Sparrow Falling (8 page)

“May I indeed. How’d you know this Stug is doing anything at all to do with the Folk?”

“The flute.”

“Who’s to say he’s using it? P’raps he just likes having it about. Maybe it belonged to his family. Anyway, s’nothing to do with me. I
need
this work, Liu.”

“And is there no-one else who wants this kind of thing done?”

“Not so far. And how many more’ll there be who won’t even talk to me ’cos I’m female?”

“Then let
me
go. Let me negotiate with him. Then, if he is involved with the Folk, I can...”

“
No.
” Eveline stopped, and jammed her hands onto her hips. Her mouth was tight. “Liu, I’m not having you run this business for me. I can
do
this, and I will.”

“I didn’t mean...”

“Never mind what you meant. I’m not having it.”

“Do you think I meant to take over from you, your
respectable
business? I am sorry you think so poorly of me.”

Eveline heaved an exasperated sigh. “Don’t take me up so sharp!”

“What else am I to think? Is that not what you meant?”

“You don’t understand.”

“Neither do you. I am attempting to protect you from your own foolishness, Eveline.”

“Oh, so I’m foolish am I?”

“On this matter, yes. And stubborn. And innocent as a fox-kit on its first day out of the den. Your mother knows how dangerous my people are – she is wiser on this than you.”

“Oh, she is, is she? Well, I’m not having nothing to do with any Folk.”

“You already are,” Liu said, gesturing to himself. “And that alone...”

“That alone what?”

“I am only trying to keep you safe.”

“I can look after myself.”

“Indeed? Do you know that you must never carry St John’s Wort to a meeting with the Folk?”

“’Course I do. Ai... someone told me that.”

“And do you know who is currently in her favour at Court, and who is not?”

“Why would
I
be going anywhere near her Court?”

“You would not need to, to be at risk. Only to have words with one of her people. Do you know who Baba Yaga is?”

“Baby who?”

“Baba Yaga is the Russian version of the Queen, in her way. And at the moment your Queen –”

“She en’t mine.”

“The Queen of the English Folk, then – she has some quarrel with Baba Yaga, over who knows what. But speaking to one of her people you might easily do something that could be seen as showing favour to Baba Yaga. All you would need to do is, perhaps, to mention that you had a Russian doll of which you were fond, or that you had enjoyed a performance by Cossack riders at the circus.”

“What sort of riders?”

“Cossacks. Or people dressed as such, at least.”

“I wouldn’t know a Cossack if one should dance up and call me Nancy. Liu, you’re not making any
sense
.”

“I am trying to explain that should you have any dealings with the Folk, you could endanger yourself without even knowing it.”

“I en’t going to, I keep
telling
you.”

“Then you will not stop this nor let me do this for you.”

“No, I won’t,” Evvie said. “You’re worse’n Ma Pether.”

“Ma Pether did her best to keep you safe.”

“Ma Pether sent me out on jobs and would have abandoned me in a blink if I’d been caught, Liu. People talk about honour among thieves but there ain’t a lot where I come from.”

“But you were very, very good...”

“Will you stop it!” She jumped to her feet and glared down at him. “You got a proper romantic idea of what being a thief is all about. Might be different for you, being as you can change what you look like and I don’t know what-all other magic you might have going for you, but I could end up hanged. Or in prison. Or on me way who-knows-where in a sinking ship. And can I trust
you
to look after this lot? After Mama? You like Evvie the trickster, who didn’t have anyone. Well I got people now and I got to look after them and I can’t do that in prison. Or dead.”

“The Folk can do worse to you, Eveline. They are dangerous, and tricksy, and...”

“Well you should know,” Eveline said, “being as you
are
one. Leave me be. If you don’t like what I’m doing, you can... you can look the other way, or you can just
go.
” She glared at him.

Liu rose to his feet, shut his eyes and clenched his hands. His fox-tail puffed out straight behind him, his teeth grew sharp, and long claws pressed into the pads of his palms.

“Lady Sparrow, sometimes...” He took a deep breath, then he walked away, across the lawn among the shadows and sun, into the woods, where all the birds were singing as though their lives depended on it.

Evvie’s chest was tight and her eyes brimming. She’d never argued properly with Liu before, insults, yes, and well, there was when she’d found out what he was, but not since they’d been proper friends.

But she was furious, too. How dare he! She felt as though she were trapped in brambles, with thorns snagging and tugging at her every which way. Well, she was going back to Stug and she’d get this job and more, too – and they’d all see that she knew what she was about.

She needed some sleep, first. Sleep and breakfast and then she’d be able to think, and deal with Stug.

She saw Beth on her way to her workroom, with a pencil behind her ear. Beth was such an early riser, unable to wait to get to her beloved mechanisms. Even Mama didn’t get up so early, now she didn’t have small children to care for.

“Oh, hello, Evvie. You’re up early – or late,” she said, looking at the bag still clutched in Eveline’s hand.

“Things to do.” Beth was about the only person she could stand to see right now. At least she wasn’t forever going on about what she thought Evvie should do with her life.

“Are you all right, Evvie?” Beth peered anxiously at her face. “Would you like some tea?”

The kindness brought tears brimming. Eveline swiped at her eyes. “Go on, then.”

Beth waited until they had tea in front of them, before she said, “What is it?”

“Oh, Liu was being stupid.”

“Oh, dear. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”

“He just thinks he knows better’n me, and it made me cross.”

“That’s men for you,” Beth said.

Hearing one of Ma Pether’s phrases come out of the mouth of Beth, who’d had almost nothing to do with men until Eveline had come into her life, bringing Liu with her, made Evvie smile, and feel a little better. “How would you know, you juggins?”

“I watch,” Beth said. “I listen. I know you think I’m silly, Evvie, and never think about much that isn’t made of metal, but I’m not completely foolish. I do know things. And I know that Liu is a good sort, only he’s got a lot of pride. Like you.”

“I ain’t proud!”

“I don’t mean it in a bad way. You’re proud of what you’re good at, and why shouldn’t you be?”

“Right now my life’d be a lot easier if I had something else to be proud of, Beth. You can make machines, you can
invent,
and no-one thinks the worse of you for it – what you do, that’s useful to anyone, and don’t make trouble nor get you the wrong side of the law.”

“Just being interested in machines got me into enough trouble, remember?” Beth said. “My mother threatened me with an asylum if I hadn’t agreed to go to the Britannia School. And whether machines are legal rather depends on what they get used for. I just wish...”

“What?” Evvie said, a little snappishly, hoping Beth wasn’t about to start on her.

“Oh, nothing.” She looked forlorn.

“Go on, Beth, what is it?”

“I just wish there was someone I could talk to about it. I mean, your Mama’s wonderful but Etherics is different from what I do, and there isn’t really anyone else here. The girls try, but there’s none of them... anyway. It’s nothing you should worry about.”

Eveline gave her a quick hug. “Poor Beth. I’ll keep my eye out, see if I can find some lass with a mechanical eye, eh?” She snickered. “That sounded strange.”

“Urgh, don’t,” Beth said. “Although...”

“You’re wondering how to make one, now, aren’t you?”

Beth grinned. “Maybe. You’d need lenses. And...” Her grin dropped away. “There’s soldiers,” she said quietly. “A lot of them lose eyes, and hands. Most of what’s made for them isn’t much good. And if there is a war... it would be good to have some designs ready.”

“You still on about the war? What’s it to do with us?”

Beth hunched her shoulders and drew a finger around the rim of her mug.

“Beth? You don’t think they’re going to come here, do you, just ’cos we’ve been teaching our girls stuff? They’re hardly going to come swanning up going, ‘Right, we hear you got females what can handle a machine, off to the front with you,’ are they?”

“Women have been soldiers, you know. Artemisia of Caria was a famous one.”

“Who?”

“She was a naval commander under Xerxes.”

“What are they?”

“He was a very famous Greek person who won a lot of wars. And he said Artemisia was the finest officer in his fleet. And there was Boudicca.”

“I thought Boudicca was made up, like Robin Hood and that.”

“No, she’s real. She was.”

“Where d’you
find
all this stuff?”

“One thing we had at home was books. Not much else, but a lot of books. Explorations and politics and military history. They were left to Mama by one of her uncles, she used to say he must have thought she’d have a son one day. Then she’d cry, or break something.” Beth looked down at the table, rubbing at a stain with her finger. “Anyway I read quite a lot of the military history. See, I had an uncle, too. My Uncle Bertie. He was a soldier. My Mama’s brother. The only one of her family who still came to see her, once... once she had me, and was in disgrace.”

Beth pulled out a rag from her pocket to blow her nose. The rag had probably been a perfectly good handkerchief before it got used to wipe down oily machinery and sop up various colourful fluids. It left a dark streak down one side of her nose.

When it seemed she wasn’t going to go on by herself, Eveline said, “He came to see you.”

Beth nodded. “That house was so quiet. Mama hated noise. The first thing I remember her saying to me is, ‘Ladies do not shout.’ She’d get headaches, and lie on the settee, and if one of the neighbours banged a door loudly or a carriage went past she’d moan. If I made too much noise she’d shut me away until she thought I would be quiet.”

No wonder Beth hardly ever raised her voice much above a murmur. Now it was so low Eveline had to lean forward to hear her.

“Uncle Berry – it was Bertie, really, but when I was little I couldn’t say it, so I called him Berry. I kept doing it, because it made him laugh. He used to come to visit and he had such a loud laugh, and sometimes he came in his uniform, all bright and brass buttons, he had a great big blonde moustache and when he smiled it bushed out, and it was like... he was like this big happy wind blowing through the house, waking things up. He’d bring me things, toys. Dolls, mostly. I’d rather have had a train set, but the only time I asked him for anything like that Mama...” Beth’s hand wandered to her cheek. “She was so furious. I don’t know if she was more angry that I’d asked for something that wasn’t suitable, or that I’d asked at all. So I played with the dolls when he was there because it made him happy. I felt guilty that I didn’t like them much. But I found the books, then when he came I’d tell him I’d been reading Vegetius or Polyaenus’
Stratagems
. He’d laugh and swing me up and call me his Little General. Mama hated it but she couldn’t say anything, in case he stopped coming to see us. I think he gave her some money, sometimes. He’d take us out to the seaside. I remember him lifting me onto a donkey, and the sound of the gulls and the children shouting, and the beach, and the sea so long and wide and blue. There was a boat and I thought, I want to be on one of those.” She sighed. “One day he told us he was going on campaign. He was very excited.

“Then we didn’t see him for months. When he came back for a visit, I was so looking forward to seeing him. Mama had already threatened me with being sent to Bedlam, you see. I thought perhaps he would help me. But... oh, Evvie.

“When he came to the door I didn’t know who he was until he said ‘Hello, Elizabeth.’ He was so thin. His hands seemed to have got bigger, but they hadn’t – it was just his wrists had no meat on them, none of him did. And his face. His face was
grey.
His moustache had started to go grey, too, just a little, otherwise it was the same – but it was wrong, it was on the wrong face. Even Mama looked shocked. She asked him if he’d been wounded and he said, ‘Oh, no. A little. Nothing.’ He said he was glad to see us and Mama fussed about making tea and Evvie, it was all wrong. He was like his own ghost, all grey and drifting. I asked him if he was ill and he said yes, in a way, and that seeing me made him better, but it didn’t. I knew it didn’t, not really. He didn’t call me Little General any more. And when Mama chattered at him about my going away to school, he just nodded, I think he barely heard her. He just stared through things until even Mama stopped talking. He put his arms around me, oh, so
thin
, and said, ‘Thank God they’ll never send you, Elizabeth,’ and then he was gone.

“And he never came back. Mama wrote to his regiment, in the end. They told his parents, when he was killed, but his people didn’t bother telling Mama, they...” She shook her head, and blew her nose again, smearing the other side. “They’d cut her off, when I was born, so I suppose they didn’t think she deserved to know. I don’t know if they even knew he’d been coming to see us. I stopped reading military history, because they talked about ‘soldiers’ and ‘the men’ but every one of them could be Uncle Berry, and maybe they all had people at home who wanted them to come home and they came home wrong or never came at all. So it matters, you see. It matters if there’s a war, because there’s people in it and they get broken.”

Eveline tried to think of something comforting to say, but she couldn’t. So she refilled the teacups and sat silently with Beth in the sunny kitchen, her eyes constantly drawn to the thick black headlines that marched, military and stern, across the pages. Her mind put people inside those headlines now. Old Jeff who pulled himself along Northey Street in a little cart, his uniform trousers wrapped over where his legs ended above the knee. Jenny Blake, whose five boys had all gone for soldiers, and not one of them had come home. Jenny who had gone quietly mad, wandering the streets asking strangers if they had seen her Davey, her Bobby, her William or Frank or little Joe with his red hair like his Da’s. More, plenty more – men missing eyes and arms and smiles, women missing husbands and brothers and sons. And Beth’s big, laughing Uncle Berry, who turned into a ghost before he was even dead.