Dark Age

by Robert T. Bradley

  ‘Perhaps she was a witch?’ Baxter chirped, swallowing a large mouthful of his Absinthe. ‘Bitter is what I mean, I’m not sure I believe in witchcraft.’

  ‘She’d have me, Baxter, stood upon a chair at the end of each week, order me to drop my trousers and recite the Mother’s words. She’d have me do each one the same. Then at the end, she’d keep a tally of the ones I got wrong. I still have the scars on the back of my legs and buttocks from the wretched bamboo cane of hers.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell your father?’ Baxter asked.

  ‘My father didn’t care. He was too busy with the building all of this – it would go on for months. Once, a long time ago, I wet the bed. I tried to hide it; in the morning I went down to the washing room to change and clean them myself, then I caught her. She was in the washing room with another of father’s butlers, and he had her bent over a spin dryer.’

  ‘Did they see you?’

  ‘Of course, I came hurrying in like a blundering runaway locomotive.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They both beat me, and said if I ever told Sidney or my father they’d murder me in my sleep.’

  ‘Did they ever get found out?’

  ‘No, but after the first and second night of being terrified I made sure they’d never torment me again.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  Lucian smiled at Baxter and tapped his arm. ‘What do you think? When they both died and father eventually passed, all of this became mine. I’d get lost in the rooms. But Sidney, he was always there behind me, ready to tell me where I’d gone wrong and get me on the right path.’

  ‘What happened to the witch, what did you do to her?’

  ‘What happens to all witches, of course. She went to hell in a blazing inferno!’ Lucian’s eye lit up as though hell appeared in the room.

  ‘Well look at you now, Lucian, you have everything.’

  ‘Not quite, Baxter, not quite.’ His smile was empty, forced, laced over with some form of self-pity. ‘Right!’ Lucian snapped. ‘Let’s change, enough of this doom and gloom chatter. I trust your room has enough clothes and some of them fit?’

  Baxter let the last drop from his glass slide down to his lips, feeling the lightheaded buzz circulating from his neck. ‘I’ve not had a chance to try any of the others on.’

  ‘Well,’ Lucian placed the shards of glass on the side of the cabinet and clasped his hands together. ‘I’m wearing a sapphire blue waistcoat and matching three-quarter length jacket, a long trench design. If you have anything you think matches, wear it. Otherwise, come to my quarters, and you can pick out one of mine. I’m sure I’ll have something which will fit you.’

  ‘Thank you, Lucian.’ Baxter bowed.

  ‘God, Baxter quit the formalities and bugger off. Get changed and I’ll see you at the party.’

  He removed the goggles and studied the metal. It was solid, like everything else in the compound.

  II

  Tabitha walked the crowded city street. Her joints cracked in discomfort, they’d rather have remained in shackles than deal with the flexed groins of lascivious men. It was her new normality, wishing for the return to pain in a place far from normal. Tabitha wondered if she’d ever know the feeling again. Her normal home, normal family, normal days, back when she plucked vegetables and fed her father’s pigs. Normal had died with her father.

  The city’s air carried dirt and grit, it scratched the inside of her throat. She licked the ceiling of her mouth to extract it, but the more she licked, the more tender it became. The spell the city suffered, her breaths drew upon those invisible poisons, and if she thought about it for too long, the madness in the cell would return. The little demons hidden behind a curtain, predators wanted to control her, grab her sexually and violate her.

  Docked against a tower of metal and stone, in the sky above a passenger airship bellowed. A crowd of men shouted at it, a few coughed louder than she’d ever heard. The red-faced gentry pleaded with flapping tickets at the closed iron gate.

  ‘Outrageous, I have a ticket!’ one large bearded man yelled into the face of a younger gentleman, a carbon copy of himself, and tore his ticket in two. ‘Never again, it’s the last time I book a balloon.’

  Other men followed in protest. Tabitha looked down at her ticket; bronze edging on parchment, a drawing of an airship navigating between two mountains in the centre with the printed text,

  Six o’ Clock Departure – No Refunds.

  She gripped the ticket as the Zeppelin, some two hundred feet above her, unshackled from its station platform and hummed upward, sinking itself into the fog-filled sky and vanishing together with Tabitha’s hopes of getting home. The mob squeezed her back in, perverts’ trouser bulges pressing against her buttocks and thighs. Hands snapped and grabbed at her. The heavy aftershave did well to conceal their putrid scent, but she wanted to break all of them. Her blood boiled, her fist clenched, and in a moment so rapid her mind failed to register she grabbed the trouser of one, pulled hard at the fabric until a testicle was in her hand. She squeezed it, the owner coiled and cawed like the morning crows. She twisted her wrist, yanked it to the deck, his face by hers; she spat at it and pushed him away. Then her mind started again.

  ‘How could you do such a thing, Tabitha? He was just a...’

  He was cherry-faced with wide blue eyes, washed red with tears. He held his destroyed groin and shook like fever, a better dressed version of Baxter.

  Her madness smiled at him. She tilted her head and twitched to retain it back under her skin. She minded her feet, looking for gaps in-between legs to get out of the polyester-trouser forest. An opening appeared, birthing her from the mob’s vile womb, and she stumbled out.

  III

  Madeline spotted Tabitha Parkin by the side of the road, wiping her boots on the pavement. The young Moorlander looked out of breath and flustered the nearby mob disbursed to a rabble, creating a sea of uncertain bodies with no destination; then like Sootrail clouds they separated away from one another. Madeline passed through, her hands at her side ready to thumb any of the so-called Middles attempts to press against her. Barging through them she traced Tabitha, watched as she crossed the road, making her way past ogling eyes, teeming smiles and their unwanted invitations.

  Two uniformed girls holding clipboards had attracted Tabitha’s attention. Cocked pistols were holstered on both of their hips, awkward in their gestures, the district was not their own. Tabitha seemed to be asking them questions and pointed at the sky. Getting closer, Madeleine noticed the red lapels and black arrows on their blue sleeves. Royal aircrew had a way about them. It wasn’t a demure one, both ladies, although stood with nerves, looked confident. Their smiles gave them away, thought Madeline, they matched their pay checks, shallow and empty. Today must be an ordeal, out to sign up new recruits, batting them with well pressed uniforms and square meals. Madeleine walked closer, lowered her goggles and raised her scarf, she was in range.

  ‘Three meals a day, women are treated as equals in the sky, high adventure on the most advanced airships in Terra.’ It was a lie, and Madeline let out a sneeze which might as well have been a squeak. She watched as Tabitha took the clipboard from one of the girls, signed her name and joined a line with a number of other street urchins.

  Madeleine hesitated, ready to pull her back and take her to the village on the Moth if she had to. Instead she stopped and watched as Tabitha fell into rank. The young girl stood upright, her chest forwards, arms hung down, ridged like the pillars of Athens. Madeline smiled.

  ‘Good girl,’ she said under her breath, before walking back into the crowd.

  CHAPTER 20

  Beatrice Nightingale had called it Alfred’s Eden, his real home. He treated his workshop like a garden, spending entire days there pruning, drawing, sawing and filing rendered dreams; and in the evening, he’d relax, have a drink and pack his pipe with the best imported tobacco Seagrave Corp could find, back before tables had turned and it was Alfred who burnt
what Lucian had created.

  He’d invite his brother and they’d chew the fat surrounded by stacks of cogs, books, papers and drawers brimmed with nails, screws, springs of every size and jewels. Some of those drawers, although simple to look at, smeared in grease, stiff to open, were worth thousands of pounds once the parts they contained had been wrenched together, scrutinised with careful consideration of months and years under lamps, held up to the dirty windows of his workshop, the light as his guide, studying the workings of his most ambitious project to date.

  After taking down the cupboards, dismantling the workbenches and chopping his shelves into firewood, the Spirit’s Nightingale Clockwork Engine fitted the entire room, leaving Alfred just enough space to slowly work his way around it. Newspapers, rolls and reams of paper contained drawing after drawing, idea after idea, all stacked, piled, shoved into whatever holes he could find. They’d all be there, waiting for him to pull them out, to roll, unfold and iron flat forgotten ideas.

  Alfred’s footsteps echoed in the workshop in the way when a room is nothing more than an empty canvas. On the only surviving desk was an empty ink pot, lid missing and with dried ink clouding the glass; a light smell of the dyes’ alcohol sent both of Alfred’s eyes rolling back in their sockets. He licked his top lip and placed the pot on the desk. Extinguished candles populated the limited furniture surfaces, lit up by the skylight whose crack was visible even in the low glow of the city’s gas lanterns. It cast a rectangle of light into the centre of the workshop, directly where he brought his dream into this world.

  Alfred stepped over buckets, empty tins of Brighton Whale Oil, springs, many more springs, and a tower of magazines. Clipping the top corner with a jagged edge of his metal knuckle, the top three skimmed off and fell into the block of light. Alfred picked them up and saw they weren’t magazines but comic books, the top one was Rocketeer volume forty-one. He held it under the light and studied the covers impressive artwork and remembered it was the swashbuckling epic sweeping contours of the artists brush and heroic representation of the heroes features which led him, as nine-year-old to collect this series, somehow it spoke to him. he had often pondered why from so many skilled comic books to choose from, the artwork for the Rocketeer plucked a cord so hard when he looked it a rapid shiver overcome him enough to stand taller, keep his head held higher in the knowledge his dreams can be realised and all it took was an ounce of what the rocketeer had, his chin held high, looking up at the clouds, as he always did, on practically every cover.

  Alfred flicked through a couple pages, and within three, the story of the issue he held came back to him. It was the first issue in a long story arc which featured Mavis Hardflower, the Rocketeers love interest. She’d fallen from the Skyhammer Airship. Rocketeer couldn’t save her; he was fast, but not fast enough. Dodge Gabble, the hero’s undercover identity, blamed himself and gave up the call. But it was his friends the Air Swaggers who brought him back to defeat Aerodevil and his Unihacks.

  Alfred blew the dust from the cover and wiped clean its brittle surface with his human hand. He had all ninety-five issues piled up.

  Carefully he would slip one out between his current tasks, make a pot of tea, and join the Rocketeer on one of his daring adventures. The project deadlines would dissolve around the pages of those stories, until images of other men celebrating returned, until he saw other men with better resources, better ideas at their disposal, faster thinkers, builders working harder than him and longer than him. They didn’t read comic books, they didn’t care about their families, all their focus concentrated on connecting the districts, bringing everyone together. He’d put the comic book back neatly, crack his knuckles and continue working.

  Lighting what little remained of the candle wicks, he covered their light with stacks of nearby books, protecting them from the phantom draft. It still niggled at his neck. The light was terrible and the gas had been switched off; nothing had changed. He found a rusted iron lantern and dipped the wick in a small tub of oil he found hidden under a cloth of cobwebs. Designs of old from a younger, fresher, focused mind, chaotically torn apart, their fragments in piles like dead winter leaves. Alfred fought to remember his last day here, what he did and where he moved the safe.

  As he searched he noticed things, items out of place; their disorder gave the space an energy of disruption. An intruder had raided it, leaving a visible wake of desperation.

  ‘The engine?’ He hurried, erratically knocking off papers and pushing over towers of books, trying to find her blueprints. Weeds scuffed his legs from their wild intrusion. Hidden under a metal sheet he found the safe, locked. Searching the tired confines of his mind for the clue to the combination, he saw images of Beatrice smiling, holding up a teddy bear, a playground swing, a birthday party, Baxter’s birthday.

  He input the numbers and heaved the iron door open; it was empty. His mechanical arm slammed the door shut. Some papers fell from the shelf above, including a long blue roll, it landed perfectly on top. He grabbed it, peeled back a corner and held it to a nearby candle. The letters RIT were scribed in faded white pencil. He cleared the desk and rolled out the dried texture of the brittle paper, it could snap if handled carelessly. Holding the blueprint down, he used nearby cogs and bricks for the corners to keep it from rolling back up, and placed a candle in the paper’s centre.

  There she was, The Spirit. The world’s first clockwork monorail system, linking all hubs and districts of the city, relying on its own kinetic energy for movement and electric charge. The shape was futuristic, otherworldly. As he smoothed his human hand over the design, the memory of a disagreement came to him.

  ‘It has to have this shape, Beatrice,’ he remembered pleading. ‘If I were to cast the eastern steel casing like Seagrave’s steam locomotives, it’ll suffer too much air resistance, causing power loss.’

  Her cheeky grin resonated her naughtiness. ‘Alfred, don’t take me for a fool. I know what you’ve modelled it on.’ She looked down at his groin. ‘You’ll have women travelling from everywhere to take a ride on it.’

  He pulled her back in his arms where she belonged. ‘And why, exactly, do you think that? I knew I’d never get you off it. At least the rest of them will be paying customers.’

  ‘I certainly won’t be,’ she said.

  His green eyes tamed her in the way he knew no other pair could. ‘You’ll pay me, Beatrice, in other ways.’

  His mind was a cruel runaway train delivering the pains of a past he longed to relive. Slowly motioning his hand over the wooden desk, conscious Beatrice’s naked flesh had once warmed it, he emptied his satchel. Placing each of the modules in order of assembly, he sized them up and hunted for the correct tools. A few he found, the rest must have gone in the loot. He didn’t care. He’d use his mechanical arm for most of the harder jobs. Soldering equipment? He thought he had it. He searched under soot-stained rags and dust-covered blankets, half-finished projects reflected their soldering, mistakes aplenty, exposing their ailing seams, they all mocked him.

  Opening a set of drawers, the last compartment offered Alfred a green glass gift, it twinkled under the lamplight, a half empty bottle of Wormwood 1931, a good year, he thought. He picked it up and slowly rested it on the table. His tongue was dry and thick, a foreign body flapping around inside his mouth. A quick Absinthe to ease the nerves, make his hand rattle less.

  II

  Grabbing a nearby glass and about ready to pour, a loud bang rang through the workshop, coming from the back entrance. He grabbed the bottle, turning it upside down. The swish of the liquid sent a shiver of cheap ecstasy down his back.

  ‘Hello?’ he shouted at the darkness. In Alfred’s heart, he hoped Seagrave had returned to steal more of his ideas or get the rest of the designs to feed his feeble mind. Killing him here, slain amongst the very designs he craved to be his own, it would be a poetic end, not cold vengeance, but a sweet one.

  From the darkened corner of the workshop, a large fleshy hand grabbed Alfred’s mec
hanical wrist. A man’s sculpted features of gentry leant into the light.

  ‘Nicholas!’ Alfred shouted in surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’ He pulled his younger brother out from the shadows and the Absinthe bottle smashed against the cold stone floor, sending glass shards in every direction.

  ‘I suspected I’d find you here, Alfred.’ Nicholas’ arms squeezed his older brother. ‘Of all the places in the world, you’d be here, I was so sure of it.’ Tears gleamed in his baby brother’s eyes.

  ‘I’m so pleased you’re here,’ Alfred said, ‘you can help me.’ He looked down at his brother’s filthy attire. ‘My God, man, you been crawling through shit?’

  Nicholas bowed and swayed his head in exhaustion. ‘Shit, you say? And the rest, if I were to list the filth we’d be here until daybreak.’

  ‘You crawled through the sewer system, didn’t you? Clever idea, but sewage, Nicholas? My brother?’

  ‘The old service tunnels from Gateshead. Yes, I know difficult to believe, isn’t it? It was either suffer such an ordeal or get caught by the guards. You forget I don’t have one of those things.’ He pointed at his brother’s face.

  ‘A mask?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, aware he’d have easily picked one up in Gateshead.

  ‘Wanting to keep a low profile is one thing, but this?’ Alfred pinched his brother’s jacket covered in filth. ‘It’s not very you.’

  ‘I wanted to fit in.’

  Alfred held his brother’s stare for a few seconds and smiled. ‘It’s good to see you, Nick.’ He slammed his arms with both hands.

  ‘Easy,’ Nicholas said, feeling the strength of his brother’s freshly oiled clockwork arm. ‘Been treating yourself to a little spruce up have you?’

  ‘Something like along those lines.’ He smiled distantly, looking beyond him as though expecting his brother to have a companion. ‘Where’s Baxter? Here as well? Or did you leave him with the animals?’