Magnificent Devices 07 - A Lady of Integrity (12 page)

“The sooner we come to an agreement, the better. But perhaps we ought to disguise our intentions a little. I would be happy to be part of a tour, if my daughter may come along.”

“The prisons of the Duchy are no place for a woman.”

“My daughter needs to experience the hard-headed reality of my business if she is to run it after I am gone. I say it is exactly the place for her. Will you send a conveyance—say, at two o’clock?”

“Very well. A gondola bearing no colors will wait at the Hotel Exelsior’s moorage. The gondolier will wear a red ribbon tied around his arm. I do not wish this excursion associated with me in any way. I will leave word with the Master of Prisons that you and your party are to be admitted.”

“Understood. I will be in touch afterward.” Meriwether-Astor paused. “And after today, I do not expect to be kept waiting by your lackeys.”

The minister murmured a reply—but Lizzie did not hear him, for Tigg was whispering, “We have to tell the Lady.”

“Of course. What a horrible, horrible plan!” Lizzie whispered directly into his ear. “How can one man be so evil? As soon as one of his plans is scotched, he immediately concocts another, each more deplorable than the last!”

“Liz, we have to be on that gondola.”

She choked back a startled sound. “I’m not going to the wretched prison.”

“Oh, yes you are, and I am going with you. Don’t you see? Once we get in there, we can scout all the ways to get out. Perhaps we might even see Jake—or at the very least, find a way to get a message to him. It’s of utmost importance, Lizzie. He must know he is not forgotten.”

Lizzie had overcome many of her deepest fears, but she had no idea what might happen if she deliberately went into a place that was dark, enclosed, and full of water. One thing at a time she could manage, but all three?

“Who’s there?” The drapes were wrenched back. The Minister of Justice pulled open the French door and glared at them.

Instead of playacting the part of lovers, in her surprise Lizzie lost her head. She grabbed Tigg’s hand and ran, across the courtyard to the open door through which a small crowd of waiters had just gone.

“You there! What were you doing? Stop! Guards!”

12

“This way!” Lizzie skidded around the corner and yanked on Tigg’s hand.

“Back to the ballroom!” he said.

“No time—quick—through here.”

They couldn’t go up, because the running footsteps of the two monks were nearly upon them. Thank heavens the door under the staircase was unlocked. They tumbled through it and nearly fell down the stone steps. Tigg hauled back on Lizzie’s arm and she found her footing, then both ran down as lightly as they could.

Above them, the door opened, and they heard a shout.

“Stop or they’ll hear us!” Tigg held her, both of them breathing hard and hoping against hope that no one would investigate further. The stone felt cold under Lizzie’s thin dancing slippers.

A brief consultation occurred in the Venetian language, and then the door slammed with a hollow echo.

A lock grated into place.

Oh, dear. She must not give way to hysterics. She must be calm.

“Liz? Are you all right? You’re shaking.”

“It’s c-cold.”

“Right. Well, we can’t go up, so we’ve no choice but to go down.”

“I don’t want to.”

He wrapped his arms around her and spoke into her hair. “It’s all right, Lizzie-love. We’re together, and we aren’t out of options yet. Come on, now. Breathe.”

She did her best. The air smelled of cold stone and dust and … “I wonder if this goes down to the water line. I smell weed.”

“Seaweed?”

“Yes. Damp and green and salty and … weedy.”

“Let’s hope so, then. I’ve still got my invitation. We can come in the front again and lose ourselves in the crowd.”

A plan. A hope. Lizzie took a firm grip on her courage.

They ventured farther down the staircase, which, instead of being lit by the usual ribbon of electricks along the ceiling, was illuminated by old-fashioned oil lamps set at intervals in niches in the wall. At the bottom they passed through a wooden door so old and heavy they could barely push it open. As they emerged onto a stone landing, Lizzie heard the water lapping against it and wasn’t sure whether to sigh with relief or take an apprehensive breath. Here again were all three things she didn’t like. “I can’t see.”

“One shake.” Tigg left her, and in a moment returned with one of the lamps. He held it up and it took a moment for both of them to realize what they were looking at.

“Great Caesar’s ghost,” Tigg said on a long breath.

The area might once have been a cellar extending under the house, but it was filled with seawater now. They stood on a stone pier similar to the one in the cave below her grandparents’ house, but there the resemblance ended. Thick columns jutted up out of the black water, holding up the house, but the floor was submerged to such a depth they couldn’t see the bottom. The expanse of restless water, flashing in the lamp’s light, had been divided up into smaller areas by iron grates.

Cages.

“Is it a menagerie?” Lizzie asked. “Like the one we stole into at the Tower of London when we were children?”

Over the top of one iron divider, a long tentacle curled up and out of the water, as though it had sensed the light and was feeling its way toward it. Lizzie sucked in a breath of alarm—the tentacle was as big around as she was. How big could the creature be to which it belonged?

But it did not seem threatening. It seemed to be … appealing to them.

It couldn’t be. She was being fanciful.

There was a splash to one side and Tigg lifted the lantern to reveal a smooth, smiling snout and a black, intelligent eye bobbing in the cage closest to them. “It’s a dolphin!” she exclaimed.

“Down here in the dark? That’s criminal, is what it is. Look, there are more. Half a dozen, at least.”

The light seemed to have excited them, and the first one began to bump its nose against the iron grate that held it. One, two three …

“The poor thing. It will injure itself,” she said softly.

“What else is he keeping down here?” Tigg’s tone was moving from wonder into indignation. “Isn’t being in charge of putting people in prison enough for this man—does he have to put creatures in, too?”

Something spouted on the other side, but the light wasn’t strong enough to reach. The tentacley creature had more of its legs—arms?—wrapped around the grate that held it in. The iron shook but did not give. And now a second one, with smaller, more spidery arms, began to thrash about in its cage, as though the light were agitating it. In a cage beyond the dolphins, a smooth, gleaming loop of scales rose and slipped beneath the surface, then rose again to reveal a wedge-shaped head. A forked tongue tested the air in their direction.

“This is awful,” Lizzie said, shivering now from more than cold. “These poor creatures. Tigg, we must find a way out. I can’t bear it.”

“I imagine they feel the same. But it doesn’t look as though there is a way out. He comes down here to play with his toys and goes back up by the same stair.”

“He had to get them in here, didn’t he?”

Tigg held the lantern so the golden glow fell on her face. “Are you planning to swim out? That might attract some notice when we go in to dance—unless you’re planning to tell people you’re Undine?”

But Lizzie did not answer. Her near-panicked gaze had fallen on an ironwork in the wall that seemed to be connected to a frame on the ceiling. “Tigg, hold the lantern up. Look, just there, and tell me what your engineer’s eyes see.”

It did not take long for him to reach a conclusion. “It appears that those levers control the walls of the cages. They can be made larger or smaller by dropping in a grate or removing it altogether.”

“If you were a dolphin, say, and you remembered how you were brought in here, would you be able to find your way out again?”

He left off his perusal of the mechanism to gaze into her eyes. “Are you planning to use a dolphin as your guide?”

“I’m planning to let them all go,” she said with grim resolve. “There is no way out of here, and the minister will just come down when it’s convenient and feed us to the snake—or that thing with the tentacles. Or lock us up in prison. We can’t swim past all these cages, so we’ll just winch them up and free everyone, leave the dolphins for last, and swim out with them.”

“He saw both of us, Liz. He’ll know we did it.”

“He’ll see neither of us again, then. It will prevent our going on the jaunt to the prison, and don’t think I’m not happy about that.”

“You’d rather face a grotto full of tentacles than a tour of the prison?” Tigg’s voice held teasing, but his gaze was absolutely serious.

“I would.” Lizzie nodded firmly. “You pulled me out of the Thames when I was five. I’m quite confident that you’ll do the same now if I need it. Can you see any other course of action we might take?”

Silently, his gaze moving from pulleys to levers to the increasingly agitated splashing in the cages, Tigg shook his head. “No time like the present, I suppose. Hold the lamp.”

With one final moment of study that seemed to set the working of it in his mind, he hauled on a lever. In the far reaches of the grotto, metal screeched and rattled, and the splashing of many—what? Flippers? Legs? Fins?—was the result.

Tigg pulled on the next, and the snake flowed under the grate and out the other side, thrashing and sliding in the light. One more lever, and the two tentacled creatures released their grip on the grate just before it cleared the water. Time seemed to stop as the larger creature’s baleful gaze met those of Lizzie and Tigg—it took them in—seemed to understand. Its many tentacles released the grate and it fell into the water with a loose, messy splash. The water mounded up over its body with the speed of its departure, following the snake, until it was lost to sight in the darkness.

By now the dolphins were making curious conversational noises, swimming in tight circles, bumping the grates impatiently with fluke and nose.

“Hang on just a minute,” Lizzie told them. The words were barely out of her mouth when the boom of the door above startled her nearly off the edge of the landing. “Tigg, someone’s coming!” she hissed in alarm.

Tigg rammed the final lever forward, and the last of the grates lifted, dripping with seawater, weed, and the remnants of whatever the minister had tossed in for food. The dolphins surged in the direction the other creatures had gone.

The pounding sound of boots on stone echoed in the stairwell.

“Now, Liz!” Tigg grabbed her around the waist and together they leaped off the landing. Lizzie had just enough time to gasp in a big breath before they plunged into the cold, dark unknown.

*

“I cannot think what has become of Tigg and Lizzie.” Claire gazed anxiously around the crowded ballroom. The whirling color and movement, to say nothing of too-brilliant lights and the crush of bodies, were beginning to give her a headache.

“They were following Meriwether-Astor,” Andrew murmured, “but he returned some time ago and is standing there, by the punch.”

“And what of the Minister of Justice?”

“No sign of him. And since we have had no real success with our other efforts, I am hoping Lizzie will have had better luck.”

This was not like Lizzie—or Tigg, for that matter. The point of scouting was to come back and report what one had seen, not to vanish with one’s young man and find a private corner in which to spoon.

“Do you want me to look for her, Lady?” Maggie asked.

“No, darling. It is not safe for you to scout alone. Wouldn’t you rather dance?”

“I danced with Claude and Mr. Malvern.”

“But there are several other young gentlemen among Claude’s friends, are there not?” Arabella de Courcy, dressed as a medieval maiden in the style of Waterhouse, floated past in the arms of Adolphus von Stade, who had borrowed an aeronaut’s uniform. How original.

“Perhaps, but I don’t much fancy them.”

Claire sighed. “I cannot blame you. I don’t much fancy them, either. I wonder if everyone at the Sorbonne is so odious?” She rose on tiptoe and scanned the ballroom once again. “Andrew, do you think perhaps she and Tigg have gone into the courtyard? Or even outside, to walk along the canal?”

“It is possible. Shall we check?”

“Could we? The very thought of a bit of starry sky and some air is a relief.”

Maggie hesitated, clearly uncertain about whether she might be intruding. “Shall I come with you?”

“No, you wait here. When Captain Hollys returns with Alice from the polka, ask them to meet us outside, at the canal. I’m sure we shall see Lizzie and Tigg out there.”

“Neither of them are ballroom people,” Maggie agreed. “I like it in moderation, but this is … too much.”

“Venice does tend to strike one that way,” Andrew murmured as they crossed the floor, winding between the couples until they reached the central courtyard. But other than servants hurrying this way and that, and a cluster of gondoliers talking among themselves, there were no other guests visible.

“The street door is here.” Andrew nodded at the gatekeeper and the two of them emerged onto the
fondamente
with a sense of having escaped out the end of a kaleidoscope.

Claire walked to the pavement’s edge, where the water seemed disturbed, though no gondola or one of the slender rowing boats that ordinary people used was visible. “Andrew, does the water level look higher to you?”

He peered over the edge. “I cannot tell. But it does seem rather rough—Claire! Get back!”

For in the canal was a most astonishing sight. The water roiled with the force of a large creature’s passing—a creature with many legs, swimming with speed and power by means of flexing its body in and out like a bellows.

“Andrew—can that be a—
kraken?
”

“If it is, it is a very small one—but still large enough to swamp a gondola without much trouble. Look, there it goes, into the Grand Canal. Great Scott! I hope it will find its way out to sea. That is not a sight one wishes to encounter when going to visit St. Mark’s in a boat.”