The Watchmaker Of Filigree Street Part 9

'You were saying about the clock,' he said.

Fanshaw seemed to go to some effort to force his eyes upward again. He cleared his throat. 'Yes. Yes, the ... it's quite old, you see, and it has some sort of chain that apparently n.o.body makes nowadays. Something to do with fuses. Ah, it's quite heavy, you might need that other hand ... '

Mori took the old clock with only one and let Katsu keep the other. He tilted open the back panel. 'No,' he said. 'It's all right. I had some fusee chain made this morning, I can mend it while you wait.'

'Really? Thank G.o.d.'

'Tea?'

'Oh, is it green? Thank you very much. Wonderful,' he said, and looked over the display cases while he drank the tea. By the time he had chosen two watches for his nephews, Mori had finished too, and Fanshaw went on his brisk way promising to mention the shop to everybody at work.

'He's going to say not to come unless you want a disturbing experience with an octopus,' Thaniel said, watching Katsu slide squeakingly down the table leg. 'How did you know he wanted that chain? He didn't tell you before.'

'No, but he said he had been looking for someone for a while, and most watchmakers can mend most things. It's only antiques that are difficult, so I thought it was probably ... oh, b.u.g.g.e.r,' he said, as the octopus fell off and on to a heavy switch in the wall, near the floor. It turned on the electric lights, one of which blew, as if it had been caught unready. Mori pursed his lips at it. 'Do you mind electricity?' he said. The others, the undamaged lights, were already fading.

'No?'

'Would you change that bulb, then?' He held out a fresh bulb from the drawer beside him. It was a perfect gla.s.s bubble with a tangle of fine wire inside.

Thaniel took it and felt unqualified to be doing anything with it. 'Why can't you?'

'I'd have to stand on the desk.' He s.h.i.+fted. 'I'm afraid of heights.'

'And you can't even stand on a desk?'

'Shall we not dwell on it?' Mori said, at a slightly higher pitch than usual.

'Sorry. Is there anything important I ought not to stand on ... ?'

'No, no, just these ... ' He chivvied two of the clockwork birds off the edge of the desk. Thaniel climbed up. The dead bulb screwed loose easily, and when it came away from its fixture, he studied the insides. Its tangle of wire had snapped. The ends touched the gla.s.s with a skittering noise as he turned it around in his hands.

'Who usually changes them?'

'I pay beggars,' Mori mumbled.

He screwed in the new bulb. Nothing happened. He frowned, thinking he had made a mistake, but then Mori leaned across to wave his arm at a patch of air by the door. The lights crackled on, and Thaniel felt the heat through the gla.s.s almost at once. He climbed down feeling disproportionately pleased with himself. It was a very modern thing to do; for a moment, at least, he could see why people became so excited about motorised engines and automatic mills.

Mori was still watching him with anxious eyes.

'I can't tease you when I'm afraid of that thing,' Thaniel said, nodding to where Katsu had stretched out in a new sunbeam.

'Why are you afraid of him?'

'I don't know, I feel like it's going to run up my s.h.i.+rt.'

'Oh. Nothing like that. I reset him every morning so that he does a certain set of things throughout the day. He has random gears, so whether he turns left or right out of the workshop is not predetermined, but that's all. He isn't thinking, or deciding. Look, I can show you.' He caught the octopus and clicked open a panel. Thaniel went to stand beside him, and Mori gave him a pair of his several-lensed gla.s.ses. He didn't need them to see that the clockwork inside, dense as honeycomb, sparkled with hundreds of tiny jewels. They threw colours on to the walls.

'Those are diamonds.'

'Yes,' said Mori, as if it were the most usual thing in the world. 'All good bearings are jewels. The harder the substance, the less they twist, the more accurate they are. Diamond is hardest, so I use industrial grades for inner clockwork. If you have something on show then rubies look better, but no one except me sees this, so it doesn't matter.'

'Isn't that expensive?'

'Not overly. There's about a thousand pounds' worth in here.'

'A thousand ... pounds.' It was a year's salary for a man like Fanshaw. 'Are you rich, then?'

'Yes.'

Thaniel watched the diamonds turn and wave. He had a murky feeling that he was seeing the payment for the Victoria bomb. 'Which reminds me, about rent?'

'Housekeeping. Just your own food and so forth.'

'But in Knightsbridge-'

'So, these are the random gears, here,' Mori said, pointing with the end of a brush pen to a miniature series of magnets that spun among the clockwork. 'He won't attack you, but he may well chance to live permanently in your top drawer, and over that I'm afraid I've no control whatever. At least, not without gutting him and starting again, which I'm not going to do.'

Thaniel nodded once, slowly. 'Housekeeping sounds fair enough.'

'I think so.' He clipped Katsu's back panel closed again. The octopus stole his pen and made off with it. Mori looked down at his microscope. 'I was about to do something, just now,' he said blankly.

'Take back Six?'

'Not yet.'

'A watch? More octo ... pi?' Thaniel said, knowing that it sounded wrong, though so did puses and podes. He tried to think where he had heard it last, but he did not often have business with more than one octopus at a time.

'No, I saw you and I thought ... oh, yes.' Mori caught one of the clockwork birds and opened it up. From inside came the faint but distinct smell of gunpowder. 'Would you like some more tea?'

Thaniel sat down again. 'Please.'

NINE.

OXFORD, JUNE 1884.

It had been a fine morning. Misty rain cooled off the scorched feeling in the streets and saved the crisping gra.s.s. With her window propped open, the grumbling humming of the b.u.mblebees came up from the broad flowerbeds with the smell of damp lavender. Grace was trying to read, but at some point in the last week, she had lost her watch, and her mind kept chafing about where it could have gone. She had looked through all her pockets, drawers, boxes, asked the porter, who hadn't seen it, and at the Bodleian, where three watches had been handed in, none hers.

She worked in her nightdress and a shawl until her eyes got tired, then, not wanting to find anybody to tie corset strings, dressed in some of Matsumoto's old things. It was good to get up and she wanted suddenly to go out and have a walk in the garden, or take the work out with her, but then the unharmonious bells rang out noon round the city. Going anywhere, even the garden, felt like too unconscionable a waste of time. She had turned her calendar over at midnight last night. The end of term was circled in red next week. She sat down in the uncomfortable chair again and propped her chin on her knee while she scanned down the essay to find her place.

She jumped when someone tapped on the door.

Bertha opened it. 'There's a lady here who says she's your mother.'

'My mother's a chronic invalid.'

Bertha nodded and mimed being wrapped in shawls. 'I thought I'd better not send her up, lest she dies of shame.' She let her eyes go around the room. It wasn't that bad, even if she had been stacking used cups into a pyramid rather than taking them back downstairs.

'Thanks. Always magnanimous. I'll come down,' Grace said. She wondered if it might be Matsumoto playing a joke.

'Put some proper clothes on, won't you?'

'Oh, are we all for corsets and bows now there's no podium? No, sorry, that wasn't very good. All my clothes are in the laundry. I didn't expect anyone today.'

'Well, perhaps you'd like to borrow something?' Bertha said, with a particular, clear politeness.

'Better not. I'll get it burnt or spill something on it.'

Bertha only looked impatient and left. Grace followed, slowly, listening for Matsumoto laughing, but in the airy sitting room at the back of the house, with its fine view over the lavender borders and the long roll of gra.s.s down to the river, was her mother. Her mother, who hadn't left London for years. Her mother who hadn't left the house for years.

'Mama, what's happened? Is it William? Or James? I thought they were both coming home on leave, what-'

'No, no, nothing like that,' her mother said quickly. She tugged her shawl closer around the shoulders, though she was in a broad sunbeam. 'Goodness, what are you wearing?'

'My clothes are in the laundry what is it, then? Papa?'

'No.' She took a deeper breath. 'Francis Fanshaw is going to be at the Foreign Office ball on the fourteenth.'

Grace felt the lines draw themselves across her forehead. 'What?' she said helplessly.

'Francis. You were children together, don't you recall? You used to fish for tadpoles in the lake at his father's estate in Hamps.h.i.+re. He's a few years older than you.'

'I yes, I recall. Is ... he ill?'

Her mother looked blank. 'No? He's going to the Foreign Office ball, I told you. You know his first wife died some years ago?'

'I read about it I think,' Grace said, still floundering. She sat down opposite on the horsehair couch, which creaked and brought her into a familiar haze of violet perfume.

'Well, the old earl is very sick now,' her mother said quietly. Her eyes were watering in the bright light and with a small noise she took out her shaded lenses and put them on. The case had been made with antique blackwork. 'And your father of course has been invited to the ball too. It really couldn't be better timing, could it?' She smiled, a real, joyful smile. Because sugar and coffee both made her feel ill, she still had pristine white teeth that looked strange in her lined face. She had put earrings on to come out, Grace noticed suddenly. At some point recently, though, her earlobes had lost their elasticity and the gold studs pulled them downward. She was an old woman. She wasn't yet fifty.

She misinterpreted Grace's expression. 'Don't you see? It will be so romantic. You can meet up again after all these years and dance, and if you're lucky he will have proposed by the end of next month. It's a very good match, very straightforward.'

'Yes, I see. Mama, I'm not ... this is very sudden.'

Her mother nodded sympathetically. 'These things always are. You know, I didn't want to marry your father, I had a horror of him at the time, I thought he looked ferocious in his army clothes. I should have much preferred to marry a parson, and lived somewhere pretty in the countryside. But of course I came to get used to it, and I should never have it any other way now.'

Grace chewed her tongue and didn't say anything about imagination or lack of it. 'No, no. I know. Of course. But-'

'Oh, Gracie!' her mother burst out, and there was a soft thump from behind the door. Grace didn't look that way. It seemed unkind to let Bertha know she was spying less secretly than she thought, especially having been rude once today already. 'You're far too old to live with us! You need your own house, your own husband. You'll stop fighting so with your father the moment the two of you don't share a roof, don't you see? And you'll be able to continue ... whatever it is you do here, once you have your aunt's house.'

'It'd be simpler if I could have my aunt's house without having to marry somebody to carry the keys for me.'

Her mother took off the dark gla.s.ses again, her eyes full of reproach. 'That can't be helped. Of course if it were up to me you should have it in an instant, but I don't know a thing about it. It's very complicated, the law. I'm certain your father knows best, I really am.'

'Yes, I know. I'm sorry. I was only being waspish. What I meant to say was, I'd much rather support myself. I'm about to do an experiment and it might be important. If it goes well, I won't need to marry anyone. I'll have a fellows.h.i.+p here, and rooms.'

'Yes, but what if it doesn't?'

'Well, I ... I think it will.' She swallowed and tried to think of a way to explain that wouldn't sound as though she were speaking downward. 'It's been done before, but not done well. I'm correcting bits of it now. It should be fairly simple.'

'But what if it isn't?' her mother insisted. 'Just say you'll come to the ball. Then I shall be happy. I hate to think of your having to come home and moulder.'

'If I do have to come home, I'll find some teaching work at a school,' she said, and tried to sound enthusiastic about the idea.

'And that would be better than marrying Francis Fanshaw, would it?'

Grace's carefulness cracked. 'Look, if I get married, I'll be someone's wife. Wives have duties. If I have children I'll go insane for a year and a half don't look like that, you did, with James and with William, it was terrifying and that will be a year and half of weeping over nothing and a brain made of soup in which I can't work. And then it will happen again with the next child, and then slowly I won't want to work at all, and I'll always be soup, and I'll just be ... '

'What?' her mother said, her voice rising. 'You'll be what? Just like me? Is that so very awful? You have such scorn for me, but I got myself here, didn't I, to tell you about it all? There are plenty of women who wouldn't want to venture out fifty miles from home quite alone!'

Grace didn't argue, because like always, it felt like slapping a kitten, and now she could feel how frail its bones were under her hand. She apologised and apologised instead, and then, slowly, because her mother could not walk fast, took her into the empty dining room to order a pot of tea. While it brewed and steamed between them, Grace reflected aloud, trying to sound offhand, that perhaps it would be fun to go to the ball.

All seemed to be mended then. Since Lady Carrow had not booked herself into any hotel but was too tired to go back immediately on the train, Grace put her in the guest house opposite the college. Knowing that the new place would unsettle her, she stayed with her the rest of the day. By the time she came back to the college, the night was gathering. A gra.s.shopper had come in through her open window to sit on the ether essay. She nudged it out again. Still bent awkwardly over the desk, she stood staring down at the pages for a long time. Her back began to hurt. The bed had been freshly made while she was out, and it had developed a magnetic pull, but she had lost too much time already. She dropped into the uncomfortable chair again and lit the lamp, and pinched herself awake to finish reading.

It was only when she stopped, after midnight, that she found her watch sitting on top of the stack of books she had already finished. She picked it up, annoyed with herself, and flicked it open to wind it up. It was already wound as much as it could be. The time was correct. Somebody had polished it, and inside the lid, cut tiny and circular to fit, was a new copy of the original guarantee from the maker. She looked over at her own closed door, perplexed, and meant to ask the porter in the morning. Because she had to take her mother to the train station, she forgot.

TEN.

LONDON, JUNE 1884.

The senior clerk glided by on roller-skates. Thaniel didn't ask why. He had got up that morning to find Katsu nesting in his suitcase, which had altered his gauge of strangeness for the day. The suitcase was already missing some socks and collars. He couldn't bring himself to mind. It was like being by the sea, sitting in the clean kitchen with the workshop door open and the clicks and sighs of the clockwork coming through. After Spindle had made his report and Williamson's men came, it would all be gone.

He pushed his fingertips against his eyelids and watched the colours of the incoming code while he drew in the will to visit Williamson again. He wanted to be sure he had received the telegram, and to mention Katsu's diamond workings. He had not gone yet because he had a clear sight of his future self, who would have to go back to the shadow of the prison and the damp riverside after making a hanged ghost of a man who used his diamonds, however ill-gotten, to make clockwork. He jumped when a hand landed on his shoulder.

'By George, it is you! What are you doing hiding away here?'

It was the gentleman from yesterday, Mr Fanshaw.

'Oh morning,' Thaniel said. 'If I'd known you worked here, I would have said something yesterday.'

'I'm not really here,' Fanshaw stage-whispered. 'I'm a Foreign Office minion, I'm scrounging people.' He gave Thaniel an intrigued look. 'I'm surprised we haven't recruited you already, with your oriental experience.'

'My what?'