Дэвид Нордли - How Beer Saved the World

Eleanor looked up. A pair of round blue-gray eyes separated by a thick nose glared down at her. Two painted lips, redder than holly-berries, pinched together. The thick powder on the woman’s face crinkled. A tart. Despite her fashionable ostrich-plume hat and fur-trimmed coat, this woman wasn’t no lady. Not at all.

“Ye best take the window seat then,” Eleanor said. “I’m getting off soon.”

She stood and moved to the aisle. The tart claimed the seat by the window and hoisted a small valise onto her lap. Did Eleanor really want to hold the eel or have it dance atop her feet on the floor? The train rocked. Maybe she ought to sit down before she fell down.

“Ain’t I good enough,” the tart said, “teh sit next teh the likes a ye?”

“‘Tis nothing to do with ye,” Eleanor said. “The eel’s the problem. He popped out in the station and nearly bit me.”

“Oh, is that all?” The tart reached for the eel sack and shoved it under her side of the seat. “Me and eels, we get along fine, we do.”

Eleanor nodded. She gathered her skirt and sat down. The tart opened her valise and removed a silver hip flask. Her gloved hands unscrewed the lid, producing a yeasty aroma but no spurt of foam. Flat beer. This woman prepared to tipple on a public train? How ill mannered.

“Well, ye don’t expect me teh drink water, now do ye?” The tart tossed back her head and took a swallow. “Water in London ain’t fit teh drink these days, if ye ask me. Will be the end of the empire if somebody don’t stop this bloody epidemic.”

“London’s seen cholera before,” Eleanor said. That had been in the 1850’s, hadn’t it? When London’s drinking water had mingled with its sewage. She’d heard about Master Harte taking sick back then. Luckily, she’d not been born until 1864.

“This cholera ain’t nothin’ like the old one, mark me words.” The tart took another swallow. “Everybody down in the East End’s sayin’ anarchists started it. Them blokes got a secret way of spreadin’ it, ye see. Tis the beginnin’ of the end of our world, I’m afeared.”

End of the world? Cholera wasn’t the plague. Not anyhow. Eleanor’s muscles tensed. There was that wretched odor of sulfur and bogwood again. Like in Master Harte’s library last night. She bolted to standing and surveyed the surrounding passengers. The ladies across the aisle pinched their noses. Where did the stink come from?

Eleanor moved into the aisle, clutching a seat back as the train swayed. Several high-pitched voices shrieked from behind her. She spun half-way around to face the tart. Only an empty window seat was there now. No tart. No eel. No valise. All three was blooming gone.

Men in Eleanor’s train car barked conflicting orders. Ladies wailed. A young woman swooned. Only minutes had passed since the tart had dissolved in mere air. The panic around Eleanor spread faster than cholera ever could.

Now a whistle blast sounded. The underground train rolled into the Hyde Park station.

“Ladies and children out the door first,” a man shouted.

Several women carrying closed parasols jostled Eleanor and pushed their way around her toward the train’s exit. Did they think she was a blasted turnstile? She wanted off this train, too, even if this wasn’t Kensington Station.

“Excuse me,” Eleanor said. “A bit of order is in order.”

Her ears caught a muffled noise. She glanced behind her, where the tart had been. A round trinket lay on the seat. The color of gold, it was. Had the woman worn a lapel pin?

The thing moved, walking on tiny metal limbs. This was some sort of miniature clockwork toy: a beetle automaton with ruby eyes. Expensive looking. She grasped the bejeweled beetle and turned it over in her palm. No engraving. Just a tiny clockface rimmed by several pairs of limbs and an unmatched extra. Insect limbs always came in even numbers. One limb must have broken off. Master Harte sometimes built small automatons. This would interest him. She slid the trinket into her purse and followed the other passengers.

Eleanor climbed down from the coach car. The station clock chimed the hour of five. A memory bubbled up but she couldn’t yet grasp it. She headed down the platform. A crowd of passengers yammered at the conductor. She skirted around them. A shudder shot through her, the same as when entering Master Harte’s library the night before. The houndstooth coat man. She’d caught a glimpse of him on the train up from Brighton today. The bleeding rogue had followed her most of the afternoon.

Why hadn’t he followed Master Harte? Maybe the knave figured the Master would notice him. Too bad the eel and its secret was gone. One thing for sure, the rogue’s magic could pry windows in the air open. The tart’s beer must have closed the cavity. Why had the woman and Parker vanished when Master Harte had not? Where had their bodies gone? A passageway to Hell wouldn’t have swallowed up Parker, a good chap. Eleanor climbed the staircase toward the street. Nothing made sense.

A staircase was like a passageway. Could the world have secret passageways? Only a spirit or a devil would do well in using them, all stinking of sulfur and bogwood. Crikey. Master Harte could be in danger right now. Eleanor reached the street. At least them anarchists today’s newspaper reported about had left. She set off in the direction of Kensington.

A hansom cab waited beside the lamppost ahead. A cab was a luxury for her. Brighton House money sat in her hidden pocket. Eleanor hailed the driver. He passed her an odd look as she prepared to climb inside.

“Ye haven’t been over near Whitechapel,” he said, “now have ye?”

“No,” she replied. No doubt the epidemic of cholera concerned him. She gave him the address of the inventors’ club. “Please hurry.”

Once inside the cab, Eleanor leaned back in her seat. The horse trotted, shod hooves clicking against cobblestones. It would be best to transfer cab money to her purse. She unbuttoned her coat and slid her hand into her hidden pocket. Next, her fingers loosened the drawstrings on her bag. Something tickled the side of her finger.

Her fingers plucked up the clockwork beetle. The trinket had a soft tick and whirr. A murky memory ruminated in the back of her mind. Fading daylight filtered in through the window. She turned the beetle on its back and counted its moving limbs. Well, this was no proper beetle. The bejeweled bug would have had ten limbs if one hadn’t broken off. A beetle with nine limbs, indeed!

Nine legs? Wait a bleeding minute. Eleanor sucked in a quick breath of air. The message Master Harte had given her had said to beware the nine. This was a “nine.” Plus she’d heard the same faint whirr and ticking after she’d purchased her train ticket. Eleanor swallowed hard. The houndstooth bloke must have planted this beetle in her eel sack. What evil was the automaton designed to do? Could the thing open windows in the air? Did the clock mechanism determine when? Holy saints and Trinity! Eleanor’s heartbeat sounded in her ears.

The hansom cab lurched one way and then the other. Eleanor thrust the beetle back into her purse and pulled the drawstrings tight. She’d heard no whirring in Master Harte’s library last night. Still, the cavity could have opened earlier in the evening before Parker unknowingly carried the beetle to London. No, someone would have noticed the offensive odor.

Maybe the beetle only unlocked the air’s window. A person might have to step in the proper place to vanish. Yet why had a fermented beverage helped Master Harte but not Parker or the tart? Eleanor clasped her hands together. Did the closeness of the beetle to the beer trigger the violent swallowing action? After taking Parker, had the beetle returned to the houndstooth knave through a secret passageway in air?