A Part 1 from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thunderslug's idea
Mar. 18th, 2006 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zesty_pintoThat's right, I said Part 1 because this has hit 4,500 words. This is looking more terribly ambitious in scale. Grrrr. After this is done, the next thing I do is going to be no more than 2,000 words AT THE VERY MOST. I'm having fun with the idea, at least, but I hate deadlines.
Whenever Augustine looked at the chronometer chaintailed to his belt, his companion Bulldinger would reactively chime in, “What time is it?” As always, he would reply with a shake of his head before they returned to watching the countryside slideshow itself through the windows of the cabin. It was an event that ran like the ticks of the second meter on that meticulous palm-size machine Augustine pocketed away.
The trip to Belgium was unfantastic, and practically dull, unlike those two days beforehand. But there was little to say that could not be considered amazing when one had made the acquaintance of the great eccentric collector, Count James H. P. Fitzburn. As he stated it, the H.P. meant:
“Heather Penfold. Count James Heather Penfold Fitzburn. Esquire.” The man foppishly corrected himself with a flair that only noble arrogance carried when it mingled in theatrics. A grotesque nose complemented with a thin and excessively oiled moustache that were L-shaped wings. Even his gait, which bore the artificial look of too-high boots and a too-powdered wig made Augustine and Bulldinger feel as though they were enacting a play. “Sirs…?”
A violin played in the background, prominent against the symphony of several instruments within the ballroom. A few male utterances mingled with bubbling female laughter into a giant echo that touched this grand hall.
Augustine blinked.
A pause broke the clockwork of the conversation. The noble continued to hold back his words as he offered intrusive stares out of him in that blank moment. Augustine realized that it was his time to speak, as eccentric as the concept seemed. Nobility loved to speak but rarely engaged in conversation with anyone but themselves.
“Gustine,” came as the quiet response.
This forced the noble to blink.
“Gustine…?” Count James muttered to himself, pausing to hear the full name that men normally were expected to carry even when they were not of high bearing. Between the air that entered and failed to be conceivable, a violin continued to stream between the incompatibility of their conversation before Bulldinger would offer his usual tidbit of words to save the situation.
“Lovely music that you have playing here.”
Count James H.P. Fitzburn immediately chattered to life again at the prospect of potential flattery. While the noble’s white and statue-perfect wig remained untouched by his words, the rest of the artificially tall man gesticulated with joy. His face stretched into a grin that resembled the man’s L-winged moustache (which now stretched almost into sides of a hexagon).
“Yes, lovely, is it not? The Third Symphony of Balcomb, a very interesting man yes… he was said to have written this in the water closet after being attended to by the famous courtesan, Artesia. Oh, but I’m sure you have heard this story…” The man half-muttered as a lure to the two men.
“Balcomb was the owner of the harpsichord?” remarked Bulldinger. Augustine hesitated a sigh of relief at his partner’s save.
“Oh? No, that he was not, no…” The noble’s thoughts misdirected, his florid speech was not undone. This allowed the man to not note this change. “If anything, the owner was a… cherished eccentric, I should say?”
“I see, and a name?” Bulldinger controlled this conversation. Augustine looked to the ground, obviously incompatible between their dialogue.
“A name?”
“The one that robbed you of a piece of your opulence, Count?” He remembered to add that title since it was obvious he was jading himself to them.
“Oh, yes! Yes!” The L-shaped crescents of that moustache wiggled some more. “A minor hedge lord, some man that recently owned his plot of land and claims he bears some lineage to earn that title when all he really did was impress the Kaiser with some knickknack that he paraded for him during one of his ceremonies. Utterly revolting, that.”
“Oh, that sounds terribly… gauche.” A word that only the wealthy or those attempting to be wealthy would use. “What is his name?”
“Is it not? Dreadful. He is the ‘Count’ of Fred. Ridiculous sounding, is it not? ‘Fred.’ What kind of house name is that?” Bulldinger cut in after he sensed a long rant.
“We will be sure to dishonor him for you, just tell us what you wish recollected.”
“Oh? Yes, wonderful. He has my…” The noble’s pause seemed deliberate, as though he was listening still to a violin sonata that continued to flit in the air before his senses returned. “-musician. A young girl that he plans on doing more with than one should ever imagine. You will need travel money to compensate, I imagine? Of course you do. Servant! Fetch them ten guineas. The remaining forty will be given at the return, I assure you. Now that all that’s settled, let me send you on your way. Good day!” With that, they were ushered out by the arms of four large men.
Ten pounds sterling was indeed quite a bit of capital. Unfortunately, eccentricism convinced the noble to offer them their money in farthings, and the two paid for their extensive trip out of an overweight carpetbag that contained almost ten thousand of the brass coins.
When the speckled stone and wood houses of the outskirts of Belgium, Augustine did not look at his watch, nor did Bulldinger ask. Time continued to tick as the seconds on the chronometer in Augustine’s pocket.
Past the steam and coal fumes of the train station and along the cobbled roads where horse-drawn and horseless carriages clopped against that ground, the two did not walk long before finding a barren looking apartment of slate and wood, all of it as dark as though fire had tasted it before. Their bodies wheezed as they stopped to undo the locks, but it was not a long walk.
“Farthings.” Was the only thing Bulldinger could choose to wheeze among the many other words that reflected his perplexion at their current situation. Lugging a bag that was almost as heavy as their own bodies, engineers and bike makers rarely engaged in heavy lifting for prolonged periods of time, let alone ones that retired from their profession.
After all doors were undone, a slow and painful lift of the sack finally reached an office of wooden desks and bookshelves, and the clutter of brass and iron knickknacks. The work completed, Bulldinger celebrated their return by collapsing on a worn cushioned bench not far from the stairs. The reaction that came afterwards was one of pain after finding the prickly ends of an iron device caltrop your stomach when you fall into it at full velocity. He sat up, removed the culprit to the floor where the rest of the mechanical curios remained, and returned to reenacting his fake death.
“Farthings.” Was again muttered from Bulldinger’s lips.
Augustine turned and sighed, spent but not as worn. He always kept a lead glass of whiskey nearby his desk, and began to uncork the vessel between his forced breaths. The glass poured its honey-tone contents into an undusted glass and was then closed again for fear of evaporating its precious contents. The liquid came down his throat with fire.
“Guineas.” came the words of Augustine as the electric tension of the fluid gave his words clarity. “Not a week too soon. Italy cleaned us out.”
His short friend turned to look at him from the early comfort of the bench and offered a handsome smirk. “I would think you would regret this more than I ever would. You looked as though you enjoyed hawking these toys around our office. You would think we were a toy shop instead of an investigation firm. We should be so lucky to have received a dispatch from someone of this scale.”
Augustine contemplated the beads of alcohol trickling into the bottom of the glass as though looking for an answer in its emptiness. “Tailor.”
Bulldinger shifted his eyes at that offense. “What was that?”
“Do we know anything about the Count of Fred?”
Bulldinger scrunched to his back. and started towards the ceiling. “I suppose I could find out in another week of investigations.”
A week told them little more than what Count Fitzburn had already said, and a location of where he resided. Along a keep that was walled with greenery and modified with the smokestacks of modernized technology.
“Why does it have to be a keep?” muttered Bulldinger at one point in his inquiries.
Little went on within those acres. Sounds of construction could sometimes be heard from as far off as the farmlands that resided along the outskirts of the hamlets nearby, but most other activity that could be seen came from gardeners or house servants that wished to spend some time outside in the pastures that belonged to their master. Little else went on, and the man was never reported to be seen leaving his home save during times when he was forced to attend the company of others of his standing, which seemed to be disliked by him. From time to time, however, shipments of supplies would come to feed himself and what servants he had. Among those were metal. One man theorized to Bulldinger in his drink that the man was an inventor of sorts, just like every other man in this age of Enlightenment, and just like Augustine.
“What’s the significance of this?” asked Augustine after learning this.
“We have to enter some way, and I doubt you to be much for scaling walls.” Bulldinger smirked again. “Do not even suggest that grapple gun of yours, either. I still remember that failure the last time I tested it.”
“Easy. Aim, then fire. It should have a range of fifty meters of accuracy.” Augustine advised, a magnifying spectacle on his eye as he examined an iron pylon of an abandoned castle top. Bulldinger, with the gun in his hand, an oversized rifle with a modified barrel.
With a pull of the trigger, a thick iron reed shot up with a flashbang and punched the grapple out. The iron tang banged against the iron tang and snagged and then, finding its home there, promptly shattered against the mount.
“Hmm… I suppose we could use a better grade of iron for the head. No meat for the next week to pay for it, though.” muttered Augustine.
Bullworth sensed the gun’s heat flaring in his hand and looked at it only to realize that the rope to the grapple had become a giant burning wick that began to catch his coat’s sleeve with a red crackling.
“I improved it,” muttered Augustine between a shot of whiskey.
“No grapple gun! Let us try to keep this simple, I’d even avoid using that sword cane of yours if I didn’t think we might find some resistance. Who knows what they do with these children. Anyway, there is a gala that he has to attend in a few days again, which the servants seem to be preparing themselves for.”
“We go and try to find a way to come inside without looking too suspicious. If we come in while he leaves, they will be suspicious of new people. We come in before.”
At precisely seven forty-three, a carriage began to thump and then clop from a dirt road to one paved with round stones. The mist still cascaded thickly over the stone and hedgework that was maintained and managed into illustrious shapes of living entities. Between the clatter of hoofs and the breath of mustangs was an endless sound of chains chattering through the air. The animal, nor the driver of the carriage seemed to pay no attention as he brought the contents of several barrels past the front gate.
A servant, prepared to see him, greeted him with a “Hoy!”
The driver nodded lazily as the hooves plodded to a slow trot before he spoke, “Shipment of wine’s come.”
The servant nodded with an expectant exuberance. “Something to look forward to while the master’s away.”
At this, the man laughed at the jest and then waited for the men in gray coveralls and gloves began to step away from the carriage and undo the straps of crates and barrels that they began to push into open arms that cradled down to the ground.
“To the back,” muttered the driver.
A pathway ran along a path that edged the manor to a set of storm doors that lay ajar to stone steps lit by gaslights fixed to the wooden panels of the shelter. The room always reeked of burning whale mingled with the effervescence of hickory and old beer. Stepping down with half of a keg or a crate, the men would climb down and plod their contents into a room laden with dust, makeshift racks of barrels heavy with liquid contents, racks, and the lonely light of a single lamp. The crates went to the burning heat of the kitchen, where they were placed in a corner for inspection. When the contents were done with, the men returned to the wagon, awaiting their pay from the driver for the day’s labor in the nearby town.
“Five pence,” muttered Bulldinger through sores that were ground into his shoulder. He turned to look at Augustine, his large body still unmarred by the constraint of hard man’s labor, save the touches of dirt or old grease that also wounded his shorter friend’s clothes. “Look at you. I suppose you had no trouble with this, did you?”
Augustine looked back at him, but then palmed the coins in his hand before handing them to Bulldinger. “This will work, you said.”
Bulldinger smirked as he counted the coins in his head. “Yeah. This should be enough, though I would fare better had I the proper tools at the office.”
“No time.”
Bulldinger’s eyes shifted again at the response to his rhetorical remark and then sighed. “Two hours. Three, if my ears catch another crack from you.”
The chronometer clicked at six twenty-four post-meridian into perfect unison. The stablemaster had begun to guide the trotting of two steeds of a covered carriage. The purple bonnet that it resembled rested as its four lantern mounts showed off its hue against the lightless path. A fifth lantern was lit, a pole-hung one that the driver kept close at hand by a used sidearm. The wide horn-spigot suggested it was a blunderbuss. To Augustine, it looked too inaccurate to be anything more than a noise threat. The two watched behind the brush of the unkempt growth that was outside of the gardener’s control since it abounded outside of the estate. Augustine watched through the extended brass neck of a collapsible spyglass that his left hand fisted.
A solitary flash came with the sparks of Bulldinger’s box lighter. “Ridiculous.” His hand held a roll of corn silk held with flimsy paper that he spent his short time putting together before reaching it to his mouth and placing the solitary flame to the brown end. It gave off a red glow as Bulldinger closed the lighter’s hinge and.began to feel the hot smoke tingle his throat as he breathed it in, felt for the soothing.
“What are they doing? They cannot be standing there waiting for him for this long!” His words still pluming with burnt paper, he took another puff and then sighed. He did not expect an answer from Augustine, whom he knew would not answer. Not answer until-
“They’re moving.”
The smoke was killed with a groundward toss and the spectacle shrunken and went to his hand. The two waited as they listened for the slow sound of horses interrupt the silence. The noise grew and became alive to their ears with the fading motes of yellow light as the ground began to offer a gentle shake and then died away slowly, slowly, until there was only the faint sound of those horses.
“Good.” Bulldinger laughed. Then stood and stepped towards the manor’s doors with the tall Augustine. The manor was still lit enough for them to see the path around the gates. The storm door was, fortunately, unlit but, unfortunately, was closed. A quick test by Bulldinger found it closed fast.
Augustine’s other hand, holding a prybar, slid between and felt for a bar that rested between the . Two together, the lock clicked open and they gracefully opened the door to find there was no one there as they expected.
A slow creep down the darkness, Bulldinger revealed his lighter again and offered a glimmer of light as they retraced the steps they took as labourers down a short path to a room where the pale light glinted back barrels.
“Do you remember which keg it was?” Bulldinger asked.
“It has an x on the side.” Augustine studied the wooden structures.
“Fat lot of help that does us when they’re on their sides like this.” A sigh, and then the short man crouched to look about.
“This one,” Augustine remarked at a barrel that stood on the bottom of another.
“Tap it then.” But there was already a tiny metal prybar in the large man’s hand. The device squeeked and whined, the wary eyes of Bulldinger looked outside the room and planned for an excuse in his mind. A worthless effort when the top of the barrel opened readily, spilling out to the floor.
“Water?!” was what Bulldinger would have exclaimed had he not remembered where he was, so attempted to hold his voice down.
“Would have been suspicious otherwise,” justified Augustine as he pulled out a wet sack and undid the cord to reveal their supply trunk, a large wooden case sealed with wax. A prybar on the seal cracked the seal and they opened it, the two of them mentally checking inventory. Caltrops, oil can, rope-
“Do we ever need rope on these things? Such a worthless expense.”
-small canisters with fuses that gave off smoke, a flintlock pistol loaded with black powder and a paper wad-
“Are you sure it was safe to put a pistol in a box in water?” Augustine did not answer.
-two glass bottles filled with fast-rusting agent, and Augustine’s bag of tools. The two began to divvy what was needed (including the rope) and began to walk around with the lighter.
The lone flame made its presence as the two continued to wend across the darkened trail.
Guided by the glimmer of the box lighter's tiny flame and what little their eyes could catch to avoid banging into anything, the two noted the second set of steps that emanated with traces of light and sounds of pots and smells of food cooking.
"There's got to be another way up." Bulldinger tried to catch what Augustine was thinking, but raising the lighter up to Augustine brought no reaction from the silent man. But he could see from his silent friend’s face that the chance of finding such a way was not so likely within this confined space.
"Great." Bulldinger muttered.
Between the odor of a roasting geese and freshly melting preserves came a rogue odor. At first, there was no attention paid to it, but soon the smell began to pervade the kitchen. A smell rich in a bitter char smell began to curl noses. Curiously, those in the kitchen began to note the smell's slow victory over spices and grease. Inquisitive over the origin, one of the scullion maids approached the door to the root cellar and found it misting with a gray wisping and that unending odor.
Within twelve ticks of the chronometer, the mansion began to grow impatient with the alarum of fire. Worse, the door refused to open. The burning door jammed itself against something. Screams of warning erupted and a bucket brigade ran into an attempt to organize itself as smoke continued to lick up from the unkillable door. Water was forced down into the seams of the door through what buckets were available in order to improve the resistance of the door. The vanguard of the bucket brigades, strongmen that were not afraid of a potential blaze, opened the storm door entrance that they found and quickly found themselves attacked by a billowing of smoke.
The way up the stairs was in such chaos that it was easy to go up, albeit amidst the chaos of the panicked or the curious, two men in servant’s outfits (even ones stained with dust and dirt) were nothing to be too concerned with with the mounting fear of fire. The welcoming chamber past the double doors included a twin staircase that snaked the edge of the room and went to rooms above. Augustine was about to move there, but Bulldinger grabbed his arm amidst the chaos.
“Guest rooms for the upper crust. We’ll need to find a securer area, probably the halls for the servants.”
They approached past double doors from where a modest set of ornate furniture rested to the sides. Small, unimpressive doors that melded into the background of the room itself like panels, rested ajar. While cramped for Augustine, they wended through a path that was lit with a meager lit sconce or two that almost reached for the vizor of the larger man’s cap.
Stairs went up and across in a tiny cylindrical room. Going up led to another set of rooms, closed but quiet. Bulldinger held the empty pistol, its weapon still ready, and slowly opened the first door before him to sneak a look inside with a lighter nearby. It led to an empty bedroom. The second was like the first, like the third, like the seventh. Empty bedrooms. Somewhere, the yelling of chaotic people finding organization penetrated the walls. The rooms were still empty with each check even though the halls continued and so did the rooms. The two passed by another set of rooms. Empty bedrooms with little more than small cots, personal knickknacks, and not much more.
And then there was music.
The stringed wonder of an outpouring glower of musical notation, harmonizing and finding form together as it grew and expanded, and almost unreal. The flow of coordination weaved and composed itself to the two’s ears, calling them. But it was a shiver of music, and it was not from here.
“Upstairs?” Bulldinger looked up. The seam of a trapdoor stared down from them with a latch on its top. Augustine gave it a quick pull and watched the door spill open with a folding crank-based ladder. The symphony beckoned them up.
Upstairs was even darker than those lonely halls, but up here it was night. Only the shadows of lampglow that came through one tiny window or another adorned this roof. The music did not seem to care, however, for among the dusty odds and ends that could be seen from the limited view of the lighter of old trunks and paintings best left stowed for now, there was the sheen of a harpsichord, and its strings continued to play and tell its tale. Behind it, rested a small form that was too busy to notice that her long chocolate hair had covered her eyes from seeing what she was doing. It did not stop her music from being stunning, accurate and precise and with the flow of a master.
“Little girl?” Bulldinger offered.
The music did not stop, but it flowed differently, from soft waves to a jittering remark of keys, curiosity in its notes.
“Little girl, we’re here to rescue you.”
The song now danced, and pranced, swishing like wind through a clear meadow. The girl continued to play.
Bulldinger shook his head, the box lighter still in his hand. “Do you think she’s deaf?” He turned to look at his companion, but Augustine did not answer, nor react: his face was frozen in disbelief at the music that continued to stream and it was obvious that in its blankness suggested a tinge of euphoria in his eyes and mouth.
“Bugger, what now?” Bulldinger spat to the side.
The music pranced, forgetful of the darkness. There were white flowers in that green meadow, and they too would grow as they had the year back, and the time before then, only the people that come and see them changing from each time this happens in each generation. Each one same but always in a world that changed-
“A man,” The girl spoke. A tiny voice that sang with the current of the music that she played. “A man will come and be curious to the sound, and he will carry no gun but a strong fist.” Her child voice continued to sing to the endless ballad, “The gun, the trigger, it will catch-“
And then the music stopped when the unaffected man pulled the girl away from the instrument.
“You’re coming with us,” he muttered.
“Hoy! Who’s up there? Who are you over there?”
It was not his voice, nor Augustine’s. The top of the box lighter closed, but it did not hide the lantern the man held.
“Bugger!” Bulldinger attempted to find cover, only to realize that his friend had stood still the entire time in his position. Only freshly brought back from his memory, he turned and blinked at the sight of the lantern.
“You! Who’re you?” The cover of the guise had failed. The chronometer barely moved a tick before the man immediately grabbed for his collar.
The chronometer ticked.
A loud flashbang escaped from Bulldinger’s hand. The pistol flared up and bathed the roof in a photo flash. Although unwounded, the man’s clothes soon caught the smolder and burn of a fire-touched paper wad that now infected him with heat. He began to scream and quickly he began to pat himself down.
Augustine reached to his bag for a wrench, Bulldinger hissed and grabbed the girl whom he noticed still in her nightgown. He then picked her up in his arms and handed her to Augustine. She did not scream, flinch, react.
The trip out was uneventful beyond the screams of a man attempting to put himself out invading against the sound of others finding the fire that was started was nothing but a ruse made from a bottle of smoke in the center of a slowly burning pile of wood neatly placed on the stone steps. There was chaos enough for the two to escape with little more to be said than a few pointed fingers and some screams from people that saw the short man running out with a tall man that held a small girl in his arms.
Bulldinger would have swore something in frustration if he was not busy trying to catch his breath.
The chronometer offered another opportunity to tick merrily as they saw the wagon they had rented from the town earlier and, with what little strength was available from the stamina reserves of two unfit men, began to take off along a small dirt path that they had managed to find along the woods from a woodsman whom they bribed with drinks. The girl that now sat with them on the way to escape still refused to react to what had happened.
“I would say that was no worse than any of the other times we performed in these little fiascos.” Bulldinger sighed as he said this even in the sanctity of a train.
For those of you that don't know, it's from a poll that I gave out for random ideas for me to make up a story from.
Whenever Augustine looked at the chronometer chaintailed to his belt, his companion Bulldinger would reactively chime in, “What time is it?” As always, he would reply with a shake of his head before they returned to watching the countryside slideshow itself through the windows of the cabin. It was an event that ran like the ticks of the second meter on that meticulous palm-size machine Augustine pocketed away.
The trip to Belgium was unfantastic, and practically dull, unlike those two days beforehand. But there was little to say that could not be considered amazing when one had made the acquaintance of the great eccentric collector, Count James H. P. Fitzburn. As he stated it, the H.P. meant:
“Heather Penfold. Count James Heather Penfold Fitzburn. Esquire.” The man foppishly corrected himself with a flair that only noble arrogance carried when it mingled in theatrics. A grotesque nose complemented with a thin and excessively oiled moustache that were L-shaped wings. Even his gait, which bore the artificial look of too-high boots and a too-powdered wig made Augustine and Bulldinger feel as though they were enacting a play. “Sirs…?”
A violin played in the background, prominent against the symphony of several instruments within the ballroom. A few male utterances mingled with bubbling female laughter into a giant echo that touched this grand hall.
Augustine blinked.
A pause broke the clockwork of the conversation. The noble continued to hold back his words as he offered intrusive stares out of him in that blank moment. Augustine realized that it was his time to speak, as eccentric as the concept seemed. Nobility loved to speak but rarely engaged in conversation with anyone but themselves.
“Gustine,” came as the quiet response.
This forced the noble to blink.
“Gustine…?” Count James muttered to himself, pausing to hear the full name that men normally were expected to carry even when they were not of high bearing. Between the air that entered and failed to be conceivable, a violin continued to stream between the incompatibility of their conversation before Bulldinger would offer his usual tidbit of words to save the situation.
“Lovely music that you have playing here.”
Count James H.P. Fitzburn immediately chattered to life again at the prospect of potential flattery. While the noble’s white and statue-perfect wig remained untouched by his words, the rest of the artificially tall man gesticulated with joy. His face stretched into a grin that resembled the man’s L-winged moustache (which now stretched almost into sides of a hexagon).
“Yes, lovely, is it not? The Third Symphony of Balcomb, a very interesting man yes… he was said to have written this in the water closet after being attended to by the famous courtesan, Artesia. Oh, but I’m sure you have heard this story…” The man half-muttered as a lure to the two men.
“Balcomb was the owner of the harpsichord?” remarked Bulldinger. Augustine hesitated a sigh of relief at his partner’s save.
“Oh? No, that he was not, no…” The noble’s thoughts misdirected, his florid speech was not undone. This allowed the man to not note this change. “If anything, the owner was a… cherished eccentric, I should say?”
“I see, and a name?” Bulldinger controlled this conversation. Augustine looked to the ground, obviously incompatible between their dialogue.
“A name?”
“The one that robbed you of a piece of your opulence, Count?” He remembered to add that title since it was obvious he was jading himself to them.
“Oh, yes! Yes!” The L-shaped crescents of that moustache wiggled some more. “A minor hedge lord, some man that recently owned his plot of land and claims he bears some lineage to earn that title when all he really did was impress the Kaiser with some knickknack that he paraded for him during one of his ceremonies. Utterly revolting, that.”
“Oh, that sounds terribly… gauche.” A word that only the wealthy or those attempting to be wealthy would use. “What is his name?”
“Is it not? Dreadful. He is the ‘Count’ of Fred. Ridiculous sounding, is it not? ‘Fred.’ What kind of house name is that?” Bulldinger cut in after he sensed a long rant.
“We will be sure to dishonor him for you, just tell us what you wish recollected.”
“Oh? Yes, wonderful. He has my…” The noble’s pause seemed deliberate, as though he was listening still to a violin sonata that continued to flit in the air before his senses returned. “-musician. A young girl that he plans on doing more with than one should ever imagine. You will need travel money to compensate, I imagine? Of course you do. Servant! Fetch them ten guineas. The remaining forty will be given at the return, I assure you. Now that all that’s settled, let me send you on your way. Good day!” With that, they were ushered out by the arms of four large men.
Ten pounds sterling was indeed quite a bit of capital. Unfortunately, eccentricism convinced the noble to offer them their money in farthings, and the two paid for their extensive trip out of an overweight carpetbag that contained almost ten thousand of the brass coins.
When the speckled stone and wood houses of the outskirts of Belgium, Augustine did not look at his watch, nor did Bulldinger ask. Time continued to tick as the seconds on the chronometer in Augustine’s pocket.
Past the steam and coal fumes of the train station and along the cobbled roads where horse-drawn and horseless carriages clopped against that ground, the two did not walk long before finding a barren looking apartment of slate and wood, all of it as dark as though fire had tasted it before. Their bodies wheezed as they stopped to undo the locks, but it was not a long walk.
“Farthings.” Was the only thing Bulldinger could choose to wheeze among the many other words that reflected his perplexion at their current situation. Lugging a bag that was almost as heavy as their own bodies, engineers and bike makers rarely engaged in heavy lifting for prolonged periods of time, let alone ones that retired from their profession.
After all doors were undone, a slow and painful lift of the sack finally reached an office of wooden desks and bookshelves, and the clutter of brass and iron knickknacks. The work completed, Bulldinger celebrated their return by collapsing on a worn cushioned bench not far from the stairs. The reaction that came afterwards was one of pain after finding the prickly ends of an iron device caltrop your stomach when you fall into it at full velocity. He sat up, removed the culprit to the floor where the rest of the mechanical curios remained, and returned to reenacting his fake death.
“Farthings.” Was again muttered from Bulldinger’s lips.
Augustine turned and sighed, spent but not as worn. He always kept a lead glass of whiskey nearby his desk, and began to uncork the vessel between his forced breaths. The glass poured its honey-tone contents into an undusted glass and was then closed again for fear of evaporating its precious contents. The liquid came down his throat with fire.
“Guineas.” came the words of Augustine as the electric tension of the fluid gave his words clarity. “Not a week too soon. Italy cleaned us out.”
His short friend turned to look at him from the early comfort of the bench and offered a handsome smirk. “I would think you would regret this more than I ever would. You looked as though you enjoyed hawking these toys around our office. You would think we were a toy shop instead of an investigation firm. We should be so lucky to have received a dispatch from someone of this scale.”
Augustine contemplated the beads of alcohol trickling into the bottom of the glass as though looking for an answer in its emptiness. “Tailor.”
Bulldinger shifted his eyes at that offense. “What was that?”
“Do we know anything about the Count of Fred?”
Bulldinger scrunched to his back. and started towards the ceiling. “I suppose I could find out in another week of investigations.”
A week told them little more than what Count Fitzburn had already said, and a location of where he resided. Along a keep that was walled with greenery and modified with the smokestacks of modernized technology.
“Why does it have to be a keep?” muttered Bulldinger at one point in his inquiries.
Little went on within those acres. Sounds of construction could sometimes be heard from as far off as the farmlands that resided along the outskirts of the hamlets nearby, but most other activity that could be seen came from gardeners or house servants that wished to spend some time outside in the pastures that belonged to their master. Little else went on, and the man was never reported to be seen leaving his home save during times when he was forced to attend the company of others of his standing, which seemed to be disliked by him. From time to time, however, shipments of supplies would come to feed himself and what servants he had. Among those were metal. One man theorized to Bulldinger in his drink that the man was an inventor of sorts, just like every other man in this age of Enlightenment, and just like Augustine.
“What’s the significance of this?” asked Augustine after learning this.
“We have to enter some way, and I doubt you to be much for scaling walls.” Bulldinger smirked again. “Do not even suggest that grapple gun of yours, either. I still remember that failure the last time I tested it.”
“Easy. Aim, then fire. It should have a range of fifty meters of accuracy.” Augustine advised, a magnifying spectacle on his eye as he examined an iron pylon of an abandoned castle top. Bulldinger, with the gun in his hand, an oversized rifle with a modified barrel.
With a pull of the trigger, a thick iron reed shot up with a flashbang and punched the grapple out. The iron tang banged against the iron tang and snagged and then, finding its home there, promptly shattered against the mount.
“Hmm… I suppose we could use a better grade of iron for the head. No meat for the next week to pay for it, though.” muttered Augustine.
Bullworth sensed the gun’s heat flaring in his hand and looked at it only to realize that the rope to the grapple had become a giant burning wick that began to catch his coat’s sleeve with a red crackling.
“I improved it,” muttered Augustine between a shot of whiskey.
“No grapple gun! Let us try to keep this simple, I’d even avoid using that sword cane of yours if I didn’t think we might find some resistance. Who knows what they do with these children. Anyway, there is a gala that he has to attend in a few days again, which the servants seem to be preparing themselves for.”
“We go and try to find a way to come inside without looking too suspicious. If we come in while he leaves, they will be suspicious of new people. We come in before.”
At precisely seven forty-three, a carriage began to thump and then clop from a dirt road to one paved with round stones. The mist still cascaded thickly over the stone and hedgework that was maintained and managed into illustrious shapes of living entities. Between the clatter of hoofs and the breath of mustangs was an endless sound of chains chattering through the air. The animal, nor the driver of the carriage seemed to pay no attention as he brought the contents of several barrels past the front gate.
A servant, prepared to see him, greeted him with a “Hoy!”
The driver nodded lazily as the hooves plodded to a slow trot before he spoke, “Shipment of wine’s come.”
The servant nodded with an expectant exuberance. “Something to look forward to while the master’s away.”
At this, the man laughed at the jest and then waited for the men in gray coveralls and gloves began to step away from the carriage and undo the straps of crates and barrels that they began to push into open arms that cradled down to the ground.
“To the back,” muttered the driver.
A pathway ran along a path that edged the manor to a set of storm doors that lay ajar to stone steps lit by gaslights fixed to the wooden panels of the shelter. The room always reeked of burning whale mingled with the effervescence of hickory and old beer. Stepping down with half of a keg or a crate, the men would climb down and plod their contents into a room laden with dust, makeshift racks of barrels heavy with liquid contents, racks, and the lonely light of a single lamp. The crates went to the burning heat of the kitchen, where they were placed in a corner for inspection. When the contents were done with, the men returned to the wagon, awaiting their pay from the driver for the day’s labor in the nearby town.
“Five pence,” muttered Bulldinger through sores that were ground into his shoulder. He turned to look at Augustine, his large body still unmarred by the constraint of hard man’s labor, save the touches of dirt or old grease that also wounded his shorter friend’s clothes. “Look at you. I suppose you had no trouble with this, did you?”
Augustine looked back at him, but then palmed the coins in his hand before handing them to Bulldinger. “This will work, you said.”
Bulldinger smirked as he counted the coins in his head. “Yeah. This should be enough, though I would fare better had I the proper tools at the office.”
“No time.”
Bulldinger’s eyes shifted again at the response to his rhetorical remark and then sighed. “Two hours. Three, if my ears catch another crack from you.”
The chronometer clicked at six twenty-four post-meridian into perfect unison. The stablemaster had begun to guide the trotting of two steeds of a covered carriage. The purple bonnet that it resembled rested as its four lantern mounts showed off its hue against the lightless path. A fifth lantern was lit, a pole-hung one that the driver kept close at hand by a used sidearm. The wide horn-spigot suggested it was a blunderbuss. To Augustine, it looked too inaccurate to be anything more than a noise threat. The two watched behind the brush of the unkempt growth that was outside of the gardener’s control since it abounded outside of the estate. Augustine watched through the extended brass neck of a collapsible spyglass that his left hand fisted.
A solitary flash came with the sparks of Bulldinger’s box lighter. “Ridiculous.” His hand held a roll of corn silk held with flimsy paper that he spent his short time putting together before reaching it to his mouth and placing the solitary flame to the brown end. It gave off a red glow as Bulldinger closed the lighter’s hinge and.began to feel the hot smoke tingle his throat as he breathed it in, felt for the soothing.
“What are they doing? They cannot be standing there waiting for him for this long!” His words still pluming with burnt paper, he took another puff and then sighed. He did not expect an answer from Augustine, whom he knew would not answer. Not answer until-
“They’re moving.”
The smoke was killed with a groundward toss and the spectacle shrunken and went to his hand. The two waited as they listened for the slow sound of horses interrupt the silence. The noise grew and became alive to their ears with the fading motes of yellow light as the ground began to offer a gentle shake and then died away slowly, slowly, until there was only the faint sound of those horses.
“Good.” Bulldinger laughed. Then stood and stepped towards the manor’s doors with the tall Augustine. The manor was still lit enough for them to see the path around the gates. The storm door was, fortunately, unlit but, unfortunately, was closed. A quick test by Bulldinger found it closed fast.
Augustine’s other hand, holding a prybar, slid between and felt for a bar that rested between the . Two together, the lock clicked open and they gracefully opened the door to find there was no one there as they expected.
A slow creep down the darkness, Bulldinger revealed his lighter again and offered a glimmer of light as they retraced the steps they took as labourers down a short path to a room where the pale light glinted back barrels.
“Do you remember which keg it was?” Bulldinger asked.
“It has an x on the side.” Augustine studied the wooden structures.
“Fat lot of help that does us when they’re on their sides like this.” A sigh, and then the short man crouched to look about.
“This one,” Augustine remarked at a barrel that stood on the bottom of another.
“Tap it then.” But there was already a tiny metal prybar in the large man’s hand. The device squeeked and whined, the wary eyes of Bulldinger looked outside the room and planned for an excuse in his mind. A worthless effort when the top of the barrel opened readily, spilling out to the floor.
“Water?!” was what Bulldinger would have exclaimed had he not remembered where he was, so attempted to hold his voice down.
“Would have been suspicious otherwise,” justified Augustine as he pulled out a wet sack and undid the cord to reveal their supply trunk, a large wooden case sealed with wax. A prybar on the seal cracked the seal and they opened it, the two of them mentally checking inventory. Caltrops, oil can, rope-
“Do we ever need rope on these things? Such a worthless expense.”
-small canisters with fuses that gave off smoke, a flintlock pistol loaded with black powder and a paper wad-
“Are you sure it was safe to put a pistol in a box in water?” Augustine did not answer.
-two glass bottles filled with fast-rusting agent, and Augustine’s bag of tools. The two began to divvy what was needed (including the rope) and began to walk around with the lighter.
The lone flame made its presence as the two continued to wend across the darkened trail.
Guided by the glimmer of the box lighter's tiny flame and what little their eyes could catch to avoid banging into anything, the two noted the second set of steps that emanated with traces of light and sounds of pots and smells of food cooking.
"There's got to be another way up." Bulldinger tried to catch what Augustine was thinking, but raising the lighter up to Augustine brought no reaction from the silent man. But he could see from his silent friend’s face that the chance of finding such a way was not so likely within this confined space.
"Great." Bulldinger muttered.
Between the odor of a roasting geese and freshly melting preserves came a rogue odor. At first, there was no attention paid to it, but soon the smell began to pervade the kitchen. A smell rich in a bitter char smell began to curl noses. Curiously, those in the kitchen began to note the smell's slow victory over spices and grease. Inquisitive over the origin, one of the scullion maids approached the door to the root cellar and found it misting with a gray wisping and that unending odor.
Within twelve ticks of the chronometer, the mansion began to grow impatient with the alarum of fire. Worse, the door refused to open. The burning door jammed itself against something. Screams of warning erupted and a bucket brigade ran into an attempt to organize itself as smoke continued to lick up from the unkillable door. Water was forced down into the seams of the door through what buckets were available in order to improve the resistance of the door. The vanguard of the bucket brigades, strongmen that were not afraid of a potential blaze, opened the storm door entrance that they found and quickly found themselves attacked by a billowing of smoke.
The way up the stairs was in such chaos that it was easy to go up, albeit amidst the chaos of the panicked or the curious, two men in servant’s outfits (even ones stained with dust and dirt) were nothing to be too concerned with with the mounting fear of fire. The welcoming chamber past the double doors included a twin staircase that snaked the edge of the room and went to rooms above. Augustine was about to move there, but Bulldinger grabbed his arm amidst the chaos.
“Guest rooms for the upper crust. We’ll need to find a securer area, probably the halls for the servants.”
They approached past double doors from where a modest set of ornate furniture rested to the sides. Small, unimpressive doors that melded into the background of the room itself like panels, rested ajar. While cramped for Augustine, they wended through a path that was lit with a meager lit sconce or two that almost reached for the vizor of the larger man’s cap.
Stairs went up and across in a tiny cylindrical room. Going up led to another set of rooms, closed but quiet. Bulldinger held the empty pistol, its weapon still ready, and slowly opened the first door before him to sneak a look inside with a lighter nearby. It led to an empty bedroom. The second was like the first, like the third, like the seventh. Empty bedrooms. Somewhere, the yelling of chaotic people finding organization penetrated the walls. The rooms were still empty with each check even though the halls continued and so did the rooms. The two passed by another set of rooms. Empty bedrooms with little more than small cots, personal knickknacks, and not much more.
And then there was music.
The stringed wonder of an outpouring glower of musical notation, harmonizing and finding form together as it grew and expanded, and almost unreal. The flow of coordination weaved and composed itself to the two’s ears, calling them. But it was a shiver of music, and it was not from here.
“Upstairs?” Bulldinger looked up. The seam of a trapdoor stared down from them with a latch on its top. Augustine gave it a quick pull and watched the door spill open with a folding crank-based ladder. The symphony beckoned them up.
Upstairs was even darker than those lonely halls, but up here it was night. Only the shadows of lampglow that came through one tiny window or another adorned this roof. The music did not seem to care, however, for among the dusty odds and ends that could be seen from the limited view of the lighter of old trunks and paintings best left stowed for now, there was the sheen of a harpsichord, and its strings continued to play and tell its tale. Behind it, rested a small form that was too busy to notice that her long chocolate hair had covered her eyes from seeing what she was doing. It did not stop her music from being stunning, accurate and precise and with the flow of a master.
“Little girl?” Bulldinger offered.
The music did not stop, but it flowed differently, from soft waves to a jittering remark of keys, curiosity in its notes.
“Little girl, we’re here to rescue you.”
The song now danced, and pranced, swishing like wind through a clear meadow. The girl continued to play.
Bulldinger shook his head, the box lighter still in his hand. “Do you think she’s deaf?” He turned to look at his companion, but Augustine did not answer, nor react: his face was frozen in disbelief at the music that continued to stream and it was obvious that in its blankness suggested a tinge of euphoria in his eyes and mouth.
“Bugger, what now?” Bulldinger spat to the side.
The music pranced, forgetful of the darkness. There were white flowers in that green meadow, and they too would grow as they had the year back, and the time before then, only the people that come and see them changing from each time this happens in each generation. Each one same but always in a world that changed-
“A man,” The girl spoke. A tiny voice that sang with the current of the music that she played. “A man will come and be curious to the sound, and he will carry no gun but a strong fist.” Her child voice continued to sing to the endless ballad, “The gun, the trigger, it will catch-“
And then the music stopped when the unaffected man pulled the girl away from the instrument.
“You’re coming with us,” he muttered.
“Hoy! Who’s up there? Who are you over there?”
It was not his voice, nor Augustine’s. The top of the box lighter closed, but it did not hide the lantern the man held.
“Bugger!” Bulldinger attempted to find cover, only to realize that his friend had stood still the entire time in his position. Only freshly brought back from his memory, he turned and blinked at the sight of the lantern.
“You! Who’re you?” The cover of the guise had failed. The chronometer barely moved a tick before the man immediately grabbed for his collar.
The chronometer ticked.
A loud flashbang escaped from Bulldinger’s hand. The pistol flared up and bathed the roof in a photo flash. Although unwounded, the man’s clothes soon caught the smolder and burn of a fire-touched paper wad that now infected him with heat. He began to scream and quickly he began to pat himself down.
Augustine reached to his bag for a wrench, Bulldinger hissed and grabbed the girl whom he noticed still in her nightgown. He then picked her up in his arms and handed her to Augustine. She did not scream, flinch, react.
The trip out was uneventful beyond the screams of a man attempting to put himself out invading against the sound of others finding the fire that was started was nothing but a ruse made from a bottle of smoke in the center of a slowly burning pile of wood neatly placed on the stone steps. There was chaos enough for the two to escape with little more to be said than a few pointed fingers and some screams from people that saw the short man running out with a tall man that held a small girl in his arms.
Bulldinger would have swore something in frustration if he was not busy trying to catch his breath.
The chronometer offered another opportunity to tick merrily as they saw the wagon they had rented from the town earlier and, with what little strength was available from the stamina reserves of two unfit men, began to take off along a small dirt path that they had managed to find along the woods from a woodsman whom they bribed with drinks. The girl that now sat with them on the way to escape still refused to react to what had happened.
“I would say that was no worse than any of the other times we performed in these little fiascos.” Bulldinger sighed as he said this even in the sanctity of a train.
For those of you that don't know, it's from a poll that I gave out for random ideas for me to make up a story from.
