Magnificent Devices [5] A Lady of Resources (17 page)

“Where?” Maggie pulled her ruffled nightdress up over her nose, coughing uncontrollably. “I can’t breathe, Lizzie.”

Lizzie grabbed the sleeve of an airman in mid-flight. “I want the captain! Mama is sick!”

“Get in your cabin, missy.” He shoved them both back into the cabin. “You’re like to get trampled.”

“But—”

The door closed with a bang and smoke seeped in over the top. The floor dropped out from under them again and Lizzie screamed. This flight in the airship, which had begun as such a treat, was horrible! She was never flying in one again. The floor canted at an angle now, and Mama rolled over and over, landing up in a heap against the base of the sleeping cupboard. “Mama, wake up, please wake up.”

Maggie climbed onto the window seat and gasped, which made her choke again on the smoke. “Lizzie, look! The river!”

The burning ship made orange and red dance on the surface of the water far below. They skimmed right over the top of London Bridge—

—London Bridge we’re falling down—

—and the water rushed up, faster and faster. Instinct made Lizzie pull on the latch and the window swung into the room, came off its hinges, and shattered on the steep slope of the floor.

“Jump, Maggie!”

“No! Mama—”

“The water will wake her up and she will swim up to find us. Jump!”

Holding hands, they leaped out into the burning dusk, and no one alive saw them go.

*

“I believe she is returning to consciousness. We must remove the helmet.”

Lizzie swam up through the water … no, the night … oh, how cold the water is …

“Lizzie?”

Something tugged on her hair, and she opened her eyes to see a vast dimness with a large glowing ball above her. The sun? Was she still under the water?

No, not the sun. Glass. And walls. The tower. She was in the tower at Colliford Castle. None of it was real. And yet … all of it had happened. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. Her mind reeled, her head pounded with the worst headache she’d ever had, and she sagged back against the bolster with a groan.

“Lizzie, can you speak?” Evan hovered over her, his voice low and full of concern. “I am going to take the helmet off.”

The heavy metal would have scraped her ears had they not been covered by the cap. As it was lifted away, she tried to lift her arms to the strings to get the cap off. They would not move.

“Let me assist you.” When he removed the cap, her hair tumbled over the bolster and hung over the side of the table. “I do apologize. One of the effects of the elixir is that there is some temporary paralysis of the limbs afterward. Do you feel any other effects?”

“Headache. A dreadful one.” To say nothing of the creeping horror still surging in her bloodstream—a horror she was powerless to act upon because she could not bloody move.

“I am sorry to hear it. It is the elixir again, I am afraid. All my subjects report the same, but apparently one feels better after a large glass of water, so I come prepared. Here, drink this.”

He slid an arm behind her head and she guzzled the glass down and nodded for more. The second one went down more slowly, but she finished it, too, and her head seemed to clear a little. The horror of the memories, however, did not.

For they were memories.

The crack—the tawny eye—

Oh, yes. She had been having flashes of a memory so deeply buried that it was not until she had seen the author of her grief and fear again that it had begun to bubble to the surface. And between her childhood books and the elixir—opium, she had no doubt—the memory had been freed altogether.

“Is Father here?” she whispered.

“I would not miss this for the world.” Her father stepped out from behind the screen, and her stomach plunged in fear. “How do you feel, my dear?”

“Better.” She tried to sit up, to move her legs or arms, but the most she could do was wiggle her fingers. She must play the innocent, the invalid. “Or perhaps not.”

“Do not exert yourself. Sometimes it takes as much as an hour for the subject to recover fully from the elixir. When Kennidge agreed to be our subject, such was the case.”

“Did it work?”

“Yes, we were able to get one of our successful plates from him.”

“I beg your pardon—I meant did it work on me?”

She prayed it had not. How foolish she had been to agree to this! For if even one plate showed an image—a single moment of those memories—then her life would be worth even less than it had been on that fateful day when she and Maggie were supposed to have died.

Maggie!

Now she lay rigid, struck motionless by terror. Even now Maggie was probably alighting from the train and looking for the trap Lizzie had sent. What had she been thinking? How could she have been so foolish as to drag her sister—cousin—into this, simply because she was frightened and wanted company?

Oh, how selfish she had been, and now Maggie’s life would be in danger, too. There would be no explaining to Father—de Maupassant—she could no longer think of him as any sort of parental figure who could bear her mother’s name—that unlike Lizzie or her mother, Maggie had neither seen nor heard anything that could incriminate him.

For he had more to lose now.

But she and Maggie had much more to live for.

“Lizzie, you must rest until the effects of the elixir have worn off,” Evan said. “While you recover, Charles and I will process the plates and see whether my recent improvements to the mnemosomniograph have been effective.”

She must run. While they were busy, she must find a conveyance and get to the train station as fast as she could.

And then what? There was no return train to London until this evening. Well, no matter. If they had to walk all the way across the Cotswolds, they would be safer than staying here. As soon as this wretched paralysis wore off, she would act.

Now she could wiggle her toes inside her kid boots. One foot flopped to the side, and with a great effort, she brought it to the vertical.

The examination of the plates seemed to take ages. Not that she would complain, for each minute that passed brought some small return to mobility. Now she could circle her ankles. And lift her arms.

Patience. Knees?

Muscles tightened in thighs and calves, to no effect. She curled her spine forward, but could not manage to sit up.

From behind the screen, Evan exclaimed, “I think we have something!”

Come on. Come on, body. Do not fail me. I must … get … up …

No matter how she struggled, her legs would not move.

“Lizzie, you are a wonder!” Evan called. “We have three clear images!”

Oh, Lord, help me now, for I am alone.

“What do you think produced such high quality?” de Maupassant asked him.

“Since the laboratory conditions were identical to those of the other subjects in every respect,” Evan said, excitement in his voice, “I cannot help but attribute it to an excess of emotion on the part of this subject. Er, of Lizzie. It is common knowledge, after all, that the young girl is an emotional, dramatic creature.”

Ooh, if she only had the use of her legs, she would march over there and show him just how dramatic it would be to have one of his precious plates broken over his head! Her thigh muscles twitched, and she lifted her left knee.

Victory!

Almost. Her right knee would not so much as bend.

The curtain was pulled back and Evan and de Maupassant walked out, the former carrying the plates. “Look, Lizzie. Can you sit up?”

She would not look at her father. Instead, she fussed with her skirts, which had ridden up a little in her efforts to move various body parts. “I don’t know.”

“Do not overexert yourself,” Evan cautioned her. “Only look. Can you identify this image?”

She did not want to look. But de Maupassant had already seen them, hadn’t he? He knew who she was, and that she was the only witness to the murder of her mother and every other poor sod on that ship that evening. Reluctantly, she looked at the ghostly image on the plate in its brass holder.

A figure in bustled skirts, dark against light, with pale hair, lying face down. Above it, an oval floating in midair. Ah. The viewing port.

“Does your conscious mind recognize this scene?” Evan asked gently, holding it before her with one hand while attempting to plump up the bolster on which her head rested with the other.

Snouts’s voice whispered in her mind.
When in doubt, play dumb. Once they underestimate you, you have the upper hand.
It had served the Lady well. She could only hope it would do the same now.

“A—a doll?” she said weakly. “A dressmaker’s mannequin?”

“Perhaps,” Evan said thoughtfully, “though one would not think such things would elicit strong emotion. What about this one?”

She stared at the plate for some time before she understood the dreamy image floating thereon. “That is Maggie, very young, asleep under a quilt.”

“Ah.” Evan exchanged a delighted glance with de Maupassant, whose face remained fixed in a pleasant smile. “That bears out my theory, at least, though the mixed results are a disappointment. And the third?”

The last image was stark—the very embodiment of what her mind had been trying to tell her for weeks. A dark field was bisected by a vertical ray of light, and in that light hung a human eye, with a round lens tilted down over it. A lens that would turn a hazel eye tawny.

Her breath died in her lungs as her entire body stiffened with the chill of fear. She must not—she must not look at him—

But like the rabbit exploding out of its hiding place when stillness would have saved it, she could not stop herself from meeting her father’s gaze.

“Do not move,” he said softly.

The predator had stalked and found her. In the echo of the words he had used on that terrible night, she knew with utter certainty that if she could not find the resources within herself to outwit him, neither she nor Maggie would survive a second time.

“Hallo, the tower,” came a familiar voice from the door. “Are you all in here?”

Evan and de Maupassant whirled with identical expressions of surprised annoyance. “Margaret?” de Maupassant managed at last, blinking as though his eyes and ears played tricks on him.

“The same,” she said cheerfully, coming in wearing her smart brown traveling suit with the velvet facings on the jacket, her eyes sparkling with pleasure that had certainly not been there on the occasion of her first visit. “Kennidge said you were all here and that Lizzie was to help you test the dream device. Have you begun? What have I missed?”

You would think she had merely overslept, not journeyed all the way from London and probably climbed out of the trap two minutes ago.

“Margaret, first, you are just in time to view the first set of plates along with Elizabeth, and second, what on earth are you doing here?” Evan asked. “Surely you haven’t gone all the way to London and back so quickly?”

“I have, actually. I attended Lady Claire’s investiture—which was terribly exciting for her and Mr. Malvern and terribly dull for ordinary mortals like me—and then I found I missed my cousin so much that I re-packed my valise and set off. I do hope my unexpected return is not an inconvenience? I would have sent a tube, but the decision was rather sudden, and—”

“No, not at all.” De Maupassant had recovered his manners, pulling them on like a cloak. “In fact, the scientists we had been expecting were delayed due to the weather, so you find us happily
en famille
.”

“But where are Claude and the others?”

“Gone to Newquay,” Lizzie said. “Maggie, do help me sit up. I cannot lie here and speak to the glass globe above us.”

But try as she might, Lizzie could not master her disobedient muscles well enough to sit up, and finally Maggie and Evan were forced to let her relax upon the table again, her shoulders against the bolster.

“Would you like to see the plates?” Evan said eagerly, thrusting them under Maggie’s nose before she had a chance to reply. “Lizzie says that this one depicts you. Can you credit it?”

Maggie peered at the image rather as one might peer through the fog on a particularly bad London night. “Not at all. Me? I do not believe it.”

“Like dreams, I suspect the images may be subject to interpretation,” de Maupassant said easily. “Now, Evan, we cannot leave poor Elizabeth lying here indefinitely. I suggest we remove her to a proper bed so that she may recover in comfort. The Queen’s Tower is nearest.”

“The Queen’s Tower?” Evan said blankly, dragging his attention away from his plates with difficulty. “Why not simply take her to her room?”

“I believe I just explained why. Come, boy. You are young and strong and you may devote five minutes to the well-being of your cousin, surely?”

Evan’s cheeks flushed above the youthful growth of beard he had clearly forgotten to shave this morning. “Of course. I do apologize. Lizzie, if you will pass your right arm about my neck, I will endeavor to lift you.”

Lizzie had been close to many a young man—in dance class one could hardly avoid it—but it was a different sensation to be cradled against someone in a relatively supine position. She was not altogether sure she liked it—or rather, she would like it more if she were surer of his motivations and knowledge.

Maggie followed them inside the house and along the corridor to the Queen’s Tower, which, since it had usable rooms for guests, had not had its doors bricked up in the same way as the science tower. “We could not have house guests opening the wrong door at a crucial moment in the experiments,” Evan explained. “Here we are. Just one more stair and your journey will be over, Lizzie.”

“I fear it is much more work for you than for me,” she said as Maggie preceded them up the stone stairs, which wound around a central pillar. At the landing, Maggie pushed open the heavy door and Evan carried her inside.

“So this is the room where Her Majesty slept,” Maggie said, turning in a circle as Evan laid Lizzie upon the embroidered coverlet and plumped up the down pillows behind her head and shoulders. “It is very fine, is it not, Lizzie?”

It was indeed. Midnight blue curtains embroidered with stars hung on either side of a curved window. An easy chair was pulled up next to the fireplace—laid with wood ready for the match—and curved shelves filled with books and curios had been fitted cleverly along the walls. On the side opposite the bed with its rich hangings was another, smaller door. “Where does that go?”

“Up to the parapet,” Evan said. “It is of a height with the other.”

“You may leave it closed, Maggie,” Lizzie told her. “I shall not be exploring parapets anytime soon.”

“There is a water closet in this alcove here behind the curtain, which was once used for storing arrows. Maggie, perhaps you might get Lizzie another glass of water? I must return to my plates and see what else I might bring you to look at.”

He clattered down the stairs much more quickly than he had come up bearing her, and when Maggie brought her a glass, she drank the water gratefully. At this rate, she was going to need that water closet—but her headache was gone, and she was feeling much less fuzzy.

“How long before you can walk?” Maggie asked. “I must say, I don’t like the idea of you being laid up.”

“Nor do I.” Lizzie tried her knees again, and this time, they both bent together. “Look, I could not do this a few minutes ago.”

“Try sitting up.”

But no, the muscles in her back would not allow it. She would have to be patient, no matter how much the inactivity—and the risk—irked her.

“While you’re lying there,” Maggie said, sitting on the edge of the bed, “you might as well tell me what is going on.”

“We’re in trouble,” Lizzie began. “It started with—wait, someone’s coming up.”

“Kennidge, maybe, to see if Your Majesty would like tea in your room?”

“If I drink another drop, it will be you carrying me to the water closet.”

The door opened and Lizzie’s stomach plunged once more at the sight of de Maupassant. “I see you are comfortable,” he said from the threshold.

“As comfortable as one can be when one cannot move, and is in a strange room.”

“I thought you would enjoy seeing the Queen’s Tower while you recover. I hope you enjoy your surroundings for as long as they are necessary.”

“I’m sorry—what?” Necessary? What was necessary was that the last of the recovery process should not take much longer. As soon as her legs would bear her weight, they were getting out of here.

He gazed around the room, settling at last on the narrow door up to the parapet. “When she and the Prince Consort stayed here, Her Majesty had just survived one of the several attempts there have been on her life. She found it very comforting that there is only one way in and out of this tower. With a guard on the parapet and one at the base of the stairs, it was quite possible to give the royal couple complete security at very little expense.”

“Well, fortunately, no one wants to make an attempt on us,” Maggie said with a smile.

His gaze moved from her to Lizzie, and held. “Quite. What a shame you will not be able to tell your relations in Penzance that you slept in the bed of a queen.”

“What on earth do you mean?” Lizzie tried once more to sit up, and found that she could lean on her elbows.

“I informed the servants you are staying up here for a lark, before you leave to see your mother’s family,” de Maupassant said. “It will mean fewer questions, particularly since His Highness is expected to arrive at his estates tonight. In mathematics, this would be called an elegant solution—solving the greatest number of problems using the fewest number of operations.”

Maggie gazed from him to Lizzie. “I am afraid I am completely lost, Uncle Charles.”

“You are no such relation to me,” he told her with blunt, careless cruelty, and Maggie’s breath caught.

Rage ignited in Lizzie’s helpless bosom. How dared he take that tone with Maggie, who was a thousand times the better person!

And in that moment, as though the fizzing fury inside her had ignited her mind, all the pieces fell into place and the reason for the cannon on the roof became clear. “You are going to try again,” she whispered. “I am surprised you didn’t do Her Majesty in while she was sleeping here.”

“It would be difficult to explain that away satisfactorily,” he said. “However, given the fact that His Highness’s arrival is typically feted in grand style, with fireworks in the village and a seven-gun salute in the park of his estate, the situation will be quite different. Made to order, in fact.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Maggie demanded. “Lizzie?”

She had nothing to lose now by playing dumb. Her father intended to do away with them both no matter what she said. “He is going to shoot the Prince of Wales’s airship out of the sky when it flies overhead this evening,” she told Maggie in a voice devoid of anything but contempt. “That is no telescope on the roof of the science tower. It is a cannon, and he is going to use it to murder the prince and his son under the cover of the fireworks.”

De Maupassant’s moustaches twitched in a smile. “Clever girl. Climbing about like a kitten on the drapes, were we? Poking our whiskers in where they don’t belong?”

“I was bored.”

“You’re very much like your mother. She was not bored, but curiosity certainly killed that cat.”

“It did not. You did. I saw it all.”

Maggie’s face was a study in horrified confusion as she looked from Lizzie to de Maupassant.

“Yes, I know. What luck that you
volunteered
for the dream device. I should not have liked to force you against your will—it would have been very difficult to explain to Evan, whose scruples are rather deeply entrenched.”

“You
wanted
me as a test subject, then.”

“Oh, yes. From the moment I saw you in Munich and realized that the girl I thought safely at the bottom of the Thames was not only alive, but grown up, it was necessary to know how much you remembered. A perfect subject for the dream device. When you spiked my guns the first time, I realized that force must be replaced with guile. How fortunate for me that your need for family was as great as my need to draw you close to me.”

Maggie’s eyes widened. “The pocket watch.”

“Yes. I did not expect you to use the skills you developed on the street. One doesn’t, does one? Getting it into your hands proved easy, but still you eluded me.”

Lizzie was finding it difficult to breathe. “That bomb was intended for me?”

“I had originally planned to offer it as a graduation gift. Clumsy, I admit, and with unfortunate collateral damage, but it was all I had in my possession on short notice.”

If she had opened it that evening, in her room with Maggie and the Lady, all three of them would have been killed. Her choosing his pocket to pick instead of any other man’s had saved their very lives—and the bully-boys had met her intended fate instead.

“I shall do better this time,” he added.

“In a pig’s eye!” Maggie lunged for the door, but he was ready for her. Stepping outside, he slammed it shut, and she crashed against it. They heard the lock turn, smooth and well oiled.

“Good-bye, my dears,” he said through oak planks at least an inch thick. “You shall have a fine send-off this evening.”

Lizzie roared, low in her throat, and threw herself from the bed to go to Maggie’s aid.

One leg worked. One did not. She fell awkwardly on the carpet, blinded by tears and rage at her own stupidity. Why had she not seen it sooner? Why had she not run this morning, when she had the chance?

But if she had, then Maggie might be the one all alone up here, waiting for the moment of her death.

Lizzie crawled across the carpet to her, and together they huddled against the door. In fact, it felt very much like the night they had crawled out of the water and crouched weeping on the river steps, helpless and wondering where their happy lives had gone.