K Jeter - Infernal Devices

Regardless, he lacked either the capability or the desire to furnish enlightenment concerning the ugly doll. I laid the thing aside for future pondering, and picked up the coin from the tablecloth.

The sovereign glittered between my thumb and forefinger. As before, a comforting weight and shape to the hand, with the shield on one side, and on the obverse – the profile of, not Queen Victoria, but rather the doll's exophthalmic twin. The craft employed in the coin's depiction was finer, of a quality equal to that ever used to show a monarch of the realm. With what self-assurance as such repulsive features could muster, the figure – I assumed it to be male, from the old-fashioned short periwig shown above the sloping forehead – gazed towards the coin's margin. If the denizens of the sea had wished to acclaim themselves a ruler, the profile might have been that of their most noble candidate.

An inscription ran underneath. I held the coin up to read the words. They identified the personage as one Saint Monkfish.

Such a figure was outside any calendar of saints of which I was aware. Admittedly, my religious education had been sparse: the aunt who had reared me had little interest of her own, other than maintaining the conventions of respectability, and had received no instructions from my father on the point. Indeed, the disastrous affair at Saint Mary Alderhythe had been the only occasion in adulthood of my entry into a church for other than a funeral service. Even now, such accumulated grim experience produced an involuntary shudder in me if I merely passed by any sanctified premises. Thus, so narrow was the compass of my Christian knowledge, I could not be without doubt, as I gazed at the coin in my hand, that there wasn't a Saint Monkfish somewhere in the minor hagiology – perhaps the patron of truly ugly people? A vision came to me of those facial deformities that we pass hurriedly on the street, dropping alms into upturned hands while averting our eyes; perhaps those unfortunates made their devotions at the shrine kept in some church's darkest corner, where they and their intercessor would be hidden from pitying gaze.

My mind was filled with conjecture and query, raised by the two strange objects before me. I resolved upon a course of immediate investigation; there was no work in the shop, other than the mahogany cabinet that the Brown Leather Man had left with me. Even if I had felt my cerebral powers up to the task of examining and repairing the device, my thoughts were too preoccupied with what mysterious connections there might be between the clockwork assemblage, the ugly doll, and the coin with its curious saint. Perhaps the dullness that is engendered by long periods of poverty, and the lack of sociability and amusement that it entrails, had bred in me a thirst for that which we should name Folly, but prefer to call Adventure. Things which a wiser man would dismiss as mere coincidence or oddities too trivial for notice, had claimed my attention. In a small velvet bag, ordinarily used to preserve the polished metal of a watch lying in the counter drawer, I placed my two small curios, and pulled the drawstring tight. I instructed Creff to keep the shop's window shutters down, and to inform any callers that I would resume business on the next day; then I set out to discover what I could do.

The parish church was situated closest to my shop. I made for it as my first point of inquiry, resolving thereby, if not to banish my fear of churches, to at least swallow the bitter pill of a visit to one before anticipation could make it worse.

Begrimed windows cast dim shapes of the coloured glass upon the stone floor as I peered around the arched wooden doors. A few candles guttered and flared in the draughts whispering around the pillars, revealing the huddled shapes of those at prayer or in surreptitious slumber after a cold night shuffling over the pavements that provided them their only home. A thin figure, whom I took to be the verger, left off clearing cobwebs from the corners of one of the larger pews, the point of the willow branch in his gnarled hand swathed in dusty spider silk, and shuffled towards me.

"I wish to see the parson," I informed him. I let the church door creak shut behind me, thus completing the gloom inside its buttressed walls.

"Do ye, then?" His age and labours bent him in such a way that his neck protruded at a right angle from his hollow chest, giving him a tortoise-like appearance reinforced by the snap of his near-toothless jaws. "If ye're another scroof come round with yer bunkum letters of reference, ye kin just bugger off. The parson's been burned fair enough times on that dodge to rickinize one of yer ilk be now." His yellow eye glared at me, as if he were about to snip my arm between his Punch-like nose and chin.

"You mistake me," I protested. "I've no intention of asking for money." Evidently, the clergyman had been the victim of those professional beggars who gain sympathy, and a sizeable gift, through their portrayal of distressed gentility. "Only information – that's all I seek. I have a few questions of a… theological nature."

"Bloody likely," muttered the verger. He did; however, lead me to the rectory attached to the church.

I was soon ushered into the parson's study, the only ornament within its severe confines being the thick volumes of sermons lining the walls. The smell of their aged morocco bindings mingled with the fumes still rising from a blackened clay pipe resting in a bowl on the desk. From behind it the aged clergyman rose, pushing himself upright with a well-worn blackthorn cane, as the verger coughed out some vague introduction before retiring behind the door.

The parson, beneath the grey tangle of his brows, glared at me with little less suspicion, as a mariner might peer through a dense sea fog to discern the friendliness of another ship spotted in pirate-filled waters. "Your name was…?" he growled with no attempt at polite formality.

"Dower, sir." I approached the desk. "George Dower. Of this parish, actually."

He lowered himself back into his chair. "I seem to have some memory of your face," he mused. "But not here in the church." He gestured brusquely at a point near me.

I sat down in the smaller chair he had indicated. "My attendance at services has been… irregular. Perhaps, on the street – my shop is nearby." In truth, his lined, scowling visage bore some reminder for me as well – but from where and what time I could not then recall.

His disordered white mane brushed his collar as he shook his head. "I do not go out from here." He raised his cane for explanation. "My mobility has been impaired for some time." His blunt hands folded across the papers on the desk as he leaned forward. "Your business, sir – I have pastoral matters to attend to."

"I only require a moment of your time," I said. "I'm attempting to find out whatever I can about a certain saint. Rather an obscure one, I feel. And I'd be grateful for whatever help you could give me."

"A saint, you say?" He nodded, frowning reflectively. "Well, that is a praiseworthy endeavour – the lives of the blessed should be an inspiration to us. Very commendable, I'm sure. What period?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"When," said the clergyman patiently, "did this saint of yours live?"

"I have absolutely no idea."

"Hm." He studied me, my commendable nature apparently lowered in his eyes. "Very well – this saint's name, then."

I gathered my breath before speaking: "Saint Monkfish, actually.

"

"Indeed." One shaggy eyebrow arched as he pinched his lower lip between thumb and forefinger; my query had apparently plunged him deep into thought. "Saint Monkfish, you say."

"Yes," I replied eagerly. "You know of him?"

He mused in silence, rubbing his lip.

"You see, I came across the name in rather a peculiar way." I brought out the velvet bag and undid its drawstring. "I was given this coin-"