The Custodian of Marvels

by Rod Duncan

  “May I apologise for my colleague?” said the other, when we were alone. “He’s within his rights. But that was uncalled for, in my opinion. If you say you’re sightseeing, then I’m sure that must be part of the truth. There’s more, of course. No one does anything for just one reason. For example, from the ledger at the sign-in desk, we know that your friend was observing a case at the International Patent Court this morning. Miss Julia Swain. It would seem an impossible coincidence that you just happened to be sightseeing in the same place as her.

  “Now, my colleague is of the opinion that Miss Swain should be brought in for questioning also. I imagine he would ask her if she’d seen you recently. She would naturally deny it – since you’re wanted by the law of the Kingdom… I’m sure you can imagine how he would behave.”

  The impact of these words was greater than the physical assault had been. I found myself answering, though I’d intended to keep my mouth closed. “Please don’t.”

  “Believe me, I don’t want her brought in. What purpose would it serve? But you must give me something or it’ll be out of my hands.”

  “I did meet her.”

  “And what did you talk about?”

  “Her law studies. The other students. Her hopes for the future.”

  “Old friends catching up? That’s nice. And what does she think of the other students?”

  “She thinks they aren’t all really studying,” I said.

  He chuckled. “And her?”

  “She’ll confound every expectation.”

  “You’re proud of her. She’s lucky to have such a loyal friend. What other friends do you have here in the capital?”

  Though I understood what the two agents had been doing – one playing rough, the other gentle – the effect was hard to resist. I found myself wanting to tell this man the answers to his questions. “There are some,” I said. “But you’ll understand, I don’t want to say their names.”

  “Of course,” he said. “You’re loyal. I understand. I wouldn’t expect anything less from you. But this is nothing to do with the law of the Kingdom. These friends may be harbouring you, a fugitive. But that’s nothing to do with our investigation.”

  “What is your investigation?” I asked.

  He spread his hands, palms raised. “Alas, I cannot tell you.”

  “Then it seems you’ll have to bring your colleague back.”

  “But he may hit you again.”

  “I’m expecting it.” I sat back in my chair and folded my arms.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said, then got up and left the room.

  When Grey Eyes didn’t immediately return, I tried again to picture my boat. This time I imagined her as she had been when I first lived on her. She’d been called Bessie then. There had been two cabins and a galley, but no cargo hold. This was before she’d been disguised as a working craft. But, however hard I tried, I couldn’t bring the detail to my mind.

  The lights in the room seemed brighter than ever, the whiteness of the walls giving me no relief. The mirror reflected the white of the ceiling.

  I stared at it.

  Some of my father’s tricks had employed half-silvered glass that would either be transparent or throw back a reflection, depending on the lighting and the angle. The thought came to me that perhaps this mirror could be a window – that an observer might be standing on the other side, watching me. I was just about to get up and investigate when the door opened again.

  Grey Eyes entered and sat facing me.

  “Who are your accomplices?”

  I remained silent, braced ready for violence.

  “Have you been in contact with any circus folk whilst in London?”

  “No.”

  “When did you last see the dwarf known as Fabulo?”

  My mind twisted at the mention of the name. I couldn’t deny knowledge. I’d seen the court record that linked us. “Last winter,” I said.

  He must have picked up my slight hesitation, because that cruel smile curled the corners of his mouth again.

  “You’re lying. When did you see him?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  His hand moved faster than I could react. The slap sounded loud in the bare room. The shock of the pain made me gasp.

  “When did you last see the dwarf?”

  “Last winter.”

  The second slap hit me further back on the side of my face, leaving a high-pitched whistle in my ear. I looked past my interrogator to the mirror and found myself imagining a man standing in darkness behind the glass.

  “Tell me the truth!”

  “Hit me again,” I said.

  He did. And I welcomed the sting of it. We were performers. I understood that now. And with this knowledge, I could take the punishment he was going to give.

  “When did you see the dwarf?”

  “I’ve told you already.”

  “Then tell me about the locksmith Jeremiah Cavendish. When did you last see him?”

  I hadn’t been prepared for the change of question. The surprise must have shown on my face. The uncertainty.

  “I don’t know anything,” I said.

  Grey Eyes swung his arm. I watched it coming, registering too late that it was a fist, not the flat of his hand. The blow connected with the side of my head. I saw lights flashing. I didn’t even know that I was falling until my shoulder hit the tiles.

  He was on his feet and around the table. I saw his mouth moving, but could hear nothing beyond the steamsaw cutting wood inside my head. His mouth moved again. He clenched his fist and drew it back, but something stopped him.

  He turned to look back over his shoulder, though there was no one else in the room. He straightened himself. He looked directly at the mirror. There was a pause. Then he marched away.

  At first, I couldn’t get up. I lay on my side, concentrating on breathing in and out. As my hearing began to return, I clambered onto hands and knees, and then to my feet. I swayed, staring at the mirror, as Grey Eyes had done.

  I sensed the presence of someone watching. I lurched towards it. There was a sound behind the wall – the opening of a door. I put my face close to the glass and cupped my hands to blank out the light. And there it was – ghostly on the other side, a hidden room, small, blank and dark, but for the crack of light streaming in through a door that was slowly swinging closed.

  The attic room smelled of roasted meat and garlic. As I crawled through the hole in the end wall, Ellie, Jeremiah and Fabulo looked up from their meal of sausages wrapped in slices of bread.

  “What happened to your face?”

  The question had been voiced by Ellie, but they were all asking it with their eyes. I hadn’t yet seen myself in a mirror, but I’d known it must be bad from the look on the face of the agent who’d come to escort me from the cell.

  “Would you believe I walked into a lamp post?”

  “Who did it?” demanded Fabulo.

  I told them, in a roundabout way, omitting my visit to Julia and Richard da Silva. Stepping into the Patent Court would have seemed like reckless stupidity to Fabulo. I couldn’t explain my reason for taking the risk without admitting I hadn’t trusted him. So I said I’d been walking along Cable Street when John Farthing spotted me.

  “He must have been searching for you!”

  “No,” I said. “He was as surprised as I.”

  “Look what he did to your beautiful mouth,” said Ellie, dabbing a wet cloth against my swollen lip. Each time she dipped it in the bucket, I saw threads of my blood spreading through the water.

  “That Farthing’s a bastard like the rest of them!” said Fabulo.

  “What did you tell him?” asked Jeremiah.

  Ellie rounded on him. “She wouldn’t say nothing! Just look at her face.”

  “Then why did they let her go?”

  “’Coz she wouldn’t talk!”

  “If she hadn’t talked, she’d still be there!”

  “No, she wouldn’t!”

 
“That’s enough,” snapped Fabulo. “Tell them, Elizabeth.”

  “I didn’t give them anything! But they gave me something – though they didn’t mean to. They asked about you, Fabulo. Wanted to know when I’d seen you last.”

  “What stupid thing have you gone and done, little man?” growled Jeremiah.

  “I’ve done nothing!”

  “You must have. The Patent Office are after you!”

  “I have not!”

  “That wasn’t all,” I cut in, before their tempers could heat up further. “You should let me finish. They also wanted to know about a man called Jeremiah Cavendish. That is you, I suppose?”

  The locksmith sat down on the tea chest with a bump.

  “But you’re right in what you said. If they’d been after me, I’d still be locked in that cell. They grabbed me because they have court records connecting me to Fabulo. But what do they know that connects Fabulo to Jeremiah?”

  “Nothing.”

  There was a silence. Then the locksmith cleared his throat. “There is something,” he said. “When you took me to see Harry Timpson in prison, there was a register. We had to give our names. It was a Kingdom prison. But Timpson’s case was mixed up with the Patent Office. We were both on that visitor list together.”

  Fabulo put aside his bread and sausage, as if it had lost its flavour. “Connection or no, why are the bastards after finding us?”

  I looked to Jeremiah, who was staring fixedly at a weevil crawling across the floorboards between his boots.

  “I think you’d better explain about your duties to the Guild of Locksmiths,” I said.

  A deep frown was growing on Fabulo’s forehead. “What has he gone and done?”

  “It’s more what he hasn’t done. He can’t face his old colleagues. He’s dropped out of circulation. I think perhaps they’ve noticed.”

  Ellie had finished tending my face. She dropped the cloth into the bucket and sat back on her heels. “Why would they be bothered that he’s missing?”

  “Jeremiah,” I said. “How many people know what you know about the locks of the International Patent Court? “

  He looked up and met my eye. “Five,” he said. “Including me.”

  Fabulo groaned. “That looks like a good enough reason.”

  CHAPTER 22

  October 10th

  Regard the lie of the liar as the shadow of a truth. Study a shadow and the position of the sun will be revealed.

  The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

  From his title, I’d assumed the Grand Master of the Guild of Locksmiths would have a larger and more palatial residence. It turned out to be a half-timbered structure, the upper storey of which overhung the road.

  An entranceway wide enough for a small coach to pass gave access to a brick courtyard. Standing inside, hidden by a stack of barrels, I could see the red evening sky reflected in the leaded glass of the upper windows. Below them was a door that seemed to access the residence. A low range of workshops faced it from the opposite side of the courtyard.

  “I can’t do it,” whispered Jeremiah.

  “You can and you will.”

  “I can’t lie,” he said, slurring the words.

  “Then keep your mouth closed. I shall do enough lying for us both.”

  Before we’d set out, Ellie had prepared a pipe for him to smoke. “To calm him,” she’d said. The smoke had been cloying and sweet. At first he complained. But, after a couple of breaths, he relaxed into his task. And, after a few more, he’d been reluctant to let her take the pipe from his hand. “That’s enough,” she’d said.

  But now, standing in the Grand Master’s courtyard, the danger had grown more real.

  I took his hand and led him to the door of the residence. “Trust me,” I said.

  I pulled the cord and a bell rang somewhere inside, followed by voices calling within and then approaching footsteps.

  It was an elderly woman who opened the door.

  “It’s guild business,” I said. “My uncle needs to see the Grand Master.”

  She curtsied towards Jeremiah, who I could see she recognised. But then she dithered on the threshold, caught by indecision.

  “May we come in?” I asked, putting my foot on the doorstep.

  This tipped the balance. She beckoned us inside, escorting us along a crooked wood-panelled passage to an equally crooked drawing room. Here she lighted the lamps and told us to wait.

  The house gave the impression of having been in a state of gradual collapse and remedial maintenance since some time in the middle ages. I perused the spines of a row of leather bound volumes. None were on the subject of locks. The shelves leaned at such an angle, it was a wonder that any of the books stayed upright.

  “Jeremiah Cavendish,” crackled a voice in the doorway.

  I turned to see a grey-bearded man, wearing a Lincoln green smoking jacket and cap. He stood bent to the left, resting his weight on a walking cane.

  “Grand Master,” said Jeremiah, bowing unsteadily.

  “What a pleasant surprise,” the man said.

  I coughed to attract his attention.

  “And who might this be?” he asked, with a look and a smile that I didn’t find comfortable.

  I answered, though the question had been addressed to Jeremiah. “My name’s Elizabeth. Mr Cavendish is my uncle.”

  “Ah? How charming.”

  “It’s me persuaded him to come.”

  “That was thoughtful of you,” said the Grand Master, his eyes still directed away from me. “We’ve missed you, Jeremiah. Not in a good way, you understand.”

  Jeremiah was looking at the floor. “I’m… sorry.”

  “We should adjourn to another room. Your niece can remain here. There are things we need to discuss. In private.”

  He was turning as if to leave when I said, “I can’t let you do that.”

  “What did you say?”

  “My uncle’s ill. I can’t let you take him from my side.”

  “He can walk, can’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “He isn’t knocking on death’s door?”

  “No.”

  “Then, young lady, take a seat and wait for the return of your elders and betters.”

  “His illness isn’t of the body.” This I said in a whisper.

  The Grand Master stepped laboriously towards Jeremiah, the metal tip of his cane clacking against the ancient floorboards. Such was the height difference between the two men that when he came close he had to crane his neck to peer up into the other man’s eyes. He sniffed to the left and right of Jeremiah’s jacket.

  “Have you been using opium?”

  “It’s the only thing that keeps him calm, sir,” I said.

  “I didn’t ask you, girl!”

  “Yet I must be the one to answer.”

  The Grand Master wheeled and scuttled towards me, his speed driven by anger.

  “You’ve been drugging him? No wonder he forgets his duties.”

  “Without it, he raves.”

  “You insolent girl! I’d have you whipped, but I see I’d not be the first!” He prodded a finger against my swollen lower lip.

  I recoiled, from shock rather than pain, for his hand was a prosthesis of metal.

  “Now leave us. Go home!”

  “I will not,” I said.

  “Will not?”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “You’ve drugged him to this piteous state. That makes you responsible for the trouble in which he finds himself!”

  “His beloved wife died,” I said. “At first he showed a stoic face to the world. But he was crumbling from within. You don’t know how he ranted! He was driven mad from grief. If you’d seen, you’d not blame me for giving him this little comfort. I would’ve kept him away from all gazes, but then I heard that he’d been missed. So I came here. To you. Did I do wrong?”

  The Grand Master half-turned and seemed to be examining Jeremiah. My face had flushed during our exchange
. If he’d been able to hear my heartbeat, as I could, thumping in my ears, he’d have known my words for lies.

  He ran the tip of his tongue over his thin upper lip, calculating, I thought. “Perhaps I’ve misjudged you,” he said. “And I’ve been remiss in not offering refreshment. Would you sit while I have something brought?”

  “There’s no need.”

  “For you, maybe. But I’m an old man, dry in the throat. And to share a pot of tea might soothe your uncle’s ill humour. I fancy it’s just what he needs. Make him as comfortable as he may be. And you yourself as well, my dear.” Then he tapped his way from the room, saying, “I’ll need to raise a servant.”

  Like Jeremiah, the Grand Master was not a proficient liar. His abrupt conversion to our wellbeing was transparently false. We’d come to soothe the suspicions of the guild. But it seemed things had already slipped too far for that. Our appearance at his door, indeed everything I’d said and done, had made matters worse.

  I listened until I could no longer hear his walking stick. Then I took Jeremiah’s hand. It felt clammy.

  “Come,” I whispered.

  He stumbled after me. “Where to?”

  “I think he’s telling the Patent Office you’re here. He may have sent for them already – when we first arrived. We must go. Now.”

  I retraced our path, along the crooked passage to the front door, which I found unlocked. Jeremiah dragged his feet as he walked, his boots making a scuffing sound against the bricks of the courtyard. It had grown dark whilst we’d been inside.

  I left him standing in the shadow of the barrels and went to check the road. At first glance all seemed safe. But then I caught the scent of tobacco smoke on the air and saw the profile of a man standing in the recess of a doorway some yards up the street. He was thickset and wore a coat so long it almost reached his ankles. I watched as he raised a pipe to his mouth.

  Back in the courtyard, I found Jeremiah sitting on the edge of one of the barrels.

  “I want to sleep,” he said.