The Custodian of Marvels

by Rod Duncan

  “Tempting,” I said. “What exactly is missing?”

  “Index cards.”

  “And what is on these cards?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “Could they have been documents related to the rewriting of history? In contravention of the Great Accord, I should say. I did see such cards. What do you suppose would happen if the world were to learn about them? For example, do you think the rulers of the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales would be interested?”

  “That cannot happen!”

  “Can it not?”

  “No one would believe you.”

  “Even if they saw the index cards themselves? I imagine some might very much want to believe the Patent Office guilty of a crime. What would they do with such evidence?”

  Agent Chronis’s face displayed a palette of emotions. Anger and frustration had caused it to redden. Now horror bleached it to a sickly pallor the colour of tallow.

  “What did you do with the index cards?”

  Ignoring his question, I stood and stepped to the window. But, even on tiptoe, I couldn’t see out. “You mentioned a more comfortable cell. I should like that. And for my friends also.”

  “What did you do with the cards?” he asked again, his voice higher in pitch.

  “I’m tired now,” I said. “I should like to rest.”

  He took in a breath, as if to speak. I lay back on the bed and turned my face to the wall. I could hear him shifting behind me.

  After a long moment he banged on the door and shouted for the guard. I could hear the tension in the rhythm of his footsteps as he marched away.

  My cell was in an upper level of the International Patent Court. Whilst I waited, I imagined what must be happening in the offices below. Clerks would continue to search for the missing documents. Agent Chronis would write notes on our interview. They would be passed on up through ever more senior ranks as the index cards were not recovered.

  One fear would be an accomplice within the Patent Office. Everyone who’d had access to the corridors would be questioned, John Farthing most of all. They would know we’d spoken down there. They would learn that he’d blocked up the hole in the door so that no one else could see what passed between us. Chronis had taken over command after that. Perhaps he was the more senior agent, or there were doubts about Farthing’s loyalty, or Farthing had himself stepped aside, unwilling to authorise lethal force as he had threatened.

  That last possibility held me.

  Eventually, when everyone was questioned and all accounts were found to match, their minds must have turned to the pneumatic messenger pipes. As indeed my mind had turned whilst the door was being forced.

  I’d stuffed the cards into a canister with a note of explanation – a plea and an apology for the danger I was sending. Then I’d addressed it to Richard da Silva and sent it off in the pipe to the Barristers’ Mess. By the time the door had opened, I’d been lying face down next to my comrades.

  If the Custodian of Marvels hadn’t been running, I believe they might have shot us. But the hum of the engine and a scatter of cards had planted a seed of uncertainty. Through our captivity, the seed had begun to germinate.

  Three days.

  The missing cards could have found their way to the Council of Aristocrats in that time. The Palace was only a mile distant. And they, the government with most hatred for the Gas-Lit Empire and its institutions – what would they do?

  There were laws for the punishment of agents. But what would happen if there was even a hint that the entire agency had strayed so far from the Great Accord? There was no precedent for it.

  I’d discovered that a battle and its technology had been wiped from history. I had not discovered why. But, as I lay in my cell, an idea had begun to form. Those terrible guns cannot have been long invented when Waterloo began. The generals sent their armies to attack, not understanding that a hundred men so armed might hold out against battalions. Ample time for reinforcements to arrive on both sides. Thus a single battle had been able to stretch for months, becoming an entire war.

  After such a harvest of death, it was no wonder a revolution had followed in the old Great Britain. From that, the Great Accord had been signed and the Patent Office brought into being – its mission to freeze the development of unseemly science. But the science they most wanted to ban was already in existence. So they used their powers to wipe it from history. They took all the guns, all the history books, every reference to it. Operation Clean Start must have taken generations. Indeed, their pursuit of my book proved it was still going on.

  The Patent Office had been set up to watch over the Great Accord. It was implicit that the governments of the nations must be watchers of the watchmen.

  If those index cards reached the wrong people, might not the men-at-arms of the Kingdom be ordered in to take over the Patent Court? What would stop them seizing that great stockpile of weaponry? Against such power, the combined forces of the other nations would be impotent. Everything the agents had striven for in two centuries would be wiped clean in a single day. That is what they feared. Enough, I hoped, for them to agree to my bargain.

  I’d once thrilled to the idea that the Patent Office might be overthrown. But that terrible arsenal had changed my thinking completely. The knowledge of such weapons had been erased. Laws had been broken. But I could find no fault in what they’d done.

  So I waited, playing out permutations, hoping they didn’t call my bluff. I thought of Yan, who had fallen, and of Tinker, worrying that he might not cope with captivity.

  And of John Farthing. My thoughts always returned to him.

  It was two hours after Chronis had left that the cell door opened and there he stood, breathing deeply, his forehead slick with sweat. I sat up on the bed as before, hands clasped in my lap, and was pleased with myself that I managed not to smile.

  “Where are the cards?” he asked.

  “No longer in this building,” I said.

  “Can you get them back?”

  “Not from here. You’d have to let me go.”

  “It is done.”

  “And my friends. A pardon for all of us.”

  “It may take a day to arrange.”

  “In the meantime, please move us all somewhere more pleasant.”

  He nodded. “And will there be anything else?”

  Our new quarters were a set of connecting apartments on the fourteenth floor of the Patent Court. I was the last to arrive. The guard escorted me to a pleasant reception room where Lara, Ellie and Jeremiah sat drinking tea. He gave a curt bow before leaving, a politeness that was unfamiliar. But I heard the door being locked from outside after he left.

  “What’s happening?” asked Lara.

  I’d just begun to explain when Tinker burst in from one of the side rooms. He seemed unnaturally clean, but wore a grin nonetheless. I staggered back under the impact as he launched himself to hug me, then he stepped back and looked me over as if to reassure himself that they had done me no harm.

  “Are you well?” I asked.

  “There was a tin of biscuits!” he said gleefully, then careened back into his room.

  Ellie rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry. We managed to hide a few.”

  I found Fabulo in one of the side rooms. He was sitting next to a bed, staring at the wall.

  “They’re going to let you go,” I said.

  “Then what will I do?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I spent half my life looking after Harry. The only thing I wanted was for him to be happy. I don’t know what else there is.”

  “Someone else to love?”

  He looked me in the eye. “That’s rich! It’ll be a cold day in Hell before I take such advice from you, Eliza.” This he said with a smile.

  It took another week for the arrangements to be made and all the safeguards that I requested to be put in place. Then, when our pardons had been signed and witnessed, when they had been taken away and delivered into Juli
a’s hand, a package arrived at the International Patent Court. When opened it was found to contain all the missing cards.

  Having packed up our few possessions we were escorted back down flight after flight of stairs to the grand lobby. John Farthing stood waiting for us. I will confess that I felt my heart dilate on seeing him. He strode up to me, his face stern.

  “Miss Barnabus.”

  “Agent Farthing.”

  “News of your release precedes you. There are people waiting outside.”

  “Thank you. I understand.”

  We were a strange procession crossing the lobby. A boy, a dwarf, two women and a man, all carrying bundles of clothes, an agent marching on either side and myself walking at the very front. People stopped to stare. Petitioners milling at the entrance parted to let us through.

  The red coats of the Duke of Northampton’s men-at-arms were conspicuous in the bright sunlight. As we marched down the low steps towards them I noticed a grand carriage waiting by the roadside.

  I stopped just before the line of yellow bricks that marked out the boundary between the Kingdom and the Patent Court. The men-at-arms were standing to attention immediately on the other side. Then the carriage door opened and out climbed the duke himself, arrayed in furs. In his left hand he held a pair of iron manacles, in his right hand, a document.

  “We meet again,” I said.

  He seemed older than before. His face was thinner. A muscle twitched below his eye. “You can’t hide in there forever,” he said.

  “Nor shall I.”

  I stepped across the line of bricks. At first he recoiled, as if I might be about to attack him. When that didn’t happen, he began to smile.

  “Elizabeth Barnabus – by the power invested in this warrant, I, the Duke of Northampton, hereby take possession of…”

  But, before he could finish, John Farthing stepped between us. “You are the Duke of Northampton?”

  “I am, sir.”

  “Your grace, the Duke of Northampton, by the power invested in this warrant…” He produced a folded document from within his jacket, “…I, John Farthing, hereby arrest you for corrupting a public official in the course of his duties.”

  The duke’s expression changed from surprise to confusion and then to a cold, dangerous anger. He moved closer to Farthing and lowered his voice. “I’ll not forget or forgive you for this! Have you any idea what this girl has cost me?”

  “You’re still under arrest,” said Farthing.

  “No court in the land will hold me!”

  “Forgive me if I didn’t fully explain. No court in the land will be concerned with your case. It rests with the International Patent Office – since it was one of our officials that you bribed. He has already confessed.”

  So saying, he took the duke’s arm and pulled him across the line. At first I thought the men-at-arms would try to pull him back. But they looked down to the yellow bricks and stood their ground.

  I pulled the warrant from the duke’s hand and passed it to Farthing. “This is evidence in the case.”

  “This is an outrage!” shouted the duke.

  “It is indeed,” said Farthing. “And did you know the penalty for your outrageous crime is death?”

  CHAPTER 33

  November 2009

  Magic has ever lived in the gap between what we believe should be and what our senses tell us.

  The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

  As my adventure had begun, so it came to end – with a waking in darkness and the knowledge that I was not alone. This time it was not a gun pressed to my cheek, but a hand rocking my shoulder. In my former life, I would have jolted awake with a cry. But, since returning to my boat, sleep had begun to bring me peace. And in that peace a kind of clarity had begun to grow.

  I opened my eyes to find him bending over me. I could not see his face. The silver moonlight was behind him, making of his hair a halo. But he was close enough for me to know the delicate scent of him.

  “John?”

  “Elizabeth.”

  He knelt on the floor next to the cot, bringing his face closer still. “You know why I can’t be here?” he whispered. His warm breath, touching my skin.

  “I do not.”

  “I’m an agent of the…”

  I put a finger against his lips to stop the words. “You are John Farthing. Beneath all the layers, that is what you are. And I am Elizabeth Barnabus. Right now it’s all we need to be.”

  “But if someone discovered…”

  “No one shall.”

  “I told myself I wouldn’t come,” he said. “But my feet carried me and I had no will to stop them.”

  There was a rustling on the other side of the cabin as Tinker sat up, shedding his blanket. “What’s happening?” he asked, his words slurred by sleep.

  “Nothing bad,” I said. “But I need to talk to this gentleman alone.”

  The boy didn’t ask further. Simple acceptance of the marvellous was one of his many gifts. He pulled on his coat, then sat on the step to lace his boots before climbing out through the hatch. The boat swayed as he jumped to the towpath. Listening to the crunch of his footsteps receding, I realised that John’s hand still lay where it had been when I awoke. My nightshirt had slipped to the side and his touch rested on my unclothed shoulder. It seemed the most natural thing. I reached up and stroked his hair. His finger traced from the side of my neck to the soft skin of my ear.

  “I’m driven by selfishness,” he said. “You know I can never marry. There’s nothing I can give you.”

  “You’re giving more already than you know.”

  I brought my hand around behind his head and guided him closer. His lips brushed mine – a kiss as delicate, it seemed, as the touch of the moonlight. Then he pulled back.

  “I’m a bad man.”

  “That which you think bad is the very part I most admire.”

  “You should send me far from here,” he said, then pressed his lips again to mine.

  The kiss was firmer than before and more succulent.

  “Perhaps I should,” I said, when next I breathed.

  But reader, I let him stay.

  SELECTED ENTRIES FROM

  A GLOSSARY OF THE GAS-LIT EMPIRE

  Accession Day

  May 23rd 1828. The day when the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales finally signed the Great Accord. As the last major signatory, this event made it inevitable that the Gas-Lit Empire would grow to encompass the entire civilised world.

  Negotiations leading to the signing had been long and fraught. The Kingdom, de facto leader of the unsigned nations, initially demanded a wide range of exemptions from the provisions of the Accord. But, as the number of unsigned nations dwindled, so did the Kingdom’s influence. Risking a slide into insignificance, it finally capitulated, having secured exemption only from the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment, which had come into effect during the negotiation period.

  The Kingdom presented this as a victory, since no other nation was exempt, ignoring the fact that none of the other signatories had wanted to be. However, Accession Day was afterwards remembered by Kingdom nationalists as a shameful moment in their history. (See also: London Time.)

  The Anglo-Scottish Republic

  The northernmost nation formed by the partition of Britain following the 1819 armistice. The city of Carlisle is its capital, the seat of its parliament and other agencies of government. It is a democracy, with universal suffrage for all men over twenty-one years of age.

  The Anstey Amendment

  An amendment to the armistice signed at the end of the British Revolutionary War. The border had initially been drawn as an east-west line from the Wash, passing just south of Derby. However, when news started to spread that Anstey was to be controlled by the Kingdom, new skirmishes broke out.

  The Anstey Amendment was therefore drafted, redrawing the border to include a small southerly loop and thereby bring Ned Ludd’s birthplace into the Republic.

  The bord
er had originally been drawn so that it would pass through sparsely populated countryside. An unforeseen consequence of the Anstey Amendment was the bisection of the city of Leicester between the two new nations and its subsequent flourishing as a centre of trade and communication.

  Armistice

  The agreement which brought the British Revolutionary War to a close. Britain had been depleted of men and resources in the stalemate of the Napoleonic Wars. Three further years of civil conflict reduced it to economic collapse and the population to the point of starvation.

  On January 30th 1819, the leaders of the opposing armies met in Melton Mowbray and signed the armistice document, which was later ratified by the two governments. (See also: The Anstey Amendment.)

  The British Revolutionary War

  Also known as the Second English Civil War, it ran for exactly three years from January 30th 1815 to January 30th 1819 and resulted in the division of Britain into two nations: the Anglo-Scottish Republic and the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales. The untamed lands of northern Wales cannot be said to be a true nation as they are ruled by no government.

  Bullet-Catcher

  One who performs a bullet catch illusion. The term is also used to describe stage magicians known for other large-scale or spectacular illusions.

  The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

  The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook is a collection of sayings and aphorisms, accumulated by travelling conjurors. Some entries seem to be transcriptions from an early oral tradition, possibly medieval in origin. Others belong to the Golden Age of stage magic.

  The Circus of Mysteries

  One of the many travelling magic shows to tour the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales. Original home of Elizabeth Barnabus. After years of financial difficulty, it was finally closed in the early years of the twenty-first century after its owner, Gulliver Barnabus, was declared bankrupt.

  The Council of Aristocrats

  The highest agency of government in the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales.