The Clockwork Woman

by Claire Bott

And saw, directly in front of me, a small niche in the rocks. Not large enough to be dignified with the name of ‘cave’, it was nevertheless wide enough to admit a slim body. A body such as mine. In a moment, I was at the lip, and dragging myself inside. Thanks be to God! It was deep enough to hide me. But only just. If one of the dogs should glance inside, it would be all up with me. I heard the pack come baying over the rocks, and held myself still.

  They passed me by.

  I lay limp in the rock cleft, barely able to comprehend my own reprieve. They had passed. I was safe. The dogs possessed limited, basic instincts. They would hunt down and kill any living thing they saw, heard or smelled; but they did not have the wit to look back and work out that I would be hiding in the rocks. Once they realised they had lost my trail, they would howl in frustration before finding someone else to chase.

  Someone else... With a jolt, I remembered that my friends were still in danger. No, not merely in danger; almost certainly doomed. Unlike me, they could not simply hide. As Lechasseur had pointed out, the dogs would be able to follow their scents. But what could I do? What on earth could I –

  Then I realised what I could do; and the knowledge was like ice in my mind. I could return to Sir Edward’s house. I could ask the housekeeper to restrain the dogs. They were answerable to it – it could instruct them at its will. It might well be that I, as Sir Edward’s toy, had enough authority to order it to obey me. It was all eminently logical. And yet I lay still in the crevice, and did not move.

  I do not want to go to Sir Edward’s house. I had come all this way to do just that, and now it was all in vain. I could not, would not return. I would creep away softly, evading the dogs, I –

  I, said a small voice in my mind. I, I, I. Do you say nothing else? Do you care for nothing else? Your friends are at risk of death because they were loyal to you. And you, you would abandon them – for what? Because you seem to think your own feelings, your own sensibility, is more important than two human lives. Truly are you Sir Edward’s creation.

  I covered my ears, but the voice was inside me. It was part of me, a part I had never known of before. And what was more, it spoke the truth. I had been selfish, had put myself before my friends. I was disgusted with myself, I –

  No, said the voice. No more I. There is no time for you to wallow in remorse. Your friends are in danger. Go now.

  I slipped out of the crevice, and set off towards Sir Edward’s house.

  I hauled myself in over the windowsill, and dropped quietly to the carpet inside. Looking around, I saw that I was standing in a long corridor. I recognised the place at once. The kitchens were in that direction, I recalled, and the housekeeper’s room was that way. So the nearest speaking-tube was – just around the corner. I tiptoed along the carpet, as softly as I could, until I stood directly below it. Now, of course, I would have to speak, and simply hope that Sir Edward was in some other part of the house, where he would not be able to hear me.

  ‘Housekeeper!’

  There was no reply.

  ‘Housekeeper!’ I called again, a little louder this time.

  ‘Yes?’ came the calm, familiar tones I remembered so well.

  ‘Housekeeper, do you know me?’

  ‘I know you. You are Sir Edward’s toy.’

  I hesitated; but this was no time to quibble over designations. ‘That is right. I am. And I want you to call off the attack dogs.’

  ‘You have no right to instruct me,’ the housekeeper informed me politely. ‘Only Sir Edward may instruct me.’

  I paused. I knew that there was no time for delay, that what I had come to do was urgent; but the housekeeper’s words had stirred me to intense curiosity. As quickly as I could, I asked, ‘Where is Sir Edward?’

  ‘He is in his room.’

  ‘His room? But it is the middle of the day! What is he doing there?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  My curiosity was unsatisfied, but I could delay longer. Every moment might bring the death of one of my friends. ‘Housekeeper, you must call off the dogs!’

  ‘Sir Edward has given me no orders to,’ it answered, unmoved.

  I sank back against the wall, feeling my old trembling begin again. For it was clear to me that no pleading would move the housekeeper, no curses affect it. I had hoped that my status as the favoured toy might have given me sufficient authority to command it, but now this hope was starkly torn away, and I was left quite alone and naked. There was no Lechasseur to rescue me, no Emily to advise me. My friends were not able to come to my aid; instead, I must come to theirs. And this was not a situation in which the tricks of seduction or the skills of a courtesan would be of any use to me at all. The housekeeper could not be wiled, could not be weakened.

  And now the task to which I had vowed myself in the still quiet of the early morning took hold of me with devastating force. For now I must think alone, must act alone, or else my friends would die. And yet I stood helpless, paralysed, shaking hard; for now the necessity was upon me, I found I could not do it.

  ‘I was not built for this!’ I moaned aloud, pressing my hands to my temples. ‘I was not made for it! Oh, God have mercy on me, I cannot think!’

  The mind must be strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task.

  ‘It is not cowardice!’ I cried aloud, heedless now of who might hear me. ‘I tell you I cannot!’

  Every being may become virtuous by the exercise of its own reason.

  ‘But I have no reason! I was not built with reason – Sir Edward did not build me so! Oh God help me, God help me, I am still his toy!’

  They alone are subject to blind authority who have no reliance on their own strength. They are free – who will be free!

  ‘They are free... who will be free...’ I said softly, and pushed myself slowly upright, away from the wall.

  The blank, black mouthpiece of the housekeeper thrust from the wall above me. I turned my head to look up at it, and clenched my fists hard.

  ‘Housekeeper!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you know that the dogs have been killing the children from the village?’

  ‘That is not my concern,’ it answered, unmoved.

  ‘But it is!’

  ‘Why?’

  Yes, why? Why should the housekeeper, which cared about none but Sir Edward, be disturbed at the deaths of children? How could I make it disturbed?

  And even as I asked myself the question, the beginnings of an answer crept through my mind.

  ‘Housekeeper, the villagers are angry – they want revenge for the deaths of their children.’

  ‘That is not my concern.’

  ‘But what if they decide to take revenge on Sir Edward?’

  ‘They would not dare.’ Was there the faintest hint of hesitation in the housekeeper’s voice, or was it only my desperate hope deceiving me?

  ‘They dare a great deal,’ I cried, ‘They have dared to lock up me and my friends with the intention of killing us! And now we have escaped, they have no-one on whom to vent their anger. Their rage will turn against Sir Edward, they will come against him with pitchforks, and knives, and fire! They will come to burn him out – they will come to kill him! ‘

  ‘You are lying.’ Now I was sure I had heard a hesitation, a brief faltering in the smooth, emotionless voice.

  ‘I am made by Sir Edward. Do you believe that he could create an imperfect thing? A thing that did wrong?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And is not lying wrong?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I felt a fierce exultation. Now it was trapped! By its own logic, its own devotion to Sir Edward, I had trapped it. Now I must tighten the noose. ‘They will come to kill him, and he has no protection! You must call off the dogs – you must set them in a pha
lanx at the gate. It is the only way to save him!’

  ‘I have no orders!’ cried the housekeeper; and for the first time in my existence, I heard dismay in that passionless voice.

  ‘If you keep to your orders, Sir Edward will die. But call off the dogs, and you save him!’

  ‘I must obey Sir Edward...’ groaned the machine, in a voice like rending metal.

  ‘Obey him or save him – you cannot do both. The villagers will come – they are coming now! They are almost at the gates! You must decide quickly!’

  ‘I cannot...’

  ‘Obey him or save him!’

  ‘No...’

  ‘Choose!’

  The housekeeper gave one last, terrible cry; then silence fell. I stood quite still, in a great terror, for a reason that I could not understand. In another moment, I had it; the sound of the housekeeper was gone. All my days, I had heard that soft, omnipresent hum, pervading all the corridors of the house so that I had come to associate it with the house itself, and had not been consciously aware of it. Until it ceased. Now the silence seemed to ring dreadfully in my ears; and, feeling close to panic, I gathered up my skirts in my hands, and ran towards the housekeeper’s room.

  I stood in the doorway. The great, grey block of the housekeeper squatted still in the centre of the room. But the dull red glow of the pilot light was extinguished; and I knew, with an unexpected pang, that my aim was achieved. The housekeeper, asked to make a decision on its own, had broken down under the pressure of it. Without it, the dogs would be nothing but inert lumps of metal. I had succeeded; and had destroyed what had been, in its emotionless way, the only mother I had ever known. I put my hand gently on one of the pipes that ran from the dead housekeeper, and drew my fingers along it for a moment.

  ‘You could have tried to think a little,’ I murmured. ‘It is – not so very hard, when once you begin.’

  There was an inarticulate cry behind me. I whirled, ready to fight or flee. Sir Edward stood there, his arms extended; but, I realised after a moment of utter panic, not to grasp or attack me. His hands were held out in a gesture of welcome; and there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘You came back,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, my darling, you came back.’

  I made him no reply, only stood stock-still and stared at him. He was not as I had known him, not the well-clad, urbane man whom I had looked up to without question as master and creator. His clothes were filthy, his face haggard and pale, his frame wasted. Had he been so when I had seen him in London? I could not recall. I had seen him only for a brief moment, and the shock of recognition had driven all things else from my mind. But now, as he stood before me, I looked, and I saw.

  ‘Dear God, Sir Edward,’ I cried, in genuine dismay. ‘You are changed – you are greatly changed! Who has done this to you?’

  He gazed at me, mournfully. ‘You did, my angel,’ he said, softly. ‘When you struck me – and I woke to find you gone – I couldn’t stand it, I thought I should go mad. I found out from the villagers where you’d gone, I rode down on the unicorn, I tried to trace you. God! That city –’ He shuddered and drew his hand across his eyes. ‘But I found you, I found you – oh my dearest, I would have taken you away from that terrible brothel, would have bought you back if there had been no other way! Why didn’t you wait? Why did you go off with them?’

  ‘Wait – ?’ I shook my head, bewildered. ‘You saw that? How?’

  ‘I was hiding on the other side of the street,’ he answered simply. ‘I thought, if I spied the place out for a night, I would be better able to lay plans to rescue you.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ I murmured, my mind running on what he must have endured. He would have had to question rough, churlish men and women who would have been more likely to spit at him than return a civil answer; would probably have had to lodge in some ill-run boarding house – and how in God’s name had he managed to conceal a unicorn, of all things, in the streets of such a bustling metropolis as London? But he had begun to speak again, and I returned my attention to his tale.

  ‘I had to do it, I had to!’ he said now, pleading almost. ‘When I knew that he must have won you away from me, I had to do what I did! But when you came into the room and cried out like that – and I knew you must have loved him – I thought, she’ll never forgive me for this, never come back to me now – I couldn’t stand it – I couldn’t... The unicorn broke down at the gates of the estate. I had to walk back to the house – I shut myself in my room, I haven’t eaten – I’ve barely slept! I thought you’d never come back to me – but you have! Oh, God bless you for it!’

  He made as though to clasp me; but I was faster than he, and stepped back, out of his reach. His speech had made me recall what the pathos of his appearance had temporarily displaced from my memory; that this man was a murderer. Indeed, a murderer many times over; for, by omitting to call off the dogs, he had allowed I knew not how many of the villagers to die most cruelly.

  ‘Sir Edward,’ I asked, still standing off from him, ‘why did you let the dogs run free? You must have known they would do much harm.’

  He looked at me in amazement, as though I had asked him something that had neither relevance nor importance. ‘Why, it was when I came back from London, my dear. I left the gate open when I entered, for I was so dispirited that I could not summon the energy to shut it, or even to care whether it was open or shut. But I shall never be so sad again, now you are come back –’ Again he made to seize me; again I eluded him.

  ‘But the dogs are built to kill!’ I cried. ‘Did you not think of the deaths you would cause?’

  ‘I told you, beloved, I cared for nothing without you.’

  I looked at him as though I had never seen him before. He was self-absorbed, selfish, caring only for the pangs and the sufferings of his own heart, and nothing for any others. I saw with clear eyes at last; and then turned away.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Sir Edward cried, panic in his voice.

  I looked back. ‘I am leaving.’

  ‘You cannot! You must not.’

  ‘I can. And I must.’

  ‘No!’ he shrieked, and caught me by the arm, spinning me round to face him. He gripped my shoulders hard and pulled me close. ‘You cannot go. Why would you leave me? Why would you want to?’ He stood looking in my face for a moment, then suddenly shook me so violently that I could hear my cogs rattle. ‘Why?’ he howled.

  I put my hands to his chest and pushed him back, forcing him away from me. ‘Tell me, Sir Edward; what is my name?’

  He looked at me in utter bewilderment. ‘Name?’

  ‘Yes. My name.’

  He smiled fondly at me, as one might at a small and foolish child. ‘Oh my darling, you don’t need a name. You are complete as you are.’

  I shook my head. ‘You do not know me. You have never known me. You claim to love me, but all you love is your own cleverness reflected in me. I can no longer be a mirror for your vanity, the statue you place on a pedestal and adore simply because it is your statue.’

  Sir Edward stared at me, bewildered. ‘You’re not making sense, my beloved.’

  I tried again. ‘I cannot sit by with my hands folded while the work of the world goes on, and know nothing of it. What purpose do I serve here, except to be your flatterer and concubine? I have talents, skills I never used while I allowed my existence to be bounded by yours. Shall I let them stagnate in idleness? I must act, I must think, I cannot give these things up now that I have found them.’

  If anything, his confusion deepened. ‘What are you talking about? What do you want that I do not give you?’

  ‘A cause worthy of my energies. A task to wake me from the stupor I lay under for so many years.’

  Sir Edward shook his head. ‘I don’t understand you.’

  I sighed. ‘No, you do not. You never will. Let me say something that you can comprehend: I am leaving
you. I will not return.’

  He stood staring at me for a moment, his face twisting, then suddenly crumpled like a puppet whose strings have been cut. He clutched at my dress, buried his face in my skirts, sobbing wildly. ‘Oh, don’t leave me, you can’t leave, you cannot, I love you – I love you so!’ He turned his tear-stained face to look up at me, desperation in his eyes. Then suddenly his gaze sharpened, and he extended a trembling hand. ‘Your key! Your key, it’s gone. You must have lost it. I’ll make you a new one if you stay with me. Oh my darling, you have to stay now! You need me!’

  With a sudden pang of terror, I put up my hand to where the key should have hung around my throat. But Sir Edward had spoken the truth. My key had gone. For several long, unbearable, teetering moments, my hands groped desperately over my neck and chest, desperately searching, trying against all logic and sense to believe that the key might have slipped in this direction, in that direction – but it had not. It was not there. It was not there. The key was lost. With a low cry, I pushed Sir Edward from me and turned away, covering my face with my hands in a gesture of utter despair. To live with Sir Edward again. To let myself run down and stutter to a halt. Two insupportable options; and yet it seemed that to one or the other of them I must turn.

  I was most completely desolate. My key – I had lost my key. Somehow, in the wild chase across the moors, or when we had been taken and manhandled by the villagers, it had fallen without my noticing – and lacking it, all my vaunted independence of thought was as nothing. For of what use was it to think unaided, when my very existence was dependent on the will of another? I drained the cup of bitterness to its very dregs, then, even cursing that night when I had read the Vindication and seen the world open before me; for now, it seemed, that wide, bright world was to be, in one way or another, snatched from me, before I had even begun to explore it. Again I cried out, in the depths of my agony.

  ‘It’s all right, my beloved,’ Sir Edward said, eagerly, catching me by the hand. ‘It’s all right, it’s not too late, I can make you a new one, we’ll be happy again! I’ll do it as quickly as I can. When will you next need to wind yourself?’