by SJ Davis
“I have no complaints about my gender,” she said.
“I can’t see that you should have any.”
“I’ve recently designed a therapeutic bathing mechanism. A bathtub that harnesses steam-powered targeted bursts of water for rejuvenation,” said Francesca, ignoring the last statement.
“For pleasure?” said Anson, interested.
“For medical therapy,” said Francesca, dismissing him as an annoyance. “For those with injuries or atrophies, or those in need of musculature rehabilitation.”
“Interesting. Inspired by the new houseboy? He looks off kilter.”
“He is a mere child, a servant. He may have spastic tendencies but he has no need of water rejuvenation. He needs nutritional support and physical exercise.”
“So you took him in? Another one of your misfits and miscreants. Like you took in another boy once, remember? That boy from India.”
“My memory fades,” said Francesca, remaining impassive and shrugging her shoulders. She pushed herself up with her hand, stepping across the room to face Anson. “Why do you concern yourself with my household?”
“Because you are housing my enemies, Francesca.” Anson face flushed as one of his waistcoat buttons flew open.
“Don’t be absurd.” She swatted him on his girded stomach with her fan as she walked past him to the window.
“You do it as we speak,” said Anson, sputtering his words, his eyes blinking rapidly. “You deny it?”
“The little boy?” She laughed. “The boy who just left?” said Francesca, eyes wide with feigned innocence.
“Don’t toy with me, Francesca.” Anson’s upper lip perched above his teeth like a rodent. “The young man who is currently residing in your dining room.”
“Pity,” said Francesca. “You seemed so friendly moments ago. Now, you’ve become all sorts of ill-tempered.”
Anson leaned into her, momentarily calm. She pushed him away and reached for a handkerchief. “How did you learn of our this little excitement in my humble abode?” she asked.
“Your business is one of my priorities, Francesca. The comings and goings in your house are of interest to me.”
“You spy.”
“I receive information. That is all.”
“Then you must know what the fuss is about. And I bid you good day.” Francesca rose to leave the room, dismissing him behind her. She re-entered the room suddenly, “And you should see a chemist for your mood swings.” She waved her hand and walked out again.
“Are you being purposefully obtuse?” Anson huffed behind her. “I have reason to believe your latest guest is in my employ. Perhaps you now understand the awkwardness of my position and my interest in the matter?” Anson reached into his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. “My questions are also directed towards your well-being. You are far too trusting of these most vagrant of characters.”
“Indeed? Should I count you amongst the vagrants?” Francesca eyes narrowed as she walked to the front door of the brothel.
“You can count on my generous nature,” said Anson. “I provided you with the means to launch this business,” he said barely above a whisper, “and I have managed to contain Henry.” He looked at her and nodded.
“I owe you nothing,” she said. “This business is mine. And as for Henry, you contained nothing. I feed his depraved soul and watch him grow sicker with his own perversions each year he remains on this earth.” She walked to Anson and put her hands on his lapels. “I have insured his place in hell.”
“Francesca,” said Anson, trying to mollify her. “I didn’t come to offend you. I would just like a short word or two with your guest. That wouldn’t be too much to ask now, would it?”
“Quite impossible,” Francesca said, quickly cutting him off. “I am not of an inclination to confirm that I even harbor any guest. Other than the usual paying suspects, of course.” Francesca stood with an imperious face, looking beyond him to the window.
Anson looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. He sighed with resignation. “Might I suggest a partnership, Francesca?”
“No, dear. I don’t trust partnerships, I believe they are a relinquishment of power when applied to the fairer sex.”
“I deem you every bit as powerful as a man, Francesca. As you said, look at what you’ve built here, and, more interesting, who you service.”
“That is my business and my business to run as I see fit. I bid you good day.” Francesca pulled her skirts around her small frame, leaving her back to him. “And next time,” she chastised, “Please, please, do not land your dirigible so close to the rear gardens. It crushes the greenery and wreaks havoc on my bulbs.” She stepped to the lace curtains, resting her hand on a velvet chair. “The roof would be a more suitable location for landing and I have a convenient laddered descent on the south side. Please keep that in mind for your next invasion.” Francesca smiled and grabbed her fan. “I mean visit.”
“So our meeting is over?”
“You know the way out, of course.” Francesca slightly curtsied and cocked her head, slowly walking back into the main house. Closing the door from the foyer behind her, she ran like a bolt of lightning to the back dining area.
“I will speak with him eventually, Francesca,” the door creaked, sorely in need of oiling, as he pulled it open. “We both know it. I was hoping we could work this out amicably, between friends.” Anson reached into his pocket and pulled out a small hand sized key ring. He tossed it up and down in the air. Brass rounded balance wheels, hands, and gears sat mounted on a clear resin centered by a blinking and incandescent ruby light.
“Thank you for the warning, Professor Anson,” Francesca said with stilted formality, staring at his blinking brass ornament.
“Intrigued?”
Francesca stood quietly impassive; admitting nothing, her back was straight against the wall.
“It is remote starter for my dirigible. If you were even slightly cooperative towards me today, I would let you use it.” He pushed the ruby button and a horn sounded from the zeppelin. “See? I have unlocked it from here, from the very insides of your house!” Anson sounded like an amazed child. He held the remote in the air like a hypnotist; the cogs and hands swayed from side to side like a shiny pendulum.
Francesca swatted Anson’s arm, disrupting the rhythm of his remote. Anson laughed, embedding his device firmly inside his palm. He tipped his hat and exited quickly, “Always a pleasure, Madam.”
Francesca narrowed her eyes and held herself completely still as Anson’s shoes echoed down the uneven cobbles of her walk, the stones had been dropped many years before and had never been straightened into any semblance of order. She watched him through the window as he entered his zeppelin. A black cloud of smoke exited the rear as he propelled upward. As soon as he rose above the house, disappearing in the fog, she quickly ran down the carpeted stairs to the back area of the house.
“He knows someone is here,” Francesca said between breaths. Pulling her velvet dressing gown around her, she pulled the heavy window curtains, leaving only a small crack of light, and lit the wall sconces.
Nico rested underneath a few hats suspended from wall hooks in the back dining area. His jacket was a shocking purple, trimmed in chartreuse. His yellow hair, matted in dreadlocks, rested on the gold lapels. He sat, propped by pillows, with a fruit basket on his lap.
“Thanks for not giving me away, Francesca,” said Nico.
“Do you work for him?” Francesca asked. “I am willing to help you and Bodhi and your other friends, but I have the right to know if you work for him.” She thrust her chilly hands into her fur-lined pockets.
“Do I work for him?” Nico laughed. “No, and yes.” Nico gazed sideways, his hazel eyes looked perplexed but his face was unguarded. He sat still.
“Well which is it?”
“It is more no than yes,” said Nico. “We introduced ourselves to Anson as hired guns,” Nico breathed in deeply. “But only so that we could learn how he th
inks and how he lives.”
“Oh, dear,” said Francesca. “He suspects you are my hidden guest.”
“He can suspect all he wants.”
“Did Anson attack you, Nico?”
“No.”
“What do you have that he wants?”
“What he wants isn’t here. I gave it to the man we were hiding it from.”
“I’m not a woman to judge, Nico, but you make no sense. You answer in riddles.” Francesca bent to pick up a fallen tube of liniment. She shoved it back into her pocket. Reaching towards him, she tucked his hair behind his ears. “Have you turned against your friends? Is that why they haven’t come back?”
“No. No. You don’t understand. I don’t know what I can and can’t tell you. Anson wants the Tabulator. I believe he’s unable to rebuild it on his own. It was his father’s design, not his, and I believe he doesn’t possess the blueprints. Rolls hid them.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me, when he asked me to kill Caroline and Josephine.”
“He asked you to what?” Francesca leaned back into her chair, her hand to her neck.
“He wanted us to kill the thieves of the Tabulator. He asked me and Yeshua to do it.”
“He believed you were assassins?”
“He believed what we led him to believe.”
“And this calculation machine?” Francesca said, smoothing her skirts and pouring the tea. “Who has it, if not you?”
“It turns out the man we wanted to keep it from is the only man who can keep it from Anson.”
“This makes no sense. I need to get the boiler started, this room has a chill.”
Nico nodded politely, he opened his hand and glanced down at the dulled silver chip that had imprisoned him. He held it up to her, a tiny circle, between his thumb and index finger. Francesca walked over and held the chip in her palm. Nico pulled the blanket higher on his lap, smiling at Francesca as she furrowed her brow, confused. She stepped over to the fireplace and poked at the embers.
“What is this?” Francesca laid the chip on the mahogany dining table. “You can tell me, Nico.”
“Knowing too many details is dangerous,” said Nico. Suspicion hung in the air like a cloak, holding them together.
“All right, Nico. You must know, after all I have done, that you can trust my discretion.” The serving boy entered through the swinging doors from the side with scones, clotted cream, and tea. “Thank you, dear. That will be all,” she said, dismissing the boy from the room with a sweep of her hand.
Francesca sat back in a strange dread. Nico’s face took on a menacing cast as he looked out the window, to the side street. A yellowy brown haze enveloped the sky; a bridge in the distance seemed twisted and curved through a myopic fog. The sun cast only small remnants of late morning light.
The side alleyway was a crush of boys in caps, omnibuses, and cabriolets. Under the din of the wet rain, yelling drivers and panting horses, London’s gentry went about their daily tasks. Nico studied the street activity. “You see, here, where you live, you’re London born and bred. Certain things come of that of course, but what you do and think is a matter of your own imagination and desire, for the most part anyway. Your actions are clearly of your own making.”
“Well, yes. I suppose. But I am not sure I follow you.”
Nico sat silently, squinting out the window. “When I was a boy, I had trouble paying attention. I would ‘act out.’ Then, one day, it stopped. Everything was quiet in my head. But I knew it wasn’t my mind – it was a forced silence. It was that,” Nico said as he pointed to the chip on the table, “that thing on the table. It made me manageable.” Nico’s composure cracked and he cleared his throat.
A squat, wet-nosed reddish corgi entered the room, shuffling to lie quietly on the bottom of Francesca’s gown. Francesca considered the chip, innocuously sitting on her table. The watery light of the morning gained strength.
“The things I liked no longer interested me. I was being fed. Fed what to like, what to do, and how to think and reason.”
“I don’t understand how Anson can be responsible for such a thing.” Francesca moved her chair closer to the fire.
“He began it all. He had the light bulb moment. But he needed money - an investor. And that is where things became complicated.”
“So you took the Tabulator from him?”
Nico nodded. “In hopes of keeping him from meeting the investor.”
“Forgive me, but can’t he rebuild or reconstruct it? He’s a very clever man.”
“As I said, he doesn’t have the original plans. It’s not simply a machine of nuts and bolts that he could copy. The tabulator has memory and intelligence. Frederick Rolls had them for safekeeping, but who knows where they are now.”
“Thus, the bombing, all those years ago…” Francesca guessed.
“Exactly.”
Nico dropped his head and thought of when he lay on the street, left for dead. He remembered the warm softness of his scalp as his hung loosely around his ear. He remembered alternately blacking out and coming to again, he remembered a brief glimpse of faded and streaky brown cowboy boot; another man, bleeding from his own mouth. Nico started to break a sweat.
Francesca set her hands on Nico’s shoulders. “Think about nothing but your recovery. I’ll do my best to keep you safely hidden.”
Nico nodded dismissively.
“Your friends will return, Nico. You haven’t been left behind. Unless you choose to remain behind. You do have choices now. You are a free man.”
Silence sat between them. Francesca dropped the chip in Nico’s hand, gently, as if it were alive. Nico folded his blanket as Francesca reached for a cheroot from a mother of pearl cigar case. The room filled with a spicy smell of candied cherry tobacco.
“Totalmente a mano,” said Francesca, offering a hand rolled cigar to Nico. He declined with a smile.
“Smoking will kill you,” said Nico.
“It’s medicinal. My physician says it will calm my nerves,” said Francesca. “I find it steadies me.”
“Why are you friends with Anson?” asked Nico. “He came here expecting you to help him. So, I don’t understand why you are helping us. Then you even turned on him when we interrogated Henry. We couldn’t have stolen his Tabulator without you.”
“Henry is a pawn, a simple thug. But Anson and I understand each other well. We have a relationship based on mutual admiration and occasional suspicion. But I have other ties, ties of loyalty.”
“To Anson?” said Nico.
“No,” she answered as she cleared the table. “To Bodhi. And to Minnow.”
The Sphere
Early September 1865
A maze of partitions separated the neatly slanted desks inside the Sphere. The one hundred foot tall structure managed to remain intact over the years, but was almost completely hidden by overgrown ivy. Built secretly behind the woods of the main residence, the cylindrical base and lower part of the large sphere was iron; the narrow middle was bronze, supporting the rounded upper area that was paneled with glass. Caroline pushed aside the creepers and vines, and her boots crunched through the leaves. They made their way to the entrance, a small hidden elevator with rusted gates, peeked through the ivy.
“Sorry for all the dust, Caroline.” Bodhi apologized as they entered the elevator.
Caroline wiped her eyes and tried not to sneeze, “It’s fine.” Slowly, the mechanical elevator grinded it’s way to the top of the sphere. The door slowly opened, revealing a library of books, papers, and desks, neatly organized in rows.
“This is the desk I was speaking about.” Bodhi pointed to the north end of the room. “The old roll top. I haven’t gone through everything but what I have managed to find is most remarkable.”
Bodhi pulled the top open to Rolls’s desk. Yellowed papers were stuffed alongside scientific catalogs and several card files sprang from hidden cabinetry. Wrapped in a crumbling world map lay Bodhi’s old goggles, ta
rnished but intact.
“Shall we have some tea?” said Caroline. “Then we can look through these things with a fresh perspective and a clear head.”
“Indeed.”
“Isn’t this strange architecture for a man like Rolls? One would imagine a more traditional design,” Caroline said as she took off her gloves, looking about the circular room. “Let’s uncover the furniture and brighten things up a bit, shall we?”
“Hmmm, of course. Just a moment though.” Bodhi pulled out the wrinkled map and lifted up his old goggles. Caroline started folding the sheets thrown over the furniture, waving away the dust as it fell back down. Bodhi cleaned the goggle, adjusted them for size and put them on.
“Mr. Rolls had goggles?” said Caroline. “Perhaps he was not truly the Luddite we had believed. Perhaps he led a double life.”
“No, silly. These were mine.”
The door separating the main office from the foyer suddenly opened. “Hello, Bodhi. How does it feel to be such a base criminal? And how is your feral female accomplice keeping? In good health, I trust, my dear Lady Caroline?” Anson stepped in the room, snapped the door shut behind him. He walked along the perimeter of the oval room pulling each curtain closed. “You seem to be down one cohort, I notice.” Anson snorted as the final curtain dimmed the room. In his hands, he held the gold tieback tassels He twisted them around his fingers, stroking them as he looked around the room.
“How did you get in here?” asked Bodhi.
“And you, dear Lady Ratcliffe. What would your father say if he were here? It would kill him.” He licked his bottom lip. “Oh, I forgot. It has killed him. My condolences.”
“Professor Anson,” said Caroline, ignoring his taunts. “How strange to see you here. But I must say that you have caught us at inconvenient time. Perhaps we can reschedule your visit.”
“No. And enough with the niceties,” he said as he pushed her aside. “Unlock the desk, sir,” he said to Bodhi.
