The Custodian of Marvels

by Rod Duncan

  I had intended to wait until I was back on the boat before examining the professor’s gift. But as I walked, a sense of foreboding grew, becoming unbearable. I speeded my step, hurrying to be home. Halfway there, I found that I had stopped. Then I was backtracking towards the sickly hiss of a streetlamp.

  Under its yellow light, I ripped open the envelope and extracted two strips of paper pinned together. One was a newspaper article. The other, the banner from the top of the page, gave the publication date as two weeks before.

  The newspaper article had been set out as a cautionary tale. The ingredients were familiar enough – a blacksmith who lived beyond his means, too ready to venture money on dogs or horses, empty gin bottles found by a reporter stacked at the back of the man’s log store, gossip of profligacy among the neighbours. None of the blacksmith’s debts were huge, to be sure. But when added together they amounted to a sum beyond his substance. This lifestyle he had maintained through an increasingly precarious feat of balance, borrowing from one creditor to pay off another.

  I could have named any number of men and women about whom the same had been said. Few on workers’ wages could afford to live without debt. A poor man never throws away a bottle. Gambling is merely hope by a different name. And were it not for hope, how could a poor man decide each day to live?

  Yet the man was a wastrel, the newspaper said. His excesses might have remained unnoticed for a time yet, but for a vigilant agent of the International Patent Office. The blacksmith had made and sold some novel devices without a licence. The agent detected the breach and imposed a fine. Thus was the balance upset and the blacksmith toppled into bankruptcy.

  His many creditors would surely have been injured by his inability to pay – themselves not wealthy men? However, a high-minded nobleman of that county saw their plight and bought up all the bad debts at a generous rate by way of service to the community.

  The newspaper praised his actions. He knew he would suffer financial injury, yet pressed ahead for the common good. Naturally enough, he took the blacksmith to law in an attempt to recoup some of the loss. But once legal fees had been paid, even with the sale of the blacksmith’s cottage, forge, and tools, there remained a shortfall of seven hundred and seventy-five guineas.

  The blacksmith was locked in debtors’ prison and his nineteen year-old daughter indentured to work in the nobleman’s kitchens for a period of thirty-five years, or until the debt be otherwise paid.

  The generous nobleman wished to remain anonymous, saying, “There is no virtue in a good deed proclaimed.”

  I became aware of a tacky feeling between my lips. And then a metallic taste. I spat onto the cobbles, my saliva bloody. I had been biting the side of my tongue while I read. I was breathing deeply, though I still couldn’t seem to get enough air.

  The story in the newspaper was my own retold. It came to me that the reporter had mistaken only the fine details – my father’s profession, my age, the sum of the debt. Everything else fitted precisely with the nightmare that had rent my family. An agent had found a supposed violation in one of my father’s devices, there was a fine, the gathering of debts, a trial, a verdict, indentured servitude.

  And yet the date on the newspaper banner proved the article was recent. Either the banner came from a different paper or they were reviewing the news of six years before. I stared at the newsprint, no longer able to read the words.

  There was a thought, puzzlingly out of focus and on the edge of my mind. It took the shape of a man riding towards me, his face yet too distant to discern. I could hear the hooves of his horse drumming the ground. But still his features were a blur. If I could but see clearly, I would be able to recognise him. Then I would understand. He had drawn so close now that he towered over me, impossibly tall. I found myself straining my neck to look up into the blinding yellow of his face. He reached down. I could see his gloved hand in every detail. Fine white leather. Stitches perfectly even. It extended towards my own hands, which cradled my face. Somehow I knew that if it took me, I would be lost. I wrenched my eyes from his hand and looked up to the face, forcing myself to see it.

  A cruel gaze bore down on me, a face I had glimpsed but twice. It was the Duke of Northampton. But the story in the newspaper was not my own. It was happening again. To a different family. Another father had been ruined. Another daughter acquired.

  I found myself kneeling, staring up at the spluttering gas lamp as understanding broke over me. I saw it all with vertiginous clarity. Then my stomach heaved. I braced myself, hands on the cold cobblestones and vomited.

  When it was done – my hands no longer trembling and the sweat drying on my forehead, when I had got back to my feet, using the lamppost for support – it came to me that the duke had exercised the same monstrous practice before. And he would continue to repeat it until death toppled him.

  But this time was different. This time I was watching. I had the means to identify the corrupt agent. What was more, I had a contact on the inside. John Farthing could walk the corridors of the Patent Office itself. He could investigate. For once, we could be fighting on the same side. And if the duke’s corruption could be proved, I had at last the means to end him.

  CHAPTER 8

  September 2009

  Take off the disguise and another is revealed beneath. Regard well the many people you must be. When the last layer is gone, there can be no more life.

  The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook [1]

  Of the many tangled threads in my life, the one I found hardest to describe was my relationship with the Patent Office agent, John Farthing. He lied to me the first time we met. And if I lied to him also, it later saved me from much trouble. I was the subject of his investigation and had since remained under his gaze.

  On the occasion of our first meeting, I had been taken in by his charm. That was before his real identity had been revealed. At the time, I was attracted by his winning smile and his easy movement, which was so unlike that of a Republican. When he spoke, his American tongue gave familiar words a roundness that seemed enticingly exotic.

  The truth was revealed on our second encounter, when he came armed and threatened me. For my part, I held the Patent Office responsible for the ruin of my family. From that day, I knew John Farthing and I must always be on opposite sides.

  Every time we met thereafter, my confusion grew. His mere presence put me on edge. He did once offer to help me seek redress for the wrongs my family had suffered. But we’d both known such action would find no good conclusion. The Patent Office would do all it could to prove its agents’ innocence. At the time, I hadn’t sufficient evidence to force its hand.

  I once used John Farthing to save my life. And in return I also once saved his. But our parting from that adventure had been the most painful and confused. I had never felt so angry or afraid. His last words to me had been these: “You need never look on me again.”

  It seemed that fate was about to prove him wrong.

  The newspaper article had forced me to seek him out one more time. The Duke of Northampton had to be stopped or more young women would fall victim. Now armed with more evidence – a second case that matched my own in every detail – they would have no choice but to investigate.

  Yet, as I stepped along Nottingham’s High Pavement towards the building where John Farthing worked, I felt my usual resolve begin to curdle and my composure entirely disappear. My heart was beating heavy and irregular in my chest. I had reached his door, but found my feet carrying me on beyond it and away.

  A thought – a ridiculous thought – had taken root in my mind. I had reasoned that the goal of my action was to confound the Duke of Northampton and enable my safe return to the Kingdom. But if the corrupt Patent Office official could be exposed and brought to book, could not also John Farthing and I be friends?

  At the end of the row of townhouses I stopped and forced myself to breathe more slowly. I could not allow such foolishness in my mind. I would put it away entirely and go about my business
as planned. Yet, when I turned and headed back, I realised that I was smiling. Indeed, I could not stop myself.

  On my previous visit I had sent a boy into the building with a message. But this day I found myself opening the front door and stepping into an austerely furnished lobby. A young clerk stood behind a high wooden counter. On seeing me he folded away the newspaper he had been reading.

  “May I help you?” he asked, in a voice that seemed older than his years.

  “I wish to talk to an agent.”

  “You have an appointment?”

  “I have not.”

  He slid a ledger across the desk, opened it at a black ribbon and traced his finger down a column of copperplate writing, too fine for me to read upside down.

  “Could I suggest a week on Thursday?” he said. “Two thirty in the afternoon. Agent Blake could see you then.”

  “It’s Agent Farthing I need to see. And I’d hoped he could see me directly.”

  “But without an appointment–”

  “I believe he’ll at least want to know I’m here.”

  The young clerk closed his ledger. “Your name?”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Your family name?”

  “He’ll know who I am.”

  I expected to be sent on my way, but he nodded towards a high-backed wooden chair opposite the entrance. “Please wait.”

  The chair seemed to have been constructed for someone with a different body shape to my own. Horizontal struts pressed against my spine and the seat was too high, so that only my toes touched the floor. But I did not mind. I wondered if John Farthing’s office faced the front or the back of the building and what hours he kept.

  A door opened close by, causing me to jump. But it was only another clerk, going about his business, a bunch of green cardboard files under one arm. He did not even glance at me in passing and was swiftly through the lobby and out the other side.

  I could hear movement upstairs – the crisp tapping of hard soled shoes walking across a wooden floor. There were fainter sounds in the background. The creaking that every house makes. The flow of water in pipes.

  Then the young clerk returned. I stood, ready.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “You cannot see the agent you requested.”

  “Is he not here?”

  “He wishes you to know that he is unavoidably and permanently engaged.”

  I let the clerk book me an appointment with Agent Blake, giving my name as Elizabeth Underwood, an alias I had used before. He transcribed the time and date of the appointment onto a slip of stiff paper and passed it across the desk to me, though he was fastidious in avoiding contact with my hand. I thanked him and left.

  I was no longer smiling.

  Opposite the Patent Office building there was a library set back from and above the road. In the small garden at the front, under the shade of a tree, I waited and watched. Before the revolution the building would have been used for Christian worship and the grounds for burial. Always with one eye on the road, I strolled the perimeter, pretending to read the inscriptions on the gravestones, which had been arranged as a kind of ornamental boundary wall.

  At half past five in the afternoon, the last patrons left the library and the great doors boomed closed behind them. Then, within minutes, people started to emerge from John Farthing’s offices. There were young and old, but all were men and all dressed resolutely in grey. I observed a mixture of top hats and bowlers. And then among them I saw a centre-creased hat with a wide brim. It was the same one he had worn on our first meeting.

  He was a man with an easy stride that looked out of place on a cobbled street in Nottingham. He never seemed to be hurrying, but as I set out to follow, I found myself having to throw in extra steps to keep him in sight.

  I do not know if I was seen by any of the others who came out of that building. I do not know if anyone watched me or followed. I kept John Farthing in view all the way up Stoney Street and Warser Gate. Then he picked up speed and began to pull away. I lost view of him in Bottle Lane. Forgetting myself, I ran. I knew that people were staring. If I had thought about it, I would have known the risk. There were still fugitive posters bearing my likeness. If one person had recognised me, my life would have been over. But I kept running, turning right up Bridlesmith Gate for no reason but that it felt to be the way he would have gone.

  Then I saw the grand columns of the Council House, and striding along beside it, John Farthing. I caught up with him on the wide plaza in front of the building. He must have heard my footsteps because he stopped and turned. I was out of breath.

  “Miss Barnabus,” he said, his voice strained by some emotion that I couldn’t read.

  “Mr Farthing.”

  “What possessed you to come to the office? Don’t you know how dangerous it is for you?”

  “It’s the Duke… the Duke of Northampton. He’s done the same thing… again. Another girl. Another family.”

  Farthing opened his mouth and closed it again.

  “We must stop him,” I gasped. “Don’t you see? With this… A fresh trail. We can find the agent who did it. We can…” I faltered, tears running down my cheeks.

  “No.” He was shaking his head.

  I stepped towards him, but he held up his hands, as if warning me away. People had stopped to stare.

  “But you must help,” I said. “Please.”

  He took a step backwards. “I’m sorry. But I have no more disguises from you. I loved you, Elizabeth. But that way is closed. I’m an agent of the Patent Office. You know what that means. Celibacy. For life. You shouldn’t have come. We stand on opposite sides of a great breach. It is too much for me to bear. If we meet again, it will be as enemies. This is the end.”

  Some minutes after John Farthing had strode away, an elderly couple approached me and asked if I needed help. The woman took my hand. She wore a jet ring and pinched cuffs. Her fingers were very pale. I do not know why these details were important, but I noticed them. I seemed to see every wrinkle in her aged skin. The two of them looked so alike in face that I took them to be brother and sister. Other people passed by in that busy square, making an art of looking the other way. A nurse pushing a perambulator, three students with battered satchels, two men carrying bags and carpenters’ tools. The flagstones beneath my feet were worn smooth.

  “My dear? Can we take you somewhere?”

  The woman was still holding my hand.

  “No. Thank you, no.”

  She unclipped her purse and withdrew a clean, white handkerchief. This she placed in my hand before guiding it to my cheek, drying the tear streaks. My nose was running. Suddenly I was aware of a plainly dressed woman standing alone on that wide plaza, in view of all, hundreds of eyes, surreptitiously stealing glances. The woman was me.

  “I’d better go,” I said, offering back the handkerchief.

  “You keep it, dear.” She closed my fingers around it with hers.

  I should have liked to say thank you, but no more words would come. I turned and walked away.

  I cannot say when the decision was made. Only that it was as I walked away from the Council House that I became aware of it. But, in truth, I seemed to have been making it for many years. Perhaps I had not been ready before then – my skills and resolve not fully honed. Or perhaps I just needed a big enough push. But I think it is more likely that until that moment there had always been some thread of hope. The illusion that my destiny could take any other course.

  When I returned to the boat, Tinker was already asleep, curled up next to the stove. The candle lantern did not disturb him. I looked to the aft wall at the Spirit of Freedom. I had imagined her as many things. When she was first revealed to me, she had seemed the plaything of the sculptor. But her expression had suggested a different story – a woman more in control of the sculptor than the other way around. As I sailed the waterways of the Republic, she took on a different meaning, suggested by the name. F
reedom. But now I saw her as she surely was – naked, stripped of every encumbrance. Supremely vulnerable. And thus, supremely dangerous.

  I ate some food. It was a mechanical process. I tried to sleep. At three in the morning I gave up, and set wood and coal in the firebox. With the moon almost full, I could steam without a lookout on the prow.

  By the time Tinker awoke, we were already on the Grand Union Canal heading south. He didn’t ask where we were going. He sat with me on the steering platform, chewing on a hunk of bread. And when the boiler pressure grew low he hopped down and started shovelling coal.

  By dawn we were approaching North Leicester. We passed the spur that would lead to the wharf on which I’d once lived. I did not look along it for fear of seeing someone from my previous life.

  “Are you ill?” asked Tinker, blurting the question as if he’d been holding it back.

  “No,” I said.

  He continued to stare at me. I turned my face away, towards the back gardens of houses that bordered the canal.

  Soon there were factories on both sides and the sulphurous tang of coal smoke mixed with the smells from the warehouses – tar and hemp and bone meal and leather. The morning light touched the walls of terracotta brick but seemed to give them no colour.

  Mine was not the only boat approaching the border crossing empty. It was common practice for captains to stop short and unload. Lines of porters were a familiar sight trotting through the backstreets of Leicester on the way to the many illegal crossing points. Each man would carry two great boxes, one on each side of him, dangling from a pole balanced across his shoulders. I had often been amazed by the loads thus carried, stout poles flexing under the weight of cargo.

  Mathematics made the trade inevitable. The hiring of porters, fees paid to the owners of the illegal crossing points and the cost of lost time, when added together, amounted to less than the import duty thus avoided. Once on the other side of the border, the porters carried the cargo back to the boats for reloading. This industry, the only purpose of which was the avoidance of tax, had brought wealth to the city of Leicester.