Mechanicals

by Jordan Stratford

  “Do you think there’s a chance we won’t?”

  “Oh, hell no. Not after what we just went through. Even if Siberia’s against us, we can swing down over Mongolia and come up from the south, won’t lose more than a day, and I don’t expect to have to do even that.”

  “Then what, sir?”

  “St. Petersburg. Maybe we send it from there. Makes it look like we’re just showing off, not making a deal with the Russians. Best not to give the English too much time to think about it. Besides, by that time, the English will need more of my guns, and my factory there will be in peak production.”

  “So, you need to show your hand, but on your own terms.”

  “And in my own time. That’s the gist of it, son. But I trust my belly on such matters.”

  “And what’s your belly telling you, Mr. Colt?”

  “Indecisive. That’s what’s troubling me. I don’t have a clear picture as yet as to what the English might do, to what degree and in which order. So the things unsettled, which unsettles me.” Colt stared off through the porthole in Billings stateroom.

  “I’m sure you’ll know once we reach St. Petersburg, sir.”

  “Weather’s with us,” said Colt, changing the subject. “Captain says we might make seventy knots again today. Clear the Sea of Okhotsk in an hour. Then we’ll see what the wind is doing; due west, or south to Mongolia.”

  “I guess sometimes that’s all you can do, Mr. Colt,” said Billings.

  “What’s that, son?”

  “See which way the wind is blowing.”

  TWENTY NINE

  For four centuries, Varna had been part of the Ottoman Empire, the Christian West having fallen here in 1444. Today, however, the city was occupied by French and English troops, the harbour choked with the Royal Navy. Most of the horses had been taken north, to graze and exercise, and marshal with the vast herd of the Heavy Brigade. Upon the Navy’s arrival, teams of Scottish engineers had been set loose on the Bulgarian shore, completing the railroad at breakneck pace through to Serbia, keeping south of the Russian infiltration of the Danube.

  Dressed, Blake and Landau disembarked the train, and the air was foul. It was not the smell of war that Blake had expected; one of powder and horses and coal-fire, but rather the slow, syrupy miasma of sickness that hung about the train station. Indeed, most the men unloading the trains wore linen bands across their faces to ward off the stench of it.

  “Merciful God in Heaven, what is that stench?”

  “Cholera, sir. They used the station as a charnel house for those that died of it, before we rolled in. They’ve only just cleared the last of the bodies.”

  “Bulgarians, eh? Beastly business.”

  “No, sir. Mostly English dead, sir. And some French, I suppose.”

  “English? Dead of cholera?” Blake exclaimed. “What is this, India? I had no idea.”

  The expression on Landau’s face changed suddenly, his eyes widening and his gaze aside and behind Blake. The captain turned to discover Cardigan, pointing and shouting, with several wigged toadies in his wake. Blake snapped to attention and saluted.

  “Damn it to hell, Blake! What are you doing in this Godforsaken stench?”

  “Just arrived, Lord Cardigan, seeing to the mechanicals. I imagine we’ll march them clear of the station at once, sir.”

  “You’ll wait for the bloody order, is what you’ll do,” rebuffed Cardigan.

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “Right, well off you go then. Can’t have the entire damn brigade choleric before we march! I blame these damn Bulgarians, living too close to Turks. No wonder they’ve invited this upon themselves. Filthy habits.”

  Blake stood, trying to decipher Cardigans rant, and to determine whether he was finished.

  “What’s wrong with you, you wooden-noddy?” roared the colonel, “I said off you go!”

  “Right, very good, sir.” replied Blake with a salute. He stalked away from Cardigan’s repulsive presence, trying to neither run nor gag on the foetid atmosphere.

  “Zouaves, to me!” he shouted, and the Frenchmen, who had been lolling about the station smoking to repel the odor of death, fell into line behind him. “Find Price. Get those tarpaulins off and the cranes ready. I want the entire brigade marching out of here in one hour.” Landau nodded before taking off in a run; the zouaves saluted and scrambled aboard the flat cars, unshackling chains and peeling back the oilskin to reveal the slumbering giants beneath.

  Mercifully, Blake had his pipe and pouch with him. He left the close air of the station, down the dock to the sea. Not even in England had he seen so much of Her Majesty’s Navy. One could walk from one point of the harbour to the other without ever getting one’s boots wet. Crates were being swung ashore in droves; supplies for the long march to Odessa, already under bombardment some two-hundred-sixty miles to the north, across the Danube. While the plans had not been drawn up officially, they were inevitably bound for Sebastopol–either directly by sea, or by landing to the north in Kalamita Bay to begin the invasion of Crimea, isolating Sebastopol, crippling the Russian fleet, and with luck, putting an end to the whole business.

  Blake’s pipe-smoke reminded him of home, and the months since sleeping in a decent bed, with a moments peace free from the prattling of men’s wives and kerfuffle of livestock and the endless maddening tattoo of the train’s wheels against rail-seams. The sea air, at least, was clean and pure from the corruption and exhaust of corpses. For now, he thought.

  Price found him, and saluted, handing him an envelope. Orders from Cardigan: they were to march north and marshal with the Heavy Brigade, as expected, but they were not to take Odessa. Blake wondered if the city had already capitulated, and if so, to whom: It seemed as though the entirety of the Royal Navy was here in Varna.

  “Orders, sir?” asked Price.

  “We’re to rally with the Dragoons to the north and make camp there. And wait.”

  Price seemed hesitant. “To wait, sir.”

  “Indeed Price. This is the Army, and waiting seems to be our lot.” He paused and took a long draw from his pipe. “I’m sorry, Sergeant. You know, that was actually my attempt at a joke. I’ve been aboard that damnable train so long I’ve forgotten how to converse without sounding the imbecile.”

  “I’ve been with the men, sir, and can hardly tell the difference.”

  “Ha!” laughed Blake. “I did have that one coming. I appreciate your forbearance, Price. If you were a women I’d marry you.”

  “I’ve been told my moustache is a proper tickler, Captain.”

  “Surely you confuse yourself with one of these Bulgarian women, Sergeant.”

  “Yet again, sir.”

  Just then, a wail, musical but unearthly to the Englishmen’s ears, rang across the city. Blake could not explain why, but the call spoke to him, moving some emotion in his breast.

  “Mohammedans,” Blake offered. “Called to prayer.”

  “No church-bells, eh then, sir?”

  “If they had them, they hammered them into cannons long ago.”

  As if in answer to the muezzin’s cry, a caterwauling of pipers resounded from the station. Blake was taken aback.

  “The Scots, sir. Marching to camp with the Heavy.”

  “You know, I’d nearly forgotten them,” remarked Blake.

  “They kept to themselves aboard the train, sir. Shall I have them wait for the Hussars, Captain?”

  “No, no, Sergeant. Best get them clear of that foul air. Have Kendrick send the French along behind them as soon as the mechanicals are fired. No need to wait about until they’ve got a full head of steam. Are our boys away?”

  “What’s left of them, aye sir. More’n half left with the horses, before the last stop.”

  “March them with the French,” ordered Blake calmly. “It’ll show a courtesy to the zouaves.”

  “Not sure I can catch them, sir. If you like, we’re bound to overtake the lot of them on our march, we could order them to hold fast u
ntil the Frenchies show up, and go along.”

  “Never mind about that, then. We’ll get things sorted when we arrive at camp. Oh, one more thing – have the zouaves load the oilskin in horse-carts, if there’s room. Just thinking of weather.”

  “Aye sir.” Price saluted as flawlessly as usually, spun on his heel and marched back to the train.

  Some twenty minutes later, aboard their mechanical, Price took his captain’s jacket before removing his own. The sergeant scanned an array of gauges, and, satisfied, strapped himself into the fireman’s sling.

  Blake placed a hand flat on the console before him, feeling the gyroscope’s vibration throughout the mechanical man, and the steady slam of the engine’s slide valve as it careened forcefully side to side. Reaching the controls, he executed an elegant left wheel, slid the knobs foreword and marched the mechanical gracefully from the flat deck down the solid metal ramp, along the makeshift bridge across the station’s other sets of tracks, and out in the Varna dockyard. Dozens of mechanicals preceded him: He didn’t stand on ceremony and was eager to clear the men of the choleric vapours.

  It was an impressive sight. The iron men, sixteen feet high, keeping a good thirty yards between them in single file, trudged along the Bulgarian road north out of the city. He could see but not hear the rearing of carthorses, unnerved at the sight.

  Thinking of the skirmish en route, and the damage inflicted to man and horse by a single mechanical, Blake shook his head at the destruction to be wrought by the entire brigade let loose. Clearly, if the Russians sought to stand their ground in advance of such an onslaught, they would be cut to a man. What commander would send his men against such an eradication – a colonnade of iron men, impervious to ball or sword? Particularly in light of the fact that the Russians had little at stake. It was not their homeland they were defending, merely the adventurous advance of a frontier, and the testing of an alliance. Well, soon enough the Tsar would see what England had brought to bear in support of Turkey, and the Sultan! Blake was rather pleased at all this inner commentary. The Russians would see what the mechanicals could do, and appropriately negotiate, and withdraw. Some exchange of treasury would, as is the custom, ensue, he had no doubt. But civilization would prevail, the virtue of war would proven, and he’d be a-bed in England come August. It must be so.

  It’s just damnably hot in the meantime, he thought.

  THIRTY

  It had been more than a modest walk to the Western quarter of the city, and Eleanor was certainly ready for lunch, and a basin of cool water. She remembered, in her march behind her be-fezzed escort, that she walked the streets once ruled by Moses himself, conquered by Rome, by Alexander before that, and now under the heel of the Ottoman Turks. She felt humbled by the history, and foolish when she thought of her own ignorance. Was her London so bereft of history? Had her streets not been home to Romans, burned by British rebels, conquered by Angles and Saxons, Jutes and Danes and Normans? She had never thought of her home in such terms, and found herself quietly ashamed.

  But at the turn of a corner, she found herself awed.

  It was an airship, but as unlike her disappointing experience in air travel as a bulldog is to a gazelle. This was white, and sleek, with sinuous lines in amber teak and amethyst glass. It was vast; greater in length than the merchant class ship that had brought her from Naples. The airship hung motionless in the perfect azure of the Alexandrian sky.

  “This...is your cousin’s?” Eleanor asked.

  Farouq’s laugh was grand. “My cousin, he is cook. Galley, yes? This ship is the Wali.”

  “Is that what it is called? Wali? The airship?”

  “Belong. Airship belong the Wali. This is Durrah. Pearl. But you go to Jerusalem much fast. Do you want I get your bags, Madame?” he offered. “From European hotel?”

  “It doesn’t seem as there’s time for that.” She could see cranes hauling crates from ships, handled by navvies working along the dock, and loaded into the hovering vessel by way of an extended gangplank. The proceedings gave every indication of immanent departure.

  Farouq’s countenance turned serious. She could tell there was far more to this man than an itinerant porter. He gave her a nod, dropping all facade of a subordinate, and assuming the mantle of co-conspirator. He held up one hand as he turned: stay here. He walked briskly up the gangway.

  A moment later he returned with a boy, perhaps fourteen, clad in an immaculate white shirt and a wisp of moustache attempting to take root above his lip.

  “Madame,” said the boy, with a bow. “My cousin informs me you are in need of assistance and transportation.”

  “Yes, thank you. Unfortunately I have no means to acquire passage at present,” Eleanor replied.

  “I shall employ you, then, if that is agreeable. I administer the preparatory cooks in the Durrah’s galleys, and their employment is at my discretion.”

  “Thank you, Mister...”

  “Muhammed. And I understand you are Mrs. Avery. Please, follow me, and we shall make our best efforts to accommodate your circumstances.” Again he gave a bow, his deportment like his speech well beyond the years of his appearance. Eleanor followed. At once Muhammed stopped, turned, and looked beyond her shoulder to give a solid, affirming nod. She turned to discover that Farouq had vanished into the crowd, and with his disappearance went her opportunity to thank him. Muhammed resumed his businesslike embarkation of the airship, and she followed dutifully.

  Aboard, everything was at once frenetically busy and meticulously organized. Crew members hurried past with grace and efficiency, carrying steel bowls and ceramic pots full of vibrant colours–spices and vegetables, flowers and concoctions Eleanor couldn’t identify. She assumed this was below-decks, as the decor, while pristine and utilitarian, did not have the opulence exhibited by the airship’s exterior. She had seen enough great houses to recognize the servant’s corridors when she saw them, even when she was some thirty feet above the ground. Muhammed opened a narrow door, screened with wicker for either airflow or to reduce weight. He did not enter, either out of propriety or maneuverability, so she squeezed past him with a nod.

  Crew quarters. Two bunk-beds and barely standing room between them. Only the upper berth appeared unoccupied, so on this she placed her parasol.

  “Please, attend here in comfort, while I make arrangements with the mistress of house. I shall inform her of your arrival, and I trust suitable arrangements can be made.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Muhammed. Although I should like to make myself useful. If I’m to report to the kitchens, I should very much like to get started.”

  “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Mrs. Avery. But as I’m sure you understand we have a protocol to observe, and I have much to which to attend at present.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Muhammed.”

  He gave her a sympathetic bow, and closed the door. She sat on the lower bunk, and found herself at a loss. She had not inquired as to the ship’s destination, but trusted Farouq not to steer her wrong and wondered, not for the last time, who or what he really was. At least she did not find herself a stowaway–she was perfectly willing to earn her passage in the galley.

  It was merely a matter of moments before the disquieting lurch of the ship wrested her from her thoughts. That was that, then. Her brief time in Alexandria was at an end, and despite the loss of Avery, she was at least en route to a known destination. She was sure he would find her in Constantinople. Provided, of course, that someone there knew she was aboard ship. Perhaps she should have found the British consul in Egypt? Well, there was a consul in Constantinople, there must be. The Turks would make allowances for the daughter of an allied nation, surely. Failing that, she would attempt to make her presence known somehow. She had to trust the resources of her faculties, and the far greater resources of the priest.

  There was a brief knock on the stateroom door, and the wicker’s lattice swung outward. There stood the most beautiful woman Eleanor had ever seen.

  “Mrs. Avery?” t
he woman asked. “My name is Asmaa. I am the mistress of house here aboard the Durrah.” She wore a voluminous white blouse with an underbust corset the colour of black cherries, and billowing skirts of broad stripes, copper and faun. Her hair was jet black, her kohl-lined eyes wide beneath a broad brow, and her skin the colour of burnished gold.

  Eleanor rose and smiled, but she was suddenly struck by the change in the woman’s expression.

  “I apologize, I understood you were Mrs. Avery.”

  “That’s right,” Eleanor replied.

  “But you are unmarried.”

  “No, no. Reverend Avery is my husband.”

  “No,” Amsaa rebutted. “You have no husband.”

  “But–”

  “Please, child. Do not lie to me aboard this ship, or elsewhere. We are several hundred feet above ground at this point, and I shall have you overboard if you dissemble again. Now,” she annunciated with precision, “you have no husband, do you?”

  Eleanor looked down, chastened. “No. You are quite right.”

  Amsaa softened, stepping towards Eleanor and touching her cheek. “There. That’s all in the past, now. If there is one thing I know, here of all places on earth and in the sky, it is the affairs of men and women. Now please tell me your Christian name.”

  “Eleanor.”

  “Eleanor. Lovely. I’ll not have you in the galley, Eleanor, or quartered here. However, I cannot see you armed aboard this ship.”

  “But...”

  “A man rarely sees a woman as a threat. Which is why a woman is responsible for security aboard. Your weapon, please. It shall be perfectly safe, as shall you.”

  Wordlessly, Eleanor drew the blade and handed it to Amsaa, who accepted it with a nod.

  “Please follow me.” She turned gracefully on one heel and was out the door.

  In the hallway there were numerous ladders to upper decks, yet Amsaa took none of these. Rather she walked the full length of the hall, to a curved ramp at the other end, and repeated this for several decks – each level becoming more luxurious as they ascended.