Alice Payne Arrives

by Kate Heartfield

  “I’m sure it isn’t,” Prudence says. “But I know it isn’t the worst.”

  CHAPTER FIVE: In Which Mr. Grigson Gives His Account

  1788

  “BUT DO YOU MEAN TO SAY,” says Father, “that you and His Lordship did not travel together, or that you did? Elucidate.”

  Father is florid already, well past the heady certainty that no one can tell he’s had two mugs of cider if he pronounces his diphthongs with austerity, and venturing into gleeful indifference.

  Grigson glances at her again. “I do not wish to frighten Miss Payne, but—”

  “Miss Payne does not frighten easily,” says Father, loudly, regretfully.

  It is irritating, the way Father becomes all the more imperious after each of his absent episodes. Mr. Brown the groom found him wandering on the hills again, just last week, and Alice held Father’s hand while he stared into the posset of cream and strong sack that Cook made for him, while all the servants tried not to show their concern. And then the next morning, he was back to being this other new version of himself, disagreeable and unkind, as if in compensation for his vulnerability the night before.

  Grigson looks back at her. She smiles sweetly.

  “We were expecting trouble,” Grigson says. “There have been so many tales of the Holy Ghost in this county lately. So my lord asked me to ride a little behind, so that if he were robbed, I could give chase. It all happened just as he thought it would. Just as the stories say: the man appeared, and then the apparition. A creature of wood and gears, if you ask me, although I could only see the shape of it from where I was. As soon as the coachman had driven my lord up Gibbet Hill, I spurred my horse and my companions did the same. The man veered back across the road, around the carriage and out of view over the hill. The carriage horses spooked and ran up onto the road bank, but we three followed the highwayman. I lost him in a creek bed. I had half a mind then to return and find the automaton and smash it to bits—”

  Alice’s intake of breath is loud; the man pauses; she covers it up by fluttering her hand to her mouth, hoping she looks overwhelmed at his manly energy. He is handsome. Good arms, nice legs.

  She has always dismantled Laverna during the night, after her prey has passed. If they find it, there is no clue that could betray her, and she does not think anyone would trace it back to Jane—people tend to leave her to putter about in her study, the harmless companion, bookish, fancies herself a scholar . . . Still. Laverna is theirs, their private secret, and she does not want their secrets smashed or studied.

  “Go on, man,” says Father, “and never mind what you had half a mind to do. Where was His Lordship then?”

  “Upon the road, or so I thought. A fear struck me that perhaps we had driven the highwayman to take some desperate action. Perhaps he thought we’d recognized him. So we returned to the road, back to the spot where we left it, and then rode as hard as our horses would go, straight to Fleance Hall.”

  He pauses, and takes a deep, shuddering breath.

  “I did not pass the carriage. And it was not here when I arrived.”

  “What do you mean?” Alice asks sharply. “It could not have vanished. There are no side roads, no paths big enough to take a carriage, not between here and Gibbet Hill.”

  That’s the very reason she chose that spot to waylay Lord Ludderworth, once she heard that Father had invited him to Fleance Hall. He was a fish in a pond. So where is he now?

  “You mean to say the whole carriage has vanished?” Father asks.

  “And the three men in it.”

  “Three? What three? Who was with the earl? Your tale is all tangled.”

  “I mean, Colonel, that the earl was driven by his coachman, and that there was a footman too, riding on the seat.”

  “It must be just on the hill somewhere,” says Alice. “Perhaps the coachman couldn’t get the horses back onto the road, and decided to wait for help.”

  “Begging your pardon,” says Grigson, “but there are few trees on the hill. Not much to hide a carriage behind.”

  “You could have passed very near to it without seeing, in the dark,” she says. “Or they turned around to drive back to London, although why they would, when they were three miles from Fleance Hall, I can’t imagine.”

  It must have been fancy, that shimmer in the air beside the road near the last place she saw the carriage. But perhaps her fancy had some cause. Perhaps her eye caught sight of something her mind did not have time to understand.

  “Satterthwaite,” says Father, his brows knit. “Have the groom ride to the New House and fetch Captain Auden.”

  Is he getting up a search party? They’ll find the automaton. She has to get out before them and dismantle it. Damn that earl! Where can he have gone?

  “What do you want with Wray Auden, father?” Alice asks. “Do you think the carriage passed our lane in the night and went on to New House? It’s possible, I suppose, although we have the lantern lit.”

  “That is possible, yes,” says Father, adopting a pompous set to his jowls to camouflage his suppressing of a belch, “but I want Captain Auden because he’s the parish constable. There’s been at least one crime done tonight, and maybe more than one. It’s time this highwayman was caught.”

  CHAPTER SIX: By Which It Will Appear That Grace Is Uneasy

  2070

  PRUDENCE’S SISTER GRACE LIVES in Capsule, the tent city north of Toronto, about an hour by solarbus from the yellow-brick suburban town house where Prudence’s rogue cell has set up operations. On this visit, Prudence won’t be staying on the air mattress on the floor of Grace’s tent, curtained off from where Grace sleeps with Alexei every night.

  Tonight, though, Grace is alone, cooking plantains on the burner. In the low light from the electric lantern, this woman, in this tent, could be anywhere and anytime. But this is Canada in 2070, when it’s warm enough to grow good plantains north of Toronto, yet not hot enough for drought-pricing to drive up the cost of bread.

  Prudence and Grace have lived in Capsule since they arrived in 2040 as children, with the other refugees from 2140. It took five years for their parents to save up enough to send them upstream by a century, to send them away.

  That migration was the first mass shimmer, controlled not by a single travelling teleosopher but by a commercial operator. That company was the first to figure out how to lock on to the EEG signatures and shimmer people en masse.

  “You’re back,” Grace says, glancing up. “You see them this time?”

  Grace has never shimmered since they arrived; it’s far too expensive for civilians. For Prudence, it’s part of the job. Her shimmer belt, military issue, will take her anywhere in human history.

  She’s seen their parents many times, in many different circumstances, before their deaths in the riots in 2140, mere months after they sent their children away. On leave between attempts at the Rudolf Project, she used to visit Dale Zuniga and Mary Rho as young, childless adults, without their knowing who she was. But not these last few months. She doesn’t want to sour anything in their family timeline. The slightest decision could be the border between a world with Grace in it and a world without her.

  She shakes her head. “Business only, this last trip.”

  “Of course.” There’s an edge to Grace’s voice tonight. Prudence knows that voice better than she knows anything in this world. She knows exactly how long it will take before whatever is bothering Grace comes like a torrent out of her, before Grace’s eyes flash and the shadows under her brows darken and then, how long it will be after that before Grace laughs at herself and the skies clear.

  It seems impossible that Prudence could know her sister to the very pore and that Grace has only existed for the past five months of Prudence’s life. And yet, both those facts are true. Her diary says so. Grace only came into existence after a Misguided team went to 1932. The Farmer intelligence is spotty on what exactly those Misguideds did. Whatever it was, how could it possibly have affected the coitus between
Mary Rho and Dale Zuniga in 2130?

  And yet.

  Here is Grace.

  A sister Prudence now remembers knowing for her entire life. She does not remember a life without her. Only her diary does. History—her history—changed. And for once, this is a change she does not abhor.

  Grace hands her a camp-plate with a flour tortilla, some dark red beans and three golden slices of plantain. This was how their dad used to cook, even after they moved to Canada. When they got the news that the mass refugee migration would go to 2040, he tried to cheer them up by joking that at least it wouldn’t be so cold that you couldn’t get good mangoes.

  The sisters sit cross-legged on cushions.

  Prudence eats, folding the tortilla around the warm, rich beans.

  “It’s good.”

  “Sure it’s good.”

  “Where’s Alexei?”

  “Working. He has a lead on something.”

  Prudence nods. She doesn’t ask too many questions about how Grace and Alexei get by. She pays for what she eats, when she visits, and a little extra when Grace lets her get away with it.

  “How go the wars, Major Zuniga?” Grace asks, looking at Prudence as if there’s some clue in her braids, her T-shirt, her khakis.

  Farmers never wear a uniform in the field; the whole idea is that they’re supposed to blend in to whatever period they’re infiltrating. She travels with whatever shimmering equipment the Command deems necessary, and with a holstered EEG scanner under her clothing. EEG remote scanners won’t be invented until 2135, so very few civilians have them in earlier time periods, but all Farmers carry them. They use them in the field to identify likely marks for propaganda, or particularly dangerous Misguideds. The little black device at her hip is no different in kind from the global EEG surveillance system that Helmut and Rati have been working on for five years.

  How to answer Grace’s question? How to tell her that she has failed, horribly, that the last ten years of her life are worse than a waste? That she is responsible for the deaths of millions? That she can’t be a part of it, even a witness to it anymore?

  “If I told you, I’d have to kill your grandma,” Prudence says lightly. It’s an old shimmer joke, and it’s not funny.

  Grace smiles anyway, at something she’s thinking. “You remember how Uncle Mads used to tell us that piss-poor joke about the pterodactyl?”

  “Ugh,” says Prudence, nodding, laughter filling her chest. “What was it? ‘Because the p is silent’? Shit. I can’t believe he tried it every single time. Like we’re going to forget from the last time.”

  “Maybe he was an undercover teleo,” gasps Grace, wiping her eye. “He was caught in a loop.”

  “It would explain a lot.”

  They let the laughter trickle to nothing, the tent warm with the sweet smell of plantain and their silence. Grace’s mouth squirms, as if with the remnants of laughter, but there’s something more to it.

  Prudence is sick of waiting, out of the habit of letting time unfurl on its own, and the relief of laughing with her sister makes her eager for more of her, more of this closeness.

  “Weh de go ahn, gial?” Prudence says it softly, putting her head to one side. They don’t speak Belizean Creole often, now, but it was once the language of secrets and the promise of secrets between them. Their father’s language.

  Grace drops her gaze, shakes her head. “Prudence. You’re going to look at me.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m a horrible person. With eyes. You want me to avert my gaze? What?”

  “No, damn, I mean you’re going to look at me. Like you do. Like you know a secret you can’t tell me.”

  “Well, maybe I do. It’s the job, Grace.”

  “No, it’s not. That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s—well, Alexei and I have been talking about trying. For a baby.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Alice Investigates, with Results That Will Hereinafter Appear

  1788

  AS SOON AS THE searchers ride out across the brush-covered pasture between Fleance Hall and Gibbet Hill, Alice and Jane saddle Havoc and Thunder and ride down the road to dismantle the automaton. They wear cloaks over their gowns, and daggers tucked down behind their busks, but for once they have no need of disguise or subterfuge. If they’re found, they’ll say they were trying to help the searchers.

  They can hear the shouts of the men, and see their lanterns among the trees, but they don’t meet anyone. Jane gets to work dismantling Laverna while Alice keeps watch, wheeling Havoc back and forth on the road.

  It was Father who taught her to ride, in better days.

  At last, Jane is done with her work. Laverna, the little box and the rails all just barely fit in their four saddlebags, when dismantled.

  After Laverna has been safely hidden in Jane’s study, the lovers make hot chocolate in the empty kitchen and take the tray out to the drawing room. It feels as though they have the house to themselves, and they nearly do. Past midnight, Cook and the housemaid are in bed, and Satterthwaite, the groom and Father are out with the search party. Everything is quiet.

  In one corner of the drawing room, two chaises meet at right angles. They each take one of them and stretch out under blankets to wait for news. Their heads loll, close, and Alice wrenches her neck around to kiss Jane’s temple, under her blond curls.

  “They could return any time,” Jane whispers. “Careful.”

  Alice sighs, and turns away. “I am sick of hiding. We should get a cottage somewhere. Just the two of us.”

  “But you love Fleance Hall.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t give up Fleance Hall. I’d just keep you as a paramour, all hidden behind walls of brambles. Don’t worry. I’d give you your machines to keep you company.”

  “Hmph.”

  She says nothing more, and at last Alice turns to see if she has hurt her, but Jane’s eyes are closed.

  Alice slips off her chaise, kneels by Jane and watches her sleeping face for a few breaths. She goes to the writing table, scratches a few lines on a piece of paper and tucks it into Jane’s blanket. Alice doesn’t want to sleep. She wants to know what she saw on the road.

  Havoc is grumpy at this third ride of the night, and he refuses to graze when she ties him near the old milestone where the carriage went off the road. He snorts and shuffles his feet, watching her peer at the ground.

  The sun is nearly up and she can see things in the cool morning twilight that she did not see in the night: hoof marks and wheel prints. They don’t make any sense. The marks of the carriage go straight off the road, up the muddy bank, and then they simply stop. No change of distance between the hooves. No sign that the horses paused or turned back to the road.

  Lord Ludderworth is the very last person on earth she would have imagined running away with the fairies.

  So what is it, then? That aura she saw. It may have been her imagination, but perhaps imagination saw what her reason could not. Perhaps there was something that caught her eye about this place—but what?

  A gleam catches her eye on the ground, a few steps away in a patch of daisies.

  She kneels on the ground and parts the flowers. A glint of wire, and a gleam like brass.

  It’s a mechanism. A device of some kind, with nine wheels overlaid on each other, round and gleaming like the gears of a clock, about as big as her hand. Something of Jane’s?

  “Looking for something?”

  She falls back onto her arse, her skirt in the mud, and thrusts the mechanism into her pocket.

  Wray Auden’s several paces away, down the slope of the road. He takes a few strides toward her, squats and offers his hand.

  “I’m very sorry, Miss Payne,” he says, with a grin that makes him a liar. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  She takes his hand and stands. Damn!

  “Captain Auden, it is always lovely to see you.”

  “You’re aiding in the search?”

  “Nothing of the sort,” she answers. “I am in the habit of leaving notes f
or several of my lovers around this old milestone, and they leave responses for me,” she says, hoping to startle him back. She succeeds. The grin drops down to Auden’s usual thin, straight line. He has a changeable face. Handsome, in most light. But it doesn’t quite look like any other face. It wants studying.

  Damn—her answer was too clever for her own good. She shouldn’t have given anyone any reason to go ferreting around here. But Auden doesn’t seem the prurient type. Curious, yes, but moral to a fault. He came home from the war around the same time Father did, bought New House and has been making a good go of it as a farmer.

  He glances up the road toward the top of the hill. “I’ve been up and down this road in the night, and haven’t found any signs of how our highwayman did away with two men and their carriage. Speaking of which, Miss Payne, I’d advise you not to ride out alone.”

  “I never am alone, if I can help it.”

  “Forgive me, but you’re alone now.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m with you.”

  She really should learn to stop flirting. Jane doesn’t mind it, but increasingly, Alice does. It doesn’t feel fair anymore, not when she knows the people she’s flirting with don’t stand a chance. Not even handsome Captain Auden.

  “Miss Payne, highwaymen might cut a romantic figure in stories, but I’m sure that they don’t waste time on seduction if they meet a beautiful young woman on the road.”

  “Indeed? Well, I’m not too worried about that. Generally I’m the one doing the seducing, anyway.”

  He rolls his eyes, throws up his hands, and there’s the grin again. Yes, that face is a study. If she did not have Jane in her life, she would like to run her fingertips over those hollows in his cheeks, that scar just beside his nose. He didn’t have that scar when he went to fight in America. He didn’t have that limp either, the reason he came home.

  “Well, if our highwayman has any brains,” he says, “he’ll stay away from these roads for a while now.”

  “You really believe the highwayman has killed or abducted them?”