The Hourglass Factory

by Lucy Ribchester

  Directly below them, the back end of a blood red cape trailed into the centre of the chamber. Lady Thorne, her disguise discarded, her hypocrisy cloaking her like a totem, stood proudly surveying her colleagues. ‘Good work,’ she whispered. ‘Good work.’

  Ebony pulled Frankie towards the edge of the balcony. Frankie’s fingers flicked at Liam and she mouthed the word ‘match’. He kept close to them, the Vesta held between finger and thumb while they clambered onto the trapeze.

  Ebony wedged herself onto the bar first, looping one wrist round the rope. With her spare arm she pulled Frankie’s legs until they wrapped her waist and crossed Frankie’s stockinged ankles in front of her own thighs. Frankie wriggled her shoulder out from under the camera strap and slung it instead round her neck, easing the shutter into place as quietly as she could. Lady Thorne looked up sharply, then, distracted by the sounds of stitching and cutting, began to pace, monitoring each of the chamber exits.

  Frankie was pressed so close to Ebony’s back she could feel the muscles around her shoulders pushing into her own flimsy breasts, and the heat from Ebony’s legs through her trousers. Ebony nudged her a glance over her shoulder. Frankie nodded and looped her wrists round the rope, keeping the flash pipe tight in her left hand. They inched towards the lip of the balcony, staying low. Just before Ebony kicked them up onto the rail she reached into the pocket of her bloomers and retrieved a crinkled ribbon. In the wisps of light Frankie could make out three colours: purple, white and green, crested by the portcullis badge. She pinned it quickly to her chest and raised her eyes to the roof. For the first time in her life unbidden to do so – either by a nun or her mother – Frankie crossed herself and asked the Virgin to protect her.

  They swung up onto the railing. Liam shoved the match in Frankie’s right hand.

  And they jumped.

  Though it wasn’t a high jump by Ebony’s standards, Frankie felt as if her stomach had been scooped out of her and tossed behind as she plunged through the air into the heart of the House of Commons. They jolted quickly, the ropes short. Cold wind gushed through Frankie’s hair, down her neck. She pressed her body forward and scraped the match head on the bar beneath them. A wisp of gold lit the air.

  One by one, each of the seamstresses looked up, stricken. Some of them cowed their faces in their hands, unsure what was happening in the dim heavens above. Ebony was breathing heavily, beginning to use her force to heave the trapeze back, to take another swing forward, when one woman raised a pear-shaped bomb above her head and flung it. It missed and went smashing into a wall where the hard terracotta splintered to pieces. The detonator dropped to the ground, unspent.

  Frankie loosened her right hand from the rope and, holding on tight with her thighs, dropped the match into the flash pipe. She looked for the sweep of red cape, found it, aimed, just as Lady Thorne rushed for the exit on the chamber’s right. She pressed the shutter as a blinding flash spluttered white hot into her eyes. The eye of the camera snapped open and shut. Sparks flew down to the chamber floor.

  It was bright enough in the residual light to manage another shot if she was quick. Frankie swung the camera round to catch the seamstresses, their tools spilled around the benches, the bombs wedged half in, half out.

  Hot flecks of magnesium showered onto Ebony’s neck and she squealed. The flash pan dropped to the chamber floor with a clatter. One of the women hurled another bomb at them, missing again.

  ‘What now?’ Frankie yelled at Ebony. They were hanging low into the chamber. Ebony had un-looped her hands and was starting to work her way up the rope. ‘I’ll climb back up and pull you over.’

  A man’s voice rang out in the darkness below. ‘Hoy there, what the devil do you think you are doing?’

  Shadowy bodies began to spill into the room, first against one wall, then the other. ‘Who’s up there? Police. Look sharp, move aside.’ A cavalry of footsteps charged into the chamber. Wood on the door jambs split with cracks as the doors were flung back and men in black tunics came tumbling in from all entrances.

  Frankie heard a piercing shriek somewhere.

  Somewhere above her.

  She angled her head up just in time to see a wash of red fabric moving up on the Reporters’ Gallery, a glint of silver.

  ‘Liam!’ she cried. She heard the grunt of a struggle, the sound of teeth biting into flesh. But it was too late. As a troupe of police thundered into the House of Commons below, Lady Thorne stood above them, a knife pressed to Liam’s throat.

  Then the unthinkable happened.

  Keeping one hand pincering Liam’s neck, Lady Thorne took the knife away and sliced with careless efficiency through each of the trapeze ropes. Below and behind them another woman released the bomb in her palm. This time it didn’t miss. Frankie felt it hot and slow, then cold and hard, a sensation similar to the weightless peak on a fairground swing. Her ears seemed to fill with roaring water, she plummeted on a puff of air and dust towards the ground, smashing with excruciating pain onto the front bones in her pelvis, skidding on the hard floor and stretching her arms in front to stop her before she slammed into a bench.

  Sour dust filled the air and smoke spread, black miasma from the ground up. The first thing Frankie did was reach her hands up to pull her throat loose; the camera strap had twisted round her neck. Her lungs stung and itched. Behind her came the hiss and crackle of fire and a scream from a woman’s gut, ‘No surrender!’

  Frankie raised her head and her back sang out in pain. She reached gently behind her, felt a warm sticky glue holding her shirt fast to her, and knew that a patch of her skin had melted. Each twitch she made sent cotton fibres probing deeper into the wound.

  A few yards away, Ebony lay on her back, her head turned away. Her limbs were splayed into a star shape. Still on her belly, Frankie began to claw along the floorboards towards her, but even before she got there it was plain to see the ungodly twist in Ebony’s collarbone. She slapped Ebony’s cheeks with one hand then the next, ignoring the chaos of the four women being grabbed and collared and handcuffed by police all around her. She pinched open Ebony’s eyelids, and put her ear next to her mouth. The breath was shallow and fast.

  Suddenly Ebony’s eyes jerked open. ‘Will you get off me?’ She spluttered and a foam of spittle and blood came through her lips. ‘Bloody journalists. Don’t leave you alone even when your back’s broken.’

  The wave of relief that passed over Frankie quickly sank when her eyes fell on Ebony’s far arm, wrenched backwards. Ebony saw the look on Frankie’s face and inched her neck round to look. If she was shocked, she hid it well. Her eyes rolled. ‘God, my mother always told me to keep my arms in. Twenty years I was working with tigers and never lost a limb.’

  A line of policemen in black tunics charged past them, rifles cocked. Frankie scrambled to her feet and slammed straight into a large woollen form.

  In the smoky light she caught the shape of a police warrant card.

  ‘She needs a doctor,’ she stammered.

  ‘Detective Inspector Primrose, CID. What the hell do you think you are doing?’

  ‘Ebony, she needs a doctor.’

  ‘This is high treason, not an exhibition opening,’ the inspector growled, stepping past her and bending down. ‘What do you think the police are here for?’

  ‘You weren’t listening to us. We needed proof. We have pictures now, proof of who she is.’

  ‘Did you get the shot?’ Frankie looked down to see Ebony’s black eyes roaming, unfocused. She had a deep scowl creasing her clammy forehead, a fine spray of blood on her chin and cheeks. ‘Where’s . . .’ she paused to cough. ‘Where’s Liam?’ She watched Frankie’s expression, then breathed out a slow moan, as if she had known all along that something like this would happen. ‘Well, you have to go and get him. Jojo will kill you if anything happens to him.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you.’

  Ebony blinked. Her gaze grew limpid and she caught Frankie in her wide black pupils. ‘I’ll take care
of the camera. Now go, and don’t come back till you’ve got him. Don’t worry about me.’ She pointed her jaw down towards the singed suffragette ribbon on her chest. A smear of blood had made its way onto the white. ‘Every peeler loves a suffragette. Think they’re going to let me out of their sight wearing this?’ Her eyes rolled backwards. Frankie wiped the hair off her brow, where it had stuck with blood. She pulled the camera strap off her own neck and placed it down next to Ebony’s head.

  A voice cried out behind them, ‘Get down, I say.’

  Another howling explosion and the short blunt shot of a gun. There came a sharp scream.

  ‘One woman down, sir.’

  Frankie made to run but Primrose snatched both of her arms behind her. ‘Not so eager, my reporter friend.’

  ‘Inspector,’ she said firmly. ‘You have to let me go. There’s a boy came in with us. Lady Thorne took him from up there. You have to listen.’

  ‘No, you listen to me.’

  ‘The boy, Liam, he’s only fifteen. She’s taken him. I saw her drag him, put a knife to his throat. She’s not safe. She’s mad.’

  ‘You’re going nowhere, miss. You’re going to wait with the Sergeant and we’ll have you cuffed and taken to the station.’

  ‘He’s my . . . our . . . responsibility.’

  The inspector scrutinised her for a moment before his eyes roved the dim chamber. The three remaining seamstresses had been wrestled to the floor and were now each raising merry hell for the six police officers anchoring them down. The two bombs had caused an unsettling amount of damage, a chunk of wood and plaster ripped from the wall, a toppled bench split in two. He looked down at the camera next to Ebony and reached for the strap. ‘I’m taking this for now. We’ll decide whether to confiscate it afterwards.’

  Frankie looked again between him and Ebony. ‘Please. There isn’t much time.’

  Inspector Primrose swallowed and Frankie saw a lump run down his neck. Eventually he said, ‘You stick with me. You’re only coming to negotiate. Do everything I say.’ He called a couple of his spare men over and sent them to attend to Ebony, depositing the camera with one of them. Frankie looked back over her shoulder as she trailed him out of the chamber.

  It should have been her lying there, broken boned, torn-limbed. As the two policemen bent down to Ebony’s head and feet, Ebony looked straight at Frankie, full to the brim with conviction. Frankie seized hold of the look and followed the inspector out of the door.

  Forty-Four

  ‘That way.’ Frankie pointed to the door that led to the octagonal lobby. They felt with outstretched hands through the choking smoke, still hearing raw screams from inside the Commons. Now there was a new noise too, loud and steady outside in the courtyard, hooves, and firemen giving orders. The door to St Stephen’s Hall had wedged itself ajar and was blowing a cool draught towards them. Primrose pushed it gently. Dim electric light glowed on the cold stone walls, muting the rich colours. Shadows stretched long and dark behind paintings and statues, twirls and ridges of intricate detail rising and latticing into the vaulted ceiling. Frankie recognised it as the old parliament from descriptions she had heard in the Cheshire Cheese. The patterned windows, the chandeliers, the frescoes that covered the walls like storytelling bedsheets. The twelve statues, and the one with the broken sword where a suffragette had chained herself three years previously and clipped the toe of his boot off when she was cut free.

  They were barely into the hall when another scream rang out, high and choked. Then a grunt as if a woman had been winded in the gut. A lady’s cut-glass voice filled the cold air and rattled off the stone. ‘Don’t come any further, Inspector, or I’ll blow this boy’s face to mincemeat.’

  The lights sizzled off and darkness tumbled in on them. From the far end of the hall Frankie could hear feet scrambling on stone.

  They moved slowly forward. After a few seconds, the door ahead swung vigorously back and forth, bringing the grand arch at the end of the hall flashing into view and out again. The inspector swallowed heavily. ‘They’ve gone into the crypt.’

  Frankie lunged ahead but he elbowed her back.

  ‘You keep behind me, hear?’

  ‘Of course I hear,’ she snapped into the darkness.

  ‘If she’s armed . . .’ He turned to Frankie, observing the stained glass shadows playing ghostly games across her handsome features. ‘Setting that off in the right spot, Westminster Palace could fall. You stay behind me and you listen to what I say.’

  Frankie growled an acceptance.

  They moved through the swinging door into a dark stairwell, cold as a tomb, swaddling both light and sound. In the distance in front of them, Liam’s voice croaked a dry protest.

  Frankie opened her mouth to shout back, but the inspector was quick and landed a soft blow in her stomach. ‘Keep it shut.’

  As they reached the bottom of the stairs the footsteps ahead faded and a door slammed. They crept forward until they felt the sensation of a wall rising up in front of them. Primrose held his revolver out, moving it around until they heard the muzzle click against a metal door handle. He slid his hands around trying to shift it. After a couple of attempts, the latch gave. He pushed the door and a dagger of gold light cut a warm path in front of them. The smell of musty incense grew strong.

  They were standing at the base of the chapel’s nave in front of a long tiled aisle, surrounded on all sides by a low vaulted ceiling of elaborate curled golden designs. Two wrought iron gates before them hung open. Drifts of leftover frankincense mingled with the scent of cold wood pews.

  ‘Don’t come any further.’ It was a curter pitch than Milly’s voice but had the same intonation.

  Lady Thorne stood with her back to them, facing the altar, her scarlet cloak spilling into a blood red cloud behind her. She had lit two creamy wax church candles, one on either side, and was using their glow to illuminate something she was fiddling with in front of her. Frankie suddenly saw two feet kick out from under the cloak on her left side, and heard a boy’s high howl.

  ‘Liam!’

  ‘I hope you’re not deaf as well as stupid, Miss George. Do as the inspector says. Authority always knows best.’ There was a nasty strain in her voice. ‘It won’t just be your friend who is buried in this stonework.’

  ‘What did the boy do to you?’ Primrose’s voice echoed round the barrel ceiling.

  ‘Helped a nasty little gossip columnist who got above her station.’

  ‘I have a photograph of you. It’ll be on the front page of every newspaper. Do you want the world to know what you became?’ Frankie reeled backwards as the inspector landed a kick on her shins. The burns in her back tweaked with pain.

  Lady Thorne swung round and Frankie saw her face, as clear and memorable as it had been the first day she had seen it outside a music hall years ago, handing out flyers. The eyes, she knew them now, were the same cut crystal blue eyes she had seen on the woman with the bundled jaw. They wore the same expression now as they had then, but Frankie realised it was not zeal or anger, it was a cold brutality, an irritation with anything that disagreed with her. That night outside Jojo’s when she had argued with her daughter, she hadn’t come to spy or to save the souls of the punters in Soho. She had come to execute Ebony Diamond.

  ‘Red,’ she said, gesturing down her body with one hand, the other fish-hooking the struggling Liam by his mouth with an extraordinarily muscular and bony finger. ‘For the Lords. I don’t know if you made the connection, I doubt it,’ she said looking at Frankie. ‘But they are the true dynastic rulers of this country, and have been for centuries.’

  Primrose raised his revolver a touch, eyeing down the barrel.

  ‘Don’t, Inspector,’ Lady Thorne shook her head, tutting. A yellow waxy light from the candles on either side of her danced on the crisp aristocratic bones in her face. She let out a weary sigh. ‘Look at you. I am a shepherd leading my flock into a light they might not know they need. Just like Lloyd George thought he could lead
his Welsh sheep and all the other farmyard animals we call this country into following his revolting People’s Budget. What if some of us didn’t want that?’

  ‘Then you vote him out,’ Frankie called. ‘What the women are fighting for the power to do.’

  Liam managed to land a kick in Lady Thorne’s leg and she twitched. She retaliated by digging her nail further into his cheek. He gagged and choked.

  ‘Sometimes a child doesn’t know what’s best for them. Does that mean you should give them what they cry for?’

  ‘They’re women, they’re not children.’

  ‘I’m not just talking about women,’ Lady Thorne bellowed back hysterically. ‘I’m talking about mongrels. Mongrels given status they weren’t born into. Miners striking, match girls walking out. Trade Unions of railway workers squeezing their fingers up the rectum of England and pulling it down to their squalid level. Anarchist cells of broken seamstresses blowing up the Houses of Parliament. That’s what happens when you give the mongrels an inch of power. We are in a hell of our own making.’

  ‘You tricked those women. They had nothing left. You lied to them, pretended you were one of them and the one you couldn’t fool any more you had killed.’

  Lady Thorne’s mouth twitched into a trout’s grimace. ‘Not quite, I got the wrong one, didn’t I? It was a surprise for both of us, I think, when I saw her deathly little face. Still, Annie Evans was one of the weaker links in the chain. Her courage would have failed her anyway.’