Lady of Devices (11 page)

As it turned out, Snouts possessed the greatest aptitude, not for numbers, but for bluffing. “It is that talent that will allow you to win,” Claire assured him. “Such a skill cannot be taught. In the meantime, let us count these diamonds once more—if you have three on this card and four on this one, how many do you have in total?”

Tigg and Jake had at one time in their dark pasts received some schooling, so addition and subtraction came back fairly quickly. The Mopsies, however, treated the concept of multiplication with dark suspicion. To them, it was simply not possible to arrive at a single answer in a multitude of ways. One added three to three to get six, one did not simply say, “twice three” and arrive at six. Since there were only four suits, Claire could only advance to the four times table in any case. Everything after that would have to be memorized … another day.

Without slates, chalk, or books, they were limited to what the cards could teach them, and as the day tilted into afternoon, she and Snouts needed the deck themselves. They played hand after hand of poker until Tigg nudged her.

“We can’t do this much longer, lady. Everyone’ll be stumblin’ off ’ome soon to get a bit of shut-eye before tonight’s games.”

“We want to play when they’re tired and foxed.” Snouts gathered up the cards and tapped them into a neat deck. “Only one problem I can see.”

“What would that be?” Claire lifted the stove lid so he could put the cards back in their place. “You have all done very well today. Even Jake can play a respectable hand, though I would not bet the deed to an estate on it.”

“That’s just it,” Snouts said. “What ’ave we got to bet wiv besides great lots of nuffink?”

Claire sat rather suddenly on the broken stool she had been using. “Oh. I had not got that far in my strategy.” She regarded him while her mind raced and anxiety puddled in her stomach. How could she not have thought of this? The whole point of gambling was to win, but one had to have a stake in order to be included in the game.

She did not even have a toothpick.

But wait—

Her gaze narrowed on Snouts. “We do have something to throw in the pot,” she said. “Where is my exchange for teaching you your numbers? Where is my great-grandmother’s ring?”

“You get yer stuff back when you teach us about chemicals and suchlike useful items.” Jake tilted his chair back, severely endangering its bodily integrity. “Not arithmetic.”

“Shut up, Jake.” Snouts reached under the muffler wound about his neck and rummaged in his shirt. “This it?”

Her great-grandmother’s Georgian emerald winked in his palm. Claire restrained herself from snatching it by sitting on her hands. She would not say she had gained their trust, but at least she was making every effort she could to help them in their uneasy truce. However, it seemed she would have to make this ultimate sacrifice in order to attain the greater goal.

“Yes, that’s it.” With a breath, she committed herself. “We will use it for our stake. I implore you to use your skills to the utmost, Mr. McTavish. I should very much like to see it come back again.”

“I ent goin’ into this wiv the intent to lose it, if that’s wot you mean.” He tucked the ring away.

“I still say we pawn the thing,” Jake put in. “Stupid to risk it when we could get ten pound easy over t’ Seven Dials.”

“We ent goin’ to pawn the lady’s ring if we have a chance of winnin’ the pot,” Tigg told him.

“What chance? Snouts ent no strategy man. You’ve got me for that.”

“But you cannot recognize the numbers on the cards fast enough,” Claire reminded him. “Snouts is our best chance.”

“I c’n tot them up pretty quick,” one of the Mopsies said with pride. “Faster’n you, Jake.”

In answer, he swatted her with the back of his bandaged hand. In the resulting uproar, Snouts grabbed him and pushed him out into the front room. “I’ve ’ad about enough of you!” he shouted. “Go do summat useful and don’t lemme see you back ’ere afore dark.” Jake’s broken boots pounded furiously on the street, disappearing into the hubbub dockside. “Stupid cove.” Snouts went to the back door and looked out, though there was nothing there but tangled weeds and broken rocks, and the river wall six feet away.

Claire opened Rosie’s cage and took her out, sliding one hand under her feet and passing her arm about her so she would not fall off. Rosie settled onto her hand, and Claire felt her feet relax.

Ah. She had gained the hen’s trust. Now she would not run away to become food for who knew what kind of four- or two-legged predator. She deposited the bird gently on the ground outside, where Rosie immediately began divesting the property of its insect life.

“She’ll run off,” Jake said.

“She will not. We have fed her, you see, and provided a hunting ground. She has no reason to run. Mr. McTavish, would you have pawned the ring this morning if we had not decided to use it?”

“Aye.”

“Thank you for not doing so. At least this way we have a chance of getting it back.”

“Means summat to ya, does it?”

“It was my great-grandmother’s. The emerald came from the crown of an Indian prince. Or so family legend has it, at least. I should hate to lose something that has come so far and been with us so long.”

Rosie pounced on a beetle with energy.

“I’ll do me best,” Jake said, his voice gruff as he watched the bird. “Ent often a lady trusts me with ’er family hairlooms.”

Claire smiled at him. “Good luck, Mr. McTavish. You’d best be off now.”

“What’ll you do?”

“I shall run the Mopsies through their four times tables once again, and then I must find a way to let my friends know I have not been kidnapped or pushed in the river.”

“You won’t tell ’em of us? Or cut an’ run?”

“Of course not. We have an agreement, and it is not yet fulfilled. I shall be here when you return triumphant, you may depend upon it.”

She had gained Rosie’s trust with a cob of corn and some bread. It would take a prince’s emerald to gain the trust of Snouts McTavish and his gang. But it was a price she was willing to pay if it meant getting her life back again. What shape that life would take was a mystery at the moment. But surely the good Lord could not expect her to waste the talents He had given her by going meekly down to Cornwall to become the wife of some husky lad whose idea of literature was the local cattle prices.

“I’m ’ungry,” one of the Mopsies announced. “We’ll be back.”

And before Claire could grab them and remind them that stealing was a crime, she and Tigg had vanished out the front. The remaining Mopsie sat upon the river wall and glared from her to Rosie in a way that told Claire exactly where her suspicions lay.

“I meant what I said, you know,” Claire informed the child. “No harm shall come to Rosie whilst she is in my care. She has given me her trust, so she will not run away. Nor do you need to stand guard over her.”

The child blinked at her. “Wot’s ’at?”

“Say, ‘I beg your pardon’.”

“I beg yer pardon, wot’s ’at?”

Claire sighed. “Once a bird gives you her trust, she regards you as a member of her flock. If I were you, I should endeavor to gain Rosie’s trust as well. One cannot have too many members in one’s flock.”

“I brought ’er a corn even when Jake would’ve et it.”

“Next time you shall give it to her from your own hand, so that she realizes you are also worthy of her trust.”

The child eyed her. “Yer a strange mort.”

“Why should you say that?”

“Most people just eat chickens and don’t care wot they fink.”

“Yes, well, no one is eating Rosie. She has a duty to perform and we shall enable her to do it. Just as you do. What is twice three?”

“I dunno.”

“Yes, you do. If I have three cobs of corn and you have three cobs, how many do we have to give to Rosie altogether?”

The wheels ground into motion. “Six. But she’d be sick for sure if she et ’em all at oncet.”

“She would indeed. However, if she ate only one, how many would be left?”

“Five.”

“One for each day of the week. A very satisfactory arrangement for Rosie, I should say, wouldn’t you?”

“If Snouts wins ’at poker game, we could ’ave ’em.”

“Let us hope he does, then. Would you do me the honor of telling me your name?”

The child gazed at her sideways while she studied Rosie, who had found a patch of bare dirt and was busy digging a dust bath. “I’m a Mopsie.”

“But you must have a Christian name.”

“I dunno.”

“You don’t know your name?” Here was a sad situation. Chickens were worthy of names but little girls with sticky fingers were not?

“I gots a name, I just dunno as I should tell you. Snouts said not if the coppers was to ask.”

“I am not a copper. And if we are to be members of Rosie’s flock, it is only fitting that we address each other correctly.”

She mulled this over. “I’m Maggie. Short for Margaret, but ’at takes too long to say.”

Claire leaned over and offered her hand, and bemused, Maggie shook it. “A pleasure, Miss Maggie. And your sister?”

“She’s Lizzie. Elizabeth.”

With a smile, Claire said, “My middle name is Elizabeth. I was named for my grandmother, who was reckoned a great beauty in her day. My mother, as you see, was an optimist.”

“Lizzie’s a beauty,” Maggie said defensively, as if her sister was not to be outdone by any other Elizabeth in the country, alive or not.

“She is indeed. She has very striking blue eyes. I hope she has forgiven me for spanking her last night.”

“Nope.”

“She did kick me first, and may I say, it was completely unwarranted. I hope her heart may soften toward me in time, if we are to be flock mates as well.”

Maggie fell silent, watching Rosie fling dirt over herself with great abandon. Then she said, “Why’s she making ’erself all dirty?”

“She is having a bath. The dirt suffocates any bugs and leaves her feeling shiny and clean when she shakes it out.”

“’Ow’s a fine lady like you know so much about hens, then?”

“Polgarth the poultryman taught me when I was as old as you. He was wise in the ways of birds. We have the finest flock in the parish, and every bird in it trusts him with her life.”

“They’re flock mates, then.”

“They are indeed.”

Maggie glanced at her. “Jake don’t trust you. Ent he a flock mate?”

Claire hesitated. “In some cases it takes time. And I don’t think offering a corn cob to him is going to do the trick.”

To her surprise, Maggie smiled widely, dimples winking in her dirty cheeks. “’E likes corn. Try it.”

Claire smiled too, more at the unexpected companionship in the child’s gap-toothed grin than at the image of Jake taking anything from her otherwise than by force or stealth. “I think the price of his trust is substantially higher than corn. I’d have to offer him my pearl necklace at the least.”

“’Ere, then.” Maggie reached under her combinations and pulled out the double strand of St. Ives pearls. Claire stared at them, pale against the girl’s grubby hand.

“Take ’em.” Maggie tossed them over, and Claire caught them more by reflex than aim.

“I don’t understand. I haven’t shown you any chemical formulas yet.”

“Jake’d just take ’em in the night and pawn ’em if he knew I had ’em. That’s why Snouts didn’t tell ’im. But we’re flock mates, and Jake’s afraid of you.”

Claire hardly knew which astonishing fact to address first. “Tha—thank you, Maggie. It’s very … commendable of you to return them unasked.” She fastened them round her neck and pushed them beneath the collar of her blouse. “Jake does not strike me as being afraid of anyone.”

“’E’s afraid of you. He talks a hard streak, but I know. Otherwise he’d’ve knifed you straight out.”

“Would he?” Claire sat down rather suddenly on the filthy back step. “I must consider myself fortunate, then.” Perhaps it would be best to change the subject. “I must go and send a tube,” she said. “Mr. McTavish will not be back for some time yet. Would you like to come with me?”

Maggie shook her head. “Rosie and me will stay behind.” Rosie shook out her feathers in a cloud of dust and stalked over to recline upon the ground next to Claire’s dusty kid half-boots.

“You might take the opportunity to clean her cage and find some fresh bedding, then,” Claire suggested. “Since she has performed her ablutions, she may wish to lay an egg.”

At the prospect of the imminent arrival of food, Maggie hopped off the wall and went to get the cage. Upon the ground, Rosie blinked in slow contentment. One creature, at least, was perfectly happy in this moment. Claire went in and put on her hat and blue merino jacket, wished fruitlessly for a mirror, and set off.

She had never realized with such painful clarity how much she had taken even a shilling for granted. Without such a simple thing, she could not in good conscience take the Underground again to Victoria Station. She could not pay to have a tube sent from the Post Office, so she was forced to consider returning home. But Belgravia was a long walk from the docks.