The Remnant

by Charlie Fletcher

  “Ah,” he said, round a mouthful of pie. “Thing of beauty.”

  “Me or the pudding?” she said.

  “Well, both of course,” he said, and nodded at Amos. “Sure he’s asleep?”

  “He had something to loosen his tongue in the first pint, and something to make him sleep in the last two,” she said. “He’ll be out until after midday I’d say. Looks like he could do with a long sleep.”

  “I’ll put him snug in the room at the back alongside the Sluagh,” he said. “Poor bugger. You think of his life. Foundling, raised in the orphanage at Cat Cree—that’s a hard place to have landed, with no time for kindness or soft edges, I can tell you, and he’ll have been singled out because he’s got more’n a touch of the tar-brush in him. Anything makes you a whit different gets you marked out for blows in a brutish sty like that place. Then he gets adopted, and thinks he’s out of the frying pan, but then it’s the Templebanes and he’s up to his chin in that nest of snakes.”

  “And all the while he doesn’t tell anyone he can hear their thoughts,” she said thoughtfully, looking at Amos’s head on the table. “So he’s not an idiot either.”

  “Got a lot of blood on his hands,” said Hodge.

  “Well, who the hell hasn’t?” said Cook. “We’re no angels.”

  “Yeah, but we’re on their side,” said Hodge.

  “He’s never killed anyone out of spite or badness,” said Cook. “He’s done it out of self-preservation or saving someone else. Just like us. He’s got more of a hum of power about him than I’ve ever felt in one so young, too.”

  “Well yeah, he has powers and don’t know that they are powers,” said Hodge. “Like that Lucy Harker.”

  “He doesn’t feel like Lucy did,” said Cook. “His troubles came on him unbidden, as it were. She had a different thing.”

  “She carried a flaw in her,” agreed Hodge. “Her flaw went back to her beginning, I’d say. He’s just lost. Looking for somewhere to be. She was the other kind of lost, always wanting not to be where she found herself, always running towards someplace else.”

  “I liked her,” said Cook. “Still do.”

  “Me and all,” said Hodge. “She’s a sparky one, right enough. Maybe one day she’ll run so far she’ll catch up with herself. Then perhaps we’ll see her again.”

  “No,” said Cook, shaking herself as if a chill had run through her. “My gut tells me I’ve seen the last of Lucy Harker.”

  She nodded at Amos, snoring on the tabletop.

  “Why don’t you carry him to the bedroom? And then we need to talk about what he told us, about Mountfellon and the Sluagh.”

  “And the eel lady,” said Hodge.

  “The Ghost of the Itch Ward,” said Cook, nodding. “Yes. Her, and her saying she was one of us once upon a time …”

  “Smith’d know,” said Hodge, “if it was true. I can’t think who she might have been. And I reckon you’ve as good a tally in your head of who’s been and who’s gone as I do.”

  “Yes,” said Cook. “It’s got me foxed too. I miss the old days when we were more numerous. I miss being part of a crowd. Felt safer. And a sight more convivial, somehow.”

  “Nothing unconvivial about your pudding,” said Hodge hopefully, nudging the now empty plate towards her.

  “Put him to bed and I’ll cut you another slice,” she said. Hodge grinned and stood up.

  “And what d’you think she is, this Ghost?” he said, lifting Amos out of his chair as easily as if he weighed nothing at all.

  “A torment and a tribulation,” said Cook. “The only question is for whom.”

  CHAPTER 40

  THE MONARCH ENGAGED

  John Rogers Watkins was a shrewd man, proud of his vision and enterprise. He was as healthily eager to make money as any enterprising man who plied his trade on the Thames, but it was his vision that set him apart from the crowd of speculators and opportunists elbowing each other to claim their piece of the rapidly expanding pie afforded by the growth the Port of London was enjoying. It was a phenomenon driven both by the explosion of manufacturing at home and imperial expansion abroad, and its result was ships, ships and more ships crowding into the narrow and twisting gut of the river, where they became less and less able to manoeuvre themselves amid the jam of other vessels. Watkins saw this, and realised the opportunity that small vessels with powerful paddle wheels powered by steam might avail themselves of in being paid to tow the increasingly ungainly cargo ships against tide and wind. Watkins was the king of the London steam tug trade, and the fact he named his business after his young son William was proof that this was a man who thought in dynastic rather than short terms.

  He also prided himself on being something of an inventor, having devised something called a chain-box which was essentially a small wagon on rails which ran across the deck of his prize tug, the Monarch, between the two paddle wheels. It was loaded with heavy chain, so that by pushing it from side to side of the boat, the equilibrium was altered, lifting one or the other paddle wheels out of the water while the other dug deep. This, he was explaining to the noble lord who had so flatteringly attended him at his offices at St. Katherine’s dock, made the tug as responsive as if he had a pair of engines enabling him to run each wheel separately, a design his new tug, presently under construction at a boatbuilders just up the river at Limehouse, was going to have.

  “That,” said Mountfellon, “is precisely the kind of mechanical ingenuity that my fellow members of the Royal Society admire. Why, sir, you may decry your innovation as merely practical, but it takes a keen mind to apply the laws of physics without excessive complication, and simplicity, as Occam’s razor reminds us, is the straightest path to the greater truths.”

  Watkins flushed, his face pinked with pleasure at the liberal application of Mountfellon’s flattery.

  “Most kind of you to say so, my lord,” he said.

  “I would be delighted, once our business is concluded, to encourage my colleagues to invite you to expatiate on your mechanical innovations,” said Mountfellon. “Indeed I would. The damned chemical gentlemen and the confounded bug-hunters get too much of our time at meetings, I always say, when it is the earnest extension and application of the Newtonian certainties afforded by mechanics or—as I term it—applied physics, that really pushes our society forward and raises us beyond the apes.”

  The “business” to which he referred was still fresh in Watkins’ mind: Mountfellon had explained that he wished to engage William Watkins Ltd’s most powerful tug, the Monarch, a sturdy sixty-five by fourteen-foot wooden boat, to drag the river. In order to do this, he had given Watkins a sketch of a simple rig he wished to be towed behind the boat, essentially a long spar from which was to be hung a series of chains with grappling hooks, each chain being independently winchable back up, if it hooked anything on the bed of the river.

  When Watkins had ventured—with the utmost deference—to inquire what the object of the fishing exercise was, Mountfellon had been most pleasingly willing to condescend and explain that the object was “some leaden caskets unfortunately dropped in the river in the past by a now departed fellow of the Royal Society, caskets whose whereabouts had only recently come to light …” He had gone on to confide that the contents were a matter of extreme secrecy, and that Mr. Watkins, by helping in their recovery, would be making a very good—nay, an irreproachably attractive—name for himself among some of the most influential gentlemen in Britain, the membership of the Royal Society being of course the ne plus ultra of clubs and associations.

  Watkins was almost as attracted to the job by that hint of future preferment as he was by the price he was offered for his discretion and ingenuity in putting the noble lord’s plans into speedy action. He was not a snob in the social sense, but he was as eager as any man who thought himself a practical innovator to be seen as such by his peers, and a Royal Society whose members had included his personal heroes Stephenson and Brunel was one whose approval he craved almost a
s much as the bag of gold sitting so satisfactorily on the leather surface of the desk separating him from his new benefactor.

  “So, Mr. Watkins,” said Mountfellon, on whom the strain of appearing to be pleasant was beginning to tell. “When might you be ready to begin? Speed is, as I intimated, of the essence.”

  Watkins looked at the sketch of the rig in front of him: a sturdy spar, any length of chain and as many grapples as he wished for could be acquired from any of the nearby chandleries, and knowing that Mountfellon knew that, he put aside his usual practice (which was to think of a reasonable time and then double it in case of the unexpected) and allowed he could have the thing rigged and assembled by the end of the day.

  “So we could start tomorrow,” said Mountfellon, his eyes brightening.

  “Indeed, my lord,” said Watkins. “If that would suit.”

  Mountfellon looked out of the window at the stubby vessel moored below them. Two semicircular cowlings covered the paddle wheels, which added to the broad-beamed look of the craft, an ungainly stockiness offset by a tall, thin smokestack topped with a spiked crown like a metal thistle.

  “That will suit,” said Mountfellon. “That will suit me very well indeed.”

  CHAPTER 41

  THE DOG DIGGER AND THE BAD STEP

  The young dog named Digger was the one brought back from Boston by Prudence Tittensor to be entrusted to Lucy and Cait to aid them in their search for the Factor’s baby. He was a little shorter than his mother, the bitch Shay, but he shared the same broken grey coat, and had some of her wolfhound profile but on a slightly more compact body. He looked tough and scrappy, and his eye was clear and remarkably alert.

  While they had waited for her to return with the dog, various things had been agreed, plans sketched and timetables revised. Chief among these had been that the agreement to help Lucy, and thus Cait, was dependent on Armbruster and Magill confirming it with Sharp himself, since he was clearly the senior member of The Oversight presently authorised to work on this side of the Atlantic. Cait visibly seethed with frustration—not at being made to see Sharp, whom she clearly liked, but on the more general principle of rebellion against being told what to do. She was by inclination and choice a free agent: The Remnant had, as far as she was concerned—and as she had even more unfortunately told them—“clearly spent more time setting up miminy-piminy rules and regulations than doing anything remotely useful with this fine new world they had trespassed upon in the first place.” When the Guardian, always calm and reasonable, had said she didn’t understand and was being a little intemperate and might indeed benefit from “regulation” if she wished to volunteer for it, as it would perhaps correct her view of things, Cait had demurred. She had instead doubled down on her intransigency, saying that as far as she could see, the “sainted” forefathers of The Remnant—and indeed all these fine new “Americans”—had arrived on these shores like “rogues, ruffians and thimble riggers,” and had immediately set themselves up as a bunch of jack-in-offices to frame laws and regulations to stack the deck and hide the fact that in stealing the land from the original owners they were, for all their fine words, the biggest parcel of rogues and thieves in a nation that she’d ever seen.

  The Guardian had taken this onslaught with an infuriatingly calm smile of politeness, but Lucy had seen Magill trying to hide a grin of a very different nature.

  “You know, Miss ná Gaolaire,” Armbruster had said as the Guardian left to make sure rooms were prepared for them to spend the night before setting out, not for St. Louis as previously planned, but for an earlier rendezvous with Sharp. “When you’re trying to steal the honey, it doesn’t do to be stirring up the bees like that.”

  “I don’t want any damn honey,” Cait had said. “I just want the baby and a fast ship home to freer air.”

  “Oh, there’s plenty of freedom where we’re going,” said Magill. “Out beyond the states, in the territories, you’ll see all the freedom in the world.”

  “And most of it’ll kill you if you don’t treat it with a sight more respect than you’ve been showing the old woman,” said Magill. “She’s more on your side than you know, and a thank you rather than a damn you might answer better, but you’re free to do as you please. Just a suggestion.”

  And then, as the thought of the promised beds was getting more and more alluring, and Lucy was stifling a yawn for the fifth or sixth time, Prudence Tittensor had arrived back with the dog Digger and an ill grace to match Cait’s truculence.

  “You’ll care for the dog,” she said.

  “Well, I won’t be giving him away to the first Tom, Dick or who the hell I feel sorry for, if that’s what you mean,” said Cait. “Not like you and the Factor’s baby. I will look after him a sight better than that.”

  “That’s not fair,” said Mrs. Tittensor.

  “No, but it’s true and it’s real,” said Cait. “And real life’s not a bit fair, from what I see of it.”

  She did, however, drop to her knees, look in the dog’s eyes and hold her hand out to be sniffed. Digger’s nose took stock of her, and then his tail thumped once, which Mrs. Tittensor clearly thought an unconscionable act of betrayal, made worse by the fact he then bowed his head and allowed himself to be scratched behind the ears.

  “I’m lending Digger to The Oversight,” said Mrs. Tittensor, looking at Lucy. “Not to a common venatrix.”

  “I have no pretensions as to being anything other than I am, common or no,” said Cait. “But it’s my word you’d be wisest to rely on: if I tell you the dog will be brought back safe, that’s what will happen, and on that I do give you my word.”

  “None the less, I’ll trust The Oversight,” said Mrs. Tittensor. And with that, she turned from Cait and gave Lucy the long leash she was carrying. “You’ll need this if you’re to take him through the mirrors, most likely. He’ll do anything else, but I don’t know if he’ll do that without encouragement, never having done it before. No dog, as far as I know, having done it.”

  She looked at Magill and Armbruster.

  “This is on your heads too, gentlemen.”

  “How does the dog let us know when we find the fisherman Graves and the baby?” said Lucy.

  “I’ve told him he’s to come to you and—” began Mrs. Tittensor.

  “Don’t you worry about that,” said Cait. “I can hear him well enough, though I can’t see through his eyes or ride along in his mind.”

  Prudence Tittensor looked as if this was the last insult she could bear. Cait might as well have slapped her.

  “I don’t have your gifts, Mrs. T,” she said, standing and unconsciously ruffling the dog’s fur. “But my father did. I can hear the shape of what Digger here is thinking to me. He’ll do.”

  The dog yipped once and wagged his tail. Mrs. Tittensor turned to Lucy.

  “The dog’s young and reckless. I want your word that you or the men will take him through the mirrors. The venatrix is not to be trusted.”

  “The devil she isn’t,” said Cait. “But I’ll not argue. I’m not one for leashing a dog any more than I’d like to be leashed myself, so if it’s to be done, Lucy Harker may do it as well as anyone else.”

  And so it was agreed, and Mrs. Tittensor took her leave with a bilious ill grace, and Lucy and Cait were shown to a comfortable room for the night, with an understanding that they would make the step through the mirrors to meet Sharp on the morrow. The door wasn’t locked behind them, but when Cait opened the door to check it was so, they found Armbruster unpacking a bedroll across the threshold in the passage beyond, while Magill was already sitting in a chair a little further down the way, reading a book by the light of a candle.

  “Sure and aren’t there other beds for you in this great well-appointed house?” she said. “This looks awful uncomfortable, and I’d hate to think we were discommoding you.”

  Magill grinned.

  “Happy to be discommoded by you whenever you wish, Miss ná Gaolaire,” he said.

  “Jon,
” said Armbruster, shaking his head. He looked up at Cait.

  “See, he’s usually the shy one. Whatever you’re doing to him, you’d as well stop it, ’cause it ain’t going to get you anywhere we aren’t going to take you anyway. You got our word on that already, and our word don’t break any more than yours.”

  “I’m not doing anything to him, Mr. Armbruster,” she said.

  “Fred,” he said. “And yes, you are. Only question is are you doing it on purpose?”

  When the door was shut and the candles extinguished, Lucy lay on the bed and looked at the sliver of moonlit water she could see through a crack in the curtains. She heard Cait get into the bed beside her, and was immediately conscious of the silence and the narrow gap of unoccupied linen that lay between them.

  She listened to the dog Digger settling himself on the floor at the end of the bed.

  “I was just trying to help,” she said after a while. “And I did.”

  The silence remained unbroken, and every second it continued she felt that six-inch cordon of crisp, cool bedsheet that lay between them widen until it became a heartbreakingly unbridgeable chasm.

  “I know,” said Cait, just at the point Lucy had become convinced she had fallen asleep. “I know. And if you give me enough time to swallow my pride, no doubt I’ll thank you for it by and by. Now go to sleep and don’t fret. Things are square enough between us. Just different than they were.”

  The bed moved as she turned away, and Lucy lay alone in the dark, not sure if she felt better or worse, and then she slept.

  When she woke, Cait was gone, and so was the dog Digger. She tumbled out of bed and threw open the door. Armbruster’s bedroll was gone too, as was Magill, but Armbruster himself was there, leaning against the casement of an open window, smoking his pipe and watching the smoke disappear into the crisp daylight.

  “Morning,” he said. “They’re having coffee downstairs. I’m just sparing them my pipe smoke.”

  Lucy knew this was a lie and that he’d been standing some kind of guard on her, but it seemed an amiable enough untruth not to bridle at. And then he tapped out his pipe, closed the window and walked off down the stairs, as if to prove her wrong.