Having informed all who might notice her absence that she was visiting relatives, Elizabeth set out south for the Big Smoke. The one person she hadn’t spoken to about the trip was John Farthing. But he was away on Patent Office business and they weren’t due to meet for another ten days. That would give her time enough to make the journey and be back without him ever needing to know. Unless her offer was accepted. In which case, she would have to face the ordeal of telling her lover she’d betrayed him.
But not yet.
The address she’d been sent proved to be a smart Georgian townhouse near the Strand. The number 67 moulded in blacked iron had been affixed to the door, but she could find no name plaque. Perhaps the neighbours had guessed the purpose of the building from the comings and goings. If so, they would surely have shuddered. But a passerby would never know that number 67 belonged to the International Patent Office.
She pulled the bell handle and heard the jangling inside. There was barely time for her to step back and glance up at the frontage of the building before the door was opened by an elderly gentleman dressed in charcoal grey.
“Elizabeth Barnabus,” she said.
He nodded and made room for her to step inside.
The house proved deeper than she’d expected. The doorman led her along a doglegged corridor, then up a narrow staircase. They would once have been servants’ stairs, she thought. The Patent Office owned many buildings scattered across the land. Most, like this, were anonymous. And their functions were a mystery.
The doorman left her in a wood-panelled room, sparsely furnished but with a luxury of height and ornamental plasterwork around the edges of the ceiling. Looking out from the window she saw a flagstoned yard. Two fruit trees had been trained espalier style over one of the garden walls.
The click of the door opening made her turn. A younger man stepped inside, also dressed in charcoal grey. His red hair and apple complexion seemed too exuberant for his clothes.
“Thank you for coming, Miss Barnabus,” he said, offering a plump hand, which she took.
“You have me at a disadvantage.”
“You may call me Agent Sorren.”
“Thank you for seeing me, Mr Sorren.”
“Not at all. Service is our duty and a pleasure.”
This was disingenuous. No ordinary citizen could expect such an audience. Indeed, few would want one. The International Patent Office might have been established to safeguard the interests of the common man. But its powers were wide and its agents haughty. Working from the shadows, they were supposed to use their powers only to stifle unseemly sciences and cultivate peace. But power and shadows do not mix well.
“We found your letter in the general pile,” Agent Sorren said. “It could easily have been missed.”
“I sent four,” she said.
“Ah. Well, quite. If you’d addressed them to a named individual, all would certainly have been seen. You did once have a case officer. Two years ago. An Agent John Farthing?”
“I didn’t want to involve him.”
“Indeed.” He nodded, still smiling, though she thought the expression false. “No matter,” he said. “You’ll understand we get many strange letters; offers of help from psychics and priests. The asylums are full of people who believe themselves the very centre of the world. Such men are drawn to us.”
“Well, they would be,” she said.
“But your letter was different. I’d be grateful if you could tell me what you know of the airship American Frontier.”
“My friend was on it.”
“Forgive me. I should have offered my condolences from the start. But people die in accidents every day. Their friends seldom believe the truth of things is being hidden. What set you to such a proposition?”
“There have been seven airship disasters in two years,” she said. “The same number as in the fifty years that came before.”
“That’s a remarkable statement, Miss Barnabus. How did you come by your information?”
“I read it. In a newspaper.”
“It wasn’t in the newspapers.”
“How strange,” she said.
His eyes were disconcertingly pale and steady. The moment stretched.
“Have you told anyone else about your… research?”
It was a dangerous question. “One,” she said. “A lawyer in New York. The husband of my dear friend who was lost.”
“Ah. Indeed?”
They had not moved since shaking hands. Though in close proximity, she could detect no scent from Agent Sorren. No perfume. No body odour. No remnant of soap or tobacco.
“We have a file on you,” he said, indicating its thickness by the spread of his thumb and finger. “I read it, of course, in preparation for meeting you. I must confess, there was something in it that I found hard to believe. And harder still now having met you. It stated that you are able to effect the likeness of a young man.”
She felt her mask of composure turning brittle. Julia had known the secret of her double identity. And Tinker, the boy had seen through it. But it was only John Farthing who could have told the Patent Office. The feeling of betrayal made her stomach clench.
Agent Sorren’s pale gaze was fixed on her. She turned her back on him and stepped to the window, trying to get her breathing back under control.
“You’ve been in and out of our interest for many years,” he said. “And your father before you. I must confess, I’d been expecting someone less well presented. You were raised in a travelling show. Yet you carry yourself like a respectable citizen. There’s much in your history that I don’t understand. But enough that I do. You’re a singular woman, resourceful and intelligent. So when you write to us offering help, it’s clear you’re not just another escapee from the asylum. And being able to appear as a man could perhaps make it possible.”
She unclenched her hands. The palms were slick with sweat. “Do you want my help or not?”
“Perhaps. But if we were to accept it without knowing where you obtained your information – this would be a concern.”
“I read it in a newspaper,” she said again, keeping her voice flat, hiding the churn of emotions.
“Offers such as yours must go before a committee. If you’d only let me know the truth, I could argue your case. Otherwise, I’ll have to recommend against you.”
“I can argue my own case,” she said.
“Very well,” he said. “But you do so at your own risk.”
Agent Sorren marched ahead, leading her towards the front of the building, then up a wider staircase. He stopped before a pair of double doors and turned to instruct her.
“You will remain standing unless told to sit. If dismissed, you will leave immediately and without objection. Remain silent unless invited to speak. And behave with servility at all times.”
He knocked twice and waited. Presently a voice from within called “Enter”, whereon he swung the doors open and gestured for her to follow.
This room was far larger than the last had been. At its head lay a dark wooden table, behind which sat five men. Two chairs had been left in the space facing them.
It took all of Elizabeth’s will to not turn and run. She could see none of their faces. Each man was bent forwards, studying papers on the table in front of him. But John Farthing she would have recognised from the slightest glimpse. He sat on the left hand side, bent deeper than his colleagues.
Agent Sorren escorted her to one of the vacant chairs, in front of which she stood, dumbly. Then the central man, who seemed older than the others, glanced up and made a downward motion with his hand. Agent Sorren sat and gestured for her to do the same.
Elizabeth’s thoughts were in turmoil. Farthing might not realise she was there. A reaction of surprise when he looked up could give away their secret. That would mean the ruin of them both. But these imaginings were swept away by a more obvious, a more painful truth. He’d known she was coming, even before she received the invitation. He’d already known when they last met in the room above the ale house. He must have been waiting for her to say it, but she never did. She felt her face reddening at the memory.
“Present yourselves,” said the eldest man, looking up from his papers.
“Please may it be recorded that I am Agent Sorren, in attendance with and representing Miss Elizabeth Barnabus. She offers her services in the gathering of information regarding the recent loss of the airship American Frontier.”
“Very well. Let it be so recorded. Also record that I am Senior Agent Lopez, presiding officer, and that this is a tribunal of irregular deputisation constituted under the provisions of the Auxiliaries Charter, section twelve.”
The man sitting next to Farthing opened a ledger and began to write.
Having paused for the secretary to catch up, Senior Agent Lopez continued: “We’ve had the opportunity to peruse copies of Miss Barnabus’s letter and other papers relating to the case and her background. We chiefly wish to ascertain where she sourced her information. Have you questioned her on this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Was she forthcoming?”
For the first time, John Farthing looked up from the papers on the table. His eyes met hers. The contact lasted a fraction of a second, but she could too easily read his anguish through the mask of cool efficiency. It felt as if lightning had penetrated her chest.
“No, sir,” said Agent Sorren. “She did not reveal that information.”
Farthing looked down to his papers again.
“Very well,” said Senior Agent Lopez. “Miss Barnabus, you see here before you a tribunal assembled to consider your offer. It has the power to accept or reject on the part of the Patent Office. Or hold you in detention pending the resolution of any outstanding questions. I am the convener. Agent Farthing, I believe you have already met. For the record we need to say that he was your caseworker on a previous investigation. Do you have anything to say?”
The recording secretary stopped scratching in the ledger and looked up, waiting for her to speak. Everyone but Farthing was watching her.
Her mind churned. If she refused to say where she’d discovered the information, she might be held in detention. But were she to admit the truth, Farthing would surely be imprisoned. And stripped from the role to which he’d devoted his life.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“You’re not charged with any offence.”
“You said I could be detained.”
“Agent Sorren is here to represent your interests.”
She took a breath but Sorren cut in before she could speak.
“Thank you, sir. I’ve briefed Miss Barnabus on our procedures. Her wish is merely to be of assistance.”
“How generous of her.”
One of the other men sat forward and cleared his throat. “The woman has offered help. But what qualifications does she have? This is a waste of our time as far as I can see. And how could we trust her, anyway?”
The secretary nodded agreement as he wrote. “She’s a woman. What useful skills could she have?”
“Very well,” said Senior Agent Lopez. “What about you, Agent Sorren? Do you recommend that we accept Miss Barnabus’s offer?”
Elizabeth glanced across to Sorren. His pale eyes were downcast.
“No,” he said.
“It seems that no one will speak for you,” said Lopez. “Will you not consider revealing your sources?
“No.”
“Very well. I am empowered to detain you pending a resolution of this outstanding question.”
Elizabeth took a deep breath and stood, making her chair legs scrape on the floor.
“Sit down,” Sorren hissed. There was panic in his voice.
Her pulse pressed against the constriction of her corset. “You want skills!” she said. “How many others have been able to find what I’ve discovered? Who else beyond your agency knows that airships are being brought down?”
No one answered.
“You want someone whose discretion you can trust. But when I protect my sources – in the face of your threats – you count it against me! Would you think me more trustworthy if I betrayed that trust? And what skills do you think I employed to get this audience? You want qualifications – though you know they’re near impossible for a woman. Consider that my qualification! But I’ll give you more here and now – if any of you dare take my challenge! Test me on the law and I’ll test you. We’ll see whose knowledge is greater! Which one will go against me?”
She cast her gaze from one to the next. Their eyes were wide with shock. Sorren had scrambled to his feet. His mouth hung slack. If a beetle had crawled across the carpet and started reciting Plato, it could hardly have amazed them more.
Anger had spurred her. But a gambler’s instinct also. She’d already proved herself unnatural in their eyes; a woman sparring with a panel of agents. Doubt was incubating in them. She could feel it. Any one of them would have called her bluff if she’d been alone with him. But in the tribunal they risked humiliation in front of their peers.
Lopez made a rumbling sound that turned into a clearing of the throat. “Please remain standing.” He looked to the recording secretary. “We will take our vote. All those in favour of accepting Miss Barnabus’s offer, please indicate.”
No one moved.
“All those against?”
John Farthing raised his hand. She felt pain, like a knife piercing her skin.
“One against and three abstentions,” said Lopez.
The recording secretary looked up, confused. “Three?”
The senior agent nodded. “I’ve yet to cast my own vote. I found myself ambivalent. And yet…” A smile had begun to spread across his face. “…and yet, her performance was quite magnificent. She beat you all, though we won’t record that in the minutes. Indeed, she has won me over.”
“Then the votes are tied,” announced the recording secretary. “But Agent Lopez’s seniority carries the motion.”
She had won her case, but it felt as if she’d lost something far greater. Her legs wobbled and she dropped back to the chair. The agents filed out from behind the table.
“Come,” said Sorren, when they were alone again. “We’ve paperwork to complete. And a letter to draft to the North Atlantic Trading Company. They’ll provide the means of it. We’ll have to arrange for you to visit with them. I presume they’ll need to see with their own eyes that you can appear as a man.”
He beckoned for her to follow.
“I don’t think I can stand,” she said.
The weeks that followed were consumed with planning and preparation. She threw herself into weaving the two cover stories: one to explain her sudden disappearance to those who knew her, the other a fabricated past for the young scientific officer she was about to become. There were books of terminology to learn, as well as the anatomy of North Atlantic whale species. She spent her evenings in the Natural History Museum in Kensington, allowed in after hours and tutored by order of the Patent Office.
Through all this, she tried to not think about John Farthing. She was now helping the Patent Office. That put her in closer alignment to his ideals than ever before. She knew that, in some senses, she’d betrayed him by making contact behind his back. Balanced on the other side was his betrayal of her. The ability to switch between male and female gave her what little agency she had in a world dominated by men. But only so long as it was kept secret. He had given that secret up. His guilt was surely the greater.
Standing in a museum storeroom one night, between shelves stacked with the bones of whales and tissue samples in formaldehyde, she found herself rehearsing what she would say when she next saw him. She tried to remember the tenderness of his expression. But when she pictured his face, it was clothed in sorrow.
Thereafter she couldn’t concentrate and left early for her lodgings. She resolved to take a trip north to confront him. They would each say their piece. She would state her regrets and he would apologise.
Walking from the museum, she began to construct a story to tell Agent Sorren. Tinker was being looked after in Leicester. Though he could fend for himself better than most adults, the boy would be missing her. He deserved a visit. A few days away would in any case freshen her mind. Her studies and preparation would benefit. All this was true enough.
But when she got back to her lodging house, she found a letter waiting. A commission had been secured for her on the Pembroke, a whaling ship of the North Atlantic fleet. She would depart on a supply ship heading out of Liverpool in four days. She must set out immediately.
The next morning, Agent Sorren met her at the air terminus and delivered an envelope of documents into her hand.
“Degree certificate, identity papers and passport,” he said.
Of necessity, she’d developed a connoisseur’s eye for forgeries. “Are they good?” she asked.
“They’re genuine.”
It seemed that it paid to be with the Patent Office.
“And there’s one more thing. You’ve not been told this until now because, honestly, I didn’t know it myself until yesterday. It is the greatest secret we’re giving you. It can’t ever be written down. This is the phrase to be uttered by your contact or by yourself. One will say: ‘I watch for the Pleiades.’ To which the other will reply: ‘I watch for the Pole Star.’ By this will you know each other. If a man speaks this line to you or responds when you say it, then you can tell him all you’ve learned. Your message will find its way back to us.”
“Then my contact is a man?”
“Forgive me,” said Agent Sorren. “I was wrong to assume. Nothing but this phrase has been told to me.”
Elizabeth arrived at the Company dock in the male guise she would need to maintain, perhaps for months. She presented her papers for inspection at the main office. A man behind a large desk brought out a magnifying lens to inspect them, but would hardly look her in the face. She felt vindicated by his reaction. But also alone.
“Your sea trunk arrived this morning,” he said, sliding the papers back without ever looking at her properly. “You’ll find it in the parcel office.”
Other than a clerk’s desk and vacant chair, the parcel office was filled with shelving racks. Daylight streamed down from high, narrow windows, each crisscrossed by iron bars. All the packages waiting for dispatch were wrapped in identical brown paper, tied with twine. Seeing no one in attendance, she cleared her throat.
John Farthing stepped out from behind the rearmost shelves.
So unexpected was the revelation of his presence that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Somewhere outside a steam whistle sounded. She managed to swallow and then inhale. She’d had a speech prepared for when she saw him again. If only she could remember it.
He too seemed paralysed. “What’s happened to your face?”
Her hand went to her cheek where she’d painted the mark. “It’s… That is…”
But he was already stepping towards her, arms open, and she found herself rushing towards him. They held each other.
“…indigo,” she said, mumbling the word into his shoulder.
“What?”
“My face. It’s supposed to be a birthmark.”
“But why?”
“So people don’t look so closely. Please don’t make me cry. I’ll make a mess of your jacket.”
He held her even closer. “You don’t have to go. You don’t have to do it. No one can force you.”
“I’m helping the Patent Office. You should approve.”
“But I don’t want to lose you.”
“Is that why you voted against me?”
“I was voting for you,” he said. “For your safety. For your life.”
She pulled herself free of his embrace and touched her hands to her flattened chest. “They knew about this,” she said. “My disguise.”
“Yes.”
“You told them! How could you do that?”
“Without it you’d have been no use as a spy. Not in the North Atlantic.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to go!”
“But going is your heart’s desire. And if I hadn’t told them, you wouldn’t have been given the chance.”
“You still betrayed me.”
“You betrayed me first. I didn’t tell them until they showed me your letter. I’m begging you. Don’t leave.”
“Agent Sorren said that no one else could do this.”
“He was manipulating you.”
“You think I’m so biddable?”
He laughed then, though there was no humour in it.
“Will you keep an eye on Tinker?” she said. “I’ve sent him to stay with Julia’s family.”
“Have you thought what’ll happen when he finds you’ve gone? He’ll think you’ve abandoned him.”
“I don’t know why he ever came to me,” she said, trying to make it seem more right than it was.
Farthing’s eyes admonished her. “You make your own rules. You’re probably more like him than any adult he’s met. He may be feral, but sometimes you seem half wild yourself. How could he fail to love you?”
“I didn’t ask for the responsibility.”
“No one ever does.”
“Will you look out for him?”
“As best I can.”
“I couldn’t have told him,” she said, trying again to make it seem right. “He’d have done something stupid, like following me. I can’t take him into that danger.”
She held John Farthing tight, desperate to feel him one more time, though there were layers of clothing and disguise between them.
“Will you not give me your blessing?” she whispered.
“I cannot,” he said.
And with that tender ill-grace, they parted.
At last, the ship’s steam whistle called her to the quayside. She joined the line of new recruits and climbed the gangplank. Once on deck she hurried to the side of the ship to scan the faces of those who’d gathered to wave off loved ones. John Farthing was not among them.
The mooring ropes were untied and thrown free. The dark waters of the harbour churned. The ship began to turn, tilting slightly as it pulled away from the dock. The crowd on deck began to disperse as others sought out their berths below. But Elizabeth stood gripping the safety rail long after the Company dock had been swallowed in Liverpool’s hazy air.
She received only one letter from him. It was addressed to Scientific Officer Edwin Barnabus, and took the form of a communication from a reform school. She recognised his handwriting, although the signature at the bottom was a made-up name. It reported in brief and unsentimental language the news that the boy, known as Tinker, had run away.
Though his whereabouts are unknown, the last sighting of him was in the Liverpool docks. We assume he may have stowed away on one of the Trading Company’s boats, heading into the North Atlantic.