John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

My arms were beginning to tell me I had not picked the most comfortable posture to support my weight. I am sure Vanity was having similar problems, folded in double above a leafy plant, which threatened to rattle at her least breath. We held our breaths and waited. It reminded me of those medieval tortures where witches were strapped into various positions and unable to move. And Vanity and I were in the role of the witches.

“Well, if’n that’s all, Doctor…”

“I do admit to a curiosity, Mr. Glum. I distinctly heard the clock operation suspend itself. If I may ask, were you the party who interrupted the movements of the clock, and, if so, for what purpose did you do this?”

“Eyah? I were thinkin’ you did it.”

“An unwarranted assumption. As your own finely honed senses no doubt imparted to you, I walked up from the Portrait Gallery while you were within view of the clock, and therefore could not have been at that spot at the time when it was meddled with, absent a certain amount of brisk jogging, which, I hope you will agree, is not in keeping with the dignity of my profession.”

“Hoy. Hum. We should look around. Of course, we sat here jawing for minute atop minute, so the scamps may be well away by now.”

“You have your suspicions, then?”

“Doctor, you is a bright fellow, I know. Here on the grounds there are five of us, our servants and our creatures, and some human beings what teach some of the classes. Who do you s’pose would be sneaking and spying around in the wee hours? It’s Colin, I’ll warrant, maybe the priggish Victor, or the sly one what don’t talk much.”

“May I suggest, then, my dear Grendel, that we have Lelaps scent around the base of the clock? He can tell us who passed by here. Meanwhile, I will check the reading of the hand against my pocket watch, which will enable us to deduce—if both timepieces had been in perfect synchronicity to begin with—how long the grandfather clock was interrupted in operation. The difference between the two times, you see…”

“Your pardon, sir, but old Lelaps can’t talk no more. All these years in the sunlight have robbed the voice clean out of him. He misses the shadows of the Darker World. The trees there are a proper size, and blot up the sun; and he’s a bit bigger himself, deep in the wood. I don’t think he’s going to talk.”

But there was a cough, and the breathing of the huge hound stopped, and then a breathy whisper came, hoarse, and sounding just as a dog would sound if dogs could talk.

“ Two walked here, light of foot, slim and fair. One has hair of sunlight-hue, one as red as flame. The first is a Prelapsarian, from time before the Fall of Man; the second is the Daughter of a King, Alcinuous his name. Neither bears scent of any crime to merit the fate Fates have assigned. Perhaps they are near; or yet perhaps far. Perhaps they will recall what Lelaps did, or did not do, when they have the ascending star.”

“Up now, me bully!” said Mr. Glum. “If you have the scent, go find them! Go!”

We heard the noise of the chain rattling, and a scuffling sound. Mr. Glum was no doubt booting the dog in the rear. The dog growled a bit, but nothing further happened.

Dr. Fell said in a polite and distant voice: “I have a chemical in my office which may render the beast more pliant.”

“Garn! (He just want the redhead for himself, don’t he?) Well, she’s not for you!”

“I suppose the matter is moot, my dear Grendel. All we need do is inform Mrs. Wren that her charges are absent from their beds. This permits us to levy a punishment. Although, I must admit that antics of this type are the very things which, should they be discovered by the Board of Visitors and Governors, might lead to decapitation, defenestration, or crucifixion for all of us. This whole matter would have been more easily arranged if, from the first, we had pretended to be a hospital for the criminally insane, or a penitentiary, rather than an orphanage.”

“Oh, to be sure, Doctor. To be sure. No one would cock an eye at a jailhouse full of babies and toddlers, no one at all. Har har. We should’ve just kept them in the pantry in my mother’s house far beneath the lake water, like what my folk wanted.”

“Originally, we thought the imposture would be needed for a few months, perhaps a year at most. No one foresaw these unfortunate events. It is a shame we were not allowed to kill them once they reached puberty. We certainly do not have the facilities for dealing with fully matured Uranians.”

“Aye, well, there’s no help for it. Even Lelaps is turning against us. Let’s go wake Mrs. Wren.”

And they moved off down the corridor, loud footstomps and sharp staccato footfalls. We continued to hold our breath and hold our positions till the silence was complete.

Then we both collapsed on top of the potted plant, and knocked over the little table. The drape was flung wide by the fall, and dirt from the pot was scattered in a fan across the carpet.

Vanity was laying atop me, her face slack with fear at the huge echoes we had raised, and she said, “We must agree never to tell Victor about this.”

The clatter and noise we had made was so loud, that we ran pell-mell to the front doors, yanked them open, closed them behind us, and threw ourselves headlong over the railing into the bushes to one side of the Main Hall’s stairs.

We held silence for an endless time, while Mr. Glum’s electric torch came back, playing across windows of the Main Hall. He opened the door and peered out into the cold moonlight.

His giant mastiff came bounding out, looked between the marble pilings of the rail, and cocked his head to one side. He seemed to grin. He was looking right at us.

Vanity and I just stared back at him.

The dog threw back his head, and gave tongue.

Mr. Glum, stumping up from behind, said, “You scent ’em boy? You got ’em?”

Howling, the dog now raced away across the lawn, going South, toward the blacksmith sheds.

We crawled on all fours in the other direction, our hands slowly getting numb with the frost. Eventually we got to our feet and ran across the North Lawn to the nearest copse of trees.

I turned to Vanity. My breath came in cold plumes. “Not tell Victor about what? About the talking dog? We have to tell about that.”

“And I cannot believe his first name is Grendel. What kind of name is Grendel Glum?”

“What kind of name is Vanity Fair?”

“Better than Vanity Glum! I don’t want to have a severed head on a post do my wedding. No, we can certainly tell Victor all of that. We just can’t tell him how easily we were caught, knocking the plant over, stopping the clock, all that stuff. The official version is, we were cleverer than the Scarlet Pimpernel, agreed?”

“We should go back. If we are found in bed when Mrs. Wren comes, then we might not be punished.”

“It’s probably too late already, Amelia! Dr. Fell went to go get Mrs. Wren minutes and minutes ago!”

“You know how long it takes to get her awake when she’s been drinking. Come on. We can make it. What other evidence do they have that it was us? I mean, it sounds like they’re pretty skeptical. They’ll think the talking dog was lying.”

“Say that again.”

“Say what again?”

“They’re skeptical. They’ll think the talking dog was lying.”

Vanity and I put all our faith in speed, and did not even try to be quiet. We ran back to the Main Hall. I arrived long before she did. As we agreed, I did not wait for her, but pushed aside the pendulum and stepped into the clock. The panel had not been slid shut (how had Glum missed seeing that?) so I was able to slide through without stopping the clock.