Timepiece (14 page)

“No,” Katarina said, “you’re not. I’m the natural daughter of an opera singer. I grew up in poverty and disgrace and I can’t do better than sing in a music hall. I’ve barely a coin to my name and no way to make anyone listen to me. You’re a gentleman’s daughter, you’ll be a gentleman’s wife, you live in a time when it hasn’t happened yet, and you have a pocket watch like Max’s—do you
truly
think you are powerless, compared to me?”

The air hung hot and heavy between them. Finally Elizabeth looked down at the last soggy piece of fish in its soaked newspaper wrapping. “Well,” she said. “When you put it that way...” She looked back up. “You’ll have to tell me everything. I have to know what happened—what will happen.”

Katarina nodded, and they started walking again. “Ask me whatever you like.”

“Is it a—a coded message, what you’ve been saying about a storm coming tonight? What does it mean?”

Katarina smiled. “It is a message, but not a coded one. It
is
going to storm tonight.” That was true enough; Elizabeth could feel the humid fog press against her lungs. “Mr. Trevelyan has invented a device to be used against the constructs, and it needs a lightning storm to be tested. Our friends will be providing distractions in other parts of the city while the test proceeds.”

“Then you’ll have a weapon, is that it? That man you mentioned—Gladstone—will still have the constructs, but you’ll have something just as good.”

“Then we’ll have
a
weapon,” Katarina said. “If it works, we can move on to the step of getting someone to create many of them.
Then
the field will be level.”

“Oh.” Elizabeth took a breath. “This was all Lord Seward’s idea?”

“Lord Seward is behind it, yes.” Katarina twisted the newspaper between her hands. “The problem with a venture of this kind is financing it. Lord Seward is a rich man—family money of course, and richer all the time for investing it in industry. Only someone of his wealth and position could have diverted the funds we needed. He pays the wages and other bills of a non-existent factory, and he hired Trevelyan to use that money to build him a weapon. He could have found no one better,” she added. “Trevelyan...lives for this cause. No one...no one hates the constructs or the men who made them more than he. And he’s truly a genius. Seward is another one, in a different way. This was far from his lordship’s only iron in the fire. I don’t know what they all were, even. He
did
have an empire of...Well. He had many irons in many fires, let’s just leave it there. It was one of the others that brought him down—I don’t know which, and the newspapers haven’t yet said—and it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that...that I believe he would have founded his ‘criminal empire’ even if Max hadn’t shown up on his doorstep and told him what was destined to happen. He would have tried to bring it all down either way, and I think Max knew that. I think that’s why Max stayed to see it through with us. Because he thinks we can win.”

Elizabeth took another breath. “But now Lord Seward has been arrested.”

The skin around Katarina’s eyes tightened in a wince as they had the night before. “Yes.” She took a breath of her own. “It makes it harder,” she said after a pause, “but we were prepared for the possibility that we might have to flee London anyway, depending how the test goes tonight. It’s simply more likely now.”

Elizabeth found that she was twisting her newspaper cone also, digging her fingers into it so fiercely her knuckles were white. She unclenched them, trying to think what else she should ask. “Where did the constructs come from?”

Katarina sighed, and looked off into the distance. “They were created with a good purpose, that’s the hell—the worst of it. They
were
created to protect us from the monsters. They
did
protect us. Mr. Ellis wasn’t exaggerating; I remember when the monsters terrorized the countryside to the west. I remember when the constructs came to us from London. We thought—They seemed like angels come to deliver us from harm. They
did
deliver us from harm. It was only later that other uses were found for them.” She smiled wryly. “It is as if we bred Bengal tigers to exterminate...well, not rats. Wolves, perhaps. Now the wolves are gone, and we are still riding the tigers.”

“And what of the wolves? The monsters, I mean. Where did they come from?”

“A brilliant young student, a Genevese. A hundred years ago, he set himself to discover a means by which dead flesh could be brought to life.”

Elizabeth’s skin prickled. “He raised a man from the dead?”

“Worse,” Katarina said. “He acquired freshly deceased body parts and stitched them together, making one monster out of many men. Then he infused that creature with life.”

Elizabeth swallowed, thinking of the stitches and the clothes that had reminded her of burial garments.

“Later, he brought the creature to England. He made himself a laboratory on the smallest island off the Orkneys—an isolated place, far away from everything—as far north as one can get and still be on British soil. There he created a female creature, to be the wife and the companion of his monster. And they...were fruitful, and multiplied, and their offspring became a terror to the Scottish Highlands. They broke into homes, took food...committed outrages upon women...killed any who tried to thwart them. The King sent soldiers. The soldiers did not eradicate the problem, but they did succeed in scaring the monsters farther north, out of civilized areas, and they brought one monster back as a captive.

“This was in 1800. The Genevese was dead by then, but some of his notes had been entrusted to a collaborator in London and were found. With the living creature and the notes, naturalists working for the Royal Academy of Sciences learned to do what the Genevese had done. To create full-grown creatures in the likeness of the first. They created a great many, and when England feared Napoleon’s invasion—”

“Katherine!”

The shout came from behind them—a woman’s voice, choked. Katarina spun around, hand dropping to her hip pocket. As soon as she saw the woman running toward them from the cross-street, she relaxed. “Annie! What in the world—”

The woman was older than Katarina, face lined and fair hair going gray. She wore a skirt and blouse and cap, dingy but modest, and on her face was an expression that made Katarina go very still. Elizabeth could almost feel the air shift as the gypsy woman drew into herself. “What’s happened?” Katarina asked quietly.

“Meg,” Annie croaked, coughing, stumbling to a halt. “It’s Meg. I was just coming to the warehouse to look for you—”

Katarina’s voice was still quiet and steady. “What’s happened to Meg?”

“That woman,” Annie said. “That old bitch of a—” She took a desperate wheezing breath, and Katarina put a hand on her arm, to steady her or comfort her or both. “I was gone because I was
working
. She knew that. She knew. I was behind on the rent, but I’d gotten work, I’d gotten—” Another gulping breath. “—a chance to work on some wedding clothes wanted in a great rush. I’ve been at the milliner’s warehouse these three days. They didn’t
let
us leave, you know how it is, Katherine, you know.” Katarina nodded, thumb smoothing the woman’s threadbare sleeve, everything else about her motionless and held ready. “She knew it, too, old Martha Hewitt. I was working, and Meg was fine alone a day or two, and I
have
the money, I’ve come back with the—” She started to sob again.

Elizabeth saw Katarina’s hand tighten into a fist, saw Katarina carefully unclench it and return it to the job of stroking the sleeve. “What’s Martha Hewitt done, Annie? Where’s Meg?”

“Murchinson’s,” Annie choked through her tears. “Martha sold her.”

Katarina shut her eyes for a moment.

“—because I’d left her—I
didn’t
, Katherine, I
wouldn’t
, not like that—”

“Of course you didn’t,” Katarina murmured to her. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

“I have rent money now, but what good—” Annie choked back a sob.

“How long ago?” Katarina asked her. “You were only gone three days, is that what you said? Meg can’t have been at Murchinson’s very long.”

 “This morning,” Annie said. “Half a day—not long at all. That’s why I was coming to look for you. That man you go about with sometimes—the white-haired gent. I thought maybe he could go, maybe they’d listen to him if he said—”

“Yes.” Katarina looked up and down the street, brows drawn in thought. “I’ll ask him. He’ll go, I’m sure he will. If he gets there before sundown, it will be easy for them to believe it was a mistake or a malicious joke, and likely they’d just as soon have the money for her anyhow, so—”

“Here.” Annie started fumbling in her pockets. “Take it.”

“No, no, there won’t be any need of that. He has money. You’ll need it to find better rooms for you and Meg when we’ve got her safe back to you.”

“But just in case,” Annie said. “I don’t want him to think I can’t— Because I
can
take care of her, don’t you see? I don’t want him to think any different. Take it. Take some of it, at least—”

“All right,” Katarina soothed her. “All right. I’ll take...half, how’s that? We’ll only use it if we need to, and we’ll give you back anything we don’t need. I’ll go and find Max right now.” She turned and scanned the buildings looming over them. “I oughtn’t take you back to the warehouse with me, though. It’s...not a good day for it. Are any of your neighbors more human than that old crone? Can you stay with one of them?”

Annie’s lips trembled. “Not one of them stopped her.”

“Then to hell with them.” Katarina took her by the arm again and turned her gently about. “I’ll take you to a place where I have friends.”

“Don’t worry about me. Just go and—”

“I shall.” Katarina was guiding the woman back the way they had come. With a jerk of her chin, she gestured for Elizabeth to follow. “The place I’m thinking of is barely a step out of my way. I’m losing no time taking you there, and I need to know you’re somewhere safe, you and that money you need to care for your daughter.”

The place Katarina had in mind proved to be the first courtyard in which they had stopped that morning. So they were very close indeed to Trevelyan’s warehouse, though Elizabeth still could not have found it on her own. Katarina instructed her to wait in the courtyard while she took Annie into one of the domiciles—the one belonging to the Thompsons, Elizabeth thought; Mrs. Thompson must be home from her work. Katarina reappeared five minutes later, without Annie and without any gentleness at all on her face.

“Come. Hurry.” She led the way at a rapid walk in the direction Elizabeth could only assume was Trevelyan’s warehouse. Once out of the courtyard, her face grew even grimmer. “I’d kill that old bizzom, except it wouldn’t do anyone any good now.”

 “She...” Elizabeth swallowed. “She...sold a child?”

“Miss Elizabeth,” Katarina said, “that happens in your time too. Families with too many mouths to feed sell their extra children to chimney sweeps. Or to whorehouses. Or to other places where the children may starve more slowly than they would at home. This is nothing
new.
Murchinson and Sons have merely...formalized the arrangement.”

Elizabeth didn’t say anything. After a moment, Katarina sighed between her teeth and seemed to make an effort to reign in her temper. “I’m sorry. It’s only that I know some people who grew up there—members of Seward’s conspiracy, as it happens. Few of Murchinson’s children live to adulthood, and those who do are...marked by it. The place is worse than the workhouses, as there’s no one even pretending to keep watch over what goes on behind its walls.”