Arabella of Mars(18)
Arabella’s purse contained only three farthings—less than a penny all told. “Have you any thing more … reasonable?”
He stared down his long nose at her, then sniffed. Slipping the fine paper back onto the stack, he reached below the counter and brought out a small, battered box. “Penny a sheet,” he said, “and you’ll find no better price in London.”
Arabella swallowed. She had no doubt the man was correct in that. “I thank you for your time, sir,” she said. “I shall return with the money as soon as I can.”
*
Arabella’s hands gripped each other behind her back as she paced away from the stationers’. Tuppence might be sufficient to save her brother’s life, but even that modest sum was far beyond her now.
She tried not to regret the money she had spent so far. The coach-fare, the shilling she had left for the clothing, the ha’penny she had given the old airman, the few pence she’d spent to assuage her hunger and thirst … all had been practically or morally necessary.
Surely she could perform some small service for a farthing or two.
But the metropolis’s bustling crowds cared little for the needs of a tattered, filthy young man. All those she importuned, on the streets or in the shops, rebuffed her entreaties—some with a kindly expression of regret, others quite brusquely, but none with any charity or offer of employment.
Already the sun had passed its zenith. Increasingly frantic, she charged from street to street, her eyes scanning shop windows in search of one that might require her particular skills.…
And then she recalled what she hoped might be the answer to her prayers.
The clockmaker’s shop.
The automaton artist.
It took her some hours to locate the shop again. She had nearly given up hope when, finally, she found herself before the shop window with the flawed automaton.
Eagerly Arabella peered at the exposed mechanism. It was complex, yes, especially being so much smaller than her father’s harpsichord player, but it lacked subtlety. Every gear and wire was connected, directly or indirectly, to the drawing hand; there was no attempt to counterfeit breathing or make the device’s head seem to follow its hand. And having understood this, the source of the problem became obvious. A simple bent rod, just one among the brass fingers that read the pins on the device’s controlling drum. Easily damaged, easily fixed.
Hands trembling, she pushed her way into the shop.
*
The shop’s dark and ticking interior was crowded, nearly filled by the shopkeeper and his one customer, a tall dark foreigner in a buff coat.
“May I help you, young sir?” the shopkeeper said, sliding his spectacles down his nose as he leaned to peer around the customer. The sir came weighted with a heavy freight of irony.
Arabella swallowed, and again bowed with the greatest grace she could muster. “I wish to speak with you concerning your display model, sir,” she said. “The automaton artist. I see what is wrong with it, sir.”
“What’s wrong with it?” the shopkeeper replied with a note of incredulity. “What’s wrong with it? There is nothing whatsoever wrong with it, my dear boy. Clarkson’s Clockworks sells only the very finest products, and I personally guarantee the function and performance of each and every one.” This last was clearly directed at the customer rather than Arabella.
“It—it is but a small flaw, sir,” she stammered, her nervousness making it difficult to pitch her voice low like a boy’s. “It puts an, an extraneous line across the middle of the picture, sir. And I can repair it, sir, for a very reasonable fee of sixpence.”
“An … extraneous line?” His already-sour expression soured still further. “It was Hodge who put you up to this, wasn’t it?” He turned his attention to the customer again, all obsequiousness. “My competitor, sir. He’ll stop at nothing. Day in and day out, spreading false rumors about the quality of my automata.” Now he returned to Arabella, and his words burned with scorn. “And I’ll tell you what I’ve told all the others who’ve complained about that line, and that is this: it is an artistic decision, a decorative flourish.”
“No, sir,” Arabella insisted. “It is only a bent rod, sir. One of the pickups from the control drum. I can fix it, sir!”
“You?” he scoffed. “A ragged, beardless gutter urchin?” Now he came out from behind his counter, begging the customer’s pardon, and stomped up to where Arabella stood trembling. He was a big man, and though his hands were very white and delicate, the forearms exposed by his rolled-up cuffs were thick with muscle.
The shopkeeper grabbed her roughly by the collar and twisted. Choking out a squawk, she heard and felt fabric tear. “You are nothing more than Hodge’s creature,” he growled in her ear, “sent to humiliate me before my clientele. You will return to him, you will give him back whatever he has paid you, and you will tell him not to try this sort of stunt again or he’ll get from me himself what I give to you now!” Then he cuffed her hard across the ear and shoved her through the door, sending her sprawling across the cobbles and into the path of a passing gentleman, who cried out and gave her a good kick. Pain exploded in her midsection, joining the pain in her bruised ear and abraded hands.
Eyes blinded with tears, she dragged herself around the corner and lay gasping against a wrought-iron fence, trying to recover her wits. But a few moments later she heard the shop door open and a loud voice calling, “Where has that boy gone? That ragged boy?” A man standing in the street immediately pointed in her direction.