Dark Age

by Robert T. Bradley

  The servant glanced at her, as he opened another set of doors. ‘His Lordship is entertaining this evening.’

  ‘Anyone important?’

  ‘His Lordship only dines with dignitaries.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘nice if he’d extend such an invite to us Captains.’ She waited for the servant’s reaction. Instead, he opened the door, guiding her in with a trembling aged hand and thin-lipped smile. She stayed still as the old man bent over, closing the door behind her, she wanted to help him but worried such a gesture might be insulting.

  ‘His Lordship isn’t comfortable without the doors being locked,’ the old man said. ‘This way please.’

  The corridor narrowed, with dark walls made from a stone resembling the floor tiles. Gas pipes every few steps just above head height, and she felt the heat from each as they passed one after the other. By her side, the bag holding the clockwork device she’d confiscated rattled against her thigh.

  ‘Just in here.’ The old man opened the door. ‘Please help yourself to a drink, his Lordship won’t be long.’

  Paintings hung upon the wall, two of which unusually large, the one behind the deep blue chesterfield, the Rocket – the Seagrave families’ first locomotive – had more blue paint than she’d ever seen in a painting. She thought it might have faded in sunlight, but there were no windows in the room. The other painting was a man wearing out-of-fashion clothing, his chin raised, sword at his side and one hand clasping a globe. Both paintings looked completed by the same artist, but she didn’t know the name. The door to the room opened as Seagrave sailed in, the stern triangle of a man, rushed classically handsome gestures with intensity, guarding all manner of secrets. ‘Captain Barknuckle, you’re back,’ he looked at his pocket watch, ‘already?’

  The captain knew the mission was a success despite Seagrave’s need for perfection. ‘We haven’t located my…’ she hesitated. ‘Francis Barknuckle.’

  ‘I see,’ Lucian said, ‘and the Rabid village, destroyed?’

  ‘His mission appeared to have been a success.’

  ‘Appeared? Interesting choice of words, Captain; perhaps I’ll wait for his report, so long as he managed to hold off from catching the Rabid virus.’ He looked down at her bag. ‘And the drones?’

  The captain emptied the components onto the table.

  Lucian eyed each of them as they fell; cogs, a relay of gears, a gyro and electrical components.

  ‘Captain. Please be careful with these.’

  ‘Sorry, my Lord,’ she said, stepping back from them, aware her body blocked the light.

  He rushed away from the table to a nearby cabinet, hurrying around in the drawers. He darted back with a magnifying glass. ‘Fascinating.’ He held a cog between his fingers, placing it up to the brightest light in the room. ‘A balance wheel.’

  He positioned it back with the other parts, pulling the next table over; he studied both of their heights, stabilising the balance wheel between them both. ‘Ha!’ he cried. ‘Just to my suspicion, it’s poised perfectly.’

  Lucian returned to the other items, searching them. ‘Where’s the hairspring?’

  Madeline handed him the bag.

  He searched it. ‘Here it is!’ He held the coiled wires up to the light. ‘Do you see this, Captain?’

  She leant in close. Warmth exuded from under his shirt. His neck covered in gooseflesh. She wondered if she had caused them. ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘Can you see? Each coil is perfectly distanced from the other in perfect uniform thickness, creating the harmonic motion.’

  The gaslights reflected off the spring, making her squint.

  ‘Polished, wonderful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, my Lord,’ she said, averting her eyes.

  ‘Where did you find all this?’ Lucian asked.

  ‘Scavengers, attacked by Rabids.’

  ‘Ghastly.’

  ‘They had it with them. I confiscated it as I recognised it to be one of ours.’

  ‘But instead of taking it to the quartermaster you decided to bring it directly to me.’

  ‘The clockwork, my Lord,’ she said holding up a cog. ‘Ours are powered by gas, are they not?’

  He carefully took the cog from her; ‘Indeed they are, Captain, well done for bringing this to my attention.’

  There was a long pause. ‘These scavengers, who were they?’

  ‘Just some teenagers, got lucky; I think they were on their way to the districts to sell it. Both around eighteen years old, a lad and a girl.’

  ‘Did they say how they got their hands on this?’ Lucian walked over to the bar, took a glass and poured a vintage Wormwood 1943. ‘Drink?’

  ‘No, thank you. He told me he made it, the lad, would you believe?’

  Lucian put down his glass and looked up at the bearded fellow in the painting. Both looked deep in thought, pondering something. ‘What was his name, Captain?’ he asked quietly as though he already knew the answer.

  There was a pause as she tried to remember.

  Outside the dull siren of the night shift sounded. Lucian had closed his eyes.

  ‘Baxter Nightingale, my Lord.’

  Lucian’s neck gave way to his head’s weight, slumping it forwards. He laughed, looking at her, his eyes wide and wild. ‘Find him, Captain Barknuckle, and bring the boy here. Baxter Nightingale, well, well, well.’

  ‘Pardon my rudeness, my Lord, but are you acquitted?’

  ‘I would certainly like to be,’ he said, smiling. ‘You’re of course familiar with Nightingale watches and clocks, and I take it you remember the train incident?’

  ‘My father has a Nightingale watch, but the train?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, before your time. Anyway, find him please, Captain, and bring him here.’

  She straightened up. ‘My Lord, the crew. I’ve sent them on leave, and they’ve not seen their families in months.’

  ‘I understand. This is imperative, Captain.’ He walked toward her. Heat emitted from him; it felt unnatural in its comfort.

  ‘I will have to round them up,’ she said, with a shake in her voice.

  ‘Do what you must, Captain. Use my messengers. Are all of your crew boarded at the compound?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good, won’t be too much trouble then.’

  The Captain fabricated a smile. ‘Will there be anything else, my Lord?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucian said as he returned to the table to cradle the contents of the canvas bag. ‘I’ll send a message to the quartermaster, take whatever apparatus you need. Which hanger are you docked?’ Lucian rang a bell on his desk and before the last ring disappeared, Sidney materialised from behind the door.

  ‘Thirty-three, my Lord.’ The thought of telling the crew made her legs go limp as she gave him a bow, and leaving him with the clockwork, she moved to exit the room.

  ‘And Captain...’ Lucian shouted.

  ‘Yes, my Lord?’

  ‘Do this quickly. Upon your successful return I’ll issue extended leave by a further two weeks, understood?’

  She sighed lightly, relieved at the bargaining chip and contemplated telling the crew she’d wagered for it. ‘Splendid, my Lord. I’m sure the crew will see it as a good deal.’

  Lucian held his hand up to her. ‘Do not return without him.’

  IV

  An owl watched the sun creep its light over the Moor as he rode the morning wind. The glare was too harsh for nightly eyes to suffer; the bird swooped down to the shadows of human settlements.

  The barn where he’d made the nest three full moons prior had gone, replaced with piles of wood and ash. Smoke rose from rubble, making the descent difficult to navigate. He flew through; it cleared, revealing the wall inclosing the grounds and home of his old nest, the owl finally perched on the ruin.

  Burnt wood and horseshit filled the dark location. A taste of hardened blood was crusted on his tongue. Somewhere an owl hooted as fingers tingled with returning senses. Was it the night? A wave o
f feeling riding on the backs of pins washed over his body and he peeled a spinning eye open, unable to fix focus. A pillar of light held purpose in front of him, illuminating many fragments of dust. His body lay in an awkward position, a heavy pressure pushing down on his legs. The lights, the gunfire and an attack were shimmers of who he was. Then he remembered, he had run into the stable, raised the trap door and slid himself in. He refused to accept the sentence and tried to gather his strength, study his body for feelings of injury, but he found nothing suggesting foreign bodies. There was a pain but he struggled to find it, out of the ordinary with just his senses alone – he had to get free.

  ‘Hello!’ Between two crushing pains inside his skull came a name, and he felt compelled to cry, ‘Baxter!’ The air rushed from his mouth replaced with the dust around him. He coughed violently. ‘Hello, Baxter?’ his nephew, was he killed? Nicholas held the worrying thought allowing a transformation to determination, allowing the energy to fill his muscles. He gripped the beam on top of him and heaved it. Something came away, then again he pushed, pushed with everything he had. A crack appeared, light, dazzling fantastic light.

  A noise beneath the rubble; a mouse? The owl had caught five this morning already, their flesh stored in his stomach ready for the chicks. Unlike a mouse to come out in the daylight, perhaps a morning rabbit? Harder to kill, but worthy of the chase. The owl’s energy wore flat, and the decision was made if a rabbit were to exit the barn, he’d pursue it with one attempt then head back to the forest.

  He stood still, listening to his prey. A faint sound of wood bending then cracks, a whole series of cracks.

  Concerned the prey could be a predator, the owl sprang loose to space and flew back to the wall.

  The creature emerged, a man covered in ash.

  Wise to the implications of human encounters, the owl took flight over the ruined rooftops, back to the safety of the forest.

  White blobs of unfocused shapes surrounded Nicholas. The air stale with a charcoal dust, quick to enter his lungs. He collapsed, hands spread across the dirt and coughed in a rasp. He spat and wiped his chin with his filthy sleeve. Another name escaped his mouth in the sound of a croak. ‘Baxter.’ Dazed, he stumbled home. He repeated his nephew’s name, but only the groans of an old house responded. Nicholas, although bewildered, saw images of his nephew lying in a pool of blood. He bound up the staircase to Baxter’s chamber. His heartbeat echoed inside the cavities of his body, they felt empty. His chamber door, locked – Nicholas ran back down the hallway and sped his broken body into it. The hinges burst, splitting the door apart, and Nicholas hit the deck. He stayed there, shell-shocked.

  The chamber room was empty. ‘Baxter.’ The chests of drawers bare, his nephews clothes missing. Had he managed to escape?

  Nicholas returned downstairs, taking off his jacket he threw it toward the fireplace. He’d failed; his nephew had disappeared. Nicholas sat in his armchair and tossed a few of the logs onto the fire place carelessly and cradled his hand in his charcoaled hands. Images telling Baxter what to do, how to behave and the recent memory of forcing the boy to skin a wolf, were all thick inside Nicholas’ mind. His thoughts dwelled on them for a moment longer but soon turned to Alfred. Nicholas looked up, saw the spade in the corner rested against the wall. He grabbed it and ran up to his older brother’s chamber. He raised the spade with a thunderous charge and smashed apart his inventions.

  ‘Alfred! You coward! Alfred!’ He cried the words as tears streamed down his face. Their journey cleared away some of the dust on his cheeks as his body quivered underneath it. ‘Why did you have to leave him?’

  Nicholas collapsed to the floor in a heap. Hadn’t cried since they threw dirt on Beatrice’s coffin. He remembered Alfred turning to him, his face soaked, beaten and more lost than he’d ever seen him. he said everything in his eyes Nicholas remembered while he also opened his. Bits of metal covered the ground, springs, broken cogs and dented gas canisters. On Alfred’s desk a green light reflected into his eyes. Housed within the emerald picture frame were Alfred and Beatrice, stood next to each other, the baby Baxter was in her arms. Nicholas wiped away the remaining tears and cleaned the picture with his sleeve. Every boxing match he’d look down and there in the corner, arriving like clockwork, was his big brother and his beautiful wife. Nicholas placed the photograph back on the desk, leaving the room he headed back to his own quarters.

  He washed in the limited vision; cuts and bruises covered his body like an atlas of war-divided continents. His face felt rough. It had been years since the last time he’d stroked stubble as prominent as this on his chin.

  Outside, villagers had gathered in the square, a large group of about ten of them talking. Nicholas watched as they headed over to a pile of ruins and began removing rocks and planks of wood. Some were digging up the ground in a charged attempt, hunting for survivors. Nicholas made no hesitation and ran back upstairs to grab his spade and continued back to the square.

  Getting to the group, he cut in straight away and began helping four of the men lift a log from one of the pits. As they heaved a few of the others noticed him, some smiled, pleased to see him unharmed.

  ‘One, two, three, lift!’ They moved the log to one side and the blacksmith Tony Adams waved a dust-covered hand in relieve.

  ‘There you are, Tony, give us your hand,’ said one of the men. A few of them helped pull him out.

  ‘Thank Mother we found you, Tony. Got a bit worried we’d ave to use your wife’s tongue to smelt our tools.’ All the men laughed but quickly stopped as they noticed the women amongst them frowning.

  Nicholas stood and watched. One of the other men in the group stopped working and looked at Nicholas. Glaring with a look of doubt the man shouted ‘Nicholas Beechcroft, alive and well I see.’ Nicholas nodded at the man, he didn’t recognise him, but evidently, the man knew who he was.

  ‘I chased your nephew out of here, Beechcroft.’

  The man was much taller than Nicholas, wider with a bald head, arms the size of the log they’d just lifted.

  ‘Did you indeed,’ Nicholas said. ‘Then my nephew is alive?’

  The man spat on the ground, missing Nicholas’ boot by an inch. ‘We sent him packing back to the inferno you Nightingales call home.’

  Nicholas looked at the ground and released their eye contact. He felt shame, disguised and stupid. How’d they know their real surname, especially all the way out here? Every effort made to keep it a secret, but not enough. ‘What of my brother, Alfred, did he return?’

  The man clenched his teeth, nostrils flared like a bull. ‘Leave at dawn, or face trial.’ The man pointed at the spire of the village clock. Nicholas had only seen one villager impaled upon it during their time here. A woman, madness, a bitter loss drove her to steal an infant after hers died in child birth. When finally caught she murdered the child in a mad rage. Every villager attended her execution.

  ‘Very well then, sir,’ Nicholas said. ‘I shall leave as you ask before noon and I will never return.’

  The man calmed, and with effort nodded in respect.

  The group returned to the work, removing the rocks and wood from rubble searching for more survivors.

  Nicholas looked back at them. He felt comfort in what he saw, their gallantry. The man was right, had they not chosen to live there in Alfred’s exile, had they not been more careful and discarded the Nightingale name; the butchery, the malice, the vengeance would have never touched this place.

  Back at the manor, Nicholas said his goodbyes to his records, to his rifles, to his sparing bag. He hit it one last time with a right hook, and the leather cracked under his bare knuckles.

  ‘Goodbye, Nicholas Beechcroft,’ he said to the mirror, ‘it’s been a pleasure.’ The simple looking man in the reflection bowed back. As he gathered his things he placed his top hat on, securing it with his silver goggles, and threw his green jacket over his back, looked at his cape and thought better of it.

  He left the village, headin
g out on to the moor just as he promised, before noon. Passing Gunner’s Ridge Nicholas Beechcroft wanted to look back, but Nicholas Nightingale did no such thing.

  V

  Alfred pushed the exhausted clockwork bike over the ridge which led down to Port Staddiscombe’s main road. He swallowed the dried mass of his brother’s stale bread through his thirst-riddled throat. The dehydration had formed an ant army, crawling up the inside of his neck they pleaded for more, just one drop of alcohol to fantasise satisfaction. Pushing the bike for a day had caused his clockwork arm to glitch; the hand lodged in the grip it kept for days. He ignored it and hoped his fingers would loosen with the mornings damp air. Apart from the traders lifting shutters and arriving with store carts, the port was relatively empty.

  The town housed mostly Lowers from the outer wall’s mines and factories. They’d be getting up in a few hours to start the new day’s shift. To the east, a light trail of miner’s lanterns snaked from an evening’s stint in the darkness, having endured unimaginable conditions, cutting away in the deepest parts of Terra, hunched over in the pits for a small bag half laden with pennies for a shift. He knew little of their world past the traditional poetry and song he’d heard in the city populous. How a miner once cut free a diamond the size of a fist, instantly elevated his family to the height of the Uppers. Tales of propaganda were rife among the Lowers. Alfred didn’t know any miners, and he suspected he never would.

  Time would have rubbed clean any memory of him, especially here. He was a Moorlander, lower than the miners, the factory cleaning drones and urchins begging on the street levels locked inside the city, ravenous for a penny’s hit of Opium.

  A ray of unobstructed sunlight broke through the sky’s filth and drummed Alfred’s face. The little heat it held danced on his skin, convincing his whiskers to erect toward it in a display of regimented optimism, the light had come to save them. He yearned for such relief, the weight of the wish tipped his head backwards unlocking his held breath as it quietly escaped his mass. If the rumours of the miners were true, illiterate, without access to the public records, Alfred was a dead man walking.