The Clockwork Three, Page 2

  Giuseppe shook his head. “No.”

  “You know the rules. You can’t give another boy your money.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Well, if you did, you deserve a whipping just for being stupid. But I think you’re in for a painful night, anyway. Now hand over whatever you got left.”

  Giuseppe scanned the street. He had a clear escape, but running would do no good. Ezio would just wait for him. Stephano let the older boy stay out all night. Giuseppe glowered and pulled out the last of his coins. “Here.” He held out his hand.

  Ezio snatched the money. Then he grabbed Giuseppe and spun him around. He locked his arm around Giuseppe’s neck, choking him, and burrowed through all his pockets. When he found nothing, he slapped Giuseppe across the face and laughed. “Better go inside. Get it over with.” He started to walk away, but then he turned back. “Paolo said you had something earlier. He said it looked like a violin.”

  “You mean this?” Giuseppe held up his well-worn instrument.

  Ezio shook his head. “He said you had a new one.”

  “You deserve a whipping just for believing Paolo.”

  Ezio grinned. He set off down the street, prowling for the last few stragglers to come in.

  Giuseppe hesitated in front of the building. He thought about the whip, the muddy ground in the rat cellar, the nibbling teeth and cold tails. He was tempted to go back to the churchyard for some money. He had enough hidden there.

  But then he thought about home, of chasing his brother through the sheep pastures, and Giuseppe stayed where he was. If he let himself, he would use a little of that money every night, and soon it would be gone. He refused to let himself do that, or he would never earn enough for the boat ticket. It was enough that he had the green violin.

  He went inside.

  CHAPTER 2

  Coal Chutes and Clockwork

  TODAY FREDERICK SEARCHED FOR THE SCRAP OF METAL THAT would become the chest plate of the clockwork man. He patrolled the factory yards and the dry docks, hands in his pockets, scanning the jagged piles of discarded iron and steel. He had the rough dimensions and measurements in mind but would only know the piece once he found it, and when he did find it, the clockwork man would be nearly complete. Everything except for the head.

  He had known from the beginning that the head would be the most challenging obstacle in the construction of his automaton. But he also knew it would be the most impressive and brilliant aspect of his accomplishment. Once it was complete, there would be no denying his freedom from apprenticeship. He would have his own shop. His own designs. Frederick would be the youngest journeyman clockmaker in the city, but also the greatest.

  He came to the docks where the wharves sagged under the weight of gaggles of street people. Master Branch had mentioned something about a wrecked ship, with its hull ripped open on the rocks and goods strewn around the harbor. All these people must have descended to see what they could salvage from the disaster. Quite a nuisance, really. But he thought that perhaps there might be something interesting he could use.

  Someone bumped him. “Pardon me.” A busker boy shoved past Frederick, carrying a violin case.

  Frederick opened his mouth to reply, but the boy hurried on without looking back.

  The storm had left powdery clouds behind, and a shade of blue in the sky that showed all the other blues what they should look like. Frederick pushed into the crowd and peered down at the debris floating in the water, mostly fragments of wood and broken furniture, and the occasional dress or shirt or bolt of fabric undulating with the waves. Several chests had been hauled up to the pier and opened. People rooted through them like maggots. Nothing of use to him.

  Frederick pulled out a handkerchief and held it to his nose against the pervasive smell of the docks: the fish decay, mildew, and seaweed. But these hundreds of working men and women dumped their own overwhelming odors of sweat, filth, and machine oil into the air. They laughed and argued all around him, grease-smeared and vacant-eyed. Their scent and commotion set his head to pounding. He rubbed his temples and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw her.

  Mrs. Treeless, unmoving and poised like an iron stake driven into the crowd.

  Her tiny eyes had found him, too, and she glared. Then she opened her mouth in a toothless grin. The sight of her unlocked doors and threw them wide onto so many memories that Frederick had kept shut away. He froze and began to pant. His stomach ached with remembered hunger. His arms dropped to his sides, exhausted and weak. His back twisted up, anticipating blows that did not fall anymore. She bore a mild and passive smile, lingered for a few moments, and then turned away from him, vanishing into the chaos.

  Frederick had to get out of the mob and away from the awful memories pressing in. He forced his way through the crowd of bodies, shaking, with his eyes on the ground. He stumbled from the docks and down the open streets, and he eventually found a quiet spot where he leaned against a coal cart. Frederick breathed through his nose, inhaling slow and deep.

  “It’s all right,” he said to himself. “It’s all right.” The flutter of panic subsided, and the trembling left his bones.

  “You all right there, son?” The coal man looked like a shadow of himself, all dusted black. He held a feed sack up for his mule, and the animal munched away, oblivious to anything else going on.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You sure? You’re white as a plucked turkey.”

  “Thank you, but I’m fine. I just need to catch my breath.”

  The coal man patted his mule’s neck. “Solomon here thinks he’s a Thoroughbred, and he eats like one, so it’ll be a while yet before we get back on our route. You’re welcome to hop up in my cart for a sit.”

  “Thank you, but I …” Frederick looked into the cart. The bed was half filled with coal, with a couple of wide shovels laid on top of the pile. And a chute for pouring the coal down into people’s basements from the street. The memories of the workhouse retreated. Frederick measured with his eye. Cut to the right length, a coal chute like that could wrap right around the clockwork man.

  Frederick walked up casual-like to the coal man, and rubbed behind one of the mule’s long ears. “Is your chute made of tin?”

  “Yup. Got to be lightweight so’s I can haul it.”

  “Do all coal men have one?”

  “Sure.”

  Frederick nodded. “I think I’m feeling better now.”

  “You look better.”

  “Thanks. You have a nice evening. Solomon, too.”

  “You do the same, son.”

  Frederick marched off. He knew of a yard down on the river where barges hauled in coal for the city, and where coal men went to pick up their loads. He was bound to find a spare chute lying around. To get there he followed Basket Street, which cut a broad and angled path through the city. From its crown at Gilbert Square, the busy road ran by the docks and the shipyards, skirted the dense and dangerous tenements, and bottomed out at the Quay on the River Delilah where the tanners and butchers dumped their toxins and offal, and where the seaward current carried the foul sludge into the bay.

  The Quay blared with the shouting and cursing of longshoremen, the bleating of farm animals, the clanging of machinery, and the thumping of barrels and crates. Foreign goods entered the city by way of the harbor, but local goods came in from the countryside by river barge at the Quay. Frederick kept his hands and arms in close and tried to be as small as he could. He bolstered himself against the crowd and merged with the swirling traffic of merchants, laborers, cattle, and carts that stretched for a quarter mile along the river.

  A cloud of gray dust hung over the coal yard at the far end. Frederick kept his eye on that spot and one hand on his pocket. He had been picked clean in places like this, where people were so unpredictable and out of control. Frederick felt the cool prickle of sweat on his back. Before he reached the coal yard he had been jabbed in the leg by a billy goat’s horns, sworn at by multiple men he bumped into,
and glared at by a pretty young woman for seemingly no reason at all.

  Frederick came to the coal yard’s high wooden fence and followed it to the gate. Coal men passed through the entrance with empty carts, and then rolled back out fully laden. Before entering, men had to put out their pipes and cigars so as not to risk igniting the explosive dust in the air. A few of them lingered at the exit gate to relight. Frederick leaned toward them, listening.

  “You believe that storm?” one of them asked another.

  “It was a bad one. My roof leaked all night. Had to leave my boy home today on account of he got sick from the damp.”

  “Landlords.” He spat.

  “It’s not so bad. Rent’s cheap, so I can’t complain too awful much.”

  “You wouldn’t complain if that worthless roof of yours ripped clean off, O’Malley.”

  Through the entry gate Frederick spotted the huge black mounds of coal bulking under high-roofed structures. He sneaked in alongside a cart, and once through, he dodged behind a nearby shed. He ducked down and surveyed the yard. Coal men backed their carts up to the mounds and then worked to pile them full. Dark rocks rained down, and to a man the workers were blackened. There were shovels everywhere, but no coal chutes that Frederick could see. He evaluated his chances of finding an unused chute, and crept forward until he was eye level with a window into the shed.

  He peered through the dirty glass. More shovels stacked inside. Some other tools. But in a corner a couple of coal chutes leaned against the wall. Frederick tried the window, and it creaked open. He looked around to make sure no one was watching, then climbed through it.

  The dusty air in the shed choked him, and he wiped his eyes. The chutes were old and battered, but he could pound out the dents back at the workshop, so he picked the better of the two, and lifted it. It weighed more than he had expected, but he could manage it. Frederick set it down and opened the shed door. He swung the chute up and over to rest it on his back, his hands over his head to hold it steady. He stepped out pretending he knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing.

  No one stopped him as he crossed the yard, until he reached the exit gate where a foreman checked paper receipts to make sure the coal men had paid for their loads. Frederick tried to slip past him.

  “Oy, where you going with that?”

  Frederick turned his whole body around, swinging the coal chute. “It fell off our cart. I was just coming back for it.”

  The foreman folded his hairy arms across his chest. “Whose cart?”

  “My pa’s.”

  “Who’s your pa?”

  “O’Malley.”

  The foreman’s eyes narrowed. “O’Malley, huh?”

  Frederick bounced a little. “Come on, mister, my pa’s waiting for me.”

  “All right then, go on with you.”

  Frederick spun around and left the coal yard behind. With the chute on his back, the thick crowds on the Quay would make it difficult to return the way he had come. He cut through an alley, and came out onto an unfamiliar street. He considered asking for directions, but thought that he could certainly find his way well enough on his own. He followed the street, and then followed another, trying to head in the general direction of Master Branch’s workshop. He stopped every few blocks to give his back a rest from bending, and to straighten out his neck. He took a few wrong turns, and hit a few dead ends, until he became lost.

  Hours passed, and the setting sunlight tipped the tops of the buildings, tossing the narrow streets into shadow. It would be full dark soon. There was no question now. Frederick needed to ask for directions, but he hated doing so. He looked around at the pedestrians sharing the quiet street with him. Three grumpy-looking men milled outside a tobacconist’s shop but were not saying much to one another. A washerwoman carrying a heavy bundle of laundry over her head trudged by him with an expression of such exhaustion that Frederick did not feel right asking her for anything.

  Then he spotted a young woman wearing a white apron, and a maid’s kerchief over chestnut hair. She looked to be about his age.

  “Excuse me.” Frederick set the coal chute down. “Could I trouble you for directions?”

  She smiled. “I haven’t seen your cart and donkey, if that’s what you’re looking for.” She had large green eyes.

  “What? Oh, the coal chute. No, I’m not a coal man.”

  “Then why are you carrying that around?”

  Frederick shook his head, irritated. “I need the metal. Look, can you give me directions or not?”

  She pursed her lips and nodded. “Where do you need to go?”

  “Gilbert Square.”

  “I’ve just come from there.” She turned and pointed up the street. “Follow this road, and you’ll come to a synagogue. Take a left there, and then take the second right. Follow that until you hit Basket Street. From there —”

  “I know my way from there.”

  “Good night, then.” She turned away, seeming irritated.

  “Wait.”

  She turned back.

  “Thank you,” Frederick said.

  “You’re welcome. Travel safely.”

  Frederick watched her go, and he noticed how long and thick her braids were. They fell like ropes from beneath her kerchief, down her back to her waist. He wished he had asked for her name. He shrugged and hauled the coal chute down the road. The directions she had given him took him past the brightly lit synagogue, around corners, and eventually onto Basket Street, just as she had said.

  A short while later he emerged onto Gilbert Square, awash with yellow light and people finely dressed, operagoers and rich folk out dining. The Gilbert Hotel shone with light from every one of its hundred windows. The New Bristol Opera House, bearing its impressive clock face, glittered both from the golden accents on its columned architecture and the jewels in the dresses and hair of the women waiting on its steps. The cathedral loomed over the square, gargoyled and treacherous up high among its dark buttresses and spires, warm and inviting through the wide-open doors at its base.

  Frederick gave the spectacle one look and no more. He crossed the square, passing under the ominous dome of the Archer Museum on the opposite side from the hotel. As immense as the building seemed from the outside, the museum had disappointed Frederick his first time through. He had enjoyed wandering among its displays, peering over the objects, artifacts, and curios brought back from distant countries, kingdoms, and empires, but he was dissatisfied with the quantity of what he saw. He felt there should have been much more.

  Frederick left the square and entered into the district of the city’s craftsmen. Master Branch had his workshop only two streets over from the clockmakers’ guildhall. The old man lived above his store, and so had Frederick ever since the old man had rescued him from Mrs. Treeless and the orphanage.

  Frederick saw that the lights were out in the shop, but on in the apartment above. He set the coal chute in the alleyway behind their building. The shop bell rang as he let himself in through the front door with his key.

  “Master Branch?” he called from the shop’s darkened front room. Light tumbled down a narrow staircase to the floor from upstairs. He shut the door behind him and locked it. “It’s me, Frederick.”

  “You’re out late tonight,” came a voice from above. “Having fun, I hope?”

  Frederick clomped up the stairs. “Some. How was your evening?”

  “Usual.”

  Frederick entered the wood-paneled main room of Master Branch’s home. It functioned as a kitchen, a living room, a dining room, and a library without any shelves. Stacks and stacks of books lined the walls and stood ready as if they hoped to be on shelves one day. The low ceiling made Frederick feel as though he always had to hunch, but somehow the effect was warm and comforting. Master Branch sat by the fire reading, a cup of coffee on the small table beside him. He looked up with his sharp eyes.

  “Is that coal dust, Frederick?”

  “Yes. A coal man dumped his loa
d almost on top of me. Nearly choked me to death.”

  “Hmm. Very inconsiderate.” Master Branch returned to his reading, his thin white hair like a fuzz of hoarfrost on his head. “There’s some soup if you’re hungry. Split pea.”

  “Thank you.” Frederick ladled up a bowl from the cookstove, grabbed what was left of a loaf of crusty bread, and sat down at the table. “A lot of commotion down at the docks today.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Commotion. On the docks.”

  “Oh. So I understand. You went down?”

  “Not for long. There wasn’t much left.”

  “Too bad,” Master Branch said, but Frederick could see the old man had his eyes and his thoughts in his book. They fell silent, and the only sounds in the room were of the fire settling and popping, and Frederick chewing.

  “I saw Mrs. Treeless today,” Frederick said.

  Master Branch looked up.

  “You remember her?” Frederick fidgeted with his spoon. “From the orphanage.”

  The old man closed his book. “I remember her. A vile woman.”

  “Yeah.”

  Master Branch’s forehead was creased in worry. “Do you want to talk about it, lad?”

  Frederick paused. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.” Better to shut tight the doors on those memories.

  “All right, then.”

  More silence, and a short while later, Master Branch stood up. He rubbed his eyes and stretched. “Well, I’m off to bed. Good work today. Very good work.”

  Frederick did not thank him. “Good night, Master Branch.”

  “I’ll be at the guildhall most of tomorrow. A few apprentices are presenting their works, hoping to make journeyman.”

  “Can I come?”

  “What for?”

  Fredrick shrugged. “No reason.”

  “Lad, you’re not fooling anyone. As bright as you are for your age, you are only thirteen. You are not ready, and when you get one chance to present yourself to the guild —”