The Clockwork Nightingale's Song
Amy Rae Durreson
Copyright 2019 Amy Rae Durreson
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Table of Contents
The Clockwork Nightingale's Song
About the Author
Other Works by Amy Rae Durreson
NIGHTINGALE NO. 48 had stopped singing.
Its brass head should have been raised, not hanging low, and its jewelled wings were meant to whir. Instead, it stood atop its marble pillar (not real marble, of course, any more than the paste jewels were real, but wood painted well enough to fool the eye by gaslight) in the most secluded glade of the Vauxhall Flying Gardens. None of the thousands of visitors who flocked to the pleasure gardens every night had yet stumbled across it. Give it an hour, Shem thought dourly, once the ladies of the ton went home and the strumpets came out to play, and this would be a far more popular spot.
Better do something before then. This was the third time this month Shem had needed to repair this nightingale. Time for it to be taken apart for a proper look at its clockwork innards.
“What should we do, Mr. Holloway?” the boy asked.
“Put a cage over the top until morning,” Shem said. “Stop the guests from interfering with it. Young gentlemen don’t have much respect for property.”
“The gentlemen, Mr. Holloway?” the boy protested, his eyes going wide. “But they’re brought up proper.”
“Properly,” Shem corrected sharply. No apprentice under his charge was going to wander around the Gardens with a gutter accent. “Higher they’re born, further they fall with a drink in them. You steer clear of gentlemen, boy.”
“Yes, Mr. Holloway,” the boy said, but he still looked puzzled.
Shem sighed. He liked to take new apprentices with him on the late shift until he was convinced they’d learned some common sense (at which point it was safe to assume they were staying, and he would deign to learn their names). This one had him worried. He was hardworking, no doubt, and the masters at the training orphanage had been right when they said he was bright. Unfortunately, he was too eager to please, and pretty besides, all coltish limbs, pink lips, and slim hips.
It wasn’t just the mechanical devices the young gentlemen liked to interfere with. Some of them had a taste for mechanics. Shem kept a fatherly eye on his apprentices, for all they were only ten years younger than him. It was going to be a job to keep this one safe from wandering hands.
Shem unlocked the gate that connected the concealed path to the grove. It took an army of mechanics, gardeners, and servants to keep the Gardens running efficiently, and keeping everyone hidden maintained the illusion of magic.
“Always lock these gates behind you,” Shem instructed the boy, who nodded earnestly. It was bad enough the whores of London plied their trade in the quiet groves and dark walks. Give them access to the secret paths, and the place would be a brothel within a week and shut down within two, putting all the staff out of work. Shem had grown up poor; he had no desire to be jobless.
The cage clicked into place over the silent nightingale, and Shem showed the boy how to lock it shut. He’d come back for it once the Gardens closed, but for now the nightingale was safe.
He and the boy continued on their rounds as the Gardens grew rowdier around them. Dining was over, and the supper boxes in the central grove were overspilling, lewd and drunken chatter drowning out the wheezy music of the steam orchestra. Some young blood, likely straight down from one of the better universities, had managed to get a foothold on Atlas’s brass globe, and was being hoisted toward the smoggy heavens as his friends cheered. Neptune’s water fountain had got clogged and was spewing bubbles sideways, an urgent repair that made Shem glad to have an apprentice to send wading into the foam to clear the pump.
He paused at the end of the Grand Walk as the horns mounted in the trees suddenly blew in perfect synchrony. Nudging the boy round, Shem watched his amazed face as the fireworks began. Vauxhall was unique, and he loved knowing the whole of London looked up at them every night, watching the lights blazing in the garden in the sky.
Only once did they encounter trouble, when a ruddy-cheeked gentleman came stumbling toward them, winking at the boy. Luckily, all Shem needed to do was tap his wrench meaningfully against his thigh, and the hopeful lecher hurriedly found business elsewhere. Even when he’d been a piston boy, running coal through the tunnels below the Gardens to feed the great burners that kept them afloat, Shem had never been waifish. These days his shoulders were too wide for the tunnels, and he carried the muscle to match them. Being a senior mechanic was no light duty. Only a brave man would risk his ire.
When the trumpets sounded for closing, long after midnight, he sent the yawning boy back through the hidden paths to wait in the staff canteen until the Gardens returned to earth. Shem himself retraced his steps toward Nightingale No. 48, the Gardens going quiet around him. He could now hear the distant clang of the last airship undocking from the quay, the wind sighing softly through the treetops, and the night birds, ones that weren’t formed of gears and metal.
The ground surged beneath his feet as the first heated air was released from the floats, and the Gardens began to slide steadily back toward the earth, guided into place by chains and pulleys. A waft of steam floated across the stars, scenting the night with ash and hot metal.
As he stepped into the grove, a real nightingale began to sing, its voice rising in loose, breathy notes. And inside its cage, for the first time that night, the brass nightingale lifted its head with a soft whir and began to sing in reply, its mechanical melody just as yearning.
That afternoon, Shem took apart the nightingale, unscrewing its chest panel to expose the mechanisms. He’d replaced its spring twice already, so he could discount that. He checked for worn, strained parts and joints in need of oiling. There was nothing obvious wrong.
The bird had sung, just not at the appointed hour. Perhaps there was a problem with its circuitry. Shem was a cog and piston man, not a circuit expert, but he knew how to replace a faulty chip. Ignoring the dull sheen of the nightingale’s glass eyes, he opened up its head. He checked that the circuits were secure, and no wires burned out, and then looked more closely.
He’d had No. 24 open last week, to replace a scratchy music roll, and this one didn’t look the same. It had the usual miniature pianola rolls to dictate its melody, but this one seemed to have an extra circuitry chip: one to control movements, one that switched between tunes, and a third, unfamiliar chip, connected to all the rest with thin filaments.
Time to consult the manual.
The nightingales were not very complex mechanisms, and their book was little used. Shem had to blow off cobwebs (he’d have to talk to the matron about whichever of the orphanage girls was supposed to be cleaning in here, because a well-ordered workshop should be clean even in the corners). To his surprise, each of the fifty nightingales had a separate listing in the book. Nine of them, including No. 48, had a symbol inked across the top of the page: a simple figure of an angel standing on a wrench. Some later hand, in red ink, had added small horns and a forked tail to the figure.
Shem wasn’t going to guess at what that meant. Instead, he tossed a dust cloth over the nightingale and took the manual to the man who might know.
Nathaniel Dawkins had been a senior mechanic back when the Flying Gardens were merely the Mechanical Gardens. These days, Dawkins was one of two Chief Mechanics. His office, unlike Shem’s workshop, had a view of the swaying treetops of the daytime Gardens, currently resting against the ground while gardeners and day-shift mechanics rushed to prepare them to rise again once the sun set.
Dawkins took one look at the picture in the manual and groaned. “Oh, not today.”
“What does it mean?”
“Only the angel bloody Gabriel coming down from heaven. Or, in his case, from Mayfair.”
Shem must have looked baffled, because Dawkins sighed. “Oh, you’ve not the pleasure yet, have you, Holloway? This is the inventor’s mark. Your broken nightingale is one of Lord Marchmont’s specials.”
That made more sense. Even Shem, who had no interest in aristocratic nonsense, had heard of Gabriel Marchmont, the Earl of Godalming. He was the darling of the Royal Society, the genius inventor whose rank protected him from accusations of madness, and the man who had, whilst punting up the Cam one May Week, casually devised a way to make a garden (and, more to his government’s interest, an ironclad) hover above the ground for twelve hours at a stretch. Shem, who worked with his inventions every day, had always rather wanted to meet the man.
“So?” he asked, thinking about the extra circuit.
“So, he’ll want to repair it himself,” Dawkins said glumly and then raised his voice to roar, “Ruth! Telegraph Lord Marchmont. We broke one of his toys.”
There was chorus of groans from the outer office.
“God help us all,” Dawkins muttered.
After all that, Shem was alive with curiosity and half expecting an old curmudgeon, although he knew Lord Marchmont had started inventing as a Cambridge undergraduate twelve years ago.
The Marchmont steam carriage drew to a halt outside the Mechanics’ Hall, behind an unusually sleek engine. Steps unfolded from the carriage with a neat click, each one locking smoothly into place. Only then did Lord Marchmont emerge.
He was beautiful. His hair was golden, pulled into a queue at his nape. His face was narrow and high-boned, almost ascetic until you saw the fullness of his mouth. He was tall, looking down on Shem and Dawkins with ease, and slim as a snake. He was dressed for dinner, in sombre colours, save the bright white fall of his cravat.
“Dawkins,” he drawled, “what have your oafs broken this time?”
“A problem with one of the nightingales, my lord,” Dawkins said politely, as Shem blinked and began to seethe. Typical gentleman, then, despite his genius.
“Break the key off as they were winding, did they?”
“No, my lord.”
“What, then?”
Dawkins waved Shem forward. “One of my senior engineers, my lord. Mr. Holloway is in charge of repairs.”
“I wish you wouldn’t palm me off on your lackeys, Dawkins. I don’t have time to run a remedial school for your rude mechanicals.”
“Mr. Holloway will take you to his workroom, my lord,” Dawkins said. “He’ll explain the problem to you, sir.” Then he abandoned Shem to face the earl’s disdain.
Shem never quite knew what to do in these situations. He didn’t have gentry manners; he’d never had them ingrained into him as a child, and he fumbled whenever he was faced with a social situation. He didn’t know how to address the man, or whether he should bow (though he knew he didn’t want to). Gruffly, he said, “This way, your earlship.”
“Dear Christ,” the earl remarked, but as he seemed to be addressing the air, or possibly the heavens, Shem ignored him. He strode back toward the workshops, assuming the earl would follow.
Strolling along beside Shem with his nose wrinkled, Lord Marchmont remarked, “This place feels more like a factory every time I visit.”
“We like to be efficient, sir,” Shem said, bristling. If Marchmont was going to sneer at his attempts to be polite, a simple "sir" was all he'd be getting.
“Napoleon was not wrong to call England a nation of factory workers.”
“I’m sure, sir.”
“They don’t waste any time teaching you people the art of conversation, do they?”
“No, sir.” Then, prompted by some inner devil, he couldn’t help adding, “They taught us that old Boney lost, though, so forgive me if I don’t care much for his opinion of working men. Sir.”
That was met with silence. Shem wondered if he had pushed his luck too far. Then Lord Marchmont laughed. It was a surprisingly nice laugh, full and merry, and Shem was startled to see genuine amusement crinkling the corners of the man’s eyes.
“A hit, a very palpable hit,” the earl said and doffed his top hat mockingly. Then he grimaced and tucked it under his arm. “These things are absurdly uncomfortable. What fool invented them?”
“Someone who never had to crawl into a beam engine,” Shem said and was relieved when the earl laughed again. He could tolerate arrogance better in a man with a sense of humour.
Once they arrived in the workshop, however, things took a turn for the worse again. The earl took one look at the nightingale dismembered on the bench and drew in his breath with a distinct disapproving hiss.
“I’m supposed to be called in before maintenance is done on any of the special automatons,” he said, pursing his lips.
“First place it mentions that is in the manual, my lord.”
“And you touch my mechanisms without consulting the manual?” the earl demanded incredulously.
Shem couldn’t hold back a snort of derision. “Wouldn’t be much of a mechanic if I needed the manual every time I replaced a spring.”
The earl stared at him for a moment before he turned back to the table. “True. Perhaps I should have marked their casing instead, to prevent well-meaning meddling.”
Shem didn’t particularly appreciate that description of his job, but he bit his annoyance back. “So far, I’ve checked—”
“I have no interest in your opinion,” the earl interrupted. As Shem glowered at him, he added, “I prefer a fresh perspective.”
“Shall I leave you to your work?” Shem asked hopefully. He had other repairs to make and an apprentice whose work needed assessing.
“No, stay and tell me your observations, without conjecture. When did it first go quiet?” Even as he spoke, his hands were moving with swift competence, performing all the checks Shem had already done, at twice Shem's speed. Shem found himself fascinated, watching those long fingers move with such dexterity. He’d always assumed aristocrats had plump, soft hands, but Lord Marchmont’s were long and narrow, with callused fingertips. Ink and oil were smudged across the base of his thumb, and Shem indulged himself for a moment. He had a weakness for men’s hands that he rarely acted upon. There was no danger he’d be tempted to flirt with Lord Marchmont, so it was safe enough to look, as long as the earl didn’t notice.
“Is that all, Holloway?”
“Yes,” Shem said, realizing he had gone quiet. “That’s when I brought it in for a better look.”
“Quite right. Nothing obvious is wrong, so it must be the special circuit. A shame. It was an interesting experiment. I was hoping it would work.” He snapped his fingers. “Clippers, please. I’ll remove the empathy circuit, and we’ll see if that fixes your problems.”
Shem passed him the tool, asking, “The empathy circuit?”
“Oh, it was an idea I had.” Marchmont paused, his hand hovering over the nightingale’s innards, and looked slightly indignant. “Some people found the early prototypes unnerving—unnatural, they said!”
“Some people are idiots,” Shem said and was startled when Marchmont smiled at him. It was broad and bright and chased any hint of arrogance out of his face. Again, the realization of just how beautiful this man was hit Shem, stealing his breath and making his cheeks heat.
“Quite,” Marchmont said. “So, the empathy circuit should cause the bird to simulate simple emotional reactions: fear, surprise, joy. If it’s interferi
ng with its primary function, however, I’ll pull it out.” He reached forward with the clippers.
Without thinking, Shem grabbed his wrist to stop him. Marchmont swung to stare at him, his face affronted, and Shem remembered that working men did not lay their hands on lords of the realm. What Marchmont had just said changed the way Shem thought about the automaton, though. He wouldn’t let drunks abuse his apprentices, and he wasn’t going to let Marchmont cripple the nightingale without a little more explanation.
“You gave it a heart,” he said, not releasing Marchmont. He could feel the pulse in the man’s wrist beating beneath his thumb, steady as a clock.
“Strictly speaking,” Marchmont said slowly, “the mainspring is its heart. That’s what powers it, you see.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Shem said. Marchmont didn’t have blue eyes. Shem had thought he would, with all that cold blond hauteur, but his eyes were brown, as rich and warm as liquorice.
“I see you’re speaking metaphorically. It doesn’t have real feelings, you must understand. They are simply produced by the circuitry.”
“And what produces our emotions?” Shem asked. He’d never been taught to be good with words, and he was struggling to find the ones to express the little clutch of panic and wonder in his throat. “The bird doesn’t know they’re not real, does it? You gave it a heart. Don’t you want to know why it’s breaking?”
Marchmont just stared at him, his brows furrowed a little. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Oh.” Shem wasn’t sure what that meant, not until that bright smile dawned across Marchmont’s face again, and he breathed, “Oh, let’s find out!”
That night, Shem found it hard to concentrate on his rounds. He was distracted by the thought of a brass nightingale that refused to sing and, more and more as the evening underwent its daily transformation from charming to wild, of its creator, his unguarded smile, the arrogance Shem wanted to slap off that pretty face, and his fine hands.
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