The Mammoth Book of Steampunk

by Sean Wallace

  Despite the machinations of her immediate supervisor, the loutish Ezekiel Snavely, Kitty’s fifth letter found its way to Briarwood House. Lady Witherspoon forthwith delivered Kitty from Snavely’s clutches and made the girl her ward. Not only was Kitty accorded her own cottage on the estate grounds, her benefactor provided a monthly allowance of ten pounds, a sum sufficient for the young woman to mingle with London society and adorn herself in the latest fashions. In the initial entries, Lady Witherspoon emerges as a muddle-minded person, obsessed with the welfare of an organization that at first Kitty thought silly: the Hampstead Ladies’ Croquet Club and Benevolent Society. But there was more on the minds of these six women than knocking balls through hoops.

  Confidential Diary and Personal Observations of Katherine Margaret Glover The Year of Our Lord 1889

  Sunday, 31 March

  Today I am moved to comment on a dimension of life here at Briarwood that I have not addressed before. Whilst most of our servants, footmen, maids and gardeners appear normal in aspect and comportment, two of the staff, Martin and Andrew, exhibit features so grotesque that my dreams are haunted by their lumbering presence. Their duties comprise nothing beyond maintaining the grounds, the croquet field in particular, and I suspect they are so mentally enfeebled that Lady Witherspoon hesitates to assign them more demanding tasks. Indeed, the one time I attempted to engage Martin and Andrew in conversation, they regarded me quizzically and responded only with soft huffing grunts.

  I once saw in the Zoological Gardens an orangutan named Attila, and in my opinion Martin and Andrew belong more to that variety of ape than to even the most bestial men of my acquaintance, including the execrable Ezekiel Snavely. With their weak chins, flaring nostrils, sunken black eyes, proliferation of body hair and decks of broken teeth the size of pebbles, our groundskeepers seem on probation from the jungle, still awaiting full admittance to the human race. It speaks well of the baroness that she would hire such freaks as might normally find themselves in Spitalfields, swilling gin and begging for their supper.

  “I cannot help but notice a bodily deformity in our groundskeepers,” I told Lady Witherspoon. “In employing them, you have shown yourself to be a true Christian.”

  “In fact Martin and Andrew were once even more degraded than they appear,” the baroness replied. “The day those unfortunates arrived, I instructed the servants to treat them with humanity. Kindness, it seems, will gentle the nature of even the most miserable outcast.”

  “Then I, too, shall treat them with humanity,” I vowed.

  Wednesday, 10 April

  This morning I approached Lady Witherspoon with a scheme whose realization would, I believe, be a boon to English letters. I proposed that we establish here at Briarwood a school for the cultivation of the Empire’s next generation of poets, not unlike that artistically fecund society formed by Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and their acolytes in an earlier part of the century. By founding such an institution, I argued, Lady Witherspoon would gain an enviable reputation as a friend to the arts, whilst my fellow poets and I would lift one another to unprecedented promontories of literary accomplishment.

  Instead of holding forth on either the virtues or the liabilities of turning Briarwood into a monastery for scribblers, Lady Witherspoon looked me in the eye and said, “This strikes me as an opportune moment to address a somewhat different matter concerning your future, Kitty. It is my fond hope that you will one day take my place as head of the Hampstead Ladies’ Croquet Club and Benevolent Society. Much as I admire the women who constitute our present membership, none is your equal in mettle and brains.”

  “Your praise touches me deeply, madam, though I am at a loss to say why that particular office requires either mettle or brains.”

  “I shall forgive your condescension, child, as you are unaware of the organization’s true purpose.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is something I shall disclose when you are ready to assume the mantle of leadership.”

  “From the appellation ‘Benevolent Society’, might I surmise that you do charitable works?”

  “We are generous toward our friends, rather less so toward our enemies,” Lady Witherspoon replied with a quick smile that, unlike the Society’s ostensible aim, was not entirely benevolent.

  “Does this charity consist in saving misfits like Martin and Andrew from extinction?”

  Instead of addressing my question, the baroness clasped my hand and said, “Here is my counter-proposal. Allow me to groom you as my successor, and I shall happily subsidize your commonwealth of poets.”

  “An excellent arrangement.”

  “I believe I’m getting the better of the bargain.”

  “Unless you object, I should like to call my nascent school the Elizabeth Witherspoon Academy of Arts and Letters.”

  “You have my permission,” the baroness said.

  Monday, 15 April

  A day spent in Fleet Street, where I arranged for the Times to run an advertisement urging all interested poets, “whether wholly Byronic or merely embryonic”, to bundle up their best work and bring it to the Elizabeth Witherspoon Academy of Arts and Letters, scheduled to convene at Briarwood House a week from next Sunday. The mere knowledge that this community will soon come into being has proved for me a fount of inspiration. Tonight I kept pen pressed to paper for five successive hours, with the result that I now have in my drawer seven stanzas concerning the marriage of my flame-haired Boadicea to Prasutagus, King of the Iceni Britons.

  Strange fancies buzz through my brain like bees bereft of sense. My skull is a hive of conjecture. What is the “true purpose”, to use the baroness’s term, of the Benevolent Society? Do its members presume to practice the black arts? Does my patroness imagine that she is in turn patronized by Lucifer? Forgive me, Lady Witherspoon, for entertaining such ungracious speculations. You deserve better of your adoring ward.

  The Society gathers on the first Saturday of next month, whereupon I shall play the prowler, or such is my resolve. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but I trust it will serve to enlighten this Kitty.

  Sunday, 28 April

  The inauguration of my poets’ utopia proved more auspicious than I had dared hope. All told, three bards made their way to Hampstead. We enjoyed a splendid high tea, then shared our nascent works.

  The Reverend Tobias Crowther of Stoke Newingtown is a blowsy man of cheerful temper. For the past year he has devoted his free hours to Deathless in Bethany, a long dramatic poem about Lazarus’s adventures following his resuscitation by our Lord. He read the first scene aloud, and with every line his listeners grew more entranced.

  Our next performer was Ellen Ruggles, a pallid schoolmistress from Kensington, who favored us with four odes. Evidently there is no object so humble that Miss Ruggles will not celebrate it in verse, be it a flowerpot, a tea kettle, a spiderweb, or an earthworm. The men squirmed during her recitation, but I was exhilarated to hear Miss Ruggles sing of the quotidian enchantments that lie everywhere to hand.

  With a quaver in my throat and a tremor in my knees, I enacted Boadicea’s speech to Prasutagus as he lies on his deathbed, wherein she promises to continue his policy of appeasing the Romans. My discomfort was unjustified, however, for after my presentation the other poets all made cooing noises and applauded. I was particularly pleased to garner the approval of Edward Pertuis, a wealthy Bloomsbury bohemian and apostle of the mad philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Mr Pertuis is quite the most well-favored man I have ever surveyed at close quarters, and I sense that he possesses a splendor of spirit to match his face.

  The Abyssiad is a grand, epic poem wrought of materials that Mr Pertuis cornered in the wildest reaches of his fancy and subsequently brought under the civilizing influence of his pen. On the planet Vivoid, far beyond Uranus, the Übermensch prophesied by Herr Nietzsche has come into existence. An exemplar of this superior race travels to Earth with the aim of teaching human beings how they might live their lives to the full.
Mr Pertuis is not only a superb writer but also a fine actor, and his opening cantos held our fellowship spellbound. He has even undertaken to illustrate his manuscript, decorating the bottom margin with crayon drawings of the Übermensch, who wears a dashing scarlet cape and looks rather like his creator – Mr Pertuis, I mean, not Herr Nietzsche.

  I can barely wait until our group reconvenes four weeks hence. I am deliriously anxious to learn what happens when the visitor from Vivoid attempts to corrupt the human race. I long to clap my eyes on Mr Pertuis again.

  Saturday, 4 May

  An astonishing day that began in utter mundanity, with the titled ladies of the Benevolent Society arriving in their cabriolets and coaches. Five aristocrats plus the baroness made six, one for each croquet mallet in the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. After taking tea in the garden, everyone proceeded to the south lawn, newly scythed by Martin and Andrew. Six hoops and two pegs stood ready for the game. The women played three matches, with Lady Sterlingford winning the first, Lady Unsworth the second, and Lady Witherspoon the last. Although they took their sport seriously, bringing to each shot a scientific precision, their absorption in technique did not preclude their chattering about matters of stupendous inconsequentiality – the weather, Paris fashions, who had or had not been invited to the Countess of Rexford’s upcoming soirée – whilst I sat on a wrought-iron chair and attempted to write a scene of the Romans flogging Boadicea for refusing to become their submissive client.

  At dusk the croquet players repaired to the banquet hall, there to dine on pheasant and grouse, whilst I lurked outside the open window, observing their vapid smiles and overhearing their evanescent conversation, as devoid of substance as their prattle on the playing field. When at last the ladies finished their feast, they migrated to the west parlor. The casement gave me a coign of vantage on Lady Witherspoon as she approached the far wall and pulled aside a faded tapestry concealing the door to a descending spiral staircase. Laughing and trilling, the ladies passed through the secret portal and began their downward climb.

  Within ten minutes I had furtively joined the Society in the manor’s most subterranean sanctum, its walls dancing with phantoms conjured by a dozen blazing torches. A green velvet drape served as my cloak of invisibility. Like the east lawn, the basement had been converted into a gaming space, but whereas the croquet field bloomed with sweet grass and the occasional wild violet, the sanctum floor was covered end to end with a foul carpet of thick russet mud. From my velvet niche I could observe the suspended gallery in which reposed the six women, as well as, flanking and fronting the mire, two discrete ranks of gaol cells, eight per block, each compartment inhabited by a hulking, snarling brute sprung from the same benighted line as Martin and Andrew. The atmosphere roiled with a fragrance such as I had never before endured – a stench compounded of stagnant water, damp fur and the soiled hay filling the cages – even as my brain reeled with the primal improbability of the spectacle.

  In the gallery a flurry of activity unfolded, and I soon realized that the women were wagering on the outcome of the incipient contest. Each aristocrat obviously had her favorite apeman, though I got the impression that, contrary to the norms of such gambling, the players were betting on which beast could be counted upon to lose. After all the wagers were made, Lady Witherspoon gestured toward the far perimeter of the pit, where her major-domo, Wembly, and his chief assistant, Padding, were pacing in nervous circles. First Wembly sprang into action, setting his hand to a small windlass and thus opening a cage in the nearer of the two cellblocks. As the liberated apeman skulked into the arena, Padding operated a second windlass, thereby opening a facing cage and freeing its occupant. Retreating in tandem, Wembly and Padding slipped into a stone sentry box and locked the door behind them.

  Only now did I notice that the bog was everywhere planted with implements of combat. Cudgels of all sorts rose from the mire like bulrushes. Each apeman instinctively grabbed a weapon, the larger brute selecting a shillelagh, his opponent a wooden mace bristling with toothy bits of metal. The combat that followed was protracted and vicious, the two enemies hammering at each other until rivulets of blood flowed down their fur. Thuds, grunts and cries of pain resounded through the fetid air, as did the Society’s enthusiastic cheers.

  In time the smaller beast triumphed, dealing his opponent a cranial blow so forceful that the latter dropped the shillelagh and collapsed in the bog, prone and trembling with terror. The victor approached his stricken foe, placed a muddy foot on his rump, and made ready to dash out the fallen creature’s brains, at which juncture Lady Witherspoon lifted a tin whistle to her lips and let loose a metallic shriek. Instantly the victor released his mace and faced the gallery, where Lady Pembroke now stood grasping a ceramic phial stoppered with a plug of cork. Evidently recognizing the phial, and perhaps even smelling its contents, the victor forgot all about decerebrating his enemy. He shuffled toward Lady Pembroke and raised his hairy hands beseechingly. When she tossed him the coveted phial, he frantically tore out the stopper and sucked down the entire measure. Having satisfied his craving for the opiate, the brute tossed the phial aside, then yawned, stretched, and staggered back to his cage. He lay down in the straw and fell asleep.

  Cautiously but resolutely, Wembly and Padding left their sentry box, the former now holding a Gladstone bag of the sort carried by physicians. Whilst Padding secured the door to the victor’s cage, Wembly knelt beside the vanquished beast. Opening the satchel, he removed a gleaming scalpel, a surgeon’s needle, a variety of gauze dressings and a hypodermic syringe loaded with an amber fluid. The major-domo nudged the plunger, releasing a single glistening bead, and, satisfied that the hollow needle was unobstructed, injected the drug into the brute’s arm. The creature’s limbs went slack. Presently Padding arrived on the scene, drawing from his pocket a pristine white handkerchief, which he used to clean the delta betwixt the apeman’s thighs, whereupon Wembly took up his scalpel and meticulously slit a portion of the creature’s anatomy for which I know no term more delicate than scrotum.

  The gallery erupted in a chorus of hoorays.

  With practiced efficiency the major-domo appropriated the twin contents of the scrotal sac, each sphere as large as those with which the ladies had earlier entertained themselves, then plopped them into separate glass jars filled with a clear fluid, alcohol most probably, subsequently passing the vessels to Padding. Next Wembly produced two actual croquet balls, which he inserted into the cavity prior to suturing and bandaging the incision. After offering the gallery a deferential bow, Padding presented one trophy to Lady Pembroke, the other to Lady Unsworth, both of whom, I surmised, had correctly predicted the upshot of the contest. Lady Witherspoon led the other women – Baroness Cushing, the Marchioness of Harcourt, the Countess of Netherby – in a round of delirious applause.

  The evening was young, and before it ended, three additional battles were fought in the stinking, echoing, glowing pit. Three more victors, three more losers, three more plundered scrota, six more harvested spheres, with the result that each noblewoman ultimately received at least one prize. During the intermissions, a liveried footman served the Society chocolate ice cream with strawberries.

  Dear diary, allow me to make a confession. I enjoyed the ladies’ sport. Despite a generally Christian sensibility, I could not help but imagine that each felled and eunuched brute was the odious Ezekiel Snavely. I had no desire to assume, per Lady Witherspoon’s wishes, the leadership of her unorthodox organization, and yet the idea of my tormentor getting trounced in this arena soothed me more than I can say.

  Clutching their vessels, the ladies ascended the spiral staircase. I pictured each guest slipping into her conveyance and, before commanding the coachman to take her home, demurely snugging her winnings into her lap as a lady of less peculiar tastes might secure a purse, a music box, or a pair of gloves. For a full twenty minutes I lingered behind my velvet drape, listening to the bestial snarls and savage growls, then began my slo
w climb to the surface, afire with a delight for which I hope our English language never breeds a name.

  Monday, 6 May

  To her eternal credit, when I confessed to the baroness that I had spied on the underground tournament, she elected to extol my audacity rather than condemn my duplicity, adding but one caveat to her absolution. “I am willing to cast a sympathetic eye on your escapade,” she told me, “but I must ask you to reciprocate by supposing that a laudable goal informs our baiting of the brutes.”

  “I don’t doubt that your sport serves a greater good. But who are those wretched creatures? They seem more ape than human.”

  The baroness replied that, come noon tomorrow, I must go to the north tower and climb to the uppermost floor, where I would encounter a room I did not know existed. There amongst her retorts and alembics all my questions would be answered.

  Thus did I find myself in Lady Witherspoon’s cylindrical laboratory, a gaslit chamber crammed with worktables on which rested the vessels of which she’d spoken, along with various flasks, bell jars and test tubes, plus a beaker holding a golden substance that the baroness was heating over a Bunsen burner. Bubbles danced in the burnished fluid. At the center of the circle lay a plump man with waxen skin, naked from head to toe, pink as a piglet, bound to an operating table with leather straps about his wrists and ankles. His name, the baroness informed me, was Ben Towson, and he looked as if he had a great deal to say about his situation, but, owing to the steel bit betwixt his teeth, tightly secured with thongs, he could not utter a word.