Merry Christmas, Verity Fitzroy

A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences: Tale from the Archives

  Merry Christmas, Verity Fitzroy

  By

  Pip Ballantine

  Imagine That! Studios Copyright 2014

  Christmas Eve, 1891

  If there was anything that Verity Fitzroy of the Ministry Seven disliked it was snow and sitting still. So having to endure both was a little bit beyond the pale—especially on Christmas Eve. Presently sitting outside a small house in Hampstead, she was getting quite wet with snow falling on her head and thinking longingly of the summer.

  Four of her fellow urchins were inside the house, rifling around for the evidence that Agent Harrison Thorne needed to have their owner arrested. It was one of the little duties that kept the orphans solvent and busy. Verity knew full well the problems she would have if the children were not kept entertained.

  They had watched the man leave his house, and then scampered across the slowly whitening garden. The only window that wasn’t secure was a tiny one that the younger children, Jonathan, Jeremy and Colin could get through—but not Verity. It wasn’t that she had gained any girth, but she had grown. Fifteen years old and she might still have some growing left in her.

  Verity preferred not to think about it, but her mind did drift to the other issue that was constantly calling to her. It was a question of her past…and quite possibly her future.

  The fact that Uncle Octavius, the man her father had held in such high regard, and Verity had thought dead for so many years, had actually become a murderer had proved quite the distraction in her life.

  She’d told no one—not even Harrison Thorne of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences—what she had seen while perched on a crate outside a Shoreditch boarding house.

  Verity replayed the scene over and over again in her head as she sat under the trees, concealed by shadows, to watch for the return of the owner of the house. She had a small tin whistle in her cold fingers. When blown the sound would not be heard by any human ear, but the tiny drum in Colin’s pocket would vibrate.

  As she sat watching the road, in her other pocket her hand was wrapped around the circular device that she had recovered from her thought-dead uncle’s rooms. Its ticking had stopped, but somehow she felt better touching it—complete some how. It stilled her thoughts.

  The lights of the city were distant and twinkling in the chill of the night. From this distance London looked like a fairytale kingdom. Verity smiled bitterly to herself, thinking how that fairytales often contained the darkest shadows and the vilest monsters.

  She was so engrossed in her brooding that it took her a long moment to comprehend the faintest ticking in the back of her head. Immediately Verity knew that it was not from the device in her pocket. It came from a far more distant source. To her practiced ear it was the slow rattle of mechanism that had not been wound for a long time. She felt it had to be an old machine somewhere, and it was almost calling for help. Verity whipped her head around, looking for the source, but there was no one nearby—and certainly no machinery.

  However, the sound was now registering as familiar. She had heard it last while following a man with a clockwork leg, and it was he that had eventually led her to Uncle Octavius. Perhaps this too was something to do with him.

  On the wings of those thoughts, she jumped up and left the shadow of the tree to trot to the low wall surrounding the garden. The trees and shrubs were heavy with snow, and everything was as silent as the grave. Silent that was, except for the sound of her own ragged breathing, and the constant rattling tick of a machine nearby, calling to Verity.

  She shot a glance back over her shoulder at the house, but there were no lights on or signs of life. The boys were being very professional.

  So Verity thought she could afford a little investigation of her own. Cautiously, she moved out onto the quiet road and ventured down away from the house a little. Verity frowned as she squinted down the street. Something was moving at the intersection, a figure that was a patch of grey in the patchwork of shadows and snow. The whirring and ticking was growing so loud in her head, that she could no longer hear her own breathing. It was almost as if she was becoming less and less aware of her own body, and more part of the mechanism racing in her head.

  The figure up ahead turned towards her and the suggestion of its head tilted slightly. Something that might have been a bowler hat was tipped in her direction, and as it did so, it moved out from the shadows just a fraction. A puff of steam stained the dark air at its back as Verity’s eyes widened.

  It was not human, but it was human sized and shaped. It also had no flesh. Verity immediately knew the word for it, an automaton. A human replicant made of cogs, gears, and pistons. Her father had spoken of such things, and the clankertons that made them. Verity still remembered the awe in his voice. Those that she had heard about however had been mindless creations, controlled by their maker. This somehow seemed to radiate personality.

  What her parents would have given to see such a creation. Her father had been an archaeologist and making had not been quite his forte. Her mother however, had played with machinery like many of the middle-class did. It was not particularly lady-like, but Mother had never been bothered by such things.

  All these thoughts darted through her mind, even as she realised the strange piece in her pocket was warm—almost burning. She was caught between terror and delight. Something about the figure was menacing, the way its eyes burned with the internal fires, and yet it was a walking marvel.

  Finally, Verity found herself trotting towards it, one hand wrapped around the tiny device her uncle had most likely killed to have, and the other outstretched before her. The falling snow made the whole scene a strange picture postcard.

  Then she heard Colin’s scream pierce that odd bubble of quiet. Verity shared one strange look with the automaton, and then spun around on her heel. Now the ticking was washed away in a flood of fear.

  As Verity ran back the way she had come, she suddenly realised the horrible thing she had done. The one thing that she had promised never to do. She had put her own problems ahead of the children that were hers to protect.

  She rounded the corner into the garden of the house and saw the figure of a tall, gangly man with his hand wrapped around Colin’s arm. Jonathan and Jeremy were dancing around him, battering at him while he dragged Colin back towards the house.

  The knowledge that whoever this man was, he was dangerous, and very unlikely to call the coppers, welled inside her. The path she was racing down was slippery, and she was panicked. Verity slipped and fell, skidding down the path on her side and colliding with the man. For a moment it was a tangle of children and angry squawking man, arms and legs flying.

  However, it was the children that were faster and lighter on their feet. Colin and Jeremy got up first, while Verity pulled Jonathan to his feet. They didn’t need to discuss the situation—all four of them ran.

  She took the lead, half carrying Jonathan, but making sure she didn’t outdistance the boys. They ran through the streets of the quiet town with the yells of the man fading only gradually into the background. Verity took them through the back gardens, alleyways, and amongst trees, but she did not do it blindly. The Ministry Seven knew London more intimately than any adult. Even the Elephants of Diamond Dottie’s group, couldn’t squeeze through gates, and hide as well as they could.

  Finally, after a long while, after turning yet another corner, Verity stopped. In the grey light cast by the moon, they all caught their breath. She didn’t want to look at them, but eventually she turned her head. Not many children that young could look accusatory, but the children of the seven hadn’t been real innocents for years—Jonathan and Jeremy maybe neve
r.

  “What happened?” Jonathan whispered, and she couldn’t take the bitter tone of his voice.

  “What happened?” Colin glared at her, his fists clenched at his side. “She left her lookout. She wandered off like a duffer. Like we didn’t matter.”

  They were three young kids, but in that moment they could have been three judges pronouncing sentence.

  “Why?” Jeremy whispered. “Why did you do it, Verity? We could have been killed…or worse!”

  “I…I…” Verity replied, her voice catching, and her chest tightening. “I was…” There was no explanation. She hadn’t told them about Uncle Octavius, or the little piece of clockwork in her pocket—so nor could she tell them about the strange automaton in the dark. Her parents and their death was danger she had bought to the doorstep of the Ministry Seven.

  “We’re supposed to look after each other!” Colin went on, staring up at her with eyes brimming with tears. “Without each other, wot have we got?”

  “Nothing,” she whispered in reply. “Nothing.” Her eyes too welled up with tears, and she couldn’t recall having felt so utterly useless in her entire life—even when her parents had been killed. Even then Verity had possessed a plan.

  However, now the