The Clockwork Three (19 page)

“How did it go with Madame Pomeroy?” Master Branch asked.

“Oh. I almost forgot. She’s leaving the city in ten days.”

“But … the automaton will not be completed by then.”

“She said she needs to cancel the commission.”

“What?” Master Branch scowled and grumbled under his breath.

“She said she would pay you for your work so far.”

“It’s not that.” Master Branch rubbed his chin. “It’s just that I was looking forward to making it. I love a challenge.”

Frederick got up from the chair and went to the window. A blanket of dark clouds cast the city into an early evening, but it appeared the rain had eased up for the walk to Hannah’s apartment. From there, perhaps she would go with him to the hospitals to ask about his mother. He had already wrecked his attempt to learn her name at the orphanage. Maybe Hannah could keep him from tripping all over himself again.

“I think I’ll go out for a bit,” Frederick said.

“In this weather?”

“It stopped raining.”

“Suit yourself, then.”

Frederick crossed to the staircase. He started down, but stopped on the third step and looked back. “You know, we could still make it. You and I.”

Master Branch looked up. “Make what?”

“The automaton. We could still make it together.”

The skin around the old man’s eyes crinkled with a grin. “Yes, we could, lad.”

Frederick smiled. “I’ll try not to be too long.”

Outside, Frederick splashed through puddles already draining off the empty streets. Rain gutters gurgled the water running down their throats and spit it out onto the sidewalks. Frederick took the trip across town slowly. This would be the first time he had seen Hannah since the night of the opera, and he felt quite awkward about it. But his awkwardness surprised and puzzled him, and he did not know what to do with it. Perhaps if he practiced what he would say to her …

“Greetings, Hannah. It’s good to see you.”

Frederick passed a lamplighter wearing a long dark coat, a tall dark hat, carrying a pole with the little flame on the end. He marched from lamppost to lamppost, leaving a trail of gaslight behind.

“Hello, Hannah,” Frederick said again, a little differently. “How are you this fine evening?”

“On your way to see your gal?”

Frederick stopped. The lamplighter looked at him.

“Excuse me?” Frederick said.

“Sounds like you was working over what you might to say to your gal.”

“She’s not my gal.”

“She pretty?”

“I suppose she is.”

“Well, here’s some advice.” The man poked the lit end of his pole inside the streetlamp, and yellow light poured onto his face. “It only takes a spark to light a bonfire.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why use a torch when you can use a flint? No woman likes to hear what ain’t sincere. Whatever you say, say it simply and make it count. You’ll get your gal.”

“She’s not my gal,” Frederick said.

The lamplighter laughed and tipped his tall hat and moved on to the next lamppost. “Good luck, chap.”

Frederick stood in the street for a moment, and then turned around and started back toward Master Branch’s shop. Hannah was not his gal, and this was becoming more complicated than he thought it would be. He had no idea what to say to Hannah now. Did
she
think she was his gal? His earlier awkwardness blazed into panic at the thought of seeing her.

He walked back the way he had come, the night almost fully ensconced around him, until he arrived on Sycamore Street. Just because she was a girl, and they had gone to the opera, did not mean there was anything romantic between them.

He stopped in the street again, in front of the clockmaker’s shop. She may not have been his gal, but she was still his friend. Why couldn’t he just go, say hello, and give her Madame Pomeroy’s message? Maybe he would still ask if she would come with him to the hospitals. Maybe. Frederick turned around and headed back toward the tenements for the second time that evening.

Before long he was looking up at Hannah’s apartment door from the street, trying to talk himself into climbing the stairs and knocking. As he stood there, the sound of a violin drifted down from one of the apartments, carrying a familiar song. It settled over his head like a heavy blanket, both smothering and safe.

He began to hum along to himself, an echo of something from long before the orphanage. A song his mother used to sing, all the time. Her face emerged from the wreckage of his past, and he remembered her eyes, the rim of green around the blue. He heard her singing, her clear voice, and hummed along with her. But then he stopped. His chest felt like it was about to collapse, and he choked on his tears.

He watched his mother’s face as she led him through the orphanage door into the entryway. He saw the old woman missing most of her teeth. He saw his mother coughing and sobbing. And she left him.

He called out to her.

He cried.

Why?

New Clues

H
ANNAH STARED AT HER FATHER’S FEET. SHE COUNTED FIVE
beats, five twitches, five movements of a foot that never moved. That could not move. She did not trust what she was seeing and called to her mother. Everyone in the room turned to stare at her father’s foot. Hannah’s mother wept and shook her head. Hannah’s sisters bobbed up and down at the end of the bed and giggled.

Her father opened his eyes, and Hannah looked right in them. Her father’s dry lips cracked into a wide grin, and Hannah smiled back at him. Hannah’s mother rushed over and took his hand from Hannah.

“Hello there,” she said. She suddenly looked down at her hand, and then turned to Hannah. “He just squeezed me so tight. Could it be that medicine?”

“Maybe.” Hannah looked at Giuseppe. “Or the music.”

“The music?”

Giuseppe played with his eyes closed, his brow knotted in concentration.

“Don’t stop,” Hannah said to him. “Please don’t stop. Play as long as you can.”

Giuseppe dipped his head and fiddle in a bow.

Hannah’s sisters held hands and swung each other around the room. “Come dance with us, Hannah!”

Hannah went over to them, and they all three joined together in a circle. The music seemed to throb from the floorboards, setting their legs kicking. Hannah felt completely free. There was no hotel, there was no Miss Wool or Madame Pomeroy. And her father was healthy and tapping his toe to a song. In that moment her family’s apartment felt like the entire world, and in that tiny world anything seemed possible. Hannah’s sisters broke away like doves taking flight, and Hannah stumbled back to her father’s side with a giddy laugh.

She knelt down so her face was right by her father’s ear. “I saw your stone today. The one you carved for Mister Stroop. I saw your holly leaves.”

His head turned slightly toward her, and she leaned closer. “It’s still out there in the park, by Grover’s Pond.” She touched the whiskers on his cheek. “It’s a beautiful stone.”

He nodded.

“I count your holly leaves at the hotel, you know. There are sixty-two. Mister Twine changes everything, but he never changes your work. All this time it’s like you’ve been there in the hotel with me.” Hannah took a deep breath. “But I don’t work there anymore.”

“What?” her mother said. Hannah ignored her.

“I lost my job, Papa. So I need to find Mister Stroop’s treasure. Did you know he had a treasure?”

He nodded again.

“Do you know where it is?”

Another nod.

“Where is it?” Hannah asked, her heart quickening, but she knew he could not answer.

Her father’s eyes looked around the room. Hannah stood and studied his face for some clue, some sign of his thoughts. He let go of her mother’s hand and pinched his fingertips together. He stabbed at the blanket with them in time with the music.

“What’s he doing?” Hannah’s mother said.

“I think he wants to write,” Hannah said. But they had no paper in the apartment. She ran to her bed and grabbed her one book from the shelf. Then she sifted through the ash bucket by the stove with her fingers until she found a splinter of charcoal. She opened the book to one of the blank front pages.

“Here, Papa.” The charcoal left smudges on his fingers as she wedged it into his grasp. She set the open book on his lap, and held his hand to it. “Here.”

He looked down at the page.

Giuseppe fiddled and sweated and grinned. The room sweltered, as though his music had replaced all the air; they inhaled it, suffocated on it. Music filled their lungs and their souls. Her father tapped at the paper with the charcoal, making rhythmic marks. One dashed and squiggly line, then another on top of it. Then several in a row.

“That’s a
T
,” her mother said, pointing.

“And a
W
,” Hannah said.

Her father wrote out another three letters.

“Twine,” Hannah whispered.

Her father nodded.

Giuseppe had hunched over his violin, playing close to the ground. His body shook, and Hannah could tell he was nearing the end of the song. The music built in intensity, like a tightening in the room.

“Mister Twine has the treasure?” she asked.

Her father shook his head.

“Does he know where it is?”

Her father nodded.

“He’s writing something else,” Hannah’s mother whispered.

Hannah watched for a moment, and then she looked back at Giuseppe. His fingers flew and his bow became a blur as he rose up on the tips of his toes. Then a last peal of music burst from the fiddle. The final notes lingered in Hannah’s ear, like the open silence just after she heard the gate latch in their old garden, and she knew that any minute her father would come through the door, home from work. Giuseppe slumped into a chair, panting. The charcoal ceased scratching. Hannah’s father went slack, and his hand fell to his side.

“I can’t read what he wrote.” Hannah’s mother handed the book to her.

Hannah studied it. “It’s not a word, Mama. It’s a holly leaf.”

Her father had lost what strength the music had unlocked in him. The spell had broken. He looked at her, at his family, with tears, but the smile had not left his lips. It had grown even wider. Hannah stared at the page, and then ripped it from the book. She folded it up and tucked it away in a pocket in her skirt. There would be no need to count them anymore. She could carry her father with her.

She bent and hugged him, her arms barely crossing his broad chest. “Thank you,” she whispered.

One of Hannah’s sisters clapped and pointed at Giuseppe. “Play again!”

He just smiled and shook his head. “That’s all I have.”

Hannah rushed over to him and hugged him. This strange boy, who smelled of the streets and made magic with his fiddle. “Thank you,” she said.

Then Hannah’s mother came over and embraced them both, and after that Hannah’s sisters came and burrowed in between their legs. They all held on to one another for a long moment, and in that moment the world Hannah had forgotten about, the outside world, seeped back in like a fog under the door. Hannah shivered.

“I have to go,” she said, pulling away. “I have to look for the treasure.”

Hannah’s mother shook her head. “I still don’t understand all of this. And Hannah, your job?”

“It’s going to be all right, Mama.” Hannah believed that, now. “I know what I need to do.”

“Hannah, you need to tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m fine, Mama.” Hannah herded Giuseppe to the door. “Look away while I change, please.” The sooner they got out on the street, the sooner they could find a place for him to hide and plan how they were going to get the treasure from Mister Twine. Hannah slipped out of the soiled skirt and into her clean one. She handed the dirty one to her mother. “Really, I’m fine.”

“Stop saying that. You’re not fine,” her mother said.

Hannah felt that same fire blaze inside the red-hot stove in her heart. “Yes, I am,” she said. She went to the door, opened it, and pushed Giuseppe through. “Good night, Mama. Oh, I forgot. It’s after seven o’clock and Doctor Morse will be here any minute. When he comes just tell him Papa started healing on his own.”

“I thought you bought the medicine from him.”

“I love you, Papa!” Hannah called out. She stepped outside and shut the door.

Out on the landing she smelled coal smoke and felt the cool night. Giuseppe swayed a bit on the stairs as they descended to the street.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

“I’m tired,” he said.

They reached the sidewalk and Hannah held out her hands to steady him. “Lean against me,” she said.

“I’m fine,” he said. “It was hot up there.”

Hannah realized she had no idea where to take him. He probably knew the city better than she did, and McCauley Park was apparently the best hiding place he had come up with. Perhaps it would be better for him to stay here with her family after all.

“Where should we go?” she asked.

“Frederick,” he said.

“What?”

He pointed. “Frederick.”

Hannah looked. Across the street, next to a boarded-up bakery, Frederick leaned against the wall, watching them. Then he walked across the street toward them, passing from one island of lamplight onto another. His eyes were red, as if he had been crying.

“Hello,” he said, his voice flat.

“Hello, Frederick,” Hannah said.

“Freddy,” Giuseppe said. “What brings you down here?”

“I came to see Hannah.”

Giuseppe scratched his head. “You two know each other?”

Hannah turned to Giuseppe. “
You
two know each other?”

“Apparently we
all
know each other,” Frederick said. “We just weren’t
aware of it. Sounds like an opera, eh, Hannah?” He turned to Giuseppe. “So, what brings you down here?”

Giuseppe shrugged. “Playing my fiddle.”

“That was you I heard? Playing that song?”

“Yep.”

“His music restored some of my father’s strength,” Hannah said.

“It’s a beautiful song,” Frederick said.

“Thank you,” Giuseppe said with a nod. “Say, Freddy. I need a place to hide out for a few days. Can I stay with you?”

Frederick looked down at the ground, like he was considering it. “Come on, then,” he said, and set off after motioning for them to follow.

Giuseppe glanced at Hannah from the side and shrugged again. She smiled and they both followed after Frederick. Giuseppe still appeared a little off balance, but as they crossed the city he seemed to recover. She noticed that he kept his coat collar up around his neck, and kept his face down.

They reached the square. Hannah wanted to talk to Frederick about that night at the opera, but wondered if he was still bothered by the questions she had asked him about his mother. Hannah did not want to hurt him or embarrass him further. Then Giuseppe skipped up alongside Frederick and pointed at the Opera House.

“I’ve been in there,” he said. “I heard them singing about love.”

Frederick sniffed. “And what did you think of the opera?”

“It was heart pounding,” Giuseppe said, and laughed like he had made a joke.

Hannah hurried up on Frederick’s other side. He flicked his eyes toward her, and then back to the street ahead. “And how did you enjoy your night at the opera, Hannah?”

“I had a wonderful time,” she said. “I went with the nicest young man.”

“Really?” Frederick said.

“Yes,” Hannah said. “And afterward we had a wonderful talk.”

Frederick said nothing else until they reached Master Branch’s shop. All the darkened windows along the ground floor reflected the night back at them. The second-story windows flickered yellow. Frederick held one finger over his lips and went to the front door. He pulled out a key and very quietly unlocked the door. He opened it a few inches, and then reached up inside around the lintel.

“The bell,” he whispered. “Go inside.”

Giuseppe slipped through, and Hannah followed after him. They stood waiting in the dark as Frederick closed the door and gently released the bell.

“Follow me,” he said, and led them behind the counter into the back workroom. There was a cot there, and Hannah wondered if that was where Frederick slept. “Down here,” Frederick said. He opened a door and they followed him down a narrow staircase into a room, a cellar judging by the smell of loam, but there was a hint of oil, too. “Hold on.”

She heard him strike a match, and his face flared in the darkness, bent over a lamp. Then the light grew like a sigh to the edges of the room, sweeping all the shadows into the corners. They were in another workroom, with a hard clay floor and tools hanging from the foundation beams and ceiling. She turned around, and gasped.

“Who is that?” she said. There was a figure lying on a worktable, covered with a stained white sheet.

Frederick chuckled. “Would you like me to show you?”

“No!” Hannah said. “I don’t know. Who is that?”

“It’s no one, yet.”

Giuseppe cocked his head to one side. “Now what does that mean?”

“I’ll show you,” Frederick said. His dark mood appeared to have changed almost instantly to excitement. “But first I have to let Master Branch know I’m home. I’ll be right back.” He bounced up the staircase, but stopped halfway and bent to look at them. “No peeking.”

“We won’t,” Giuseppe said.

“I’ll be back in just a few minutes.” Frederick’s legs disappeared, and they heard his footsteps upstairs. Then the shop bell tinkled and Frederick called out to Master Branch. They heard a muffled voice, and then Frederick said he was coming. Silence after that.

“I’m peeking,” Giuseppe said.

“No,” Hannah said.

“Why not?”

“He asked us not to.”

Giuseppe looked at the sheet. “Don’t you want to see him?”

“See who?”

“Whoever’s under there.”

“No,” Hannah said.

Giuseppe bit his lip. “I’m peeking.”

But before he could lift the sheet they heard Frederick coming back down the stairs. Giuseppe hopped away from the worktable and grinned at Hannah.

Frederick stepped around to the head of the table and took hold of the sheet. “I’ve been working on this for some time,” he said, and looked at Hannah. “I think it will impress you.” Then he took a deep breath and whipped the sheet off the table.