by V. E. Ulett
There was a scratching sound at the great cabin door and the captain’s steward Saramago slid into the cabin. He came up to Miriam and offered her a hat of fine fluffy wool.
“For you, Miss,” Saramago said. “With my best—how you say?—gallantries.”
“How kind, I am very much obliged to you.” Miriam turned the closely knitted cap over in her hands. Not many days since Saramago had come in and measured Miriam’s head with lengths of package twine. “It is a fine hat, and I am most grateful—”
“From alpaca, Miss, he is a llama gives warmest, best wool.”
“I shall be honored to wear it, thank you. I wonder, is it to be so very cold where we are bound?”
Saramago responded with a grin and an enigmatic waggle of his finger back and forth before his own face. A loud and insistent knocking startled the Hell-Cat. Thrax jumped from Miriam’s lap with a hiss in the direction of the great cabin door.
“Come in,” Miriam called.
Mr. Dashwood rushed in. Miriam was of two minds regarding Mr. Dashwood. Her first evening aboard he’d made her a gift of two bottles of Otto of Roses, that she recognized from when she purchased them in Algiers.
“Where is the Captain?”
Mr. Dashwood was dancing on his toes with excitement.
Miriam motioned toward the right or starboard side of the great cabin, which was Captain Thorpe’s exclusive domain. At that moment, hearing Mr. Dashwood’s voice no doubt, Maximus Thorpe issued from his private lair. Behind the captain’s back, and before he closed the door, Miriam and Mr. Dashwood were treated to a glimpse of luxurious hangings and purpose built wood cabinetry crammed with books and maps. Those rich colored fabrics brought the harem to Miriam’s mind, another subject about which she was of two minds, maybe more.
“Well, Mr. Dashwood?”
“We are forty sea miles or so from the gale, sir. And shall close to within twenty in the next glass.”
“Very good!” Captain Thorpe clapped his hands loudly. “Saramago! There you are. A pot of tea, Saramago, and pass the word for Mr. Dodd. Mr. Dashwood, we shall clear for action in half a glass. You and Miss Miriam will join me for tea?”
Miriam and Mr. Dashwood looked at one another in confusion.
“Top gallants struck?” Captain Thorpe barked out.
“Why yes, Sir,” Mr. Dashwood said, “during this last watch. It may be my first ascent—”
“Just so, Mr. Dashwood,” Captain Thorpe said, “and as you’ve become quite the proficient with the Mechanism, you will be knowing we do have time for tea. This is not just any tea.” Captain Thorpe turned to Miriam. “This is maté, coca tea, Miss, from Saramago’s own country el Perú.”
Saramago returned bearing a tray with the tea in cans, each with its pipette. Mr. Dodd followed Saramago in, and they stood thus cramped together, leaving a seasoned old quartermaster at the helm. One by one, once the Captain helped himself, they each—saving Miriam, who went next after Maximum—by rank, selected a can. Then they stood about calmly sipping the maté.
“Do be seated, Miss Miriam,” Captain Thorpe said. “In a short while we shall make a clean sweep fore and aft. We take down the bulkheads, and remove the furnishings, so that my officers and I have unimpeded passage from one end of the ship to the other.”
“From clew to earring, sir,” Mr. Dodd offered.
Captain Thorpe smiled, and the bear-like Mr. Dodd rumbled out a chuckle. Mr. Dashwood continued to wear a puzzled expression.
“Mr. Dashwood will be wondering why we take tea before clearing for action,” Captain Thorpe said, as though instructing Miriam. “The Incas found that drinking coca tea helped them endure the rarified air of the high Andean mountains, and gave them uncommon resistance to fatigue.” The Captain jumped to his feet, having finished his own tea. “Right. Let us shift our clothing, gentlemen, then it’s sharps the word and quick’s the action. Oh! I was forgetting. Dashwood, have you a pair of trowsers you can give Miss Miriam? You’ve a narrow backside and they might just fit the lass.”
Both Miriam and Mr. Dashwood recoiled as though before a horrid and unthinkable suggestion. Captain Thorpe, already in tearing high spirits, laughed at them. “What a pair of ninnies you are. You are to put on your warmest clothes, Miss, wear the trowsers beneath your skirts if you wish. There is nothing nefarious in it.” Captain Thorpe tutted, and said to his first lieutenant, “After you fetch the garment, we shall beat to quarters, Mr. Dashwood.”
When Miriam emerged from the closet where she slept, clad in layers of clothing, and fastening a hijab over her hair, she met a shipboard world in chaos. The bulkhead partitions, the interior walls, were down and she could see straight through to the bow of the ship. Forward the canvas curtain was removed, so that Captain Thorpe’s command center was in plain view. The Captain was standing at the yoke, with Mr. Dashwood practically riding astride the table housing the Mechanism. The carpenter’s mates appeared with mallets, and began knocking down the walls of her private den.
Miriam side stepped out of the path of seamen carrying the Captain’s personal effects to the hold below the lowest deck of the ship. One of the scurrying men, the bearer of a cabinet box of books, with a pair of candlesticks and plush red velvet curtains atop for good measure, was her China instructor, Jugma Bora. Seaman Bora gave her a distracted shake of the head. The entire deck was opening up to such a degree, Miriam wondered where she must go to keep out of the way.
“Aft there!” Captain Thorpe called out. “Pick up the pace. Ascent in,” a pause while Captain Thorpe and Mr. Dashwood exchanged a nod, “one quarter glass. A quarter glass and closing.”
The men around her went into a faster whirl of activity. Miriam never expected to see such limping, damaged beings move so fast. They disappeared below decks with their burdens, then came scrambling back up. Some remained on the deck forward of where Miriam crouched on the stern locker in what used to be the great cabin, taking up stations alongside the arrangement of blocks and heavy lines attached to the yoke. Others ran topside where Miriam heard them greeted by Mr. Dodd. “Mind the lifelines fore and aft!” The motion of the ship had grown lively. It was all Miriam could do to keep her seat.
Saramago came rushing at her at the same time as Captain Thorpe. Mr. Dashwood was holding the yoke now, his long hair streaming behind him.
“Sit down upon the deck itself, Miss Miriam,” Captain Thorpe was telling her, kneeling beside her on one knee.
Miriam slid off her seat and did as she was bid, her legs straight out before her, and her back to the stern locker. Several things struck her at once. How glad she was of the trowsers she wore in her present awkward position, and how kind in Captain Thorpe to have thought about her comfort. In fact she was now seated all the way aft and in the starboard area of the ship where Nonesuch’s captain had his private abode. They were lashing her with lines made fast to the pegs for the cabinets that housed Captain Thorpe’s prodigious store of books.
“You shall be able to get free, Miss Miriam, but this will prevent you being too much tossed about, I hope and trust. Saramago! Remember to swallow, Miss.” With this strange admonition Captain Thorpe took off forward, stooped over, crab walking sideways with the ship’s bucking motion, until he reached the yoke and took over from Mr. Dashwood.
Saramago was still kneeling beside Miriam, alternately sliding into or away from her. From a pocket of his seaman’s tunic he withdrew the knitted alpaca hat he’d given her, with its leather reinforced sides meant to cover and protect the ears.
“You forget this in your cabin, Miss,” Saramago said. “Wear over your veil, tie under your chin, and pray to Allah to keep us safe. Your ears pain you, chew on this.”
The steward pressed into Miriam’s palm a small round ball of damp green stuff.
“Coca leaves,” he said, “small boiled in lemon water.”
Saramago patted her atop her cushioned head, smiled kindly into her face, and was up and away to his appointed station. Under normal circumstance
s Miriam might resent the steward taking liberties, assuming he knew what god she prayed to, but these were not normal circumstances.
She was so violently tossed from side to side that Miriam popped the coca leaves into her mouth and clung to the ropes binding her. The ship must be nearing the gale the officers spoke of, predicted by the Mechanism. Miriam hung on to the ropes, bruising and chaffing against them, her feet flying in the air. She heard shouting forward, between Captain Thorpe and Mr. Dashwood.
“Course southeast by east, a half east!”
“Mr. Dodd, stunsails a-low. Stuns’ls, Mr. Dodd!”
Mr. Dashwood left the cockpit and ran aft toward Miriam, bent beneath the deck over his head. He did not spare her a glance as he grasped the rails of the aftermost hatchway companion ladder and, stopping halfway up, began shouting orders from Captain Thorpe to the upper deck. The side to side battering ceased, and Miriam felt her stomach rising to her throat. There was a great bump, and a sensation as though the ship was gathered into a giant’s hand and then dropped. Miriam’s gorge rose up several more times, her ears pained her, and then she remembered to swallow.
Miriam was grateful the flinging about was over. She became aware of a high whistling sound as of a tremendous wind. The cold that set in was sudden and penetrating. She watched her breath cloud in the air before her face. Miriam blessed Saramago and his knit cap. She pulled the lower folds of her hijab up over her nose and mouth.
“Mr. Dashwood, set the flotation!” Captain Thorpe called. From his position at the yoke, Captain Thorpe glanced back as his premier dashed up the ladder. “Mr. Dashwood, coat, hat, gloves! Damn your eyes!”
In the moment before Captain Thorpe whipped round to face forward, he met Miriam’s gaze. He gave her the briefest of nods, and she caught a regretful look in those eerie mismatched eyes.
Much seemed to be happening on the deck open to the air over her head. Miriam heard shouts and calls, and the stamping of many feet. Captain Thorpe glanced twice more anxiously over his shoulder at the companion ladder.
“Mr. Dashwood!” the Captain thundered. “Report!”
Mr. Dashwood did appear on the companion ladder then, borne slumped between two seamen.
“Stow him in the stern,” Captain Thorpe called in a resigned tone, after taking in the situation.
Mr. Dodd came a few steps down the ladder. “Fore and aft flotation in place, Sir! Ready on your word.”
The seamen finished securing Mr. Dashwood next to Miriam, and hurried after Mr. Dodd back up the companion ladder. Mr. Dashwood was limp, draped over the lines holding him fast. The ends of his long hair were tipped with frost, and there was a trickle of blood coming from the ear turned toward her. Miriam reached out a trembling hand and put two fingers against Mr. Dashwood’s neck. She was relieved to find a strong pulse beating there. More blood was running out one nostril of Mr. Dashwood’s sculpted nose.
Unwinding one of Lady Elgin’s elegant scarves from round her own neck, Miriam wiped Mr. Dashwood’s nose. Then she wrapped the scarf tightly round his head, nose and mouth, the way she’d done her own. Easing out from under the lines restraining her, Miriam made her unsteady way to a rack on the bulkhead in which she’d spotted several boat cloaks.
After tucking a cloak round Mr. Dashwood, inside of the lines, Miriam stumbled forward like a drunkard toward the Captain. Along the way, as she staggered from side to side, she felt guiding and gentle hands placed under her elbow or briefly grip her arm. Miriam found she didn’t care when once or twice it was a seaman’s metal hook or appendage that grazed her, it made no difference to the assistance afforded her or the kindness with which it was offered.
She made it to the cockpit, and held on to the table surrounding the Mechanism, swinging this way and that, flashing first the brilliant disc with the planets, then one with a compass, and another with astronomical symbols.
Captain Thorpe gave Miriam an inscrutable sideways glance. “How fares Mr. Dashwood? I should almost wish to faint, to be receiving of such tender care.”
Miriam was not sure if she’d heard that last part right. “Has he merely fainted? Do you carry a surgeon?”
They were obliged to shout at one another, over the roar of the wind.
“We do not. No extra weight,” the Captain said. “We carry our sick and wounded to port. As to Mr. Dashwood, like as not it was the altitude and the rarified air made him take a tumble. Too much enthusiasm by half. Miss Miriam, step this way if you please.”
She went to Captain Thorpe, and he moved aside and fixed her hands on the yoke.
“Just for a moment, mind,” he said. “Do you see this cross I’ve drawn on the yoke, and the compass there? The cross is us, Miss Miriam, the Nonesuch. Keep her lined up with the compass setting as she is, very well thus.”
Her heart began to pound as she felt the live ship humming through the hull, rigging, and the yoke. Captain Thorpe stepped quickly over to the Mechanism and began to adjust it, twirling the various discs around the axis.
“It is a shame and a pity, though who is born to be hanged will never be drowned,” Captain Thorpe said, as though to himself. “Mr. Dashwood is a skilled navigator.”
The helm was under her control. This was something Miriam, for all her study and love of ships, never dreamed of achieving. She was both thrilled and terrified, fearing the failure of her strength to maintain the course, and anxious every moment for what the next might bring.
Captain Thorpe was back at her side, and taking over the yoke. Her heart raced as she peeled her grip from the helm with reluctance and relief. There was such a connection with the yoke in her hands to the living ship under her control, and of the multitude of forces buffeting Nonesuch, that Miriam didn’t want the experience to end.
“What do you require, Captain Thorpe?” Miriam shouted. “I can relay orders to the upper deck, I believe.”
Miriam remembered a Scottish clansman she’d once seen in Tehran, arrayed in kilt and cloak and weapons, with the same fierce and proud expression Captain Thorpe now turned on her.
“Over there in the bulkhead rack, Miss Miriam, is a speaking trumpet. I would be much obliged to you if you would call up to Mr. Dodd to light the braziers and begin inflation. Once we have her at altitude it will be easier sailing. Use the fore hatchway companion ladder, Miss, the one the men use.”
Miriam was positioned halfway up the fore hatchway companion ladder relaying orders between Captain Thorpe and Mr. Dodd. She removed the alpaca hat the better to hear. As Captain Thorpe promised, after a series of commands like, “set the fore staysail, Mr. Dodd. Up rudder and fix wind-engine,” the ship’s motion became easier, as though in calmer waters.
“Desire Mr. Dodd to take the yoke, if you please, Miss Miriam,” Captain Thorpe called.
Mr. Dodd came puffing down, red faced beneath his cap and muffler. Miriam backed down the ladder out of his path. She put the Peruvian cap on again. It was cold and frosty in the ship.
“That was well done, Miss Miriam, very well indeed,” Captain Thorpe said. “I beg your pardon for desiring you to stand upon the ladder the hands use, but it is closest to me.”
Miriam was surprised by the pleasure those words gave her. “Not at all, Captain.”
“Should you like to come on deck with me now?”
Miriam cast a meaning glance in Mr. Dashwood’s direction, where the lieutenant was like a cloth doll hung over the ropes.
“Oh, he will keep for the moment, Ma’am,” Captain Thorpe said. “You have done a signal service, and ought to see where your efforts have taken us.”
Maximus told himself he would not be disappointed if there was shrieking and fainting when he brought Miss Miriam Blackwell up on deck, but the truth was he’d already come to expect better of her. Once Maximus had her secured with a line round her middle to the starboard lifeline, Miriam gazed up at the immense fifty-foot balloons towering over them and asked an intelligent question.
“Montgolfier or Charles, Sir?”
He’d thought her a rare plucked ’un for her behavior earlier, but in that moment Maximus admired her even more.
“They are on the principle of Montgolfier, which is to say hot air balloons,” Maximus said. “But with many of the innovations of Charles, the balloons are of silk conditioned in rubber and enclosed in the tremendous nets you see. The whole assemblage requires a deal of maintenance and oversight.”
Maximus stopped speaking, catching something familiar in Miriam’s dark eyes, a look at once disturbed and thrilled. The rest of her face was hidden by her head scarf. She wore the Peruvian chuyo, tied securely beneath her chin, and a boat cloak over all her clothing. He’d made certain she was properly bundled and clothed for the upper deck. One of the greatest sins, to Maximus’s mind, was the willing destruction of innocence and beauty.
“The immensity of it, Captain, the silence.”
“By Allah, and all the saints of Christendom.”
“Amen, amen,” Miriam said.
After a decent pause, Maximus turned to her. “Allow me to show you the voltaic pile, that runs the bellows for the great braziers. The braziers are not unlike try pots, ma’am, that are used in our...”
Miriam was swaying on her feet, her knees become wobbly.
“Hand firmly on the line, Miss,” Maximus said in a steady voice. “You may put the other on my arm, if you wish.”
Miriam stood gripping Maximus and the lifeline, while he faced her with one hand on the line as well. Maximus imagined what she was feeling, for all aboard felt it. The tingling in the feet, that rose up one’s body, when you looked out on the immensity of the sky, with clouds below and around you. No land in sight, no sea. You felt as though you could fall headlong into the abyss, and many had.
She took several shuddering breaths. “You will forgive me, I hope, if I cannot move just at present? I should very much like to see your voltaic pile, but I find I...Perhaps you will tell me more about the Nonesuch. How...how long shall we sail in the ether?”
