Chapter 29
Chapter
I rapped my knuckles on Buckland’s office door, trying to calm my racing pulse. I’d practically fled from Henry, and my thoughts were tangled and wild.
Buckland called for me to enter, and I stepped inside his office.
He winced and smacked his brow. “Oh, my dear Mary, I’m so sorry, I got wrapped up in some other things and completely forgot to come and collect you after my discussion with Davies.”
I managed a smile. “It’s quite all right. I’ve managed to entertain myself.”
“Good, good,” he said cheerfully, glancing at the darkened window. “Let me finish this last letter, and then we can be on our way home, yes?”
I sat in one of the chairs, listening to the scritch-scratch of his quill and tapping my toe anxiously. He hadn’t heard about my employment with Henry, that much was clear. Or there would have been a thick line of consternation between his brows when he greeted me.
I would have to tell him. Any second now he would sign his letter, and I would have to tell him.
“So,” he said, still not looking up from his letter-writing, “you are to be Henry Stanton’s research assistant.”
I caught my breath. “You heard.”
“I heard,” he said softly, laying the quill on his desk and folding his letter into neat thirds.
“I wanted to tell you myself. I—I was just about to.”
Buckland didn’t answer. He held a lit candle over the parchment and let the wax drip onto the fold, sealing it with his ring. Over the course of our friendship, I had received a hundred, maybe a thousand, letters sealed thus.
What had I said to Henry? Everything I am, everything I have, is thanks to William Buckland. Guilt was slippery in my throat.
Yes, but what was it Henry had said in response? He helped you to shine, he said, but you were always the diamond.
Still, I couldn’t look at Buckland. I stared at my hands, clenched white fists.
His lips were a thin, pressed line. “Mary—”
“You could have asked me yourself,” I whispered. “To be your assistant. I would have said yes in a heartbeat. But you didn’t. And Hen—Stanton did. So, I have to do this. Even if it makes you angry. Even if it makes you hate me.” I forced myself to look up and meet my old friend’s eyes.
They were unreadable in the dim light. Buckland cleared his throat, and I braced for his disappointment.
Instead he said, “I understand.”
“You do?” I managed to stammer.
He nodded. “Henry Stanton presented an opportunity for advancement, and you seized it. Just as I would have advised.”
“I—” I was lost for words. I’d used them all up in my useless tirade, apparently. He wasn’t even angry. “Well. All right, then.”
“Yes. All right, then.” He squared his shoulders and said cheerfully, “Now, I believe Catherine said the cook would be preparing roast goose tonight. Delicious, roast goose. Tastes a bit like flamingo, did you know? I had flamingo once. A little gamey, but overall very satisfying. Perhaps I will see if Catherine can get her hands on another.”
He chattered on—about flamingo and parrot and puffin and their relative merits as dinner—as we climbed down the stairs.
“Do be careful, though, won’t you,” Buckland said, interrupting his description of a fried parrot wing as we reached the last steps.
“I don’t want to see you….” He paused as we stepped out into the night to wait for the coach to be brought round.
“Well, I suppose I don’t have to warn you about Henry Stanton’s loyalty, do I? ”
I stumbled a little, blinking in shock. He knew. All this time, I thought I’d kept my heartbreak secret.
“How did you know?” I managed.
“Oh, from the very beginning. From the first day you introduced me to your new friend, Henry, it was in your eyes. But I did not think it my place to say anything, or to offer warning. I am”—he smiled, fond and sad together—“well, I am not your father. And there are some lessons that must be learned by the young.”
I thought of the moment where I’d considered kissing Henry. How I’d imagined what it might be to press my lips to his once again. The desire, long dormant, but waking again.
Apparently I’d never learned my lesson, after all.
All thoughts of Henry vanished the second I saw Lucy, sitting stone-faced in the Bucklands’ parlor. Elizabeth was beside her, looking smugly pleased.
“Oh, no,” I gasped, hands flying to my mouth. “Luce—I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry,” Lucy said stiffly. “I sent word to Edgar that we wouldn’t be coming, after all.”
“I have no excuse.” I knelt in front of her chair. “I completely forgot. Henry asked me to be his research assistant, and—”
“I thought you said no excuses.” Elizabeth sniffed, and I scowled.
“I’m just so sorry, Lucy. I’ll make it up to you. And Edgar! I’ll make it up to you both, I promise.”
Lucy sighed. “Well, if you promise,” she said, catching hold of my fluttering hands and finally offering a tiny smile. “I’ll hold you to that, though. Now, did you say Henry Stanton asked you to be his assistant?”
“Research assistant,” I said. “I have an office and everything.”
“But you’re a woman,” Elizabeth said sharply.
“Yes. I am.”
“So you can’t have an office at Palmanaeus.”
“Well, I do.” My voice was terse. Elizabeth wasn’t even part of this; this was between Lucy and me.
“Elizabeth, darling, can you give us a few minutes? I need to speak with Mary,” Lucy said, and I tried not to look too pleased. Elizabeth made a disapproving noise as she flounced away unhappily, but she didn’t argue.
Lucy arched her brow. “Research assistant?”
“We…actually make a good team.”
“Hmm.” She looked as if she might say more but then shook her head and clapped. “Now, about that promise to make it up to me.”
I chuckled. “Calling it in already?”
“There’s a meeting tonight. Come with me.”
My eyes widened. “A Promethean meeting?”
She nodded eagerly. “We’re coordinating to support Edgar’s bill.”
I hesitated. I had no real desire whatsoever to get caught up in Lucy’s politics. But I had just let her down.
I nodded. “All right. I’ll come with you.”
Lucy clapped. “Oh, wonderful! We’ll leave around midnight; Edgar will send a coach to the back gate.”
“We’re sneaking out?”
Lucy looked coy. “Do you really think Buckland would approve if we announced we were taking his daughter to a Promethean planning committee?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Elizabeth is coming?”
Lucy lifted her chin. “Yes. She is very devoted to the cause already.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ve only known her about three days.”
A soft, glassy look passed over Lucy’s eyes. “She’s sweet, Mary. Smart, and kind. But she’s got a fire in her, too.”
“You really like her.”
Lucy’s nose flushed red. “I do.”
“Then I do, too.” I squeezed her hand. “Midnight, you said?”
“Midnight. Oh, and wear dark colors.”
The coach came to a stop under a streetlamp, and we stepped out into a round pool of silver light.
“We’ll be back in one hour,” Lucy said, slipping the driver a coin, and he nodded and flicked the reins.
Lucy led us down an alley off the main road, which quickly dumped into a promenade lined with gentlemen’s clubs. We joined a stream of happy drunks and eager night-hawkers.
This was a wealthy neighborhood, and the men were top-hatted and tailed.
Constables were posted at regular intervals under bright streetlamps, blue uniforms starched and stiff.
But Lucy led us farther, down narrower, darker alleyways, where pub signs and doorframes needed repainting and the crowd was sparser.
I frowned as we turned again, down a converted back alley, narrow and crowded, lit only by a few reliq-lamps hanging in interior windows. Men and women hung in the doorways, calling out to the darting, scurrying crowd and making furtive exchanges. There were no bobbies here, to be sure.
I couldn’t quite believe Lucy had brought Elizabeth to this part of town.
An addled man stumbled in the road in front of us.
“The queen is in the castle,” he croaked in a singsong, showing a row of blackened teeth.
Lucy flung an arm in front of me defensively as the man tried to lurch forward, his eyeballs rolling in his skull.
“But the walls are made of silk, and now the worms revolt.” He laughed, and then urinated on the road just in front of us.
Elizabeth screeched, and I jumped back from the splash.
“It’s just there,” Lucy said, and hurried us both forward by the elbows, around the drunkard.
She led us to a sagging wooden structure.
The upper level was half-collapsed, and two of the windows were shattered.
The shutters were closed, their paint peeling, but a sign above the doorframe read, The Eagle and Flame.
“Rather obvious, don’t you think?” I muttered, and Lucy rolled her eyes as she rapped on the blue door.
An eyeball appeared in the crack.
“Password?”
“Meadowlark.”
The door swung wide, and we followed the tiny, stooped bearer of the eyeball—the innkeeper, I assumed—inside. The room was warm, and warmly lit. There was a bar, and small round tables, and all the usual features of a cozy common room.
Lucy was greeted like an old friend, and a pair of men in tailored suits vacated their table so the three of us could slide in instead. I studied the gathered as the innkeeper brought us each a small glass of brandy. The clothing ranged from fine, like the two gentlemen’s, to plain, dirty workwear.
“Now, where were we,” said a man with dark stubble along his jaw. He was one of the ones in workwear—a laborer of some sort, from the dust and mud on his trousers—but the whole room turned to him in polite attention.
“Logistics,” said a woman in a black widow’s veil.
“The protest will take place a fortnight from tonight. Cell leaders, please get word to your cells as soon as possible. In the meantime, we will be rallying support. We’ll be converging just south of the Covent Garden slicks, two Thursdays hence, at four o’clock sharp.”
“What did we decide on the armband proposal?” asked a man with a port-wine stain.
“It makes it easier for the bobbies,” the innkeeper said.
“Yes, but also easier to identify one another,” countered one of the suited men.
“What do you think?” the leader asked, turning to Lucy. I realized for the first time that none of the Prometheans had used her name—or any names, for that matter.
Lucy pursed her lips. “I think yes. Reports from the Nottingham leadership suggest that even when people don’t actively join in, they may don an armband in support.”
The Promethean leader nodded. “I agree. All in favor of armbands?”
He counted the votes carefully, an ultimate tally of thirteen in favor, seven against. Elizabeth raised her hand to vote, but I kept my arm down.
“The ayes have it. We’ll do black, to match the Nottingham movement. Now, each of you be sure to remind your cells—allow people to access the slicks as they need. This is not a blockade, or a boycott.”
“Not yet,” muttered a girl even younger than Elizabeth, in a factory uniform.
The leader nodded. “Not yet. Of course, we will escalate if we must, but for now this is a rally to support Lord Merlton’s proposal to raise the national reliq-rate. We will not be engaging in any violent action. This is a peaceable protest. Is that understood?”
A previously silent man with a long, drawn face and dusty clothing raised his hand.
“And if the bobbies get violent with us first?”
The Promethean leader grinned, a spark of something cold in his eye. “Then we give it right back.”