The Transference Engine (7 page)

Nothing new or interesting there. I moved on, deeper into the back roads and tenements of the poor. Not a safe neighborhood. I had only the farthing and a ha' penny and my tin cup worth stealing. But I had a few weapons hidden about my person. I'd be safer than Sir Drew.

Chapter Six

D
ID I DARE CROSS the bridge into Southwark? The haven for criminals and the desperately poor stirred restlessly as sunset approached. Many denizens ventured abroad only with the cover of darkness.

When I had been with Miss Ada ten years, I knew she'd not need me as a governess much longer. I began to stretch into new acquaintances and after dark became Madame Magdala, the bastard daughter of a Gypsy king. I'd sweep into salons and read the futures of the attendees. My visions came in the swirling whirlpool of any liquid. The hosts of these salons pressed champagne into my hands, hoping the expensive wine would heighten my arcane talent.

Once, after midnight, I was returning home in the carriage of my latest hostess—Madame FitzWilliam of the demimonde. With a name like that, she could allude to royal connections. King William IV, the sailor king, had two-dozen illegitimate children. Who could keep them straight?

The sleepy driver took a short cut near this very neighborhood and did not look smart or control his reins well. The horses slowed to a dreary walk. Without direction, they plodded across Westminster Bridge and came to a halt under a gas streetlight.

“S'cuse me, sir.” A girl child approached the carriage. “Got a shillin' t'spare for a girl willing to work for it?”

That brought me out of my wine-induced daze. I dropped the isinglass window and peered through the fog at the youngster. As I expected, her face was smudged with tear-streaked dust.

“Me mum's got the cough, and we ain't got no money for coal to heat the flat.” Her voice turned plaintive. “I'd do any as you ask, for a shillin'.”

Then she saw me peering out at her. “Sorry, mum. Thought you was a genl'man. No lady drives out a midnight like this.”

“I'm not a lady,” I informed her. “Are you truly willing to work?”

She gulped and nodded. She wouldn't raise her eyes to mine.

Obviously, she'd been told about women with odd tastes in partners but had never encountered one before. I wondered if this was perhaps her first night on the streets, driven by desperation to help her ailing mother.

“Anything you asks, mum.”

“Including sweeping and washing up in the kitchen?”

She raised her head then, eyes wide with hope.

“Three pence a week. Half day off on Sunday and Monday to take your wages to your mother. We'll feed you, give you a place to sleep out of the cold and rain, supply you with a new uniform each year, and insist you stay clean. That means scrubbing your face and hands every day and taking a full bath once a week.”

“Thruppence a week!” She looked astonished at the vast sum.

“Yes. But you have to stay clean, and learn to speak properly. Now what's your name child?” I opened the carriage door for her to clamber in.

“Violet, mum. Me mum calls me Violet after her favorite flower. Ain't never seen a real one, but Mum had a picture of one on the wall until we had to sell it to pay the rent. A real pretty flower it was, too.”

“Yes, Violet. They are pretty flowers, and come spring I'll show you a real one in my lady's garden.” I pounded on the roof of the carriage with my stick to rouse the driver.

And when I left the household the next year, upon Miss Ada's marriage to William King, Violet came with me, the first of my rescued street urchins.

And now she was missing.

As I considered the cheapness of life among the tall and rickety tenements of Southwark, from whence Violet sprang, the open midden in the streets, and those who partied and prowled in search of victims in the gambling dens and brothels, my common sense prevailed. The leaders of whatever conspiracy I searched for would not allow loose tongues to speak in this district. Dressed as I was to appear desperate among the back alleys of London and Westminster, I was too clean and prosperous appearing for Southwark. They'd spot me as an outsider inside of two heartbeats and either silence their own words or eliminate mine with a knife to my throat.

I'd mined as much information as I could for one evening.

Lucy and Emily waited for me in the café, even though they'd closed up hours ago. They sat in the back corner sipping tea and puzzling over a large book from my library.

After I'd made my presence known, I went to the cash box behind the coffee bar and extracted some coins to pay the girls for coming in on short notice. “Any report from Mickey?” I asked as I handed each of them a shilling three pence. Yes, I know I overpay my workers, but they give me good service and loyalty.

“He snatched some shortbread about an hour ago and left again. Said he'd see you in the morning,” Emily answered, accepting her coins gratefully.

“Where you been, Missus?” Lucy asked, wrinkling her nose as if I smelled bad. She tucked her own wages into a reticule tied to her waist.

Perhaps I did smell. I usually kept my clandestine observing secret from them. “I've been listening to London, seeing if I can find new information about Toby and Violet.”

“No sign of Jane, either,” Emily grumbled. “Not like her to stay out after sunset.”

I needed to sit down. So I grabbed a cup and saucer and joined them at the table, sincerely hoping the tea was still fresh and not stewed. But I'd drink it any way I could at this moment.

“That sniveling little Oxford don returned this with a nasty note,” Lucy said, pushing the book toward me before I could take a sip.

“Skinny fellow, short, wears spectacles, and cannot get his cravat straight or even interesting?” I asked after I'd taken a hearty swallow of tea. Good; it was still hot and fresh.

“That's the one,” Lucy said. Her mouth twitched up, and her eyes focused somewhere else. Smitten. With the man or his position?

“He does have an active and keen mind, though,” I admitted. The only attractive part of him, to my mind. I glanced at the title of the thick book with its cracked leather binding and yellowing pages.
An Examination of Necromancy and Soul Preservation After Death in the Magic System of Araby
. Then in smaller letters on the title page inside the book:
A Translation from the Latin
. I couldn't read the name of the translator in the dim light, or without my own spectacles which I used only in private when I knew no one would interrupt my study.

“It's an English translation of the Latin which was a translation of the Arabic,” Lucy explained. “At least that's what Professor Badenough said in his note. Only he didn't say Arabic. He said . . . Persian. The original was written in Persian, but the translator changed that to Araby. He was not happy because both the Latin and English are incomplete and incorrect.” She thrust a hastily scrawled note under my nose. The written words slashed across the page of my own stationery so obliquely and unevenly I'd have trouble deciphering them in good light with magnification.

“Angry a bit?” I laid the note flat on top of the book. “I'll examine this later to see if I need to remove it from the library catalog. If it truly is inaccurate, then it is worthless.”

With that, I dismissed the girls, wishing Toby was around to walk them home. I didn't like my girls out alone after dark. But they would walk together and knew to keep to lighted streets and familiar neighborhoods.

And neither of them fit Lord Byron's requirements of being petite and dark.

Sleep eluded me that night. Drew did not knock upon my door, or use his key, to help ward off the vision of dark despair and fear I had touched at the edges of Southwark. Nor could I banish my worry about people going missing. I wondered how many more than just the ones close to me had left home never to return.

Rather than fight the clinging shrouds of nightmares, I settled in my big armchair in the study and took up the book that Professor Badenough had returned. With abundant gaslight from my lamp and my wire-rimmed spectacles, I puzzled out the Oxford don's note and found his signature almost legible. Jeremy Badenough. A pleasant mouthful in the right accent. Lucy's shop girl intonations would make it sound pretentious when it was probably meant to honor respected relatives.

Most of my linguistic skills came from modern spoken languages in the lands I'd traveled through. Latin and Greek, let alone Arabic or Persian made no sense to me. So I could not determine if Professor Badenough's assessment was valid. I did find most of the translation twisted into pompously archaic sentences that wandered through six subjects and eighteen predicates before coming to a conclusion totally removed from the opening. If the text did not improve drastically further in, I agreed with Badenough. The book was worthless. I should probably seek the original and have it properly translated if I wanted to keep the subject matter in the library noted for esoteric publications.

Five pages in and I drifted off to sleep, the book in my lap and my spectacles dangling on the end of my nose.

Mickey showed up on my doorstep at dawn the next morning. His eyes remained red-rimmed and his nose damp from another night of tears. He shook his head the moment I opened the door to him.

What could I say? What could I do to ease his misery and my own worry over Toby?

“Wash your hands and face. Then after breakfast you can sweep the front walkway and the café for a penny.”

“Them's Toby's jobs,” he said sullenly. But he eyed with hunger the sugar buns just coming out of the oven.

“Wash first.” I slapped his hand away from the treats. “And you'll have the cheese yeast rolls first.”

“Does I have t' sweep? Shouldn't we save it for Toby?”

I had to bite my lip to hold back the tears. “Toby takes pride in how well he sweeps.” I would not, not, NOT, use the past tense. “We need to do his jobs well so that he knows how much we love him when he returns.”

“That one won't get un-lost without me.” Mickey stuck out his lower lip in pouty protest. “I should be out on the streets looking for him. And them other girls you ain't seen nothing of in nigh on two days. And the black dragon was flying yesterday, low and circling Westminster. But we lost 'im in the clouds when he left. Flew higher than Jimmy could.”

“Mickey, I want you to stay close. I need to know you are safe.” I knelt on the floor to bring our eyes level. I fussed with his ragged coat and straightened his shirt. “Almost time for new clothes for you. You're growing fast now.”

“If you got shoes that fit better, I'd be mighty grateful. I'll sweep for you for a week to pay for 'em.” He sniffled as he stared at the broken toes of his too tight footwear. He'd come to me barefoot, with an even smaller set of clothes.

“Deal. Now wash up so you can eat. I'll root around in the cellar closet to see what I have that might fit you.”

The rest of the day progressed as usual. Except Violet and Jane and Toby remained missing. My customers reflected the mood of my employees: more subdued in conversation, fewer arguments over the newspaper reports, and no requests for book searches, mundane or esoteric.

One quiet conversation caught my interest.