The Custodian of Marvels

by Rod Duncan

  “You should’ve locked your door.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “You’re a locksmith. A locksmith should lock his own house!”

  “Well, that’s how little you know!”

  “Look,” said Fabulo. “Arguing is for fools – of which I’ll admit I’m one.”

  Jeremiah sighed and stepped into the room. “Maybe that’s the both of us.”

  “Will you not talk? Away from that stinking attic, I mean.”

  “I’ll talk. But it won’t change nothing. “

  Jeremiah pushed back a window shutter. Light spilled onto an uneven workbench surrounded by high stools. We all sat.

  “It’s the heat made us quarrel,” said Fabulo.

  Jeremiah stared down at the wood of the workbench, which was scratched and grooved. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

  “In a day or two, it’ll pass. Things’ll look different. It was a mistake having you make the key away from your workshop, I can see that now. But it’s done. The key you made – it’s a fine thing.

  “You know how long Harry Timpson spent planning this? The last ten years of his life he was thinking of it. Then Elizabeth’s machine comes to us. We see it make a beam of light hot enough to cut through iron. But it was only later, after they took it and we found out where it had been stored – that’s when Harry sees what can be done.

  “And then we find you, Jeremiah. The finest locksmith in the land – and with the knowledge of that place. I tell you, even in his prison cell, he was happy. And why? Because of what treasures are hidden there. He knew we could get to them. All we have to do is take your key and Elizabeth here and you, with all your skills. It’ll all be ours, my friend. All those treasures will belong to you and me.”

  Jeremiah shook his head. “Have the men-at-arms stopped searching St John’s?”

  “Didn’t see them this morning,” said Fabulo.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Are you scared then?”

  “I shouldn’t have said those things about Elizabeth last night. I’m sorry for that. But the meat of it hasn’t changed. All it takes is a word in the wrong ear and you’re all of you swinging on the end of a rope. Am I scared? Yes. Are you not?”

  “You knew all that before you agreed,” said Fabulo. “What’s changed?”

  “Too many people,” he said.

  “I trust every one of them,” said Fabulo.

  “But my share’s being cut with every new one you bring into the circle.”

  “You’re worried about money?”

  “There’s only a handful of locksmiths could do it. If I was still here after it’s done, the guild will come asking questions of me. Or I could go into hiding. Either way I couldn’t be working again. Not in this trade. I’d need money enough to last. And with six of us, you’re cutting the cake too thin.”

  “So, is it the money or the risk?” Fabulo asked.

  “It’s the money.”

  “Then you can have a bigger cut. Yes, that’d be fair. We couldn’t do it without you. I see that now. Instead of a sixth share, you can have a fifth.”

  But Jeremiah was shaking his head. “It’s not enough.”

  “There’s going to be fortunes for all of us!”

  “You’re asking me to give up my craft.”

  “Then we’ll make it more,” said Fabulo, though his eyes had narrowed and his voice had dropped to a rumble. “A quarter share. I’ll talk the others round.”

  “I want a half,” said the locksmith, getting to his feet.

  “A half!” Fabulo didn’t hide his outrage.

  “I’ll take that and no less!”

  “You think your neck worth more than mine? Than Elizabeth’s?”

  “I think you can’t do it without me!”

  “Nor Elizabeth! Nor me! Nor any of us!”

  “Take it or leave it, dwarf!”

  The stool fell as Fabulo climbed off it. Then he kicked out at the one Jeremiah had been sitting on, sending it clattering. He was reaching for his knife when I pulled him back.

  “I hope you burn in hell!” he growled.

  “Get out!” shouted the locksmith.

  The door to the workshop clattered closed behind us as we marched out into the yard.

  The first mile of our journey back we walked at double speed, driven by Fabulo’s mood.

  “We’ll get another locksmith,” he said.

  “I thought you spent ten years looking for this one.”

  “Once we’ve got your machine in our hands, we can melt through any of the doors.”

  “Could we use gunpowder?” I asked.

  “But think of the guards! They’d hear us.”

  By the time we caught sight of Tower Bridge, our mood and our pace had dropped. Fabulo had remembered something that he and Timpson had once mooted. A mixture of concentrated acids dripped into the lock might eat it away from within.

  “If that would work, why use a locksmith at all?”

  “Because… the lock may be needed to pull back the bolt. If we leave it in ruins, the door may open, or it may be locked forever.”

  “So this is no answer at all,” I said.

  “But we only need to get through two doors! Then we’ll have your machine. It’s a risk. Maybe…”

  “If it’s true for acid, it’s true for the light machine. Unless you know what you’re doing, we could be locking the doors forever rather than opening them.”

  “You’re not being helpful,” he growled.

  After he’d been silent for a time, I asked, “Did you believe him?”

  “Believe what?”

  “That he wants money.”

  “Everyone wants money.”

  “So that’s why you’re doing this?”

  “Yes.”

  The towers of the bridge loomed above us in the hazy air. A thought had come to me and was growing in my mind. I slowed as we started to cross the first section. At first Fabulo pulled ahead. But at the midpoint he stopped and turned, waiting for me.

  “I don’t believe you either,” I said. “You’re not doing this for money.”

  “You’ve done things for gold,” he said. “Taken risks, I mean. Put your life in fate’s hands.”

  “No. I’ve taken risks for what gold could buy. But that’s different. Jeremiah can earn money. He’s in a guild. He has a job. It’s the other way around. He said this would stop him earning.”

  Fabulo spat over the parapet. “You’re thinking too much.”

  “Give me some money,” I said.

  “There you go!” He brushed his hands against each other, as if I’d proved his point and the argument was over.

  “I mean give me a few shillings. I’ve got a long walk to do and I’ll need to eat later.”

  “You’re not thinking of going back!”

  I held out my hand, palm upwards. Fabulo let out a growl of irritation. But he dug coins from his pocket nonetheless.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t make things worse!”

  “I’ll try to be as tactful as you, shall I?”

  He pulled a face. “Be careful. Feels as if the weather’s going to turn.”

  Fabulo was right. Heat still radiated from the paving stones, but my shadow had become indistinct. A haze of cloud had turned the sun into a pale disc. At one point on my walk I thought I felt a heavy raindrop landing on my arm. I found myself looking up into the sky, hoping the weather would break. But the cloying air pressed in on me with even greater intensity.

  The streets began to empty. A few coaches and steamcars rattled past at speed, as if hurrying to be somewhere else. It’s easy to be unseen in a crowd. But I was now the only person walking that stretch of road.

  The duke was pouring his resources into the hunt. I risked capture each time I stepped out of the tenement. But with soldiers searching the rookery, staying put wasn’t an option. Neither was running. I hadn’t even the money to buy lunch without begging it from Fabulo
. My only hope was to get our mad enterprise rolling once more. And for that, I needed the locksmith.

  By the time I reached Cambria Street, I could see no other pedestrians. My legs ached from the miles and my inner garments were sodden with sweat.

  Jeremiah’s workshop seemed untenanted as before. Though this time the main door had been left a few inches ajar. I called through into the darkened room: “Are you there? It’s me, Elizabeth.”

  I waited and presently heard the creak of someone descending wooden stairs. Jeremiah’s face appeared at the door.

  “I’m alone,” I said.

  He stepped aside to let me through. “The weather’s going to turn,” he said.

  At first I thought he was going to take me back to the workbench where we’d spoken earlier. Indeed, he paused there before leading me on through a doorway and up to the floor above.

  The room that we entered showed no sign of order. Clothes lay draped over the furniture. Empty beer bottles clustered on the floor near the fire. Jeremiah scooped up some shirts and long johns from one leather armchair and laid them on another.

  “Please sit,” he said.

  “Did you never marry?” I asked.

  “The dwarf sent you to propose?”

  “I’m just trying to understand.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be understood.”

  The armchair was firm and comfortable. It must once have been expensive, though there were signs of wear. My finger found a small burn mark on the right armrest. Jeremiah cleared a wooden chair for himself, dragging it so that he could sit directly opposite me. The legs screeched on the floorboards.

  “Fabulo didn’t send me. I came back so you could tell me the truth. I thought it might be easier without him listening in.”

  A patter of soot falling from the chimney into the fireplace made me turn my head. The temperature in the room had dropped.

  “I need to get it swept,” he said.

  “Great craftsmen don’t make great housekeepers,” I said. “I’ve seen that before. They put so much into their work, there’s nothing left for taking bottles back to the shop. Seeing you make the key – it was a thing of beauty.”

  He sighed. “I had a wife used to arrange things. I don’t even know which sweep she used. She died last year. She was a little whirlwind with her cleaning and her sorting. And never sick. The rest of London might be coughing up their lungs but nothing ever touched her. Then I come up here and find her sitting perfectly still. And just like that she’s gone.”

  “You could get someone in,” I said.

  “You’re not the first to say it. And I will. I just don’t feel ready.”

  We were both quiet after that. I couldn’t think of what to say next and he seemed content to stare into the empty fireplace. Before, I had thought he’d been lying to us. But now it seemed that perhaps he had been lying to himself.

  One of the window shutters swung free and clattered against the wall outside. A breath of rain-scented air wafted into the room. Jeremiah heaved himself out of the chair and went to hook the shutter in place. For a moment he leaned his arms on the windowsill and stared out.

  “Is that enough?” he asked. “Do you understand me now?”

  “How’s your business faring?”

  “There’s work if I want to take it. But I can’t get interested.”

  “You’re an artist.”

  “I used to be.”

  “There are paintings in the National Gallery less works of art than that key you made us.”

  “Well, thank you for that.”

  “You see,” I said, “that’s my problem. I’ve never known an artist do anything for money. That’s why I don’t believe you’re telling the truth when you say you need a half share or you won’t help.”

  The world beyond Jeremiah’s room had grown still as we spoke. London’s bee-swarm-hum, never noticed because it’s always present, had dropped away. Into the new quiet, a dog began to bark. As if the sky were responding to the call, a growl of thunder formed in the far distance, boomed then faded.

  Jeremiah glanced back over his shoulder at me. “If I tell you the truth, will you go away?” When I didn’t answer he said, “I’d better go secure the doors downstairs. This is going to be a big one.”

  Off he went. I listened to the sounds of him moving around – the clack of bolts being slotted home on the shutters. The front door clattered. From the window, I could see him in the yard, working the pump to fill a bucket, which he carried back inside. The daylight had a sickly hue. Thunder rumbled around the horizon once more.

  “Filth gets in the water when it floods,” he said, returning with the bucket, which he placed near the wall.

  “Will it flood?”

  “Maybe. We’ll see soon enough.”

  He joined me at the window. The sky in the distance was streaked with falling rain.

  “I hate politics,” he said. “What I mean to say is, I’m no good at it. In the guild, if you want to get on, you have to have friends. That means doing stuff for people higher up. And then if they like you, you’ll get put forward for the examinations. That’s when your skill is supposed to show. Four candidates go for each examination. Only one gets through. And once you get through, you’re into the next circle. And the further in towards the middle you are, the bigger the presents you get from them further out. The one in the centre – the Grand Master – he’d never need to work again if he didn’t want.

  “I’ve been slow to progress. Too much time greasing locks and not enough time greasing palms. That’s what my wife used to say. She said any other locksmith with my skill would have gone faster.”

  “Did she mind that?”

  “She said it would’ve been better if we were further in. But she said that wasn’t the man she married. And she didn’t want any other.”

  A sudden breeze shifted my hair. I inhaled the smell of the rain and heard it hissing towards us, a grey veil sweeping across the courtyard. In an instant everything outside was wet. Lightning flashed. I counted twelve seconds until the thunder. The wind was blowing the rain inside. I stepped back from the window, into the dry, but Jeremiah remained.

  “Did you pass examinations?” I asked.

  “Many. In the first few years it was easy. Your master puts you through the first, at the end of your apprenticeship. And there are plenty enough places in the outer circles of the guild. But once you get further in – a master locksmith – each circle has less seats than the last. And one Grand Master appoints the next. They say big money changes hands for that. Or it’s a family member who gets the place.

  “So I’ve been in my circle three years and no chance of sitting an examination. Then one of the High Masters comes to me – came to my very workshop – and he says there’s a chance he can get me examined in the autumn. One of the candidates had withdrawn. I thought my life was about to change. One circle further in and it would be me people came to for advancement. So I agreed. He had the papers with him, which I signed there and then.

  “After he left, my wife came rushing down to the workshop to ask whose coach it had been in the courtyard. I told her. She kissed me and said that it seemed justice was to be done and how proud she was.

  “A locksmith should always be looking for false keyholes. You can see a hundred locks and they’ll all be simple. Then one comes along that looks as if it was bought for three shillings. But when you try to pick it, you find, underneath the cheap iron, a thing of craft and cunning. Maybe it sets off a time lock or an alarm, or a knife springs out to cut your hand.

  “Three days after I signed the papers, a friend comes to me and says did I know the High Master’s nephew is to be examined in the autumn. None of the other candidates would have a chance, he said. Then I saw what he’d done, that High Master. Because only one candidate goes through. And at this level, once you’re examined, if you fail you can never be examined again. The test would be fixed. The High Master’s nephew couldn’t be allowed to fail.”
r />   The rain had been falling fast and heavy. It gurgled in the gutters. It rushed, white, from the bottom of the downpipes, bubbling onto the cobblestones and away into drains. Jeremiah’s sleeves dripped. The floorboards under the window had darkened. Thunder rumbled around the city and the clouds flickered with lightning.

  “Hadn’t you better close the shutters?” I asked.

  “I want to see it,” he said.

  Abruptly, the rain intensified. Water began to cascade directly from the roof. I could no longer see the cobblestones in the yard. All was a mass of dancing water. The scene flickered brilliant white and for a blink Jeremiah became a silhouette. The house shook with the impact of the thunder.

  “Come away from the window!”

  I pulled at his arm, dragging him back so that he was standing on the dry floorboards. More flashes lit the window. I unhooked the shutters and swung them closed, then led him to the armchair. He sat, but only when I pushed him back.

  “I’m angry,” he said, his voice soft.

  “And with good reason – if they marked his paper unfairly.”

  “There is no paper. Only locks to be opened.”

  “Then they gave the easiest lock to him?”

  Jeremiah shook his head. “They’re all the same. The first candidate to complete the task is the one who passes to the next circle.”

  “Then how was the contest fixed?”

  “They would have shown him the locks beforehand. He would have been schooled in them. I was cheated and now must remain outside.”

  “Then your motive is revenge?” I asked.

  “What use are oaths sworn to people who have no honour?”

  I became aware of water dripping on the floor next to my foot. The slates were letting the rain through. The roof space would be sodden.

  “You have your answer,” said Jeremiah. “Now go. Tell the dwarf if you must. But no one else.”

  I found two more leaks on my way to the stairs. Water was pooling on the stone floor of the workshop, though I couldn’t see where it was coming from. I started to push the door open and felt the storm battering it back. Rain lashed at my face through the gap. Water lapped over my shoes. I looked down and saw that it was flooding in from the courtyard. Stepping out, I found myself ankle deep. After two paces it was up to my calf muscles. I jumped back inside and closed the door. Water still flowed in underneath, though not as fast.