to her, gently removing the defiled gown that clung to the wasted body. There was little of his wife underneath the garment—sagging brown skin, the surface distorted by the rounded shape of protruding bones. Her vacant eyes never moved; her mouth, lips stained with drool, was a ghoulish reminder of the passion they had once enjoyed.
On the table next to her bed was a tin bowl filled with water, a thin scum of soap residue coating the surface. He began washing her, lifting her arms tenderly. It was his ritual of caring, of love.
“There was a young man come in just a moment ago,” Crehan said, dipping the cleaning rag in a bucket of water, wringing it out with a twist of his powerful hands, and then washing her. “Near a boy. He reminded me so of Michael. Proud. He had a purpose like Michael.” He stopped for a moment in thought. “Red hair, too. Sandy colored in a way, but his manner was like Michael’s.”
Crehan slid his hands underneath his wife’s naked body and turned her. He did so four times a day. If he didn’t, the sores would set in. He cupped her head in his hands and twisted slightly. Her mouth and nose were free of the mattress, and she drew in faint breaths.
“He wasn’t nearly as tall. More like Matthew. Heavier though. He fancied himself a gentleman but he tried too hard.” Crehan chuckled. “Young men are that way, ain’t they?” He wrung the fabric out, and the droplets danced on the water. “He come for Mr. January’s clock. The one that other fellow drawed. He must be smart, that other one.” His voice hardened. “No smarter than me, though.”
Crehan finished cleaning Charity, stuffed the soiled bedclothes in a sack for washing, and dressed her in a gown he had made. He would feed her later, some broth he had coaxed from the remains of a chicken, and turn her once more before he went to bed. He slept on a pallet spread on the floor in the other room.
He planned to work on January’s clocks. He would make ten more, because he thought of ways to improve them. He forgot his grief, forgot the woman who lay close to dead, as he examined the intricate drawing. It was made by a smart man—a man who knew machines. Not clocks, but the mechanics of clocks. Crehan could make it better. He was sure of that.
Crehan went downstairs, sat at his worktable, adjusted the oil lamp, and picked up the beginnings of another January clock. He liked to hold the piece as he studied it—maybe the weight added something to his understanding of the machine. Whatever it was to be used for did not matter to Crehan. He was a clockmaker—the instrument was all that concerned him. The complexity, gears, rods, springs, tooling, hands, and the finish of the face—he was a clockmaker.
His reflection in the windowpane caught his attention, but he looked beyond the tired face with the melancholy eyes to the images of his sons. His face softened at their memory, producing a hollow smile that was nearly lost in the dying light. He turned away from the window to his clock, concentrating on the complicated device in his hand.
That is how Crehan found relief from torment. There were no memories of the deaths of his boys in the hard, polished surfaces of the clockworks; no reminder of his wife, dying from grief; no intrusion of any kind. Not even the thing that Royal January had planned.
Chapter 7
The Canadian Northern Railway Terminal
Quebec City, British Canada
Fitz shrugged his cape over his good shoulder and stepped from the coach to the station platform. The vast station was a field of steam floating just over the heads of the crowd. It was the product of a sharp cold that caught a person’s breath, and then tossed it in the air in celebration of winter’s power. The train engines added to the clouds, injecting violent bursts of steam at the feet of passersby. The hundreds of horses that lined the loading dock, waiting for freight to be transferred from the train to the long line of wagons, snorted spurts of steam from their nostrils.
“The bags, Fitz,” Asia reminded him.
“Yes,” Fitz said as a porter with a handcart appeared. The man began loading the luggage without waiting for instructions.
A short man in a fur hat approached them. “Colonel Dunaway?” The man’s thick beard parted in a friendly smile. “Davis Tooke, Assistant Consul.” He bowed to Asia. It was then Fitz realized that the man was portly, not just heavily bundled against the weather.
“Welcome to Quebec City,” Tooke said. “If you’ll follow me we’ll find someplace a bit warmer. The wind comes through this old barn of a station.” He glanced at Fitz and Asia. “If you don’t mind me saying, you may want to find heavier coats. I learned immediately not to underestimate the winters here.”
“Have you been here long?” Asia asked as they trailed behind him.
“Two years,” Tooke said. “Right out of college. Harvard, class of ’60.” They passed an ice-covered girder and veered to avoid a cluster of passengers. Just beyond, Fitz saw the crowd flow around an obstruction, and in the midst of that, a wall of red.
A company of British soldiers, dressed for winter campaigning, formed ranks under the bullfroglike croaks of a sergeant major wielding a swagger stick. The men moved quickly, falling into rank, stiffening to attention, their Enfield rifle-muskets clamped against their shoulders, soldiers and weapons perfectly aligned.
Fitz eyed them appreciatively and realized with a pang of disappointment they paid no attention to him. He would have appreciated the courtesy of professional recognition—one soldier to another.
“Here we are,” Tooke said, stopping at a carriage. He said something in French to the porter. “He’ll take your bags straight to the hotel. We have rooms for you at the St-Denis. I suspect that you’ll want to freshen up.” His eyes flicked to Fitz’s arm. “Do you require any special assistance, Colonel?”
“That is a lovely hat, Mr. Tooke. Did you make it yourself?” Asia spoke before Fitz exploded. She knew the idea that Fitz needed any assistance, at anytime, under any situation, was anathema to him. What generally followed a question like Mr. Tooke’s was a tirade.
Tooke, confused, said, “No, Mrs. Dunaway. It is rabbit. I purchased it.”
Fitz cooled enough to respond. He appreciated Asia’s intercession. “I need no special consideration whatsoever, Mr. Tooke. I wish merely to do as ordered by the president.”
As they took their seats in the carriage and started off, Asia leaned close to Fitz. “I think we would need a whole family of rabbits to make a hat for Colonel Dunaway’s head.”
Fitz pretended to ignore her but he responded with a warm smile. She had told him once that she knew him well—that he ran on emotion, which, despite his reluctance to admit it, often overwhelmed his good sense. But, Colonel Dunaway, she had said to him after they made love, I wonder how well you truly know me? He had no answer.
“What do you know of the circumstances that brought us here?” Fitz asked.
“Everything,” Tooke said. He was, despite his portly frame and slow manner, a levelheaded young man. “Professor Abbott’s disappearance is of the utmost concern to everyone. We have been informed he had a violent argument with the superintendent of the Brooklyn Navy Yard just prior to this latest episode. It is rumored”—his face reddened in embarrassment—“that he enjoys the company of a certain type of woman.”
“Presbyterians?” Asia said.
Tooke, shocked, tried to reply.
“Is
