by Claire Bott
I started at his words; for they shook loose in me a realisation that had been swamped by my rising panic. ‘Last night,’ I said, slowly. ‘I ought to have wound myself... last night.’
Last night, I had sat up and read the Vindication until it was almost morning. Last night, my thoughts and sensations had been too fully occupied with the opening vistas I had seen for me to have had any thought to spare for winding myself. Last night, I had gone beyond the time when I should have needed to be wound... and had felt no lassitude, no lessening of my ability to move and function, as had always been the case before. Last night...
Last night, I had become free.
I drew my hand back from Sir Edward’s, and looked him full in the face. ‘I no longer require my key, Sir Edward, nor anything else that you can give me. I am independent of you at last.’
His eyes met mine. I saw the colour drain from his face, leaving it as pale as new milk. Then he flung himself to the floor, and crouched against the wall, sobbing bitterly, his hands over his face. I hesitated. His entreaties had not persuaded me, but his despair could still move me. For a moment, I wavered. After all, would it be so terrible to stay – ?
Yes, it would. I could not be the doll he wished to make me, and would only make both of us miserable in the attempt. Leave I must, and leave I would.
‘Do not make any more women, Sir Edward,’ I said quietly. ‘No thinking being can live the life you designed me for.’
I do not know whether he heard me. At any rate, there was no break in the steady rhythm of his sobs, which gradually diminished in volume behind me as I made my way through the corridors.
As I passed through the entrance-hall, a chance glimpse of myself in a mirror on the wall made me turn and look. My hair was matted and dishevelled, my dress torn and dirtied, my slippered feet caked to the ankles in mud. Yet I thought of the well-dressed, perfectly coiffured girl who had glided on her smooth path through the days and nights and days of Sir Edward’s house, and did not envy her. She had been caged, and I was free. It was the only difference that mattered.
‘I am no longer Sir Edward’s possession,’ I said aloud, my voice echoing in the empty hall. ‘I am Dove; and I am ready to fly.’
Then I turned on my heel, and left that house for ever.
There is little more left to tell. As I stood on the steps of the house, wondering where Emily and Lechasseur might have fled to by now, and how on earth I would make contact with them, a terrible thought struck me. Had I, after all, been in time? What if the pursuit of the dogs had outstripped my own attempts to put a stop to them, and my friends had been destroyed even before the housekeeper was? What if –
‘Dove!’
I turned, startled, at the cry, to see Emily emerging from the undergrowth.
‘Oh, thank God!’ I flew down the steps to catch her in a close embrace. ‘You are alive! I had feared –’
‘It’s all right,’ she said, clasping me in return. ‘It’s all right. But Dove,’ she added as we pulled apart, ‘do you know what happened? Those things were chasing me, and then they just fell over in mid-step and lay there. I came here – I didn’t know what else to do, and I thought you or Honoré might be here, maybe. Did you do something?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, I did.’ I saw her look at me expectantly, but I was not yet ready to talk about my private struggle for freedom, and shook my head. Her look showed that she understood me.
‘But where,’ I added, ‘is –’
‘I’m over here,’ a quiet voice interrupted, and we turned to see Lechasseur leaning wearily against a tree. There was a long, deep scratch on his face, and one of his sleeves was in tatters.
Emily ran to him. ‘Are – are you all right?’
He shrugged. ‘Mostly. I had a run-in with a dog. It fell over before it could do much.’ He looked at me. ‘Was that you?’
I nodded. ‘It was me.’
‘Thank you,’ he said quietly.
It was enough. From a man like him, it was more than enough.
We walked together out of the gates, and I sighed with deep relief. ‘I will never go back there again. It is over.’
Lechasseur looked at me quizzically. ‘Is it?’ he said slowly. ‘I’m not sure. I wish I could see –’ He broke off, suddenly, in mid-sentence, still staring at me. There was a long pause, and I had the strangest feeling that he was looking, not at me, but through me, at something beyond, something only he could see... Then he blinked, and seemed to return to himself. ‘My God,’ he said quietly. ‘My God.’
‘What is it, Honoré?’ Emily asked.
He turned to her. ‘It’s back, Emily. Her life. Her timeline. It’s back.’
‘And... the important thing?’
He smiled. ‘It’s there.’
‘What is it?’ I cut in. ‘What are you talking about?’
Lechasseur looked back to me. ‘Do you remember when you asked what it was we had to do, and I said that we would know when we’d done it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it’s done.’
I felt a sudden pang. ‘Does that mean... that you will be leaving?’
‘Yes,’ Emily said gently, ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘I wish I could come with you,’ I said miserably.
‘I’m sorry, but you can’t,’ Lechasseur told me.
‘I know.’
He shook his head. ‘No, you don’t know. If you came with us, the world we’re going back to wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t even exist, not as we know it.’
I frowned. ‘I don’t understand you.’
‘You change the world, Dove,’ he said quietly. ‘You make a difference.’
I stared at him. ‘Truly?’
‘Truly.’
‘But – how?’
He hesitated. ‘I... don’t think I should tell you too much,’ he said slowly. He glanced at Emily, who nodded.
‘You see, Dove,’ she added, ‘if we interfere too much, we might change your timeline again. We don’t want to risk that.’
‘But could you not at least give me some suggestion?’ I pleaded. ‘I do not know how to change the world.’
‘Yes, you do,’ Emily told me. ‘You just have to know that you do.’
I thought about that. Perhaps she was right; but I was still afraid. ‘Could you not give me even a small clue?’
Emily and Lechasseur looked at each other. ‘Think of that night in the library,’ said Lechasseur finally. ‘It started then.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘ For that assistance. You did not need to give it to me. You have given me so much already. Thank you again, one last time.’ I turned back to Emily. ‘Thank you, too, for everything. I won’t try to keep you from leaving. It is only that I will miss you both.’
She hugged me. ‘We’ll miss you, too, Dove.’
I clasped her close for a moment. She had been as a sister to me, and if I could, I would have wept to lose her.
When she stepped back, I turned to Lechasseur. He held out his hand, and I shook it. He, I would not embrace. He had courage, persistence, and a dignity not to be trifled with. Much later, when I learned to speak French, I discovered what his name meant, and how well it suited him: Honour, the Hunter.
He extended his hand for Emily to take, but she hung back, looking at me anxiously. ‘Dove, I’m worried about you. You said you wouldn’t go back to Sir Edward; but where will you go? How will you live?’
I had decided this in my own mind. ‘I will return to London, and make my living by writing, as Mary Wollstonecraft did.’
‘But are you sure you can support yourself?’
‘Yes. I am determined to, and I will do it. I will find work.’
Lechasseur stepped forwards. ‘Until you do, Dove, take this to tide you over,’ and he held out the bag that contained the remains of Sir
Richard’s money. I began to demur, but he hushed me. ‘I won’t have any more use for it, and he certainly won’t. Take it. At the very least, it’ll pay your coach fare to London.’
I took the bag. ‘Thank you again,’ I said. ‘I will never forget you both.’
‘Goodbye, Dove,’ Emily said, a little sadly.
‘Goodbye,’ Lechasseur echoed.
I only smiled, not trusting myself to speak. The two of them glanced at each other, then clasped hands with each other. There was a moment when their bodies were limned in crackling blue fire... a sudden disorientation... and they were gone.
I stood still for a long time, staring at the point where they had been, as though I could will them into existence again. But they had gone for good, returned to their mysterious future, and I had never felt so alone.
Then I seemed to hear a quiet voice saying, Women should... think and act for themselves, and I remembered that I had a cause to fight for, and a mentor to lead me on. I would never be truly alone again. I shook my abstraction from me, and turned my face towards London. There I would go, there I would support myself as a writer, there I would fight for the revolution that Mary Wollstonecraft had called for.
When I hold my hand to my ear and move my fingers, I can hear the whirring of tiny cogs. But we are not constrained by the circumstances of our origin; and if I work hard to secure my independence; if I study to enlarge my mind; if I fight all my days for the cause that I love; then I may, finally, attain a character as a human being, and win myself liberty at last.
They are free, who will be free.
About The Author
Claire Bott used to be a performance poet, before realising there was no money in it and opting to be a hack instead. She quickly found out there was no money in journalism either, but by then she was hooked and it was too late. She wrote for the Independent, Men’s Health and Comics International before settling down at Publishing News. The Clockwork Woman is her first book. About The Clockwork Woman, she writes: ‘I’m not sure what this book is. An SF retelling of the Pinocchio story; a gender-reversed Frankenstein; a coming-of-age parable; Pygmalion and Galatea with a twist? Anyway, it’s got plenty of hairsbreadth escapes, kidnappings and flights over the moors from psychotic robot dogs in it, so that’s all right.’
The Time Hunter Series
