The Peculiar (11 page)

The goblin scowled out at him from under leafy eyebrows. “Right up there,” he rasped, waving a claw in the direction of a tall, thin house near the end of the alley. The building was just as dilapidated as the others. Certainly not a place Mr. Jelliby could imagine the Lord Chancellor visiting. Him, with his extravagant costumes and perfect white skin.

Mr. Jelliby thanked the hobgoblin and approached the house uneasily. Looking up, he saw that it ended in a massive knot of chimneys and roiling fumes, like a head of wild black hair. He entered through a low door and began climbing some stairs, up and up, past leery-eyed lodgers and foul chambers until at last he came to the fifth floor. There he found a small hand-painted sign pointing to small hand-painted door on which was written quite simply
Mr. Zerubbabel.
No mechanical marvels.

A collection of rusty bells jangled over the door as Mr. Jelliby entered. The room beyond was dark, low-ceilinged, and cramped, its actual shape difficult to make out for all the shelves and stacks of machinery towering throughout it. The metal skeletons of half-built automata sat slouched on crates, staring at nothing with dead eyes. Wires crisscrossed the ceiling, and on them, wheeling to and fro with soft creaking noises, were dozens of little tin men on monocycles, carrying in their hands screwdrivers and hammers and spouted cans of glistening oil.

A metallic
ting
sounded from the far corner of the room, and Mr. Jelliby turned to see an old man hunched over a desk, adjusting the treads on a clockwork snail.

Mr. Jelliby took a step toward him. “Sir?” he said. The word fell like a furry ball to the floor. The old man looked up. Wrinkling his nose, he peered at Mr. Jelliby through half-moon spectacles.

“Yes, please?” he said, setting the snail down on the desk. It gave a contented whir and began turning circles around a mug of black grease.

“Ah—do I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Zerubbabel?”

“I am Mr. Zerubbabel, though whether you derive any pleasure from addressing me is entirely up to you.” The old man's voice was clipped, educated, completely at odds with his jumbled little shop. On his head he wore a very tiny black hat. “Xerxes Yardley Zerubbabel, at your service.”

Mr. Jelliby smiled gratefully. “I have a damaged piece of mechanics here that was constructed at your shop. It—it crashed through my attic window.” He had practiced what he was going to say all through breakfast while pretending to read the
Times
. It had been nothing like what he had just said. “If you would be so kind as to tell me where it was headed, I will be along right away to give it back to its owner.”

“Oh, not necessary, I assure you. Not necessary at all. I have all my customers written up. Show me the machine, please.”

Mr. Jelliby set to work extracting the bird from his pocket. A metal talon snagged on his trouser and tore off with a
twang.
The old man winced. While Mr. Jelliby struggled to undo the feathers from the stitchery on his waistcoat, the old man said, “Oh! The Sidhe's bird. Thank you, I will see that it is returned to him myself.”

“Oh . . .” Mr. Jelliby looked unhappy. “Well, would you tell me where it was flying anyway?”

The little man's brow darkened. When he spoke, his voice was wary. “No. No, I don't suppose that I would.”

Mr. Jelliby's mouth twitched. He flicked at one of the bird's springs. He shuffled his feet. Then he said, “All right, look here. I'm with the police, see, and the creature who bought this bird from you is a heinous criminal.”

“He is a politician,” the old man said flatly.

“But he is also a murderer! He's been all around London and Bath killing poor innocents and leaving them hollow like dead trees, and
you,
as an upright Englishman, are required by
honor
to help me.”

Mr. Zerubbabel grunted. “Firstly, I am not an Englishman. Secondly, that's the dottiest tale I've ever heard. With the police, indeed. I don't believe a word of it. And even if I did . . .” He sniffed and, eyebrows raised, set back to fiddling with the clockwork snail. “It's none of my business.”

Mr. Jelliby threw up his hands in exasperation. “How can you—what in—have you no . . .?” He dropped his hands. He opened his wallet and fished out two gleaming sovereigns, waving them under the old man's nose. “Can I make it your business?”

The old man eyed the coins. Snatching one, he bit it. Then he looked hard at Mr. Jelliby, stood on his tiptoes to look out the window in the shop door, and said gruffly, “Let me get my records.”

Like an old rat, Mr. Zerubbabel retreated into a hole between two drooping shelves. Mr. Jelliby could see nothing inside but blackness. Some oaths issued from within, followed by a heavy crash that shook the towering house to its roots. A cascade of clockwork mosquitoes tumbled from a jar nearby. The old man popped his head out. “It has been eaten. One moment, if you please.” He disappeared back into the hole.

There was another crash, what sounded like claws tapping, and fierce whispers, and the old man emerged again, this time with a map in his hands.

“Now then!” he said, puffing. “Let's see what we've got here, shall we?” He unfurled the map across a pile of debris and began poring over it, eyes darting like flies. Long lines had been drawn across it in red ink. Mr. Zerubbabel traced them with a wizened finger. “I have a captive faery-of-the-air to travel the distances and calculate safe routes, et cetera,” he explained. “It finds obstacles, measures the height from which my contraptions must launch.” He cast Mr. Jelliby a sideways glance. “So that they don't crash through attic windows, you know.”

Mr. Jelliby nodded wisely.

Mr. Zerubbabel turned back to the map, frowning. He rapped his finger three times, in different places on the map. “Here are the points he gave me. Three birds. Each bird has its own route. Three birds for three routes. And all starting from different spots in London.” Mr. Zerubbabel looked thoughtful for a moment. “The one you picked up travels from Westminster Palace, it seems, on its way North. Yorkshire. It is launched toward the east to bypass the factory ash. The second one flies between Bath and a house on Blackfriars Bridge. And the third I never could understand. He had me calibrate it to fly in an upward line from a garret in Islington, three hundred feet into open sky. And when I sent Boniface—that's my faery-of-the-air—up to see what was what, he found nothing. Just clouds and sky.”

Mr. Jelliby wasn't listening anymore. He had what he needed. “Thank you, sir, thank you so very much. Might you give me the marks, though? The longitudinal lines or whatever they're called.” He held up another sovereign. “I'd be terribly grateful.”

The old man pocketed the coin and scribbled a series of numbers on a yellowing scrap of paper. He passed it to Mr. Jelliby. “I don't know what you're up to. Trying to ruin the fellow like as not. Maybe a bit of blackmail? You are so alike really, you English and the faeries. So desperately far on either side that you can't see anything in between. Ah, well. I'll not talk. This part of London, nobody talks but the face on the coin, and as I said, it's none of my business.”

Mr. Jelliby thought that was not a very nice thing to say out loud. He was about to bid the man a cool farewell, when the bells above the door jangled again, and in ducked another customer.

And who should it be but the Lord Chancellor John Wednesday Lickerish's faery butler.

Mr. Jelliby's hand tightened around the bird. Slowly, slowly he began slipping it up his sleeve. The claw snagged his cuff.
It wouldn't go.
Quite out of nowhere it struck him how very like a praying mantis the faery butler looked, like a deathly pale insect, with those long arms and fingers. The faery had to bend his head to the side in an odd way to keep it from knocking against the ceiling. The brass machinery around his face was stiff, unmoving.

One step. One step to the right and Mr. Jelliby would be hidden behind the rivet-studded tentacles of a mechanical octopus. But it was too late. The faery butler turned, saw him.

“Ooh!” he whined, lenses clicking across his one green eye as it focused on the bird in Mr. Jelliby's hand. “Fancy seeing you here. . . .”

CHAPTER XI
Child Number Ten

T
HE
goat tracks looped across the kitchen floor, from the door to the table to the beds and the potbellied stove under the drying herbs. Mother's bulk rose and fell gently in sleep, the old bed creaking with each breath. Inside her cupboard, Hettie shifted a little, and sighed.

Bartholomew let his breath out slowly.
What has the faery come for? What does it want?

If only he hadn't invited it. If only he had listened to Mother and heeded her warnings. She had told him what might happen. She had practically begged him not to do it. But he had wanted a friend so badly. He wanted something to protect him, and talk with him, something that would make him feel he wasn't just strange and ugly. Only it wasn't going to
be
his friend. It wasn't going to protect him, and it wasn't going to wind up the wash-wringer either. All it did was slither about in the night and put nightmares in Hettie's head. The number ten on the paper in the attic was another of its pranks, like as not. It was probably snickering into its sleeve right that very moment.

Bartholomew bit his lip and followed the tracks to the flat door. It was still locked.
He puts his finger into the keyholes, see, and the locks spring open, just like that.
And spring closed again, too, it seemed. Slipping the key down off its peg, he unlocked the door. Then, careful not to make a sound, he tiptoed out into the passageway.

The house was cool and dark. The floorboards, worn smooth by the years, gleamed dully in the feeble light from the window.

The trail of ash led upstairs. It became fainter as he followed it, whispering away until it was only breaths against the wood. By the time Bartholomew reached the third floor it had almost disappeared. It didn't matter. He knew where the faery had gone.

Silent as the moon, he slipped up through the trapdoor and into the attic. Ducking under the first crossbeam, he crept forward, eyes darting, searching for a hint of where the faery might be hiding. He would kill it if he found it. The thought came to him with sudden violence. If he found the little monster, he would wring its neck. Wring it before it wrung Hettie's, and Mother's, and his.

A sound stopped him dead—voices, muttering, muffled under the roof.

“Oh, yes. That one's a Peculiar if ever I saw one.” The voice that was speaking was hushed, but Bartholomew recognized it at once.
Hollow, earthy. The singing voice.
Only this time its owner took great wheezing breaths every few words, sucked in between its teeth. “The leetle half-blood builds a house, see? A downright inferior house to catch himself a faery with. I found it whiles I was exploring the place. Kicked it to pieces, I did! Ha-ha! All in leetle pieces.” There was a giggle.

Bartholomew dug his fingers into his palms and flattened himself against the sloping roof. The voice was coming from the place under the gable. His place.

“And the stupid changeling still thinks it worked. It thinks I'm its faery slave.” A wheeze. “It asked me questions, it did. It wrotes me a letter, with words, all fancy like, and asked me what something meant in the language o' the faery lords and”—another wheeze—“now this is the strangest part of all. It was—”

“I don't care,” a second voice interrupted. It was also very low, but in an entirely different way. It was a harsh, dangerous low, and so cold. “Is the changeling what I need, or is it not? I cannot afford any more mistakes. Not from you, not from anyone. I hire you to make sure the changelings are usable, to make sure they are what the Lord Chancellor needs.” The voice rose in anger. “And nine times in a row you give me
rubbish!
It will be taken from my neck if the child is again unsuitable.”

“Well, you got so many necks it wouldn't hardly make a—”

There was an angry hiss and Bartholomew saw a shadow lash out across the beam. “
Shut up.
Shut up, I tell you. Too much is at stake now. Did you make certain with the list my master sent you? Did you even
get
the list? There have been . . . interruptions of late with the Lord Chancellor's messenger birds. He could not be certain it had arrived.”

“Yeh, I gots the bird. Came just as it always does.”

Bartholomew edged closer. Through the gap between the beams he could just make out a figure. Bartholomew's breath caught in his throat. It was the raggedy man. There could be no doubt. The creature matched Hettie's description exactly. It was small and misshapen, standing very still with its chin against its neck. A broken stovepipe hat was pulled low over its face. A waistcoat and tattered jacket were its only clothes. It wore no trousers. Bartholomew saw why right away. From the waist down the creature was not a raggedy man but a raggedy goat. The fur on its haunches was thick and black, matted with dirt and blood. Two chipped hooves peeped out from under its shaggy fetlocks. The raggedy man was a faun.

“Very well,” the cold voice said. “I will believe you. I haven't the time, or I would investigate these matters myself.” Bartholomew couldn't see who had spoken those words. Whoever it was, he was hidden around the corner of the gable, and Bartholomew didn't dare go any closer for a better look.

The voice went on, just barely a whisper. “I warn you,
sluagh.
If the Lord Chancellor is again displeased with the delivery—if the changeling is again a failure—I will knock more from your head than just a few teeth.”

The raggedy man shuffled its hooves and said nothing.

“Is that clear?” The voice was ice.

Bartholomew didn't wait to hear the rest. Sliding backward, he made for the trapdoor. Everything was different now. Everything had changed. This wasn't just about some silly house faery anymore. He didn't want to think what these creatures would do to him if they caught him listening. He climbed down into the third-story passage and hurried toward the stair.

His head was reeling.
It never worked, then. The invitation. The pitiful house with the cherries twisted into its walls. It has all been for nothing.
The raggedy man wasn't his faery. The raggedy man had been hired. To spy. To make sure Bartholomew would
do
, be suitable, not a failure like the other nine.
Nine.
The Buddelbinster boy was one of those. He must be. And now Bartholomew was number ten.
The paper in the attic.
He pulled up his sleeve and examined the markings on his arms. Bloodred tens in the faery language. At least the raggedy man had told the truth about that.

He broke into a run, down the stairs, wood splinters pricking his hand from the rickety banister. He didn't know what they wanted him for. He didn't know whether he should hide, or tell Mother, or wait quietly until they came for him. The creature—the one he hadn't seen—had said it was working for the Lord Chancellor. Wasn't that good? Weren't only the kindest and wisest people allowed to be Lord Chancellors?
But why would a Lord Chancellor employ faeries that sounded like winter and knocked people's teeth out?
Bartholomew didn't know what to think anymore. He was terrified and excited, both at once, and it felt like a whole cloud of moths were beating their wings inside his stomach. An image flared up in his mind of grand people, of dukes and generals encrusted with medals, of ermine cloaks dragging across marble, and great halls ablaze with candles. A knife tapped, silvery, against a wineglass. A cheer went up. And Bartholomew realized they were cheering for him. Barthy Kettle. Child Number Ten, of Old Crow Alley, seventh faery district, Bath. It was a ridiculous thought. A happy, hopeful, ridiculous thought that had a million cracks running through it.

He was almost to the flat door when something caught his eye through the passage window. Something was out in the alley, an extra shadow where no shadow belonged. He retraced his steps and brought his face up close against the round leaded panes.

It was the lady in plum. She was back again in Old Crow Alley, sitting still as death on a rough-hewn bench against the wall of the place known as moss-bucket house. The moldering eaves hung low over her, drowning her in gloom. She was slumped against the wall, her hands in her lap, her chin resting against her neck.

Bartholomew raised his hand to the glass. The image of the candlelit halls, ermine cloaks, and admiring faces became brighter than ever. Why shouldn't the lady take him away? Someone—no, not just someone—the Lord Chancellor himself, had gone through a great deal of trouble to find him. That meant he was important. In the faery slums he wasn't important. In the faery slums he was just another ugly thing to be hidden away and never spoken of. He would die here. Sooner or later.

But the dreadful faeries in the attic,
a voice cried, clanging in his head like a fire-engine bell.
The Buddelbinster mother's warning, that ugly face on the back of the lady's head, and the hooves, and the voices—
Bartholomew silenced it. It didn't matter. What did any of that matter when all they were doing was taking him to a better place? A place where he belonged. It would be better for everyone if he were gone. It would mean one less mouth to feed for Mother, one less changeling for her to worry about. Hettie would cry, and he would miss her awfully, but surely he could visit. And if the room he had traveled to through the mushroom ring was anything like the place he was going, he knew he wouldn't mind living there. He could just scrape bits of gilt off the furniture and Mother and Hettie would have pies and duck to eat for months.

By the time he turned away from the window he had made up his mind. Somewhere in London people were waiting for him, glorious people with clockwork birds, fine rooms, and fireplaces. He was leaving Old Crow Alley behind.

He laid his head against the door to the flat and whispered, “Good-bye, Mother. Good-bye, Hettie.” He waited several heartbeats, as if listening for a reply. Then he went downstairs. The goblin was asleep on his stool. The face in the door stared out sightlessly, gray wooden eyes over gray wooden cheeks. Silently, Bartholomew said good-bye to them, too. Then he slipped out into the narrow confines of the alley.

The houses all around were black spikes against the sky. The sun was just starting to rise, and only the early morning red gave the alley any light. Somewhere several streets away, a cart was rattling over the cobbles, echoing.

Bartholomew crossed the alley and approached the lady cautiously, scraping himself along the wall toward her. She looked even larger up close, even darker and more forbidding, as if the shadows from the recesses and deep doorways were being drawn to her, soaking into her skirts. The last time Bartholomew had seen her he had been in the attic, behind glass. Now he could see her every detail. She was young. Not a great lady at all, but a girl no more than twenty. Her hat still sat askew atop her head, but the jewels were no longer around her throat and one of her night-hued gloves was torn, crisp with something like dried blood. Her red lip paint was somewhat smeared. Bartholomew thought she was the most marvelous and frightening thing he had ever seen.

He came within three steps of her and then stopped. She sat so still. So very, very still in the shadow of the eaves. He contemplated reaching out and touching her hand. It didn't seem wise at all.

He was just about to slip back inside and lie shivering against the door until he could think of something to say, when the lady moved. Her eyelids fluttered open and she said ever so softly, “Oh! Hello, sweet child.”

Her voice was airy, dreamy, half between waking and sleeping.

Bartholomew flinched. For a moment he wasn't sure she had been speaking to him, since she hadn't turned her head or even really looked at him. But the alley was empty. He and the lady were the only ones in it.

“Did Father send you?” she asked. “Are you the new valet?”

Bartholomew stood, mouth open, unsure of how to answer.
Is this some sort of test? Oh, no. I mustn't muddle it. Something clever, something clever so she will be impressed.
This was still the sorceress who had taken his friend, still the lady with the secret, twisted face. But her eyes were so kind. And she had such a lovely voice. He couldn't even remember that second face anymore. Perhaps it had belonged to someone else.

“Tell him I will not relent,” she continued. “Never as long as the hills are green. Jack will be mine, and nothing shall ever come between us. But I am so tired. . . . What is this hard chair I sit on? Where are my pillows? Where is Mirabel with
pêches et crème
? Sweet child, where am—”

Suddenly her eyes snapped wide. Her pupils focused on Bartholomew and she sat bolt upright, snatching both his hands. “Oh, no,” she whispered, and her voice shivered at the edges. Desperation wrote itself across her face, and her eyes shone, fearful-bright. “No, no. You must run. Sweet child, they are here to
take
you. Don't let them. Run. Run with the wind and never look back.”

All at once there came a sound, a tapping that drifted down into the alley. It was coming from the rooftops. Bartholomew looked up just in time to see the small round window of his little gable burst outward, shooting a cloud of glass into the air. A shape flew out, a writhing mass of blackness. It plummeted, glass glinting around it, and landed in the alley with a dreadful scuttling sound.

Bartholomew's heart lurched. The lady gasped and dropped his hands.

Everything seemed to move very slowly then. The glass from the window rained down, tinkling like diamonds into the gutter. The writhing shape hurtled toward them over the cobblestones. And the lady's head turned to Bartholomew, her eyes full of tears.

“Tell Daddy I'm sorry,” she whispered. “Tell Daddy I'm sorry.” And then the dark shape slammed into her and she doubled over, the breath knocked from her lungs.

When she raised her head again, her eyes were sharp and black. Faery eyes.