“I’ve got it.” Frederick held the book at a distance as if it were hot. He set it on the table and started thumbing through the pages. “Cur. We’ll start with the c’s before the k’s,” he said, passing over the a’s and b’s. “Cur.” He landed on the page, and traced the columns of words with his finger.
“You find it?” Giuseppe asked.
“Here it is.” He leaned in to read and then leaned back out. “Why?”
“Why what?” Giuseppe asked.
“No, that’s what it means. Why.”
“It asked why?”
Frederick leaned in again. “Yes. Why.”
“Why what?” Giuseppe asked.
“I have no idea,” Frederick said, but that was a good question. He scanned back up the same page and nodded. “I’m going to try something.”
He reached over and pushed the bronze forehead closed with two fingers, leaving two moist dots that faded away almost instantly. The same gentle whir emanated from the head, and then the eyes opened back up.
Its mouth moved and intoned the question, “Cur?”
“Quid cur,” Frederick said.
A moment passed in which the bronze head seemed to be grinding away on the words. “Cur?” it said.
“Hmm. That didn’t work,” Frederick said.
“What did you say?” Giuseppe asked.
Frederick looked down at the book. “Why what.”
Giuseppe tugged on his sleeve. “How about this? Because.”
Frederick looked at him for a moment. “Let me see,” he said, turning pages.
“Cur?” the clockwork head said.
“Quia,” Frederick said.
“Cur?” it said.
Frederick slammed the book shut. “I don’t know what it’s asking.” But it was obvious to him the Magnus head expected an answer.
CHAPTER 21
The Hidden Suite
TOO ANXIOUS TO GO BACK TO SLEEP, HANNAH LAY AWAKE IN the predawn having only dozed for a few hours. Her father’s mighty snores across the room rattled the floorboards and brought a smile to her face. Hannah owed Alice a great deal. But even though her father’s health had improved, her family’s situation had not. Without Hannah’s job, there would be no money for rent, and no apartment. No poorhouse would take them once they learned of her father’s condition.
She had to find the treasure.
The night in the museum felt like it had been a dream. A dark tale of golden heads and ogres, in a cavern lined with moonlight. But her anger at Frederick felt very real. What if they had been caught? What if he had been caught?
By now Hannah had figured out how single-minded Frederick could be, and determined, and she admired that about him. But not when it caused recklessness. She felt a little guilty for storming off the night before, but she had been so scared for him. When Giuseppe had pulled her away from the rooftop, she felt like they had abandoned him. But then Giuseppe had told her that Frederick had grabbed the head and run off deliberately.
That thought made her want to punch her pillow. Well, at least he was safe.
Her sisters curled up next to her in the bed, and Hannah kissed each of them. She slipped from under the blankets as smoothly as she could, and dressed for the day. In her pocket she felt for the chunk of clay she had accidentally taken from the museum the night before.
She felt guilty for stealing it, but she had not meant to. Those men had come in so fast, and she was so scared. She had put the piece of clay in her pocket without thinking as she ran from them. The words on the tag identified it as a fragment from the forehead of a golem in Prague, reminding her of the way Madame Pomeroy referred to Yakov. The way Hannah thought of him, too. Their protector.
She would return the fragment to the museum if she could think of a way to do it without getting into further trouble. But that did not seem likely, and it was only a silly little piece of clay, after all. Frederick had stolen a whole head, and he had no doubt been up all night with it.
Well, now it was her turn. Today they would search for the treasure, and she drew comfort from the certainty that Mister Grumholdt and Miss Wool had not found the next clue. That was in her pocket, a gift from her father that he would share with no one else.
She left the apartment and descended to the road. The gaslights were still lit along the streets, but tired and weak-looking after their night vigil. Hannah reached Frederick’s shop without seeing another soul about and stood at his door, afraid to knock and wake Master Branch. She finally settled on a gentle rap, and a long wait, before Frederick came to the door.
He flashed an openmouthed grin. “Hello. Would you like to come in?”
She looked to the right and left as though deciding whether she preferred to remain in the street. “I suppose.”
Frederick opened the door wider. “You’re still mad.”
“Of course I’m still mad,” she whispered as she stepped into the shop. “Think about what could have happened.”
“I have thought about it. I’m sorry. I won’t do that again.”
“Won’t do what again?”
“Steal.”
“That’s not what I’m really mad about, Frederick.”
“I was reckless, too. I’ll be more careful.”
“I hope so.”
“There’s still that treasure to find.”
Hannah nodded. “Yes, there is.”
“Hannah, you came back,” Giuseppe whispered. He was poking his head out from the back room. “Did you tell her, Freddy?”
Hannah turned to Frederick. “Tell me what?”
“I got the clockwork head to talk.”
“It talked?”
Frederick rocked back on his heels. “Yes, it did.”
“What did it say?”
“Cur,” Frederick said.
“What does that mean?”
“That’s what I wanted to know,” Giuseppe said.
“Do you want to see it?” Frederick asked.
She was still angry with him, but she was also very curious. “Fine,” she said, and followed the two boys downstairs.
The tarnished metal had been polished to a golden gleam, the face just realistic enough to cause disquiet. A cold energy seemed to radiate from it, and Hannah stood away from the table a few feet, her hands in front of her. When she noticed the eyes, spinning like platters, she stepped off to the side where they could not look at her.
“Cur?” it said with a voice like two of the hotel’s silver pitchers clanged together.
“How did you make it speak?” she asked.
“All I did was clean it and restore a section of gears. When I closed it all back up it just started talking.”
“Cur?” it said.
“I still haven’t figured out how to answer it,” Frederick said.
“What does that word mean?”
“Why.”
“Why?”
“It’s Latin,” Giuseppe said. “We think.”
Frederick pointed at the ceiling. “I’m going up to get another book. Maybe it will give me some more ideas.”
He plodded up the stairs, and after he was gone Hannah turned to Giuseppe. “Do you think he’s going to want to leave to come help me search for the treasure?”
“Not likely. Until I said something this morning I think he’d forgotten I was even here.”
Hannah sighed. Single-minded and determined.
“Cur?” the head asked.
“Will you come with me?”
“Of course,” Giuseppe said. “I said I’d help you, and I will. But I can’t go out again until later tonight.”
Hannah nodded in disappointment. But maybe it was for the better. It would have been difficult to take the two boys into the hotel with her; they did not know their way around, and would only have drawn attention to Hannah. She needed to get in without Miss Wool or Mister Grumholdt knowing she was there.
“This one has phrases in it.” Frederick came back down holding up a book. He set it on the tab
le and opened it.
“Frederick?” Hannah said.
“There must be something in here,” he said. “What’s it really asking?”
“Cur?” it said.
Hannah could think of several questions, questions she would want the answer to if she were a bronze head. Why was it here in the cellar of a clockmaker’s apprentice? Why had Magnus, or whoever he was, made it without a body? Why had he made it at all?
Hannah thought about her sisters. They were always asking why. Why did the coal man forget to come so often? Why did Hannah have to go to work instead of playing with them at home? Why did their mother always have red eyes?
Hannah had different why questions of her own, but already knew there were no answers for them. Why had her father had a stroke? Why him and not someone else? But then, that someone else would have asked the very same thing. The more she thought about it, what other question could the bronze head have asked? Everyone had why questions, but no one had all the answers.
“Cur?” it said.
“Frederick,” Hannah said. “Translate this: I don’t know.”
“I don’t know?”
Hannah nodded.
Apparent doubt raised one of his eyebrows. “That’s not an answer. I think it wants an answer.”
“Just try it, please.”
Frederick scratched his head. He flipped back and forth several times in one of his books.
“Cur?” it said.
Frederick took a deep breath. “Ego non scio.”
As soon as he said it Hannah heard a very subtle click inside the bronze head. “Nescio quoque,” it said.
Hannah turned to Frederick. He was already digging through the book.
A moment later, he translated: “I don’t know, either.”
After the exchange, the bronze head closed its mouth, but its eyes remained open and the clockwork continued to churn inside it.
“Ask it something,” Hannah whispered.
Frederick took a few moments to search through the books. “I’m going to ask who created it.” He turned to the head. “Qui te fecit?”
“Albertus Magnus,” said the clockwork head.
Hannah smiled.
Frederick set the book down. “The words were a key. You unlocked it.”
“But you didn’t answer the question,” Giuseppe said.
“That’s true,” Hannah said. “And I’m leaving now.”
Frederick looked up, confused. “Where are you going?”
“To find the treasure,” she said. “Remember?”
“Oh. Well, of course I remember. It’s just —” He looked at the bronze head.
“Stay here, Frederick.” Hannah turned toward the stairs. “I wouldn’t have been able to sneak you two into the hotel, anyway. But I’ll come back later, and you can tell me all about your clockwork conversations.”
The sun had crested the seaward horizon by the time she reached the hotel. Hannah decided to take the service entrance. Not only did she want to avoid being seen by Miss Wool or Mister Grumholdt but she most especially did not want to run into Walter. When Hannah thought about him, her body became a thing so enraged she doubted her ability to control it. And he would probably only rat her out again.
She did not even consider trying to see Madame Pomeroy, no matter what her former mistress had said to Frederick. Hannah simply could not face her.
The service entrance was near the hotel kitchens, and every maid or valet that entered or left the hotel this way did so licking their lips. The smells wafting from the ovens and stoves congealed in the hallway to a concentration Hannah could taste on her tongue. The scents of savory meat, buttery pastry, and rich chocolate were the closest Hannah ever came to eating them.
Through some luck, she did not encounter anyone on her way down the long corridor. It ran the length of the kitchens, and then forked near the ballroom, one branch pointing toward the laundry room, and the other toward the main lobby. Mister Twine had a private suite on the second floor of the hotel, which he used as an office and where he slept some nights rather than returning to his mansion up on the Heights. Hannah was not sure if he would be there, nor did she know yet what she would say to him.
Hannah looked around the corner, left and right down the hallways, and hurried onward. Tendrils of steam from the laundry crept along the ceiling where she paused to take a final clean breath. As soon as she entered, the acrid steam, laced with lye and bleach, brought tears to her eyes. Huge vats boiled around her, great cauldrons billowing, while a blight of mildew reached out from the corners over the walls. The room was always dim. No gaslight flame could survive the oppressive moisture beading on every surface in spite of the open windows wicking it away. Entering the laundry felt to Hannah like climbing into a mouth.
Several washerwomen stirred their soups of sheets and chemicals with long wooden paddles. Hannah nodded to them and they to her. She reached a spiral staircase and swiveled up its circular path. Around and around, up through pungent clouds to the ceiling and then onto the second floor.
She stepped into a service room with an open window where the heat and steam that rose with her escaped. She opened the door, peered out into the guest hallway, and seeing no one, hurried on toward Mister Twine’s suite.
Her father had said Mister Twine knew where the treasure was. But if that was true, why had he not claimed it for his own? What would he do when Hannah asked for his help in finding it?
She reached the door to his suite and pulled the bell.
No one came.
Perhaps it was too early and Mister Twine had not yet risen for the day. But his valet would have been up by this time, polishing his master’s shoes, laying out his clothes, and seeing to his breakfast.
Hannah tried the doorknob, and found it unlocked.
At first she resisted the urge to enter. Then she heard voices coming toward her down the hall. Hannah panicked, pushed into Mister Twine’s suite, and shut the door. The voices in the hallway approached.
“Ma’am, thank you for appointing me to Madame Pomeroy.” Hannah recognized Abigail’s voice.
“She’s leaving the hotel in a few days, so I assumed even you could handle her.”
That was Miss Wool. Hannah backed away from the door without looking behind her. She bumped into a table, tipping over a vase with a hollow thunk. It nearly rolled to the floor before she stopped it.
“Did you hear that?” Miss Wool asked.
“Hear what?”
“A noise. In Mister Twine’s suite.”
“One of the staff?”
“Not this early. I unlocked it for the electricians, but they’re not supposed to be here for another hour.”
“Electricians?”
“Mister Twine is bringing Edison’s electricity into the hotel. He’s starting with his own suite.”
“Electricity?”
“Are you an idiot? Just get back to work. I will see to it.”
The doorknob rattled.
Hannah’s heart lurched. Hallways on either side led into adjacent rooms. She bolted to the right and found herself in a library with wide windows and a broad wooden desk. Behind her, the front door opened. Hannah dove behind the desk and scrambled under it.
“Is anyone here?” Miss Wool called out.
Hannah held her breath and listened. Miss Wool seemed to be doing the same. Then Hannah heard the light sweep of the woman’s feet over the rugs. She was probably looking at the vase right then, wondering who had tipped it over. Hannah heard her set it upright.
Then Miss Wool began to move through the other rooms. Hannah heard doors opening and closing in an endless hunt that finally brought the woman into the library with her. Hannah closed her eyes tight, waiting and hoping with clenched teeth.
Several moments passed, slow and tortured, like sliding down a rasp. Then Hannah heard Miss Wool leave through the front door. It took another moment or two before she dared poke her head out. The library was empty. The suite seemed empty.
So Mister Twine was not here, after all. Hannah would have to call on him at his mansion, if he would see her. It had been terrifying the first time she met him, back when she asked him for a job at the hotel.
Hannah took a last look around the library, and then went back out into the foyer. There was the vase, and the table. The sharp light of morning fell in parallel strips against the floor and walls from two tall, narrow windows. The floors were marble beneath the Oriental rugs, and the stone continued up one of the walls, forming an arched alcove. Hannah looked closer, and noticed a tiny holly leaf carved at the back.
That made sixty-three. She pulled out the scrap of paper on which her father had drawn. Drawn. With his own hands. Were it not for the charcoal lines in front of her, Hannah would never have believed it, would have doubted her own memory as a dream. But even with the holly leaf in her hand, Hannah still felt gratitude that in all his renovations Mister Twine had never changed her father’s work. Mister Twine even had her father’s work right here in his own suite.
She stepped into the alcove and reached out to her father’s carving. At her touch, the stone inside the holly leaf gave a little, like a button. She pressed harder. The stone clicked.
A grating sound surrounded her, like a boulder clearing its throat, and the back of the alcove slid away. Hannah stared into a dark passage, cool air pouring over her. The rumors were true. Mister Twine had secret passages for moving around the hotel. And then the puzzle pieces fell into place.
Hannah’s mother had said that Mister Twine was always asking Hannah’s father for special projects. Projects Mister Twine never changed afterward, despite his willingness to rip out even the most beautiful craftsmanship. What if her father had drawn the holly leaf not simply as a gift to Hannah, but a message? A clue.
The passage entrance yawned like a cave, the cave of the forty thieves. There was a lamp just inside on the ground, and Hannah went to look for matches. Once lit, the kerosene flame revealed the corridor not as an earthen cave, but a clean and narrow hallway. Hannah looked over her shoulder, then entered, and a few feet inside spotted another holly leaf. She pressed it, and the door in the alcove closed, sealing her in.
The Clockwork Three Page 24
