“Ever’one all right?” Snouts croaked, eyes screwed shut in pain. “Mopsies?”
Two cries answered him. One was the girl Claire had relieved of her waist. An identical copy wrapped itself around the first, and they both burst into fresh tears.
“Jake?”
“I’m gonna die, Snouts. Jus’ kill me now, eh?”
Ah. Jake, the unfortunate burn victim. His difficulties were only increasing the longer he retained Claire’s acquaintance.
“Tigg?”
“’Ere, to my misfortune,” wailed the boy who had been wearing Claire’s coat.
“’Oo’s got Weepin’ Willie?” came another voice, belonging to a boy of about twelve who cowered in the gutter, his ragged jacket over his head.
“I gots ’im,” Snouts reported. “Can’t you ’ear the racket?”
“What happened? Who’s set upon us?”
Claire stepped out of the shadows, even though none of them could see yet. “I have.”
Silence fell, broken only by the sobbing of Weepin’ Willie and the Mopsies.
“’Oo’s that, then?” Snouts tried to crack his eyes open, which only resulted in more agony as the condensed gas on his face dribbled into them. “Wot we done to you?”
“You have attacked me, stolen my possessions, and taken my landau,” Claire snapped, her voice ringing into the night. “You will return every piece of my property at once or I’ll give you a second dose.” There were not enough chemicals in the satchel to make good on it, but she would bet not one tortured individual lying in the street was about to take the risk.
“’Oo are you?” Snouts set the wriggling Willie on his feet and sat abruptly in the gutter, still blinded.
“Never mind who I am. But what I am not is some puling victim willing to be cowed and beaten by the likes of you. I demand the return of my property immediately.”
The waif—Willie—ran across the road, bawling, and flung himself against her knees. Nonplussed, she stared down at him for a moment, then sighed. “All right. All right then, little man, let me wipe the capsaicin out of your eyes.” She knelt, found her handkerchief still in her sleeve, and wiped his face. He wrapped his arms around her neck and sobbed. “Poor darling, why did you not wait for me? I didn’t mean for you to be gassed as well.”
“’Ow does she know our Willie?” Tigg’s voice was muffled from trying to grind his eye sockets into his knees. “She ent gonna hurt ’im any more, is she?”
Claire raised her chin. “Unlike some in present company, I have no intention of hurting anyone. I simply want my things when you are sufficiently recovered to gather them up.”
“’Ow long will that be?” Snouts attempted to open his eyes again, and whimpered behind clenched teeth.
“About thirty minutes, I should say.” Then she had an idea. “Willie, would you be so kind as to direct me within? I’m quite capable of repacking my trunk myself.”
“You leave our Willie alone.” The two Mopsies faced her, using their ragged garments to wipe the tears streaming from their eyes. One of them hauled back and kicked Claire in the shin.
“You wretched little monster!”
Claire dropped Willie on the cobbles and caught the girl by the back of her combies as she spun to escape. It was the work of a moment to turn her over her knee and remind her of Newton’s law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
“Snouts!” the miscreant screamed, wriggling out of Claire’s grip and running for her life. “She whacked me!”
“There’s a surprise,” he mumbled.
“Shoot her!”
“Wiv what? You fink I’ve got a pistol in me undershorts?”
“But she whacked me!”
“You won’t be kicking her again, then, will ya?”
Fuming, the child stamped her foot and shot Claire an evil look, compounded by swollen eyes and a dirty, tear-streaked face. “You’ll be sorry, lady.”
“I’m afraid you’ll be the sorry one if you try to assault me again,” Claire informed her. “Honestly, I’ve never seen such a badly brought-up child, and that’s saying something, considering the past several days.”
“I ent been brought up, and you’re just mean.” The moppet stamped again.
“Don’t stamp. It isn’t ladylike.”
Stamp. Stamp .
Claire dodged behind Snouts’s balled-up form and snatched the disgusting creature by the back of her combies a second time. Again the laws of physics were soundly applied, to the accompaniment of such screeching Claire fully expected either bobbies or criminals to descend on them all like the wrath of God.
She set the child on its feet and silently dared it to stamp again. Its leg twitched once before discretion became the better part. “A wise decision,” she told it. “I’m encouraged to see that you have some capacity for education.”
The moppet blinked and ran away to its sister, who put her arms around it and administered what comfort she could to wounded pride and hinder parts.
Claire straightened her spine and surveyed the field of battle. Satisfied that no one had the spirit or the physical capacity to challenge her victory, she held out her hand to Willie. “Would you be so kind as to escort me inside, Master Willie?”
The boy shot an uncertain glance at Snouts.
The latter had at last managed to open one eye just a crack. He waved a defeated hand. “Don’t look at me. I ent gonna argue wiv ’er.”
Chapter 16
Inside the derelict building, the gaseous miasma had already begun to clear, not finding the walls and roof any great impediment to its rise through the atmosphere. But Claire still felt a stinging in her eyes, like an echo of the pain endured by the criminals outside.
Criminals, hmph. They were children. How was it possible that so many children should be parentless and forced to make their own way in the world? It was one thing to be eighteen and possessed of an education. It was quite another to be ten ... or four ... and possessed of nothing at all.
Master Willie, being closer to the ground and less affected by the remnants of the gas, found her a lamp on a hook. Then he towed her over to her trunk, which lay empty on its side next to a cold fireplace that appeared not to have been cleaned since the Queen of Empires had begun her glorious reign.
“Ah. Here’s a start. Well done.” She righted the trunk and laid her embroidered waist inside. Then, holding the lamp high with one hand and her skirts with the other, she followed Willie carefully up a rickety stair—more of a ladder, really—that creaked alarmingly at their combined weight.
As she collected her various bits of clothing—underthings, blouses, walking skirts, dresses, hats—she saw they had already been sorted into heaps with sundry like items that were not nearly as clean. “Willie, were these going to the ragmen in the morning?” He nodded, his eyes tearing a little at the last remnants of the gas. “It’s a lucky thing I acted quickly, then. If I had waited, I should never have seen my clothes again. You wouldn’t have observed a small traveling case containing a Bible, would you?”
The little boy glanced to the rear of the apartment, where there was a single plank door. Everywhere else, it appeared the members of this gang were using the piles of rags and clothes as bedding until enough had accumulated to go to the ragman or the stall-keepers in Petticoat Lane. But someone rated the privacy and status of a door, and she had one guess as to who that might be.
“Is that Snouts’s room?” Willie nodded. “Since he has given me carte blanche to recover my property, I shan’t feel too badly about invading his privacy, then.”
Willie looked alarmed, and she suspected all the children were under threat of death if they, like Bluebeard’s wives, succumbed to the temptation to open the door.
For all his status as leader, Snouts had not much more than his minions, she saw as she stepped cautiously inside. A pile of rags, a pipe, a cage containing rags, and a window with real glass in it was the extent of his worldly goods. The room stank of acid alcoho
l and offal. Primming her mouth in disgust, Claire rooted through the rag-pile until her hands touched a hard and rectangular shape.
Her traveling case. She carried it over to the lamp and opened it to find only the Bible inside. The lock of hair still lay within, so that was another blessing. But what of the rest? She tipped up the false bottom and peered in, then felt the compartment with her fingers.
Nothing. No notebooks, and certainly no jewelry.
“Willie, have you seen any sign of a book and a notebook for writing in? They were in this case.” Again, he shook his head, looking worried. “Never mind. I shall have to conduct an interrogation, that’s all. Best to do that while the suspects are still somewhat incapacitated. Will you help me return these things to the trunk, please?”
A muffled sound, like water bubbling in a pipe, came as though in reply. Willie’s eyes widened and she glanced in the direction of his gaze. “Is there something alive in there?”
What she had mistaken for a heap of rags inside the cage moved and lifted its head. Two black eyes regarded her with suspicion, and the bubbling sound came again.
“Good heavens. Is that a chicken?” Willie gripped the windowsill and stood on tiptoe to peer into the cage. “Snouts keeps a chicken in his room? Why on earth should he do that?” The little boy gestured with both hands and she understood. “Ah. An inexhaustible source of food. What a pity he doesn’t understand that one needs to care for one’s birds in order to expect something in return.” If she had been angry before, it was nothing to what she felt now. This poor creature, locked in the dark with nothing to eat, expected to produce food until—what? It died?
“Come along, little bird.” She picked up the cage. “Willie, you are in charge of lighting us downstairs.”
In a few moments she had repacked everything into her trunk, and closed the lid. She was not sure how she was going to move it, and she did not yet know where the landau was, but she could only accomplish one thing at a time.
“Thank you for your assistance, Master Willie. Your help has been invaluable.”
For the first time, a smile broke out on his face, and she saw a dimple wink on each side of his mouth. He hugged her knees and she dropped to his level, carefully putting the cage on the floor before she hugged him back. When she tried to rise again, he hung on. “What is it, Willie?”
His grip tightened.
“You don’t want me to take the bird? No. You don’t want me to go outside again? But I must. It is clear that a few of my possessions are secreted upon the persons of your friends, and I intend to retrieve them.”
He shook his head, as if her guess was incorrect, and held her immobile with the force of his affection. “What is it, dear? I don’t understand.”
He released her and ran to the largest rag-pile, where he busied himself making the hollow in it larger, as if to accommodate a—
“Willie, is it that you want me to stay here?”
Beaming, he nodded, and sat himself in the hollow he had made, patting the space next to him. Unaccountably, her eyes filled with tears.
“But my dear, I must go. I must find a place to lay my head this evening, and then continue my search for employment. I appreciate your help deeply, and someday when I can, I will repay you, but I cannot stay.”
The smile faded from his face, and even the pathetic hen in the cage made a sad sound. Compassion warred with practicality. It was one thing to rescue a hen that was probably on its last legs anyway. It was quite another thing to rescue a child—or a number of children. Some things were just beyond her means and ability at the moment. She had never realized the power in a child’s tears—especially when this particular child had so little, and she was about to take even that away.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Grasping the hen’s cage, she went outside.
The members of the gang—oh, for heaven’s sake, the children—had pulled themselves into a knot on the steps of the rope-maker’s establishment opposite. When she appeared, they stirred uneasily. Well, they didn’t know she had nothing but a cardigan in her satchel, did they?
“Thanks to Master Willie’s assistance, I now have most of my things,” she said, taking up a schoolteacher’s stance before them. “I now require two books, a parcel of pencils, a ring, and a pearl necklace, and I also require the whereabouts of my landau.”
They shifted, making themselves smaller on the steps. Snouts gulped audibly and climbed to his feet, brushing the fronts of his patched trousers. “We—we gots a proposition for you, lady.” Then he peered through the gloom. “Izzat my Rosie you got there?”
“If you mean this unfortunate scrap of poultry, then yes. I am in the process of rescuing her.”
“But she’s mine. How’m I gonna eat?”
“I suspect you’ll develop the same skills as your companions, Mr. Snouts. You have starved and degraded this poor creature until it’s a wonder she’ll give you anything but a sound pecking.”
“’E caught ’er in t’market in Poultry Street,” Tigg said. “’E were gonna eat ’er but t’Mopsies talked ’im out of it.”
The Mopsies glared at her, as if she’d singlehandedly undone all their good work. “You may rest assured no one will eat her whilst she is in my care,” she assured them. “Now. My property, if you please.”
“Our proposition first,” Snouts said.
“Mr. Snouts, you are hardly in a position to bargain. I am the one with the poisonous chemicals.”
“McTavish.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My name’s McTavish. Snouts is just a handle.”
“And a fair one it is,” Tigg snickered.
“’At’s enough! I’m doing a spot o’ business ’ere, can’t you see?” He turned back to Claire. “Our proposition is, we give you back yer stuff if you stick aroun’ an’ teach us ’ow to make them chemicals and such.”
Willie crept up behind her and wrapped his arms around her knees. Snouts McTavish nodded. “Willie likes yer, so ye must not be like them toffs wot beat us off their fancy carriages.”
Memory flared. It had been the day she’d driven Gorse home from school—the day she’d caused the explosion in the laboratory. “That was you. You stopped my landau in front of Pilkington’s Hotel. I gave you all the change I had.”
Snouts shrugged. “So those’re our terms. For every day you stay wiv us an’ teach us summink, we give you back one of your gewgaws.”
“And my landau?” For the first time, Snouts lost his bravado. He sucked his upper lip into his teeth. “Mr. McTavish, do you have my landau or do you not?”
“Not,” he mumbled.
“You don’t? Then where is it?”
“Billy Crumwell an’ ’is gang stole ’er off us.” He met her eyes, pleading. “We ’ad ’er stashed safe as houses, honest, but they followed us. When we went back wiv a buyer—er, I mean, a friend of ours, yer landau were gone.”
Claire fought down a rising explosion of rage at having yet another foe to face. “If I stay and teach you, will you help me get it back?”
“Oh, aye, lady. I wouldn’t want it nosed about that Snouts McTavish can’t ’ang onto ’is plunder.” She glared at him. “Ah, I mean, that someone can take wot don’t belong to ’em and get away wiv it. It ent honest.”
“The hen remains mine.”
“Aye,” he said reluctantly.
“None of my property shall go missing again.”
He gave his companions a look. “Aye.”
If she left now to go to her grand-aunts Beaton, she would never see her notebook, full of years of painstaking experimentation, or her great-grandmother’s ring again. And the simple fact was, her aunts did not want her there. They were set like summer mud in their own ways, and barely tolerated anyone under fifty, never mind someone just out of school. Her friends could not help, and her mother was hundreds of miles away. She glanced down at Willie, who was still performing the duties of a ball and chain around her knees. He smiled up at her, and he
r heart turned over.
At least someone in the wide world cared whether she came or went—whether she had a bed for the night or not. It might be Hobson’s choice, but at least it was a choice. “Willie and Rosie shall share the upper room with me. I am afraid propriety dictates you must move your things and sleep with your companions, Mr. McTavish.”
“And you get all the eggs?”
“Certainly not. We shall save the eggs and have an enormous fry-up, to be shared by all. That is, provided we find some corn and perhaps some greens for Rosie to eat in the meantime. She is not an automaton. She must be cared for.”
“We’ll find food for ’er, lady.” The Mopsie that Claire had not paddled spoke up. The other one rubbed its behind and remained mutinously silent.
“We are agreed, then. I will teach you how to construct my gaseous capsaicin devices, and you will return my things and assist me in the recovery of my landau.”
Snouts nodded, and slowly the others followed his lead.
“Wot’s yer name?” the boy who had worn her coat asked. “We can’t call yer ‘lady ’oo makes the devices’ all the time.”
Claire hesitated a moment. “Lady will do for now. It has the advantage of being both true and anonymous.”
“Wot’s nominus?”
“What I choose to be until I make something of myself, that’s what. Now, then. I have observed that the gas I released inside, while it made you uncomfortable, had the side benefit of killing all the vermin in the place. Shall we all adjourn and see what comfort we can find in our lodgings?”
Chapter 17
It cannot be said that Claire spent a comfortable night on her rag-pile. While Willie breathed gently next to her, she started and woke at every sound, suspecting thievery or vermin—she wasn’t sure which would be worse. When a watery dawn finally broke over London, she was already awake and regretting the absence of tooth-powder and warm water to wash in.
Lady of Devices Page 9
