Lady of Devices (8 page)

Something dug mercilessly into her ribs. With a groan, Claire cracked open her left eye, and then her right. Her head spun with dizziness and confusion, but she had not been rendered unconscious. At least, she didn’t think so. Under her cheek, dirt grated between her skin and the hard cobblestones, stinking of soot, alcohol, and ancient urine. Revolted, she lifted her head.

Something poked her in the ribs again. Blindly, she whipped her arm backward, connecting with empty air. “God help me.” It seemed to take an eternity to pull her knees under her, and even longer to get her hands on either side of them.

Her gloves were gone. Bare skin scraped the stones.

She raised her head. The landau. Her trunk. All her worldly goods. Memory rushed in—the shouting, the ridicule, being hit. Falling.

The landau.

The street stood empty, the lamps outside the Aldgate station shining steadily, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Something glinted on the cobbles, and she bent to pick it up, groaning again as the blood rushed to her head.

One of her tortoiseshell hair combs. A tine had snapped off, leaving a gap like the smile of a child without a front tooth. Absently, she reached up and slid it into her chignon. So they had found her traveling case. It seemed too much to hope that they would miss the false bottom in it—at any rate, it had disappeared into the night with them and she was unlikely to see her pearls or her great-grandmother’s emerald ring again. At least they had not stolen the very pins from her hair, or the clothes off her body. Her coat, however, with its lovely twining soutache trim, was gone.

The landau. Oh woe. The landau. Tears welled into her eyes as she surveyed the empty, silent street, and scalded a hot track down one cheek.

Something poked the back of her knee.

“Get away!” She whirled, expecting to see a dog nosing at her to see if she was edible, and found instead a child. “Good heavens. Who are you?”

Dressed in a ragged homespun jacket and pants, and a shirt with a fraying band and no collar, the waif turned huge dark eyes on her and pointed into the mouth of an alley across the street. He took a handful of her blue merino skirt—streaked now with something she didn’t want to investigate closely—and tugged.

“Oh no, my dear. I know your tricks. If you’re hiding another band of miscreants in there, they’ll not have me to work over again.”

Brave words to a scrap who couldn’t be above four years of age. She was as weak as a day-old chick and wouldn’t even be able to fight off this child if he decided to do more than poke her.

He shook his head and tugged again on her skirt.

“I’m not going with you, poppet. I must find a bobby and report Mr. Snouts and his friends to the authorities at once.”

The ragged head, which might have sported curls if it had been brushed, shook more vigorously. He tightened his grip on her skirt and began to tow her across the street, toward the alley.

“Stop, little man. I’m not going in there. I need to find a policeman. Do you understand? Do you speak English?” He nodded, then made a buttoning motion over his lips, still tugging her toward the alley. “You’re not permitted to speak?”

Another nod. He frowned when her stumbling steps stopped, then seemed to get an idea. He dug in one pocket and pulled out her other comb, all its tines intact. After handing it to her, he pointed again at the alley.

Comprehension dawned as she rammed the comb into the other side of her chignon. “They’ve gone this way? The ruffians who stole my landau and my trunk?” His gap-toothed smile lit up his face in the dim glow from the station lamps across the road. “Aha. Then lead on, little man. It would be useful for the bobbies to have a destination for their investigations once I locate it.”

Again the vigorous shake of the head, but he set off at a trot, pulling her by the skirt as though she were a horse on a leading rein. Claire followed him down the empty alley, dodging crates and kegs and even a sleeping human form, its legs sticking out from behind a rubbish bin. The alley doglegged past the door of a tavern, where they both picked up their pace, and disgorged them into a street lined with warehouses of all shapes, piggybacked onto one another and leaving barely enough room to squeeze between. Beyond their ramshackle outlines, she could hear the suck and pull of the Thames as it gurgled against dock and piling.

Squeezed between two warehouses she saw a squat building that might have been a house once, or maybe a customs shed. Even with the moonlight, it was difficult to tell. Its roof raked upward at a steep angle, and it was so narrow a person could stand on one side, toss a stone, and hit the other. The ragged child tugged her skirt as if to moor her to the spot, and pointed.

“They’re here? This is where they’ve taken my things? What is it, some kind of robbers’ hideout?” The boy frowned. Too many questions. She tried again. “They’ve brought my things here?” He nodded. “Are they friends of yours?” He nodded again.

Here was a puzzle. She squatted next to him in the shadow of the neighboring warehouse. “But my little man, if they’re friends of yours, why have you showed me? I’ve said I’ll bring the bobbies down on them. Is it because they’ve hurt you?”

He shook his head so vigorously his matted hair swung straight out above his ears. He took her hand and pointed to the ramshackle place, smiling in a way that she could only interpret as encouraging.

“You want me to go in there?” Big nod. “By myself?” He thrust out his chest and planted his feet as though he were a captain surveying the quarterdeck. “Well yes, I know you’re with me, but you probably couldn’t stop them coshing me on the head a second time the moment they caught sight of me. All I want is to get my things back. Do you know where they might have put the landau?”

Confusion wrote itself all over the smooth but filthy features.

“Never mind. I shall find it.” She rose, the muscles on her right side—the ones that had unceremoniously met the street as she was pulled from the landau—aching with the effort. “And since I haven’t seen a member of Sir Robert Peel’s policing force in the last hour, I must conclude I’m on my own.”

Claire surveyed the building, which leaned against the warehouse next door like a drunk against his best friend. Rage bubbled just beneath her breastbone. How dared they take the clothes literally off her back? How dared anyone treat her like this? It wasn’t enough that a mob had invaded her home and caused her to run for her very life. It wasn’t enough that her father had made the poor decisions that had opened her up to this. But this scum—these ruffians—had taken everything she had in the world, everything that would have made it possible for her to make her own way. Without respectable clothes and the landau, she could not convince anyone she was worthy of employment, much less gently bred.

These wretches had stolen her future from her, and by all she held holy, she would not tolerate it. She was finished with apologizing and hiding and running away. It was time to stand up and impose her will on someone else for once in her life.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” she told the youngster still standing beside her, waiting for her to go skipping into that house to have tea and crumpets with his criminal friends. “And if you would be so kind as to make inquiries as to the whereabouts of my landau and meet me out here, I promise I will not involve you in what I’m about to do.”

The child’s eyes widened and he released her skirt as if it burned him.

She marched down the street, picked up her skirts, and took to her heels in the alley. The last trains ran at eleven o’clock. If she was lucky, she could steal a ride on one and get to the laboratory at St. Cecelia’s and back before an Underground conductor caught her without a ticket.

No one occupied the Underground train carriage but two middle-aged charwomen more interested in their own gossip than in what a young lady was doing unaccompanied on a train in the middle of the night. Claire sidled off at Victoria Station, ticketless but unaccosted, and took a shortcut through Eaton Square to the back gate of St. Cecelia’s. The administration fondly thought that their property was secure, but the students knew better.

Claire found the foot- and handholds worn into the wall behind the glossy curtain of ivy and clambered up and over in moments. From there it was a quick dash across the lawn and down the basement steps, where skillful application of a hairpin to the lock made the way plain.

The stairs were as dark as criminal activity required them to be, though Claire kept a firm hold on the rail. The last thing she needed was to miss her footing and tumble to the bottom.

Ah. The Chemistry of the Home laboratory.

She found the jar of lucifers Professor Grünwald kept next to his blotter for the purpose of lighting a forbidden cigar during the lunch hour, and by their light set to work. It took a few moments to dredge up the recipe from the recesses of memory—blast the thieves for taking her notebook!—but within a quarter hour she had four vials stoppered and ready to go. Some day, when she was famous and once again rich, she would make an anonymous donation to the school’s pitiful science department and make restitution for what she had removed. But for the moment, necessity was most certainly the mother of invention, and on that principle alone even Professor Gr
ü
nwald might approve.

After bundling her treasure in a used cardigan and then into a leather book satchel, both abandoned in the Lost and Found, she strapped the satchel to her back and retraced her steps. Half an hour later, she stepped out of the alley mouth opposite the rake-roofed home of the rascals who had stolen her things.

No small boy waited for her. Her lips thinned. Well, if he had not taken her seriously before, he most certainly would now.

Keeping to the shadows, she hurried around the corner of a half-timbered warehouse that might have seen active commerce in King Henry’s time and removed the vials from her satchel. Their noxious contents gurgled in her hands once she’d refastened the satchel on her back. Since it and the cardigan were her only possessions, she was loath to leave them lying on the street—and the satchel had the advantage of providing storage while allowing her hands free movement.

Thank goodness she’d put on this navy merino suit this morning. The fog breathing off the river was damp and chill, and droplets were already condensing in her hair. The dark color also allowed her to blend into the shadows as she crept from corner to corner of the building. A rat’s entry chewed into a board welcomed the first vial. She smashed it into the floorboards. “That’s for my notebook, you miserable wretches.” A board missing altogether was a fine entry point for the second. “And that’s for my pearl necklace.” At the third corner, she could find no way in except for a window, so she tossed it through and heard the satisfying tinkle of glass. “My coat, thank you very much.” She ran for the front entry as the first noxious tendrils of smokelike gas began to curl out from between the boards.

She wrenched open the front door. “And this—” She threw it with all her might. “—is for my landau!”

Someone yelled as the gas did its work, and then pandemonium broke loose. Claire retreated, smiling in satisfaction, as half a dozen figures staggered out in various stages of undress—or not—good heavens—that creature was wearing her coat! Claire flew across the street and tore it off a very short individual who was trailing its lovely panels in the dirt. He—or she, it was difficult to tell—spun in place, both hands mashed to his eyes as he shrieked in pain. Shrugging on her coat, Claire felt as Queen Elizabeth must have at seeing the first of the fire ships succeed so brilliantly against the Spanish armada. It was almost enough to make a person dance a hornpipe.

But she restrained herself, for there in front of her was one of her pretty embroidered waists, being used as a nightdress over a pair of ragged combinations! She dashed over, grasped the hem of it, and pulled it over the filthy girl’s head. Weeping with pain, the child turned to her, instinctively seeking to be comforted, but she hardened her heart and stepped away. Finally, the spindly person with the enormous nose staggered out, his face contorted in misery, carrying the waif who had directed her here. The latter’s unhappiness was acute, from the sound of the roars emanating from under the coat covering the lad’s head.

“Ever’one all right?” Snouts croaked, eyes screwed shut in pain. “Mopsies?”

Two cries answered him. One was the girl Claire had relieved of her waist. An identical copy wrapped itself around the first, and they both burst into fresh tears.

“Jake?”

“I’m gonna die, Snouts. Jus’ kill me now, eh?”

Ah. Jake, the unfortunate burn victim. His difficulties were only increasing the longer he retained Claire’s acquaintance.

“Tigg?”

“’Ere, to my misfortune,” wailed the boy who had been wearing Claire’s coat.

“’Oo’s got Weepin’ Willie?” came another voice, belonging to a boy of about twelve who cowered in the gutter, his ragged jacket over his head.

“I gots ’im,” Snouts reported. “Can’t you ’ear the racket?”

“What happened? Who’s set upon us?”

Claire stepped out of the shadows, even though none of them could see yet. “I have.”

Silence fell, broken only by the sobbing of Weepin’ Willie and the Mopsies.

“’Oo’s that, then?” Snouts tried to crack his eyes open, which only resulted in more agony as the condensed gas on his face dribbled into them. “Wot we done to you?”

“You have attacked me, stolen my possessions, and taken my landau,” Claire snapped, her voice ringing into the night. “You will return every piece of my property at once or I’ll give you a second dose.” There were not enough chemicals in the satchel to make good on it, but she would bet not one tortured individual lying in the street was about to take the risk.

“’Oo are you?” Snouts set the wriggling Willie on his feet and sat abruptly in the gutter, still blinded.

“Never mind who I am. But what I am not is some puling victim willing to be cowed and beaten by the likes of you. I demand the return of my property immediately.”

The waif—Willie—ran across the road, bawling, and flung himself against her knees. Nonplussed, she stared down at him for a moment, then sighed. “All right. All right then, little man, let me wipe the capsaicin out of your eyes.” She knelt, found her handkerchief still in her sleeve, and wiped his face. He wrapped his arms around her neck and sobbed. “Poor darling, why did you not wait for me? I didn’t mean for you to be gassed as well.”

“’Ow does she know our Willie?” Tigg’s voice was muffled from trying to grind his eye sockets into his knees. “She ent gonna hurt ’im any more, is she?”

Claire raised her chin. “Unlike some in present company, I have no intention of hurting anyone. I simply want my things when you are sufficiently recovered to gather them up.”

“’Ow long will that be?” Snouts attempted to open his eyes again, and whimpered behind clenched teeth.

“About thirty minutes, I should say.” Then she had an idea. “Willie, would you be so kind as to direct me within? I’m quite capable of repacking my trunk myself.”

“You leave our Willie alone.” The two Mopsies faced her, using their ragged garments to wipe the tears streaming from their eyes. One of them hauled back and kicked Claire in the shin.

“You wretched little monster!”

Claire dropped Willie on the cobbles and caught the girl by the back of her combies as she spun to escape. It was the work of a moment to turn her over her knee and remind her of Newton’s law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

“Snouts!” the miscreant screamed, wriggling out of Claire’s grip and running for her life. “She whacked me!”

“There’s a surprise,” he mumbled.

“Shoot her!”

“Wiv what? You fink I’ve got a pistol in me undershorts?”

“But she whacked me!”

“You won’t be kicking her again, then, will ya?”

Fuming, the child stamped her foot and shot Claire an evil look, compounded by swollen eyes and a dirty, tear-streaked face. “You’ll be sorry, lady.”

“I’m afraid you’ll be the sorry one if you try to assault me again,” Claire informed her. “Honestly, I’ve never seen such a badly brought-up child, and that’s saying something, considering the past several days.”

“I ent been brought up, and you’re just mean.” The moppet stamped again.

“Don’t stamp. It isn’t ladylike.”

Stamp.
Stamp
.

Claire dodged behind Snouts’s balled-up form and snatched the disgusting creature by the back of her combies a second time. Again the laws of physics were soundly applied, to the accompaniment of such screeching Claire fully expected either bobbies or criminals to descend on them all like the wrath of God.

She set the child on its feet and silently dared it to stamp again. Its leg twitched once before discretion became the better part. “A wise decision,” she told it. “I’m encouraged to see that you have some capacity for education.”

The moppet blinked and ran away to its sister, who put her arms around it and administered what comfort she could to wounded pride and hinder parts.

Claire straightened her spine and surveyed the field of battle. Satisfied that no one had the spirit or the physical capacity to challenge her victory, she held out her hand to Willie. “Would you be so kind as to escort me inside, Master Willie?”

The boy shot an uncertain glance at Snouts.

The latter had at last managed to open one eye just a crack. He waved a defeated hand. “Don’t look at me. I ent gonna argue wiv ’er.”