After a time, Madame F and her minions went out of the room. She could hear them muttering as they moved along the hallway. Then she felt, behind her, the chill of cold metal on one bare wrist. She froze.
TD chirped, very quietly, from the high hexagonal window. She looked up to see the little bird looking down, his head on one side. He didn’t seem bothered by whatever he could see behind her. Neither did the lab-rat, whose pointy nose popped over the sill beside TD’s beak. Gus had a chunk of biscuit in one front paw, which he alternated nibbling on and holding out for TD to take a peck. Peering down through his goggles, he looked like a nosy old fellow in a box at the opera.
She strained her neck trying to see over her shoulder, then gave that up and listened instead. The familiar snick of bronze rat claws scraped on the wooden chair. The metal touched her wrist again and she felt the fabric’s tension ease. Mindful of just how sharp those claws were, she sat very still while he shredded. When the cotton fell from the back of the chair, she bent to unwind the cloth around her feet. She must warn Serephene and Scottie.
No more barging through doors, though. She listened intently to several voices in a distant room before slipping out to the stairwell. At each flight she stopped, listened, looked, and then fled downward. On the bottom floor too, she went room by room, always checking. But she saw nobody and heard nothing save the slow drip from before. She slipped behind the fabric rack and pushed aside the curtain, and was about to step through when she heard Scottie’s voice.
Oh, good, he’d finally woken up. And cross as two crabs in a lobster pot, by the sound of him. Surely he was not yelling at Serephene like that? He’d be getting a piece of more than one woman’s mind. She stepped up behind the crates and started to push, and then stopped as Scottie’s words became clear.
“Get back, ye de’ils. Back, I say, or ye’ll be off home by the wet road.”
She couldn’t see him. What was going on in there?
Chapter Thirty-One
AS MADDIE HESITATED, huge arms went around her from behind. She was lifted clean off her feet. Her captor unceremoniously walked her into the cellar, seemingly oblivious to her kicks at his legs. Someone had pulled back the dark drape, letting reflected sunlight fill the room. She blinked against the dazzle.
Scottie stood in a far corner, with Serephene pushed behind him and the gondola oar in his hands. He swung at a fan of men blocking his way. There had to be a dozen of them, all in plain dark clothing, most with a green badge on their breasts. It looked familiar but Maddie couldn’t call to mind where she’d seen it before. Her captor carried her around the table and plunked her onto her feet, keeping a firm hold on her upper arms.
On the table, at the same corner where she’d perched earlier, sat a man dapper in pale twill suiting over an embroidered waistcoat. He twirled a cane, completely at his ease while the men opposite made half-hearted feints at Scottie’s oar. He might even have been smiling, but it was impossible to be sure because his entire face was covered by the Cricket mask she’d seen twice before.
“You!”
He stood and bowed, tipping the outsized bowler hat. “And good morning to you too, my dear young lady. How enterprising you have become. A chair for our guest, Higgins.” The hands left her arms. Wood scraped. She looked behind her to see a loose crate had been upended behind her.
Serephene saw her and shrieked, “Maddie, get away if you can.”
By now Maddie’s eyes were fully adjusted, and she didn’t bother to make a dash for the open grill. For one thing, she could see, under the drape, another pair of boots such as the men in here were wearing. For another, she was too furious to leave until she’d had her say. And she was not going to sit down for it either.
“You. Take off that ridiculous mask this minute. Are you selling Scottie back to the French? You stole all his research from them not two days ago. Who are you working for this time? The Germans? The Russians?” She realized her fists were clenched and deliberately relaxed them. “Answer me, or by the Great Cog I will publish your name and your doings in every newspaper in the British Empire. And Take. Off. That. Mask.”
The mask lifted, revealing first a thin-lipped mouth, and then a nose with a decided hook to it. Yellow-gray eyes came next, filled with an exaggerated degree of deference. There was no doubt of it now. The man in the Cricket mask was Henry Wellesley, once a British spy in Asia and more recently a fixer-for-hire with no loyalties except to his current employer.
“Mr. Wellesley, you . . . you haddock-slapper. Call off your men at once.”
“My, my,” said Henry. “You’re not a morning person, are you?” He lifted his cane and the men drew back. “Now then, my dear, pray do tell me by what name I am to address you this time. You’ve used almost as many in recent years as I have. But since you used my real name, perhaps I should use yours.”
“No.” The yell came from Serephene. She pushed past Scottie and marched through the ring of men, her pugnacious stance daring them to lay a hand on her. Scottie followed, glaring. The men gave them a wide aisle.
Henry watched the pair approach, his thin lips twisted in a wry smile. “Stalwart defenders indeed. And here I thought you were defending them. Dear Miss . . . Hatter, pray do be seated. Your friends too. Shall I send for coffee and pastries?”
Maddie growled between her teeth. She didn’t mean to. It just slipped out. “No. Thank you. What are your intentions here?”
“Why, to wrap up the little matter of the French spy, preferably without disrupting the morning routines of Venice’s finest Commissario.”
“And?”
Henry sighed. “To have a civil conversation with Doctor McHoughty who, I believe, was a later beneficiary of my own dear tutor in Chemical Engineering at St. Andrews.”
“Don’t talk to him, Scottie,” said Maddie. “He’s slippery and devious and certainly won’t have your best interests at heart. No matter what he says.”
The automaton rat chose this moment to scamper across the floor. It climbed the table-leg in a trice, skittered across the surface, and leapt to Henry’s outstretched arm. Its wicked claws didn’t so much as snag the sleeve.
Henry stroked the rat’s back with one finger. “As it happens, this time I do have the good doctor’s interests at heart. Those align, you see, with my current employer’s. If you please, doctor, tell me: would you ever knowingly work against Her Majesty or the Empire?”
“I wouldna.” Scottie stood with one arm holding the planted oar, much as one of his ancestors might have held a pike or other long weapon. “Had I known Madame Frangetti was after selling my work to the French, I’d no have taken the job.”
“As we thought. No, dear Madeleine, don’t interrupt.” Henry set the rat on his shoulder. “We men are talking, and you must leave us to it. Not because you are a woman, but because you are a newspaper reporter. In fact, unless you immediately swear never to reveal the contents of the forthcoming discussion to anyone save when ordered by myself or the current head of British Naval Intelligence, I shall have to ask you, and this charming young lady, to wait outside.”
“British Naval Intelligence?” Maddie gaped. “You can’t be . . . they’d never take you back after . . .” She huffed, and sat back with her arms across her chest. “I don’t believe it.”
“Now there you sound more like your father’s mother than your own.”
“You leave my family out of this.” Maddie had managed to forget Henry knew her lineage as well as she knew his. It was a wonder he hadn’t sold that information long since. But maybe even the weasel Wellesley was susceptible to the power of the Third British Steamlord. “Go back to the Naval Intelligence part.”
“If I must.” Henry drew a card from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to her. She peered at it, shifting it to catch the light from the exit. Gold lettering gleamed. Firmly embossed were the crest of the Royal Navy and the name of the woman Maddie knew was the current head of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Chicheley.
“Any
body could have this card.”
“Read the back. Out loud, so I can enjoy it.”
Maddie flipped the card. There, in sprawling script, were the words, “Yes, Maddie. He’s working for me. And no, Knott cannot publish this story. Matter of national security.” The signature was a looping rendering of the initials A and C: Avis Chicheley, who had personally overseen Maddie’s oath for the Official Secrets Act during her stint on the Navy airship. The admiral was a close friend of Maddie’s mentor and duelling instructor, Madame Taxus-Hemlock. The signature looked genuine, but . . .
“Sad to say it’s the real thing, Maddie.” The voice came from the pile of crates. Maddie turned. “Obie. Here?” He too wore the badge on his chest, and immediately she remembered it. The silver bowl of the Earl of Kinbiskit. “Your earl is with Naval Intelligence?”
He nodded. “He came to Carnevale undercover, to winkle out a spy at the consulate. You’re unharmed, then? When I heard Madame Frangetti cursing you upstairs, my hair fairly curled. What possessed you to come back here?”
“Lack of options. And we thought she’d already fled.” Maddie grinned at him. “I could have really used you last night, after we got Scottie out of that tunnel.”
“What tunnel would that be?”
“There’s a disguised water-tunnel across from Serephene’s grandmother’s palazzo, where Scottie and the shark were being hidden all through yesterday. It appears to lead under at least two other buildings, and may terminate under the Russian Consulate.”
“Now there’s a thing we didn’t know before. Well done, Maddie.” Obie turned to Scottie. “Can Gus have chocolate? He’s eaten his way through every other kind of biscuit already. It seems he hid in the bottom of the spider-bats’ cage for the whole time you were gone.” Henry cleared his throat pointedly, and Obie faced him. “Sorry. All prisoners presented and accounted for.” He added with distaste, “Sir.”
“Thank you.” Henry frowned. If Maddie was less convinced of his ability to see around corners, she might think he too had not known of the tunnel. Or he had, and kept quiet about it for his own reasons. With a rodent like Wellesley, one could never be sure.
“What,” she demanded, “does it mean that I can’t write about this case as W.Y. Knott? I risked my own person to track down and rescue Scottie from a nest of spies who were trying to divert his research to the use of Britain’s enemies. I’ve already filed a half-dozen instalments.”
Henry’s thin lips flattened even more than usual. “I think you’ll find your instalments will not see print in CJ Kettle’s or any other newspaper. Britain’s enemies must not learn how close they came to making off with one of our brilliant inventors.” Ignoring her outraged gasp, he said, “See the ladies home, Mr. O’Reilly. I’ll ask for their reports later. Invite me to tea, Miss Hatter?”
Serephene moved to Scottie’s side. “I’m not leaving him here with you.”
“I’m afraid, as a foreigner, you may not swear the Official Secrets oath, Miss . . . ?”
Finally, something Henry didn’t know. Did he think Serephene was a simple seamstress Maddie had cultivated to get her into Madame Frangetti’s? She would enjoy correcting that error.
Maddie said, quite as formally as if she were in a drawing room back home, “First off, Mr. Wellesley, as this lady is residing in a family home in Venice and you are a visiting Englishman, it is you, sir, who are the foreigner. And, secondly,” she turned to her friend. “Serephene, my dear, allow me to present Mr. Henry Wellesley, thrice-disgraced younger son of Lord Wellesley. He’s a spy-for-hire who appears to be currently working for England. Henry, make your bow to Lady Serephene, first daughter of Lord AcquaTiempe. You may have heard of him, as you share an interest in automatons.” She didn’t bother adding Lord AcquaTiempe’s other titles: Queen’s Artificer and Ninth Steamlord of the British Empire. Henry would know those qualifications as well as he knew Lord Main-Bearing’s.
Henry’s face froze for a micro-second. His Adam’s apple bobbed behind his spotless collar. His yellow-gray eyes lost their mockery. He had not known, and now he was worried.
And that, she thought with quite unladylike malice, was how you reminded a supercilious, condescending, traitorous fop who exactly was who in the British aristocratic hierarchy. Her Old Nobility grandmother would have, for once, approved. They still had to leave, for the spies upstairs must be brought down, interrogated, and smuggled out of Venice by means that Maddie was happier not to know about. Scottie promised he would discuss no business with Henry until he’d slept, and Obie volunteered to enlist Lord Kinbiskit’s help to set up an oath-taking for Serephene, making her formally Scottie’s business advisor for Admiralty requests. Serephene’s triumphant smile softened when Scottie kissed her hand. It wasn’t an agreement for marriage, but her father’s disapproval could not keep her from seeing Scottie as part of an Admiralty business relationship.
Maddie and Serephene were escorted out the servants’ door for the last time, blinking in the sun’s dazzle off the Rio di Noale, and Obie lined up transportation for them. Zaneta, arriving with a fragrant basket of pastries, a jar of face cream, and a hairbrush, found them on the point of climbing into an English Consulate launch for a fast cruise around Venice.
“I knew she was a French spy,” said Zaneta, making the “I’d spit if I wasn’t a lady” face. “I will come with you, Maddalena, to clean your hands and help you to bed. Maybe you give me a reference letter, since I have no job now?”
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON was fair and fine, for a change. The four friends took a picnic lunch and went off to explore the islands, with Zaneta as their guide. Fanto, no worse for his lively brawl with the Russians, sang as he steered them along the sunlit waterways. They visited the glassblowers of Murano and the lacemakers of Burano, rode velocipedes around the placid lanes of Mazzorbo, admired the Byzantine mosaics on Torcello and, in the sunny lee of its cathedral wall, ate a delectable luncheon packed by the kitchens of the Hotel Gritti.
Scottie safe, Serephene happy, Obie and TC with her . . . Maddie could almost think the clock had turned back to before that disastrous night of Carnevale. She couldn’t even work up much anger about losing a vastly exciting W.Y. Knott story. CJ knew she had followed it to its dangerous conclusion. Her obedience to the Naval Intelligence blackout would simply show him she was to be trusted with the really big stories.
One thing was bothering her, though. “Zaneta,” she said, wiping the last powdered sugar from her hands with a Gritti napkin, “I haven’t been fully honest with you about what I do.”
“You are more than a friend of Serephene.” It was clearly not a question.
“What do you mean?”
Zaneta’s thin face lit up as she chuckled. “The wife of my brother has a cousin. The day concierge at the Gritti. He tells us how he helps you send the many telegrams to a big newspaper in England. I think from this you are a fashion reporter. You were spying on Frangetti while she was spying for the French.”
“Guilty.” Maddie took the Italian woman’s hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth right away. You were so helpful, showing me all those costumes the Consuls and their wives would wear. And I hope we’re friends now.”
“Friends.” Zaneta squeezed Maddie’s hand and smiled. “You want help to spy on somebody else’s clothes? You call for me, assi?”
“Absolutely!”
Serephene leaned forward. “Can I call for you too? When I’m ready?”
Afterward, on their way back to the gondola, Scottie kissed Serephene on the lips, standing at the apex of the Ponte del Diavolo, the bridge legendary as the site where a witch tricked the devil into helping young lovers run away from a disapproving papa. “He’ll come around,” said Serephene, when Maddie asked if she was planning an elopement. “After I’ve been out all night chasing after kidnappers, brawling in boats, and cuddling a man in a kilt, he’s afraid I’ll never be respectable enough for a Society marriage. In six months he’ll be happy anyone is willing to take
me.”
When Fanto dropped Maddie and Obie back at the Gritti Hotel’s landing stage, the concierge was waiting. “Ah, signora! So many flowers to waken the sleeping heart. Is this the man most fortunate? Signor, I salute you.”
Obie raised one eyebrow in bewilderment.
Maddie’s chamber, they found, had been transformed into a bower of yellow roses. Vases and vases of them, small and large bowls, buds and full blooms, corsages and bodice bouquets. A single white card sat among the stems of the largest arrangement. It read, “I believe these are yours. H.”
Maddie looked at the card, and at the roses, and at the card again. She growled through her teeth.
“If I am not mistaken,” she said, “That outsized rat, Henry Wellesley, has hidden those spider-eye cameras among these roses. If we are not to be spied on by our own devices, we’ll have to search every blasted flower in the place.”
Obie rolled his eyes. “You start left of the door, I’ll go right.”
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About the Author
Jayne Barnard is a founding member of Madame Saffron's Parasol Dueling League for Steampunk Ladies and the author of the Aurora-nominated Maddie Hatter Adventures. Her crime stories, set anywhere from the real past to several alternate futures, have seen print and prizes across Canada. Fuelled by love of the wild, she’s at work on a trilogy of mystery novels set in the forested foothills of the Rockies. The first, When the Flood Falls, won the Dundurn Unhanged Arthur in 2016 and is slated for release in 2018. She divides her writing year between Calgary, Alberta with an orange cat, and the rocky shore of Vancouver Island, where her only regular companion is an owl.
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