Lady of Devices

chapter 14



Something dug mercilessly into her ribs. With a groan, Claire cracked open her left eye, and then her right. Her head spun with dizziness and confusion, but she had not been rendered unconscious. At least, she didn’t think so. Under her cheek, dirt grated between her skin and the hard cobblestones, stinking of soot, alcohol, and ancient urine. Revolted, she lifted her head.

Something poked her in the ribs again. Blindly, she whipped her arm backward, connecting with empty air. “God help me.” It seemed to take an eternity to pull her knees under her, and even longer to get her hands on either side of them.

Her gloves were gone. Bare skin scraped the stones.

She raised her head. The landau. Her trunk. All her worldly goods. Memory rushed in—the shouting, the ridicule, being hit. Falling.

The landau.

The street stood empty, the lamps outside the Aldgate station shining steadily, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Something glinted on the cobbles, and she bent to pick it up, groaning again as the blood rushed to her head.

One of her tortoiseshell hair combs. A tine had snapped off, leaving a gap like the smile of a child without a front tooth. Absently, she reached up and slid it into her chignon. So they had found her traveling case. It seemed too much to hope that they would miss the false bottom in it—at any rate, it had disappeared into the night with them and she was unlikely to see her pearls or her great-grandmother’s emerald ring again. At least they had not stolen the very pins from her hair, or the clothes off her body. Her coat, however, with its lovely twining soutache trim, was gone.

The landau. Oh woe. The landau. Tears welled into her eyes as she surveyed the empty, silent street, and scalded a hot track down one cheek.

Something poked the back of her knee.

“Get away!” She whirled, expecting to see a dog nosing at her to see if she was edible, and found instead a child. “Good heavens. Who are you?”

Dressed in a ragged homespun jacket and pants, and a shirt with a fraying band and no collar, the waif turned huge dark eyes on her and pointed into the mouth of an alley across the street. He took a handful of her blue merino skirt—streaked now with something she didn’t want to investigate closely—and tugged.

“Oh no, my dear. I know your tricks. If you’re hiding another band of miscreants in there, they’ll not have me to work over again.”

Brave words to a scrap who couldn’t be above four years of age. She was as weak as a day-old chick and wouldn’t even be able to fight off this child if he decided to do more than poke her.

He shook his head and tugged again on her skirt.

“I’m not going with you, poppet. I must find a bobby and report Mr. Snouts and his friends to the authorities at once.”

The ragged head, which might have sported curls if it had been brushed, shook more vigorously. He tightened his grip on her skirt and began to tow her across the street, toward the alley.

“Stop, little man. I’m not going in there. I need to find a policeman. Do you understand? Do you speak English?” He nodded, then made a buttoning motion over his lips, still tugging her toward the alley. “You’re not permitted to speak?”

Another nod. He frowned when her stumbling steps stopped, then seemed to get an idea. He dug in one pocket and pulled out her other comb, all its tines intact. After handing it to her, he pointed again at the alley.

Comprehension dawned as she rammed the comb into the other side of her chignon. “They’ve gone this way? The ruffians who stole my landau and my trunk?” His gap-toothed smile lit up his face in the dim glow from the station lamps across the road. “Aha. Then lead on, little man. It would be useful for the bobbies to have a destination for their investigations once I locate it.”

Again the vigorous shake of the head, but he set off at a trot, pulling her by the skirt as though she were a horse on a leading rein. Claire followed him down the empty alley, dodging crates and kegs and even a sleeping human form, its legs sticking out from behind a rubbish bin. The alley doglegged past the door of a tavern, where they both picked up their pace, and disgorged them into a street lined with warehouses of all shapes, piggybacked onto one another and leaving barely enough room to squeeze between. Beyond their ramshackle outlines, she could hear the suck and pull of the Thames as it gurgled against dock and piling.

Squeezed between two warehouses she saw a squat building that might have been a house once, or maybe a customs shed. Even with the moonlight, it was difficult to tell. Its roof raked upward at a steep angle, and it was so narrow a person could stand on one side, toss a stone, and hit the other. The ragged child tugged her skirt as if to moor her to the spot, and pointed.

“They’re here? This is where they’ve taken my things? What is it, some kind of robbers’ hideout?” The boy frowned. Too many questions. She tried again. “They’ve brought my things here?” He nodded. “Are they friends of yours?” He nodded again.

Here was a puzzle. She squatted next to him in the shadow of the neighboring warehouse. “But my little man, if they’re friends of yours, why have you showed me? I’ve said I’ll bring the bobbies down on them. Is it because they’ve hurt you?”

He shook his head so vigorously his matted hair swung straight out above his ears. He took her hand and pointed to the ramshackle place, smiling in a way that she could only interpret as encouraging.

“You want me to go in there?” Big nod. “By myself?” He thrust out his chest and planted his feet as though he were a captain surveying the quarterdeck. “Well yes, I know you’re with me, but you probably couldn’t stop them coshing me on the head a second time the moment they caught sight of me. All I want is to get my things back. Do you know where they might have put the landau?”

Confusion wrote itself all over the smooth but filthy features.

“Never mind. I shall find it.” She rose, the muscles on her right side—the ones that had unceremoniously met the street as she was pulled from the landau—aching with the effort. “And since I haven’t seen a member of Sir Robert Peel’s policing force in the last hour, I must conclude I’m on my own.”

Claire surveyed the building, which leaned against the warehouse next door like a drunk against his best friend. Rage bubbled just beneath her breastbone. How dared they take the clothes literally off her back? How dared anyone treat her like this? It wasn’t enough that a mob had invaded her home and caused her to run for her very life. It wasn’t enough that her father had made the poor decisions that had opened her up to this. But this scum—these ruffians—had taken everything she had in the world, everything that would have made it possible for her to make her own way. Without respectable clothes and the landau, she could not convince anyone she was worthy of employment, much less gently bred.

These wretches had stolen her future from her, and by all she held holy, she would not tolerate it. She was finished with apologizing and hiding and running away. It was time to stand up and impose her will on someone else for once in her life.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” she told the youngster still standing beside her, waiting for her to go skipping into that house to have tea and crumpets with his criminal friends. “And if you would be so kind as to make inquiries as to the whereabouts of my landau and meet me out here, I promise I will not involve you in what I’m about to do.”

The child’s eyes widened and he released her skirt as if it burned him.

She marched down the street, picked up her skirts, and took to her heels in the alley. The last trains ran at eleven o’clock. If she was lucky, she could steal a ride on one and get to the laboratory at St. Cecelia’s and back before an Underground conductor caught her without a ticket.