The Story of Cirrus Flux (8 page)

It was hard, backbreaking work. Her fingers were sore and blistered, and the brush left painful splinters in her hand.

She had almost reached the top of the staircase when a carriage drew up to the house. A bell clattered in the air.
Before she could gather her things, Mr. Sorrel had padded over to the door and admitted a plump, middle-aged gentleman in a powdered wig. A boy entered behind him, carrying a box of brushes and loops of hair.

Pandora kept her head low as the entourage passed by, climbing the steps to Madame Orrery’s chamber. The gentleman gave her a wide berth, as though skirting a puddle, but the boy seemed to linger. She risked a glance up and caught him staring at the scarlet trim on her foundling’s uniform. There was something in his eyes she recognized—a sad, haunted look.

The twin doors opened and Madame Orrery appeared, dressed as usual in her silver gown. “Ah, Mr. Fopmantle,” she said. “How good it is to see you. Horrendous weather, is it not?”

The gentleman stooped to kiss her hand. “Indeed it is, madam, indeed it is. Why, it’s as hot as Hades outside and just as smelly, I wager.” He paused to sniff a perfumed handkerchief he carried with him and turned to the boy. “Now then, Aaron, don’t be shy. Bring my brushes. We must make madam even more ravishing than usual.”

A smile lifted the edges of Madame Orrery’s lips. “And you have brought your new apprentice again, I see,” she said, reaching out to stroke the young boy’s cheek. “I did so enjoy his tales of the Foundling Hospital the last time we met. I hope to hear more of them now. Come inside.”

Pandora, who had lowered her eyes as soon as Madame Orrery appeared, looked up, surprised by the friendliness in
her voice. So the boy was a foundling like herself. But what stories did he have to tell?

She watched as the boy followed his master into the lady’s boudoir. The door closed behind them. Mr. Sorrel immediately made his way back down the stairs, urging Pandora not to dally.

As soon as he was gone, she rose to her feet and stretched the stiffness from her limbs. Then, hearing voices on the other side of the door, she moved her bucket closer and began lightly to scrub the floor, hoping to overhear what was said.

Madame Orrery’s voice was muffled and low. Pandora could make out only a few words here and there. “I must applaud you,” she thought she heard the woman say. “The boy I seek is there.”

Pandora’s heart skipped into her throat. Was Madame Orrery talking about Cirrus Flux?

Pandora pressed her eye to the keyhole, curious to see what was happening, but could make out little beyond the edges of Madame Orrery’s skirts. Then she noticed the boy, Aaron, slouching in a chair. He appeared to be asleep. Madame Orrery moved toward him. Something silver glinted in her hand. “Now tell me, Aaron,” the woman said. “Have you ever seen a—”

Suddenly she stopped, turned round and advanced toward the door.

Before Pandora could scramble to her feet, the woman was standing over her.

“That will do,” said Madame Orrery icily, as Pandora
moved the brush in frantic circles, pretending to look busy. “You may join Mr. Sorrel downstairs. I have no further use of you today.”

“Yes, Madame Orrery,” said Pandora with a curtsy. Grabbing her brush and bucket, she hurried down the steps, not daring to look back. She could feel Madame Orrery watching her from the top of the stairs.

Her cheeks were burning and her mind was racing. What was Madame Orrery up to?

She dashed through the kitchen and tossed the water into the yard. She then saw Mr. Sorrel heading toward the mews, where the coachman was preparing the horse and carriage for its journey across the city. She ran after him.

“I need to know,” she said, the words leaping out of her mouth. “Why is Madame Orrery going to the Foundling Hospital? Is she after Cirrus Flux?”

Mr. Sorrel refused to meet her eye. “Please, Pandora,” he said irritably. “No more questions. There are some things it is better not to know.”

She stared at him angrily, but could tell that he wouldn’t discuss the matter further.

With a sigh, she glanced at the horse and carriage and noticed the silver timepiece enameled on its door. Immediately she made up her mind. If Mr. Sorrel refused to help her, she would find out for herself. She would follow Madame Orrery back to the Foundling Hospital and discover the truth.

Black Mary’s Hole

C
irrus could stand it no longer. While the other boys lined up for the cold bath, he made a break for the fields.

Ever since Bottle Top’s departure a few weeks before, he had tried keeping a close watch on the Gallows Tree from the upper windows of the hospital, but there had been no further sightings of the man from Black Mary’s Hole. Worse, none of the other boys believed him when he told them what he and Bottle Top had seen. Even Jonas had started calling him a liar. But Jonas had just been apprenticed to a stationer in the city, who needed a boy with fresh legs and strong lungs to call out news to passers-by, and Cirrus no longer had to endure his taunts and gibes. No matter what anyone else thought, he was convinced that someone had been watching the hospital until recently and was determined to find out who—and why.

As soon as no one was looking, he dashed away from the infirmary and scuttled across the lawn, heading straight for
the apple tree he and Bottle Top had climbed before. Unusually for this time of year, the leaves were beginning to turn brown and wither; some had even dropped to the ground. A dry, dusty vapor hung in the air.

Before anyone could notice his absence, he hoisted himself into the branches and worked his way across to the wall. Then, using the rope that still dangled over the other side, he carefully let himself down.

He cut across the field. Here and there large shapes broke through the gloom, but he did not stop until he had reached the Gallows Tree, which stood like a bolt of black lightning by the side of the dirt road.

There was no sign now of the nest he and Bottle Top had investigated before. Instead, a pile of sticks and twigs lay broken and discarded on the ground. He raked through them with his foot, but could find no evidence of the creature that had once dwelled inside. Not a feather, not a shell. Even the pellets he had seen the last time had disappeared. Had he been mistaken? Had all of his suspicions been wrong?

A sound caught his ears.

Tap-tap-tap
.

It sounded like someone hammering in a smithy and seemed to be coming from the edge of the neighboring field. Black Mary’s Hole.

A cold sensation trickled down his spine and he wished again that Bottle Top was with him, to lend him courage and support. He glanced at the mass of ash-gray buildings to the
south and wondered how his friend was coping on his own. Then, girding himself, he moved toward the sound.

A trail snaked through the grass on the opposite side of the road and he followed it, knowing that it led to Black Mary’s Hole. For a moment all of Jonas’s late-night stories came flooding back and his heart started to tremble in his chest. Even more terrifying than the tales of Billy Shrike was the legend of the witch who had once drowned her baby in the dried-up well—the spring that gave the hamlet its name. The long blades of grass had been flattened underfoot, and it looked as if something large and heavy had been dragged along the ground. Nettles, half hidden in the undergrowth, stung him with their fangs.

He came to a river. It was little more than a trickle here, a narrow brook spanned by a rotting bridge, and the water reeked of decay. Rushes grew in clumps along the bank and clouds of midges swarmed the air.

The sound came again, louder this time, from the other side.

Tap-tap-tap
.

He stopped. A row of huts stood on the opposite bank, sprouting like mushrooms from the soil. A cold, scared feeling lodged at the back of his throat and he swallowed it down. Then, taking a deep breath, he slowly advanced across the bridge. The boards rocked and juddered underfoot.

The noise came again, from further up ahead.

A path led past the huts to a small clearing in the
distance. Peering nervously from side to side, he followed it, alert for any movement. The huts had long since been abandoned and their windows were nothing more than gaping holes. A black odor filled the air and he inhaled its tarlike scent.

Just before the clearing was a lone cattle shed, a semicircular stone building with mossy walls and a collapsed roof. The sound of hammering was coming from the other side. He stepped closer and then came to a sudden stop.

The beams of the shed were thronged with crows. Twenty or thirty of them, hunched inside, hooded like executioners. He dared not move, dared not breathe, but stood in one spot, rooted to the ground. He half expected them to rush at him in a volley of wings and noise, but they remained perfectly still, watching him with their baleful eyes. Then, slowly, they turned their heads to look at whatever was hidden from view.

Cirrus willed himself closer, taking tiny, timid steps.

The smell of tar was even stronger now, and he thought he could detect a fiery glimmer in the air. Crouching low, he made his way along the wall until he came to a small window on the western side of the shed. Cautiously, he raised his eyes and peered inside, aware of the birds’ awful presence overhead.

The gentleman he had seen on previous occasions was inside, stooped over a large wicker basket. A tall T-shaped metal pole protruded from the interior of the basket, and an enormous net of fabric hung above him from the rafters. A variety of instruments dangled from the joists: pots and pans,
a compass and even a small anchor. Elsewhere in the shed lay discarded remnants of cloth—just like the sheets Mrs. Kickshaw said had been stolen from the laundry. They had been cut into sections and dipped in a solution that gave them a fine golden gloss.

A fire flickered just out of sight and threw restless shadows along the walls. Every now and then it erupted into a bigger blaze and the man turned his head toward it.

“Hungry, ain’t ye?” he said in a rough, gravelly voice, and scratched his brow.

He had rolled up his shirtsleeves as far as the elbows, exposing thick, muscular forearms that were sun-bronzed and covered with strange inky lines. Tattoos. Cirrus had heard Jonas mention them once in one of his stories. A short brass truncheon dangled from a belt round the man’s waist. It wasn’t a pistol, as Cirrus and Bottle Top had suspected earlier, but something else entirely.

A spyglass.

Cirrus watched as the man suddenly threw aside his tools and stepped across the floor to a canvas sack that had been slung from a nail near the doorway. He pulled out several long thin shadows, each on a bit of string, and tossed them to the fire.

They were rats! Dead rats!

Immediately, the fire crackled and Cirrus saw what might have been a wing of flame flicker across his vision. A raucous screech filled the air—and Cirrus jumped back in terror, sweat coursing down his spine.

He ducked, just as the man glanced toward the window.

“Soon,” he heard the man say from the other side. “Soon, Alerion, I promise. We’ll go to the hospital, fetch what we came for and disappear for good. No more of this godforsaken city for us, eh, girl?”

Cirrus sat bolt upright. Who was he talking to? And what was he planning to take from the hospital? He looked across the fields and considered running back to alert the Governor, but then he heard a soft cascading noise from inside the shed and craned his neck to see what had caused it.

The man was dragging the large net of fabric along the ground toward the clearing. Cirrus scuttled forward, along the outside of the wall, tracking his movements.

A wooden scaffold had been erected over the mouth of the well in the center of the clearing, where people had presumably once drawn their water. The man was now using a rope and pulley to hoist the fabric—like a sail—into the air above it. Once this was done, he returned to the shed for the wicker basket, which he hauled outside and tipped at an angle so that the prominent T-shaped pole was placed directly over the top of the well and beneath the mass of fabric. He then proceeded to attach a series of cords from the base of the sail to the edges of the basket, taking care to knot them tightly. Finally, wiping the sweat from his brow, he turned back to the shed and said, “Are ye coming, then? Or do ye expect me to get this contraption off the ground without ye?”

Cirrus froze, terrified that he had been seen, but then
realized that the man was speaking to whoever—or whatever—was still hidden in the shed.

A ball of flame shot out of the building and circled round the clearing before settling on the iron perch above the basket. Cirrus staggered back and sucked in his breath in amazement. It was a bird made of fire! But that was impossible, surely?

He rubbed his eyes and then stared even harder at the fierce, flaming creature. The bird was flickering all over with gold and crimson feathers. It burned so brightly it was painful to look at, but was so dazzling in its beauty it was difficult to look away. Even the crows had gathered overhead, silently watching.