Timepiece (10 page)

INGLEHAM WAREHOUSE DESTROYED IN FIRE; ARSON SUSPECTED.

PHILATHROPIST ENDOWS CHARITY FOR THOSE LEFT JOBLESS AFTER INGLEHAM FIRE. Some of the article appeared below this one:
Lord Seward today announced the formation of the Ingleham Fire Charity, for the relief of those whose livelihoods were destroyed by the conflagration…

BOILER EXPLOSION ABOARD THE ALICIA BELL, read the fifth headline. CARGO LOST, ALL HANDS SAFE.

LANFORD AND SONS FAILS.
Lanford and Sons today closed its doors, citing the loss of its three largest ships to freak accidents over the past year…

TRAIN ROBBER TRIAL OPENS; ROBERTSON TESTIFIES AGAINST CLAYBOURNE.

SURPRISE CLAYBOURNE WITNESS.
Lord Seward today took the stand as principle witness for the defense, speaking to Jonathan Claybourne’s character...

CLAYBOURNE ACQUITTED.

FACTORY REFORM BILL FAILS IN HOUSE OF LORDS VOTE.

ANONYMOUS TIP AVERTS SABOTAGE.
Acting on anonymous information, Inspector John Barnes arrived at Murchinson Matchworks in time to arrest five men preparing to engage in acts of sabotage...

MURCHINSON SABOTEUR CLAIMS TO HAVE BEEN HIRED BY “ROBERT LOCKSLEY.”
In exchange for a reduced prison sentence, Murchinson saboteur Frank Turner today testified that he was offered twenty pounds for said act of sabotage by a man identifying himself as “Robert Locksley”…

WHITEHALL BREACHED; AERIAL PLANS STOLEN.
The explosion that rocked Pall Mall in the early hours of Friday morning was said to have caused nothing but property damage. However,
The Times
has learned—through an exclusive interview with a minor government official—that when the smoke cleared, plans for an experimental new Aerial Defense System were found to have been abstracted from the government office in which they were kept. Whitehall clerk Richard Courtland, missing since the morning of the bombing, is suspected of a connection with this appalling theft…

AERIAL PLAN TRAITOR RUMORED TO BE IN FRANCE.
It is unknown how Mr. Courtland could have escaped this country without the knowledge of the port officials, but...

The next clipping, incongruously, appeared to be from the Society page:
Despite his generous donation, Lord Seward was not present at the opening, having departed for the Riviera on Friday.

The final clipping was a letter to the editor—a long and rather rambling one.

Dear Sir,

As the police are not interested in my discoveries, I bring them to you in the hope that you may communicate them to the world. Only if we are forearmed with knowledge have we any chance of withstanding the forces working to destroy our Empire from within.

For some years now I have noticed a certain similarity among various crimes of robbery, forgery, espionage, and sabotage—a certain flair to their preparation that could never have belonged to the fools arrested for their execution, signs of an intelligence working behind the scenes, an immense organizing power moving agents like pieces on a chess-board and throwing its shield over those apprehended by the law.
I am certain now that what I have suspected is the truth. He sits motionless, a spider in the center of a web that covers all London and extends throughout the country and even farther. His pawns may be caught, arrested, punished, but the spider is never so much as suspected. The spider has a name, and it is Locksley.

Locksley! Locksley! The word is on the lips of half those arrested for arson or forgery or robbery. It whispers like the wind through grass in the stews of the East End. He has built a kingdom for himself in that seething mass of vice, and it is dedicated to nothing less than the overthrow of the Empire. Unless it is discovered who wears the mask of Locksley, he will succeed in reducing this city and then all of England to chaos. Every man, woman, and child is in danger until this monster is apprehended...

The letter might have continued, but the cutting ended there, with no name given. William sat back, closed the scrapbook, and stared at the scratches running along the faded green cover.

In the year 1885,
he thought,
London is a warfront. More: in the year 1885, London is
occupied.
Someone has imposed a curfew on the city, enforcing it with metal giants that fire weapons second-cousin to artillery.

These newspaper clippings show a weakening of various institutions of government and industry. Arson, ships sunk, military documents stolen. At least one person thinks it all deliberate. Could that all have happened first, and then been followed by a coup d’état?
He thought of the guerilla warfare he had seen in Spain. One weakened the pillars of the temple whenever possible, before bringing it down with a frontal assault. He was mixing metaphors almost as badly as the writer of that letter, but he didn’t bother to rephrase the thought to himself.

He read through the letter again, more slowly. The writer did not sound overly reliable, but assuming he had stumbled onto something true...
“Locksley” might have been a foreign agent. French, say. Sent to weaken key pillars in government and trade.
He wished the clippings had contained dates, so he could understand how long ago this happened.
If the government has been overthrown, and the Crown is in exile, like the House of Bourbon...
He thought he had identified Trevelyan’s role in all of this now. He had, after all, seen some guerilla warfare, and the mantle of guerilla soldier fit Trevelyan’s shoulders very well. Developing a weapon against the metal giants? Perhaps in the service of the Crown-in-exile?

But why the clippings about the philanthropist Seward? William re-opened the book and read them over again, frowning. Pilot Bill, Claybourne, Riviera...Why would a nobleman speak at a robber’s trial? If this theory about Locksley was true, might Seward have been be working for him? A traitor within the ranks, giving aid and succor to His Majesty’s enemies? Or...William let the thought trail off. He couldn’t say for certain without more information.

There was one obvious way to obtain more information, to test the theories he had formed. William glanced in the direction of Trevelyan’s laboratory, weighing approaches. Trevelyan respected competence, which William had not been demonstrating earlier; hence Trevelyan’s impatience. But if he returned and ambushed the tinkerer with competence now, he might just startle some answers out of the fellow.

He picked up the scrapbook and took it to Trevelyan’s laboratory, wedging it under his right arm and using his left hand to open the door. Trevelyan was now standing at the workbench just inside the room, flipping through the mess of paper on its surface, fingers moving so fast through the sketches that they seemed to be juggling shadows. William stood obviously in the doorway, but Trevelyan did not look up.

“So then,” William said, a little louder than necessary to be heard over the racket. “Your weapon is intended to bring down Locksley’s metal monsters? How many people know Locksley is Lord Seward?”

And then Trevelyan’s startled eyes came level with his own.

Pendoylan, Wales, May 18, 1872

“Ah, Miss Evans! Good afternoon to you.” Mrs. Pritchard waddled up to the counter, beaming like an amiable partridge. “Here for your letters, are you?”

That was generally what took a person into a post office, but uttering such a waspish response did not even cross Brenda Evans’ mind. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Pritchard. Yes, I am.”

“You’re in luck today!” Mrs. Pritchard turned, sorting through the pigeon-holes behind her with as much eagerness as though the luck had been hers. “There’s a letter come for you from your Gavin. He’ll be home for the summer holidays before very long, won’t he?”

“Next week.” Brenda knew she was turning pink with pleasure, but saw no reason to hide it. A letter from Gavin did indeed make it a lucky day. She took it from Mrs. Pritchard, smiling at the distinctive bold script on the envelope. “Then home for good and all this time next year.”

“And that’ll be lovely, won’t it?” Mrs. Pritchard sighed with such happiness it might be her own lover returning. “No other letters for you, dearie, just the paper for your dad. Awful news up north, isn’t it?” She clucked her tongue at the headline, and Brenda murmured agreement without really looking at it. There was
always
awful news from north of Moore’s Wall. Nearly every year, the English sent a troop of soldiers over the Wall to try to take back the Highlands. Nearly every year, they made some small progress at first, but then the wild monster clans rose in force and drove them back. This had been going on for as long as Brenda could remember, and she did not find it very interesting to read about.

The bell over the door jingled, and Mrs. Pritchard turned her attention to her new customer. “Ah, Mrs. Jones! Here for your letters, are you? My best to your mum, Miss Evans, and tell her I’ll be seeing her at the Ladies’ Aid tomorrow.” Mrs. Jones held the door, and Brenda slipped around her and outside.

The loveliest sort of evening was coming on, cool clean air and soft blue sky. Spring had finally taken hold, with little green shoots visible in gardens and wildflowers clustered by the side of the path Brenda took home from the village. It was time she got back to help her mother put tea on the table, but she lingered for just a moment, admiring the sparkle of sunlight through green leaves. Between the pleasant weather, the newly trimmed hat on her head, and the letter from Gavin in her pocket, Miss Brenda Evans was very close to perfectly happy.

Not that she was in truth “Miss Evans.” She and Gavin had been married very quietly the year before—everyone hereabouts knew that, and the plain gold band on her finger would have told them even if they hadn’t. She ought to have been “missus.” But they wouldn’t be able to set up housekeeping until he took his degree next spring; she lived still in her father’s house, and mostly the same as she had done before the wedding; and so most folk tended to forget, as a day-to-day matter. As far as the neighbors were concerned, she was “Miss Evans,” and she generally thought of herself that way too. It was still something of a surprise to see her married name on an envelope, in Gavin’s forcible scrawl. He was the only one who used it, and it made her feel warm to think of him proudly writing it out.

Theirs was an unusual situation, to be sure. A few of the folk who said “Miss Evans” did so with a meaningful pause before the title, meant to indicate their disapproval. Brenda knew, but could not bring herself to mind. Her parents did not disapprove, so what else mattered? It was unusual to agree to a marriage between one’s daughter and a man who could not yet support a wife—a betrothal would have been the more routine arrangement—but Gavin’s prospects were excellent. His parents were dead, but an old seafaring uncle had left him a legacy in trust to pay school fees and the part of university not covered by scholarship, the principle to come to him when he turned twenty-one. Even had there been no principle, the university degree catapulted Gavin straight to the status of “excellent match.” When he graduated, he was almost certain to obtain a government-sponsored engineering post in Cardiff or London. Brenda’s mother hoped for Cardiff, which wasn’t too far off for a week-end visit; Brenda herself was excited by the idea of living in London.

Though she had been told London was smelly and noisy, and if Gavin decided to settle there, she would doubtless miss this placid green peace and the smell of freshly turned earth. It was therefore only sensible to store up memories of walking in the countryside at twilight, in case she needed them for comfort later on. So that was a good reason—well, no, it wasn’t really; truthfully, it was being naughty, but she could
pretend
it was a good reason—to go home the long way, by the Davies’.

This time of day, their duck pond was perfect mirror of the sky, flat as glass with pink-tinged clouds floating through it. Brenda peeped at her own reflection, admiring all over again the pink ribbons with which she had trimmed last year’s hat. The ribbons had been a birthday gift from Gavin, all the way from London, and no other girl in the village had ones so fine.

A duck sailed through her reflected face, and Brenda had to laugh at herself for vanity. She lingered another moment, watching the duck flip itself upside-down in its search for food and listening to a bird trilling in a nearby tree. Before her stretched the Davies’ fields, brown and fresh and homely and everything that was spring. Up above them rose the green hills and low mountains that made South Wales so distinctively beautiful. Brenda had never travelled farther than Cardiff, but she was sure there was nothing in England or any other part of the wide world to compare.

From here it was only just possible to see how the tops of those mountains were scarred by coal mines. It wasn’t possible at all to see the barracks used to house the tame Wellington monsters who worked them. When the mines had first opened, years ago, the miners had been Welsh—men, women, and even tiny children, toiling away in the darkness below the ground from the age of six or even younger. Brenda shuddered at the thought, and drew a breath of fresh air with particular pleasure. How inhuman, to treat children that way. It was much better for Wales to have the monsters work the mines, and human families be free to farm in the fresh air.

Free to go off to Cardiff and work in the factories, too, of course. Many young men and some young women did just that, and that work was hard and the hours long, but at least those who went were old enough to choose for themselves, not tiny mites. Much better to have the monsters do the truly dangerous work, particularly as they were bred to it and it did them no harm. They were mostly contented with their lives, Brenda understood, not like the nasty wild ones in Scotland. It was the difference between a housecat and the
cath pulag
out of the old tale of Pa Gwr, so people said, and you only had to look at the newspaper’s headline to see the truth of that. THE NORTH IS BURNING, it said, and it went on to tell of horrible things done to English soldiers by the wild monsters. Brenda thought it would be much better if the English would stop with their attempts to retake the Highlands, just retreat to their side of Moore’s Wall and have done, but she supposed they must have some reason to keep trying. She glanced through the first few words of the article, then shuddered and turned her eyes back to the sky above the duck pond. It was a waste of a lovely evening to fret over far off things she could do nothing about. She was glad that she did not live there and never would, and even gladder that her husband was an educated man and not a soldier, so he would never have to go there either.

She couldn’t wait a moment longer. She pulled out Gavin’s letter and settled down on a rock right there by the duck pond to read it. It would hardly make her any tardier returning home than she already was, for Gavin’s letters were never very long. He was brilliant at anything having to do with numbers or carpentry or what they taught at university, but rubbish at putting words to paper in any sort of eloquent manner. Brenda didn’t care. She wouldn’t have wanted a long poetic letter, for a long poetic letter wouldn’t have been the least like Gavin.

Nor had he sent one. His scrawl covered only a sheet and spoke mostly about some work he was doing with a professor, work that seemed likely to lead to a post after he took his degree. The post, if he got it, would keep him in London, but perhaps they might contrive to take lodgings outside the city—somewhere pleasant—and he could take the train in every morning. Just exactly like a gentleman with business in the city! Should she like that? He was very much looking forward to talking it over with her next week. “Yours ever, G.”

She was reading it over for the third time, feeling the air cool around her and thinking that she really ought to be getting home to help her mother with tea—when a hand dropped onto her shoulder and she jumped nearly out of her skin.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” a deep voice said as she squirmed around. “My dear young lady, I am so sorry. I did not mean to startle you.”

His back was to the sun and she could see nothing of his face. For that moment, he was only a black, broad-shouldered figure outlined in flame, and every tale she had ever heard of things one might meet in the wood flashed through her mind.

Then he shifted to one side, and Brenda scolded herself for a goose. He was nothing fearful, only an ordinary looking man of middle age, broad-shouldered and silver-haired, with an agreeable, unremarkable face. An Englishman by his speech—and a wealthy one, for his sleek black coat was like nothing she had ever seen in her life. It must, she thought, be the latest London fashion.

His hand was still on her shoulder. She tried to shrug out from underneath it and rise, but he was standing in such a way that she could not easily get her feet underneath her. “Miss Evans, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly.

“Yes, sir,” Brenda said. Her initial alarm had been banished by his ordinariness, but now it came creeping back. The stranger smiled at her, but only with his lips and not his eyes, and it occurred to her that the duck pond was somewhat off the beaten path, that no one had passed by in all the time she had spent daydreaming, that the afternoon had faded into the hour when most folk retreated behind doors for their tea…

“I have the honor to count your husband among my friends,” the silver-haired man explained. “I have seen the little miniature he keeps by him; I would know you anywhere. Though it scarcely does you justice, of course, madam.”

She would have been charmed by the compliment had it been delivered in a roomful of other people, in daylight. Alone in the wood it pressed itself ominously against her, like the fingers on her shoulder-blade.

“It is a piece of luck to find you here,” the stranger went on. “I was going to call upon you, was just now seeking my way to your parents’ house. I saw your husband in London yesterday, you see, and he asked me to bring you a message since I was traveling this way.”

Gavin’s letter crackled as Brenda’s hand tightened on it. Gavin’s letter, written only the day before, conspicuously omitting any introduction of a friend. “Indeed,” she said, trying not to let her voice quaver. “How fortunate, Mr.—?”

“Jones,” the man said with no hesitation at all, but Brenda didn’t believe him for a moment. It was a Welsh name, and there was nothing of Wales in his speech.

“Mr. Jones.” She took a deep breath, trying to act as though nothing troubled her. “I’m always pleased to know a friend of Gavin’s. And—and I’m sure my parents would invite you to tea. We’d, ah—” She took another breath. “—we’d best start walking that way. I’m quite late already, and they’re bound to come looking for me if I’m not back soon.”

He didn’t step back to allow her to rise. He didn’t take his hand from her shoulder. Brenda ducked her head, trying to wriggle upright and through the slender gap between the man’s looming figure and the rock on which she sat. She wasn’t sure if she would have chanced running, had she been able to get away from him; but as it was, she stumbled on her skirt, twisting her ankle, and the stranger caught her by her upper arms.

They stood there frozen for a moment, face to face, his fingers biting into her arms and his eyes burning as he studied her.

“Thank you,” she said, and tried to pull away. “Thank you, sir, I’m fine, there’s no need—”
Let me go,
she meant,
let me go,
she wanted to say, but she feared to betray her distrust. What would happen after she did? “—I’m fine, thank you.”