Magnificent Devices [5] A Lady of Resources

by Shelley Adina

  Lizzie swam out of the dream, choking and gasping. The sheets were damp and tangled around her legs, and she pushed them away frantically, trying to escape.

  Escape. No.

  She did not need to escape. She was safe in her room at Colliford Castle, and she had had a nightmare.

  Lizzie slid out of bed and went to the window, where she opened the latch. Rain pattered on the stone sill, and the cool exhalation of the ground as it welcomed the moisture was scented with mint and lavender.

  Safe.

  It had been so real. So detailed. She could still feel the hard wood of the cupboard door as her cheekbone had pressed against it.

  Had it been a nightmare? Or a memory?

  A memory … in which she had seen her mother’s face. No, that couldn’t be right. She had never had such a memory. The first time she had seen that face was in the portrait over the fireplace in this very house.

  But if it were a dream, would Mama not be wearing the only dress Lizzie had ever seen her in—the dressing gown over the frothy white nightclothes?

  As clearly as she recalled the cupboard door, Lizzie’s mind recalled the navy silk traveling suit her mother had worn, complete with the bustle draped in a fashion that had been obsolete for a decade. A fashion that did not permit her to sit comfortably on the narrow bench beneath the viewing port.

  Not a dream. A memory.

  But what had happened afterward? Why had Father twisted up her wrists like that and deliberately hurt her? What boy had they been talking about—His Royal Highness? Surely they could not have meant Prince George, the Prince of Wales’s son?

  Her father—assassinating father and son because they stood in line to the throne? But it had not happened. Prince George was alive and well, and in fact was planning to join the Prince of Wales in Scotland for the hunting party, if the Evening Standard had its facts in order.

  Dream or memory? Whatever it had been, it had murdered sleep for Lizzie, well and truly. It must be long past midnight. Perhaps a tube had arrived and with the staff gone to bed, there was no one to hear. She buttoned a summer dress over her batiste nightgown, shook a moonglobe into luminosity, and padded down the marble staircase barefoot.

  A tube waited in the slot in the library.

  Dearest Lizzie,

  You are the toploftiest of gumpuses (gumpi?) and of course I forgive you.

  I shall be on the 7:15 train. The Lady has not yet returned from the revels at the Society (!) so she will not hear me leave. I have confided in Lewis, however. Someone must know where we are, and by the time the Lady extracts the story from him, we will have solved whatever it is that has your wig in a welter.

  Love, Maggie

  *

  “Bundle your hair into this cap,” Evan said, handing her a small garment halfway between a mobcap and what one might wear sea-bathing. “It will protect your head somewhat from the metal interior, and your hair will act as a cushion. Do you see now why I asked you to leave it down?”

  Obligingly, Lizzie tucked her hair away and arranged the cap comfortably. He handed her a teacup filled with a milky liquid. “What is this?”

  “Something to help you sleep, but watered down quite a lot so that you wake in only an hour or two instead of tomorrow morning. It may have some other physical effects, but they wear off quickly.”

  She drank it down—it tasted bitter and slimy—and then Evan guided her onto the table, where he fitted the dream device over her head. “Is Father going to come watch the experiment?”

  “I do not know. He mentioned something about visiting the tower at breakfast, but perhaps he wanted to check the telescope. He had better do that either before the experiment begins or after it is concluded. I do not want you to be disturbed.”

  “I hope it is after—and that he will not notice the telescope has been moved.”

  “He has not been up there in some time. I doubt that he will remember how he left it, and our bad behavior will go unremarked. Now, are you comfortable?”

  “As much as one can be with a diving helmet on one’s head.” The last words came out a little slurred. The aforesaid head seemed to be floating off her shoulders.

  “Good. Now, I shall lower this visor and I will not be able to hear you. Nor shall you be able to hear me. We will communicate with hand signals and a slate.”

  She nodded, and the visor slid down. Her breathing sounded loud in the confined space, and before long, the metal in front of her nose would show the condensation from it. At a gesture from Evan, she lay back and swung her feet up. He slid a bolster—covered in chenille, no doubt filched from one of the many bedrooms in the castle—under her neck and shoulders to support them.

  And then she slid into unconsciousness the way an airship crashed—a long, slow glide and a soft landing.

  Mama’s voice was only a whisper, but Lizzie in her cupboard could hear it clearly. “Murderer.” Beside her, Maggie stirred and rolled over, but Lizzie could not move.

  “So dramatic, Elaine. Nothing has happened yet.”

  “What do you plan to do with us?”

  “That is well in hand.”

  “Charles, think of the girls. They are only five, for God’s sake. They are innocent.”

  “I do think of the girls, but when one looks at the longer view, I have all I need in Claude. Girls cannot run businesses, nor can they inherit, especially once I secure a peerage. It is a pity you did not give me a son, like Louise.”

  “I know what happened to her, Charles. I know, and if you do not leave now, I will tell what I know. It is all written down, and a word from me will see that the papers get it.”

  “And who will hear that word?”

  “I shall scream.”

  “I have no doubt you will.” He advanced upon her. “But for the sake of the girls, I suggest you do not. Will you terrify them so?”

  “You may do as you like with me, but leave them alone.” Mama’s courage was beginning to crack.

  “I am afraid not. You see, I know that Elizabeth is awake in that cupboard, and that little pitcher has particularly big ears. No, I am afraid this must be a family affair.”

  “What do you—what is that? Charles, what is in that syringe?”

  And then Papa pounced upon Mama again, and she tried to scream, but then her body went limp, and something dropped to the floor that Lizzie could not see.

  Papa advanced upon the cupboard, and Lizzie pressed both hands to her mouth. Mama lay upon the floor. What was wrong with her? Why was she sleeping there and not in her bed across the cabin? Mewling noises emanated from between her fingers, and Lizzie tried to choke them back. Some deep instinct told her she must be quiet, he must not see her—

  Too late.

  His tawny eye pressed to the crack in the cupboard door. Only a crack, but she could see the malevolence and the triumph there.

  “Do not move or speak,” he whispered, “or your mother will die.” And then he was gone.

  Frozen in terror, Lizzie huddled under the quilt. When the smell of smoke crept into the cabin, she sniffed the air. Oh, no. Even she and Maggie knew that meant something dreadful. Fire on an airship meant it would crash. They must not crash!

  She must disobey Papa and wake Mama, hurry hurry.

  She slid the cupboard door open with both hands and leaped out, shaking Maggie with all the terror that had kept her motionless a few minutes ago. “Maggie! Wake up! There is a fire!”

  Maggie rolled to a sitting position. “What? Where?” She coughed and clapped her hands over her nose. “Fire!”

  Lizzie dropped to her knees next to Mama and shook her shoulder, the silk slippery under her fingers. “Mama! Wake up! Mama!” But she did not. Mama’s face was waxy pale, and her mouth hung open, filled with spittle. “Mama!”

  Lizzie could hear the flames chuckling madly now, and without warning, the floor dropped away underneath her. She screamed and lunged for Maggie. “Get the Captain. He must help Mama!”

  They tumbled into the co
rridor, where men were dashing up and down, handkerchiefs over their faces. “Run!”

  “Where?” Maggie pulled her ruffled nightdress up over her nose, coughing uncontrollably. “I can’t breathe, Lizzie.”

  Lizzie grabbed the sleeve of an airman in mid-flight. “I want the captain! Mama is sick!”

  “Get in your cabin, missy.” He shoved them both back into the cabin. “You’re like to get trampled.”

  “But—”

  The door closed with a bang and smoke seeped in over the top. The floor dropped out from under them again and Lizzie screamed. This flight in the airship, which had begun as such a treat, was horrible! She was never flying in one again. The floor canted at an angle now, and Mama rolled over and over, landing up in a heap against the base of the sleeping cupboard. “Mama, wake up, please wake up.”

  Maggie climbed onto the window seat and gasped, which made her choke again on the smoke. “Lizzie, look! The river!”

  The burning ship made orange and red dance on the surface of the water far below. They skimmed right over the top of London Bridge—

  —London Bridge we’re falling down—

  —and the water rushed up, faster and faster. Instinct made Lizzie pull on the latch and the window swung into the room, came off its hinges, and shattered on the steep slope of the floor.

  “Jump, Maggie!”

  “No! Mama—”

  “The water will wake her up and she will swim up to find us. Jump!”

  Holding hands, they leaped out into the burning dusk, and no one alive saw them go.

  *

  “I believe she is returning to consciousness. We must remove the helmet.”

  Lizzie swam up through the water … no, the night … oh, how cold the water is …

  “Lizzie?”

  Something tugged on her hair, and she opened her eyes to see a vast dimness with a large glowing ball above her. The sun? Was she still under the water?

  No, not the sun. Glass. And walls. The tower. She was in the tower at Colliford Castle. None of it was real. And yet … all of it had happened. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. Her mind reeled, her head pounded with the worst headache she’d ever had, and she sagged back against the bolster with a groan.

  “Lizzie, can you speak?” Evan hovered over her, his voice low and full of concern. “I am going to take the helmet off.”

  The heavy metal would have scraped her ears had they not been covered by the cap. As it was lifted away, she tried to lift her arms to the strings to get the cap off. They would not move.

  “Let me assist you.” When he removed the cap, her hair tumbled over the bolster and hung over the side of the table. “I do apologize. One of the effects of the elixir is that there is some temporary paralysis of the limbs afterward. Do you feel any other effects?”

  “Headache. A dreadful one.” To say nothing of the creeping horror still surging in her bloodstream—a horror she was powerless to act upon because she could not bloody move.

  “I am sorry to hear it. It is the elixir again, I am afraid. All my subjects report the same, but apparently one feels better after a large glass of water, so I come prepared. Here, drink this.”

  He slid an arm behind her head and she guzzled the glass down and nodded for more. The second one went down more slowly, but she finished it, too, and her head seemed to clear a little. The horror of the memories, however, did not.

  For they were memories.

  The crack—the tawny eye—

  Oh, yes. She had been having flashes of a memory so deeply buried that it was not until she had seen the author of her grief and fear again that it had begun to bubble to the surface. And between her childhood books and the elixir—opium, she had no doubt—the memory had been freed altogether.

  “Is Father here?” she whispered.

  “I would not miss this for the world.” Her father stepped out from behind the screen, and her stomach plunged in fear. “How do you feel, my dear?”

  “Better.” She tried to sit up, to move her legs or arms, but the most she could do was wiggle her fingers. She must play the innocent, the invalid. “Or perhaps not.”

  “Do not exert yourself. Sometimes it takes as much as an hour for the subject to recover fully from the elixir. When Kennidge agreed to be our subject, such was the case.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Yes, we were able to get one of our successful plates from him.”

  “I beg your pardon—I meant did it work on me?”

  She prayed it had not. How foolish she had been to agree to this! For if even one plate showed an image—a single moment of those memories—then her life would be worth even less than it had been on that fateful day when she and Maggie were supposed to have died.

  Maggie!

  Now she lay rigid, struck motionless by terror. Even now Maggie was probably alighting from the train and looking for the trap Lizzie had sent. What had she been thinking? How could she have been so foolish as to drag her sister—cousin—into this, simply because she was frightened and wanted company?

  Oh, how selfish she had been, and now Maggie’s life would be in danger, too. There would be no explaining to Father—de Maupassant—she could no longer think of him as any sort of parental figure who could bear her mother’s name—that unlike Lizzie or her mother, Maggie had neither seen nor heard anything that could incriminate him.

  For he had more to lose now.

  But she and Maggie had much more to live for.

  “Lizzie, you must rest until the effects of the elixir have worn off,” Evan said. “While you recover, Charles and I will process the plates and see whether my recent improvements to the mnemosomniograph have been effective.”

  She must run. While they were busy, she must find a conveyance and get to the train station as fast as she could.

  And then what? There was no return train to London until this evening. Well, no matter. If they had to walk all the way across the Cotswolds, they would be safer than staying here. As soon as this wretched paralysis wore off, she would act.

  Now she could wiggle her toes inside her kid boots. One foot flopped to the side, and with a great effort, she brought it to the vertical.

  The examination of the plates seemed to take ages. Not that she would complain, for each minute that passed brought some small return to mobility. Now she could circle her ankles. And lift her arms.

  Patience. Knees?

  Muscles tightened in thighs and calves, to no effect. She curled her spine forward, but could not manage to sit up.

  From behind the screen, Evan exclaimed, “I think we have something!”

  Come on. Come on, body. Do not fail me. I must … get … up …

  No matter how she struggled, her legs would not move.

  “Lizzie, you are a wonder!” Evan called. “We have three clear images!”

  Oh, Lord, help me now, for I am alone.

  “What do you think produced such high quality?” de Maupassant asked him.

  “Since the laboratory conditions were identical to those of the other subjects in every respect,” Evan said, excitement in his voice, “I cannot help but attribute it to an excess of emotion on the part of this subject. Er, of Lizzie. It is common knowledge, after all, that the young girl is an emotional, dramatic creature.”

  Ooh, if she only had the use of her legs, she would march over there and show him just how dramatic it would be to have one of his precious plates broken over his head! Her thigh muscles twitched, and she lifted her left knee.

  Victory!

  Almost. Her right knee would not so much as bend.

  The curtain was pulled back and Evan and de Maupassant walked out, the former carrying the plates. “Look, Lizzie. Can you sit up?”

  She would not look at her father. Instead, she fussed with her skirts, which had ridden up a little in her efforts to move various body parts. “I don’t know.”

  “Do not overexert yourself,” Evan cautioned her. “Only look. Can you ide
ntify this image?”

  She did not want to look. But de Maupassant had already seen them, hadn’t he? He knew who she was, and that she was the only witness to the murder of her mother and every other poor sod on that ship that evening. Reluctantly, she looked at the ghostly image on the plate in its brass holder.

  A figure in bustled skirts, dark against light, with pale hair, lying face down. Above it, an oval floating in midair. Ah. The viewing port.

  “Does your conscious mind recognize this scene?” Evan asked gently, holding it before her with one hand while attempting to plump up the bolster on which her head rested with the other.

  Snouts’s voice whispered in her mind. When in doubt, play dumb. Once they underestimate you, you have the upper hand. It had served the Lady well. She could only hope it would do the same now.

  “A—a doll?” she said weakly. “A dressmaker’s mannequin?”

  “Perhaps,” Evan said thoughtfully, “though one would not think such things would elicit strong emotion. What about this one?”

  She stared at the plate for some time before she understood the dreamy image floating thereon. “That is Maggie, very young, asleep under a quilt.”

  “Ah.” Evan exchanged a delighted glance with de Maupassant, whose face remained fixed in a pleasant smile. “That bears out my theory, at least, though the mixed results are a disappointment. And the third?”

  The last image was stark—the very embodiment of what her mind had been trying to tell her for weeks. A dark field was bisected by a vertical ray of light, and in that light hung a human eye, with a round lens tilted down over it. A lens that would turn a hazel eye tawny.

  Her breath died in her lungs as her entire body stiffened with the chill of fear. She must not—she must not look at him—

  But like the rabbit exploding out of its hiding place when stillness would have saved it, she could not stop herself from meeting her father’s gaze.

  “Do not move,” he said softly.

  The predator had stalked and found her. In the echo of the words he had used on that terrible night, she knew with utter certainty that if she could not find the resources within herself to outwit him, neither she nor Maggie would survive a second time.