by Lev AC Rosen
Volio watched as Adams tried to attach what seemed to be a wheel to a large grooved hoop. He put the hoop on the ground, balanced on the wheel, and gave it a slight push. The wheel went flying off. Volio snickered as Adams kicked the floor. He wondered how Adams had gotten into Illyria in the first place.
When independent time was over, Volio left to eat supper quickly and alone, then retired to his room, waiting for night to fall. He had another letter ready for Cecily, which he read over once more before sealing it in the envelope. Volio was smart enough to know he wasn’t a poet, but he felt he managed to express some small part of his romantic feeling in words that, if not beautiful and florid, were beautiful in their directness.
He sealed the envelope with golden wax and his family’s signet ring, and left his room to meet Miriam in the gardens and give her the note. Cecily, he knew, often worked alone or read or spent time with her cousin after supper, and so it was easy for Miriam to get away then. She was waiting, as she always did, along the edge of the river, a long dark cloak sweeping around her as she looked at the rushing water. Volio walked up to her quietly, resisting the sudden urge to push her, and watch her drown.
“Mrs. Isaacs,” he said. She turned, and he thrust the letter toward her. She took it from him, her face expressionless, and it vanished into the pockets of her cloak. She turned back to the river. Volio hated the way she ignored him, the way she seemed to retain the power during their meetings, though it was clearly all his. He stepped next to her and looked at the river. “Do you think if you look at it hard enough, it will wash away your sins?” Volio asked.
“I have no sins I wish washed away,” Miriam said without looking up. “I have your letter. You may leave now, Mr. Volio.”
“When Cecily and I are married, I think I shall forbid her from seeing you ever again. You are uppity for a servant, and the fact that you are also a Jew and a woman makes it worse. You should be more docile, not less.”
“The Jews would agree with you,” Miriam said, with a low, murmuring sound, maybe a laugh.
“Just remember, a word from me, and you’d be finished,” Volio said, then turned around and left Miriam standing alone in the dark.
Miriam wished it were raining, that the water could run down her face and neck and ease this clutch of muscle in her chest. She wished she were back in France. Every day there had been spent lying blissfully alongside Toby by the beach or going bathing in the hot springs, and every night they had made love in their private villa with the windows open so they could hear the crash of the ocean on the shore. It had been cold some nights, but neither of them had cared. Toby just brought more blankets to the bed, and Miriam wrapped him around her for warmth.
Here all she could hear was the constant sound of the gears of Illyria, turning and grinding away. She got away from it as often as she could. When Toby was in bed or working late in the chemical lab, she often stole out into the evening and lingered in the fog-heavy garden, watching the river. It felt good to be out of Illyria, even if she was still standing beside it. Illyria had become too fraught with darkness: blackmail and a possibly mechanical master who spent his nights lurking in a labyrinthine basement were more than Miriam could handle at once. She considered herself strong. She had endured a lot, after all: her move to Paris, then London, the death of her parents and her husband, being spit on in the streets. But the mysteries of Illyria were exhausting. A fire she could put out, a dead husband she couldn’t bring back; these were simple difficulties. What lay beyond that door with no handle was something else entirely.
She had begun having nightmares since they came back from France. In them, she was chased by clawed automata with the duke’s face until she was pressed against the door with no handle and couldn’t open it, their claws closing in on her. She would wake up from them, startled and sweating. Every night she walked through the basement to leave the building, and every night, the hallway to the rest of the basement seemed to call out to her. Curiosity warred with fear. She did not want to go the rest of the year like this. And so, that night after receiving Volio’s love note, she returned to the basement and walked into the dark hall, determined to confront her fears and solve the mystery.
Her torch flickered in the hall as she aimed it ahead. It was just as she remembered, filthy and full of shadows, with soft shuffling noises and dimly lit lamps placed seemingly at random. But almost immediately after turning the corner, she heard footsteps in addition to her own. She couldn’t decide whether to run away or just shut her torch and press against the wall.
A moment later, before she could decide, Professor Curio came around the corner, holding a gas lantern. He looked at her, clearly surprised. “Mrs. Isaacs,” he said.
“Professor Curio.”
Miriam was never entirely comfortable being alone with a professor. She wasn’t a student, nor was she a professor. She ate with the professors often enough to know them, but did not socialize with them. She was not their equal, but she was not clearly below them, either.
“What are you d-d-doing down here, at this hour?” he asked. His eye twitched in the dim light of his lantern.
“I remembered just before retiring for the evening,” Miriam said, a lie forming in her mind, “that Cecily asked me to pick up some more tree sap for her project tomorrow. There was none in the duke’s lab, nor yours, so I thought I would come down here and claim it from storage.”
“Ah,” Curio said. Miriam could not tell if he believed her. The hand that was not holding the lantern suddenly spasmed violently, and Miriam took a step back. Curio had never seemed dangerous, just twitchy, but in the basement at night, his small, uncontrolled movements took on a sinister aspect. “Sorry,” he said as she jumped back, “c-can’t help it. Well, the tree sap will b-be just in this room, here,” he said, opening a door. He stepped into the room, and Miriam leaned over to watch him. The room was just for storage, lined with crates and barrels. He took a large bottle out of a crate on the floor and handed it to her. “I’ll try to keep a better stock of it in my lab from now on,” he said. “You s-s-shouldn’t have to come down here alone. It could be q-quite d-dangerous.”
“Oh?” Miriam said, trying to appear fearless. “Well, thank you for the sap.”
“Of course,” Curio said, bowing slightly. “What Cecily has d-d-done with it is most impressive, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Miriam said. “She’s quite a brilliant girl.”
“Indeed,” Curio said, suddenly looking distracted. “Well, g-good night.”
“Good night,” Miriam said as Curio locked the door again. She headed back to the entrance to the basement, her heart pounding furiously. Her hands shook, so that the bottle of sap nearly slipped from them and she had to react quickly to catch it. As she rose in the lift, she realized that while Curio had asked her why she was in the basement, he never revealed his own reasons for being there. Could he have some relation to the handleless door, or the automaton that so resembled the duke? Miriam tried to think back on what she knew of him, but it wasn’t much. He had been here longer than she, and spoke little. She didn’t even know his first name. From what Toby said, he was mostly a quiet man, and a good instructor, though he would sometimes have fits of rage and violence. And of course, there was his twitching.
It was worth mentioning to Toby. She hadn’t told him anything, not about her going back to the basement, or about the duke’s odd resemblance to the automaton. Nor would she—he would be distraught to hear of her going there alone—she would simply tell the same lie she had told Curio about the tree sap. She didn’t want to make an accusation against the duke and be wrong.
The clock was tolling when she reached the ground floor, and she paused, watching a shadow walk slowly up the stairs ahead of her. She didn’t know who it was, but decided it was best not to be found out of bed after dark anymore. The shadow shrank away, and the clock stopped tolling, so the only sound now was the clanking gears and the soft buzz of the few electric lights that were still o
n. Gathering her cloak tightly around her, Miriam headed to her room and soon fell into a fitful sleep.
* * *
THE next day was filled with the usual business. Cecily had lessons in French and German, and the duke had asked that she be taught “Domestic Skills,” so Miriam devoted an hour to needlepoint and crochet, which neither she nor Cecily enjoyed very much. Then, after lunch, Cecily was free to pursue learning on her own, usually by working in the lab, but sometimes by convincing one of the professors to tutor her, and sometimes just by reading. She chose to work in the lab this afternoon. Though she had finished creating the gears for Ashton, Cecily was still exploring the properties of her new formula, seeing if it was still as strong when molded into very thin sheets, among other things. Miriam sat beside her at her table in Curio’s lab, occasionally eyeing Curio to see if he was in any way suspicious, and sometimes, when no one else was looking, smiling at Toby, who worked beside Drew at his own table. She had not brought a novel today, as she sometimes did, but she did have her lesson book, so she went over what she would be teaching Cecily for the rest of the week. The gears moved particularly quickly that day. Before long, supper was over and night had fallen again, and Miriam stole out of Illyria to the gardens, where Toby, Drew, Ashton, and Jack were waiting for her.
The bar was curiously quiet that night. The serving girl leaned against the bar reading a penny dreadful, occasionally glancing up to see if anyone needed her, and usually finding that they didn’t. Miriam leaned back in her chair and into Toby’s arm. She reached out and squeezed his thigh. Ashton was looking around nervously, while Drew and Jack were discussing the pony show from the weekend. It was as good a time as any.
“I saw Curio in the basement,” she said. At the word basement, everyone looked at her. “I was down there to get some supplies for Cecily and he came around a corner, from deeper in.”
“You think he has something to do with the automaton?” Ashton asked, his voice oddly high.
“I don’t know,” Miriam said. “I don’t really know Curio. But I think we should go back. Explore some more.”
“Mmm,” said Toby. “Curio’s an all right fellow. He has his fits, sure, but he’s not a bad man. And those automata had something right sinister about them. I don’t think they’re connected. He was probably just in the basement for supplies, same as you.”
“Nonetheless,” Miriam said, “I’d like to go look again. I want to know what’s going on down there.”
“I don’t,” Ashton said, then took a long drink. “I promised my sister I wouldn’t go back down there. I told her all about it, and she said it was dangerous and made me promise.”
Sometimes Miriam felt that there was something not entirely honest about Ashton. It wasn’t that she thought he was lying, but that the truth had somehow gotten cluttered in his mouth and needed to be reassembled on the table like a puzzle. She liked him, sometimes felt an odd kinship with him without knowing why, and she trusted him, but the details never seemed entirely correct. She believed only two things: that he was a genius, and that he was a good man. She wasn’t sure about the rest, but then, it didn’t matter much to her. There was nothing sinister about Ashton’s secrets, whatever they were. They would unravel of their own accord, in time. But the secrets of the basement needed further prodding.
“Aw,” said Drew, “c’mon now, mate, y’ain’t gonna let your sister boss you about, are ya? Doing that will give ye a woman’s character. Be a brick, eh? I’m curious to go down there again.” Drew took a large swig of his drink. Ashton watched him with half-open eyes, which seemed a little sad to Miriam.
Jack looked carefully at Ashton, as if deciding whether to side with him, or convince him to change his mind. “There’s no reason your sister would ever know,” he ventured.
“I don’t like breaking my promise to h-er,” Ashton said.
“Tell her you were drunk and I forced you. Blame me. Let her slap me around a little. I don’t mind.”
Ashton sighed, finished his ale, and then nodded slowly. Toby clapped his hands. “Adventure!” Toby declared. “It is the one call we men, and Miriam here, cannot ignore. And since we’re not anywhere near the jungles of Africa, then to the basement of Illyria shall we go. I plan to prove Professor Curio innocent of all wrongdoing and behavior that would suggest him to be in any way eerier than he actually is.”
“’Ere, ’ere!” Drew said.
“I think we should bring paper this time,” Miriam said, “and ink. So we can make a real map of the place.”
“We’d need light for that,” Jack said.
“We have the torches Ashton made,” Miriam replied.
“And something hard to write on,” Ashton said, looking thoughtful. “Can it wait until tomorrow? I have an idea.”
“I suppose it is a bit late,” Miriam said, disappointed.
“Don’t worry, love,” Toby said, putting an arm around her. “We’ll catch all the bogeys in the basement.”
Miriam nodded. It was something, anyway.
* * *
THE next day passed in a flurry. Miriam taught Cecily her lessons and helped her work in the chemical lab. Outside, the fog was extremely heavy, and a pale yellow color, like preserved human skin. Looking out the window on the second floor, Miriam couldn’t see more than three feet. All of Illyria felt disconnected from the world.
That night, they all met in the basement. Ashton had brought with him a new invention: a brass tray of sorts that he hung around his neck with a leather cord, so it lay flat in front of him. It had a handle on the side, like an organ grinder, which, when wound, caused the top of the box to light up. Ashton had placed a piece of parchment over this light, so the parchment glowed, and he could sketch a map of the basement in charcoal. Everyone agreed it was quite brilliant and stood about at the edge of the basement hall, discussing it for a few moments.
But Miriam did not want to delay much longer. She turned toward the darkness and headed into it, and the others followed. Miriam wanted them all to see the door and the missing automaton, but as they headed forward, she found she had no idea where it was. Her lines in the dust of the walls were gone, as if someone had swept them clean, but not the floors. Ashton carefully mapped each hall, noted each door. They found halls that curved oddly and seemed to slant downward slightly, as though they were going lower, but they found neither the door nor the train that they had found previously. At one point, they came upon the wall of gears, which apparently extended deep into the basement. Water dripped down on them, and they were rusty and covered in moss, but they still ground, slowly, almost silently. It was a vast wall, Miriam thought, longer than Illyria itself. It seemed to stretch on forever.
“What would they need these here for?” Jack asked.
“I—I think I remember,” Ashton said, marking something on the map, then looking up at the gears again. “It was in one of my books on Illyria. They originally built the waterwheel, then extended the gears down here to power some machines that helped build the building itself, from the ground up. It was a brilliant idea. Some engineer friend of the duke’s came up with it.… I don’t remember his name.”
“Hm,” Toby said, gazing at the wall. He reached out and touched one of the gears, then drew his fingers back and looked at them, rubbing them together. “Well, it’s barely working now. And it’s slimy to the touch.” He wiped his hand on his trousers.
“I bet the algae is something special, though,” Drew said, then reached out and tore some of the green stuff off a gear. The gear vibrated at the movement and, for a moment, turned much faster, speeding up the gears around it and sending a small shock wave and the sound of clanking metal down the wall. Everyone stared silently at the point where the wall faded into darkness, as if waiting for something to come out of it, alerted by the shaking gears. But nothing did.
“We should go,” Toby said. “It’s late.” Miriam sighed. “We can continue this later,” he said, taking her hand. She flinched, trying not to think of wh
ere that hand had just been, but nodded.
“Let’s try to space it out a bit,” Ashton said. “We don’t want to go every night. Let’s head to the pub again tomorrow. We can decide our next route by looking at the map. I want to find the train again, and mark it down.”
“Good idea,” Jack said. “Best to go in with a plan, right?”
Everyone agreed, and Ashton wound up his light-box again, examining the map and pointing the way out.
XXV.
FIONA Gowan had a knack for selling things. She understood the ideas of exchange rates and relative value. She knew how to make a person want something, and how much they would pay for it. But being born the only child to a tanner in Inverness, all she had to sell was herself. Not in the sense of prostitution—though she did dabble in that from time to time, if a gentleman seemed wealthy and enjoyable, or to get a better part in a play—but in the sense that she could show people what they wanted to see. As an actress, some might have called her a ham, but she knew what the audience wanted from her, and she delivered, perfectly.
But she was getting to an age, the kind never spoken aloud, where parts were fewer. She needed a steadier income. An audience of one with full and generous pockets. Becoming a mistress seemed the best option; even better would be mistress to a man who invested in theater, and cast her as all the leads. But she’d settle for anything that got her a clean room for a while.
Violet was a great source of information in preparing for her new role. Despite the extortion, Fiona rather liked Violet. She had a wild impetuousness that Fiona had only played onstage a few times, but which she secretly hoped she also possessed. Pleading sick from Thursday’s pony show, Fiona returned to the small boarding room she shared with two other girls, and fished out her small satchel of glass and paste jewelry. She had bought some new pieces with her share of the profits from peddling Mrs. Wilks’s Oscillation Therapy Devices—an easy sell—and she put them all on to prepare for the night, and for her great audition.
