Steampunk! Part 10

Mistress Angharad wailed to curl my toes and disappeared.

After that, I had far more important things to think about than a sulky spirit. Hercules himself could not have made Cwmlech Manor fit for company in three days' time, so I went down to Mam's and begged her help.

If Da's genius was to beat dead iron into usefulness, Mam's was to settle a house into order and beauty. She began at Cwmlech by going to Mr. Thomas at the wool mill and Mrs. Wynn the shop and charming goods from them in exchange for a letter of patronage to hang on the wall, saying that Sir Arthur of Cwmlech Manor did business here and no other place. Then she summoned all the good women of Cwmlech village, who tucked up their sleeves and descended on the Manor with mops and brooms and buckets. They worked like bees in a meadow, until the windows were all draped in good Welsh wool, and the bed linen white and fragrant with lavender, and flowers on the chests, and the wood in the dining room all rubbed soft and glowing.

On the Sat.u.r.day morning, Mam came with me to the Manor to help cook and wait upon the guests.

"There is funny gentlemen they are," she said when she came from showing them to their chambers. "Rat's eyes and bull's necks, no servants, and next to no luggage. No manners, neither - not so much as a smile or thanks, only a sharp warning not to meddle with their things. Were they not Sir Arthur's guests, I would not willingly give them to eat."

Which was strong speaking for Mam. It made me think of Mistress Angharad and how I'd missed seeing her these past days, sharp tongue and all, and how I wished to hear her opinion of the men who would sleep at Cwmlech Manor this night.

So you may judge my joy when I carried Mam's leek soup in to dinner that evening, to see Mistress Angharad hovering at the sideboard, b.l.o.o.d.y and disheveled as ever.

I smiled at her; she frowned back. "Eyes open and mouth shut, girl," she ordered. "Here's mischief abroad."

Which I might have guessed for myself, so smug were the guests, like cats at a mouse hole, and so fidgety was Sir Arthur, like the mouse they watched. Two of them were large and broad, very thick in their beards and necks and narrow in their eyes; the third was thinner and clean shaven, but no more handsome for that, with his mouth as tight as a letter box and his eyes hard as ball bearings.

"A fine, large workshop, Sir Arthur," Clean-Cheeks said, picking up his spoon. "A pity nothing useful has come out of it."

One of the roughs said, "Don't forget the pipe, Mr. Gotobed."

Mr. Gotobed smiled thinly. "I do not forget the pipe, Mr. Brown."

Sir Arthur nudged his cutlery straight. "It's very nearly ready, Mr. Gotobed. Just a few details about the interface. . . ."

"Interface?" The second rough found this funny. "Them things got no face at all, if you ask me."

And then the tureen was empty, and I must run downstairs again to fetch the fish course. When I returned with the baked grayling, Mr. Gotobed and his friends had sc.r.a.ped their plates clean, Sir Arthur's soup was untouched, and Mistress Angharad was scowling blackly.

"I know Cwmlech Manor is haunted," Mr. Gotobed was saying. "There is a whole chapter on the subject in The Haunted Houses of Great Britain. Your resident ghost is precisely why Mr. Whitney wants to buy it. He has a great affinity for the supernatural, does Mr. Whitney of Pittsburgh, America. By his own account, some of his best friends are ghosts."

"Then I'm afraid he must be disappointed," Sir Arthur said. "You will be paid in full."

Mr. Gotobed smiled. "Yes," he said. "I will. One way or another. Mr. Whitney is very excited. I believe he intends to install a swimming bath in the Great Hall."

Mistress Angharad reached for a candlestick. Another time, her look of fury when her hand pa.s.sed through it might have made me laugh, but I was too furious myself for mirth. Sir Arthur's hands clenched against the table. "A year's grace is all I ask, Mr. Gotobed."

"A year! It will take that long for the patent office to read your application, and another for them to decide upon it. I'm sorry, Sir Arthur. A manor in the hand is worth any number of inventions in, er, the bush. Pay me in full on the first of September or Cwmlech Manor is mine, as per our contract. Excellent fish, by the way. Did you catch it yourself?"

How I got through the rest of the meal without cracking a plate over Mr. Gotobed's head, I do not know. Lucky that Mam was busy with her cooking. My face was a children's ABC to her, and I did not want her knowing that Sir Arthur had pledged Cwmlech Manor. She'd small patience with debtors, and she'd think him no better than his father, when the poor boy was only a lamb adrift in a world of wolves like Mr. Gotobed.

The uncomfortable dinner wore on, with only Mr. Gotobed and his roughs eating Mam's good food, and Mistress Angharad cursing impotently, and Sir Arthur growing more and more white and pinched about the nose. When I took up the cloth at last and put the decanters on the table, he stood up. "I have some rather pressing business to attend to," he said. "Enjoy your port, gentlemen."

And then he went into his bedroom across the landing and shut the door.

I wanted to knock and give him a few words of comfort. But Mam was waiting downstairs with all the cleaning up, and I could think of no comfortable words to say.

Mam and I were to sleep at Cwmlech Manor to be handy to cook the guests' breakfast in the morning. When the kitchen was tidy, we settled by the fire to drink a cup of tea, too weary to speak. So low was I, I hardly started when Mistress Angharad said, "Tacy! I have news!" right in my ear.

Mam shivered. "There's a wicked old draft in by here."

"Worse when you're tired," I said. "Go in to bed, Mam. I'll see to locking up."

She gaped fit to split her cheeks and went off without argument for once, which was a blessing, since Mistress Angharad was already talking.

"Listening I was, as they drank Sir Arthur's port. It's all a trick, look you. The Manor is sold already, to the rich American who likes ghosts and swimming baths. And Tacy, that blackguard will wreck Sir Arthur's workshop tonight, in case he might sell his machines and pay his debt!"

I clutched my cooling tea, half sick with rage and entirely awake. "Will we tell Sir Arthur?"

"Sir Arthur!" she said with scorn. "Meek as a maiden aunt all through dinner, and off to cower in his bed as soon as the cloth was lifted. No. If anyone is to save Cwmlech Manor, it must be the two of us."

"Right." I put down my tea. "To the stable, us. And pray we're not too late."

Pausing only to light the lantern, we crept out of the kitchen and across the yard to the stable, the moon sailing high and pale in a rack of cloud above us. Within, all was black, save for the sullen glow of the forge fire. The flickering lantern drew little sparks of light from the dials and gears and polished metal of Sir Arthur's machines and tools. The air smelled like pitch and coal and machine oil.

"The dragon's lair," Mistress Angharad said, full of bravado. "Is that the virgin sacrifice?"

I followed the faint glow of her pointing finger to a table set like a bier under a bank of lights, and the figure upon it draped with an old linen sheet.

"That," I said, "is Sir Arthur's expensive French automaton. Will you look?" I picked my way carefully through the chaos of strange machines and gear-strewn tables and reached for the sheet. "Only an old mechanical it is, see?"

In truth, it looked eerie enough, bald and still and deathly pale. Mistress Angharad stroked its cheek with a misty finger. "There's beautiful it is," she said, with wonder.

I touched the key in its neck. "Still, only a mechanical doll, simpler than the simplest automaton." Without thought, almost without my will, my fingers turned the key, feeling the spring coil tight as I wound.

Mistress Angharad turned her head. "Douse the lantern," she hissed.

Heart beating like one of Da's hammers, I blew out the candle and ducked down behind the table. The door flew open with a crack of splintering wood, and Mr. Gotobed and his two thugs rushed in, waving crowbars.

I cursed my tired brain, drew my pipe from my ap.r.o.n pocket, and played the first tune that came to mind, which was "Rali Twm Sion"- a good rousing tune to instruct the mechanicals to break down walls.

Someone shouted - I think it was Mr. Brown. Then the air was filled with whirring gears and thumping treads and grunts and bad language and the clang and screech of metal against metal.

"Sons of pigs!" Mistress Anghard screeched. "Break their bones like matchsticks I would, could I only touch them!"

From the corner of my eye, I saw her hovering, cloudlike, over the automaton. Then she said, "I am going to break a great rule. If it means the end of me, then I will at least have tried. Good-bye, Tacy. You have been a good friend to Cwmlech and a friend to me as well." And then she disappeared.

Though tears p.r.i.c.ked my eyes, I went on playing "Rali Twn Sion" as though my life depended on it - until the French automaton twitched and thrashed and sat up on the table, when the pipe dropped from my hands, grown suddenly nerveless.

The mechanicals froze, of course. The French automaton, however, swung off the table and staggered toward the noise of iron crunching against polished metal. Not to be outdone by a toy, I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the first heavy tool I laid my hand on and ran, yelling to tear my throat, toward a shadowy figure whose shaven cheeks showed ghostly in the gloom.

Swinging my makeshift weapon high, I hit him on the arm - as much by luck as design. He swore and dropped the bar. I was about to hit him again when Sir Arthur's lights flared into blinding life overhead, and Sir Arthur's pipe brought the mechanicals to purposeful life.

Quick as thinking, they seized Mr. Gotobed and Mr. Brown and held them while the automaton who was Mistress Angharad picked up the third thug and slammed him bodily against the wall.

Sir Arthur came running up to me, his eyes wild behind his spectacles. "Tacy! What the devil is going on here? Are you hurt?"

I hefted my weapon - a hammer it was. "Not a bit of it. But I think I may have broken Mr. Gotobed's arm. Earned it he has twice over, the mess he's made of things."

Side by side, we surveyed the workshop then. Like a battlefield it was, with oil stains in the place of blood. Not a mechanical but was dented, and more than one stood armless or headless and dull eyed, its motive force gone. Not a machine but bore smashed dials and broken levers. Most pathetic, the French automaton lay sprawled like a puppet whose strings have been cut, one arm at a strange angle and the leather torn over its shoulder to show the metal underneath.

Sir Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's ruined," he said, a mourner at a wake. "They're all ruined. And there's no money left - not enough to repair them, anyway. I'll have to sell it all as sc.r.a.p, and that won't bring enough to keep Cwmlech Manor on."

It hurt my heart to hear him say so. "What about the treasure?"

He shook his head. "That's a legend, Tacy, like the ghost - just a local variant of a common folktale. No. I am my father's son, a gambler and a wastrel. Mr. Whitney will have Cwmlech Manor after all."

"Do not lose hope, Sir Arthur, my little one," I said. "Do you lock those bad men into the tack room while I make a pot of tea. And then we will talk about what to do."

When I returned with the tea tray, Mr. Gotobed and his rogues were nowhere to be seen. Two chairs had been set by the forge fire, which was blazing brightly, and the automaton back upon its table, with Sir Arthur beside it, nibbling on his thumbnail.

I poured two cups with sugar and milk, took one for myself and carried the other to him. He thanked me absently and set down his cup untasted. I breathed in the fragrant steam but found no comfort in it. Abandoning my tea, I set myself to search grimly among the tools and gla.s.s and pieces of metal on the floor. Like looking for a needle in a haystack it was, but I persisted and turned up Mistress Angharad's key at last under one of the broken machines.

"Here," I said, thrusting it into Sir Arthur's hand. "Maybe it's just run-down she is, and not ruined at all. Do you wind her and we'll find out."

Muttering something about putting a sticking plaster on a mortal wound, he inserted the key, turned it until it would turn no more, and then withdrew it.

The eyelids opened slowly and the head turned stiffly toward us. Sir Arthur whooped with joy, but my heart sank, for the eyes were only brown gla.s.s, bright and expressionless. Mistress Angharad was gone.

And then the finely carved mouth quirked up at the corners and one brown eye winked at me.

"A legend, am I?" said Mistress Angharad Cwmlech of Cwmlech Manor. "There's a fine thing to say to your great-aunt, boy, when she is on the point of pulling your chestnuts from the fire."

It would be pleasant to write that Sir Arthur took Mistress Angharad's haunting of the French automaton in his stride, or that Mistress Angharad led Sir Arthur to the treasure without delay. But that would not be truthful.

Truthfully, then. Sir Arthur was convinced that the shock of losing Cwmlech Manor had driven him mad, and Mistress Angharad had a thing or two to say about people who were too clever to believe their own eyes. I was ready to shut them up in the workshop to debate their separate philosophies until one or the other of them ran down.

"Whist, the both of you," I said at last. "Sir Arthur, there's no harm in hearing what Mistress Angharad has to say, do you believe in ghosts or not. It can be no more a waste of time than arguing about it all night."

"I'll speak," Lady Angharad said. "If he'll listen."

Sir Arthur shrugged wearily. "I'll listen."

The Cwmlech Treasure was hidden in a priest's hole, tucked all cozy into the side of the chimney in the Long Gallery. In the reign of Harry VIII, masons had known their business, for the door fit so neatly into the stonework that we could not see it, even when Mistress Angharad traced its outline. Nor could all our prodding and pushing on the secret latch stir it so much as a hairsbreadth.

"It's rusted shut," Sir Arthur said, rubbing a stubbed finger. "The wall will have to be knocked down, I expect."

Mistress Angharad put fists on her hips. Very odd it was to see her familiar gestures performed by a doll, especially one clad in an old sheet. It had been worse, though, without the sheet. Mute and inert, an automaton is simply unclothed. When it speaks to you in a friend's voice, however, it is suddenly naked and must be covered.

"Heaven send me patience," she said now. "Here is nothing that a man with an oilcan and a chisel and a grain of sense cannot sort out."

"I'll fetch Da, then," I said. "But first, breakfast and coffee, or we'll be asleep where we stand. And Mam must be wondering what's become of me."

Indeed, Mam was in the kitchen, steeling herself to go upstairs and see whether Sir Arthur had been murdered in his bed and I stolen by Mr. Gotobed for immoral purposes. The truth, strange as it was, set her mind at ease, though she had a word to say about Mistress Angharad's bedsheet. Automaton or not, she was the daughter of a baronet, Mam said. She must come down by our house to be decently clothed - and explain things to Da while she was about it.

High morning it was before we gathered in the Long Gallery, Da with his tools, Mam with the tea tray, and Mistress Angharad in my best Sunday costume, with the triple row of braiding on the skirt, and my Sunday bonnet covering her bald head.

Da chipped and pried and oiled and coaxed the door open at last, amid a great cloud of dust that set us all coughing like geese. When it settled, we were confronted with a low opening into a darkness like the nethermost pits of h.e.l.l, which breathed forth a dank odor of ancient drains and wet stone.

Da looked at Sir Arthur, who bit his lip and looked at me.

"G.o.d's bones!" Mistress Angharad cried, and s.n.a.t.c.hing up the lantern, set her foot on the steep stone stair that plunged down behind the chimney.

Sir Arthur, shamefaced, followed after, with me and Da behind him, feeling our way along the slick stone wall, taking our breath short in the musty air.

It could not have been far, but the dark made the stair lengthen until we might have been in the bowels of the earth. It ended in a stone room furnished with a narrow bed and three banded boxes, all spotted with mold and rust. Da's crowbar made short work of the locks. He lifted the lids one by one, and then we looked upon the fabled Treasure of Cwmlech.

A great deal of it there was, to be sure, but not beautiful nor rich to the eye. There were chargers and candlesticks and ewers and bowls, all gone black with tarnish. Even the gold coins in their strongbox and Mistress Angharad's jewels were dull and plain with time and dirt.

Mistress Angharad picked a ring out of the muddle and rubbed it on the skirt of my Sunday costume, revealing a flat-cut stone that winked and glowed like fire in the lantern light.

"What think you of your variant folktale now?" she asked Sir Arthur.

He laughed, free and frank. "I see I shall have to speak better of folktales in the future."

All I recall of the rest of that day was the steady stream of police and masons and men from the village come to deal with the consequences of the night's adventures. When Sir Arthur sat down to dinner in his parlor at last, Mr. Gotobed and his thugs were locked up tight as you please in the magistrate's coal cellar, and the treasure had been carried piecemeal from the priest's hole and put in the old tack room with Ianto Evans and two others to guard it. Mam cooked the dinner, and served it, too, for I was in my bed at home, asleep until old Mrs. Philips's rooster woke me next morning to walk to the Manor in the soft dawn as usual, as if my world had not been turned upside down.

First thing I saw when I came in the kitchen was Mistress Angharad, sitting on the settle in my Sunday costume.

"Good morning, Tacy," she said.

A weight dropped from me I had not known I carried. I whooped joyfully and threw my arms around her. Like hugging a dress form it was, but I did not mind.

"This is a greeting after a long parting, Tacy, my little one," she said, laughing. "Only yesterday it was you saw me."

"And did not think to see you again. Is it not a rule of ghosts, to disappear when their task on earth is done?"

The automaton's face was not expressive, and yet I would swear Mistress Angharad looked sly. "Yet here I am."

I sat back on my heels. "Is it giving eternity the slip you are, then? The truth now."

"The truth?" She shrugged stiffly. "I am as surprised as you. Perhaps there's no eternal rule about a ghost that haunts a machine. Perhaps I am outside all rules now and can make my own for a change. Perhaps"- she rose from the settle and began her favorite pacing -"I can wear what I like and go where I will. Would you like to be trained as a mechanic, Tacy, and be my lady's maid, to keep me wound and oiled?"

"If you are no longer a lady," I said, with a chill that surprised even me, "you will not need a lady's maid. I would prefer to train as an engineer, but if I must be a servant, I'd rather be a housekeeper with a great house to run than a mechanic, which is only a scullery maid with an oilcan."

A man's laugh startled us both. "Well said, Tacy," said Sir Arthur from the kitchen door, where he'd been listening. "Only I have in mind to make your mother housekeeper, if she will do it, with a gaggle of housemaids under her to keep the place tidy. You I need to design a voice for my humanatron. You will learn engineering. Which means I must command tutors and books from London. And new tools and a new automaton from France, of course. Perhaps more than one. I suppose I must write my lawyers first and finish work on the pipe. And the foundation needs work, the masons say." He sighed. "There's so much to do, I do not know where to begin."

"Breakfast first," I said. "And then we'll talk about the rest."

There is a ghost in Cwmlech Manor.

She may be seen by anyone who writes a letter that interests her. Mr. Whitney came all the way from Pittsburgh to talk to her. He stayed a month, and Sir Arthur persuaded him to invest in the humanatron.

She travels often, accompanied by her mechanic and sometimes by me, when I can spare the time from my engineering studies and my experiments. Last summer, we went to London, and Sir Arthur presented us to Queen Victoria, who shook our hands and said she had never spoken to a ghost before, or a female engineer, and that she was delightfully amused.

A woman and a girl. A man and a boy. And witnesses, people who were interested to see them go up the mountain separately, then come down together, the boy carrying the girl's basket, and the woman's hand resting on the man's arm. As pairs they were already notable, and when they started keeping company, they presented a real puzzle to the flourishing gossips of Gethsemane.

For a start, it wasn't usual for anyone to speak to the girl in public. The stallholders in the market would never take money from her hand; she had to leave it on the counter and they'd pick it up once she'd moved on. The girl was a witch. She lived in a dark crib in an alley off Market Square and was followed everywhere by the woman, a silent, white-eyed figure.