and extracted two strips of paper pinned together. One was a newspaper article. The other, the banner from the top of the page, gave the publication date as two weeks before.

The newspaper article had been set out as a cautionary tale. The ingredients were familiar enough – a blacksmith who lived beyond his means, too ready to venture money on dogs or horses, empty gin bottles found by a reporter stacked at the back of the man’s log store, gossip of profligacy among the neighbours. None of the blacksmith’s debts were huge, to be sure. But when added together they amounted to a sum beyond his substance. This lifestyle he had maintained through an increasingly precarious feat of balance, borrowing from one creditor to pay off another.

I could have named any number of men and women about whom the same had been said. Few on workers’ wages could afford to live without debt. A poor man never throws away a bottle. Gambling is merely hope by a different name. And were it not for hope, how could a poor man decide each day to live?

Yet the man was a wastrel, the newspaper said. His excesses might have remained unnoticed for a time yet, but for a vigilant agent of the International Patent Office. The blacksmith had made and sold some novel devices without a licence. The agent detected the breach and imposed a fine. Thus was the balance upset and the blacksmith toppled into bankruptcy.

His many creditors would surely have been injured by his inability to pay – themselves not wealthy men? However, a high-minded nobleman of that county saw their plight and bought up all the bad debts at a generous rate by way of service to the community.

The newspaper praised his actions. He knew he would suffer financial injury, yet pressed ahead for the common good. Naturally enough, he took the blacksmith to law in an attempt to recoup some of the loss. But once legal fees had been paid, even with the sale of the blacksmith’s cottage, forge, and tools, there remained a shortfall of seven hundred and seventy-five guineas.

The blacksmith was locked in debtors’ prison and his nineteen year-old daughter indentured to work in the nobleman’s kitchens for a period of thirty-five years, or until the debt be otherwise paid.

The generous nobleman wished to remain anonymous, saying, “There is no virtue in a good deed proclaimed.”

I became aware of a tacky feeling between my lips. And then a metallic taste. I spat onto the cobbles, my saliva bloody. I had been biting the side of my tongue while I read. I was breathing deeply, though I still couldn’t seem to get enough air.

The story in the newspaper was my own retold. It came to me that the reporter had mistaken only the fine details – my father’s profession, my age, the sum of the debt. Everything else fitted precisely with the nightmare that had rent my family. An agent had found a supposed violation in one of my father’s devices, there was a fine, the gathering of debts, a trial, a verdict, indentured servitude.

And yet the date on the newspaper banner proved the article was recent. Either the banner came from a different paper or they were reviewing the news of six years before. I stared at the newsprint, no longer able to read the words.

There was a thought, puzzlingly out of focus and on the edge of my mind. It took the shape of a man riding towards me, his face yet too distant to discern. I could hear the hooves of his horse drumming the ground. But still his features were a blur. If I could but see clearly, I would be able to recognise him. Then I would understand. He had drawn so close now that he towered over me, impossibly tall. I found myself straining my neck to look up into the blinding yellow of his face. He reached down. I could see his gloved hand in every detail. Fine white leather. Stitches perfectly even. It extended towards my own hands, which cradled my face. Somehow I knew that if it took me, I would be lost. I wrenched my eyes from his hand and looked up to the face, forcing myself to see it.

A cruel gaze bore down on me, a face I had glimpsed but twice. It was the Duke of Northampton. But the story in the newspaper was not my own. It was happening again. To a different family. Another father had been ruined. Another daughter acquired.

I found myself kneeling, staring up at the spluttering gas lamp as understanding broke over me. I saw it all with vertiginous clarity. Then my stomach heaved. I braced myself, hands on the cold cobblestones and vomited.

When it was done – my hands no longer trembling and the sweat drying on my forehead, when I had got back to my feet, using the lamppost for support – it came to me that the duke had exercised the same monstrous practice before. And he would continue to repeat it until death toppled him.

But this time was different. This time I was watching. I had the means to identify the corrupt agent. What was more, I had a contact on the inside. John Farthing could walk the corridors of the Patent Office itself. He could investigate. For once, we could be fighting on the same side. And if the duke’s corruption could be proved, I had at last the means to end him.

CHAPTER 8

September 2009

Take off the disguise and another is revealed beneath. Regard well the many people you must be. When the last layer is gone, there can be no more life.

The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook
^[1]

Of the many tangled threads in my life, the one I found hardest to describe was my relationship with the Patent Office agent, John Farthing. He lied to me the first time we met. And if I lied to him also, it later saved me from much trouble. I was the subject of his investigation and had since remained under his gaze.

On the occasion of our first meeting, I had been taken in by his charm. That was before his real identity had been revealed. At the time, I was attracted by his winning smile and his easy movement, which was so unlike that of a Republican. When he spoke, his American tongue gave familiar words a roundness that seemed enticingly exotic.

The truth was revealed on our second encounter, when he came armed and threatened me. For my part, I held the Patent Office responsible for the ruin of my family. From that day, I knew John Farthing and I must always be on opposite sides.

Every time we met thereafter, my confusion grew. His mere presence put me on edge. He did once offer to help me seek redress for the wrongs my family had suffered. But we’d both known such action would find no good conclusion. The Patent Office would do all it could to prove its agents’ innocence. At the time, I hadn’t sufficient evidence to force its hand.

I once used John Farthing to save my life. And in return I also once saved his. But our parting from that adventure had been the most painful and confused. I had never felt so angry or afraid. His last words to me had been these: “You need never look on me again.”

It seemed that fate was about to prove him wrong.

The newspaper article had forced me to seek him out one more time. The Duke of Northampton had to be stopped or more young women would fall victim. Now armed with more evidence – a second case that matched my own in every detail – they would have no choice but to investigate.

Yet, as I stepped along Nottingham’s High Pavement towards the building where John Farthing worked, I felt my usual resolve begin to curdle and my composure entirely disappear. My heart was beating heavy and irregular in my chest. I had reached his door, but found my feet carrying me on beyond it and away.