Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles (16 page)

I certainly had no time for such things.

In truth—contrary to the uncertain ailment squeezing the breath from me—my heart pounded as if I were giving chase, excitement flowing through my veins.

I was in high spirits, eager for a run; a mad dash into the unknown. The kind of feeling I associated with the day after a fact-collecting sortie into an opium den.

Quickly, I pulled my collecting garb from the trunk I hid it in, stepped into the thick woolen trousers and cotton shirt, cinched my own corset and fastened its high neck collar around my throat. Made of thin slats of the finest metal I could acquire, it had protected me from many a stray blow and the occasional blade.

I’d designed it to be close-fitting but not overly snug, straight in form enough to give pause from a distance—though only a blind man would be fooled up close as to the nature of my sex.

I added warm woolen stockings, thick workman’s boots and wrapped the blackened length of my braid about my head. Finally, placing a street boy’s cap over it all, I glanced at myself in the mirror and nodded. In the fog, it would do.

I seized a worn sack coat, pulled it on and hurried out my window.

It wasn’t so late that I could afford to be careless. Making my way to the West India Docks took precision and planning. To get out of Chelsea, I stepped in the shadow of more than a few parties crossing the footpaths with lanterns aloft and spirit-laden cheer apparent.

Once upon a time, the district had been the home of fashionable sorts like my mother. Intellectuals and philosophers, even artists of true talent and possibility. Now, much of the night was spent among bohemian wastrels carousing and spouting poetry about art and love and other such dreams.

I liked it. It kept much of Society’s worst gossips away; save when said gossips were wastrels themselves.

By the time I made it to the docks, my small brass watch warned me of Big Ben’s coming chime. A quarter of an hour would put the bells at one of the clock. Plenty of time to tend to my business, and late enough below that only vagrants and the nighttime dwellers would be about.

I was forced to wait five minutes while my chosen ferryman returned to the dock above.

“You again,” was his greeting as I traversed the plank.

I said nothing; I didn’t have to. We’d long since finalized our arrangement, and he quickly set to work stacking more coal into the furnace. I watched as he did. The sky ferry was a rather simple piece of engineering, for all its purpose was complex. Coal in the fire heated the mechanisms by which steam would power the aether engine. The aether engine would draw the appropriate supply of aether from the steam, and voilà.

A simpler and yet more unstable version of the engines that powered Her Majesty’s Navy’s sky ships, and even less powerful than the gondolas in London above.

It took an inordinate amount of time for the shuddering ferry to reach the ground; time I spent clutching the rail and briefly wondering how many trips I would make before the old girl simply shook itself to pieces.

The fog swallowed us within moments.

I left Abercott his coin on my seat, hurried off the ferry and into the choking soup, holding my breath for as long as I could before forced to inhale. The fog immediately stung my nose and throat. I swallowed a sudden coughing fit, lest it draw attention from the dock men huddling around a furnace inside the warehouse I hesitated beside. Quickly, I pulled my goggles into place, fastened the respirator into the rivets under each eye and behind my ears and took a grateful, cleansing breath.

So attired, I hurried away from the usually busier lanes of the docks and to my destination.

I was not accosted. This, while a relief, was not a surprise. London, whether above or below, had cultivated a certain understanding with collectors. While I’d been led to understand that my presence as a woman collector was something only speculated upon, I did know that only certain sorts of people had the means and reason to wear equipment such as I displayed.

Many collectors were inventors of a sort, or knew someone who fulfilled the role. I had seen nets cast from uniquely developed pistols, goggles which provided a certain kind of magnification, even weapon holsters specially designed to allow for the maximum amount of reach with minimum time and effort.

We were, by necessity, a creative lot. As I spent much of my time hunting bounties more to do with debt than with actual danger, I did not need as many such things as others did. I designed my own items—my corset, my goggles and respirator.

The end result was that I was easily recognized as, or at least assumed to be, a collector, and only a fool messes about with such.

Above the drift, collectors were considered very different creatures indeed. I knew of a few gentlemen who dabbled with the role—I called them Society collectors with a sneer—but they were considered only
fashionably
dangerous. None knew of me.

The unspoken code of the night below the drift was this: When accosting a mark, the safest way was to do so from the shadows. A cosh, a quick struggle, and the mark’s money and valuables would be there for the taking.

When accosting a collector, the safest way to do so was in a very large gang, or not at all.

I suspected even Jack the Ripper would leave a collector alone, taste for street doxies notwithstanding.

And so I found myself once more climbing the steps to the University College, sometime after the Westminster clock rang out its one o’clock warning.

Nothing had changed, although I hadn’t expected much. The cupola remained lit behind the columns, providing not so much light as atmosphere reminiscent of ancient Greek temples. The fog was eerily thick tonight, muting everything down to a reflected glow. My yellow lens provided a clearer path, but only just.

I could all but taste the choking edge of coal smoke in the pea souper tonight. The factories must be working double-time.

I stepped through the front door—once more unlocked, as if two professors had not suffered a sudden and unexpected loss of life within these very halls—and made my way to the offices MacGillycuddy had shared with the unfortunate Lambkin. I stripped the goggles and respirator from my face, tucked them away.

The door opened to my questing push, and light spilled into the lecture hall.

Here, there had been changes. A new professor, I imagined. Gone were the winking stars of crystal. The desks were fewer in number, but arranged in a circle, which I found odd. The window Lambkin had tumbled from was now closed, and in the faint lamplight from behind me, I could pick out the shape of a large, knobbed telescope beside it. Peering up, I noticed, though I wondered what it could possibly see through the miasma.

A book remained on each desk. I peered at its gilt lettering as I passed the closest.
Complete Works of Galileo
.

Only mildly scandalous. If I recalled my lessons correctly, the Holy See had authorized the printing in 1741, thereby removing all dichotomy between faith and science.

Or, well, in theory. Such divides still persisted, but as University College remained a secular school, I approved of the choice of reading material. I patted the book, but felt no need to leaf through it. Mr. Ashmore retained a copy in his library; I’d read it many times over.

I passed through the hall, tested the door leading to the office of the late professors, and for once, found something locked.

Not that it truly mattered. I’d long ago learned how to take a lock apart, and picking one was as easy a puzzle as setting one’s mind to it.

I retrieved a long, thin bit of metal from my tool belt—a gift from Ishmael Communion, a friend as well as one of the Bakers’ most accomplished dubbers—and withdrew a pin from my hair.

A dub, of course, is a master key such as what he gave me. Ishmael has large hands—he is a very large man—but the things he can do with a lock would surprise even the master dubbers of the black art of lock-picking.

I was not nearly as accomplished as he, but within a few minutes of cautious application, the tumblers gave way. The door creaked open.

I grinned, exultant. A few more moments of searching located the lantern kept on an iron hook by the door, and I struck a match from the packet on a small shelf next to it. The wick caught quickly. Firelight filtered over the strangely tidy office.

So the new professor had made his home here, as well.

Both desks were wiped clean, papers organized into neat stacks and clipped in place. I leafed through them, found a set bearing promising symbols different from that of other formulae and folded them in half. I tucked them into my corset for later study. A bookshelf behind one desk now featured the spines of treatises and dissertations, bound and printed in gilded lettering. I brightened. Perhaps the book I searched for was here? I reached for one, read its title and replaced it quickly.

I could spend hours among books, and frequently did. I had not the time now. Thank heavens for the tidy new professor. I found the book I sought after only a moment’s searching.

Mr. Humphry Ditton’s dissertation.

I withdrew the tome, opened it reverently and with great care.

The New Law of Fluids
, proclaimed the title page in bold, Gothic lettering. I quickly muffled a laugh.
Or
, it went on,
a Discourse concerning the Ascent of Liquids in exact Geometrical Figures, between two nearly contiguous Surfaces.

It continued like this for six more lines, but I only shook my head and closed the book with a muted snort. Men. Even in the sixteenth century, they could go on and on.

Yet in the onslaught of verbiage, I realized what I held in my hands, and I did not like the sudden and unmistakable comparison.

This, written in 1729 by Mr. Ditton, was a text on alchemical solutions.

Which meant the letters I’d taken to be initials weren’t. They were alchemical notations of some kind. My father’s laboratory, the notes I’d found in this very room, all conspired to paint a picture of alchemical study.

Fools’ study, I thought, but I’d seen it in the flesh, as it were. My flesh. I had been the victim of my father’s own experiments.

What, then, was I to assume as motive for the professors’ deaths now? The dean of King’s College had considered the alchemical symbols gibberish; did he know what it was I’d drawn?

Or did this mean that I was investigating a deeper madness? One that fell too easily along similar lines as my own insane father’s legacy.

I didn’t know. What I knew at that moment was that this book was what I’d come for.

It was time to return home to study it. I turned away from the shelf, tucking the tome under my arm.

Thud.

I froze, certain I heard a footstep outside the door.

A policeman patrolling the college grounds? A student come for some forgotten item, or the professor himself?

What would I say?

Collector’s business
masked many sins to the common folk, of course, but the business was not a legal one. I could not justify theft to a constable.

Perhaps it was the murderer returned to the scene of his crime.

I was not prepared to tangle with a bobby, or to be caught unawares by something worse.

The latch lifted.

Chapter Twelve

I
sprinted for the door I’d seen at the far end of the office, leaving the lamp burning on the desk with a silent curse. This entry led to a narrow closet stacked with forgotten tools of the trade. Chalk and cloths to wipe the boards with, rulers, odds and ends I suspected were meant to maintain the apparatuses in the hall. There were other books I could not take the time to read, and I set my stolen book atop them quietly.

There was no room to turn, much less reach for my blades hidden upon my person.

Which all conspired to mean that there was precious little room for me at all. The shelves climbed up farther than even a man could reach, but I squeezed inside and shut the door as I heard the office door creak a warning. Darkness filled the tiny space. I could feel the door pressing against my bosom, trapping me against the shelves at my back, yet I could see nothing. Only smell the musty air of a storage space and hear the faint step of my unwanted guest.

I held my breath.

There, a whisper of sound. Papers, I thought. Rifled through. I’d only just made that sound myself. And another footstep, a quiet one. Either the person was light of frame, or attempting to be as discreet as possible.

I heard a muted thump—a drawer, perhaps—and a low mutter. A curse? Or simply talking to one’s self. I could not distinguish further characteristics from my cramped hiding place, though I strained to do so.

As I struggled to breathe quiet as possible, another footfall thumped gently, and with startled dread, I realized the intruder was coming straight for me.

Bloody bells and damn! I looked side to side, looked down at my feet and saw shadows flit through the seam of light. I had no choice. I was not ready to be caught by a possible murderer, and could not reach my weapons even as flexible as I was.

Setting my jaw, I braced my hands against both sides of the closet, sucked in a breath and stiffened my arms. I leapt straight up.
Allez, hop!
My arms caught my weight, screamed in protest, yet I held it as I braced my feet on either side.

Once splayed, I moved cautiously, only as fast as I dared. The occasional creak of straining wood seemed masked by my fellow trespasser as I scurried up the closet interior like a spider. My limbs strained by the time my feet cleared the door jamb; my arms shook dangerously as I locked in the awkward split of my legs, each foot braced against the closet’s interior and my knees bent due to the narrow confines.

This weakened the strength of my locked hold, and sweat bloomed across my shoulders and forehead.

Yet I’d moved just quickly enough. The closet door opened, allowing in a blast of light that I felt only pointed the way to me, hovering a mere few feet above. I gritted my teeth, elbows shaking with the effort as I peered down between my splayed legs.

The narrow tunnel showed me nothing. Only the vague impression of a silhouette beyond the closet.

But my nostrils flared as the sensitive interior of my nose began to itch fiercely. With mounting horror, I recognized the onset of an ardent need to sneeze. Of course, that could have been anything in the closet; my passing likely stirred up more than dust.

My nose twitched, throat beginning to itch with the same need. I sucked in a breath.

A hand appeared, barely a shape in the suddenly blinding corona of the lantern held within it. The light speared through my head, skewering the dark vision I’d grown accustomed to. Blinking as my nose prickled uncontrollably, my limbs shook and my eyes watered, I was certain this would be the end. All my mysterious trespasser would have to do would be look up.

Yet, I realized as no hue and cry took place, it did not happen. I blinked fast, my vision clearing on an arm clad in simple, inelegant brown fustian. I heard the mild thud of books falling sideways; felt the repercussions of it in the shelves digging into my back. I didn’t dare move.

Every second became a nightmare. A dull ache centered behind my knee, matched by the mirrored pulse of my still-tender shoulder. I was reaching an age where such contortions and feats of strength no longer came as easily as they once did, and I feared any second of losing my grip upon the wooden walls.

If the sneeze building inside my nose did not give me away first. I bit my lips hard together, stretching my face in vain attempt to soothe the tickle.

My eyes burned with it. Yet still the light shone, and still the figure poked and searched. Until finally—finally!—the light withdrew. The door shut, and I heard the footsteps recede.

Just in time.

The sneeze tore through my chest, captured between my teeth and sending fireworks of pain through my nose. I winced, froze as much as my shuddering arms and legs would allow, but heard nothing.

That was it, then. If the explosive release only just trapped behind my nose hadn’t earned me a demand to come out, I had to be alone.

I made my way down the narrow closet, wincing with each scrape of shelf from backside to nape, and finally reached the floor with a grateful sigh. Gingerly, I pushed open the door, blinking to find the lamp once more where I’d left it.

Another sneeze seized me, and this time I muffled it in my hands. I wiped at my watering eyes, grimacing. That had been a close thing.

I turned, reached for where I’d left
The New Law of Fluids
and found only tilted books beside a pushed aside bookend.

I bit back a rude word.

My thieved tome was gone.

But it couldn’t have gotten far. I darted out of the office, scanned the empty lecture hall, the still-closed window. Hurriedly, I sprinted out of the naturo-philosophy wing, eyes sharp for any sign of motion; ears straining to hear even the faintest step that wasn’t my own.

Nothing.

I spilled from the University College entry, dragging the back of one arm over my nose—not nearly so itchy now that I’d left the room—and glowered at the fog painted in sickly yellow from the lit cupola.

As I pounded one fist into my open hand, my skin prickled. Warning, sharp and clear as a bell. Alarmed, I turned; only I saw nothing, heard nothing from the silent edifice of the college’s Corinthian columns.

Yet as I kicked at the fog and muttered a handful of terse uncivilities, I could not shake the sensation of being watched. Measured.

And possibly, I thought angrily as I stalked away from the grounds with only a handful of notes to show for it, found entirely lacking.

M
y options were dwindling, and I had only my fool idiocy to blame for it. As my high energy and simmering irritation fueled my stride into the Philosopher’s Square, I considered what choices I had left.

Things I knew: Whoever was in that office wanted that book. And, potentially, the notes I’d stolen beforehand. Why?

An alchemist? What for? What did this book tell the reader, aside from what I assumed to be a collection of inane and illogical recipes for gold making and immortality shaping?

Whatever that book held, it was worth the lives of at least two professors.

Or was I reaching for a solution too pat?

Was MacGillycuddy involved in this charade or was he simply a victim of circumstance?

Was Professor Johannes Lambkin a suicide at all?

Dear me, this particular train had gone off the rails rather spectacularly. I strode through the Square, turning up the collar of my sack coat against the damp. The cold bit deeply, though the air was not as frozen as could be expected above the drift that protected it somewhat.

I could be grateful for small favors.

I was nearing the center of the Square—a place dominated by a courtyard long since left to molder—when the idea struck me from nowhere at all.

Where would I find a copy?
I’d asked.

The dean’s assistant had shrugged.
A bookshop? A scholar?

I stopped mid-step, turned abruptly and picked my way to the west.

I knew a man. A bookseller. I’d once run a bounty for him—timeworn books, stolen by a filching cove with more debt than sense. The old shopkeeper had been pleasant enough when I’d returned his belongings.

This had been, oh, what? A year ago? No, longer. Summertime. I remembered the putrid smell of the River Thames reaching all the way across the city.

If he hadn’t closed shop, then I’d find him just on the edge of the Square. It was late, but this was a crisis.

And I was impatient.

I found the neat row of shops, side by side with nary a crack between them. The road in front of each had once been a sweetly maintained lane with gas lamps lining the way for students and professors and scholars and more. I imagined it had been a bustling place, filled with shopkeepers taking delight in their wares; of purchases made by the ounce and the pound, by the flagon and the stack. Books, quills, charts, odds and ends.

Now, in the dark and the damp, it looked a dreary place to be. The night tore any warmth from the row of derelict edifices, leaving them rather reminiscent of skeletal teeth in a lurid grimace.

Not the kind of place I’d expect to find a bookshop, but perhaps that was part of its charm.

The door I required was the third from the left, marked by a single lantern hanging from an iron post. The brave little flame within it struggled mightily from its iron confines—a beacon to my yellow-tinged sight, but sadly weaker than the fog it guttered in.

Only the faded stains of rusted numbers remained over the lintel. Yet it wasn’t the bright windows in the first floor that told me my quarry was in reach, but the light flickering from behind drawn shades in the story above.

Mr. Augustine Pettigrew never went to his bed with a lantern still on. The risk this posed to his precious books far outweighed the comfort of a light in the dark, and as I recalled, he’d only ever had the one fireproof brazier.

I glanced over my shoulder as I approached the shop’s front door. No sign hung where chains used to offer one; the row of storefronts had fallen on difficult times, obviously. The street in either direction was silent, only visible for a few feet when the fog shifted.

Yet I still squinted at shapes in the mist. The fine hairs on my neck and arms had not settled during my chilled jaunt across the square, and I could not help but think it was not all the wet October air.

Of course, paranoia would only serve me well as long as I did not let it overcome my sensibilities.

Shaking off the ghosts in the smoke, I hammered on Mr. Pettigrew’s door. The sound echoed like a drumbeat, tossed this way and that before vanishing into the hungry dark. I waited.

Too much noise, and I’d earn the attention of others in the row. Not my intent.

It was a full minute before I heard a shuffled step inside, counted in my own heartbeat as I half turned and kept a wary eye on the roiling coal-laden cloud behind me. Iron caught, clanged faintly as a latch was lifted, and the door opened a scant few inches. Light spilled from the crack, incandescent and near blinding after my nighttime foray. “It’s a late night for guests,” whispered a frail voice.

I turned back, my smile hidden behind my respirator. “Mr. Pettigrew? Collector’s business, sir.”

The light shifted, lowered, and I could just make out the bulbous edge of a nose near pressed to the gaping door. One eye, once green and now turned milky with age, searched me. A grunt, a sigh. “Best you come in from the damp, then,” he said, turning away from the door and leaving it to swing slowly wide in his wake.

I stepped in, and it was as if I’d found a miracle in the cold depths of London below.

Mr. Pettigrew’s establishment, once called something unrecalled but now only referred to as, “old Gus’s shop,” among those enlightened enough to know of it at all, was a haven of sorts. Shelves lined the full of the downstairs, books filling each near to overflowing and some stacked upon others where there was room. New bindings, old bindings, some no more than sheaves of paper wrapped in cloth. Comfortable armchairs, worn near to the stuffing, beckoned a weary soul to take ease by the brazier.

The warmth did not only keep out the drafts, it kept the room inside toasty and dry for the books. The last I’d come by, it’d been warm enough and cozy for a cup with the old man.

Mr. Pettigrew did not age as well as the books he loved. Nearly stooped double, he was frail of build, with long, thin arms and a rail-slight chest that occasionally gave over to a wheezing cough. He wore a faded purple dressing gown—which didn’t scandalize me at all, despite Society’s claims to the contrary—and a nightcap perched atop his mottled, sparsely furred head.

He shuffled to one of the chairs slowly, his gait hampered by his years. “Close the door, then,” he called, his voice a thin memory of the robust man he must have been once.

I obeyed, locking out the creeping damp, and stripped the protectives from my face. “I apologize for the lateness of my visit,” I said politely, because Mr. Pettigrew was a kind man.

A shrewd one, even in his advanced age, but nevertheless kind.

A gnarled, heavily veined hand waved at me, then plucked the folded nightcap from his head. “Come, girl, sit. Tell me what you’re searching this time. Not for me, I hope?”