The Story of Cirrus Flux Read online

  “Nutmegs!” he cursed, managing to stagger to his feet—bruised, shocked, but luckily unhurt.

  Cirrus was there in a flash, fending off the crows with his stick. But it was no good. The birds were leaping all around them now, rising and falling like black flames. Wings fanned their faces. Talons brushed their hair. With a shout, the two boys grabbed their things from the base of the tree and raced across the neighboring field toward the hospital, more than a hundred yards away.

  The crows followed in pursuit.

  Kraa-aak! Kraa-aak! Kraa-aak! they cried, skimming low as the boys ducked and darted through the grass, holding their jackets above their heads to protect them from the diving, shrieking birds.

  Then, halfway across the field, the crows suddenly stopped. They suspended their attack and fluttered back to the Gallows Tree, as though nothing had happened. They settled in the topmost branches.

  Silence fell.

  The boys slowed to a crawl and then dropped thankfully against the wall of the hospital.

  “I’ve a good mind to stone them crows,” said Bottle Top savagely, wiping a sleeve across his brow, which was streaked with sweat and tiny ribbons of blood where the branches had scratched him. “That bird bit me!”

  “Which bird?”

  “The one in the nest.”

  “Show me.”

  Cirrus grabbed his friend’s wrist and swiftly uncurled his fingers. At the tip of one of them was an angry white welt.

  “That weren’t no crow,” said Cirrus knowingly. “You been burned.”

  He peered back at the Gallows Tree, thinking of the feathers he had seen on the ground, and noticed a figure advancing toward them from Black Mary’s Hole. A man in a dark blue coat and a tricorne hat.

  “Who is he?” asked Bottle Top, who had also spotted him. “He looks just like a highwayman.”

  “Dunno,” said Cirrus, feeling a shiver of recognition creep up his spine, “but I think he’s been watching the hospital.”

  Neither boy moved, but they both looked on nervously as the man stopped beside the Gallows Tree and pulled a short, blunt instrument from the depths of his coat. He aimed it, gleaming, in their direction.

  “He’s got a pistol!” shrieked Bottle Top, scurrying behind Cirrus for protection.

  The two boys backed against the wall, breathing hard, and then jumped as a loud noise clanged violently behind them. Mrs. Kickshaw was in the garden, ringing the bell.

  “Cirrus! Abraham!” she called.

  Bottle Top sagged with relief. “I’m off!” he gasped.

  He was gone in an instant—scrambling round the corner of the hospital, past the burial plot at the back, to the place where they’d tied the old hemp rope to an overhanging branch so they could clamber over the wall unaided—leaving Cirrus alone to face the swarthy gentleman at the far end of the field.

  For a long, disturbing moment the man trained his sights on the boy and then, as Mrs. Kickshaw called out their names once more, he finally lowered the brass instrument and turned to face the tree.

  He raised a steady forearm in the air.

  At first, Cirrus thought he might be waving or signaling in some way, but then one of the crows swooped down from an upper branch and settled on the man’s shoulder, close to his ear, where it proceeded to nibble on the rim of his hat. To Cirrus, looking on aghast, it seemed for all the world as though the bird were telling him a secret.

  And then, without glancing round, the man headed back the way he had come—down the long winding path to Black Mary’s Hole—while the other birds took to the air and followed silently like a pack of thieves.

  The House in Midas Row

  Pandora’s heart was pounding. No sooner had Madame Orrery drawn attention to her place behind the curtain than Mr. Chalfont had pulled her out of hiding and escorted them into the adjoining study. He rang a little bell to summon a maid and then bent down to check a tag Pandora wore on a chain round her neck.

  “Number four thousand and two,” he said, walking over to a large wooden cabinet against the wall.

  He selected a thick leather ledger from one of the shelves and carried it to a table, where he began thumbing through it, running his fingers up and down the columns of neat handwriting. He came to a stop in mid-May 1771.

  “Ah, here we are. Child number four thousand and two,” he said. “Female, approximately three days old, in reasonable health.” He glanced up from the book and his voice clouded over. “Delivered with a twin brother, later deceased.”

  Pandora stared at the floor, her ears burning. For a moment she was no longer in the Governor’s study, but was standing in a drafty kitchen somewhere in the country. An enormous woman—Mrs. Stockton, the woman employed to be her nurse—lay on the ground in front of her, an empty mug of kill-grief in her hand, while in the corner, still alive, stood a small, sniveling boy, his nostrils caked with snot and his cheeks blotched by fever.… Her brother.

  The tears came again.

  “Good heavens, child. Do not cry!” said Mr. Chalfont, rushing to her side.

  She was back in the Governor’s study, on a rug before the fire.

  He crushed her into his arms, nearly suffocating her, until all she could feel was the edge of his neckcloth biting into her skin. Then he straightened.

  “I know. How about some ginger? There is no ill that cannot be cured by ginger!”

  He dashed to a slim writing desk by the window and withdrew a small japanned tin from an inside drawer. Pandora could see some of his other possessions, too: a shiny silver locket, a tortoiseshell comb and a peculiar pendant shaped like a globe. A portrait of a woman hung above the desk.

  The Governor noticed the direction of her gaze and quickly closed the drawer.

  “She was my wife,” he said, indicating the oval portrait and holding out the tin in front of Pandora. “She died not long after we were married.”

  Pandora did not know what to say, but reached into the tin, as instructed, and selected one of the golden nuggets for herself.

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Chalfont. “Now pop it in your mouth.”

  Pandora cradled the gem of ginger in her hand, treasuring its flame of color, and then placed it experimentally on her tongue. A small fire erupted in the center of her mouth, and her face crimsoned with the unexpected heat.

  Mr. Chalfont looked delighted. “There now,” he said, dabbing at her cheeks with his handkerchief. “All better?”

  Pandora nodded dutifully and turned her attention to Madame Orrery, who was studying a large oil painting above the mantel—a seascape featuring a fully rigged ship surrounded by cliffs of ice.

  “The Voyage of the Destiny,” remarked the woman, reading an inscription on the frame. “An unusual subject for a hospital, is it not?”

  “Not at all,” said the Governor, helping himself to a large piece of ginger and returning to the table. He pulled a document from a sheaf of papers and started filling in some of the details with a quill. “There was once a time when many of our boys were sent to sea. Several of them even served on the Destiny.”

  “Is that so?”

  Madame Orrery turned to watch him closely and then perused the other objects in the room: a spyglass on a nearby table, a nautilus shell on a shelf and a model ship sailing across a desk. Finally, her eyes settled on a row of cabinets against the wall. They were lined with slender drawers, one of which was partially open, revealing a tangled heap of objects inside.

  “Tell me, Mr. Chalfont,” she said, moving closer. “What do you keep in here?”

  Pandora tightened her grip on the scrap of fabric in her pocket, praying the Governor would not discover her theft. She knew exactly what the drawers contained: hundreds of trinkets laid out in trays, each corresponding to a child in the hospital.

  “Tokens,” answered Mr. Chalfont. “Buttons, rings, bits of folded paper. Anything the poor mothers can find to identify their children when they leave them here at the hospital.”

  The woman looked u
p, intrigued. “And is there a token for each child?” she asked.

  “But of course. It is a condition of the hospital.” Mr. Chalfont set his quill to one side. “Most of the mothers are maids or young women down on their luck when they arrive at the hospital. The tokens they leave are normally objects of personal significance but little value. Something for their children to remember them by, that is all. We record each item here,” he said, indicating the ledger on the table in front of him, “on the off chance they might one day be in a position to reclaim them. Their children, I mean, and not their tokens.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and gazed into the distance. “Though, I fear, this is seldom the case.”

  Madame Orrery opened one of the drawers and picked through its contents. “How … tragic,” she said at last, dusting her fingers on her dress.

  She continued inspecting the drawers while the Governor busied himself with his paperwork.

  “And what is it precisely that you do, Madame Orrery?” he enquired after a while, pausing to dip his quill in some ink.

  She turned to face him. “I am a mesmerist,” she said. “I cure the body and heal the soul. It is a form of animal magnetism.”

  Mr. Chalfont frowned slightly. “I am afraid I am not familiar with that particular branch of natural philosophy,” he said.

  Madame Orrery smiled and walked over to the portrait of his dead wife. She stroked the likeness with her fingers. “I relieve the body of its physical suffering and ease the mind of its spiritual complaints,” she said. “I wipe the mind clean of its painful memories.” She regarded him thoughtfully. “Just one of my sessions, Mr. Chalfont, could alleviate whatever ails you.”

  Mr. Chalfont stood up and cleared his throat. “That won’t be necessary, thank you all the same, Madame Orrery,” he said, his cheeks reddening a little. “And now, if you would be so kind.” He motioned to the form in front of him. “All we require is your signature and the girl will be yours.”

  Pandora felt her chest tighten. A hundred words tangled in her throat all at once, all pleading with the Governor not to let her go, but the man merely smiled when he noticed her distress and she looked on helplessly as the woman sat down at the table and wrote her name in a seamless thread of ink.

  “Very good,” said Mr. Chalfont, clapping his hand on Pandora’s shoulder. “Child number four thousand and two, you are hereby apprenticed to Madame Orrery of Midas Row.”

  A maid arrived with a bundle of clothes, which the Governor pressed into Pandora’s hands, and then he escorted her out of the room and down a series of long dismal corridors to the front of the hospital.

  “You really must let me see to your gout,” said Madame Orrery as he limped beside them.

  “That is quite all right, Madame Orrery,” he said. “I am content to hobble on as I am. And now, if you will excuse me …” He bowed and hurried away.

  Pandora watched him go. Apart from a few years in the country, in the custody of Mrs. Stockton, the nurse who had mistreated her, she had spent most of her life within the confines of the hospital—rising early, attending to her chores and caring for the younger girls—but now the doors were opening up and flinging her out. She was leaving the hospital almost exactly as she had entered it: in the company of a woman who did not want her.

  She blinked away the light that greeted her eyes and made her way to the gate.

  Only once they reached the iron railings separating the Foundling Hospital from the outside world did Madame Orrery pause to consider her young charge. Her face registered her disapproval.

  “What a tiresome girl you are,” she said. “Have you no chest? No other belongings?”

  Pandora shook her head, her voice taking refuge inside her. What little she owned—apart from the change of clothes Mr. Chalfont had hastily thrown into her arms—she wore on her person. She had not even had time to collect her sole possession from its position beneath her pillow in the girls’ dormitory: a prize book Miss Stitchworthy, the instructress, had awarded her for her uncommon ability to read. She glanced at the windows high above her, but there were no friendly faces to see her off.

  “Very well, child. Come along.”

  Two carriages had drawn up to the hospital gate, and Pandora bundled herself inside the one with the silver timepiece enameled on its door. The seats were padded with a thin but luxurious covering of patterned silk, which did little to cushion the hardness of the wood beneath. Madame Orrery squeezed in beside her, her skirts filling most of the space, and the door clapped shut behind them. Immediately the vehicle jolted forward, leaving the hospital in a swirl of dust.

  Curled up in her thoughts, Pandora peered through a gap beside the blind at the passing crowds. She had never seen so many people. Everywhere she looked there were ragged figures rushing through the streets: charwomen carrying baskets of coal and tinder, carters transporting barrels, and barefoot children dodging in and out of cart wheels, hitching rides on the backs of carriages. She watched them for a while, envying their freedom, and then raised her eyes to the tops of the tall buildings, hoping for a glimpse of sky, but all she could see were boarded-up windows, cracked tiles and blackened chimney pots spewing smoke.

  The city, it seemed, had swallowed them.

  Miserably, she groped in her pocket for the piece of fabric she carried with her. Instead, her fingers encountered the sharp stab of metal and she realized with a start that she had failed to return her keys to the Governor. A sudden desire to ask Madame Orrery to stop the carriage and turn round took hold of her. Yet one look at the proud woman sitting next to her convinced her that it was too late. Besides, there was no going back. She was a foundling no more.

  With a shiver, she slid even further into the corner of the carriage and picked at the hem of her uniform. Unlike most of the girls at the hospital, she was hopeless at sewing and had twice been confined to the dark room, an airless chamber below the stairs, for cursing whenever needles stung her fingers. What could Madame Orrery possibly want with a girl like her?

  Eventually the roar of the streets subsided and the near-constant din of hawkers and ballad singers was replaced by the quieter jingle of the horse’s harness and the comforting sound of its hooves clopping against the ground. Madame Orrery finally raised her blind to admit the weak rays of sunlight filtering through the dusty sky.

  Pandora’s mood brightened. She was greeted by the sight of creamy-white houses with dark railings and iron lanterns set on slender poles. What the houses lost in height, they gained in girth and grandeur. There was even a private park with stately elm trees in which the residents could wander.

  Cheered by this discovery, she dismounted from the carriage as soon as it rolled to a stop and followed Madame Orrery up to a large stone house on the eastern side of the square.

  The door was opened almost instantly by a peculiar gentleman in a dove-gray coat. He was no taller than Pandora and dressed in powder-blue breeches, spotless stockings and shoes with prominent heels. Wisps of fine white hair rose like steam from the top of his head. He bowed meekly as they entered and closed the door behind them.

  Pandora found herself in a glacial hall with curtained doorways on either side and a floor so bright she could almost see her reflection in its surface. A central staircase curved like a swan’s neck up to a small balcony that overlooked the main hall. Two thin doors stood at the top of it, guarding an inner apartment.

  Madame Orrery moved beside her.

  “The Governor was a buffoon,” she declared, her voice booming against the smooth white walls. “Though I do believe he is protecting more than just the boy.”

  She took two steps up the marble staircase and stopped. A veil of secrecy fell across her face. “One of my private sessions, I think, Mr. Sorrel, will be in order. I must find my way back to the hospital as soon as possible.”

  The man inclined his head. “As you wish, madam,” he said.

  “Good. Now show this girl to her room and see that she is put to use.”

 
The man gave Pandora a cursory glance and quickly bowed his head.

  “Yes, madam.”

  Without another word, Madame Orrery walked up the remaining steps and disappeared behind the doors at the top of the stairs. Pandora glimpsed a flash of gold and a streak of mirrors, and then she was gone.

  “What is your name?” the man asked her in a high, fluty voice.

  “Pandora, Mr. Sorrel,” she answered, with a curtsy.

  The man’s lips twitched in a smile. “Very well, Pandora. Come this way.”

  Through one of the curtained doorways, she glimpsed a large wooden tub surrounded by a ring of chairs. It was decorated with loose, flowing ribbons and studded with short, elbow-shaped poles.

  “What is in there?” she asked, hanging back.

  “That,” said Mr. Sorrel, sweeping aside the curtain, “is Madame Orrery’s Crisis Room. It is where she reveals her healing powers.”

  Pandora’s eyes widened as she took in the fainting couches along the walls. “Is it true?” she asked, remembering what Madame Orrery had told Mr. Chalfont. “Can she really make people’s memories go away?”

  Mr. Sorrel looked as though she had slapped him across the cheek. “But of course! Madame Orrery is the most celebrated animal magnetist in London. Patients come from far and wide to take advantage of her treatments. It is a most persuasive science. She learned it in Paris from Monsieur Mesmer himself!”

  Pandora noticed an odd-looking instrument in the corner. It resembled a small organ, but for the fact that thirty glass bowls, of varying shapes and sizes, had been arranged on top of it.

  “Ah, the glass harmonica,” said Mr. Sorrel, following her gaze. “It plays the most heavenly music.” He flexed his fingers. “That is my job: to play soothing melodies while patients recover their wits. And now, if you will come this way …”

  Carrying her bundle of clothes, Pandora followed him through to the back of the house and up a series of stairs to the attic.