‘Really, you are an uncultured girl. Coppelia is a ballet, about Doctor Coppelius, who created a life-size dancing doll. In his youth, poor Uncle Eric was quite the balletomane and I think Coppelia sparked his interest in automatons.’
‘I find beauty and music in numbers,’ I said. That was the end of the letter.
The trunk was made of dark unpolished metal, bound with thick iron bands. The lid closed with a lock, the combination of which comprised four letters.
‘Uncle Eric did not give us the code,’ Mother said. ‘How will we open it? There must be hundreds of combinations!’
‘There are 456,976,’ I said. ‘If you allow for repetitions of letters.’
‘Show off your mathematical skills to me, if you must, but do take care not to do it in front of young gentlemen. They will take you for a bluestocking and they do not like a wife more intelligent than they. Do you wish to remain a spinster all your life?’
I felt my throat tighten. ‘I am but nineteen years old, not yet an old maid. And, unless a man crept around the door whilst I was taking delivery, there is none here to observe my mental calculations.’
‘Not since your poor Uncle...’ Mother sniffed and dabbed at her eyes. I squeezed her arm.
‘I regret my insensitivity. I miss him too.’ I kissed the top of her head. ‘Let us leave the trunk for now, I will undo the crate.’
I forced the top upwards with the poker. The nails came away and it opened, revealing an object the shape of a man, apparently constructed of bronze. It was dressed like a country gentleman. Its fingers, interconnected metal cylinders, were riveted to the hands. A cord round its neck carried a front door key and a crank-style grandfather clock winder.
The face felt cold to the touch. It was clean-shaven, with engraved curlicues above the eyes imitating eyebrows. Blue enameled eyes stared at nothing. On its head was a flat cap, with a black band. I removed it, and the short black wig underneath it came away in my hand. Next to a panel in the top of the head was a button, about one-eighth of an inch wide. I pushed it and the panel popped open, revealing a clock-like mechanism.
I put the crank key onto the winding peg inside and gave it a turn. The box vibrated as mechanisms activated somewhere within the body. Inside the head, a ticking began as a cog turned one tooth at a time, restricted by the rocking anchor-shaped escapement that kept the apparatus running regularly. I closed the door and replaced the wig and the hat. The eyes moved from side to side.
With a whirr of gears and a creak of wood against metal, the automaton sat up and raised its cap. ‘My name is Arbuthnot, at your service’. Its mouth did not move. The voice was like that of a man, but with a metallic edge and an air of distortion, like one of Mr. Edison’s recordings. It climbed out of the crate and stood up. It was about five feet eight inches, as tall as me. ‘I am glad to make your acquaintance.’
‘And I yours.’
‘Now, what about a nice cup of tea?’ he said. ‘You need only show me once. I learn.’
Arbuthnot joined us in the parlor. ‘So refreshing.’ Mother put her cup down. ‘Euphemia must teach you to cook.’ She turned to me. ‘I wish to lie down.’
I pushed the wheelchair to the foot of the stairs and, gripping the handles, went up backwards jerking the chair upwards one step at a time. Mother winced.
‘Allow me!’ Arbuthnot brought the chair back downstairs. He bent and lifted Mother, one arm under her legs, the other supporting her back, and carried her upstairs.
‘I will bring the chair up presently,’ he said. ‘I trust I deliver a satisfactory vehicular experience. Which is your bedroom, Mrs. Thorniwork?’
‘That one,’ I heard Mother say.’ And...do call me Agnes.’
‘I shall go and ask the locksmith to call,’ I said three days later. After countless cups of Arbuthnot-made tea I had still not opened the trunk.
‘Do be careful.’ Mother wheeled herself out into the hall. ‘The Ripper.’
I patted her hand. ‘It is quite safe. Broad daylight.’
She put her Daily Post down. ‘Nevertheless, take care. They think,’ she tapped the paper with her finger, ‘that there is a connection between his vile crimes and the recent increase in house fires.’
‘Really, Mother. How can they say that on the basis of five cases?’
‘An insufficient sample size,’ Arbuthnot said.
‘Yes, mere coincidence,’ I said.
‘Not statistically significant,’ Arbuthnot and I said together.
‘Arbuthnot,’ I said, I think that you and I are going to be good friends.’
I showed the locksmith out of the house and went into the parlor, where Mother was teaching Arbuthnot to play Halma. Loki sat on a third chair at the table, as though umpiring the game.
‘He broke two saws and a drill, and still it will not open,’ I said. ‘I must go to Uncle Eric’s workshop and see if he left a record of the code.’
‘But, you cannot go alone,’ Mother said. ‘And, anyway, we do not know where it is.’
‘I have the key.’ Arbuthnot pointed at the cord round his neck.
I clapped my hands. ‘And the address?’
With a sound of clicking cogwheels, he shrugged his shoulders. ‘I am afraid I do not know. I was created in the workshop, I did not go outside. My spring wound down and when I awoke, I was here.’
I clenched my fists. ‘Then all is lost. I cannot try the key in every cellar door in the East End.’
Loki jumped onto the table and skidded across the Halma board, scattering pieces across the floor. I bent to pick them up.
‘Allow me.’ Arbuthnot crawled under the table and his hair flopped forward, exposing the top of his head. He withdrew and stood up. Holding the pieces in one hand, he raised the other to replace his hair. I noticed something I had not seen before.
‘Leave it,’ I said, my voice rising in pitch. ‘Come here at once, and let me see the top of your head.’
He bent forward. To one side of the panel covering the cogs and the escapement, I saw a knurled brass knob the size of my little finger nail, set into a dial with two marks, ‘home’ and ‘travel’ engraved above them in copperplate script. At the edge of the knob was a matching mark, turned towards ‘travel’. I turned it towards ‘home’. With a sound of gears engaging, Arbuthnot raised his head and replaced the hair.
‘I believe I could lead you there, now,’ he said. ‘I will sense the way, if we walk. It should take 30 minutes and 9 seconds, if our way is not impeded.’
‘Then we go as soon as it is dark. Nobody need notice your construction, if you wrap a muffler around your lower face.’
Mother opened her mouth to speak. I raised my palm. ‘It is the only way. Arbuthnot will keep me secure.’
We stood in Dorset Street in Spitalfields. Chimney pots belched coal smoke and a layer of soot had settled on the ground and the wretched tenement buildings. This, and the manure that the crossing sweepers had missed, caused a smell that made me gag. Feeble gas lamps illuminated the entrance to a low archway leading to an alley running between two buildings. Millers Court, according to the sign above the arch.
‘It is too narrow for us to enter side by side,’ Arbuthnot said. ‘I will go first.’
I followed, clutching the back of his coat. The alley led to an unlit terrace of six buildings, each with its own front door. The building at the end of the terrace had two doors, and I tried the key in the lock of the one on the right hand side. It opened, revealing a stone staircase leading down into darkness. I took a box of matches from my pocket and struck one.
‘Allow me.’ Arbuthnot took the match from me. ‘I will feel no pain as it burns down.’ He strode down the stairs and I tiptoed down behind him.
At the bottom, I caught a glimpse of a dark cellar that appeared to have been carved out of rock. Arbuthnot’s match went out and I struck another. Patches of mold made strange shapes on the walls. To my left stood an inverted tea chest on which stood an oil lamp, half full. I lit it and jumpe
d back with a shriek as a rat skittered across the floor. The cellar was empty save for a desk in the center, with three drawers. There was nothing in them but watchmaker’s tools. I held the lamp closer. Ants ran across the bottom into a corner of the lowest drawer.
I shut it. ‘No papers, nothing in which he might have written the combination. We shall have to go home. If we try every combination of four letters, we will get there eventually.’ I tried not to calculate how long that would take.
‘Remember, Euphemia, that I do not sleep,’ Arbuthnot said. ‘I will start as soon as we return. I will be able to tackle a considerable number before I need to be rewound.’
We stepped out onto the pavement and I locked the door. ‘Come, let us look for a cab,’ I said. ‘We have no time to lose.’ I changed Arbuthnot’s setting to ‘travel’.
It began to rain as we walked back to Dorset Street. It was deserted, save for a few passersby. On the other side of the road stood a man wearing a long dark coat and a bowler hat. In his hand he held an oil lamp similar to the one in the workshop. He put it on the pavement, took out matches and lit it. He picked it up and hurled it through the nearest window. Flames shot up the curtains. A woman screamed and the few people out in the street ran towards the house.
‘I must help,’ Arbuthnot said.
‘No, wait for the Fire Brigade, someone will see you-’
But he was gone.
The man who had thrown the lamp walked across the road towards me. He came near and stared into my face. I looked into eyes that were as dead as the catch on the fishmonger’s slab and recoiled. My heart gave a jump and I felt my skin tighten and the hair raise at the back of my neck. He darted behind me, grabbing my arm and hauling it towards my shoulders. I tried to scream. It came out as a squeak.
‘Now, pretty one.’ Hot breath in my ear, carrying the stench of rotting fish. His other arm tightened around my throat. I felt my windpipe crushed and all grew dark around me. I heard ringing in my head. I fumbled for his hand, trying to bend his little finger back, but my hands had grown weak. I scraped the heel of my boot against his shin. He cursed and the stranglehold loosened enough for me to let out a cry.
‘Pheemie!’
I heard a crunch of grinding cogwheels as Arbuthnot set off a run, his shoes thudding across the cobbles. He seized the man’s arm and bent it back. I heard a crack and the man bellowed with pain. I was free. My legs buckled and I dropped to my knees. The man tried to run, but Arbuthnot held him fast. The man stuck out his foot and Arbuthnot slipped on the wet cobbles, dragging them both down into the road where they rolled and wrestled, the attacker lashing out at Arbuthnot without effect. A butcher’s knife fell out of the man’s pocket, a stray kick from Arbuthnot knocked it down a drain.
The ringing grew louder. It was real. Like a monster, steam shooting out of a valve at the top of its boiler, smoke pouring out of a chimney, a fire engine rounded the corner, hauled by a team of four galloping horses, their hooves striking sparks on the cobblestones. The driver started in surprise and pulled back on the reins. Arbuthnot forced the attacker to the ground and looked up. The engine thundered on. The driver stood up and pulled again. The horses slowed and reared. Arbuthnot, and the attacker, lay broken under the iron-rimmed wheels.
Accounts of my escape from strangulation warranted a few lines on page ten of the Post, soon overtaken by coverage of the calls for tighter control of safety of fire appliances. After all, people said, a man had been killed. ‘Gentleman’s outfitter crushed under wheels of fire. Dummy, modelling the latest rugged outdoor costume, also ruined’, read one headline. There were no more murders.
Mother insisted I stay in bed, to recover from my ordeal and rest my throat. I crept downstairs. I had to try to construct another Arbuthnot. I knelt, trying random combinations of letters. Nothing. The cat scratched at the trunk.
‘Stop it, Loki,’ I croaked. He ignored me and continued to clean his claws. ‘LOKI!’
With shaking hands I scrabbled at the lock: L-O-K-I. It clicked open. I heaved up the lid. Inside, piles of notebooks and loose papers gave off a dank, musty smell. I picked up a wad of foolscap, the corners had been eaten away. Mice, or maybe ants, had managed to get in where humans could not. I pulled at a bundle of papers and the edge came away in my hand, scraps of paper flying up like a shower of confetti. I reached underneath it and felt paper give, soft as mold under my fingers.
This is my vow. I will make sense of Uncle Eric’s notes. I will find a young man to work with me. He will value intelligence, it will be a meeting of minds. And he will call me Pheemie. In a hundred years’ time, I am certain that nobody will have heard of Jack the Ripper. But, I am equally certain that every home will have its own Arbuthnot.
THE END.
THE HUNTRESS by Amanda Jourdan
My movements were small and carefully controlled as I moved backward through the damp street. I would not show fear, though my heart pounded relentlessly in my ears and I knew my pursuers could hear it as clearly as thunder. The tension in my muscles screamed at me that my body was ready to run for safety, but my mind knew that I could not escape these two. I knew enough about vampires to understand that they were not easily evaded.
They edged toward me, their characteristic grace precluded by their desire to wait for my move. Their steps were small and their distance travelled short because mine were. They were stalking me as wild animals might stalk their next meal, and I knew that was exactly what I was to them. The man and woman who moved steadily nearer with feral eyes and animalistic postures did not care that I was Artemis Johanssen, the last living heir to a prestigious bloodline of vampire-hunting witches. They did not care that the honor of my family would die with me. Why should they? For all of recorded history, vampires had killed witches for blood or for sport, leaving a trail of carnage in their wake that would make the most hardened hunter shiver.
“You should have known better, huntress.” The hiss of the last syllable uttered by the female vampire hung ominously in the air long after she spoke. Even in the darkness, her crimson eyes flashed. Her name was Elisabeta, and she was feared nearly as much by my kind as by the humans she drained of life. Her hair was long and dirty blonde, and her ruffle-sleeved dress was of a deep burgundy.
Elisabeta was my intended target. Unfortunately, I had made a severe miscalculation in my attack: I had neglected to consider her mate, Lysander.
“You were foolish enough to enter my territory,” said Elisabeta now, “but to come alone? Are you witches yet so uncivilized that you lack both training and common sense?”
At this insult to myself and my kind, I found my voice. “I had enough training to kill Jacques.”
I knew I had touched a nerve.
Jacques was my First Kill. I had driven my blade through his heart when I was only fifteen, though due to my upbringing, by that age I already was well-educated in my trade. Within the bloodlines of witches, it was common knowledge that a witch was promised immortality after her First Kill. To me, Jacques was the granter of my future as an immortal witch. Unfortunately, to Elisabeta, his death held no glory. He had, after all, been her brother.
“And for that,” Elisabeta snarled, “I will rip you apart.”
She made a swift grab for my arm, which I wrenched away from her and drew to my waist. I withdrew my knife from its sheath and brandished it protectively in front of me as my eyes flicked from one of them to the other and back again.
“If you let me leave here, I will not return for you.” As soon as the words had left my mouth, I regretted them. It was not becoming of a witch to allow her prey to escape or to depart for the preservation of her own life. There was much more honor in dying in the hunt. However, as much as I tried to convince myself that I was accustomed to pain, I did not welcome it. Moreover, I knew that I would cease to age when my mortal life ended, becoming immeasurably more powerful upon my resurrection by the magical forces that enabled me. My mind knew these things, but my heart knew that I was nineteen y
ears old and deeply afraid to die. My heart was irrational. It filled my mind with doubts. What if something went wrong? What if I stayed dead? What, then, had my life meant?
“We do not trust the words of your kind,” said Lysander. His blood-tinted eyes narrowed as he mirrored his mate’s move toward me.
I reacted reflexively, slashing my blade across his palm. He cried out in what sounded more like anger than pain, and the pretense of cat-and-mouse was rent away. All formality was instantly erased upon the drawing of first blood, and the vampires lunged. I flipped backward, my skirts landing rather unceremoniously at my feet on my return to the ground. I had successfully placed at least a yard between us, and I slid into a defensive stance, blade at the ready as adrenaline coursed through me.
They hesitated only for a beat. Then, Lysander ran forward, teeth like daggers glinting in the sparse light of the gas lamps. I raised my free hand toward him and willed him to freeze. He halted suddenly, mid-stride. His eyes were alarmed as he stood immobile on one leg.
“None of your games!” Elisabeta rushed past him, her hand with its talon-like fingernails drawn back and ready to claw at me. I remained perfectly still until she reached the perfect distance and brought my knife swiftly upward at an angle, tracing a sharp line across her stomach. Though I expected her to recoil, she charged on with an enraged shout, gripping my knife hand and ripping away my weapon, which she tossed down the street into a storm drain. She then tossed me easily backward, sending me hurtling onto the cobblestones where I landed on one arm with a sickening crack.
My head whipped upward to find that in my moment of lost concentration, I had inadvertently freed Lysander. He had retaken his place beside Elisabeta, and the two started again toward me, this time in no hurry. What easy prey I must have seemed to them.
9 Tales From Elsewhere 6 Page 12
