Chapter 46
Chapter
Henry and I had been back in London for two weeks, and the skirmishes were growing more deadly by the day.
We’d heard rumors, on the journey home, of the tension in the city.
The Prometheans had—as I’d expected—launched their blockade during our time in Kirtlington.
Every night brought a new bloody clash between protestors and lawmen.
If either side had once assumed the conflict would be over swiftly, they knew better by now.
The wealthy neighborhoods—Henry’s, and Buckland’s, and around Palmanaeus House—were patrolled by constables and soldiers, with any suspicious types quickly detained for questioning.
But even those of us inside the safe bubble of wealth had ears to hear, and eyes to see: the shattering of glass, the firing of muskets, occasional smoke rising against an orange sky.
Libertas Magicae! declared the posters slapped on every lamppost and pub door and garden wall.
Rise and Resist; Don’t Sell Your Reliq, read some.
Or Pay Our Worth, Or Pay the Price. The fliers went up almost as quickly as they were pulled down and tossed into the streets to be trampled into the cobblestones.
Had Lucy written the slogans? Designed the posters? They had her voice. Her fiery style. Where was she now? I’d thought—hoped, I suppose—that she would make contact before today, at least.
Because today was the day. The Society’s annual meeting. The day I would stand or fall as a geomagician.
Henry, sitting on the coach bench beside me, laced our fingers together.
“Don’t look so worried, darling. Have faith. In both of us.”
I scowled. “I was trying my best not to think of it.”
Henry had invited me to stay with him when we returned from Kirtlington. But I hadn’t wanted to risk our reputations so close to the election, so I’d taken a room in a boardinghouse not far away.
I’d seen Buckland once or twice in the halls of Palmanaeus since his return, but I turned and walked away whenever he tried to speak with me.
Soon it was common knowledge that Buckland and I had fallen out, and that I was fully allied with Henry now.
The rumors gave wildly conflicting, half-true reasons—sex, money, revenge, betrayal—but in the end, it didn’t shift our calculations for the presidential election.
Henry kissed the top of my head.
“Well, we have done what we can,” he said. “The rest we must leave to fate.”
It was true. Henry had spent most of his waking hours shoring up his support, hosting “impromptu” discussions and lavish lunches. He promised committee seats and research funding, and introductions to members of Parliament. And he shook so many hands, his palms started to itch.
It was masterful, really, and based on our preliminary count, we were fairly confident he would win the presidency.
There would be sixty-two voting members of the Society; Charles Lyell was still on expedition in Switzerland, and Leopold Duncan was consulting in Vienna.
Henry had thirty votes verbally guaranteed, and we guessed at twenty-six promised to Buckland.
That left six geomagicians of whose loyalties we were still uncertain.
Then Mantell and Goldsmild came to my office together one afternoon after returning to London. They’d seen my outburst at Kirtlington. They knew what I sought.
“We’re with you, Mary,” Goldsmild said, when we sat together on the couch. His eyes glittered, and his voice was thick with emotion. “And if you need us to vote for Stanton, we’ll do that, too, if it helps your cause.”
Mantell chuckled. “Besides, my wife would kill me if I voted against the first woman geomagician.”
I embraced them both, overwhelmed with gratitude. That was two votes we’d assumed locked in for Buckland—but I had won them over.
Still, we couldn’t spread word too widely, or we risked it getting back to Davies, who would do his own lobbying to counteract ours. Henry feared he might even decline to retire at all, if he learned of the plan to nominate me.
I tried to distract myself. I studied the crowd through the coach window, the harried women in aprons and bonnets, with babies or loaves of bread in their arms. Men with hats and coats and scowls.
Hawkers with popping sausages and gloves and shoes.
It looked like any normal day, at first glance.
But on second, there was a sour tension in the air—in sidelong glances and sharply turned cheeks.
And I lost count of how many wore the black armbands around their upper arms after I hit twenty-five.
Three constables in crisp, clean uniforms were pressing through the crowd.
I couldn’t hear the exchange over the sounds of the street, but I watched one of the officers shove an arm-banded man against the wall of the bakery.
He spat in the constable’s face, and one of the other lawmen threw a punch.
Our coach rolled past, and I had to crane my neck as the tension burst into a brawl, shouts and shoving and other bodies rushing in to join.
The coachman must have seen, too, because the horses picked up their pace, and soon we were too far away to see.
I sat back in my seat, chewing my thumbnail. So much for distraction.
I counted and then recounted likely votes in my head. Henry and I hoped that the vote for my nomination would fall out along the same lines we expected for the presidency. But we couldn’t swear by it. There was no way to campaign for votes without giving away the game.
Which meant Henry and I had no real sense of who would back me, and who would balk, once my name came up. We were going in blind.
I’d imagined my nomination to the Geomagical Society of London in a thousand different daydreams over the last fifteen years.
But I’d had no idea what Palmanaeus House looked like, or how to picture the hall in which geomagicians gathered for their annual meetings.
Sometimes I pictured it like a grand opera house; other times, like the cozy interior of the parish church.
In some of these fantasies, I stood on a stage before the crowd, and in others, I was in the center of an arena.
But in every fantasy, I was there, standing in the room, basking in the applause as the geomagicians welcomed me into their ranks.
The reality was far different.
“Unfortunately, you won’t be permitted inside the auditorium,” Henry had explained when he snuck me into the wings.
Instead I stared into the swaying black curtains that separated me from the stage. I paced back and forth behind the folds of rippling velvet, my nerves so charged, I thought I might combust.
On the other side, President Davies was delivering an overly long, obnoxious speech.
“I am extremely proud of what we have accomplished during my tenure as president. My authorization to investigate the reports of the awakened pterodactyl has yielded unprecedented leaps and bounds in our scientific study.”
I rolled my eyes at the loud applause that followed. Davies couldn’t even bother to say my name. Would they clap that loudly for my nomination?
“And under my leadership, we invested Society resources in the Glasswater Mill, successfully developing the first manifold reliqs in history.”
More applause. I couldn’t help noticing that these accomplishments were due to the two men vying to replace him. Both far greater men than he would ever be.
The self-congratulating went on for a while longer, and then, finally, Davies announced his retirement from the presidency, and there was a thunderous round of applause that went on much too long.
Things moved quickly after that. The secretary cleared his throat and called for nominations for the next president of the Geomagical Society. Conybeare—I recognized his voice—nominated Buckland. And Thomas Reed stood for Henry.
More applause. On the other side of this damn curtain, Buckland would be walking up to the podium to accept the nomination and give a brief speech.
I couldn’t stand it. I darted off the stage and ran, full speed, skirts raised, down the halls. There was no one to see me. They were all in the auditorium. I took the side stairs two at a time, then stood outside the back doors of the gallery, panting to catch my breath.
I opened the door with agonizing slowness; the last thing I needed was sixty heads looking back to see what that creak was.
“…the world is full of doubt,” Buckland was saying. The gallery was empty, thank God, so I closed the door and pressed myself against the wall.
“So many now look around and see change on the horizon, and they fear, and they are led by fear to doubt. To question the goodness and promise of God. Doubt is at the root of all that we see churning around us now: the violence, and anger, and resentment.
“But in the face of an unknown future, we, the Geomagical Society of London”—his voice rang out, and even through my anger, I felt it stirring some noble urge in my chest—“we can unveil the past. And in looking to the past—to proof of God’s promise, and His wisdom, and His miracles…
” His eye caught mine and lingered for a heartbeat.
I held my breath. Regret and admiration and love and anger spun through me. And then his gaze passed on.
“…I pray that we can offer hope.”
He bowed his head and then returned to his seat amidst the applause. He didn’t look up at me again.
Clearly, I was not well hidden here on the balcony. Henry clocked me as soon as he took the podium; I could tell by the twitch in his cheek.
My hands were a sweaty mess, no matter how many times I wiped them on my skirts.
“Hope,” Henry said. He cast his knowing smile around the auditorium, the kind that always made my knees a little weak.
“Our friend Mr. Buckland calls for hope. And I do, too. But where Mr. Buckland finds hope in the past—in the old ways, and old beliefs—I would urge us, instead, to embrace the future. To find hope in what we can do—what geomagic can do.
“The age of machines is upon us, my friends. Of steam. But the world will need minerals, and metal. We can map them. We can find them. We can pull them free of the earth.
“The people clamor for reform. You’ve heard them.
You see them, marching even now in the streets.
And we have the answer. With the manifold reliqs of the Glasswater Mill, we can raise the standard of living tenfold—build clean, wholesome tenements in moments, and yield a thousand times the harvest. We can do that.
We have the future in our hands, gentlemen. ”
He gripped the podium, knuckles white. “Mr. Buckland would pull us back to the past. Tie us to the old ways.” Henry was being very careful not to say the Church. But the allusion was clear to anyone who understood the difference between the two men.
“I don’t want to take us back to the past, like my colleague does. No. Rather, let this be the Age of the Geomagician.”
The applause was deafening. Half the crowd leapt to their feet. I suspected even some of Buckland’s allies had risen for Henry, but it was hard to tell from the back; they all looked the same in their top hats and coats.