A clockwork river, p.73
A Clockwork River, page 73
Through this silvery arch passed Angeline LaBida on the arm of her old friend Harry Harkness and looking fit to burst from happiness. At a makeshift altar fashioned from cherry blossoms and crowned by a familiar enchanted tree waited Colonel Jack Muldoon in his new uniform, looking, for perhaps the first time in his life, a bit nervous. His best man, Smithson, clapped a steadying hand on his shoulder, and the maid of honor, whose trim waist will make her so unrecognizable to our readers that I will identify her immediately as our own Rosie, smiled encouragement. Madame Rimbini presided in a flowing yellow robe and a fringed silver turban, and such was the magnificent solemnity of her presence that throughout the ceremony not a single baby dared to cry, though little Agnes did stretch her arms out to her mother from Sam’s lap, and Sam looked a little longing himself. When the bride and groom were instructed to kiss, handkerchiefs were called into service across the audience. Several couples were inspired to imitation, including the doting moustachioed pair, Margaret and Terence MacGow, who were still performing their famous labial gymnastics behind the lady’s peacock feather fan when the bouquet was thrown. As the spray of violets and apple blossoms sailed through the air, the peerless Marianne found a strategic position, but was no match for another lady, who flung herself athletically after the prize, plaid skirts streaming, and, panting, brought it back to her dear Presswell, who grinned a little fearfully and complained that her fingernails were hurting his forearm.
As the bridal pair retreated, to the strains of “As Long as the River Runs”, the branches of the marvelous tree entwined briefly into an arboreal heart and burst open, lobbing sprays of rice and foil-wrapped sweets. After all of her stores had been flung away, Jacky herself popped out from the papier-mâché trunk, laughing and brushing rice from her hair as she made her way through the crowd toward a tall figure leaning against a cherry tree. His dimensions were familiar, as was the stiffness of his posture, but his clothes were very strange – a water-stained silk tailcoat of midnight blue, a tangle of wilted lace at his throat and, strangest of all, the smooth, eyeless expanse of porcelain mask that wrapped his face from ear to ear.
“Hello, Father!” Jacky called.
A smile fluttered across the scarred mouth below the edge of the mask. Then this curiously dressed individual felt a large, masculine hand thrust into one palm and a soft, graceful one into the other, and a bubbling warm voice said, “Malachi Locke! So good of you to have come up for us” – whereupon he understood that he was in the receiving line and let the happy couple, with his blessing, proceed to the dance floor for the inaugural number.
Colonel Jack, with the nimble surefootedness of an expert fencer, lunged and twirled while Angeline, who had danced principal roles before larger audiences, kept close to his every step and occasionally soared into the air as if on the wings of her happiness. As they concluded their performance, the band settled into a more sedate number suitable for the amateurs who thronged the floor. Though everyone wanted Jack and Angeline for partners, it was Rosie who was whisked away in Colonel Jack’s adroit embrace, while Sam found Angeline’s shapely curves contained within the circumference of his arms. Such is the magic of passing time that he found himself capable of intelligent speech despite being close enough to smell her. At times, he was even distracted by the daring dips to which Colonel Jack subjected Rosie on a nearby patch of parquetry.
“You have never had an audience as pleased for you as this,” Sam confided in his partner. “There was not a dry eye in the house.”
“Jack was just telling me that, after so many instances of admiring me from the front row, he found it a thrilling challenge to be on the far side of the footlights.”
“You could act without the bother of itinerant life, now that Inez and Harry have settled in at Stonemason’s,” observed Sam.
“It will be the pearl of the Rhumbsford stage,” agreed Angeline. “The venue had such potential, and now that Cyril is on the run, and Sadie and the cashbox with him—”
“It was a dreadful scandal,” editorialized Sam.
“It shocked the world of theater, which is not easily done,” agreed Angeline. “But all the better for Stonemason’s that the Guild of Night Ladies stepped into the breach. They have good taste and business sense, and now the theater will offer an ensemble cast and a union crew and more reputable fare. I am coaching my replacement in The Lucky Catch. She has wonderful assets, and it is simply a magical play to start the season. You’ll get a foretaste later in the evening. As for me, I plan on a long hiatus in which to follow Rosie’s example. I’ve captured all the public I want for now, and I look forward to a bit of private life.”
“I hope you will visit often,” Sam offered. “After all, you’re family now – a morganatic cousin by marriage. My family is much bigger than I would ever have supposed a year ago, and I expect it to get a little bigger still.”
“Yes!” cried Rosie, flushed pink as she was spun past. “It will be so nice for the cousins to grow up together, being of an age and all. Oof!” she finished off, as she was catapulted into the air.
“I am sure we will see a great deal of each other,” affirmed Angeline. “Still, I am looking forward to moving into our own house. By the time we return from the honeymoon, the dungeons should be aired out and made suitable for Jack to practise swordplay in, and the combustion workshops redone into a home theater. There will be a designated room for Jack’s medals.”
“I hope it’s a big one,” said Sam. “I hear he will be made a general as soon as it is seemly.”
“His name has been floated as representative to the Engineering Council,” boasted Angeline. “Lord knows the army is busy these days, and there are not as many officers as there were before the tragedy at Oxhull. I am as proud of him as anyone except Crucifer, who is delighted to have so many display cases full of shiny things to polish, and the dungeons opened up for a fencing academy, so there will be lots of young aristocrats to admire his domain. You would not recognize him; he has grown so mild and optimistic since the renovations began. He bounds about like a bunny and has actually taken to appearing as a fluffy albino rabbit with gentle pinkish eyes.”
“I have seen him hop as high as this,” cried Colonel Jack in passing, gripping Rosie by the waist and flinging her to the edge of the dance floor for the final bars, then turning with a sprightly grin to take on the somewhat more formidable burden of Marabella Spurwell for the next tune, which was a polka, and since there is never any song as popular as a polka, the dance floor soon grew crowded. Sam danced with the Empress, and Angeline danced with Smithson, and Rosie danced with her father, and the sidelines grew sparse, until there remained only the aged and infirm. Malachi from under his porcelain mask cooed at the baby and dandled it while her parents ornamented the dance floor. Blind though he was, his keen hearing could pick up every missed step and clumsy footfall from the dance floor; as the Lock, Key and Fob Club took to the parquetry and cut a thunderous rug, the ghost of a sneer began to haunt Malachi’s smile. Shay, his joints popping to the beat of a different drum, added to the cacophony by lumbering past with a tray of cucumber sandwiches, while Tommy Snow darted with an elfin glide and a salver of champagne flutes in a distant orbit, sometimes careening into the heart of the polka party, like a comet approaching the sun, to slingshot around the bride and groom.
“Have something to eat, Father,” said Briony from her gilded chair, producing the canapé and glass of bubbly she had snatched from the servants in passing. While Malachi juggled the baby and the finger food, Briony sipped from her own glass, smiling and tapping her remaining toes in time to the music. Several feet to the side, Florian Weaver, despite being a frequent guest, could not shake the habit of being bashful near his old mistress, and stood frowning at his feet as if he were trying to work up the courage to say something.
“I cannot dance,” Briony volunteered helpfully.
Florian nodded sympathetically.
Briony colored. “I mean,” she clarified, producing two wrinkled slippers from beneath her belled skirt, “I would be worse than ever now that I have lost most of my toes to frostbite. I would probably tip over.”
“Oh, your dancing could not possibly be worse than mine,” Florian countered, pointing at his eyepatch. “Every time I turn left, I waltz straight into a card table. I am a hazard leading on a crowded floor like this one.” He stuck out his hand and grinned. “Come, Miss Locke, I will hold you upright if you shout out directions. Shall we menace the furniture?”
After a brief hesitation, Briony took it. “We shall be the most dangerous couple on the dance floor.”
There were only two minutes of the polka remaining, in which time they did manage to knock several chairs askew and step on Lady Eisen’s toes, but assuredly, Briony Locke had never looked so pretty as she did that night, with flushed cheeks and a mind so completely preoccupied with clasping onto her former footman’s neck for dear life that she forgot entirely to be self-conscious, and though they had real intentions not to collide with anyone there were a number of mishaps for which they could not properly be blamed, since anyone might be thrown off by the Lock, Key and Fob Club snaking a conga line, led by the new attorney general, his rusty sideburns swaying pendulously on either side of his path through the busiest parts of the dance floor, or Branson practising his handsprings and Gilly her swoons just when it was least convenient. After the music ceased, they collapsed onto a convenient sofa, and when they had finally stopped laughing, and after Briony had attempted to ameliorate her hiccoughs by drinking champagne upside down, she remarked, “I hear you are a much better engineer than you ever were a footman. Sam is always going on about you.”
“That is very kind of him,” replied Florian, “but I cannot believe how much there still is to learn. I wish I had spent my youth with a nose in a book, like you.”
“I find that all the chemistry theorems in the world are very little practical help in running a”—she paused, having been going to say, “empire,” but though the term was wonderfully descriptive of the vast network of chemical and pharmaceutical concerns that she had inherited from Doctor Longwilling, she rejected it as sounding stuck-up—“a business,” she finished.
“Sam says you’ve taken to it,” Florian said loyally.
“I find I like bookkeeping,” Briony admitted, “when the sums are large enough to make the math a challenge. And I have lots of ideas that I want to implement just as soon as Parliament comes to its senses and lowers the inheritance age to twenty-one.”
“What sort of ideas?” Florian queried, pretending to stretch, but actually dropping one arm daringly onto the back of the couch.
“Take my factories for instance,” Briony replied, “all churning out wrinkle creams and hair ointments. I wonder if they cannot branch out to do something more useful. I am particularly interested in the virulent pox. Rosie has told me that among some tribal peoples it is unknown, and Osborne surmises it is because they are exposed at an early age to a disease of cattle to which the pox is closely related. I have a team researching the feasibility of injecting infants with a dose of cow’s blood, in order to afford them lifelong protection.”
“Cow’s blood?” Florian could not hide his shock. “And how horrible, to stick a needle into a little baby!”
Briony smiled at his discomfiture. “Worse is done to babies in the Felds, yet they survive their collaring and thrive. And isn’t the Demon a kind of blood transfusion? Aggie had pox when she was little, you know, and the spirits are not exactly human,” she said with a wistful look.
“And you are alive because they gave themselves to you,” said Florian quickly. “I think it’s marvelous what you are doing. I will be the first to set aside my prejudices.”
A loud cymbal punctuated a highlight of the next song, a rhumba, in whose thronged gyrations occasional couples popped out to the visible margins. Commissioner Spurwell was dancing with his wife, perhaps a trifle more conservatively than she would have liked. Osborne, beard blowing as he huffed with the effort of twirling Kat from corner to corner, traded suspicious stares with the members of the Lock, Key and Fob Club who seemed shocked that such a fine abundance of facial hair should be let to go to seed, and pompously fluffed and preened their own carefully managed mutton chops and ringleted beards; even Presswell had started on a promising goatee. A dozen guests went down in a heap over Gilly’s well-placed faint, from which she wriggled out unharmed, and Branson spouted up from the hubbub whenever he could convince Shay to put down his tray for a moment and give him a boost for a triple flip. A convulsion of the crowd expelled Rafe, holding his Jenny tightly by the hands, and Ichabod, who skidded out on his heels together with a dog of indeterminate age who had some spaniel in him, and some corgi and some Doberman. Tommy Snow happening to pass by, the dog ran underfoot and brought him up short for long enough for Ichabod to grab two flutes of champagne apiece, plus one for the dog, who licked up his portion with a long, pink tongue that reached the very bottom of the glass.
“Thirsty work, dancing,” Rafe said, linking arms with Ichabod and Jenny to toss back the first bumper.
“Especially with a lady,” Ichabod remarked acidly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You’ll be back in the saddle in no time,” comforted Jenny.
“Nonsense. It is only that I am a confirmed bachelor who will not be tied down,” Ichabod protested. “I prefer a dog, anyway – a dog is faithful, and dependable, and in all other ways a better companion than a woman who is always badgering a man to reform.”
The MacGow twins appeared and began to ruffle the pup behind its long, floppy ears.
“His name is Frank Philosophy,” said Ichabod, anticipating their question. “Wiser and more truthful than many a maid you’ll find tending bar up in Oxhull.”
“Ought he drink champagne?” asked Jethro, cocking his head as the dog licked him with a sensibly carbonated tongue.
“Absolutely. He loves it,” said Ichabod.
“It’s not the worst of his vices,” added Rafe. “He is mad for cigars – snatches them right out of your hand and eats them under the table, if you give him half a chance.”
“I have got many cigars that way,” said Ichabod sagely, “when my own case was running at low tide. If you wrestle them back fast, there is often a smokable portion to be salvaged.”
“Say, there is Spurwell!” cried Rafe. “Jenny, to arms.”
“Your dress,” cooed Jenny, deftly helping Marabella Spurwell out of her husband’s grip, “is daring. And how kind of you, to dance with your father two numbers in a row.”
“I hear you have got a contract coming up on the Chittering Locks,” Rafe said, throwing out his chest and cornering the commissioner.
“Cigar?” offered Ichabod, opening his case and holding it high off the ground to ward against the suddenly excited dog that snarled circles around his ankles.
“Big project, indeed,” stammered Spurwell, accepting a stogie and wiping it off on his tie. “I assure you, your bid will be given every consideration. It is attractively cheap.”
“Military surplus,” purred Rafe. “We lucked into some spare cement, after the Oxhull affair. Quite a pret-ty bar-gain,” he enunciated, leaning in and tapping Spurwell on the chest to emphasize each syllable.
“We’re ex-military ourselves,” added Ichabod. “Very reputable. Frank, shoo. A card?” he offered, putting away the cigars and cracking a case of business cards that read “Gruts and Muldoon, Civil Contractors.”
“I’ve got one, thanks,” said Spurwell. “Really, this is not the time and place to talk state business.”
“Business does not wait,” said Rafe sententiously, spreading his hands to show he was a man of the world.
“Deligris!” the commissioner cried in sudden, desperate delight, pivoting away as the professor waltzed up with Sam and Rosie, spinning the one and dipping the other with such abandon that all three of them very nearly collapsed. “Just the man I wanted to see! A man with the look of a future Minister of Hydraulics about him!”
“Oh, no you don’t!” retorted Deligris, panting a little as he shook the commissioner’s hand. “I’ll never leave teaching again. I’m too good at it. Just take Rosie here,” he said, giving his daughter’s arm an affectionate squeeze. “She’s my first and finest student. Did you know that her ethnography of the Oxhull tribes has just gone to press?”
Commissioner Spurwell offered his heartfelt congratulations.
“And Sam here!” continued the professor with great enthusiasm, “my tutee from his earliest years, will be my colleague come fall. I am extremely old, I realize.”
“Not you, too, Sam!” cried the commissioner regretfully. “Isn’t anyone interested in public service anymore?”
Rosie lassoed Florian as he hurried by carrying a lime sherbet for Briony. “Aha! Meet Florian Weaver. You can tell by his flaming locks that he’s just crazy enough to go into politics!”
“And an engineer of rare talent!” added Sam, as Florian’s ears turned the vivid crimson of a setting sun.
“A pleasure to meet you, Mr Weaver. You come with glowing recommendations.” The commissioner took Florian’s hand and peered curiously into his countenance. “But perhaps I know you already? Or your father?”
“It is possible, sir,” stammered Florian.
“I will ask my wife,” Commissioner Spurwell said, turning toward the cookie buffet. “She has a wonderful memory for young men.”
