by Dave Freer
Their guide had lit the little oil-burning Davy lamp that she took down from a hidden ledge just inside the tunnel, and led them on down, through several airlocks, down stairs, and another sequence of ladders, down, down, into the underwater bowels of London. The walls oozed and dribbled down between the bricks. The silence, except for their footsteps, was scarily not complete. Besides the sounds of dripping, there were distant scamperings and rustles. And they were not alone in their little pool of light, going down into the dark. At certain points along the way for no obvious reason that Clara could see, their guide had stopped and whistled a snatch of a tune. “I hope my memory isn't failing me,” she said, turning back to smile secretively at them. “If I get it wrong, they'll flood the tunnel, and it would take hours to pump this out again, by which time we'd be long drowned.”
Then they'd come to a place where the tunnel had been bricked up. Narrower pipes came in from the sides, dribbling red-brown slimy fluid down the glistening walls. Their guide counted bricks and then knocked on one. It looked just like any other brick. Then they waited.
A little later a platform slowly came down from the roof. It was nothing more than three planks with a brick facade underneath, and ropes at the corners.
“I'll go up first,” said their guide, “to explain. Duke Malcolm's sappers have been a little problematic lately.” She took her lamp with her, and left them standing in utter darkness, with nothing but dripping and the sound of their breathing.
“Mother. What's happening? Where is she taking us?” Clara had asked, trying in this pause to make sense of a world that kept turning upside down around her. A world that showed that there were more secrets all around her than she'd ever imagined.
“Hopefully to catch a submarine to America,” said her mother. “My mother set up an escape route, oh, twenty years ago. Mind you in those days, the submarines had an easy passage. Half of London's tea came in by submarine, tax free. It's got harder.”
America. Clara swallowed. That was a long way from Cork. “Will…will we be safe there?”
“I hope so. Hush. The platform is coming down again.”
It did, with their little gray-haired guide and her lamp. She was smiling. “Arranged. Up you go, dears.” She hugged them both and helped them onto the platform.
“My things. Our bags. My mother's notes…,” said Mother.
“They'll send someone for them. If they're not watched and can be brought safely, they will be. We have friends in very odd places. Don't you worry now,” said the gray-haired woman.
Up they'd gone. The ragged, dark-haired, and white-skinned man waiting there looked as if he'd never seen the sun. He looked them over, coolly. “Come along then.” There were a number of pipes, passages, and tunnel-mouths up there, and he led them into one of them—much narrower than anything they'd been along before, and this time made of iron, too low to walk upright along—leading down.
Stooped, they walked on. And eventually came to what was obviously another checkpoint, and an airlock. And that led out into a large underground space, the shadowy roof latticed with iron rafters. It was sparsely lit by gas flares, but busy with people and even a few donkeys, hauling carts. Somehow, that could only be a market there, by the voices touting wares. Coal, eels, and tea were being offered by the barkers. Set into the walls there were doors and even windows. It smelled of smoke and people, and was noisy with them, unlike the damp reek of the emptinesses they'd been led through.
“Welcome to Charing Cross,” said their guide, dryly. “Passengers for Southwark or Temple Station should alight here.”
“But we do not have a ticket,” said her mother. “Where may we procure one?”
It was obviously the right thing to say, even if it sounded quite mad. “Old Madge vouched for you, but you never know,” their guide said, putting back into his sleeve a narrow-bladed knife Clara had not even seen him draw. “Mick'll see you right, ma'am.” He pointed to another broad man, standing in the shadows. “He's the Irish conductor.”
Clara was not sure if the conductor was Irish or if they were supposed to be. Both, it turned out, were the case. Mick detached himself from the wall. “Word was you were using a very old code, ma'am,” he said in a high, slightly lilting voice, at odds with his big square body. “I'd need to be knowing just who you are and what you'd be wanting. And there's a price.”
“A price on ideals,” said her mother, dryly. “My name is Dr. Mary Calland. This is my daughter Clara. My mother was Dr. Clara Immerwahr. She told me to say that she'd bought a season ticket for us.”
Square solid Mick blinked. “Well now. Jack Calland's wife and the old dragon's daughter. It's believed she got money out of the Rothschilds for the first two submarines. Got the Hollanders in to help us and train us. I'll take you along to Southwark. What are you needing? A boat to Kerry?”
Her mother laughed bitterly. “A lot farther than that. We seem to have both Imperial Security and the Russians wanting to catch us. So, if you please, as I know the Underpeople do business with the Russians, and there are informers everywhere, even here, I'd rather not say.”
Mick nodded slowly. “True enough. I'll take you to Southwark as quickly and quietly as possible, then. Come along, follow me.” They'd gone down a metal stairway into yet another echoing hall lit with gas flares. Here men were off-loading long lidded barges that bobbed below the quay. Mick went over to a foreman who was overseeing the line of pale-faced stevedores off-loading, by the smell of it, tea. “Tug. We'll need a bobber. These coves need to get to Southwark, sharpish.”
“One over at platform seven. I'll get someone to hook it up to a dragline for you.” Clara realised that the “dock” was actually the railway station, with the track area flooded so that the barges were floating in it. They crossed two little makeshift bridges and came to a hanging faded sign that read PLATFORM SEVEN EASTERN LINE.
Floating there was a little capsule sitting deep in the water—it looked rather like a barrel, made of wooden staves with iron bands, and a round manhole-like screw-opening. On either end there were metal staples and a cable drooping away into the water.
“It's a bit of a tight fit, ma'am,” said Mick, who was easily twice Mother's size. “But it'll save you a few hours of tunnel walking and a lot of the risks.”
So they'd squeezed into the barrel thing. Mick almost had to pour himself through the opening. It was dark inside, and the wooden walls were covered in quilted padding. “You and the gal better find a hanging strap, ma'am,” said Mick. “Feel about on the roof.”
Clara had found one, as someone outside closed the hatch and screwed it in place. It was dark and airless, and then they started to move.
“Why is it all closed up like this?” asked Clara, curious as they bumped and swayed. She was very grateful for the handle.
“Tunnel dips right underwater,” said Mick. “We knock about a bit too, so hold tight.”
They did, indeed. Clara was very glad to get out of the dark…into another gaslit drowned station, with the thrub-thrub of pumps underlying everything. Here Mick took them to what must have once been the ticket office. And to her disgust Clara got to kick her heels outside while her mother went into an office to talk to people. Time passed very slowly. She didn't even have Mick to ask questions about the clanking and hissing machinery in the distance, or the people who came and went, dropping parcels into a chute in the arch. It was all very mysterious, and very poorly lit, and damp smelling. Damp and coal smoke would always colour her memory of Under London. Eventually her mother came back, with as near to a smile as Clara had seen since they'd managed to give the count the slip. She squeezed Clara's hand, and her voice had some relief in it. “I've been able to send a Marconi message to a prominent scientist I know of in the United States of America. We have had a reply already. He obviously has more government connections than I knew of, and it seems that they also knew the Russians and Imperial Security were up to something. They've agreed to give us both asylum, darling.”
Mother sighed. “Not yet. It means that we have somewhere to go. And the alternative was staying here, and that, I gather, would not be safe. It seems that they're still looking for us. The Underpeople say that collecting our bags for us may have been a mistake. Duke Malcolm's men are setting enquiries afoot in London. The leadership of the Liberty—as they call themselves—want us out of here, as soon as possible. So nice to be welcome. Well, I suppose at least they're not just tossing us out.”
Looking around the station, Clara felt that “out” might have nicer air to breathe. But obviously her mother didn't think so. Soon they were in another bobber, heading for Stockwell Tube and that thing Clara had no real image of: a submarine.
The level of flooding in Stockwell was deeper, and the station's domed roof barely penetrated the murky water. Nobody on the surface would have guessed there were new tunnels down there, and that the generating station branch line led to the deep caverns, which was where the bobber took them—to the Underpeople's main submarine nest. Mick helped them out—it had been a long run and they were bruised and shaken. And there in the light of the methane-gas flares were three submarines being loaded…or unloaded. They were black, broad, and streamlined, the hull-metal bound with rivet-bands, the upper deck planked and tarred, but otherwise near featureless except for their exhausts, and a low cowling. “Our gateway to the world, ma'am,” said Mick, cheerfully. “The Darter, the Plaice, and the Cuttlefish. Over there is the Garfish, having her struts worked on.” Clara looked where he pointed. A long sharp-nosed tube hung from several gantries, with the outrigger-like sides protruding outwards and downwards on rails. The sharp, actinic light of welding flashed and flickered from the workers there. “Pity she's not quite ready for sea. They've been working on the outrigger design. They work as hydrofoils when they're under sail. They're trying to adjust Garfish so she can run on her coal-fired Stirling on them.”
He took in their expressions and said, “Greek to you, I'd be thinking. Well, let me take you to meet Captain Malkis. Looks like they got word, and Cuttlefish is readying for sea. He's a good skipper, and they've got a great navigator submariner in their first mate. He's one of the original Hollander trainers who showed us how to work underwater.”
He took them to the third of the strange, forbidden craft, moored here, underground and underwater, deep in the heart of the British Empire's capital. And that was how they'd got here. It had only been minutes after they'd arrived that their valises and trunk had arrived, and the submarine had left Stockwell.
The submarine might be yet another new thing, but it was narrow and crushing to someone who had lived—well, at least walked to school and home again—under an open sky. And this cabin was smaller and more closed-in still.
Lying there, Clara finally decided she could take it no longer. She could smell food. She could hear the thump of the motors. When she got up she could even feel it through the soles of her feet. They couldn't still be on silence.
She followed her nose down the passage, and to the tiniest of tiny kitchens. That boy was there, scrubbing pots. So was a short man who was nearly as wide as he was high, stirring another large pot. “Ah, missy. Yer come for some tucker?” he asked with a gap-toothed beam.
She decided then and there she could like him, unlike the boy, who was scowling at her again. “What's tucker?” she asked.
“Vittles, missy. Food. That's what we call it where I come from. The new bread hasn't come out yet, and this porridge needs stirring or it'll stick, but if young Tim can get his hand out of the suds, he can cut you a bit of yesterday's baking.”
Tim obviously got the message, and dried off his hands and fetched out a loaf while Clara asked the cook, “So where do you come from, mister? I've never heard your accent before.”
The cook grinned. “Westralia, missy. God's own Republic, bless 'er. Dry as a…bone. But the finest place on Earth.”
Westralia. She knew where that was. The rebel “Republic” of Western Australia that had declared itself independent when the Crown abandoned the colony after the Swan River dried up. A desert no one wanted, full of runaways and criminals, so she'd been taught. Well, a lot of what she'd been taught wasn't quite as true as she'd thought it was. “What are you doing here, so far from home, Mr. Cook?”
He beamed at her. “You can call me Cookie; everyone does. It's a long story, missy. Submarines go everywhere, even if they's not supposed to. Westralia, they can sail on the surface and in the harbour too. I reckoned I'd see the world. So far all I seen is me kitchen.” He didn't seem too unhappy about it. “Some butter for her in the icebox there, Tim-o. And there is jam here, see.”
The boy said nothing. Just went back to washing up when he'd given her the butter. Clara had not had much to do with boys. Well, there were knots of them who would tease the girls and whistle at them as she made her way back from school. Of course the other girls told stories. And some of them had brothers. Clara ate. It was more interesting to watch them from the counter than to go back to the tiny cabin. She wondered if she should offer to help, even if Mother had told her to stay out of the way. The boy looked like he needed some lessons in washing up. And in washing himself. He had grease on his nose. And he'd been crying. She could tell.
But they seemed busy, so she ate, said her thank yous, and went back to her cabin. And now sleep came quickly.
She was awakened by someone knocking. Her mother sat up sleepily below her and bumped her head on the upper bunk. “Ouch. Who is it?” Mother asked, plainly trying to get herself orientated.
“Tim Barnabas, marm,” said the odious boy from outside. “Captain's compliments, would you care to join him and the officers for breakfast?”
“Thank you. How long until you eat?” asked Mother.
“Officer's sitting in the mess in half an hour,” said the boy.
“Half an hour. How like men,” muttered her mother. “Very well. We'll be there. Can you come back and show us where to go?”
“Don't worry, I know the way,” said Clara, then wished that she hadn't admitted it.
“Ah.” It was an “Ah” that heralded a lecture later, Clara knew. “Now where is the light switch?”
Clara knew that too. And the way to what the submariner had called “the heads,” all of which was necessary to get them to the tiny “mess” on time. It wasn't really a mess, in fact, a very square and neat dining area, with tablecloths and silver, Clara thought. Clean too. Even the boy Tim had washed his face before serving in.
It was a proper breakfast, with porridge—oats from Norway, and kippers from Greenland. Everyone seemed quite relaxed about their narrow escape from Stockwell Station. Well, there was sadness and worry, about what they'd left behind, but they were away now. Out in the open ocean submarines had little to fear.
And then a lieutenant—the one who was so proud of his moustache—came down from the bridge and saluted. “Sorry to interrupt, sir. We've picked up sign of two armoured cruisers on our track. And Sparks is monitoring a Marconi message. He thinks they're talking to a dreadnought. They were being asked about depths.”
The captain got to his feet. “Excuse me, ladies,” he said, as he left in a hurry.
A few minutes later a bell chimed and the captain's voice—odd-sounding through a speaker tube—said, “Crew to action stations. We're going to run into the Wash Fens.”
“What's that?” asked Clara.
“It's the old flooded fen lands in around Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk,” said the other lieutenant, getting to his feet. “It's shallow, but our charts are better than the Admiralty ones. We land a lot of cargoes there. And those armoured cruisers have a deep draught, missy. They need about twenty-six feet of water. If we flush our ballast and put out the outriggers we can run on the surface in six feet of water. And at twenty-five we're below water level.”
&n
bsp; “Not by much,” said the first mate, heavily. “They could see us from the air.”
“But they'd have to come hunting us in shallower draught ships, and the skipper is a canny old bird,” said the lieutenant, taking his hat and leaving them with a sketch of a salute.
So they were left to go back to their tiny cabin again and to worry and to fret.
The submarine touched sand with an odd sugary grating sound a few times, but they kept moving.
And then they stopped.
A little later, the “all quiet” light came on.
Tim was off-watch and asleep when the submarine stopped. It was enough to wake him. “Wazzup?” he asked sleepily of the other sailor in the locker below the bed. It was Big Eddie, who used the bunk Tim was sleeping in during alter-shift. Eddie was one of the two divers aboard, as well as a junior steersman.
“I've got to go out and pull the camo-sheet over her. So if you're feeling like getting wet, you can come for a swim, lad,” said Eddie, with a laugh.
Tim shuddered. He could swim. Sort of. You had to as a tunneller. But Under London water was likely to digest your clothes, or the eels might get you. There was supposed to be a giant killer pike up near Wandle. There'd even been a crocodile from Africa in a flooded tunnel once, he'd heard tell.
“And then?” Tim asked.
“And then we lie still until dark and I take it off again,” said Big Eddie, setting off for the escape hatch in the bow, in a thick Arran pullover and heavy woollen breeches and thick socks.
He came back a little later, to get back into his normal clothes, before Tim had properly got back to sleep. “Not too bad out there for this time of year. Mind you, the Fens are fairly buzzing with boats. They're hunting this woman hard.”
