Chapter Three: ‘Tick, tock, tock‘     

    Well, honestly! How did he expect her to fall asleep now?! Francesca lay the pages down and picked up the envelope again. She ran her finger along the rough edges of the paper, and then frowned, something caught her eye. Blowing into it she saw that there was very fine writing along the inside of it. She carefully pulled the envelope apart and held it up to the candlelight, it seemed to be nothing more than a reduced collection of old newsprint articles about home and abroad.

    ‘What to do, what to do?’ She hummed quietly to herself. ‘Well, when in doubt ...’ She opened a drawer in her nightstand and pulled out a gold and silver gilt mirror with small translucent jewelled rosettes that wound around a vine that, in turn, wound around the glass and ended by twining itself into a leafy handle. Francesca looked into the slight imperfections of the mirror and her reflection. Taking a deep breath, she exhaled over the surface of it, fogging it slightly, and produced her prettiest pout. ‘Specchio, who is the fairest of them all?’ The mirror slowly came to life in her hands, turning all shades of violet before settling upon the very pale pink of the sky just before sunset. Her reflection re-appeared beneath the fogged surface and looked at her, much as one expects a mirror to do until it frowned when Francesca did not frown and opened its mouth to yawn an enormous yawn. ‘Francesca, darling, what time is it? God, you really must look at yourself, you’re getting old before your time, really ...’ 

    ‘Specchio,’ Francesca interrupted, a little annoyed. ‘I need your help.’

    Her reflection gazed critically at her nightgown. ‘Don’t I know it! What are you wearing?’ Don’t you know that pyjamas are all the rage right now? And look at your hair!’ It giggled. ‘Come now sugarplum, you’re making me look bad, and that takes some doing -’ 

    ‘Oh my God, enough!’ Francesca placed the mirror face-down upon the duvet, and happily waited out the muffled protestations. It was evidently not happy, as it had now turned quite red. ‘I’m not going to pick you up unless you behave.’ Said Francesca glancing down at it. ‘Well?’ She asked. The mirror slowly turned back to a soft pink colour again and spoke into the duvet. ‘Mmm-k.’ It grudgingly replied.

    ‘Good.’ Francesca picked up the mirror and read her uncle’s letter aloud. ‘You see my problem?’ She asked, finally. We both know that uncle Leo is continuing his travels throughout Italy as an ambassador of the Empire, and we both know Uncle Leo is definitely not a Bonapartist. In fact, she smiled to herself, he secretly worked against Napoleon’s machinations in their homeland ... but what he was on about was anyone’s guess. 

    Her eyes wandered over the typeset articles and she noticed that they were tedious descriptions of past battles, what could possibly interest her less?  She held up her hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn and lay back against her great big, embroidered pillow. Skimming over the page, she read old news of the Peninsular War and how, during 1808 to 1813, the Spanish Guerillas aided by British troops under Wellington and his Portuguese allies drove the French out and eventually invaded southern France ... ‘What?’ Francesca blinked. The Specchio showed her reflection chewing on a hangnail, it turned to her. ‘That wasn’t right, dear, everyone knows Napoleon pushed Wellington out of Spain and defeated him in Oporto in what is known to be one of his most celebrated victories.’ 

   Francesca turned the page toward the candlelight and looked at the remaining articles more carefully. ‘Why, every single one of these articles describes the important military defeats of Napoleon. The final article describes the bloody battle of Waterloo as that which saw Napoleon’s remaining elite guard destroyed, and himself exiled to St Helena from where he was to never return. ‘This is absurd!’ The mirror exclaimed. ‘He didn’t lose - he won! What is this? What is your Uncle Leo doing sending us news that makes no sense?’ Francesca looked again at the page, and then picked up the first part of the letter and re-read it. 

    Could his experiments with the looking-glass have something to do with this? Her reflection pondered, it was now wearing a huge night-bonnet and taking a sip of camomile tea. After a moment, it put the tea down and turned back to a frowning Francesca, before quietly speaking. 

    ‘He was successful with the Breguet, that was clear ... but Mikuláš of Kadaň? Where had she heard that name before? She reached over and ran a delicate finger down a neatly stacked row of notebooks, her carefully catalogued schoolwork. 

    ‘Ah!’ She breathed, finding the right one. She wet her thumb with the tip of her tongue and expertly rifled through the neat pages. ‘Mikuláš of Kadaň ... hear it is!’ He was a clock-maker from Bohemia, from Prague, who, with the collaboration of Jan Šindel, constructed the Prague astronomical clock in the year 1410! She leant back, fluffing a bright, pale pink pillow. The clock shows a full range of astronomical data, providing the revolutions of the Sun, the Moon and the apparent revolutions of the stars. This famous astronomical clock figured into the Looking Glass Theory, that much she was certain, but how? 

    ‘Oof,’ she exhaled. ‘This is too much, and what of the Breguet? Perhaps he was too successful, is that what he meant?’ 

     Francesca pulled out her diary from under her pillow and turned to the back of the book where she kept all her study notes.

     Uncle Leo’s past experiments helped return the famous timepiece to Marie Antoinette when many of his contemporaries thought it an impossible thing to do - she had been dead for thirty-four years afterall. He did do it though, he did it with his Looking Glass Theory and the pendulum. Everyone knows she received that watch, but not many know how.

    Principessa Pesca rolled over onto her back and meow-d what could only have meant ‘Stop moving the bed please, can’t you see I’m trying to sleep?’ Francesca reached over and rubbed her orange and white belly with her fingertips and found herself yawning again. ‘Perhaps you’re right little one, it is very late, give us just ten more minutes, hmm?’ 

    Her reflection sneezed. ‘Atchoo! Cats, I hate cats, they scratch up all my furniture and shed all over my best outfits … shoo!’

     Francesca and Principessa Pesca ignored her. The ten minutes became twenty, and the twenty, thirty ... until Francesca knew she had understood it was time to give up understanding what he was trying to communicate. ‘Well Specchio, what a girl needs is sleep. Sleep for her skin and sleep for her brain. Perhaps we could get Uncle Rudolpho to enlighten us.’ Francesca and her reflection giggled in unison, and they both yawned at the thought. If there was one truism, it was that if you needed a little intellectual help, do not go to the muscle in the family, because a little is the most you could hope for. She placed the mirror back into its drawer, Francesca yawned, ‘Good night Specchio.’ She slid the drawer closed on the muffled ‘g-night dear’ from within. Francesca loved sleeping even more than her Uncle Leo’s puzzles, now that was something that was absolutely undeniable. 

    Putting out the candle between dampened fingertips, and burying herself under her blankets, she felt the careful footsteps upon the bed as the cats moved in to join her under the covers as she drifted off to sleep.                                 

    Exactly four hours and twenty-three minutes later five things happened that would erase the tranquility that had settled upon the Parisian boudoir. 

   First. A pair of violently running disembodied legs appeared in the air above Francesca’s bed that could only have belonged to Uncle Rudolpho - he was in the habit of wearing purple riding boots, besides which, the lime green breeches with the patch on the left knee were an absolute giveaway. 

  Second. Uncle Antonio’s suitably startled-looking head appeared three inches above Francesca’s happily sleeping visage. 

   Third. An unusually large pocket-watch dropped onto Francesca’s pillow, narrowly missing, not only her, but Uncle Antonio’s disembodied head as well. 

   Fourth. Francesca being an unnaturally light sleeper, awoke, and finally ... 

   Fifth. Through no fault of her own, and really quite reasonably, Francesca started to scream. And then? She abruptly fainted. 

                                                       ***

        Francesca slowly opened an eye and peered round the room. Her partially enclosed Louis XV bed showed no discernible sign of what she remembered transpiring. She opened the other eye and peered into the darkness. The small but ornate hexagonal rooftop room, or tower, as she imagined it, was as calm as she would expect it to be at God-knows-what-time-it-was Tuesday morning. Wriggling out from underneath the covers, she pulled her bonnet off and heard it. A subtle ‘tick, tick, tick’ disturbing the silence. Leaning out from between her embroidered silk pillows, and running her hand under the edge of the bed, she grasped at the faint tick-tocking of what turned out to be the oversized pocket-watch that very nearly decapitated her.

     Calmly squinting at it, she noted two things: the watch had many arms, at least six that she could see, and it ‘tocked’ more than it ‘ticked.’ ‘Oh Dio mio.’ She frowned, she could clearly hear the rumblings of her uncles arguing through the floorboards from downstairs. ‘Well,’ she thought, ‘they’re up, and I have the evidence, which means I didn’t dream it. I also have a bone or two to pick with those two men!’ It appealed to her sense of correctness that two grown men should not be interfering with the much needed sleep of a girl in her prime, not to mention, popping out of thin air into the boudoir of a lady. Uncle or no uncle!

    Digging herself out from underneath the blankets and groping her way to her favourite shawl - large, red-and-white-striped cashmere, very pretty, and silk day-slippers - softer pink and pearl motif (they went with almost everything) she ran her hand along the wall and found the banister that led round and round down the polished wood stairs to the main room below.

     What she saw was this: Uncle Rudolpho standing on the long dining table amidst the books, beakers and bottles; brandishing his rapier over the head of Uncle Antonio who, clearly irritated, is banging one fist upon the back of a chair sending Principessa Pesca running for cover behind a stack of not unattractive British landscapes. Rudolpho is pointing at the ostentatious armoire à glace. 

     ‘You see,’ he bellowed? When I raise my sword - so - I am raising my right hand, but the mirror clearly shows me holding up my left hand!’ 

                       Antonio was becoming quite red in the face. 

      ‘Rudolpho, you old reprobate! Stop hopping about like a caffeinated donkey and listen!’ 

      It was at this moment that Francesca, tired of their immature antics, shrieks, startling Rudolpho, who gets hit in the head by a panicked cat, the Large Grey One - Oliver. Rudolpho falls forward, topples Antonio, the rapier follows, expertly impaling both of them upon a chaise longue with a fortuitous skewering of both uncle’s cravats. Francesca takes three determined steps, slides up to the chaise longue like a cobra about to strike and deposits herself next to her beloved uncles. ‘Now ...’ She smiles, holding up the pocket-watch. ‘Please tell me what this is all about.’

      Her uncles looked at each other, and then at Francesca, and finally at the twirling watch above their heads. Rudolpho was the first to react. 

     ‘Antonio,’ he whispered. ‘She has got the orologio, what we going to do?’

     ‘Be quiet you dunderhead, you think she can’t hear you?!’ 

      He turned his bespectacled eyes towards Francesca and smiled a rather alarming smile.

     ‘Francesca!’ He laughed. ‘My you’re up early, and look at you, so beautiful too!’ He looked down his nose, and at the thin blade. ‘Would you mind removing this rapier?’ He tried to move, drawing attention to his obvious  predicament. ‘It seems to have lodged itself in my cravat.’ He grunted. ‘And I feel like a Siamese twin attached to your uncle here ...’

     Francesca lowered the watch from its brass coloured chain so that it touched the tip of Antonio’s nose. ‘Beloved uncle, pray tell me what exactly is going on or I shall leave the two of you touching cheek to cheek ‘till I receive a letter from mother telling me otherwise ...’ She grinned an unpleasant sort of grin thought Antonio. Francesca chuckled. ‘And you know she may very well insist on leaving you so till Uncle Leo returns!’ 

       Rudolpho squirmed, ‘Francesca, come, you know we love you, be a good girl and remove the rapier, eh? I buy you pretty dress and you no tell your mother ...what you say?’ 

        She pretended to look shocked. ‘Uncle Rudi, I think you are trying to bribe me!’ 

        Rudolpho turned to Antonio. ‘What she mean “bribe”?’ 

      He snorted. ‘She means she knows you are as smart as your left stocking.’ His spectacles started sliding down his nose. ‘Francesca, please, this is very undignified. I promise I will tell you what you like when you release us from this predicament ... now I insist you do as you’re told!’ 

        Francesca clicked her tongue off the roof of her mouth and thought a moment. ‘Francesca!’ Antonio was getting impatient now. She smiled a little and then produced one of her perfect pouts. ‘All right uncle.’ She stood between them and placed her left foot against Rudolpho’s chest, grabbed the rapier by its hilt and started to pull.

        Rudolpho frowned. ‘Francesca, be careful, you ruin my shirt!’

       ‘Uncle, please - be - quiet ...’ She gave one hard tug, and it popped out with a discernible “twang.” ‘There, you’re free.’ Francesca smiled, placed the blade on the table, and offered a hand to each of her uncles. 

        Antonio brushed himself off, ‘Thank you m’dear, that was most uncomfortable.’ 

        ‘She put a footprint on my shirt Antonio, you see? This Oriental silk ...’ 

        Francesca rounded on him. ‘Oh please, hush Uncle!’

       ‘Yes Rudi, calm yourself.’ Antonio, turned and winked at his niece, trying to show he was on her side, but she squinted at him suspiciously. 'You have a hundred just like it, now go make us some tea.’ 

        Rudolpho stalked off to the fireplace muttering ‘Tea?! If I boil the water, I make the pasta and I make it only for me, not you ...’