Forty-One
Arabella had sent everyone away.
She stood by herself in the great hall now, trying to decide where to go. It was late, nearly midnight, and come morning, she would have to make a choice. Her head told her to go to her own chambers, but her heart was telling her to choose a different path through the castle, one that would lead her to a tower room.
She was at a crossroads, and she knew that they were lonely places, thresholds between one world and another. Thieves and murderers were buried there. Witches, too. Staked through the heart so that their restless spirits could not wander. Valmont always said that the devil lingered at crossroads, ready to lead mortals astray.
“What do I do?” she cried out in torment, her voice echoing through the hall.
As if in answer, the mirror over the mantel shimmered. Arabella watched as it became a window, showing her another time, another Arabella.
That Arabella was standing in the great hall, too. She looked different yet so much the same—alone, unsure, so full of longing. She had ventured downstairs, as she did every night on soft, stockinged feet, and was standing in the shadows.
The golden clock was only half-finished. It had no dial yet, no bell, no track with figures moving along it, just a diabolically complex amalgamation of gears, wheels, springs, and strikes. A man, his sleeves rolled up, stood in front of the immense works, adjusting the tension of the chain that suspended the clock’s weights.
Arabella’s eyes moved from him to the shiny sheets of gold, all neat in a stack, that would be used to face the clock. Earlier in the day, from the window of her father’s fine carriage, she’d seen a thin child picking grains of wheat out of the dirt of a newly harvested field. She wondered now what just one of those gleaming sheets could do for that child, for her entire family. Arabella hated the clock, this folly of her father’s, made solely to show off his wealth. Yet she couldn’t help but marvel at it, too, for it was a feat of balance and precision. There was wonder on her face as she watched the clockmaker work. And envy.
She stayed in the shadows, not wanting to be seen, until the clockmaker—adjusting a spring—said, “Since you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful. Would you hand me those pliers, please?”
Arabella didn’t move, mortified at having been found out.
“I won’t tell your parents, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
Relieved, she bent down, picked up the pliers off the floor, and gave them to the clockmaker. “What a magnificent machine,” she said.
The clockmaker’s lips cut a smile into his face at the compliment. “Thank you,” he responded, reaching inside the clockworks with the pliers. “But it’s not finished yet. I must still fabricate the case.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Arabella said, watching as he straightened a bent tooth on a gear. “Nothing is more beautiful than the works you’ve devised. I never tire of watching them.”
As she finished speaking, she glanced down at her hands, clasped in front of her. A diamond on her left ring finger glittered in the lamplight. It was as big as a molar and every bit as grotesque.
The clockmaker glanced at it. “I heard about your engagement. You must be very happy. Prince Constantine is a marvel of engineering himself, no? Handsome, tall, powerful, rich—everything a woman could want.”
“When will the clock be ready?” Arabella asked, ignoring his question. “The prince admired it, and my father wishes to make a present of it to us on our wedding day.”
“In three or four months, I should think,” the clockmaker said. His eyes found hers over the top of his glasses. “Or never, if that is your wish.”
“Why would I wish that?” Arabella asked, a quizzical expression on her face.
The clockmaker set his pliers down. “I overheard the king. After the parties and the negotiations. After the marriage contracts were signed. I heard him tell his son that the young woman was a good match, a beautiful girl from a wealthy family. Though perhaps a bit spirited. But she would learn her place. ‘She will be a queen one day,’ he said. ‘And queens, like children, should be seen and not heard.’”
Arabella brushed some imaginary lint from her skirt.
“Is this what you want, child? To never be heard?”
“It does not matter what I want,” Arabella answered, repeating words her mother had spoken to her. “I am not a milkmaid, free to come and go as I please. I am a duke’s only child and heir.”
“Surely it matters to you?”
“You are impertinent, sir,” Arabella said, turning to leave.
“People are always offended by the truth,” said the clockmaker, wiping his hands on his apron. “I see you, Arabella. I see the movement of your heart as surely as I see this clock’s. Do you?”
Arabella whirled around, her eyes flashing. “What would you have me do?” she asked.
“Listen to that heart.”
“That’s exactly what I am not supposed to do. I’m supposed to box my heart away and bend to others’ wishes. Those who know better—my parents, and soon, my husband.”
“You must do one thing and one thing only—become the person you were meant to be. No matter how daunting that task may be. Otherwise, your life is not a life; it is merely a long, protracted death.”
“You do not understand, sir. I have a duty.”
“To whom?” the clockmaker asked. “Your father, who taxes his people cruelly to pay for this giant golden plaything? Your mother, who slowly squeezes you to death to fulfill her own ambitions? Is your duty to them, Arabella? Or to the girl who wishes to build schools and hospitals? The girl who devised Paradisium?”
The color drained from Arabella’s face. “How do you know about Paradisium? Why are you asking me these questions? Who areyou?”
“I am the clockmaker, child. The master of hours. The keeper of time.”
Arabella backed away, frightened by the man and his words, frightened by the longing they stirred in her. “I cannot do what you ask,” she said.
“Cannot or will not?” challenged the clockmaker. “You have listened to too many voices, all telling you that you cannot, should not, must not pursue your heart’s desire. But who are they really talking to, Arabella? You? Or themselves? Disregard them, child. They are nothing but squawking crows, deathly afraid that someone else might achieve what they themselves are too frightened to attempt.”
“But how?” Arabella asked, with an incredulous laugh. “What shall I do? Pack my books? My sketches? Leave my parents, this castle, everyone and everything I’ve ever known?”
“If that’s what it takes, yes,” the clockmaker replied. “I would advise packing a few of your jewels, too. A passage to Rome or Venice, a room when you get there, fees for a teacher—these things cost money.”
Arabella let his words sink deep into her consciousness like stones falling through water. For a brief, beautiful moment, she saw herself in Venice, sketching the Doge’s Palace, studying the spires of the Basilica, walking over the Rialto Bridge, and her heart leapt with joy.
But then she heard it—a voice that had been whispering to her from an even deeper place. A voice that had grown louder ever since Constantine had humiliated her at the ball. It was dry and rasping, like a snake slithering through dead grass. Don’t be ridiculous, you foolish girl. You’re not smart enough to hold your own in a classroom of men. Not tough enough to command the armies of masons and carpenters it takes to build a castle. Not talented enough to come up with designs as magnificent as the palaces and cathedrals you admire. Who on earth do you think you are? All of this is nothing but—
“A pretty dream,” Arabella said aloud. “That’s all it is. All it ever will be. I must return to my chamber now. Good night, sir.”
“Good night, Lady Arabella,” the clockmaker said ruefully. “Sleep well. And remember this—the whole world is ready and willing to tell you no. Do not join their cowards’ chorus.”
Arabella rushed from the room. Outside the doorway, she stopped, tears brimming in her eyes. She blinked them away, desperate to quell the storm of emotion brewing inside her before it led her, once again, into trouble. Looking down at the ring on her finger as if it were a cancer on her hand, she said, “It’s too late, Clockmaker. I already have.”
The mirror shimmered again, then it hardened back into cold silver glass. And Arabella felt herself harden with it, as she always did, unable to escape the past and its quicksilver pull. One day, very soon, it would pull her so far under, it would drown her.
She could not save herself, or those who shared the castle with her, but maybe she could save the thief before time ran out. Maybe he did not have to drown with them.