The Boneshaker (26 page)

"But I don't understand what we're trying to find out,"
Miranda said as they paused beside a placard on an easel.

Natalie examined the schedule of events and gave a little shudder. "Look. Amber Therapy demonstration, seven till eight." She frowned up at the stage where Alpheus Nervine was beginning to set up a selection of pieces from the brass and glass chamber: the leather-covered table, the glass-fronted case with all the light bulbs, the crank-handled box that had helped to power the whole thing, which sat on a small wrought-iron table. "It must be nearly six-thirty. We can do a lot of searching in an hour and a half."

"But what are we looking for?"

Well, that was the question, wasn't it? "The reason Mr. Coffrett is upset with my father. Some idea of what my mother's supposed to do that she might not be well enough for. Anything that tells us what those Paragons and Limberleg are really up to." She bit her lip and watched Nervine attach some wires to the bookcase full of light bulbs and switches. "Let's start at the back."

Miranda led the way; Natalie had been too upset to pay attention to the route Nervine used to take them there earlier that day. Too quickly, it loomed in their path, throwing immense shadows across the surrounding booths: the Amber Therapy Tent. Natalie and Miranda slipped inside.

Natalie barely remembered the room they now stood in, a sort of antechamber they must have passed through on their way to the main part of the tent where the Amber Therapy machine was. One side was given over to a collection of electric apparatuses, assorted batteries and cables connected to weirdly shaped light bulbs, and all kinds of
things—from boxes to an old round tub—sprouting wires and electrodes. The other side of the tent had a consultation desk flanked by placards on easels announcing
THE FAME AND CREDENTIALS OF THE CHEVALIER ALPHEUS NERVINE AND GRAND CORRESPONDENCES: THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHEVALIER ON THE MEDICINE OF THE MODERN ERA.

"I'll look through all this stuff on the placards," Miranda said. "You know more about mechanical things, so you take that junk over there, okay?"

Natalie picked up a heavy muslin belt connected to a pair of electrodes, then dropped it unceremoniously as an image of her mother strapped into the chamber in the tent beyond flickered through her mind. "I don't know anything about electricity, though. Can I help with the placards, too?"

If Miranda heard the desperate note in her voice, she didn't say anything about it.

What were they possibly going to find in here? Alpheus Nervine's "credentials" looked like the certificates they gave out when you graduated from one grade to the next in school. His "grand correspondences" were a bunch of letters and envelopes from faraway places, mostly illegible thanks to the supremely messy cursive writing most adults seemed to favor. About the only words you could really read were the names on the envelopes: Pulvermacher, Addison, Abrams, Sanche, Bellinspire...

Now, that was interesting.

The envelopes glued alongside the letters on the placard were all from different people and were addressed
to Monsieur le Chevalier Alpheus Nervine at various addresses that ended with "Paris, France." All except one, stuck near the bottom, which was addressed to a Dr. Jasper E. Bellinspire, Oxford, England. It had been sent from somewhere in Connecticut. Natalie squinted at the signature.
Your loving mother,
it said.

Very interesting. Apart from the trouble she had believing anyone would write anything loving to Alpheus Nervine, this letter was clearly addressed to someone else. So why on earth was it here?

"Miranda. Look at this."

Over her shoulder, Miranda scanned the letter. "Who's Jasper E. Bellinspire?"

The letter itself was uninterestingly comprised of updates from someone's home, sentences like
Your sisters miss you and your father sends his love...
nothing about modern medical techniques or electricity or anything. If it hadn't been posted up for anyone who walked in to read, Natalie would have felt as if she were looking at a boring page out of somebody's diary.

"Maybe it got stuck up there by mistake," Miranda hazarded.

Natalie frowned. That vague, persistent buzzing started up in her ears and at the back of her tongue; the dizzy feeling that made her want to shake her head returned.
Not again.
She swallowed thickly. "Don't you think somebody'd have noticed? This has to have been glued there for years."

"I guess." Miranda hesitated. "Do you want to take a look in the ... the other room?"

Natalie looked at the curtained entrance to the main space of the pavilion, where the Amber Therapy Chamber stood. Her hands started to shake, and she clasped them together to hold them still. "I don't ... I don't want to, Miranda."

The girls jumped as the curtain swung open behind them, but it was only a cluster of older boys exploring the tents, laughing and blustering as they went straight for the big room that held the chamber itself. Natalie swallowed her reluctance and nodded to Miranda—there was nothing like a bunch of loud boys to provide a distraction in case somebody appeared wanting to know what they were up to. With Miranda at her shoulder, Natalie caught the swishing curtain after the last of the bigger kids ducked through.

There was the giant chamber, darkly gleaming. One of Limberleg's seemingly endless staff of identical brown-suited men sat on the nearer bicycle, lecturing the boys on some point of Amber Therapy. Natalie shook her head, drowning for a moment in memories of Mrs. Minks, her skeleton showing through her skin as electricity coursed through her. "I can't."

"It's okay, Natalie. Anyway, we've already been in there ... once," Miranda whispered. "Might as well check all four of those doctors' tents, right? We can always come back."

Natalie couldn't stop thinking about Jasper Bellinspire's letter as she followed Miranda through the nostrum fair to the Phrenology Pavilion, where another pale man in a brown suit was dozing in his chair among Argonault's collection of labeled and grid-marked heads.

Miranda strolled casually to the curtains at the back of the pavilion and slipped through to the enclosed tent beyond. Natalie wandered through the heads more slowly, reading the dates written on labels on each ceramic neck, glancing at the words in each compartment. Causality, amativeness, temperance...

"Natalie." Miranda leaned through the curtain and waved her hand.

If she hadn't already been inside Dr. Limberleg's wagon, Natalie would have had to swallow a screech. She decided she needed to start giving Miranda, who hadn't made a peep, more credit.

The Phrenology Pavilion was lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed full of grinning human skulls. Natalie examined the closest shelf:
Specimen 46-a, a classic example of the character of a serial murderer,
read the label beneath the first skull in the line. Little numbered red pegs glued to the dome of the skull corresponded to a short list of dangerous characteristics printed on the label below.

"Over here," Miranda hissed. She stood beside a table piled with charts. "Look at this."

The chart she held out was old and heavily creased, as if it had once been folded quite small. At first glance it looked like a particularly misshapen skull drawn in faded colors. Then Natalie saw lighter lines in the background, so faded they were almost undetectable. There was something familiar about the shape they formed, so faint she could barely make it out.

The curious vertigo punched into the back of her head,
and Natalie knew from the sudden grasp of Miranda's hand on her arm that she had nearly fallen over.

"You okay?"

"Fine."

Miranda eyed her cautiously for a moment, then turned back to the chart and traced with one finger the lines Natalie had thought were so familiar. "See? It's not a phrenology drawing at all. It's a
map
."

And not just any map; it was definitely the United States. If there had ever been any road names or places written in, they had long faded away; only the heavier lines that looked as though they'd been drawn on later with ink were clear.

"What do you think?" Miranda tapped one of the ink lines. "Is this a travel route?"

"Could be." It was hard to tell exactly, but one of the lines passed through the place where Natalie thought Arcane ought to be. On the whole, though, the map looked like a memento rather than anything anyone would use.

"Maybe it isn't important, but it was kind of like that letter you found. It just—"

"Didn't belong," Natalie finished, giving the map one last searching look. "So, we have a letter and a map."

Natalie tucked the map back into the stack of charts, and they crept out of the tent. The shadows had lengthened and grown darker. But in the sky over the front of the nostrum fair, strange lights flickered: the Amber Therapy presentation was under way.

"Do you think anyone volunteered, like they did at
the Phrenology one?" Natalie asked as they stopped at the Magnetism Tent. It was a horrible thought to consider.

Through the antechamber and into the tent ... another strange medicine, another strange apparatus. Natalie stopped just inside the curtain and threw her hands into the air, staring helplessly at a giant oval steel tub surrounded by threadbare chairs. The tub held about a dozen or so corked bottles arranged under a foot or so of water, and a quantity of iron rods that rose upright out of the water at regular intervals. "I don't even know what—I mean, what on earth is that?"

A closer look didn't help; on examination it still looked like a tub, a bunch of bottles, and a few metal sticks. "I give up," Miranda mumbled, glancing around the tent. "There's nothing else
in
here."

But there was one other thing. In a corner, another collection of rods stood in an elaborate umbrella stand. Most of them were narrow, pale metal wands like the one Vorticelt carried for a walking stick. One was not.

Feeling the beginnings of the vertigo starting again, Natalie reached for the odd one out, a very old cane made of light wood with a slight crook at the top.

"This is it," she whispered. Then she crumpled.

The thunk of her head hitting the ground brought her back to consciousness at the same moment that Miranda reached her side. "Are you okay?" She let Miranda help her to her feet and looked woozily at the cane in her hand. The unsteady, giddy rush in her head was coalescing, forming flashes like the ones you got from looking too long at the sun. Almost pictures, just like before.

"We should get out of here," Miranda said worriedly. Natalie shook her head to clear it, then nodded in agreement. The motion sent the flashes skittering across the back of her eyes. The sensation of
almost there
was overwhelming, but she put the cane back and let Miranda lead her from the tent.

Folding screens partitioned off four little spaces inside Sir Willoughby Acquetus's Hydrotherapy Tent. Natalie and Miranda wandered through each one, looking for the thing that was out of place, but the rooms were pretty much all the same: each had a big bathing tub, a chair, and a little table equipped with a pile of what looked like ordinary bedsheets folded up next to a water jug and a basin with a sponge.

"Anything?" Miranda asked as they wandered back to the front part of the tent, where Acquetus had his desk and chair. Natalie shook her head.

She stopped and looked hard at the desk. Nothing strange on top, just some notepads, a pen, a little lamp. Nothing odd about the doctor's bag by the chair—it was an ordinary, pebbly old Gladstone bag just like Doc Fitzwater's...

And there it was, the pricking behind her eyes, the sudden dizzy swoosh that made her grab for the edge of the desk so she wouldn't fall into it. Dimly, she heard Miranda hiss her name, felt Miranda grab for her waist to hold her upright.

Natalie opened her eyes and looked at the leather bag at her feet. Embossed in gold near the clasp were the letters J. E. B. None of the Paragons had those initials.

Jasper E. Bellinspire.

"Come on," Miranda insisted. "We have to go. I'll take you to Mr. Finch; he'll know what's wrong."

Who was this Bellinspire person? The dizziness faded, but the flashes were now so close to real pictures that meant something.... Natalie shook off Miranda's hands and pressed her fists into her eyes. A letter, a map, a cane, a bag...

"I'm almost there ... I can almost..."

"No, no, we have to leave. You're sick! Something's wrong!"

Natalie shook her head again, harder. "There's still something to find." She opened her eyes and forced them to focus on her friend. "What time is it?"

"I don't have a watch! Don't you see? Something's happening to you.
We have to leave!
"

Natalie stumbled out of the tent with Miranda following a step behind, pleading under her breath and looking frantically around—maybe for an adult to try to talk sense into Natalie. But it seemed everyone, customers and hucksters alike, was still attending the Amber Therapy presentation.

"We have one more place to look," Natalie insisted. They turned a corner into a familiar, dead-end alley. "There."

The inside of Dr. Limberleg's wagon was no less unsettling the second time around, and the sensation of vertigo was already starting. Somewhere in Limberleg's uncanny collection, a clue was hiding ... maybe the
last
clue to the dizzy puzzle that was sending off sparks behind her eyes. Leaving Miranda staring, disconcerted, at a particularly
withered hand under a glass dome, Natalie looked around the crowded wagon for a hint.

She glanced over the grisly examination chair and, behind it, the big clockwork tableau with the replica of Limberleg and the four miniature Paragons under their pots. The first flowerpot was canted back just enough for her to see the tiny Nervine doll back in its place, cymbals spread wide. Just beyond that was the door she hadn't tried last time.

Suddenly her skull was abuzz, and she could feel her insides spinning harder than ever. Willing herself not to pass out again, forcing herself to stay upright, Natalie crossed the wagon and opened the door.