A clockwork river, p.36
A Clockwork River, page 36
Florian made a not very bloodthirsty lunge, only to have his blade wrenched from his hand and sent hurtling into the heavens, where it soared for the duration of several somersaults before Captain Jack plucked it from the air, left-handed, and tossed it helpfully back to his foe.
Numbers were called out all around, representing the amount of time Captain Jack would toy with his victim before delivering the coup de grace. “Three minutes more!” “Four and half, and then the gizzard!” As Tommy registered the bets, he occasionally drew into the upper air, from a brown, oiled-leather pouch hooked onto his belt, his remarkable chronological instrument. It was about the size of a baby’s fist – knobbly, silver, shaped something like an onion, with a hoop on top where a chain might be attached and bulging all round with glass cases, like fisheyes, that contained all kinds of dials and gauges: your basic chronometer, of course, but also a barometer and sidereal calculator. He consulted its spinning second hand with calm efficiency, unperturbed even by mud-caked Fanny’s loud and unavailing efforts to fight through the throng of bettors by main force.
“A brave thrust,” thrilled Captain Jack. “Oh, my red-headed stepchild! We are brothers, are we not, in the great fraternity of unacknowledged children? We make our own crest upon the field of honor. Oh, but I shall give you a noble scar!”
Florian warded off a lazy flick in the direction of his femoral artery and returned his blade to guard his eyes.
“Your instincts are fine,” remarked the soldier approvingly. “I am likely to mark you on the left side of your face, as most becoming. It is what I have myself, and you deserve no worse.” The tip of his rapier infiltrated Florian’s guard and wobbled teasingly inside the footman’s left nostril. “I would rather have this eyepatch than the entwined serpents I should have inherited from Gulliver Vanderslaang, had I been conceived lawfully. He dishonored his house, but I still have my natural worth. Who speaks disrespectfully of Captain Jack Muldoon, though his mother was a seamstress? And what were the wages of my sister’s legitimacy – dead, giving birth to the scions of a disgraced house? Her son is a deserter; I delivered his warrant myself. Poor woman! Well blocked!”
Florian had, in fact, managed to ward off a straightforward lunge and was so astonished by his accomplishment that he utterly failed to notice Captain Jack’s rapier darting back through his defences.
“I am glad my future is in my own hands, as your life is in yours,” cried the captain gallantly. “Guard it now!”
Florian did not scream. He only doubled over in shock with his hand clapped to his face, and a thin stream of blood pouring out between his fingers. The crowd gave an exultant roar and began to settle accounts. Those who had laid money on specific wounds clustered in to see if it were a sliced cheek, a lost eye or a severed ear; a swish of Captain Jack’s blade dissuaded them from coming any closer.
“You are one of my fraternity now,” he called cheerily to his opponent, who had recovered himself enough to snivel. “You shall have the best care from a military doctor, who is a singular friend. Smithson, bring linen.”
The lieutenant hesitated, a stack of clean but homely sackcloth obscuring his resplendent cuffs. “Has the young man no second of his own then?”
“Where’s your second, lad?” asked Captain Jack of the tall, handsome footman, who curled into a ball and whimpered. “Poor lad,” continued the captain, and kneeled to put his hand upon Florian’s shoulder. “Are you so alone then? You are alone no longer.”
A shout disturbed this touching scene as a burly apprentice in duck pants and a figure entirely obscured by layers of fresh muck rushed up to claim the post. The first was Rupert, who felt responsible for the whole affair and meant to do what he could to help; as for the other, her own mother could not have made her out under all that mud, but you and I know it was Fanny, who suddenly bore the footman no ill will for taking her place upon the field of honor but felt that such a dramatic scene must certainly require her participation. Rupert hoisted Florian up so that the old doctor could take his pulse, and all the while, Captain Jack hopped about, maintaining an enheartening monologue, and Fanny, out of some combination of solicitude and curiosity, attempted to discover exactly where and how the footman was wounded – he would so obstinately keep his left hand over his eye, no matter how she coaxed him; it was quite vexing – and so it was Briony, standing moodily at the roadside, who first saw a carriage thunder up behind four white horses in ostrich plumes and jingling harnesses. The horses slid to a halt in a spray of mud, and the crested door flew open to reveal the vibrating yellow ringlets of Marabella Spurwell.
“Oh, where is he?” she cried breathlessly. “Have I missed the fight? Is he hurt?”
XXXV
With dissembling and demanding.
“What’s taking so long?” burst out Professor Deligris, who sat in his own front hall miserably twisting his polka-dot handkerchief between his fingers. He extracted a pocket watch and rattled its chain. “It’s been seven minutes already!”
A small, neutral noise sounded from the tiles, where Lucy was scrubbing at glacial speed around the drawing room door.
“Is that normal?” pursued the professor. “For a routine examination?”
Lucy, who wished to concentrate on the faint but fascinating wavelets of discourse flowing under the door, answered that everything was perfectly in order. The maid’s curiosity may have been undermined by a prattling employer and a thick, oaken door, but ours must not be. Let us proceed without further ado into the drawing room.
“Flatulence?” Rosie suggested from her perch on the edge of a glass-shelved, walnut specimen case bursting with natural curiosities and mechanical marvels, where she swung her legs and spooned up cheese curds and honey from a bowl balanced on the northern pole of a large and perfectly round belly.
“Unscientific,” disapproved Osborne.
“Backache?”
“Irrelevant.”
“Vapors?”
“Inconsequential.”
“It will have to be swollen ankles,” came the decree from Professor Deligris’s writing desk, which Kat had commandeered. “It’s the only symptom that is both serious enough to warrant attention and, at the same time, impossible to confirm.”
“Toxemia.” Osborne tapped his pipe absently against one knee. “It seems cruel, given how his wife died.”
“I know,” replied Kat, chewing on the end of Professor Deligris’s best pen. “However, the more frightened he is, the more likely he’ll let her stay where we can take care of her properly.” She hunched back over her paper and resumed scratching furiously at a heap of writing paper.
A timid rap barely penetrated the thickness of the door. “Rosie, darling!” came the worried voice of Professor Deligris. “May I come in?”
Osborne consulted his pocket watch with wonderment. “It’s only been ten minutes,” he whispered. “The poor man is nervous.”
“Never mind,” hissed Kat, coming out from behind the desk and stuffing a quantity of ink-splattered parchment into her skirt pocket. “There’s no reason to raise suspicion.”
“Just a moment, Papa!” Rosie hopped nimbly down from her perch, stowed her curds deftly between a dehydrated newt and a clockwork sawyer, and deposited herself onto a straight-backed chair while Osborne fumbled at the bottom of his knapsack for his stethoscope. As the professor stepped in, still mangling his handkerchief, Osborne was applying the silver bell to Rosie’s belly with solemn concentration while Kat stood by in a helpful pose.
“Just finishing up,” Osborne reported cheerfully as he folded his instrument away. “The baby’s heartbeat is wonderfully clear, and Rosie is as strong as an ox.” He paused and tactfully lowered his voice. “There are only the lower extremities to be examined, and Kat has kindly volunteered. We’ll just need some sort of partition.” With a wag of his magnificent beard, he indicated the hearth. “Can you lend a hand, Sylvester?”
Beaming with relief, Deligris grasped one shiny, copper finial while his friend took the other; between them, they hoisted up the fireplace screen and placed it before Rosie’s knees, then sat on the settee while Kat palpated the patient’s unmentionables. In nervous anticipation, Deligris excavated his tatty old pipe from a pocket packed with walnut shells and loose washers and suchlike, and tamped in Osborne’s proprietary blend, of which the botanist had been good enough to give him a pouchful.
“No swelling of the knees,” reported Kat from behind the screen as she probed Rosie’s patella. “Nor of the lower legs.” A pause ensued. It drew on. It became ominous. Suddenly, the midwife erupted from behind the barrier and seethed at Professor Deligris, “Are you smoking?”
The flustered engineer thrust the offensively fuming article away into a bit of spare real estate on top of the commode, where it smoked merrily and looked very shabby between a highly burnished valve and a fragment of ancient pottery that retained a glossy blue finish. Giving the pipe an accusatory look, as though it were a bad child that had come downstairs past its bedtime, he returned to his polka-dot handkerchief and wrung it with renewed ferocity.
“You have carried on with that too long,” admonished Kat, beetling her brows at the pipe. “And that pipe must be twenty years old. I should be very surprised if it has not built up all manner of toxins and tars. You ought to give it up.”
“Kat, dear,” interjected Osborne, a little alarmed, “an infumation of tobacco, in moderation, has a calming effect upon the sympathetic nervous system and loosens the pleural membranes. I use it myself, as you know.” He smoothed his beard back behind his shoulders and assumed the dignity of medical science. “Let us proceed. Our patient is evidently weary, and we must not prolong this indelicate moment in the examination. Now, the talocrural joints?”
“The ankles? Let’s see here.” Kat dove beneath the screen and palpated them with a violence that brought on a very convincing wince. Kat gave a severe sigh of distress, as though she had warned that something would go wrong and was pleased to discover that it had. “That’s not good,” she pronounced.
Deligris sat bolt upright and grasped for his pipe; finding it no longer in his pocket, he satisfied himself by chewing on the earpieces of his spectacles. “What’s not good? What is it?”
“Edema,” reported Kat gravely.
The blood had drained from the professor’s pate, leaving it as white and shiny as an egg. “Oh, Rosie,” was all he could manage. Like homing pigeons, his hands fluttered of themselves to his smoking pipe and closed around the comforting warmth of its bowl. Rosie felt suddenly as miserable as she could have wished, and if it had not been for the difficulty of flitting in her condition, she might have flitted at once into her father’s arms to tell him there was nothing to fear.
“Steady, Sylvester.” Osborne pressed a calming hand onto his friend’s trembling shoulder. “With the proper diet regimen and a course of hydrative therapy, there’s a good chance of reversal. Of course,” he paused for emphasis, “under no circumstances should she be allowed to travel.”
The professor nodded weakly.
“Now,” continued Osborne, tossing his beard over one shoulder and striding to the door, “what you require is a restorative glass of beer.”
“I understand there will be a meeting with the military commanders today,” interjected Kat, taking advantage of Deligris’s shaken state as they left the room. “You know I have appreciated your offer to communicate between the civilian workers and the military command, and I have prepared a memorandum.”
“Well of course,” stammered Professor Deligris. Although he tried not to look Kat in the eye, she was almost exactly his height and uncomfortably close to him. An uncanny feeling came over him – something about the crudely tattooed rose she turned so brazenly to him, or simply the unflinching, almost accusatory expression underneath it. “Anything I can do.”
“Excellent,” she purred, producing a folded square of parchment from the depths of her skirt and tucking it into the pocket of his jacket as Osborne opened the kitchen door. “Here are a few small matters you might bring to attention at the meeting.”
“The meeting has probably begun already,” mentioned Private Ichabod Gruts offhandedly from beside the ale keg, where he was chummily helping Lucy fill him a second tankard. “I was sent to tell you it was moved up an hour, but Lucy said I ought not disturb you in a delicate moment.”
It was a very distracted Professor Deligris who ran, five minutes later, from the cottage door, jamming his shaggy, fur hat over his bald head with mittened hands. In less time than you would think, he bustled into the officer’s club and, not bothering to shed his snow-dusted outerwear, tore directly into the meeting room, puffing extremely from the climb uphill, with his hat in his hand and sweat beading on his pate. A half-dozen officers, seated about a veneer table with a silver coffee service in the middle, turned in unison from General Anthony Firth, a grizzled individual in braided gold epaulettes who had been making obviously engrossing remarks about the progress of the excavation but now fell silent while Deligris circuited the table to the only vacant seat, inconveniently located on the far side of the room.
“Good of you to join us, Sylvester,” rumbled General Firth cavernously from between a pair of graying mutton chops.
“I am very sorry, gentlemen,” hastened Professor Deligris. “I had some trouble at home and only just heard the meeting was rescheduled.”
“Trouble at home, eh?” leered Lieutenant Bonswell from three seats away. The engineer leveled a glare at him from beneath bushy, brown eyebrows until the officer looked away and, nudging his neighbor with his elbow, toyed significantly with the cream jug.
“We are glad to have you,” rumbled the brigadier. “In the final stages of a campaign, it is morale that is chiefly important, morale and manpower, but we remain grateful for your expertise as we approach the deadline of the New Year.”
“If you will permit me,” interjected Deligris, “it is impossible. The sluice cannot be opened until March at the earliest. The workforce is raw recruits and convicts, and dangerous corners have been cut already.”
“If you had been more timely,” remarked a major with thin, oiled moustaches whom Deligris did not know, “you would have heard General Firth’s plan to hurry things along.”
“You understand the honor of the corps is at stake,” observed the brigadier, “and brooks no delay. We have been charged with a sacred trust to bring new water to the Rhumb. Double shifts from this moment forward, and no more labor wasted on inessential tasks.”
“Inessential tasks?” blurted Deligris. “What on earth do you have in mind?”
“The plans are excessively cautious at a number of points,” explained the general, gesturing at the hieroglyphs traced in chalk upon the big slate mounted behind him. “For example, shoring up the north junction, a task which right now takes up fully a fifth of our manpower.”
“The dam is at breaking point even now,” protested Deligris, “when it is the dry season and there is nothing but standing water behind it. There is every risk it will be overwhelmed at its weakest point once the sluice is opened and the spring melt begins.”
“It is the opinion of the Parliament,” intoned General Firth, “and the corps concurs, that the dam is a pinnacle of human achievement and a beacon of imperial ambition. Timidity and faintheartedness have no place in an operation like this. I have been authorized to take every measure to meet the deadline, and I am empowered to replace any individual who hampers our progress.”
“Traitorous elements agitate against us,” admonished the major with the thin moustache. “Why, it has been only seven weeks since an attempt was made on my life. My scar, gentlemen.” He removed his regimental cap and ran his fingers through the thin, black hair above his temple. “My battle wound.”
“Your sacrifice is humbling, Brittling. We thank you,” resumed the general, and droned on about the Oxhull Dam as symbolic of the constitution of the empire, whose every subject was welded together in their collective pursuit of prosperity and right living, making uninformed generalizations about engineering matters along the way.
Professor Deligris fumed to himself at these developments, but it was worth Rosie’s life to travel, and anyway, he was not the man who would walk away from a bad job if there remained something he could do to mitigate the worst of it. It was not until the brigadier began to touch upon the convict battalion in mixed metaphors – “lost lambs, made to redeem themselves by public service rendered pulling the cart of mechanical power, that at last must overtake the horse” – that he remembered Kat’s memorandum and intervened again.
“Regarding the convict workers,” he said, fishing it from his pocket, “I have lately been approached by their spokeswoman and asked to communicate this note regarding their conditions.”
The square of parchment was immediately snatched up by his neighbor to the left, Major Hagward, who unfolded it and began to read aloud. “REQUIREMENTS OF THE OXHULL LABOR BRIGADE,” he declaimed. “Requirements, eh? That seems peremptory, from a pack of convicts.”
Colonel Burns, one seat over, greedily grabbed the parchment and continued where Major Hagward had left off. “First. The term ‘convict’ is pejorative. All personnel shall be referred to simply as ‘workers’.”
A shout of laughter rose up about the table, and Lieutenant Bonswell, taking advantage of the distraction, snatched the document and, when the hilarity had begun to quiet down, began to read in a whining falsetto. “Second, every worker shall be entitled to one day of liberty in the work week.”
“Just when we are going to double shifts,” hooted Major Brittling. “That’s rich. Give it here,” which Lieutenant Bonswell, no doubt out of respect for the man’s wound, consented to do. Brittling plucked a pair of reading glasses from his breast pocket. “Third. Military and civilian workers perform the same work and ought to perform it in the same conditions, sharing living quarters and provisions and working in integrated brigades. No!” he squealed, slapping away his neighbor’s hand. “I outrank you, Lieutenant Guttswerp! Fourth,” he began. “Let go, Guttswerp!”
