Cold Stone and Ivy

by H. Leighton Dickson

Neither Tag nor Dickey had tails, so they wagged their back ends vigorously.

  Sebastien turned and bounded up the steps, but as he passed the nurses, the cold rose up all around him. He paused, turned back to study them. Agnes Tidy was the first. He’d known her for years, but the other scowled at him, and he stepped closer.

  Gagging, choking, silent as night

  He narrowed his eyes at her. She stiffened, raised her brows in defiance.

  Barely a whimper, Godfrey’s Cordial, dressmaker’s tape

  In a smooth, swift motion, he reached behind his back to pull a clockwork pistol, levelling it between her eyes. He cocked the hammer.

  “Leave,” he growled under his breath. “Leave before I put a bullet in your brain.”

  Tidy gasped and shrank back, but the woman whose pin read “Amelia Dyer” did not. She scowled one last time before spinning and quitting the foyer. He waited until the sound of her shoes had died away, then pocketed the pistol and threw a look at Tidy, smiling like the sun.

  “Hello, Tidy. How’s the children?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer before turning to follow Ivy into the sanitarium.

  DR. JOHN WILLIAMS looked up from his desk, his grim mouth splitting into a smile at the sight in the doorway.

  “Remy, my boy! Come in, come in!”

  The young physician did so, slipping into the office and closing the door behind him.

  “I thought Bondie had given you boys a bit of a break? Take a seat, man! Take a seat!”

  Christien pulled up a chair, dropping into it as if he were carrying a great weight. Williams laced his hands across his desk.

  “What’s up, boy? And don’t give me any cock ’n bull story about interns’ hours. Tell me the truth. Are you missing your little Ivy, or is this Whitechapel business wearing down your nerve?”

  “Yes on both counts, but that is not why I’m here.” Christien reached a hand into his pocket, tossed the locket onto the blotter on Williams’s desk. “What the devil is this, sir?”

  Williams’s grey eyes grew sharp as he glanced first at the locket, then at Christien.

  “You honestly don’t know?”

  “No, sir. I don’t. I mean, I know it belonged to my father and to his father and perhaps even his father’s father. I know that it was engineered by a French metallurgist who worked for our family back in Normandy, but for what purpose, I can only suppose. I know that it is kept in a lead-lined box and that we must change the box every year, for it turns the lead into gold, which we keep under the beds and in the cellar. I know it was given to me after my father’s death and Sebastien was left the key, although what he has done with it, I have no knowledge. And I know that when I wear it, I experience headaches and now a loss of time. It is most disconcerting, sir.”

  “Interesting.” Williams cocked his head. “A loss of time, you say?”

  “I lost an entire day, sir. More than twenty-four hours. So pray tell me, what is this thing and why does the Ghost Club want it so?”

  The doctor reached a hand toward the locket, hesitated a moment.

  “May I?”

  Christien grunted so Williams picked it up, holding it in his fingers as if it were made of eggshells. The pendant caught the light, flashed colours across the walls, across the desk, across their faces.

  “It is not alchemy, nor pure metallurgy, although it may be a combination of both. It is perhaps the most perfect example of metaphysics you will ever see—a clockwork device that needs no winding nor in fact any key, so what, precisely, your brother holds is beyond me. These gears are not silver or gold, copper or brass, but elements we are only beginning to discover now. You have read Crookes’s works, no doubt?”

  “I have not, sir.”

  “Well, see that you do. He is a founding member, Remy. His work in both the applied physics and metaphysics fields is quite astronomical, if you pardon the pun.”

  Christien blinked slowly.

  “Ahem. Crookes believes that it is fashioned out of elements such as uranium, selenium, antimonium, and zinc. Fascinating materials, quite fascinating. That is why he wants to study it in his laboratory in Kensington. You see, Remy, it powers itself.”

  “But that’s impossible, sir. A machine cannot power itself.” He reached for the locket.

  Williams passed it back. “There is still much in the scientific world that we do not understand, Remy. If this little trinket does indeed contain antimony, it may well be powered by angels.”

  Antimonium. The Philosopher’s Stone. The stuff of childhood myth and legend.

  “Angels . . .” Christien tucked the locket back into his pocket. He raised his blue eyes, his face becoming porcelain once again. “I can see why the Club wanted my brother.”

  “We may have him yet, Remy. But right now, we have you.” And he leaned across the desk, patted Christien’s hand. “We have you.”

  “But why would it give me headaches?”

  “I can’t say, boy. We should get it into Crookes’s laboratory. See what we can find.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Christien rose to his feet, turned toward the door. “This has been most illuminating.”

  “I wouldn’t wear it if I were you,” Williams called after him. “I would hate to lose you to the angels.”

  “Good day, sir,” said Christien, and he closed the door behind him.

  ONCE THROUGH THE arch, Lonsdale Abbey changed before her very eyes. The corridor was marvellous with brightly coloured panelling and a low ceiling that looked like it had been dabbed with a hundred different paints. There were stripes and flowers, zigzags and swirls. It was as if the dim light were caught, reflected, magnified, and distorted to create a surreal palette. It was a distinctly different atmosphere from the foyer.

  Sebastien had caught up with her and she wondered what he was thinking. According to both Christien and Rupert, he had spent much of his youth here. She wondered if a place like this could ever truly feel like home.

  They rounded a corner and her breath caught in her throat. A dining hall as large as any she’d ever seen, with raftered ceilings easily four stories high. Again, the colours—almost a different colour in every panel, with lilies and roses, butterflies and bumblebees, suns, moons, and stars. Paintings of princes and clowns, ponies and dragons. Everywhere she looked, it was madness. Beautiful, terrifying, childlike madness.

  She looked at him and he smiled.

  “Tea?”

  “My mother.”

  “Right. This way.”

  And he led her out of the dining room and down another hall towards a large wooden door. The brass nameplate read “Dr. A. Frankow, MMBS, FRCS, MRCP” but underneath the plate, the long handle of an axe protruded from the wood. On a stool next to the door, a young woman sat reading. She had dark hair piled on top of her head, a tiny mouth, and rather round cheeks. She looked up as they approached.

  “Hallo,” she said. “Who are you?”

  “Laury,” Sebastien answered slowly. He seemed to be studying her. “This is my companion, Ivy Savage.”

  “Hallo, Laury. My name’s Lizzie!”

  Ivy stepped forward, rapped on the door.

  “I’m going to the Americas.” Lizzie clapped her hands. “Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m terribly excited.”

  Sebastien seemed spellbound. He was staring at the woman, cocking his head like one of his many dogs.

  “Dr. Frankow?” Ivy called and rapped again.

  “You’re jealous of me,” said Lizzie. “Because I’m going to Fall River.”

  From behind the door, Ivy heard the tap, clank, and hiss that had begun to invade her dreams. The door creaked open onto the shiny shaft of the mallard cane, then the metal of his legs, and finally, the glare of the reticulating spectacles. He eyed her until he noticed the axe.

  “Lizzie?” he said slowly. “What did we decide about your temper?”

  “That girl is a greedy girl,” Lizzie snapped. “She’s jealous of me.”

  “You must ke
ep your axe in the pigeon coop.”

  “The Russian scares them! He jumps off the roof and scares them every time! I hate him!”

  “No pudding for supper tonight, I’m afraid,” said Frankow.

  “I hate him and will chop off his head!”

  “Girls who chop off heads do not get pudding.”

  With a growl, the girl sprang to her feet, yanked the axe out of the door and stormed off down the hall. Slowly, the doctor turned back to them.

  “Miss Savage, how kind of you to visit,” he said with the ghost of a smile. “And Sebastien, what is this? I hear you are dismissing my nurses.”

  “Didn’t want to waste a bullet,” he muttered. “That woman. You’re not releasing her?”

  “Who? Miss Borden? Oh yes. She is quite cured.”

  Sebastien raised his brows.

  “I am convinced, at any rate, that there is nothing more we can do for her here.” Frankow looked at him, and the lenses circled in. “Why? Would you care to try?”

  The Mad Lord shook his head and sighed.

  “Miss Savage is concerned for the well-being of her mother. Would we be able to conduct a short visit to ease her mind?”

  “Her mother is in the baths, now. Perhaps later.”

  “I will not leave without seeing her,” Ivy said.

  “Then I suppose you will be staying the night?” Frankow asked, and his tone filled Ivy with dread. “Would you like your old room, Sebastien? You may share the bed with Miss Savage. She seems small enough. We haven’t changed a thing, you know.”

  “Is Mumford there?”

  “He is. He has commenced a treatise on the care of fine woollens but is currently suffering from what he calls ‘writer’s block.’ He has not left the room for months.”

  There was a long and awkward silence, when suddenly, Sebastien began to laugh.

  And even more suddenly, the two men embraced like old friends.

  “Please,” Ivy moaned. “Tell me what in the heavens is going on!”

  With an arm draped across the doctor’s shoulders, Sebastien grinned at her.

  “He’s been having a jape on you, Miss Savage,” he said happily. “Frankow is a good man. A middling doctor, I’ll admit, but a good man.”

  “But my mother . . . When can I see my mother?”

  “My dear young woman,” Frankow began. “Your mother is indeed in the baths. But she will be done within the hour. Please, come into my office. It is a dreadful night and I have some fine port warming by the fire. They will notify us when she is ready.”

  They followed him, and once again, Ivy was astounded.

  The office of Dr. Arvin Frankow was a marvel of engineering. It had huge windows, at least three stories in height, and the many panes of leaded glass seemed to bend and fold to amplify the little light put out by the English sun. Above their heads, great cogs wheeled in slow motion, creating a low hum and generating sparks that leapt in lanterns higher up. It gave her the impression of a factory. Fitting, she thought, for the machine-man from Slovakia. He conducted business like an automaton.

  Sebastien and Frankow were chatting like old friends, and she sank into a deep leather wing chair. This man, this machine-man, was treating her mother. He was a founding member of some wretched Ghost Club, along with Dr. Williams and Sebastien’s dead father. For the first time in her life there was entirely too much mystery for her.

  “But the woman is unstable, clearly,” said the Mad Lord as he lifted the port to his lips. “I can’t believe you will declare her cured.”

  “With the exception of her little outburst tonight, Miss Borden has been an exemplary patient, Sebastien,” countered Frankow. “Her father and stepmother wish to start a new life abroad. There is no clinical reason to detain her.”

  “I see no good in her future. Violence and death at the end of that axe. Notoriety. Infamy . . .” He sighed, swirling the port in his glass. “And pigeons.”

  “And pigeons.” Frankow grinned, and his lenses whirred. “And how is your Christien doing in London, Miss Savage? Oh, one moment—”

  He rose to his feet at the whoosh and thump of pneumatic pipes, and she watched him clank over to a brass wall plate, slide open a hatch, and remove a large capsule. Inside was a letter, and she understood. Pneumatic pipes were all the rage in London. Could send posts speedily and efficiently throughout buildings and, if some reports were to be believed, throughout cities as well.

  The lenses whirred and clicked, and Frankow looked up, his eyes as large as moons. “Your mother has retired from her baths. We may see her now.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she snapped, and she sprang up from the chair. “You don’t need to accompany me. Just point me in the general direction—”

  Suddenly, the fire roared in the hearth and just as suddenly died, and the office was plunged into darkness.

  The gears above their heads began to groan and sparks leapt in the lanterns up above. Ivy shuddered as the temperature plummeted, and she could see her breath frost in front of her face.

  “What’s happening?” she asked, but her attention was drawn to the window. The rain that was striking the glass was quickly becoming hail, and at the bottom of the panes, ice was gathering.

  With eyes made wider by his spectacles, Frankow turned to look as well. Pane by pane, the ice was crawling its way up the glass, crackling in a crystalline wave like a living thing, just like that first night at Lasingstoke.

  “Mulieres mortuae iratae . . .”

  It was a strange voice, hollow and echoing and in a language she didn’t understand. Slowly, Ivy turned to look.

  Sitting deep in his leather chair, the Mad Lord was completely still, his eyes bluer than a country morning and fixed on something no one else could see.

  “Mulieres mortuae iratae . . .”

  “Sebastien?” said Frankow slowly. “What is it?”

  “Mulieres mortuae iratae . . . Mulieres mortuae iratae . . .”

  “Is that Latin?” Ivy shivered, arms wrapped around her chest.

  “Dead Women,” said Frankow as he laid the capsule on his desk. “Very Angry Dead Women . . . Sebastien, speak to me now.”

  “There is someone in Seventh,” Sebastien announced in English, but his voice was strange, as if narrating a tale on a theatrical stage. “A boy . . . in the windows . . . the women . . .”

  Frankow moved to the chair where the Mad Lord was sitting.

  “Sebastien, is this present or future?” His breath fogged, created tiny icicles on the hairs of his beard.

  “Present. Now. A boy . . . the boy . . .” He closed his eyes as if trying to recall a name or a face. “Puer insipiens . . . Mulieres mortuae iratae . . . occident te . . . saevus . . . saevus . . .”

  “Saevus . . .” Frankow looked at her. “That is Latin for ‘savage’ . . .”

  “Davis,” she gasped. “Davis kept saying he would find a way to Seventh. Is it Davis, Sebastien?”

  “Davis Saevus,” said Sebastien. “Davis Savage. The women are going to kill him.”

  “Women?” exclaimed Ivy, and she dropped to her knees beside the chair. She could barely breathe. “What women, Sebastien? Please tell me what is going on!”

  “They are very angry, and they will kill him.”

  “Oh!”

  Suddenly, the glass shattered in his grip. Blood dripped from his palm onto the floor.

  Frankow moved slowly, surprising her by removing the glass and taking the Mad Lord’s hands in his.

  “Sebastien . . . Sebastien, look at me. Look now at me . . . Yes, that’s right. That’s good . . .”

  Slowly, Sebastien did as he was asked, blinking as if surfacing from deep and dangerous waters. Frankow nodded and continued.

  “You need to get home, Sebastien. Take this young woman and crack the whip on your horses. I will have Carl send a telegraph to Rupert. But you, get home as quickly as you can. Do not forget your training. You may yet be able to save him.”

  “There are too many women,”
he whispered. “It’s so cold. I can barely even look at them.”

  “There are always too many women, Sebastien. Do not forget your training. Use the frost. Harness it. Rise above it. Now go.”

  “Please, sirs,” wailed Ivy. “Tell me what is happening to my brother!”

  Sebastien rose to his feet, grabbed her hand, and bolted out the door.

  Chapter 15

  Of Bad Boys, Good Samaritans,

  and the Seventh House of Lasingstoke

  THE GOOD SAMARITAN was a public house on the corner of Turner Street and Stepney Way. Tucked in behind the London Royal Hospital, it was a favourite for doctors, patients, and medical students alike because of its proximity to the Royal and because of the local ales on tap. It was a favourite of Bondie’s boys as well and they could often be found at a round table in the corner. They had carved their names into the wood when they had first started studying together. The table was near the dartboard, and it was well known that Henry Bender was a crackerjack with a dart.

  Christien sat now with Ambrose Pickett while Bender gathered his darts. Rosie had a wall of empty glasses in front of him, and he looked up over it as Bender dropped down onto the bench.

  “Won my drinks for the week,” he grinned, stabbing his darts in a row into the wood.

  “Ours too?” asked Rosie.

  “Dream on, you git.” Bender raised his beer to his lips. “My darts, my money.”

  “Damn,” grumbled Rosie.

  “Where’s Lewie?”

  “Late,” said Christien. “As usual.”

  “Typical. He should’ve been a lawyer.”

  The pub was loud, and they had already gone through two pints before Lewis Powell-Smith shewed up with a young woman on his arm. He was a trim fellow, dapper in tan pinstripes and tweed, and like Rosie, he was moustachioed, with a bolt of blond hair that fell across his forehead. The woman on his arm was young and quite beautiful, and when she smiled, she shewed great dimples in her cheeks. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that her clothes were old and the red shawl over her shoulders was threadbare and patched. But her hair was a mass of strawberry blonde curls, and the fact that she was not hiding it with a hat caused very few to pay attention to the state of her clothes.