The Clockwork Three (12 page)

“I might be back, though.” Giuseppe wagged his finger. “Come evening, you may look mighty tasty.”

He scuttled down the rock and considered his options. If he took off in some random fashion, he was less likely to find a path and more likely to get disoriented. But if he kept to the streambed, he could always come back to the cave for shelter that night.

He looked to both sides, and liked the way the creek widened to the right. He set off, whistling. Last night the forest had seemed haunted, but in the sunshine it felt alive. Not completely safe, but not sinister, either.

Along the way he looked for something edible. He knew almost nothing of wild food, but he doubted he would find a bread crust tree. He did know that certain plants could be poisonous, but without knowing which ones, he felt reluctant to try anything. He stood over some mushrooms, biting his nails. He peered at some tiny red berries, chewing his lower lip. When he found a bush bearing blueberries, he recognized them even though he had never tasted one.

He plucked a handful, and they burst in his mouth, juicy and sweet. He made a breakfast of them, nearly picked the whole bush clean, and patted his full belly with fingers stained purple. He rinsed the stickiness in the creek, and swaggered on. He would be fine out here. He could survive. He had just found his own breakfast.

He had a harder time finding lunch. The berries did not satisfy him
for very long, and he scanned the brush for more. He noted several small trails that looked more used by animals than people. Cougars were said to still roam these woods, but he had not seen any sign of one, nor of any bears or deer. He observed plenty of birds, and their song passed among the trees like a rumor.

In the late afternoon, Giuseppe decided to return to his cave. On his way back, he noticed some walnuts hidden in the grass on an embankment. He had missed them on his way through that morning, but gathered them in pocketfuls. He returned to the blueberry bush and snatched the few stragglers left behind.

Back at his cave, he tried to crack the nuts open between two river rocks. When their hard shells finally shattered, they smashed most of the meat inside. The tedious task of picking out the meager bits took most of the evening. And the nuts tasted bitter. He finished his meal with the berries and folded his arms in frustration.

The same squirrel resumed its post as sentry and Giuseppe gritted his teeth at the chattering. His threat that morning had been idle. Even if he could catch the thing, he had no ability to make a fire to cook it.

“You’re safe for now,” he said.

He curled up under the rock and covered his ears. Before long, he fell asleep.

The squirrel woke him for the second time. Giuseppe leaped from his cave, grabbed a stick, and hurled it. The animal skittered around the tree, and the stick bounced off the bark, harmless.

“Be quiet!” Giuseppe shouted.

He picked up a rock, but the animal climbed higher, out of the reach of anything Giuseppe could throw. It ranted like it was really angry now.

“Suit yourself,” Giuseppe grumbled, and dropped the rock.

He turned to the left this time and set off into the day’s exploration. There were no berry bushes that morning, and only a few more walnuts by that afternoon. The streambed thinned, and the brush on either side closed in, strung with spiderwebs and studded with thorns. Branches clawed at Giuseppe and scratched him. He pressed as deep as he could, but by evening he gave up and turned back.

He nibbled on what he could get from the nuts and tried to fill up the rest of the room in his belly with water. All that did was wake him up several times during the night with a piercing need to relieve himself.

On the third day he felt weakened, with a tremble in his legs and arms. Stephano kept them all half-starved, and two days of trudging through the woods with even less food had exhausted him. He still resisted the idea of taking off blindly into the forest, but had explored as far as he dared along the creek. So he spent most of the day sulking outside his cave, shouting at that same dogged squirrel. Giuseppe had never encountered a creature more persistent.

He went to bed before the sun had set, with a pain in his stomach that kept him awake. He huddled at the back of the cave, but could not escape the hunger or the reality of his situation. He was in serious trouble. Even if he ventured into the trackless woods in pursuit of food, could he survive on berries and nuts? Giuseppe whimpered. He would starve out here.

For half a breath, he wished he would have thrown that green violin right back into the bay the day he found it. If he had, he would never have played it, and if he had never played it, he would never have gathered up any hope for escape. Everything would be how it was before the shipwreck.

In that moment, the pang of regret passed on like a morning fog swept away by the sun. No. He would never go back to the way it was, not even if it meant his end beneath the trees. He collapsed on the ground. “I’m sorry,” he said to his brother and sister. “I tried.” His tears fell like glass beads in the dust.

A Whole New Problem

F
REDERICK KNEW IT WAS GIUSEPPE. HE CLIMBED THE OPERA
House steps and peered at the alley into which the busker had fled, thinking that he should have gone after him to help. That was what a friend would do. Instead he followed Hannah, hoping to see Giuseppe emerge from between the buildings. His friend never appeared.

They reentered the lobby. Hannah took hold of his hand and squeezed it, and that contact forced out all thoughts of Giuseppe. He swallowed.

“What do you think will happen to Violetta and Alfredo?” she asked.

Something implausible, ridiculous, and entirely avoidable, he was sure. “I don’t know,” he said, and worried about the sweat on his palms soaking into her white gloves. “We’ll just have to watch and see.”

She let go of his hand, and Madame Pomeroy led the way back to her box. Everyone except the Russian took their seats. Hannah pulled out her fan and waved it in front of her face, sighing like she was trying to blow out a candle. The air from her fan wisped over her, and carried the scent of roses toward him.

“Frederick?” Hannah said.

“Yes?”

“Do you really think Violetta should tell Alfredo why she has to leave?”

“I do.”

“But it won’t change anything, will it? I mean, she still has to leave him, and telling him would only make it harder. Wouldn’t it be better to spare him and suffer in silence?”

Frederick folded his arms. “Maybe. But I suspect not telling him will make it that much worse.”

“How so?”

“It just seems that the two are destined for tragedy.”

She eased back into her seat and looked down at the stage. “Oh.”

The lights dimmed and the curtain rose on another party. Gypsies and bullfighters danced and sang to entertain the party guests. Those scenes were fun. But before long, Violetta entered on the arms of the man Madame Pomeroy had said was the baron, and Frederick rolled his eyes.
Of course
. Alfredo was already there at the party and saw them enter together. He and the baron played against each other at the gambling table. Alfredo finished with a fistful of the baron’s money.

After that, Violetta approached Alfredo and sang to him. Frederick did not understand Italian, but he guessed she was asking him to leave the party, which of course he would not.

Frederick heard Madame Pomeroy whisper to Hannah, “She is afraid the baron will challenge Alfredo to a duel and kill him.”

“But Alfredo doesn’t believe her, does he?” Hannah said. “He thinks she’s in love with the baron.”

Instead of leaving, Alfredo became enraged and threw the money he had won in Violetta’s face. Hannah gasped, and all the party guests onstage became angry at Alfredo and drove him out. Frederick felt for the man. He suffered so much hurt without knowing the reason.

Violetta sang to him as he departed.

Madame Pomeroy translated. “‘Alfredo, Alfredo, little can you fathom the love within my heart for you.’”

The act ended.

Hannah cried beside him, both her hands over her face. Her reaction to the story puzzled and annoyed Frederick. They were only actors. Then he felt bad, and reached out his arm to put it around her. But he ended up holding it behind her without touching, like a scarecrow, before pulling it back. Hannah dropped her hands in her lap and turned to him.

“You were right.”

He pulled a kerchief from his coat pocket and handed it to her.

“Maybe she should have told him,” she said.

“It’s his fault, too,” Frederick said. “He never really asked her why. It was like he didn’t want to know.”

She nodded, and the third act began.

Violetta reclined in a bed, with a pale face and shadowed eyes, attended by a doctor. And moments later, alone onstage, she read a letter. Frederick did not need to know what it said. The singer’s voice conveyed everything in her heart. Grief and love and weary resignation. In spite of himself, Frederick felt moved, and he wanted to reach out and comfort her, too.

Alfredo arrived but Frederick could see it was too late. Then Alfredo’s father entered, bent under a mountain of regret. Alfredo and Violetta sang to each other, and the music seemed to linger in the air long after she died in his arms, like the runnels and fallen leaves after a storm. With that scene, the opera ended. Frederick’s chest quivered, and he cleared his throat. He rubbed his eyes.

Hannah clutched Frederick’s kerchief. “It was beautiful, Madame,” she said.

Madame Pomeroy laid her hand over Hannah’s. “A wonderful production.”

They rose and shuffled with the crowd through the lobby, out the doors, and down the steps. A few opera patrons spoke in hushed but enthusiastic conversation, extolling one performance or another, but most were silent. Frederick also found it difficult to speak. Words seemed an intrusion.

He decided to walk with them back to the hotel. They ambled across the square and when they reached the entrance Madame Pomeroy turned to him.

“Frederick,” she said, and covered a yawn. “Would you mind waiting down here for Hannah? I’d like someone to see her home.”

Frederick bowed. “I would be glad to.”

Hannah smiled. “I won’t be long.”

They went inside, and Frederick put his hands in his pockets and looked up at the sky. He paced a little in front of the stairs, casting expectant looks at the hotel entrance. He noticed a blond porter leaning in the doorway, watching him. When they made eye contact, the boy dislodged himself and loped down to Frederick.

“You were at the opera, weren’t you?” he said. “With Hannah? I saw you come back with them.”

The boy was taller and stronger-looking than Frederick. And he leaned forward with a subtle menace in his posture, as if he was trying to cast Frederick in his shadow.

“I was,” Frederick said.

“How do you know Hannah?”

“I am making a clock for Madame Pomeroy.”

“Oh,” the boy said. He looked Frederick over. “Oh, now it makes sense. So the opera, huh? Isn’t that just a bunch of people singing for no reason?”

Frederick smiled. “To you? Most likely.”

A grin landed for a moment on the porter’s face before confusion set in. And anger. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. You should go sometime.”

“To the opera?”

“Why not?”

“Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll invite Hannah.”

Frederick did not like this boy, and did not like the thought of Hannah going to the opera with him. “How good is your Italian?”

“I don’t speak Italian. Why …? Wait, you mean they don’t sing English?”

“Hello, Walter,” Hannah said, gliding down the stairs. “I see you’ve met Frederick.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We met.”

Hannah had changed out of the blue dress, but Frederick still saw the gown, as if it were hidden beneath her maid’s uniform.

“We met,” Frederick said. “In fact, I was just telling your porter here that he should attend the opera sometime.”

Hannah beamed. “Oh, you should, Walter, you really should. Take Abigail, she would love it.”

The porter shifted back and forth on his feet.

Frederick offered Hannah his arm. “Shall we?”

She took it with both hands. “Yes. Good night, Walter.”

“Hannah,” the porter said. “Grumholdt says I get off in ten minutes.”

“But it’s after midnight.”

“Not by his watch.”

The two of them shared a laugh. Frederick watched them and felt like an outsider.

“So if you want to wait,” the porter said, “I could walk you home.”

Hannah seemed to be thinking about it, and Frederick waited. Then, she reaffirmed her grip on Frederick’s arm.

“No, thank you. Frederick will take me.”

The porter stopped shifting and fixed them both with a stare.

“Suit yourself, then,” he said.

“Good night, Walter,” Hannah said as though she were closing a door.

Frederick nodded at the porter, but only got a scowl in return, and Hannah pulled Frederick away. The two of them walked side by side down Basket Street. The sky had cleared, and cold moonlight brushed the streets like whitewash, with splatters of yellow gaslight here and there. They shared the street with a few pedestrians, while stray cats prowled the alleys after rats and mice.

“So where do you live?” Frederick asked.

She looked away. “Near where we met that first time. Down in the tenements. But I haven’t always lived there.”

He did not know what to say. “Seemed like a better street than some.”

She said nothing.

“Better than an orphanage,” he said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I lived in one.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. Since I was six. Then a few years ago Master Branch came for me. He wanted an apprentice.” The words surprised Frederick, the second time in the last few weeks he had talked so openly. It scared him, but at the same time it felt good to place his trust in others. In friends.

She leaned in closer. “What happened to your parents?”

“My father died when I was a baby.”

Hannah waited. “And your mother?”

Frederick did not answer.

“Did she leave you?”

He shrugged and forced a weak smile. “It’s all right.”

“But what happened to her?”

“I don’t know.”

Hannah looked at him with her mouth partway open. Her gaze dropped to the cobblestones. “I can’t believe she left you.”

“I’m sure she had a reason.”

“And you don’t know where she is now?”

Frederick wriggled his arm a bit where she held him, and she let go.

“No,” he said.

“Could you find out somehow?”

Frederick stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Look, she had a reason.”

Hannah lowered her voice. “I know. I’m sure she did. But have you ever thought of finding out about her?”

Frederick felt the answer in his mouth like a rusted nail he could not spit out. He had reached the limits of what he wanted to share, how much he wanted to trust, and marched forward, staring straight ahead.

“Frederick,” Hannah said, behind him. “I didn’t — I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”

She sidled up to him as they walked, and from the corner of his eye he could see her taking hesitant glances at his face. They went on in silence until they reached her building.

“Good night,” he said, trying to sound friendly. But he did not want any more questions.

“I really enjoyed the opera with you, Frederick.” Hannah seemed as though she wanted to say something more, but nodded to herself. “So, good night.”

Her steps echoed as she climbed the wooden staircase up the side of her building. He waited until she reached her apartment and opened the door. He waved at her, and she waved back before stepping inside.

For a few minutes he stood in the road, looking up at her apartment. Then he turned and strode up Basket Street with his hands clasped behind his back.

Clockwork could not run counter to its nature. The seconds, minutes, and hours moved only forward. Patient, precise, and unstoppable. Memory was an indulgence, an illusion that broke like a wave upon the juggernaut of time. The past remained the past.

Frederick forced his thoughts away from his conversation with Hannah and on to the clockwork man. Babbage’s work had been a revelation, but Frederick had not yet finished the chapter on the Analytical Engine. Based on what he had learned thus far, Frederick could not wait to read on. Babbage was a genius. Before the Analytical Engine, he had created the Difference Engine, a device for complex mathematical calculation, and already the implications of that machine had opened up new inroads on Frederick’s problem.

Diverted as he was by his thoughts, the journey to Master Branch’s shop passed quickly. Frederick arrived, expecting the old man to be asleep. But when he climbed the stairs to the apartment, he found Master Branch awake in his chair, reading before the fire.

He closed his book. “Was it dreadful?”

“At first,” Frederick said. “But in the end I actually enjoyed it.”

“Opera.” Master Branch said it like he was spitting out a piece of
gristle. “The important question is whether Madame Pomeroy enjoyed your company.”

“I believe she did.”

“Did you escort her back to the hotel?”

“I did.”

“Excellent. Now I’m off to bed.” On the way to his bedroom, Master Branch pointed at the table. “I thought you might enjoy something sweet. I picked up a cake.”

Master Branch never bought sweets. Frederick’s gaze fell on the table, and his mouth began to water.

“Eat all you like,” Master Branch said. “The sugar hurts my teeth.”

The old man shut his door, and Frederick scooted up to the table. He cut a wedge of pastry onto a plate and dug into it, wallowing like a bird in a bath. The cake had a dense texture, suffused with butter and lemons, with a crackly icing made of rose sugar over the top. The floral flavor reminded Frederick of Hannah, and he wished he could share some with her. He saved her a piece of the cake, in case he saw her tomorrow or the next day, but ate the rest, pressing the stray crumbs together on the back of his fork.