Corsets & Clockwork
Page 4
The years passed and Silka was fifteen-years-old and still she had never left the cottage, although she often gazed wistfully through the small windows at the sky and the cliffs and the rolling green hills. When he was in a good mood, her father would set a fire of beech wood in the hearth and he would cut herrings longwise and open them up like butterflies and hang them in the aromatic smoke and feed her portions of smoked kipper, while he told her far-fetched tales of the wide and wonderful world. She loved the taste of the smoked fish and wished she got to eat it more often.
He spoke to her of her mother, although never the truth, saying instead that she was a fine lady from a big house and that evil misfortune had sundered them, and that all there was of her now was the necklace of blue periwinkle shells. And when her father told these stories, Silka would clutch at the necklace and weep for the mother she had never known.
At other times, he would speak of the filthy fishing port of Grimsby that lay to the north, but more often of the wonderful sun-baked southlands and of London Town where the streets were paved with gold and where everyone could find their true love.
Hector had no real idea of what a true love might be, but he had heard tell of it once, and coveted the idea of it in his hard and leathery heart.
"I would like to see the wide world," she'd say. "I would like to go to London Town and find my true love. When will I get to go there, Papa? Will you take me some day?"
"In good time," he would reply, meaning never.
And then Hector MacAlindon made a fatal mistake.
One bright spring morning, when the wicked sap was rising in him, he mistook his daughter for his wife and Silka reacted badly. Affronted and enraged, she snatched up a kitchen knife and plunged it three times into her father's neck. Then she sat back on her heels, watching the gush of blood turn to a thick trickle. She dabbled her fingers in the red ooze, and not having been taught better, licked the blood off and rather liked it. Then she leaned down to her dead father's neck and bit and chewed and liked that even more.
I draw another veil here, except to say that once she had eaten her fill, it took Silka some hours to finally prize herself loose of the leg shackles. Able to move freely at last, she went through her father's belongings, discovering his best Sunday suit, tucked away and reeking of camphor. He was a small man, and she was a lanky girl, and while the white shirt and black waistcoat and trousers were too big for her, they weren't so much too big that she couldn't wear them. She looped a black tie at her neck and pulled the black frockcoat over all, regarding her reflection in the dull shine of a tin plate.
"Quite the dandy," she said tonelessly, remembering how her father had sometimes put this suit on and paraded up and down in front of her, saying those very words. "Who'd have thought it to see me in my work clothes? Quite the dandy!"
Then she tied up some raw fish and meat in a piece of rag, kicked the cottage door off its rusty hinges and stepped out on a lovely, glowing, clear-skied noontide and saw daffodils dancing and heard seagulls calling.
She walked to the cliff edge. For a moment she gazed out wistfully over the sea. Her fingers slipped inside the collar of her shirt and caressed the tiny ridges of her lost mother's periwinkle shell necklace. But even on a bonny spring day, the North Sea is grey and dispiriting, so with a melancholy feeling that she did not quite understand, she turned her face to the south and set forth to learn about the wide world.
PART THE SECOND
Silka Sallies Forth to London Town
Silka strode the wild hills with a light heart and a spring in her step, hoping and expecting to catch a glimpse of London Town as she crested each hilltop, disappointed that she did not but determined that it would lie beyond the next. Or the next. Or--please Watt--the next!
Her father had often described London Town to her--its soaring steeples and lofty domes, its teeming streets, its wise and courteous citizens, gliding from mansion house to coffee shop, tipping their hats, smoking cigars and speaking of philosophy and of the natural sciences. And he had told her of the mechanical marvels of the great dirigible harbour at Alexandra Palace and of the ornithopter ports at Biggin Hill and Croydon. Of river bridges that rose to let the steamships through to the wharfs and quays--steamships laden to the portholes with all the treasures of the British Empire.
She could see it in her mind already. She could almost feel the golden paving stones under her bare feet. Alas, but her trammelled life had not given her any real sense of the size of the world, and so she suffered disappointment after disappointment as the day dwindled and the evening came gliding in on feathered wings.
The first human habitation she came upon was the village of Scartho, although she didn't know its name. She stood on a hilltop in the deepening twilight and looked down on a small cluster of buildings with windows that shone with yellow and white gaslight.
Full of hope, she made her way down the long hill and found a beaten and rutted road that led a winding way into the heart of the village.
She approached a stable and discovered a man grooming a horse by the light of a hanging oil lamp. She had never seen a horse. It was very large. Very extraordinary. Oh, the marvels of the world! She wondered what it would taste like.
She stood in front of the man, waiting for him to look at her. She had been taught not to speak until spoken to. She had no wish to be beaten.
After a short while the man turned from his work with the grooming brushes. He stared her up and down, his face growing puzzled.
"Do you want something, lass?" he asked.
"My name is Silka MacAlindon and I am going to London Town to find my true love," she replied.
The man grinned. "Are you, indeed?" he said. "You've a fair old step ahead of you, if that's your aim."
"Truly?" Silka replied, a little crestfallen. "Is it very far, then?"
The man rubbed his stubbly chin, staring down at her grimy bare feet. "If you're walking, lass, you'll be ten days on the road, for sure," he told her. "But if you took a road train, I dare say you could be there within a day," he added. "But the road trains don't run through Scartho. You'd need to get to Scunthorpe and pick up the Iron Road there."
Silka looked solemnly at him. "I don't know what a road train is," she said. "And I have never heard of Scunthorpe. Is it far?"
"Far enough, if you're on foot," said the man.
"How do I get there?"
He pointed westwards. "Scunthorpe lies that way," he said. "Follow the road through Keelby Town and Limber and Kirmington, through Wrawby and Brigg and Sawby Brook, and you will get to Scunthorpe ... in the end."
"Thank you, I will," said Silka.
The man took a step forward, looking closely at her. "You've a bonny face, Silka MacAlindon. Are you travelling alone?"
"I am," Silka replied.
He smiled. "Dressed in your big brother's cast offs, eh? I'll bet there's a story there, lass. Are you a runaway? Are you hungry? Would you like a bite to eat before you set off?"
"I am and I would!" Silka declared, spreading her lips and giving the man a wide, friendly smile.
Alarm flashed across his face and he took a stumbling step backwards. "Watt save us! What are you?" he gasped.
"I am Silka MacAlindon," she said, confused.
"You're some manifestation," cried the man, clearly frightened now, starting to panic. "You're the Pale Girl of Accrington or the ghost of Anne Mort, you are! Some evil thing from out the hills! Get away from me!"
Silka reached out a hand, unsettled by the man's behaviour.
He backed off, stumbled and fell. "Demons!" he howled at the top of his voice. "Demons from hell! Help! Help me!"
Doors and windows opened, feet began to run. Voices called from out of the gloaming.
"It's Nathan Switcher! He sounds fair frit to death!"
"Is that you, Nathan? What's the matter, lad?"
Silka spun, her eyes darting from side to side as a ring of people closed in on her from all directions in the twilight. One
or two carried pitchforks, another clutched a meat cleaver, and one glowering man held an odd contraption of iron and wood in his hands.
Silka lowered her head, hissing and spitting, her eyes narrowed in watchful fear, her fingers curled. She had no idea, of course, of what a fearsome sight she made to the disturbed populace of that small village.
The circle of terrified people halted at the full sight of her in the lamplight. Surely she had to be some demonic thing spewed up from the bowels of the earth. For sure and certain, she was not human. Just take a look at those teeth!
The man with the iron and wooden contrivance lifted it to his shoulder, pointing a bell-shaped black tube toward her. There was a flash of blue light and a loud bang. Something hot slashed past Silka's face, grazing her cheek. Hurting her.
She howled and threw herself away from the fiery contraption. A man with a wooden club barred her way. She sprang high like a leaping salmon, coming down on him with all her weight. He collapsed under her. She dipped her head to his neck and bit hard. There was blood and flesh in her mouth for an instant, then she bounced to her feet and fled away along the darkened street and off up into the high hills again.
* * *
She was in the hills, lying on her back under a starry sky, panting still from her exertions. She had run a very long way before finally collapsing in the grass. She rubbed the sore spot on her cheek where the hot thing had scorched her skin. She would be wary of approaching people again. They were not to be trusted--and they carried dangerous weapons.
But a lesson had been learned. Don't smile at people--you have the teeth of a pike! Your father told it to you often enough, you fool! Keep those teeth behind closed lips unless you want the whole world to scream bloody murder whenever they see you.
She caught a hare and ate it raw and still warm, then slept, curled among tree-roots. The night was cold, but she was hardened to that. Tomorrow she must seek Scunthorpe and learn what road trains were.
* * *
The little huddled villages were threaded along the slushy spring-wet road like knuckles of flint stamped into the green land. Silka skirted them, preferring to avoid any more encounters than was strictly necessary for her to get to London Town. Once there, she felt sure the cultured and courteous people of the sun-drenched City of Gold would help her to find her true love. And then all would be well.
It was the foul air that first alerted her to the fact that she was closing in on the industrial town of Scunthorpe. She sniffed, not knowing what she was smelling, but not liking it much.
Nothing Silka had encountered so far prepared her for the sight and smell and din of Scunthorpe. It lay in a wide valley, black as evil, shrouded in a cowl of dense swirling cloud. Iron and brick structures thrust up like broken fists and fingers into the underbelly of the smoggy sky, belching more filth, spreading their stain over the cerulean blue of the heavens. And like a vile effulgence, red and yellow fires would spurt up at random from various parts of the hellish place, briefly staining the cloud with a hectic, horrible brightness before sinking back down again like dragons spent of flame.
Through the haze, bulbous shapes drifted to and fro above the town. Silka guessed they were the dirigibles of which her father had sometimes spoken--great elongated bags of gas, ribbed and hung with gondolas, powered by grinding engines, gouting steam and sparks as they cruised like airborne pigs, filled with passengers and cargoes.
And other, smaller flying things buzzed through the clouds, like black beetles, hovering and darting, rising and dipping. Ornithopters ferrying folk about, their curved wings beating the air, their exhaust pipes spewing more filth into the polluted sky.
Silka stood stark on a hilltop on a sweet spring afternoon and stared into the gaping maw of hell on earth. But for good or bad, she must enter the black pit of Scunthorpe to get to London Town.
She made her way down the road. Be polite. Don't smile. And be ready to run if things go awry.
* * *
There were few people on the cobbled streets, and those she met ignored her or moved away to avoid her as she approached them. And they hadn't even seen her teeth! They simply distrusted strangers, she decided.
At length she came to the mouth of a narrow alley. She heard singing and was drawn to it. A straggle of men and women stood around an open doorway. A rank, peculiar smell billowed out. It was an inn and the smell was beer, but Silka knew nothing of either. Her father had been a gin drinker. When he could afford it.
"I'm sorry to bother you," Silka began, approaching a man with his arm around the shoulders of a buxom woman with copper-coloured hair and a bloated, painted face. "Could you direct me to the road train, please."
The man and the woman stared at her for a moment then laughed. They called the others over and soon Silka was surrounded by people, grinning and staring and occasionally plucking at her clothes as though she was a great curiosity to them.
"Where have you come from, my girl?" asked one man, running dirty fingers along the lapel of her frock coat.
"From the north," Silka replied. "My name is Silka MacAlindon and I am going to London to seek my true love. I am told I should use the road train. Could you direct me to the road train?"
"Well, you're a strange one," said the painted woman. "London, indeed! I never did! And what's with the clothes, dearie? You look neither one thing nor another! A little he-she, that's what you are--and barefoot to boot."
There was more laughter and it sounded mocking to Silka and she did not much like it. She lost her temper a little.
"I ate my father because he angered me," she said quietly, looking hard at the woman. "But I would not eat you, woman, I think you would taste rank and rancid. I wouldn't drink your blood if I was dying of thirst!"
There was laughter at this as well, but it sounded more hesitant, and the painted woman did not laugh at all, but stared at Silka in astonishment. "Well, I never!" she declared at last. "What a thing to say. The saucy minx."
"I'll box her ears!" announced the man at her side. "That'll teach her to give cheek to her elders and betters."
He squared up to Silka and was about to launch a blow at her--which may have been the last action he ever took in this world--when a loud voice sounded from beyond the boozy congregation.
"What's all this? Leave the girl alone!" A tall, wide-shouldered man pushed through the small throng. He had a rugged, handsome face and crinkly blue eyes. "Get inside, you blowsy good-for-nothings, before I take a piston rod to the lot of you."
Grumbling and muttering, the crowd slunk away through the doorway and Silka was left alone with the big man.
"Don't mind them, lass," he said. "They don't mean any harm." He eyed her with a faint smile. "Now then, what's your tale? You look no more than a child, despite wearing your father's Sunday best. Off to London to find wealth and fame, are you?"
Silka smiled cautiously at him, lips pressed together. "I am going to London, but not for wealth or fame." She looked hopefully at him. "First I must find the road train that will take me there."
The man tapped his broad chest. "I'm Royston Hoof, I am--and I can tell you all there is to know about road trains, lass, if you've a mind." His face opened up into a big friendly smile. "And how can that be, you're asking yourself? It's plain enough, lass. I drive one!"
* * *
The Marshalling Yard was huge under the cloud-clogged night sky. Great lamps shone down from tall posts set at intervals along the perimeter fence, smearing shadows in all directions.
"We're not allowed passengers," Royston Hoof had told her as they had slipped together through a side gate in the high wire fence. "So keep quiet and out of sight till they've finished loading my train." He had pointed to one of several vast dark iron snakes that stretched along the yard. "That's the William Murdoch. My train. I'm going to leave you now. When you hear two blasts from the horn, you'll know I'm good to go. Make your way quietly to the gateway yonder, and with luck, we'll be on the road as sweet as a whistle."
The engines themselves were great snub-nosed machines, their backs higher than the rooftops of the nearby warehouses, squatting like immense fat black sows on rows of iron wheels, enveloped in veils of white steam, shuddering and grumbling as though eager to be on their way.
Silka found the sight of them both exciting and scary. Less scary, though, when she saw Royston Hoof climbing up to the high cab that projected above the back of the engine of the William Murdoch. He looked tiny as he clambered into the cab, like a flea crawling into a dog's ear.
One by one the carriages of the William Murdoch were slammed closed and bolted. A jet of white steam spurted up. A moment later there was a haunting double hoot, deep and resonant. Silka got to her feet as she watched the road train begin to inch forward. More steam. Rumbling and roaring. The grind and clank of iron wheels on an iron floor.
She slipped along the fence and watched the road train coming. She cringed a little as it ground past her, its wheels taller than her, the black bulk creeping alongside her like a moving mountain. She snatched at the lowest iron staple and hung on for grim life as her feet were whipped from under her. Steam eddied around her body, hot and wet. She climbed swiftly like a fly on a wall.
Feeling a little dizzy, she came to the cab and dragged herself inside. Royston Hoof smiled at her and yanked on a chain. The horn let out three melancholic blasts.
"All aboard who's coming aboard," Royston declared, pulling a lever that brought an iron shutter down over the entrance Silka had used. "Next stop, London Town."