Praise for Peter Bunzl’s Cogheart Adventures
“Vivid and gripping…a beautifully-drawn world and delicate detailing, as finely wrought as a watch’s workings.”
Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Girl of Ink and Stars
“A glittering clockwork treasure.”
Piers Torday, author of The Last Wild
“A delightfully badly behaved heroine, enthralling mechanicals and a stormer of a plot.”
Abi Elphinstone, author of The Dreamsnatcher
“A classic adventure in every way I love – machines, Victoriana and high, pulse-pounding thrills. It’s got real heart too.”
Rob Lloyd Jones, author of Wild Boy
“One of my favourite debuts of the year. Murder, mystery and mayhem in a thrilling Victorian adventure.”
Fiona Noble, The Bookseller
“A magical and thrilling story. Prepare yourself for the adventure of a lifetime, a truly stunning debut.”
Jo Clarke, Book Lover Jo
“WONDERFUL…a blend of Philip Pullman, Joan Aiken and Katherine Rundell. Don’t miss!”
Amanda Craig
“Wonderfully gripping.”
Charlotte Eyre, The Bookseller
About this book
It’s hard to escape the secrets from the past.
Storm clouds gather over Lily and Robert’s summer when criminal mastermind the Jack of Diamonds appears. For Jack is searching for the mysterious Moonlocket – but that’s not the only thing he wants. Suddenly, dark secrets from Robert’s past plunge him into danger. Jack is playing a cruel game that Robert is a part of. Now Lily and Malkin, the mechanical fox, must stay one step ahead before Jack plays his final, deadly card…
For Hannah, who read this first.
Contents
PRAISE FOR PETER BUNZL’S COGHEART ADVENTURES
ABOUT THIS BOOK
DEDICATION
TITLE PAGE
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
A DICTIONARY OF CURIOUS WORDS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FIND OUT WHERE LILY AND ROBERT’S JOURNEY BEGAN IN COGHEART
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
COPYRIGHT PAGE
Jack stepped through the crack into the night. Outside the yard was quiet and thick dark clouds hid the moon from view.
Squatting beside the door, he scooped handfuls of muck from a puddle and plastered it through his white hair. Muddy lumps dripped down his scarred face, oozing odorously into his eyes, nose and mouth, making him want to retch.
A spotlight swept past, outlining the barred windows. Jack crouched low to the ground and scanned his surroundings. The prison yard, the cells, the watchtower, the tall perimeter fence, the gatehouse, the iron gates, the high stone wall tipped with iron spikes – all unbreachable. In its long illustrious history, no prisoner had ever escaped the ’Ville…
But he’d conquered worse. After fifteen years in maximum security, under constant surveillance, it had been a mistake for them to transfer him here to Pentonville and a regular cell. This past week the screws had barely looked in on him; they’d even let him out to exercise. They should’ve known better. Now, because of their stupidity, he’d be The World’s Most Infamous Jailbreaker as well as its Greatest Escapologist!
He crawled towards the fence and pulled himself onto its wire surface, scrambled upwards, vaulted nimbly over the top, and dropped down the far side. Landing with a squelching thump, he raced towards the main gate and exterior walls.
A drainpipe snaked up the side of the gatehouse. Jack brushed his muddy palms against his chest, took a deep breath, and began to climb.
Reaching the top, he hauled himself over the gutter onto the slippery roof and across a patchwork of tar and tiles, the exterior wall looming above him in the dark. Mounds of leaves and globules of green moss gathered in the crevices up here, creating perfect hiding places for small items someone might wish to stash.
Jack rummaged in one such crevice and pulled out a tarry tangle of ropes. They’d been bartered and bargained for outside the oakum shed over the past seven days, and were the makings of a secret escape kit. He began fastening them together, checking each knot carefully and pulling them tight.
Long ago he’d taught Fin to do this. A good knot can be the difference between life and death, he’d told the boy. Especially for an escapologist, or a hanged man. Luckily he’d never yet been threatened with that final rope.
Thoughts of the old times led Jack to remember his wife and the plan they’d made long ago to hide his greatest treasure – the Blood Moon Diamond. Artemisia might be gone, but soon, very soon, that big beautiful stone would be his once more. And, oh, what a diamond day that would be!
Jack checked the last knot and fastened a heavy stone to the rope’s end. Then he stood and began whirling it around his head like a lasso, feeding out lengths of line until the stone picked up speed. When it was finally making a wide circle about his head, Jack released his grip.
The stone flew through the air, arcing over the exterior wall. For a second the rope wriggled, trying to snake free, but Jack kept a tight grip on its end, and the stone hit the ground on the wall’s far side with a clunk.
He waited a moment, listening…
Awhoo! Awhoo!
An owl hoot – the signal that the line was secure.
The searchlight was fast approaching once more.
Jack dropped flat against the tiled roof and, when it had passed, jumped up and pulled the rope taut, testing his weight against it.
His knots held – as he knew they would.
He scraped the soles of his boots in the roof tar to make them sticky.
Then he began to climb.
The cracks between each stone made strong footholds. The top of the wall was fifteen feet above, but he took mere seconds to reach it and hop nimbly over a row of spikes that guarded the parapet, before lowering himself down the far side into the street.
Finlo stood beneath him wearing a battered bowler hat. He was a little taller than his father, though that wasn’t saying much – all the Doors were short. As a teenager, fifteen years ago, he’d been a skinny disappointing runt, but since then he’d added a few inches, filled out into a man. Perhaps, Jack thought, he might be useful on this mission after all.
Jack dropped to the pavement beside his son and embraced him, sniffing the air. “Get a whiff of that peppery smell, Fin. I haven’t smelled that in fifteen years!”
Finlo took a deep breath. “What is it?”
“Freedom!”
Jack flashed him a scarred smile. As he strode towards the prison entrance, a few feet away along the wall, a loud alarm bell began to wail.
“Da, please,” Finlo called softly. “We have to go.”
“Quiet! I’ve one more trick up my sleeve…” Jack pulled a playing card from thin air, and pinned it to the jail door.
When he lowered his arm, Finlo saw what it was: the Jack of Diamonds.
“And now,” said Jack, slipping into the shadows, “we disappear.”
In her short life Lily Hartman had come back from the dead not once, but twice. Neither time had been particularly pleasant. The first she didn’t like to recall; the second she wished every day she could forget.
Her first near-death occurred when she was six years old. She’d been in a terrible steam-wagon crash, which had killed Mama and left her mortally injured.
Her second near-death took place last winter – barely three months past her thirteenth birthday. On that cold November day Lily was shot by someone she trusted dearly; and it was only thanks to the bravery of her friends, Robert and Malkin, and the enormous strength of the Cogheart – an amazing invention of her papa’s – that she’d survived.
Though it had brought her back to life, the Cogheart made Lily different. She was a hybrid, with a clockwork heart that might tick for ever. A girl with untold secrets – for who could she tell when, outside her family, everyone regarded hybrids and mechanicals as less than human?
Not that Lily liked to dwell on such things. This morning her troubles felt truly behind her. She lay with her back on the warming earth, enjoying the fizzing feeling of being alive, and let her mind drift to the promise of the long hot summer ahead.
Malkin, her pet mechanical fox, was curled at her side, one black beady eye open, watching. Tall stems of corn towered over him.
“Oughtn’t we to be indoors?” he snapped, gnawing disdainfully at a burr-covered leg. “It’s practically breakfast time.”
“You don’t eat breakfast, Malkin,” said a second voice.
Robert, Lily’s other best friend in the whole world, was picking dandelion clocks a few feet away. He stuck one in his buttonhole. It looked almost as good as the crown of daisies garlanding Lily’s flame-red hair. Almost, but not quite.
Malkin spat out a mangy hairball with a sound like an engine misfiring. “But I can smell breakfast,” he persisted. “Chiefly Mrs Rust’s lumpy porridge. It’s the most important meal of the day – you wouldn’t want to miss that.”
They probably would miss it, because they’d risen early and gone out to spot the night-mail zep on its morning flight from London, as they often did. When it passed over Brackenbridge, at half past seven or thereabouts, Lily knew all was right with the world. Then she and Robert would dash for their bicycles and race pell-mell through the village, over hill and dale, and on to the airstation, to collect the mail for Papa.
This morning, however, the night-mail was very late indeed. They’d been sitting a good forty-five minutes in the lower field, waiting for the zep’s arrival.
Lily took a sixpence from her pocket and turned it over in her hand. “Heads we stay. Tails we go.”
She flipped the coin, letting it land in the curve of her dress.
“Heads. We’re staying.”
“You didn’t let me see,” Malkin groused. “It could’ve gone either way.”
“Well, it just so happened to go my way.”
“It always does,” he huffed.
“Malkin,” Robert said, “you’re so easily wound up.”
Lily laughed. “Yes, anyone would think you were made of clockwork!”
She settled back on her elbows, getting comfortable. The sky had turned bright red over the roof of the house, and she could see the sun and moon simultaneously. If she glanced over her right shoulder there was the sun, slowly rising, and if she gazed to her left, there was the moon. With a large slice of its ghostly white face in shadow, it looked like a bent penny dropped in a wishing fountain. Lily held her sixpence up against it and squinted, making a lunar eclipse.
“The man in the moon looks awfully like Victoria today.”
“She should be called the woman in the moon then.” Robert snatched the sixpence from Lily and performed the same trick.
“The coin-Queen’s got a bigger nose,” he declared thoughtfully.
Lily chewed a stem of grass. “But you have to admit, they do look alike.”
“How would you know?” Malkin was still quite cross; he gnawed at his other paw. “You’ve never met the Queen.”
Robert handed the coin back and Lily replaced it in her pinafore, beside her pocket watch and a stone with a small ammonite in the centre – a gift from her mother that she always carried. “Did you know,” she said, “the Queen has two birthdays, like me. What d’you think of that?”
“You don’t have two birthdays,” Malkin snapped.
“Yes, I do.” Lily adjusted her crown of daisies, which had slipped to one side. “My real one, and the time Papa brought me back from the dead. Three if you want to count the time I was shot. I’m unique.”
“Birthdays don’t work like that,” Robert said. “Not even if you’re…” He whispered the word: “A hybrid.”
Lily’s hand jumped to her chest, feeling for her scars. “Please don’t call me that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like it.”
A grasshopper settled on the corner of her dress. She watched it idly. It seemed so real and yet so mechanical at the same time – just like her. She hated the word hybrid; all she ever wanted was to be normal.
Malkin snapped at the insect and it hopped away between the ears of corn.
“What did you do that for?” Lily cried.
“You think too much,” he grumbled. “Besides, I missed it, didn’t I?”
“Because you’re not fast enough.” Robert picked another dandelion clock.
“How’s this for fast?” Malkin nipped at the fluffy seeds, scattering them.
“Hey!” Robert cried angrily. “Why don’t you—”
But before he could finish, a loud tuk-tuk-tuk of turning propellers interrupted him. An immense zeppelin, decorated with the insignia of The Royal Dirigible Company, bobbed overhead.
“The night-mail! Finally!” Lily whooped above the din. “I knew it would arrive!” She took out her pocket watch and flipped it open to consult the time. “An hour behind schedule.”
“Better late than never!” Robert said, wedging his flat cap onto his head. “Come on, let’s go meet it.” He snatched up his bicycle, which lay nearby in a flattened ring of corn, and wheeled it to the edge of the field.
“On your feet, Malkin.” Lily dusted the earth from the front of her pinny.
“If you insist.” The fox leaped up and shook the burrs from his fur as he watched Lily grab her bicycle.
The two of them trotted though the tall grass. By the time they reached the gate, Robert had already pushed it open and was in the lane, sitting on his saddle, waiting.
Brackenbridge village was busy with people on their way to work; costermongers, tradesmen and clusters of shoppers with wicker baskets stood in the lanes, gossiping and exchanging the time of day. A few mechanical servants, owned by the people from the smarter houses, walked in the gutters along the edge of the road, so as not to disturb the crowds.
Robert and Lily sped round the corner to the High Street, where a lamplighter was decorating the lamp posts with ribbons in preparation for the Queen’s Jubilee celebration in four days’ time. They wove past his ladder, bumping along the cobbles side by side, then whirred up Planter Lane and on over Brackenbridge Hill.
Malkin bounded between them. He may have only been a mechanimal, but he could run twice as fast as a real fox and had no trouble keeping up. His internal clockwork fizzed with joy, keeping time with the rattling spokes of Robert and Lily’s bicycle wheels. His tongue lolled between his teeth as he nipped at their heels, trying to worry them over the brim of the hill.
When they arrived at the airstation the mail-zep was already turning about, casting a long shadow over the landing field. The airmen on its prop platforms loosened a pulley and lowered three red flags.
“That’s the signal,” Robert said. “In a second they’ll drop the mail.”
A puffing steam-wagon jerked to a stop in the centre of the landing strip and a stocky mechanical porter jumped down from its driver’s compartment. The zep lowered him a line and Lily watched as he attached it to the rear of the wagon. Then he gave a brief hand signal and four mailbags came zipping towards him. The porter caught each in turn, and threw them into the wagon’s hold. Finally, he unclipped the airship and it floated away, disappearing behind a froth of buttermilk clouds.
The porter got back in his steam-wagon and drove towards the rear of the airstation. Malkin, who’d been stalking up to him this whole time, broke into a sudden gallop, streaking alongside the wagon’s wooden wheels.
“What on earth’s he up to?” Lily cried, and she and Robert jumped on their bicycles and pedalled as fast as they could to keep up.
They rounded the corner to discover the steam-wagon already parked outside the mail depot. Malkin stood beside it, barking at the mechanical porter, who was trying desperately to unload his sacks of mail. “Shoo!” he cried, waving a fat sheaf of envelopes at the fox.
Letters tumbled free, blowing about the yard.
“Shoo yourself!” Malkin growled, and gave a snort for good measure.
“Stop harassing that mechanical, Malkin!” Robert shouted.
“Is this creature yours, Sir?” The mechanical porter’s clothes-brush tache twitched indignantly. “Call him off at once!”
“Malkin, you clonking clot!” Lily cried. “That’s enough!”
“He smells funny,” Malkin snarled.
Lily waved her arms, hurriedly shooing the fox away from the porter.
“I’m terribly sorry, Sir. I hope we can set things right?”
“I should think so!” The mechanical man began picking up his letters.
As Lily bent to help, she caught a glimpse of the brass number plate bolted to his forearm:
The porter was one of Papa’s inventions! She handed him the letters, peering closely at his metal face. She was certain she’d seen him somewhere before…
“Weren’t you on the airship from Manchester last year?” she asked.
The porter’s face lit up. “Bless my bolts! Yes, I was. My faculties might be rusted, but I remember you. Miss Grantham, isn’t it?”
“Actually it’s Miss Hartman.”
“Of course…the professor’s daughter!” He took her hand and shook it enthusiastically, until Robert thought her arm might fall off.
“You brightened a dark day for me then,” Lily said. “May I ask your name?”
The mechanical man gave a deep sigh. “Alas, I don’t have one, just my serial number: Seven-Six-Five-G-B-J-Four-Zero-Seven. It’s a bit of a mouthful, so some of the airmen call me Brassnose, on account of, well…my brass nose.” He polished it proudly with the sleeve of his jacket until the sun winked off its coppery surface. “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to introduce your friends, Miss Hartman?”
“Of course, Mr Brassnose, this is Robert and Malkin.”
Robert doffed his cap to the mechanical and Malkin gave a non-committal grunt.
“I see you quite regularly round the airstation,” Mr Brassnose said.
“I’m no tocking zep-spotter, if that’s what you’re implying,” Malkin snapped back. “Personally, I can’t abide airships – such vulgar vehicles! It’s these two who are the aficionados. Robert here knows every flight path. He even has a book full of zep registrations. Show him, Robert.”
“I do not.” Robert bristled. “Besides,” he told Mr Brassnose, “we’re not around that often, only once…or twice a week.”
“Why’s the mail-ship so late today?” Lily asked, trying to change the subject.
“Could be anything…” Mr Brassnose said. “But I heard on the telegraph they stopped the newspaper presses for some breaking news. And since Fleet Street buys up most of the cabin space for deliveries, that tends to put the whole flight back.”
He lugged the last mail sack from the bed of the steam-wagon and Robert saw that it was stamped with the logo of The Daily Cog. “Must be a big story to delay the zep an hour,” Mr Brassnose said, opening the bag and handing a paper to Lily. “What’s it say?”
Lily read the headline and smiled, for the story was credited to a friend of hers and Robert’s.
Lily stopped reading, and pursed her lips. “They know all this and yet they can find not a single clue as to his whereabouts… Who would credit it?”
Malkin shook his head. “Not I.”
“Nor I,” Robert said. “What else does it say?”
Lily perused the rest of the article. “‘The redoubtable Chief Inspector Fisk of the Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard, is of the opinion that the convict was aided in his escape by a third party, and that he, or they, may have procured transport out of the city. Members of the public are advised not to approach Mr Door as he may well be armed and dangerous. They should instead make a note of his whereabouts and inform their local constabulary forthwith.’”
“Have we any letters today?” Malkin interrupted. “I’d hate to think we came all this way merely to hear you read out choice excerpts of the news. Hardened criminals or no, we deserve our mail.”
“Let’s see.” Mr Brassnose flipped through the piles of correspondence in one of the other bags, checking the addresses. “You do realize we deliver?” he said.
“I know,” Lily said, “but we were in the area…”
“And you wanted to watch the ships come in. I understand!” Mr Brassnose stopped abruptly and pulled a cream-coloured envelope from the bag. “You’re in luck, this one’s for your father.”
Lily took the envelope. It was addressed in scrolled calligraphy to: Professor John Hartman, Esquire, Brackenbridge Manor. After that came a long looping flourish – like the swish of a fancy sword – that gave her such a whoosh of excitement in her belly that Lily dearly wished the letter had been addressed to her.
She turned it over. On the other side was a red seal embossed with a Lion and Unicorn, rearing up on their back legs and facing each other across a large ornate shield topped with a crown. Under their feet were the waxy words: DIEU ET MON DROIT.
“Looks important,” Robert said, peering over her shoulder.
“Very.” Mr Brassnose’s eyes glowed. “You’d best get that to Professor Hartman immediately. That’s the Queen’s seal – you’ve got Royal Mail!”
Lily put the letter in the pocket of her pinafore. Malkin grasped the newspaper in his jaws, and the three of them hurried home. As they cycled through the village, Robert hung back, letting the others surge ahead. There was something else he wanted to do.
At the end of the High Street, as they approached Bridge Road, he took a detour across the village green, past the graveyard and the grey stone church where they’d buried Da last winter. The ground had been so frozen beneath their feet it had felt as if it might never thaw. He felt a pang of apprehension and squeezed the brakes of his bicycle, thinking he might stop, but this was not his destination. Instead, he coasted round the corner and on up the street to Townsend’s Horologist’s shop.
Once his da’s pride and joy, now it hunched, a festering tooth in Brackenbridge – a scorched shell of its former self, its windows boarded up, the glass of its front door broken. The state of it made Robert’s chest ache. And yet its dingy presence had become a magnet, pulling him in, until he found himself pining like a lost puppy for Da, and for his former life, lost in the fire.
Sometimes he liked to imagine he was only staying with the Hartmans until Da’s return. He’d pretend Thaddeus had popped away on a visit and would be back soon. It was only when he saw the concrete reality of things that he knew this wasn’t so.
He’d come to stare at the burned-out shop many times, but he’d yet to muster the courage to go inside. Professor Hartman had warned him not to. The building was unsafe. Anyway, everything he wanted had been taken from him by the flames. This wreckage belonged to his ma, wherever she might be.
Selena. In the ten years since she’d left, she hadn’t bothered to send a single card or telegram, not even on his birthday. She probably hadn’t heard about Da’s death – that was how little she cared. And yet she’d been named owner of the shop in his will… When Robert first heard that surprising news six months ago, he’d waited for her to return and clear things up. She hadn’t appeared, and Townsend’s sat empty, while he remained with the Hartmans. Well, he was done. There would be no more waiting. He would turn away from his past.
He was about to do just that when his eye was caught by his old bedroom window, and his heart leaped to his throat.
Something had moved behind the smokey pane of glass. A figure in the gloom…
He peered closer.
There was no doubt about it. There it was. Staring right back at him.
Its face was pale and moon-shaped, with a square nose, greying hair, and piercing dark eyes. Da? Could it be?
He stepped towards it, but the figure disappeared, vanishing as quickly as it had come, as if it was a ghost. For a moment Robert expected it to materialize in the downstairs doorway and beckon him over to open the shop. He waited, but it never did.
Suddenly Malkin skittered to a stop at his feet and, seconds later, Lily screeched to a halt beside him on her bicycle.
“Where have you been?” she asked breathlessly. “We were heading home but, when we looked behind, you weren’t following.”
“I was right here,” Robert replied. I was heading home, he wanted to add. This is it.
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her about the ghost, but he didn’t. Because it could’ve been wish fulfilment, a fantasy. Hadn’t he just been thinking of Da? Maybe he’d conjured a picture of him looking down…
“What’s the matter?” Lily asked. “You seem lost.”
“Not lost,” he replied. “But I… I had a vision.”
“A memory?” she persisted.
“Perhaps.”
Was that what it was?
Lily nodded at the house. “If you’re planning to go in there—”
Malkin dropped the newspaper in the road. “No, no, no,” he barked loudly. “John said the building could collapse at any moment. Come on.” He nudged their legs with his dry nose. “Let’s get back to Brackenbridge Manor. There’s breakfast waiting. Delicious porridge! Besides, we still have the Queen’s letter to deliver.”
“I’d almost forgotten.” Robert gave a ponderous smile and watched Malkin pick up the paper.
But as they cycled off, he couldn’t help glancing briefly over his shoulder one last time. There, in the shrinking gloom of the shop window, he swore he saw the shadowy face of his da again, watching them from behind the soot-stained glass.
Lily and Robert swerved up the drive of Brackenbridge Manor, with Malkin scampering along behind them. They aimed their bicycles through the open doors of the stable block and came clattering to a stop.
Malkin sniffed at a pair of metal feet sticking from beneath the front of a steam-wagon.
“Leave it out!” Captain Springer rolled himself out from beneath the vehicle’s chassis. His metal face was covered in engine oil, but that wasn’t unusual given that he was a mechanical. He dropped his spanner into his big tin toolbox and rooted around for something else. “Your father’s looking for you,” he told Lily. “You’re late for breakfast again.” He gave a tut like a ticking clock. “An engine can’t run without fuel, you know, tiddlers.”
“We know,” Lily told him. She and Robert left their bikes against the wall in an empty stall and hurried through the yard into the house.
They arrived in the dining room to find Papa already seated and tucking into a plate of kippers.
“Ah, the wanderers return!” he cried. “Zep-spotting, I take it?”
Malkin jumped up onto a chair and deposited The Daily Cog on the table. “Merely collecting the paper. Here you go – it’s hardly mauled.” He nudged the paper towards John with his nose, then jumped down and slunk under the table.
Papa smoothed out the crinkled pages. Lily half-expected him to start in straight away on the sensational story about the jailbreak, but instead he opened the technology section and, taking up his half-moon glasses, peered through them at the tiny printed articles.
“Aren’t you going to read the headlines?” she asked, as she reached over and snatched the puzzle pages for herself.
“This item’s far more interesting,” Papa muttered.
Lily gave a big sigh; she was too hungry to argue. Besides, she knew he wasn’t listening. He’d be lost in reports of the new inventions being built around Britain.
Mr Wingnut, the mechanical butler, bustled in. His metal brow furrowed in concentration as he set down a silver tray and gave a bowl of porridge and a plate of bacon, eggs and toast to each of them.
There was too much food again. Mrs Rust, the cook, had never quite got the hang of quantities and consequently would overdo things a little in the kitchen. But two breakfasts suited Lily down to the ground; she sat at her place and tucked in immediately. After so much cycling she felt as if a hungry army was marching round the pit of her stomach demanding feeding.
She scoffed down alternate mouthfuls of porridge, toast, bacon and eggs, and glanced at Robert across the table. He gave her the wannest of smiles. His complexion had turned terribly pale and he was barely eating. Lily hadn’t noticed before, but tired grey circles had grown under his eyes.
She was sure it was visiting the shop that did it. For a while a suspicion had been growing in her that Robert had been making secret excursions there regularly. He tended to disappear at odd times, when he imagined no one would notice. But Lily did. She always noticed where he was – it was as if she was extra-sensitive to it. Catching him at Townsend’s today had only confirmed her suspicions: he was aching for his old life. She knew what that was like, but dwelling on the past could only make you upset. Her heart went out to him.
Lily missed Mama every day. It could be a pain in her chest, as if a cord that once tied them had been broken, or the tiniest itch of a memory. Half-forgotten hugs and faded conversations – they rattled around inside her and came out sometimes, like catching the slightest whiff of a faded scent that you can’t quite place.
The pain of loss must’ve been keener for Robert, since the cut was fresh and deep. He probably thought of his da every hour of the day. And perhaps he felt he couldn’t say, or worried she, or Papa, would see that as ungrateful. But Robert was silly to imagine he couldn’t be truthful with them.
“Listen to this.” Papa shook out the newspaper. “Parliament today voted to build a new power station on Lots Road, in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, with plans to move ahead with electric power for the whole Underground and West London.”
“That’s not interesting,” Lily said.
Papa straightened his glasses, which had gone wonky on his nose. “Of course it’s interesting, Lily. Electricity is the future. Why, ever since Edison first lit up the street lamps on the Holborn Viaduct fifteen years ago, engineers in London have been striving for bigger and better power stations that will transport electricity efficiently around the city and, one day, around the country.”
He began moving condiments about on the table. “I mean, imagine this pepper pot is the power station, and this fork a railway train, or better yet, this knife.”
“That’s my knife!” Lily cried. “Give it back! I’m eating!”
Papa waved it at her. “But listen, Lily…this is important. Within your lifetime, there may be no more clockwork engines, or steam-wagons. The fact is, soon, everything will run on electricity.”
Lily snatched her knife from him and cut another slice of bacon.
“After that,” Papa continued, “mechanists like me will be out of a job. Mechanicals too. A multitude of electrical appliances will take their place.”
There was a crash in the background as Mr Wingnut dropped his silver tray, spilling a plate of kippers on the floor.
“Sorry!” he mumbled, and Lily heard him muttering, “What clacking nonsense,” under his breath as he bustled about picking up the tiny fish bones that were stuck to the carpet.
“In the meantime,” Lily said, tapping the front of the newspaper frustratedly with her eggy fork, “you’re ignoring the most exciting story of the year, right under your nose. The daring jailbreak of a vicious convict named Jack Door, written by our friend Anna.”
Papa stared at the headline splashed beneath the masthead. “Well, well, I see she’s their lead reporter now. A female lead, whatever next!”
Lily tutted. “Plenty of ladies are lead reporters, Papa. Haven’t you heard of Nellie Bly, or Elizabeth Bisland?”
“Why bless my soul, of course I have!” Papa peered at the article. “Who’s this blackguard Jack? He robbed the Queen, it says…”
“Yes,” Lily replied. “He was given a life sentence. And then he wrote a book in prison called The Notorious Jack Door: Escapologist and Thief Extraordinaire! It was serialized in the penny dreadfuls, but I read it as a book last year. It’s marvellous!”
“Sounds more scandalous than marvellous,” Malkin said.
“And a mite scary, if Anna’s article is anything to go by,” Robert added. “How’d he sneak a novel out of jail, anyhow, if he was being held in maximum security?”
Lily took a big bite of toast. “Nobody knows. But he managed it somehow – if you’re an escapologist you have those kind of skills, Robert.”
Robert pushed his food aside; he hadn’t eaten much, he was too busy thinking about the ghost at the window. At least Lily’s story was a distraction. “That’s what Jack’s book’s about then?” he asked. “His famous tricks and robberies?”
“Not really,” Lily said, spraying toast crumbs across her plate. “It mostly tells you how to pick locks. That and how to break unbreakable chains…oh, and how to tie untie-able knots.”
“Why on earth would you need to know any of that?” Papa asked.
Lily licked the end of her finger and picked up the crumbs one by one. “It came in handy when we rescued you, didn’t it?”
“If I recall correctly,” came a voice from beneath the table, “I was the one who did the better part of the rescuing on that occasion.”
Lily ignored Malkin and examined page two of the paper. “There’s a little more about Jack’s history here… It says he once had a show in the West End with his family. His wife was a spiritualist, and he was some sort of a magician and expert in escapology. When he bored of that, he started using his skills to steal from country estates – that was before he pinched the Queen’s diamond.”
“How’d they know he did those other robberies?” Robert asked. “It could’ve been anyone.”
“Ah.” Lily smiled. “He had a calling card. At every house he burgled, he left a Jack of Diamonds pinned to the wall. That’s how they got him in the end. Well, that and someone gave up his location to the police.”
“What a tockingly stupid way to incriminate oneself!” Malkin exclaimed.
“Quite,” she agreed. “He even tied a playing card to the Elephanta’s tail, when he stole the Blood Moon Diamond live onstage. So there was no need for the police to use their new fingerprinting techniques to prove his guilt. They locked him up for life on the strength of those cards.” She peered down at the article. “Anna’s called his jailbreak the most audacious ever.”
“Zeppelins and zoetropes!” said Mrs Rust, who’d come in with a plate of muffins during Lily’s chatter. “Let’s hope he never comes round here. That rogue’s probably gone right back into the burgling business.” She stooped on her way back to the kitchen to help Mr Wingnut clear up the dropped kippers.
“He’s not interested in inventions, Rusty. He only stole jewellery, and we don’t have any of that.”
“Houndstooth and herring bones! I should think not,” Mrs Rust spluttered.
“And thank tock for that!” Mr Wingnut added.
“There’s more,” Papa said. He was fascinated now, and perusing the article himself. “It says the diamond was never recovered, despite a ten-thousand-pound reward, and during his fifteen long years in prison the Jack of Diamonds never revealed its whereabouts.”
“That’s his nickname,” Lily whispered to Robert. “Because of the playing cards.”
Papa gave a loud cough, for he hadn’t finished reading. “On top of the original reward for the recovery of the Blood Moon Diamond, a further reward of five thousand pounds has been offered for any information that would lead to the rearrest of Jack.” He pushed the paper away and took a contemplative bite of his toast. “We could do with a little of that money ourselves!”
Lily realized he was probably right. Despite Papa trying to hide it, things had been a little sparse of late. Perhaps it was because Madame Verdigris and Mr Sunder had run off with a lot of Papa’s valuable patent papers last year, and they still hadn’t got them back.
That last thought seemed to jolt Papa from his chair, and he stood, folding the paper under his arm.
“Enough of this,” he said. “I’ve work to do. I have to finish repairing Miss Tock.”
Normally after breakfast Lily and Robert had lessons in the nursery, supervised by Mrs Rust, but halfway through a particularly boring reading comprehension they’d been doing, the mechanical had wound down, and they’d taken the opportunity to sneak off and see what Papa was up to.
The lightning bolt on the workshop door was supposed to symbolize danger, but Lily liked to imagine it represented the inspiring things that filled Papa’s workshop. She turned the door handle and she and Robert stepped inside.
It was an amazing space, bigger than Robert’s da’s old workshop and filled with more clockwork than the insides of Big Ben, but a certain cosy quality was absent. Robert found the rest of Brackenbridge Manor like that as well – a little too grand, a little too imposing. It never quite felt like home, because everyone was spread so far apart.
“Done with your schooling already, are you?” Papa glanced up, and Malkin, who lay underneath his chair, nipped at his shoelaces. He brushed the fox away and stood, beckoning them over. “Come and look at this, a proper clockwork brain!” he said, indicating Miss Tock, the mechanical maid, who sat wound down on the workbench, her stilled legs dangling beneath her, a panel in the front of her skull open. She had banged her head while dusting and doing the housework, knocking a cog loose, and it had been rattling around and making her act strangely ever since.
Papa fished out the troublesome cog and waved it at them. “These cogs connect up, much like the synaptic links in your heads. Their turning allows ideas to pass through her consciousness. One piece out of place and she’d never remember what day it was!”
Papa’s talk of clockwork made Lily’s mind drift to her own clockwork innards and worries. Her sense of not fitting in, of being a square peg in a round hole. It wasn’t just the Cogheart, pumping blood around her body with each mechanical heartbeat, that made her feel that way. Even before she knew she had a perpetual motion machine for a heart, she’d always felt different to other girls. The truth was, discovering she might live for ever had only made her feel more out of sync with the world. She glanced at Robert, but he didn’t seem to be concentrating either.
The trouble was he couldn’t shake the image of his da’s face at the window. Could it really have been a ghost? For a second Robert wondered if he should ask Professor Hartman, but then he decided against it. He didn’t want to worry him unduly. The professor would probably say he’d been imagining things, or was going mad. He tried, instead, to focus on what John was saying, but all this talk of clockwork made him think of his old life as Da’s apprentice and that made him miss Thaddeus even more.
“There.” John replaced the final gears. “That’s the last of these complications. She’ll be ticking royally once again in no time.”
“Oh my goodness! I forgot!” Lily pulled her purse from her pinafore with such force that the letter, her ammonite, watch and money flew from her pocket and scattered across the table. She scooped up her things and handed Papa the letter. “We received this in the post – Mr Brassnose at the airstation said it was from the Queen.”
“You forgot a letter from the Queen?” John looked incredulous.
“I…” Lily looked embarrassed. “I was so intrigued by the jailbreak story that it clean escaped my memory.”
“Never mind.” John put the letter on the workbench beside Miss Tock and carefully finished screwing the panel on her head up tight.
“Well,” cried Lily, “aren’t you going to open it?”
“I can, if you like…” Robert reached for the letter.
“In a moment.” John propped his elbows on the workbench and steepled his hands, as he always did when he was trying to give a lesson. “Patience, you know, is a virtue. First, we have to finish with Miss Tock here.”
“This is hardly the time for lectures, Papa.” Lily stepped towards him, so that she might lunge forward and see the letter.
“Yes,” said Robert. “Please, let’s hear what it says.”
John sighed and picked up the envelope, breaking the seal and slitting it open with his screwdriver.
Lily and Robert leaned in close. Even Malkin – who was the sort to pretend he received letters from the Queen every day – jumped up onto the workbench, so he might see what was going on.
John put down the screwdriver and, with a grand flourish for his audience, reached into the envelope and pulled out a thick wodge of cream paper.
He unfolded it carefully but, as he began to read, his smile faded. “Good heavens!” he muttered.
“What is it?” Robert asked. “What’s the matter?
“Yes,” Lily said. “Tell us.”
John cleared his throat. “The Queen wants me to travel to London, to the Mechanists’ Guild, and repair the Elephanta.”
“You mean the mechanimal Jack stole the diamond from?” Robert asked.
“That’s right.” John nodded. “She was the first mechanical creature ever created. Prince Albert had her made for the Coronation. The missing Blood Moon Diamond is what powered her. The Queen seems to think I, as a renowned mechanist and maker of mechanimals, might find a way to bring her back to life so she can take part in the Jubilee.”
Robert was aghast. “But that’s only four days away! An impossible task!”
“Not for Papa,” Lily said. “If anyone can fix the Elephanta, he can.”
“I don’t know, Lily…” Papa replied.