Chapter One
Beneath blue silk awnings a menagerie whirrs into
life. Velvet coated leopards pad behind screens of un-wilting silver trees and
do not disturb in the least the enamelled, jewel eyed peacocks who fan their
feathers and dance around each other. Still the band plays on their sightless
polished eyes staring at their music sheets, their instruments plucked and
pressed in precise movements intended to bring nothing more than the
appropriate climax. Merciless, no sooner have they finished than they return to
the beginning. These are the achievements of an age of clockwork and steam (see
how realistic the leopard’s moist breath is). They will certainly be a
highlight of the ice fair. Every year, Montenoix holds its ice fair because
every year the river through the capital and the little lake which adjoins the
river freeze solid. Perhaps one day the river will fail to freeze but this
seems unlikely. The Weather here obeys its own laws. No one can remember the
first fair but the history books speak of a brave and enterprising pie maker
who crept out onto the ice one morning and set out his stall. Nervously,
slipping in their clogs, his customers came and continued to come. They were
emboldened by pie and, to a far greater extent, by a barrel of good strong ale
dragged out by the local bar keeper. They began to craft makeshift sleds and
skates, lit braziers and talked in the dark blue hours of twilight about how
they would do this again next year if the waters froze. Unfortunately, although
history clings to this charming story the names have been forgotten. They
vanish out of sight like pennies slipping through cracks in the ice never to be
seen again. Such is the way with the lives of peasants. Someone should write a
book about this. No matter, we are with Camille now and Camille’s principal
concern is whether or not her clockwork menagerie will sell. There are
certainly many boastful dandies who might believe such lifelike creature to be
the perfect garnish to a banquet or a ball. The question is: can they be
persuaded to part with real gold to make their vision a reality?
The only person she knows
for certain will visit her pavilion is her brother Jon. She also knows for
certain that he has not got any money. He is after all but a humble librarian.
Albeit, a librarian to a noble family. Sadly, by his account not one likely to
be swayed by such outré art as she has produced.
‘No one will know,’ Jon says as he helps Louis down
from the cab they rented. ‘We will see my sister’s clockwork and then we shall
vanish into the crowds.’
‘Yes.’ Louis said. How he
longs already to vanish. How he longs for the strangest things. He longs to run
away, with Jon, into the woods and grow a pelt like a fox. Freed from all
convention they can sleep out the winter in a deep den underground. But he
takes Jon’s arm, holds it tight as they wind their way to Camille’s pavilion.
He is dazzled as they step in. Against his will, for he would rather have had
an excuse to slip away, he stands entranced by a cage of flapping calling
exotic birds as Jon goes to make his greetings to his sister. It seems
inappropriate now for Louis to introduce himself. How would he describe their
relationship to her? He should think of some clever and cunning pseudonym, the
kind a romantic heroine might have, something long and elegant. He toys with
the idea of sweeping in clad in a flowing black cape and silken mask. He would
sweep off the mask as he takes his hostess (or indeed his hosts) hand. Showering
kisses upon the fingers as he introduces himself as La Comte Mystere. The brush
of a Leopard against his leg and the brief shock of such intimacy with a
predator bring him back to his senses. He really must go to the theatre less
often it is utterly clouding his senses but there are times when he would
rather live in a world of dreams. The pavilion is filling up now. Little crowds
of people knot around the birdcages; women in feather plumage which seems
somehow less magnificent than its imitation and men in fur collared coats which
merge with the moving animals. There is a general clamour of excitement as
children dare each other to pet the big cats. Little hands fly out, little
cries of delight are heard then the hands plunge back into the safety of gloves
and pockets.
The sound of trumpets cuts
through the air. People jump back and Louis feels Jon’s hand in his again
gently tugging him back into the shadows. A leather clad finger presses to his
lips and demands his silence.
Here comes the Princess
Amandine stepping down from her carriage in a fanfare of trumpets and a cloud
of heady oriental perfume. Her long velvet train ripples over the ice. The
colour is bright, vivid blue as dazzling as a sapphire, seeming to twinkle with
as many facets. She looks as if she has been carved out of the ice. Her guards
follow after her, hands poised on their glittering swords, heels clicked
together. They are toy soldiers but not quite so uniform. Look a little more
closely and one might see how the captain inclines more towards his Princess,
how his eyes pass over her as if contemplating something truly remarkable. Look
more closely at the Princess herself and one would see how little she sleeps.
Her eyes are tired; her skin glistens a little less beneath them. She tries to
hide this. She is here to do her duty for it is her job to open this fair
officially as she does every year. One swift snick of the scissors a few words
upon the beauty of the season (how closely this land is allied with winter) and
how wonderful the invention of these stalls will be. Now she moves amongst them
her duty done but her curiosity not yet satisfied. It would be inaccurate to
say that she is only human but she is by no means immune to boredom. So she visits
each pavilion in turn. She lingers when she reaches Camille’s fantastical
animals. She pauses to examine, at a proximity which would make a mortal
nervous, the musicians. She looks at their fingers upon the keys of their
pianos, she looks at their lips upon the lips of flutes, she examines their
mother of pearl fingernails and their polished glass eyes, and she touches
their hair made from delicate strands of silk, finer and glossier than any head
of human hair.
Their chests seem to her to
move as if they conceal hearts and surely their velvet upholstered lips are
made for kissing? What is a human being? Not just the tangle one sees on a
surgeons table surely. Can a thing be made to be human? She has never thought
of this before. Now it seems quite
possible to Amandine that she has missed something rather obvious. If fate will
not bring her brother’s true love to her door then why should she not build him
or her within the hall? A suitor already there, perfectly tailored to suit the
specifications of her brother’s heart. Ah, but how to know those? No matter,
she will cross that bridge when she comes to it.
‘Madam, would you come with
me?’ Camille looks up from the snake she is winding and sees a Guardsman
standing over her. He has thick sideburns which border upon the English fashion
for mutton chops and steel coloured eyes. His tall hard hat is tucked under his
arm. She lets the snake go and it writhes from her hands onto the floor,
vanishing off amongst the fair goers skirts. He will give someone a shock like
that.
‘Why?’ Camille has never
done what she is asked to do without first asking her own questions.
‘The Princess,’ here the
Guard pauses to inhale deeply and clicks his heels together loudly, ‘would like
to speak with you.’
‘What about?’ Camille asks. The
guard looks utterly horrified at this. He plucks at the plume on his helmet.
‘That is not for me to
know.’
‘Very well then, so who are
you? I suppose that is a question you can answer?’
‘Certainly,’ he says, ‘I am
Captain Albert San Valentine.’
‘What an elaborate name.’
‘It was my father’s name and
his fathers and his father’s before him.’ The Captain says with a glimmer of
pride.
‘And I take it that if you
have a son you will also call him Albert san Valentine?’ Camille says as she
puts on her coat and adjusts her fur hat on top of her elaborate coiffure.
‘I have not thought of the
day I have a son.’ The Captain sighs. ‘However, were I to have a son I think it
is high time that we added a new name to the family tree. It is becoming rather
hard to read.’
The captain of the Guard in
his stiff uniform twined and buttoned with gold leads her across the ice. He
offers her his arm from time to time in a stiff show of chivalry. They are
heading towards a vast carriage the colour of summer violets. The coat of arms
painted beneath the silk curtained window tells Camille at once whose carriage
this is. A shiver runs up her back. The lives of Clockmakers and Princesses
usually do not cross. Has she offended her sovereign with her wind up
menagerie? The guard knocks on the window, a little too softly at first and
then with flushed cheeks he knocks a little harder. The window is lowered and from
the depths of the carriage the Princess leans forward. She rests her gloved
hand on the sill. She smiles very briefly before the smile is dashed from her
face by a strange twist of regret. Papers spill from the Princess’s lap down
into the body off the carriage like autumn leaves from a tree.
‘You are the clockmaker who
made the peacocks and the violinist?’ The Princess asks. ‘They tell me you are
but I would have you say it yourself.’
‘Yes, I am the clockmaker.’
Camille says.
‘And do you believe that you
can fashion anything out of clockwork?’
‘Most things, yes, your
highness, I believe that I can.’
‘How real might they be?’
the Princess asked. ‘I saw that your automata seemed to breathe. They seemed to
smile at times but still their eyes were silent. Could you make them more alive
than they are now?’
‘With time.’ Camille said.
She had considered the problem of thought before. She had created things which
seemed to think but she had destroyed them all.
‘Time.’ The Princess sighed. ‘Well, I have
waited long enough what is another dozen years or a dozen more on top of a
hundred years.’
‘I am not sure what you are
asking of me, your highness?’ Camille said.
‘I am not sure myself. Not
entirely. The idea has only just entered my mind as I looked around your
pavilion. I saw, I think the solution to a question which I have long asked
myself.’ There is a long pause. ‘Would you accept a commission from me, madam?
There will be no penalty if my hopes proof foolish. They often have before.’
How could one say no to such
an offer?
‘Yes, your Highness.’
Camille said. She moved to kiss the Princesses hand but her gesture was waved
away.
‘There is no need. It is a
hand like any other it has done good and it has done bad but I have never known
it to do those who kiss it the least good or evil either way. You should know,
if you work for me, that I am not actually a stamp.’
Though Camille thought, now
that she saw the Princess up close, the stamp captured a remarkable likeness
but not the warmth or brightness or those eyes. It was almost as if a fever
burned through them.
‘I will send a carriage for
you tomorrow. You do not need to tell me your address. I know where every one
of my subjects is.’ He fingers squeeze Camille’s fingers. The gesture is
strangely human and undignified but it makes her easier to like. ‘I thank you.’
The carriage rattles off up the bank; the
plumed black horses that draw it straining up the incline with foggy snorts.
The Guards come jogging after the carriage to push its wheels free before they
freeze to the spot.
Camille turns and makes her
own way back across the ice. Skaters were beginning to cut patterns and swirls
amongst the tents. Tiny female Domovoi, less often seen than their men folk,
wrapped in rose printed shawls and thick felted skirts have pulled a painted
sledge (its pattern matching their shawls exactly) bearing great silver
samovars into the midst of the crowd . They are serving tea in cups and saucers
none of which match, all of which are patterned with roses. They are charitable
to those who look too poor to pay the penny price of a cup but woe betides
those who can pay but hope to get something for nothing. Small hands slap and
claw at them, strange curses in a tongue most do not understand rain down on
them till they are forced to pay, blood staining the coins in their hands. Soon
the pockets of the Domovoi’s white starched aprons are bulging with coins. Not
greedy creatures themselves they do not even taste the tea they serve but from
time to time, when unobserved, they take swift, ecstatic sips from the milk
urn. Their tea is marvellous, lightly spiced and sweet. Camille pauses for a
cup. Sits on one of the benches hewn from logs and considers the Princesses proposition.
She has not yet been told what she is expected to make. She knows very little
about the Princess save what everyone knows from reading the Saturday
illustrated papers; she is as good a ruler as they have ever had but then, as
she has ruled for a hundred years or more there is no one who can recall a time
before her. She is beautiful and sophisticated but then she should be should
she not when her mother was the most beautiful of the fae and her great, great
grandmother was a mermaid of such renown that there are still stories told
about her. There are also myths told about the Princess, that she will vanish
into thin air someday as her mother did before her and what will they do then
with no clear heir to take over the country? There are myths that her brother
does indeed lie in a deep sleep somewhere in the palace and will wake who knows
when. Though, ideally he would wake when she vanishes and then they will all be
saved.
Out of the corner of her eye
as she stands she thinks she sees her brother and the young man who accompanied
him gliding along on skates. Their arms are twined about each other’s waists
and their heads rest upon each other’s shoulders. She smiles for them. How very
like Jon it is that he should forget to tell her a little thing like his being
in love.
