Mechanicals

by Jordan Stratford

  It was days to Alexandria, and again they amused themselves at playing games, or by her French studies, or merely enjoying each other’s company. She was not eager to see this routine come to an end, and anxious about Egypt.

  “What will they think of me?” she wondered.

  “However you should like them to. But well, I imagine,” he replied.

  “I’ve always pictured them as they are in fairy books, with great curved swords and beards. Savages with camels and pagan idols.”

  “Savages?” Avery was surprised. “No, my dear. They are of a most noble race. Theirs was a culture of learning, of mathematics and astronomy while we English were in mud huts, stealing one another’s sheep. This is Alexandria, the capital of the ancient world, to rival Rome or Athens. The city had indoor plumbing before Europe had invented the latrine.”

  “It must be marvelous.”

  “Indeed. Had our mission not been one of such urgency, I should very much like to reside here for some time. There is much to be learned from the ghosts of such places.”

  Given Avery’s interests, Eleanor could not tell if his allusion to ghosts was figurative or literal. She let the subject alone.

  As they neared port, Eleanor assumed her role as Mrs. Avery, the vicar’s young wife, by ordering the porters about and seeing to the luggage. There was a flurry of activity with netting and cranes, seabirds and merchants, travelers and officials of every variety. The sun was glorious and hot, and Eleanor was grateful for the lightweight suit and broad-brimmed hat Avery had purchased for her in Paris. Down the sway-roped ramp and into the market adjacent the dock Africans and Arabs, Turks and Europeans, and even the odd Chinaman babbled together in cacophony of haggling and hawking. In the hubbub of the market, she could make out one word: “English.”

  She turned to the source of the word, only to have a man in a filthy shirt and trousers grab her by her left shoulder. Reflexively, her left hand twined around the man’s wrist, breaking his hold, and she struck out hard at his face with her right. Her slap cracked like a whip, and her assailant staggered back. Her hand stinging as though by wasps, she had the presence of mind to reach for the blade secreted in her left sleeve, and this she withdrew, brandishing it menacingly.

  At its sight, the man disappeared into the crowd. Her heart racing, she turned to look for Avery–to discover he too had been swallowed up by the throng. In the teeming market with a thousand people, two thousand miles from home, Eleanor was suddenly alone.

  “Sinjin?”

  TWENTY TWO

  Having unshackled and marched the mechanicals from the train in port at Dover and then onto the ship, the entire operation had to be repeated in reverse, with the unchaining, unwrapping, craning, stoking, firing and marching of the mechanicals off the ship, down the dock, and alongside the rail lines. Then they were cooled, emptied, oiled, craned, and chained to flatbed cars, although this time French. And all of this had to be done before the horses, which had voided themselves mercilessly belowdecks, could debark.

  The zouaves had proven invaluable in this operation. They were swinging from the Dragoon mechanicals before they had come to a stop, securing, tightening, repairing, doing whatever was needed. They had no fear of the machines, and as far as Blake was able to determine, no fear of anything.

  Hours later, as horses and men and arms and stores were stowed and the train chuffed out of Calais, Blake was grateful for the relative sanity of the Captain’s car. At the last minute, Cardigan had decided that the entirety of the zouaves were to go by rail and remain out of his sight while at sea, so the train was more tightly packed than expected. And in a move that seemed to Blake most foolish, several of the dairy goats and chickens were likewise banished, providing the train with more nourishment–when they could get it at any time–than the ships, which could not. At least it was not the other way around, with all the zouaves at sea and Cardigan by train. The very idea of Cardigan in the officers’ car made Blake entertain the thought of putting a ball through his brain-pan.

  The whole affair made something of a circus, with men and the wives and the livestock all packed in tight as tobacco in a pipe. At the moment, there were simply the three Captains, Kendrick, Price, and two French officers whom Blake did not know. The sergeants were assuming what Blake saw as liberties, as their reports were delivered and had yet to return to the chaos of the other cars. The Dragoons were led by lieutenants, after all, and were berthed with the senior non-commissioned officers. It hardly seemed sporting, Hussars or no.

  There were thousands of miles of this sort of thing to come. The matter of uniting the Light Brigade at the end of the journey had yet to be settled. And marshaling that force with the rest of the Army was in Lord Ragland’s hands. Or hand, as Blake remembered, somewhat inappropriately.

  Landau had seen to him as best as he was able. There was simply no room for three officers to be dressed properly at the same time, so Reynolds, no longer under arrest, had attempted some sort of schedule. This Blake dismissed as something that could wait.

  A knock brought the sergeants to their feet, and a corporal entered with a smart salute and a folded message for Kendrick.

  “Captains,” Kendrick said, having glanced at the missive. “It seems we have lost two horses. Which is to say, one is dead with no cause, and the other appears to be missing, sirs. Also there’s a report of injury, one private, due, it says here, to the train rolling over his foot.”

  “How on earth does one allow a train to run over one’s foot?” asked Nolan. “It’s hardly as if he didn’t know where it was headed.”

  Kendrick offered the piece of paper to the young captain.

  “No details here, sir, but I’ll see what I can find.”

  “No, no, Sergeant,” replied Nolan. “You’ll have your hands full. Half an hour in France and we’re already taking casualties. See to the quartermaster, though. France or not I shall not see provisions go by the wayside.”

  “Sir,” Kendrick saluted, and left promptly. Price, getting an uncomfortable look from the rest of the captains, likewise found it prudent to depart.

  When the door opened, despite the wind, Blake could make out the clucking of chickens from the next car.

  Three thousand miles. Across the Small States and the German Confederation and Bohemia Austria Hungary Walachia and Bulgaria, with the diplomatic sands shifting hour to hour. And all the while like a rabbit in a warren, serenaded by the clucking of fowl.

  Rum business, war, Blake thought.

  TWENTY THREE

  The gods of this place were grim and grey. Short days of gloom lackadaisically disturbing starless nights of cruel wind. Their coal purchase at New Archangel had Billings wondering about fuel and distance, and the taxing of engines in the face of aeolian onslaught meant frequent descent for fresh water on islets between open ocean.

  The crew fell to tight-lipped silence, counting knots as the Celerity hooked on the guttural place-names on charts: Aniakchak, Akutan and Unalaska. Nikolsk and Amilia, Atka and Adak. It seems a limited number of vowels and consonant sounds had been distributed to the cartographer.

  On Tanaga, the men had caught a large seal, almost by accident. The cook was entirely unsure of what to do with it, but the promise of the thing seemed a welcome enough reprieve from fish. They’d had venison at Aniakchak, but that was many joyless meals ago. Caribou had been seen on their departure from Adak, and there was some ongoing discussion about returning to harvest–but of course Colt would have none of it.

  Billings had taken to drinking in his stateroom, only to awaken to the same darkness, the same shrieking wind, the same hammering of engines to which he’d fallen asleep. To relieve the monotony, he set foot on each island, if only for ten minutes while the pump-hose drank from whatever stream or creek they could find. The rain provided for full and fast waters, even on the smaller islands, yet on more than one occasion Billings experienced a topographic deja vu, a certainty that this island was identical in every way to the last. W
hite stone, recalcitrant pines, fierce wind, and an interminable leaden sky.

  Even this far out into the Bering Sea, they were not entirely alone. Whalers or Russian naval vessels were not infrequently sighted. And whales, of course; black mounds in black water, noticeable in their disappearance and the odd spume of silver mist from blowholes, then vanishing.

  Actual islands, as opposed to barren rocks jutting defiantly from the Pacific, became increasingly scarce. There was a palpable tension in the crew, and as Colt ascended the ladder to the bridge, he could see rolling storm clouds ahead, and the amethyst flash of lightning.

  It seemed even odds that both the storm and the Celerity would make landfall on Amchitka at the same time, and the engines worked hell-bent for leather to up the odds in the airship’s favour. No one was certain what might happen if lightning struck while the ship was over sea, although there was an untested rod atop the center balloon. Thunder rattled the panes in their cases, and boomed through the decks. There was no chance of ascending above the storm, which seemed limitless, and the pressure was wreaking havoc on the instruments. Billings could barely tell if they were moving forward at all.

  Another volley of thunder rocked the dirigible. This time, the ship answered with her own din; a metallic pinging that was the unmistakeable snapping of steel cables. The net which held the Celerity together was unweaving itself, and the time between purple flares of lightning and the fulminations of thunder was diminishing with each assault.

  “Release the ground-hook!” called the captain.

  “But we’re not over land!” exclaimed a mate.

  “Now, goddammit, or we’re all mortal!”

  There was the now-familiar klunk of the hook’s release, and the vibration of chain falling to the sea from a massive spinning spool. Billing did not know if the aim was to anchor to the bottom of the ocean, or a stray crag, or some debris of shoreline should their advance allow it. Or it may have been a kind of prayer from a desperate man who had to decide something, anything.

  The gambit was received with a welcome yet sickening lurch, which not only halted the ship’s forward moment but sent her spinning slowly counter-clockwise – broadside to the storm.

  “Winch!” yelled the captain, and whatever purchase the hook had found clawed altitude from the ship. Another resounding ping of shearing steel sent daggers of fear through the men. Through the blear of rain on the windows, Billings could make out a beach, fast approaching. The full fury of the storm was now upon them. What happened next appeared to halt time itself.

  There was not so much a flash as a glow. A strange metallic scent filled Billings’ nostrils, as the hair on his arms stood straight. The simultaneous thunder came not in a single explosion, but in a succession of waves he imagined he could see. He kept his feet, as did the rest of the crew, but there was an instant in which everything, even the air on the bridge itself, turned to liquid, slowing each gesture or contorted command.

  Time returned, and with it the roar of wind and the shouts of the men. The landing was upon them, and whether they had made the beach, or would wreck to the sea, was yet to be seen.

  Billings was as grey as their destination. “What the hell just happened?”

  “We’ve been struck by lightning,” said the captain. “That rod saved us, all right, but whether the batteries are charged or shot to hell, we’ll see if we survive the landing. Hold fast!”

  And with a crunch and a nightmarish twisting of metal, the ship pitched forward enough for Billings’ knees to buckle and bash against the bulkhead, but he was grateful to remain relatively upright. A crewman shouted into the speaking tubes over the map table, which had vomited most of its contents onto the bridge deck. The crewman jammed the side of his head into the tube.

  “We’re fast, Captain. Not taking on water, but there’s damage, sir.”

  “Did we make the beach?”

  “We did, sir.”

  The bridge’s population collectively exhaled.

  “Get another line down. Get the men out, and lash to anything we can reach. We ride it out here.”

  Throughout all of this, Colt had remained on the bridge, stern and silent. Billings made eye contact, and Colt merely nodded.

  The ship was again slugged by thunder, and again. Lightning flashed around them, but failed to induce the otherworldly effects of a direct strike.

  The report came that one of the crewmen was dead ashore, the tree he was ascending struck, but they’d a half dozen cables fast to rocks and trees to hold them through the storm. Additionally, the undercarriage had twisted itself on a vast rock, and seemed an insistent fixture. They were secure, if not entirely whole.

  Colt had ordered the crew to leave the dead man until after the storm was passed. He’d still be dead in the morning, but he was not going to lose another man to lightning.

  Billings stooped to restore the fallen charts to the map table. As he placed the table compass atop the map, his hair stood on end a second time in an hour. In a minuscule hand, a script around the map read “Amchitka, Billings 1790.” Whether by coincidence or fate, he resented the thought of being so manipulated.

  TWENTY FOUR

  It was her hair that was the problem. She had piled it into a bun, but the Alexandrian wind and humidity had tease loose a strand here and there, and Avery watched it play with the nape of Eleanor’s neck, subtly bronzed by their time in the Mediterranean. It captivated him; or rather, its distraction had led to his capture.

  He had heard the word “English” too late. Had he any presence of mind at all he would have intuited the approaching intent. As it happened, they had him, elbows and knees, a bag over his head and a sharp jab at the ribs for good measure. He could feel the crowd closing around him as his abductors wrenched his cane from his grip.

  He went slack, both to belabour his captors and to preserve his strength. He slowed his breathing and concentrated on cues from his environs; a spice-merchant. A goat’s bleating. The smell of a forge. A shout in a language he couldn’t place, not Arabic. Farsi? A left, if he was walking forwards. His captors were not Mohammedans, from their poor hygiene. Up. Due south, it had to be. Sudden cool. A doorway, as the footsteps of the gang carrying him shuffled together. Flipped and dropped, a weight on his back as his hands were bound tightly. He offered no resistance. So, he thought, barely more than a block south of the market. That’s something. He tried not to panic when he thought about Eleanor.

  Surely, they had let her be. If their intent was to capture her, she would be alongside. The logistics of nabbing two persons in broad daylight and taking them to separate locations was exponentially challenging, and his lot, while efficient, were amateurs, not professionals. Very well then. Eleanor is at the market still, he assured himself, and not likely to fall to pieces. She is, he remembered, an Englishwoman.

  The men hissed to themselves in a tongue unfamiliar to the priest. There seemed to be some disagreement, and one of his captors grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him roughly across the floor. Avery retracted on leg inch by inch, until the man needed to adjust his hold, and at that minute Avery’s foot shot out to connect with his assailant’s jaw with a satisfying crack, and the laughter of the other men. He tucked his elbows into his hips to brace for the kick he knew was coming, and his prescience was rewarded with impact.

  After the man’s rage had been appeased with the appropriate damage and groaning from the captive, he was dragged upright, his rope-bonds cut, and he was shoved against a stone wall. Iron manacles were fastened around his wrists. Long term, Avery thought, I’d be better off on the floor.

  After more arguments, some whispered, some shouted, Avery’s bag was removed. There was little adjustment for the light, as the weave of the burlap was loose enough and the storeroom dim enough to be roughly of the same degree of gloom. Vision was altogether uninformative save putting a number on his assailants. Six.

  It was obvious enough that he was not being robbed, and that someone wanted him alive. At least
, he thought, for the time being. He considered it best to play the part of kidnap victim, and if it turned out to be that, it was a simple enough matter to settle.

  “Gold,” said Avery. “I have gold. Thahab.” That got their attention.

  “Where gold, English?” asked one of his abductors. “Where gold?”

  “Hidden. In my cane. Assaya.” With that, each scanned the corners of the storeroom to see where Avery’s walking stick had been set. Two men grabbed it simultaneously, and Avery tried not to wince. “No, no. There’s a latch. Distola. Oh, dear, damn my bloody Arabic. Zurra.” He was clearly not selling his role as helpless captive.

  “I’ll show you. I can get more. Please, don’t hurt me. Rahma. More gold. Thahab, rahma,” he pleaded, he hoped convincingly.

  One of them was victorious in his efforts to be in sole possession of the cane. He shook it at Avery from across the room. “Gold!” he shouted. “How?”

  His rivals shouted at him at once, repeating Avery’s mangled attempts to explain that there was a hidden latch or button to the thing and that the gold was secreted inside. He left to the street to examine it in the light, followed by two of his fellows. That was at least a step in the right direction. Possibly. Avery wasn’t entirely sure, but he braced himself nonetheless.

  The explosion was not earth-shattering, but it was considerable. There was a significant rumble and a kind of crunching to the air which set his ears ringing.