The Dark Unwinding (9 page)

I digested these things as we walked, a small barge moving along the canal above my head. It occurred to me to wonder how a French soldier could have come to live and marry on an English estate. It also occurred to me that if the housekeeper Daniels was the unmarried sister of Ben’s father, then Ben did not bear that father’s name. But perhaps it was an indelicate matter to mention. Ben pointed ahead.

“And here are the gasworks, Miss Tulman.”

I looked up to see a handsome brick building on the canal bank, the coal smoke from its chimneys borne high and aloft in the wind, and then to the storage structure beside it, a familiar sight to one who had spent all her days in London: round, red-bricked, and metal-domed, utterly dwarfing the first building in size. The metal dome ascended slowly within tall wrought-iron supports, rising little by little if one watched carefully, pushed upward by the pressure of the gas vapors inside it. I watched as I walked, realizing that the ground beneath me had also risen. The canal wall was gone, and we were once again on the same level as the water.

“G’day, Ben Aldridge.”

I turned to see a wizened old man leading a cow down the path. He was gap-toothed and grinning until he met my gaze. Then his wrinkles turned downward and he looked right through me, as if he had come across cast-off entrails or horse dung, something too vile to be taken notice of. I looked away.

“Good day, Mr. Turner,” Ben replied gravely, hands behind his back. I watched the slow-moving water, listening to the cowbell move away down the path. “This circumstance,” Ben said, “is not one in which I’d like to find any sister or acquaintance of mine. Are you … certain, Miss Tulman, that you wish to do what you’ve come for?”

I closed my eyes briefly. “I always do what I have to, Mr. Aldridge, no matter how unpleasant.” Thirty days I had agreed to; I had twenty-eight of them left. “I think … I’ll go back to the house now, if you don’t mind. The heat, you know.”

“Miss Tulman,” he continued, as if I had not spoken, “if you find yourself in need of help, or advice, I am always here.”

I pressed a bead of sweat from my temple into the sleeve of the worsted, hoping my silence would not be taken for lack of manners. Responding to kindness was something I had no experience with.

When I crested the rise, I saw Mrs. Jefferies at the bottom of the slope, leaving through the door in the garden wall. She had her basket over one arm, and with the other made sure the garden door closed slowly and without noise behind her. Then she glanced left, right, and left again, and hurried straight out into the empty grass of the moors, at a surprising speed for so stout a woman, never once looking to the top of my hill.

I was glad to see her go. I trotted down the slope, through the door, and into her cabbage patch. After much pulling and soiling of my hands, I had managed to twist a new cabbage from its leaf bed. I placed the cabbage on the steps to the greenhouse, where I trusted a boy with a rabbit might easily discover it. If I had to spend twenty-eight more days here, then I would not allow those days to turn me into the likes of Aunt Alice. No matter what I had to do at the end of them.

T
he next day I was back in the workshop, the steam engine humming through the floor, Uncle Tulman huddled in his usual position, hunchbacked and cross-legged on a floor cushion, his papers now blackened with jottings of numbers. Lane was at the workbench, painting in silence, the gray eyes never once piercing mine.

“Do you think I might play today, Uncle?”

My uncle looked up, his joy bubbling. “Oh, yes! You must! You must, indeed, little niece!”

That got Lane’s attention. The brush stopped moving, paint dribbling down it. “Why, Mr. Tully?” He looked as if he hadn’t meant to speak that thought aloud.

“Because she likes it, just as she likes clocks! My little niece is very good at clocks, she knows just the right way to wind them.”

I got up from my place on the floor. “Shall I help Mr. Moreau paint, Uncle?”

“Yes, yes! But let him show you how, niece. Show my little niece, Lane, so she can do it the right way. Lane always knows the right way.” He went happily back to his scribbling while I approached the bench, trying to seem friendly. The paintbrush was already moving again.

“He let you wind the clocks,” Lane said. But I knew it was not really a statement; he was demanding my answer.

I kept my eyes on his paintbrush. I had stood for a long time after leaving that cabbage for Davy, thinking of my twenty-eight days, the garden breezes pushing me this way and that before I picked up my skirts and ran through the house to the clock room. There I’d stood once again, this time just outside the doorway, watching my uncle. He’d been chattering as he wound, happy and lost in his own ticking world until he whipped around, the beard spreading wide, his shout of “Simon’s baby!” ringing out over the noise of the clocks. We took turns after that, counting the revolutions of the winding keys, my uncle clapping when I did it right. But it wasn’t until I was tiptoe on a stool, stretched full length to wind the birdcage clock, that I saw my uncle was no longer counting. He was waiting, eyes closed. The little bird whistled and the clock beside us boomed, the first chime of the noon hour, one clang in a cacophony of sound that made me drop the key and cover my ears. Uncle Tully jumped to his feet, laughing and waving his arms as if the noise were something he could swim through. “Listen, little niece!” he’d yelled over the din. “They are telling us when! Listen to the clocks tell us when!”

“He let you wind the clocks,” Lane’s low voice repeated, breaking my reverie. I looked up to see the gray eyes now fully on me, dark brows down, and realized I had been smiling. I settled my expression, lowering my eyes back to the paint.

“Yes, he did. The essential thing was to note how many times the winding key should be turned, and to always be turning clockwise before the reverse. We made short work of it, and … I think my uncle enjoyed himself very much.”

Lane’s paint went up and down on the wooden square, his fingers moving the brush in long, expert strokes. Here was someone else I could not sort. I did not like that. I thought of the silver falcon and the intricate cuts on its ruffling wings, and wondered what other skills Lane chose to hide from the world. The silence stretched long.

“Well, are you going to show me how, then, or shall I just stand here?”

He set down the brush, jaw tight, and handed me a piece of wood identical to his. It was very light. “What is it?” I asked.

“A dragon scale. A few got knocked off during your little demonstration the other day, and need to be fixed.” He gave me a brush, and I dipped it into the green paint. “The ‘essential thing,’ as you say, is to leave no lines in the paint. If there are lines, then Mr. Tully will have to count them.”

I nodded. I understood that sort of frustration. I began on the square of wood slowly while Uncle Tully talked to his papers, trying to be careful of my dress, though I didn’t really care whether the dress had paint on it or not. I wished I didn’t care if Lane were angry with me or not.

“Mr. Moreau, would you be available Monday afternoon to take me to the Upper Village? I have not seen it yet.”

Lane painted on without answering.

“I hope you haven’t changed your mind about our agreement?” I prodded.

“You’re the one who seems changeable. One moment you’re having a conversation, the next you’re running out the door.”

I took a long breath, and soldiered on. “I was thinking perhaps Monday might be convenient, after a morning spent at the water-side. Monday, I believe, is the day my uncle sets aside for trying new things, and I was able to point out to him yesterday that seeing his fish swim in the canal might be interesting and could even inspire further improvements. Mr. Aldridge is eager to observe this, too, I believe. They were both quite … excited by the idea.”

Lane’s voice momentarily lost its slight inflection and became very proper. “Then I’d have Mr. Aldridge take you on a village tour, Miss Tulman. That would be more suitable, I’m sure. And of course, I’m certain you understand that I have my duties to attend to.”

It was a not-so-subtle slap. “Of course,” I said, eyes on my dragon scale. “That will be most suitable, indeed.”

“It is time!” shouted my uncle suddenly. I sighed and set down my brush. There were sixteen lines in my paint.

It was night, the sky was studded with stars, and I stood barefoot on the path beside the canal, the wardrobe of Marianna’s bedchamber before me on the bank. The water was bright blue in the starlight, a tropical blue, and though I walked on dirt I could hear the faint groan of floorboards beneath my feet. I approached the massive wardrobe. The carven faces covering its doors and edges were whispering to one another, soft creaks of discussion, and they were discussing me. Then the door on the left swung wide and I saw the black closet-like space behind it, while on the right the wooden eyes of an openmouthed nymph turned toward me. “Misssss,” she hissed slowly, and the mahogany face became that of Mary Brown.

“Lord, Miss, wake up!”

I sat bolt upright in Marianna’s bed, my nightgown twisted around my legs. The windows were dead dark, the wardrobe door stood a little way open, and Mary Brown’s eyes were two pools among freckles in the light of an upheld candle.

“You’ve a visitor, Miss! And Mrs. Jefferies says … oh, you’ll never be guessing who it is!” Mary’s nightcap shook as she bounced. “Mr. Babcock!”

In fifteen minutes I was dressed and hurrying down a corridor, wide-awake after a short argument with Mary about my boots. They’d been found in the bathtub, caked with drying mud, a circumstance Mary insisted that I had caused by straying off the path at the canal bank, when I knew perfectly well that I had done no such thing and had left them beside the bed in respectable condition. I could not fathom why Mary would not just admit that she had borrowed my shoes. I had, after all, borrowed her dress. But she was still annoyed as she hustled me down a hallway, barefoot, while I limped along, pinched in her too-tight boots. “Where are we going?” I whispered, speaking low only because the corridors were dark.

“Drawing room!” she said, turning confidently to the left to patter down a set of stairs I was unfamiliar with. I wondered just what else Mary had been doing with her days besides cleaning my room.

We entered the drawing room by the stairs at the back of it, the grand stairs in the room I had thought of as an entry hall on my first visit, but it was the only thing about the place I recognized. The dust was gone, and so were the dust sheets. The color of the walls was softened in the dimness, the furniture grouped and arranged comfortably, gleaming and polished in the light of a crackling fire. The other thing this firelight illuminated was the ugliest man I had ever seen.

“Miss Katharine Tulman,” the man said, coming forward and extending a hand. He was short and rotund, with a misshapen nose, large jowls, and a head too small for his body. “I have been wishing to meet you these many years, and now, at last, my wish has been granted. I am a lucky man.” He kissed the hand I put into his, bowed, and gallantly offered me a seat. I sat on the edge of the chair, trying to contain my astonishment, tucking Mary’s unpolished shoes beneath my skirt.

“I am very glad to meet you as well, Mr. Babcock,” I said carefully, “though I cannot say the wish has been years in the coming. I have known your name for less than a week.”

“Ah,” he said, settling his roundness into the depths of the chair opposite. “The Tulman men have a distressing tendency to short life, an affliction that has removed anyone who might have enlightened you to my particular nomenclature, I’m afraid. But I have known your name, my dear, since you were born. I was present, in fact, on that auspicious day, the day you entered this world and your mother left it.” He shook his jowls sadly. “Joy and pain blended, Miss Tulman, joy and pain blended.”

I thought about this. “I take it, then, that you are the Tulman family solicitor.”

“Quite right.”

“And yet you are not Mrs. George Tulman’s solicitor.”

“No.” He smiled affably.

“And you represent the interests of Stranwyne Keep, and have done so for many years.”

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps you can explain to me, Mr. Babcock, how between eight and nine hundred people live and work on this estate, brought largely from the workhouses of London? My uncle, I believe, did not instruct you to do this.”

The drawing-room fire settled in a cascade of sparks, and Mr. Babcock laughed suddenly, uproariously, his chins shaking. “Forthright! Down to business with no muss or fuss. I like it, indeed I do!” He chuckled. “Yes, Miss Tulman, we do have a problem, do we not? A pretty little problem, not unanticipated, but tricky all the same. Alice Tulman has undoubtedly gotten wind that her son’s inheritance is perhaps not what it was and has sent you to begin the process of putting a stop to it. But those monies are being replaced, Miss Tulman, they are being replaced!”

“I cannot see how that is so, Mr. Babcock.”

Mr. Babcock sat back and regarded me, fingers interlaced over his round belly, his rather ridiculous expression hooding eyes that were hard and bright inside the folds of his face. I was glad, suddenly, not to be on the wrong side of this man in a courtroom. He began with, “I’d like for you to consider your grandmother, Miss Tulman. A brilliant woman, peculiarly placed. In charge of the Tulman estate, not in name, perhaps, but in practicality. And she had three sons, the youngest two estranged from her, and the oldest, the heir of Stranwyne, a son who was — who is — special, a son who would never be capable of managing the estate he has inherited. A son who —”

“Mr. Babcock,” I interrupted, “you said the money was being replaced.”

“Patience, my dear. I do not stray from my point so easily. You are not averse to hearing facts, I assume?”

I shrugged a shoulder, and he continued.

“The problem your grandmother faced was twofold: how to provide for this special son’s needs before her death, and how to provide for this son’s needs after her death, when her other two children were not … understanding, shall we say.”

“She was afraid my father or Uncle George or Aunt Alice would have Uncle Tulman put in an asylum.”

“Precisely. So Miss Marianna concocted a plan. An original plan from an original mind. She proposed to create an estate that did not depend upon the interest of an enormous sum put back in the customary so-and-so percents, but a working, thriving place that could produce its own yearly income, while at the same time securing that particular environment so important to the well-being of her child. It was an enormously expensive endeavor, but with the goal of eventually bringing the family reserves back to their original level. Sadly, Miss Marianna left this earth before her plan could be fully realized. And as both —”

“Mr. Babcock, how is the money —”

Mr. Babcock held up an authoritative finger. “And as both Simon and George followed their mother to the grave not long after, I, Miss Tulman, have carried on the work in your grandmother’s place. However, if Mr. Tully were to be proven unfit, if someone else was to be put in charge of the estate, someone … unsympathetic to your grandmother’s vision, then the whole plan rather goes out the window, does it not?”

Mr. Babcock leaned back in his chair, and now that I could speak I chose to be silent, amazed at my grandmother’s attention to Uncle Tully, and the utter lack of it for her other two sons or their children. But I was wrong there, I realized. The Stranwyne estate was entailed, and would always pass intact to the next Tulman male. Fat Robert was protected. It was I who had been left with nothing. I returned my gaze to the solicitor.

“Did this plan of my grandmother’s include emptying the workhouses, Mr. Babcock?”

Mr. Babcock smiled broadly, tapping his lumpy nose. “All me, I’m afraid. We had a gasworks to build, workshops, kilns, engines, and pipes, too; stone and wells to be dug; then schools to build, churches, and many, many cottages. Men must be hired. Why not hire those most in need of the work? Two birds with one stone, Miss Tulman, two birds with one stone! And a grand thing it is, too. Remarkably successful.”

“And how … sympathetic, would you say, was my father to this plan?”

Mr. Babcock’s smile left him. “My dear, I shall be honest with you. Simon Tulman was undecided on this matter, and the death of his dear wife, and then his mother — with whom he never reconciled — just after, preyed on his mind considerably. It is a serious thing to feel abandoned by a parent, even when that parent intends no such thing. But it is my personal belief that he would have sanctioned my actions in the end. George Tulman, being of a very different temperament, was kept deliberately in the dark.”

I imagined my aunt’s face when she heard this story. How quickly she would be calling for her maid, handing me the yipping dog, tying on her bonnet, hurrying off through the yellow fog to her own solicitor’s office, her thin mouth pressed tight. She would try to have Mr. Babcock sued for this affair, or even arrested, but something told me she could not. Mr. Babcock was clever, a man who knew his business. I lifted my eyes to the solicitor. His fingers drummed comfortably on his round belly.