Black Iron

by Franklin Veaux

  The Yard was, for want of a better word for it, a yard. It was a large yard, made as impressive as the Royal Architects could make it, given the paucity of material to work with. It was nearly two blocks long, and situated just across the main entrance to police headquarters. Hedges in neat, stepped rows lined its edges, maintained by royal order to mathematical exactitude. In the precise center of the Yard stood a lonely flagpole topped with a bronze casting of a woman, only barely less scandalous in her attire than Lady Justice, holding a trident triumphantly skyward. The whole thing was rather dreary, in its geometrically perfect way.

  It hadn’t originally been a yard. Once, it had been a school. But then again, New Scotland Yard had been a curved street once. King John could not abide streets that curved for no reason. He also believed that if a street was called New Scotland Yard, there should be a yard on it. He had both of those oversights corrected during the Great Reconstruction. Nowadays, it was noteworthy mainly for the astonishing number of pigeons that called it home.

  On most afternoons, the Yard was surrounded by throngs of people on their way to and from the Palace. For the most part, they stuck to the sidewalks, walking around the Yard rather than through it. On most days, there was, as a general rule, nobody on the Yard itself. Almost nobody ever went on the Yard.

  Not today. Today, the Yard played host to nearly thirty people, all lined up in two neat rows so tidy as to make King John’s heart soar, if indeed he had had a heart, which was purely a matter of conjecture.

  Skarbunket paced back and forth, seemingly unaware of the rows of men standing in front of him. Beside him, Mayferry shifted his weight uncertainly. Little gusts of bone-chilling wind blew around them. A light rain drifted down from the ashen sky, the kind of rain that gets in your eyes and sticks to your clothes, just enough to make you uncomfortable but not enough to be worth getting out the umbrella for. Inside Skarbunket’s mind, a cold wind howled.

  “Sir?” The voice, hesitant, originated somewhere in the second row. The owner of the voice, a thin, gangly man who barely looked a day over sixteen, coughed nervously. He had large blue eyes and a shock of yellow hair that sprouted almost vertically from his head, giving him the perpetual expression of a very surprised duck that had just had an unfortunate accident with a live electrical wire.

  “Yes?” Skarbunket said. His eyes refocused on the external world. “Tumbanker, is it?”

  “Yes, sir. Peter Tumbanker, sir. Beg pardon, sir, but why are we here?”

  “The times are changing,” Skarbunket said, more to himself than to the ranked men before him.

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  A gust of wind blew a smattering of rain into Skarbunket’s eyes. He shook his head. “Most of you have probably heard the news by now. The Council of Lords has ordered a curfew for all residents of Highpole Street, beginning at six o’clock tonight and each night thereafter until such time as the Lady Alÿs de Valois of the French Court is located.”

  “And she’s somewhere in Highpole, is she?”

  “Not to our knowledge.”

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “Then I suppose it’s a good thing that understanding is not part of your job,” Skarbunket said, his face carefully neutral.

  “But sir, if we’re all out at Highpole tonight, who will be patrolling the rest of London?”

  “Who indeed, Mister Tumbanker. London will have to look after itself tonight.”

  “What about tomorrow night? And the night after that? Won’t the crims know we’re all in Highpole?”

  “You have an admirable way of putting your finger directly on the pulse of the problem, Mister Tumbanker. I do not doubt, and I say this not to discourage you, Mister Tumbanker, but I do not doubt that will cause you no end of trouble as you advance in the Force. Do you have any other impertinent questions for me, Mister Tumbanker?”

  “Just one, sir. Won’t the people in Highpole be upset?”

  “Oh, yes, I imagine they will be. Very upset, I expect. Ask yourself how you would feel in their shoes.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Skarbunket looked at the ranks of tense faces. They were all good men, to a one; perhaps a trifle uninspired, some of them, but good men nonetheless. Each of them had been placed in an untenable position and was looking to him for a way out.

  And he had nothing to offer them. Well, nothing beyond the consolation prize of firsthand experience with the twisted labyrinth of the political mind.

  “We do as we’re told,” he said. “We enforce the curfew. Our betters have spoken.” He made no attempt to keep the bitterness from his voice. “Effective immediately, all other ongoing investigations are paused. Whatever it was you were doing, you aren’t doing it anymore. I am designating Finske, Pipstrin, and Leodsman as acting commanding officers for the duration of the curfew. I want each of you to take a section of Highpole Street south of the mosque and work out amongst yourselves which men you will take with you. Mayferry, Habis, Nadeem, Tumbanker, and Levy, you will accompany me. Mayferry, choose another half a dozen or so people who you trust to keep their wits about them. We will be enforcing the curfew on the north end of the street.”

  “Me, sir?” Tumbanker’s eyes were wide. “Why me?”

  “Because you have a keen and inquisitive mind, Mister Tumbanker, and as I said, such a thing may cause no end of mischief if it is not carefully managed. Oh, there is one other thing, if I may, gentlemen. Remember that these people you will encounter tonight are citizens of London, the very people you swore an oath to protect. Some of you number the residents of Highpole among your friends. Some of you live there, or have family there. The people of Highpole will be angry, and this is reasonable. They are not the enemy. I expect to see no less than the highest level of conduct from each of you. If any of you gentlemen here assembled believe you may have difficulty remembering the oath you took when you joined the Force, step forward now. There is no room among us for such men. Anyone?”

  He waited for several heartbeats. A field of statues could not have been so still. “Good,” he said. “I will see you all reassemble here at four thirty. Mayferry, Habis, Nadeem, Tumbanker, Levy, with me, if you please.” He turned smartly and headed back toward headquarters. The other men had to race to keep up with him.

  19

  “I don’t know anything!” Eleanor wailed.

  She was sitting on an uncomfortable chair in the guardroom behind a broad, polished-wood table that looked brand new. Behind her, the stone wall was lit by the flickering yellow glow of oil lamps. Her fingers twisted together in the fabric of the long green dress she wore, clenching and unclenching, clenching and unclenching.

  King John had personally decreed that the guardroom would be illuminated by oil lamps rather than the modern electric arc lamps that graced most of the rest of the Palace. He embraced the onward march of Progress, but when it came to matters of personal security, his sensibilities took a more pragmatic turn. He had reasoned that if all the light in the Palace came from electricity, then all that would be necessary to storm the Palace would be to cut those slender copper wires that connected the Palace to the great coal-powered generators a mile or so away. It was what he would do, anyway. So critical parts of the Palace could be illuminated by gas jet, oil lamp, or both, should the need arise.

  Besides, oil lamps gave the guardroom a more appropriate ambiance.

  On the other side of the table, Max the Axe and Julianus sat looking at Eleanor. Max the Axe was angry. This time, his attention was not split.

  “Aiding and abetting a fugitive from justice is treason,” Max growled. “Treason is punishable by death.”

  “But I don’t know where she is!” Eleanor was near tears. “I told you! I don’t know anything!”

  Julianus leaned back, eyes half closed. His head throbbed. This day hadn’t been the least bit productive so far, and it didn’t see
m to be on a path toward improving anytime soon.

  They’d spent most of the morning in the kite maker’s shop in Highpole. The police had whisked away the body to wherever it was they took murder victims. The man in charge of the investigation, Scarbungle or Stambangle or something like that, was one of those sorts who was entirely too clever for his own good. He didn’t like the presence of Max and Julianus at his crime scene and had made a show of pretending to conceal his disdain for them without quite going so far as to actually conceal his disdain for them. He and his men did what policemen did, which mostly seemed to be looking around a lot and writing notes in small notebooks.

  Chiyo Kanda, the recent and recently deceased proprietor of the shop, had been the sort to keep careful, meticulous, and highly detailed notes in a thin, precise hand on all her clientele, all recorded in a thick ledger book bound in leather. That was the good bit.

  And oh, such a good bit it was. The ledger was massive, a thing of extraordinary beauty, wrapped in soft red leather embossed with intricate geometric designs. The edge of the book was painted with a seascape, small black birds soaring high above foam-topped waves. The pages of the book were filled with notes, calligraphy, sketches, a watercolor or two, and ledger entries—hundreds of pages of ledger entries, all neatly organized. The last quarter or so of the book was blank.

  The bad bit, at least for anyone other than Chiyo Kanda, was that all her careful records were written in a language neither the two Guardsmen nor the policemen had ever seen before, all boxes and little lines stacked in neat columns. It contained a vast amount of information, all of which was completely inaccessible to the police, the Guard, and all the language experts employed by both.

  Julianus’s optimism had gradually evaporated, replaced by that throbbing pressure in his head. The ledger book was a dead end. It contained the identity of the mysterious person who had commissioned the kite, he was sure of it. But it kept its secrets tightly locked away behind a wall of strange impenetrable handwriting.

  When Julianus proposed they show the ledger book around the Highpole District, in hopes that someone else might be able to read the odd, blocky script, the police commander, Scarbungle or Starbucket or whatever his name was, had insisted on accompanying them, citing “chain of custody” and “verifiable information” and other things that had made Max very angry. His tone and manner suggested he questioned the integrity of the Queen’s Guard. If there was one thing that Max the Axe could not abide, it was anyone who questioned his integrity.

  If there was a second thing Max the Axe could not abide, it was anyone who questioned his authority. If there was a third thing Max the Axe could not abide, it was anyone who doubted his dedication to the Realm. After that, Julianus stopped keeping count of the things about Steerbundle that Max the Axe could not abide.

  He let the two of them argue it out, intervening only a couple of times when it seemed Max might be on the brink of doing something regrettably violent to a commander of the municipal police force, which, while understandable, might have led to a distracting political tangle.

  Eventually, they agreed that Max, Julianus, and the police commander would all look in Highpole for a translator for the ledger. That, too, had been a dead end. Nobody they talked to seemed to know how to read the book; in fact, few of the people they encountered seemed to speak the Queen’s English at all. A crowd had gathered around the three of them, all whispers and suspicious gestures, but wherever they turned their attention, it seemed to melt away into nothing. And, of course, nobody knew anything.

  Typical.

  Finally, Julianus had given up. “This is pointless,” he said. “We’re getting nowhere. We need to come at this from another angle.”

  “Alÿs,” Max said.

  “Ah, there it is at last! I wondered how long it would take us to come to a meeting of the minds, partner,” Julianus said. “Yes,” he continued, ignoring Max’s expression, “the Lady Alÿs. We followed the kite to the shop, and there she was. She’s connected to the shop, which means she’s connected to the kite, which means she’s connected to the man who jumped out of the airship with the kite. All these threads tie together. We just need to find the right one. What threads connect to Alÿs?”

  “I bet I can find some of those,” Max had said. His face was bright with the promise of violence.

  Half an hour later, they were in the guardroom with Eleanor in tow.

  “I told you already! She didn’t tell me where she was going!” Eleanor said. She looked back and forth between the two of them, searching their faces. The Queen’s Guard was supposed to protect the Queen, and by extension, that meant they were supposed to protect her. Yet somehow, things had gone topsy-turvy. The Queen arrested by members of her own Guard, her ladies being interrogated like common criminals, or Italians…

  “You are her best friend,” Julianus said.

  “Yes! I mean, no! I mean, I don’t know! She was…she is…she hardly talks to me!”

  “That’s not what the other members of the Court say,” Julianus said mildly. He examined his fingernails as though suspecting them of collusion with Eleanor.

  “Okay! Okay! Yes, we are friends!” Eleanor said. Tears flowed. “But I swear on the life of Her Grace Queen Margaret of Britain, I don’t know where she is!”

  “She left yesterday afternoon,” Julianus said.

  “Yes! We were talking about Shoe Man, and—”

  “Shoe Man?”

  “The man who jumped out of the airship!”

  “Did she know him?”

  “No! She wanted to go look for him. I tried to warn her that he was an Italian spy, but she wouldn’t listen! I told her the Italians aren’t like us! They eat babies, I told her that!” She looked up, horrified. “Do you think he caught her? Do you think he—” Her voice choked off in a sob.

  Julianus glanced at Max. “Where was she going to look for him?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “What did she say?”

  “She didn’t say anything! She just stood up and left. She had that look in her eye, the one she gets when she runs off on one of her adventures.” Her expression changed, became more hopeful. “Why aren’t you talking to that stable boy? He usually helps her when she gets in one of her moods. I bet he knows where she went! You should talk to him!”

  “Do you mean Henry? Young lad, about so tall, red hair?” Julianus asked.

  “Yes! Henry! You should talk to him!”

  “We did,” Julianus said. “We spoke to him and his brother not half an hour ago. They were cooperative, but not very helpful. That’s how these things go sometimes.”

  “Did they know where she went?”

  “No,” Max said. “We were very…persuasive. If they had known, I’m sure they would have told us.”

  Fear flickered behind Margaret’s eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sure the older boy will probably walk again,” Max said. “Whether they ever see the outside of a cell again is still open to debate. As I said, aiding and abetting a fugitive is treason. Even if you don’t know you’re doing it.”

  Eleanor’s eyes widened. “I tried to stop her! I told her not to go, I did! But when she gets that way, you can’t tell her anything. It’s like when—” She stopped suddenly and clapped both hands over her mouth.

  Max and Julianus looked at each other. They both looked back at Eleanor.

  “I—I—” Eleanor stammered.

  They kept watching her, Max with feral interest, Julianus with clinical detachment. Neither of them spoke a word. Slowly, deliberately, Max folded his arms.

  Time stood still. Shadows danced on the stone walls.

  Eleanor made a small keening sound. Gradually, it increased to a wail. The sound rose and rose until it transcended the bounds of human hearing. Then, without a warning, she exploded into tears. Words poured out of her in a rush
, each one vying with its neighbors to be the first past her lips. “She told me to do it I don’t know what the message said she just told me to send it to the Cardinal I think it was in Latin she said it was a secret message it’s how he knew to meet the airship after you arrested the Queen she said to throw it in the fire I had to do it because Roderick was watching her it wasn’t my idea!”

  Max and Julianus looked at each other again.

  “The message?” Julianus said.

  “The message!” Eleanor affirmed. “The one to the Cardinal! She gave it to me! She wrote it down and told me to give it to the signaling man! I don’t know what it said, I swear on my life! I never was any good at Latin. Oh, God, I should have studied more. She said it was a secret message, not for any of the Guard to kn—” She put her hands over her mouth again. “Please don’t put me in the cells! I’m not a traitor! I don’t even like Italians!”

  “You see?” Julianus said, turning to Max. “Follow the threads.” He leaned forward, arms around his knee. “Is Alÿs close to the Cardinal?”

  Eleanor nodded, sniffling. “He’s a friend of her father’s.”

  “The French king?”

  “Yes. He asked the Cardinal to keep an eye on her. She goes to the cathedral often, and I don’t mean just to pray. She likes to gossip. The Cardinal indulges her. I don’t know why.”

  “I see.” He leaned back, stroking his chin. Eventually, as if it had just come to mind for no particular reason, he said, “I seem to recall there’s a commoner’s Mass tonight. And, unless I miss my guess, the Cardinal will be delivering it.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Eleanor said.

  “No. I imagine you wouldn’t. I don’t expect you mingle much with commoners? But the same is not true of the Lady Alÿs, is it? Thank you, my lady, you have been most helpful.”

  “So I can go then?” Eleanor said, hardly daring to breathe.

  “You may leave,” Julianus said. “I think I’m feeling a sudden rush of religious inspiration. It’s been far too long since I’ve been to church. Max, how’s your relationship with God?”