The Clockmaker's Girl

by Ceres Wunderkind

Sixteen year old schoolgirl Sunny Moon has a secret... a secret that may be the key to ending the Holy War which has engulfed Lyra's world.

15. On the Marie Louise

On the Marie-Louise

When I'm in the middle of a dream,
Stay in bed, float upstream.
Please don't wake me, no, don't shake me,
Leave me where I am - I'm only sleeping.

John Lennon & Paul McCartney

Mister Joyce was sitting by himself in the bows of the Marie-Louise. His eyes were closed and I wondered if he were asleep. I supposed I had better not startle him, so I coughed when I was still about six feet away from him.

'Ahem.'

He stirred. Ah, I'd been right - he'd been dozing in the late afternoon sun.

'Hello, Mister Joyce,' I said. Would you like a cuppa?'

'Not if it's that filthy Frankish muck.'

'I'll make it myself. With boiling water. Five minutes standing time. Fresh milk. Do you take sugar?'

'Two chaispoons.'

'Back soon.' I slipped down to the Marie-Louise's galley and lit the stove. When I returned with two steaming hot mugs, it was to find that Mister Joyce had not moved from his place. His eyes had closed again and he was absent-mindedly stroking his daemon Viola.

'Here we are.'

The eyes opened. 'Thank you.' He took one of the mugs from me and sipped from it. 'That's not bad. Where did you learn to make chai?'

'At home.'

'Of course.' He took another sip. I sat down on the deck beside him, Alfie in my lap.

'Mister Joyce?'

'Yes?'

I wonder if... if we could have a talk? There are some things I don't understand.'

'There are plenty of things I don't understand.' For a moment - just a moment - I thought he might have smiled.

According to Capitaine Fourneaux the Marie-Louise was a peniche of 250 tons displacement. She was just a big old barge so far as Alfie and I were concerned, but I smiled and nodded and tried to look interested. Mister Joyce didn't have to pretend. I could tell straight away that the boat and all its workings fascinated him, from the mechanism that steered the vessel to its smoky engine, buried deep in the bottom of the hull. I mean; as if I hadn't been taken over all Daddy's ships! They were the real thing, not dirty little ditch-crawling barges like this. But I was the capitaine's guest, and sailing on a boat - however lowly - was much better than walking.

I acted as a translator between them. Mister Joyce spoke no Frankish at all and Capitaine Fourneaux had little English beyond "Hello", "Goodbye" and "Pleased to meet you." I had never known how useful the stuff they taught me at Highdean was going to turn out to be. Of course they had told us that, but I'd paid no attention to them at the time.

We toured the peniche from bow to stern. Mister Joyce walked in a stiff-legged way that made an odd sound on the steel decking. "Step-bang, step-bang, step-bang". I kept turning around to see what the noise was. When we sat down to eat I noticed that he held the fork in his right hand, like an American.

'Your left arm... have you hurt it? It looks funny.'

'It is funny. See.' Mister Joyce rolled up his left sleeve and I saw what he meant. Oh, Hell. Why hadn't I noticed his hand before...?

'Oh.'

'And while we're talking about personal injuries...' Mister Joyce reached over and clumsily tugged at his left leg, rolling down the sock and revealing the pink-painted wood underneath.

I don't understand. I don't understand why I sat stock-still, like an idiot, staring at his artificial left leg and arm. Hadn't I seen far worse, only a couple of days before in the field hospital? Hadn't I seen maimed soldiers in London? Hadn't I danced with them, for Heaven's sake? So why did Mister Joyce's injuries, which I could tell were old, affect me so badly? Why did I turn my face away from him?

The capitaine had introduced us to his wife and baby. Pale-skinned, fair-haired Emmeline Fourneaux had taken the wheel while her husband helped us aboard the Marie-Louise. I took to her and little Guillaume immediately. Alfie and her linnet-formed Marcel chatted in daemon-speak while Emmeline and I swapped stories, dress-sense and grooming tips. She was horrified by the state of my hair. 'Comme tu es jolie!' she said when we met. 'Mais tes cheveux! Tu as été malade?'

No, I told her, I had not been ill. I had cut my hair so I could be like the soldiers. We sat in her cabin and I showed her my sword. 'Vous voyez? Je suis armée, comme des soldats.'

'Ah!' she said, believing she understood. Guillaume chattered and gurgled his baby-talk, and played with his ever-changing daemon Sophie. Cat, bird, dog, cat, bird, dog, cat, bird, dog, grey squirrel...

I gulped and raised my head again. 'Did it happen in the war? Not this war, I mean...' I stopped.

'No, not this war,' said Mister Joyce, rolling his sleeve back down and his sock back up. 'It was a different war.'

'In the Rheinland?' They'd told us about that at school, in Contemporary History. The Doytch and the Franks had fought over the land adjoining the river Rhein. There had been a long siege at a town called Colmar. Horrible things had happened there, which our teachers hadn't told us about. Not in detail, at any rate.

'No, not there.'

'Where, then?'

'Oxford.'

'Oxford? But there wasn't a war in Oxford. There's never been a war in Oxford! I don't understand.'

Careful, said Alfie.

Mister Joyce grimaced and rubbed his wooden arm. 'It still hurts, you know,' he said.

'Your arm still hurts? How long ago did it, er, happen?'

'Nineteen years, now. It's hard to believe sometimes.'

'What happened? Was there an accident?'

'You could say that.' Mister Joyce's eyes were bleak. 'A house fell on us.' He stroked his Viola with his right hand.

'A house? How? Why? In a war? Which war?'

'A car exploded. It was a war, but you've not heard of it. Can you leave us in peace now, please? I'm very tired.'

And in pain, added Alfie.

'Yes, Mister Joyce. Sorry, Mister Joyce.'

The Marie-Louise was to be our home for the next few days. Mister Joyce and Capitaine Fourneaux bunked down in the spare cabin and Emmeline, Guillaume and I slept in the main stateroom. I say slept, but I was feeling unsettled and I think it rubbed off on Guillaume. He woke up crying every couple of hours and refused to go to sleep until Emmeline put him to the breast. When morning came we were all short of sleep. That was nothing new for me by now.

I felt I should be doing something to earn my passage, so I slipped out of bed, walked down the short passageway to the galley and put the kaffee pot on the stove. Mister Joyce would have to do without chai this morning. I found some cheese in the cool box down by the waterline and put it on a white delft plate. By this time the pot was boiling. I took it off the stove and shovelling kaffee grounds into it. Right - five minutes' brewing time. Just long enough.

The barge was moored up at a little village wharf which stood just above a lock. Alfie and I climbed up on deck, ran ashore and knocked on the door of the combined lock-keeper's house and village shop. Two francs and some schoolgirl Frankish later and I was armed with two baguettes and a demi-livre of butter. We dashed back to the canalside, clattered across the gangplank and into the wheelhouse. A short companionway led down to the cabins underneath, which were surprisingly spacious. Mister Joyce said that English canal boats were very cramped by comparison, and I wondered if he were a waterman himself. I knew so little about him... I would have to ask him some more questions. Perhaps he would be less tired today, and more willing to talk.

Bread - two beautiful, fresh, crusty, aromatic Frankish baguettes spread with unsalted butter and slices of Emmental cheese - washed down with black kaffee looked like a splendid breakfast to me, and the capitaine and his wife seemed to appreciate it. Then they unpegged the mooring ropes and Monsieur Fourneaux took his position at the wheel. I passed more hunks of bread up to him and Madame Fourneaux brought the pot into the wheelhouse as we navigated our way into the lock. He shouted to the lockkeeper to open the top gates and let us in, and took a sizeable gulp of boiling-hot kaffee.

I had got more or less used to the locks by now, with their dripping walls, thudding wooden gates and mysterious watery-vegetable smell. The lockkeeper closed the top gates and opened the bottom sluices, letting the water out of the lock. Emmeline and I held onto the line which she had flung in a life-long practised way over the bollards along the top of the walls. I knew she didn't need my help, but all the same I was glad to give it.

All this time, I wondered - where was Mister Joyce? He hadn't appeared for breakfast, although the capitaine must have woken him when he got up. I supposed that he had gone back to sleep again.

I let the rope slip slowly through my hands as the water level went down. Slowly, slowly, we descended the last few inches and then the bottom gates opened with a creak and we were free to carry on. Emmeline threw a fifty-centime coin to the lockkeeper. He touched his forelock gravely - just like the farmworkers did at home - and his otter-daemon did likewise.

The sun was rising ahead of us. All was still, quiet, misty and grey-green. Nothing stirred the water ahead of our bow-wave and the slow whump-whump-whump of the Marie-Louise's engine was no more than the boat's steady heart-beat; telling us that she was alive and well. I sat with Alfie in the wheelhouse, watching Capitaine Fourneaux's strong brown hands work the controls. His dolphin-daemon Jeanne splashed by our side and I wondered what it would be like to have a daemon who occupied another element. How would they touch one another? Perhaps the capitaine swam with her when he could. It was hard to see how they could ever sleep next to each other.

After a while, Emmeline came up with little Guillaume and gave him to me to hold while she saw to the week's washing. I was apprehensive to begin with - what if he needed changing or started crying again? But I needn't have worried - first his Sophie settled into vole-form and dozed off, then he followed her into sleep. Occasionally he muttered and moved in his sleep, and Sophie changed form in hers, matching his dreams. I think Alfie and I stayed awake for only another ten minutes after them.

I dreamed. I hadn't dreamed much lately - I'd been too tired. So much had happened since I left England. How long ago was it? Let's see - we'd left Pompey on Monday evening and reached Frankland the following day. Then two day's driving - nearly - to St-Claude and three days or so at the field hospital. A day and a half to the crossroads. One night on board the peniche. Nine days in all, more or less, so today must be Wednesday. All this I worked out in my dreams, together with a nightmare where I was running down the corridor of a train, swinging my sword and lopping the heads off the passengers. They were all women, I realised, in a quick lucid flash. They were all women that I was killing. Then Gerry was there too, only his eyes were a strange cobalt-cornflower blue - and then he was Private Fraser, and then his hair went fair and floppy and he was Mister Joyce, chubby-cheeked and sad-eyed, sitting at the top of the Marie-Louise's mainmast - for she was a sailing ship now, heaving and splashing across the Mandarin Sea, in hot pursuit of spice-pirates, firing flaming bolts of paraffin wax at the whale-daemons the pirates rode.

'Hein, hein, hoy!' the pirates cried, boarding our ship with mortal-sharp officer's swords clenched between their teeth. One took his sword in his hand and spat a great gob of tobacco at my feet. 'Ugh!' I said. 'What terrible manners! What would your mother say?'

'What,' he said, and his teeth were many, and sharp-pointed, and black with leaf-juice, 'would your mother say about you? What, eh?' and he lifted his sword high.

'Don't, Mummy!' I screamed, only it came out all squeaky, like a mouse.

Then he was Aunt Sybil and Daddy all wrapped up together. 'Go back to school, you naughty girl,' the Sybil/Daddy said. 'Iron your blouse. Finish your essays. Learn the Periodic Table of Elements. Clean your shoes. Get a haircut. Write out five hundred times "I will not run on the Chapel Flagstones". Come and see me when you have finished and I will send you to polish the tennis courts with a toothbrush. You do have your toothbrush, don't you?'

'I... I... I think so. It's in my kitbag.'

'No, you haven't! No, it isn't! Fibber! Nasty Fibber! Where is your toothbrush? Where? Where? Where? Where is it? Where?'

'Here! Look, it's here!' I tried to show the pirate/Sybil/Daddy my ebony-handled toothbrush, but it wasn't a toothbrush, it was a marlin-spike.

'You stole it! It's not yours. Thief! Thief!'

'No!'

'Liar! Thief! Join us. Join us on the Perilous Seas Of The South. Sail with us to the Anti-Pole, where the Noah-Birds flap and splash! Be a Bastard Of The Ocean, and crew with Captain Will The Beardless. Kill with us. Kill the monkey-women. Kill the Comrades Three! Kill yourself and die with us for ever. Be a pirate's moll, a seaman's slut, a forecastleman's Jenny... Sit astride a ten-pounder cannon, light the fuse and strew the decks with bloodied Excise-Men!'

'No! Yes! No! Yes! Death or Glory!' I ripped a tear in the sky with my dream-sword and awoke.

'Mam'zelle? Mam'zelle?' It was the capitaine, shaking my shoulder. Guillaume was still in my lap, whimpering slightly, his Sophie flickering between forms faster than I could follow. I had disturbed him.

Emmeline came up from her work below to see what all the fuss was about. Apparently I'd been crying out aloud in my dreams. Shouting, even.

Mister Joyce was sitting at the wheelhouse table. In front of him was a collection of bits and pieces, mostly made of brass. Wheels, cogs, spindles, gears, springs, pointers, keys, all that sort of thing. He must have come up from the men's cabin - for that was what we were calling it, as a joke - while I was asleep. I wondered what he was up to, so I sat down at the table opposite him, casting a shadow across it.

'Don't do that,' he said, not looking at me. 'You're blocking the light.' His daemon Viola glared at my direction.

'Sorry.' I moved over a bit. 'What're you doing?'

'The ship's chronometer had stopped. I'm mending it.'

'Does the captain know you're playing with his clock?'

Mister Joyce looked up and his eyes flashed with anger. 'I am not "playing" with it, as you put it. I am repairing it. Of course he knows.'

'Oh good,' I said lamely. 'Do you know about clocks, then?'

Mister Joyce shook his head. 'Heaven help us!' was all he said.

'Does that mean "yes"?' I asked.

'Yes. It means "yes". It means that I am a Master of the Guild of Temporalists. It means that I am well-versed in all the skills and mysteries of the clockmaker's art.'

'So you're a clockmaker, then.'

'Yes. I'm a clockmaker. Now beggar off and leave me in peace.'

It looked as if I was not doing very well with him. Got off on the wrong foot, you might say.

All that day we travelled through the Frankish countryside, stopping for lunch and whenever we came across a lock or a swingbridge. Our pace was slow - no more than a brisk walk - but our cargo of coal and gravel didn't mind and neither, apparently, did our crew. I dozed, or helped with the ropes, or made chai and kaffee, or walked around the deck with a mop. Mister Joyce put the clock back together and reattached it to the bulkhead next to the engine's oil-gauge. Then he sat in the bows again or went down to the cabin. He seemed to spend quite a lot of time there.

It was hard for me and Alfie, not having very much to do. We weren't used to that, not after our time in Mornington and the field hospital. With Mister Grumpy Joyce occupying the forward part of the boat we naturally stayed in the stern. There was a question I wanted to - needed to - ask him, but it would have to wait until he was in a better mood. It was too noisy to go below deck - the vibration from the engine got everywhere - so I mostly stayed in the wheelhouse and watched the countryside drift by. I had, as I say, little to do and I didn't want to get in the way. I wished I'd brought a book with me so I'd have something to read, but all I had was my notebook and some pencils.

The war seemed very far away. Even though we were less than a hundred miles from the Front, there was no sign of the fighting. No sound of guns or rockets, no bursting of shells, no gyropters buzzing overhead, no stealthy Zeppelins sneaking through the clouds. The canal nestled into the landscape and when we came to a town it was by the back door, so to speak. Often we missed the towns and villages altogether. Every hour or two we passed through a lock. The capitaine would exchange greetings and news with the lockkeeper in Frankish that was too quick and idiomatic for me to understand.

The day ended as the previous one had, with the Marie-Louise tied up on the outskirts of a small town and Emmeline cooking (with my help) a daube of beef and herbs in the galley. All right, I peeled potatoes and chopped vegetables rather than doing any actual cooking. All the same, it went down well and even Mister Joyce looked happier by the time the meal finished. In fact, we all felt happier. It must have been something to do with the bottle of red wine we had to drink.

The next day was the same, and the day after and the day after that. The weather stayed fine. I sat in the timber-framed wheelhouse while Mister Joyce rested in the bows. Jeanne swam alongside and chatted to Alfie from time to time. Guillaume was shared out between us, although I was glad to see that he seemed to prefer to stay with me. Perhaps I hadn't upset him too much, that first day. Alfie talked to Sophie, educating her, he said.

I doodled on my notepad. Ideas, dream-thoughts, little pictures of home, or Gerry. I thought of writing to him, but somehow I never got round to it. The canal was becoming busier, so that we sometimes had to wait our turn when we came to a lock, but the land nearby never seemed to be very occupied. It would have been so different at home. Our fields would have been full of our men - ploughing, harrowing, planting; looking after the stock, milking the cows, minding the sheep, mending fences. Our estates were properly run. Daddy saw to that, or his agents did.

Where had everybody gone? Where were all the men and women? I could have asked Capitaine Fourneaux or Emmeline, but something stopped me. Instead I wrote these lines in my notebook:

The plough and the harrow stand quiet by the lee of the hill.
The byre is abandoned, the cockerel crows for no dawn.
The furrow lies barren, the rickyard is empty and still.
The fields are burnt stubble, the fog-shrouded meadow is cold and alone.

At the edge of the highway the poppies' blood chases the green,
From the countryside into the town where it splashes and streams,
Down the streets to the factories where ev'ry machine,
Stands unmoving and wasting away in the dark like my wishes, my hopes and my dreams.

Where is the sweetheart who kissed me goodbye at the door?
Where is the clerk, the smith and the millhand, the fair
Brother, the father, the lover, the son and yet more;
Where is the huntsman, and where is the fellow who follows the plough and the pair?

I stopped writing. I knew where they were, all those men and boys. I had seen them in the wards and the operating theatres of the field hospital. My inspiration failed me suddenly and completely. All I had left was one last line:

A kiss for the lad who is gone; the lad who will never endure to grow old.

I had a question to ask Mister Grumpy, so I waited until after a specially good supper of stewed rabbit, potatoes and carrots, washed down by two bottles of vin rouge this time. We sat back from the wheelhouse table - it doubled as a dining table - and Monsieur Fourneaux lit his pipe. I was out of cigarettes, unless you counted the incredibly strong Nuages Noirs I'd bought in a little bar-tabac the day before. One puff was... interesting. Two puffs were definitely very interesting and after the third, with my head buzzing, my eyes streaming and my stomach heaving, I'd thrown the ciggie over the side. And a good riddance too, said Alfie.

Emmeline brought us some kaffee. Perhaps this was a good time to put my question to Goodsir Joyce. 'Mister Joyce?' I said.

'Yes?'

'I wonder... could you tell me who Arthur Shire is?' Capitaine Fourneaux looked up from his newssheet. 'You told me to tell Capitaine Fourneaux that we were friends of Arthur Shire and I did, although I've never heard of him. Obviously our skipper knows about him, but I don't. Will you tell me?'

Mister Joyce looked at me, and then he looked at the capitaine. Monsieur Fourneaux shook his head. I quickly revised my opinion of his knowledge of English.

'No.'

'No? Why not?'

He ignored my question. '"No" means "no", young lady.'

I stood up. 'Why not? Why won't you tell me?'

'Because you don't need to know. Now sit down!' I remained standing.

'Look, Mister Master Clockmaker Joyce. I was told to meet you by a man I met on the train. Was he Arthur Shire? Tell me!' I could feel my face turning bright red.

'Sit down!' Mister Joyce's voice, which was normally soft with a not unattractive Oxfordshire accent, was harsh with anger. 'Sit down, you stupid little girl!'

I sat down. 'But look,' I pleaded. 'You've got to tell me. Aren't we in this together? Weren't we told to meet up so that we could do something together? Something important. It must be something important.' I was starting to sniffle.

'You think it's important because you're involved. Stars in Heaven, but you've got a big head!'

'Look,' I replied. 'Maybe I am big-headed. Maybe I'm not. At least I'm not a grouchy old cripple with a wooden leg and a chip on his shoulder... Oh God...' I stumbled to my feet and lurched out of the wheelhouse door onto the deck and leaned over the stern, letting my tears fall into the water. I could hear voices behind me in the wheelhouse. Alfie clung to my tunic.

Sunny, why? Why did you say that?

It was awful... I don't know. Why doesn't he like me? Why doesn't Mister Joyce like me?

I don't know yet. Viola won't talk to me either. But Sunny, that was unforgivable.

I know. I know. It must have been the wine... Oh, Hell. I've got to go back in there and say I'm sorry, haven't I?

Yes, you have.

Or get off the boat now and run away.

Run away? Again?

We keep doing that, don't we? Running away.

It's time we stopped.

Yes, you're right. It is.

I turned around and went back into the wheelhouse. Everyone fell silent, even little Guillaume. I took a deep breath.

'Mister Joyce, I'm very sorry. That was a terrible thing to say, and it was dreadful of me to say it.'

'Yes,' said Mister Joyce, 'it was. You should never mock anybody's infirmity.'

'No, you're right. I shouldn't have. I'm sorry.'

'Hmmm.'

'Assieds-toi,' said Emmeline Fourneaux. 'Encore de kaffee?' I sat down and took the cup she offered me. There was cognac mixed in with it, and I gave her a little bow in thanks.

'But look...' I said after a few minutes.

'Yes?'

'Who is Arthur Shire?'

Mister Joyce held up his hands - the real and the artificial - in exasperation. 'Stars above! Heaven help us! Heaven save us from nosy-parker girls!'

I giggled and Guillaume chuckled in appreciation.

'All right,' and Mister Joyce leaned over the table. 'I give up. Arthur Shire is a Gyptian. He's a boatman, and most of the time he plys his boats up and down the canals of Brytain, carrying whatever cargoes people will give him to transport. It's a hard life, like the life the captain and his wife and baby lead.'

'It doesn't look hard.'

'That's because it's summer and there's lots of work on. Lots of war work. It pays well, they say.'

'I see.'

'Perhaps you do. Anyway, you've heard of the Gyptian folk, probably. They've not got a very good reputation. They're travelling people, and they're not trusted by landsfolk. "Thieves - here today, gone tomorrow," they say and, "Off with the raggle-taggle Gyptians, oh," they sing.'

I nodded. We'd sung that song at school.

'Well, Arthur Shire is very high up in Gyptian society. For a start, he's the master and owner of his boats. But more... I can't tell you much more. Not yet. Maybe never. But he's well enough known for our hosts here to recognise his name and take us on board simply because we claimed to be his friends.'

'And are you his friend?'

'Yes, I am. I'm very proud to say it. We've seen things, and done things, together that very few other people have. He's an oracle, you see. He's... connected with the deeper world beneath us and the greater world above us. I really mustn't say any more.'

'Is that because you don't trust me? I don't tell tales, you know. Not even under torture!' I grinned.

Mister Joyce did not smile in return. '"Not even under torture", eh? That's good. That's very good, Sonya. Because that's what it may come to, before all this is over. Yes, indeed it may.'

He emptied his cup of kaffee, stood up with his right hand holding on to the table for assistance and hobbled downstairs to the sleeping quarters below, his squirrel-daemon riding in the crook of his left arm.

Oh my good grief, said Alfie.

Good grief, indeed. And what about the other questions I'd wanted to ask him? For example; where are you going? Why are you going there? Why am I going there with you, if that's what I'm doing? How did you get here, with your gammy leg and all?

Better not ask that one, said Alfie.

No, better not. I think I've done quite enough damage for one day.

I think you have, said Alfie.