Chapter 8
Claire and Davina both screamed, and Claire leaped for the opening. Oh, dear Lord in heaven, please let him have caught something … let him be in the rigging, hanging onto a rope, something … please please please …
But he was not.
The water gave way to land and she could not see a thing. She ran to a window, heedless of grasping hands or the laughter of the pirates.
Nothing! Not a sign that Jake had ever been there, had ever learned chemistry recipes, had ever touched a sextant or gazed at the starry sky.
Had ever lived.
Each breath practically a sob, she could not tear herself away from the glass, in case somewhere in the distance she caught a movement that might indicate he had survived. Behind her, the countess had gone into hysterics, and the ensuing hubbub formed a kind of privacy in which Claire could grapple with regret and horror and grief.
Which meant that she was the only one looking out when a most peculiar assembly floated past.
Suspended from what was clearly a makeshift balloon was her hatbox.
Her mouth dropped open. She craned to see where it was going, and in doing so, saw that they were only fifty feet in the air and coming in for a landing. The hatbox floated downward and vanished somewhere in an uninhabited landscape populated by scrubby trees.
An enormous spire of red rock filled the windows and blocked her view. One of the pirates shouted, “Port ho, sir! Prepare to secure ropes!”
She was pushed out of the way but she hardly felt it.
Her hatbox. Floating away.
The last time she’d seen it, it had contained Rosie and the Dunsmuir diamonds.
If it did still, had the Mopsies seen Jake’s demise and taken precautions? Or did it mean that they had given up hope and were prepared to surrender?
Oh, she must give these wretches the slip and find the children! She had not been able to save Jake. But with every cell in her body, she meant to save the Mopsies and Willie and Tigg. Wherever he was.
And then they could mourn Jake together. Properly.
But for now, she must concentrate on staying alive and at liberty. She would do none of them any good if they locked her up, or separated her from the Dunsmuirs and the ship. She must at all costs be able to get back to the Lady Lucy, if only to discover whether or not the children were all right.
Especially Tigg. Why had she not seen him? He had not been locked up with the crew, and he had not been with Willie in the ceiling. What had happened to him?
Under her feet, she felt a curious sensation, one a bird might feel if it were prevented from flying. “They have moored us,” the countess said.
“Quiet!” one of the pirates barked, and Claire realized that the captain and those miscreants who passed for his officers had gone while she had been pressed to the window—probably to the gondola to oversee their landing.
But what was this? They were still thirty feet in the air. How were they to get down—jump? Or be pushed, like poor Jake?
And then she saw it. A cloud of dust rose into the air ahead of it—a huge engine that might once have been a locomotive, with a tower bolted to it. Steam puffed from the stack as it made its ponderous way across the yards of crushed plants and matted bush below, until at last it heaved up next to the gangway hatch and stuck a ramp into the opening. At least, that seemed to be the goal. However, it missed the opening and crashed into the fuselage. Backed up. Fired up its engine and tried again.
This time, the ramp protruded more or less into the hatchway, and two pirates grabbed it and locked it down. Steam puffed out and up around the tower, for all the world as if it had heaved a sigh of relief.
“You lot.” The pirates flanked the earl and countess and one of them gave John Dunsmuir a poke in the back with a rifle for good measure. “Out.”
“Is the mooring mast not on the ground? Why are we up so high?”
“None of your questions or you’ll go down the short way. It don’t take so long, but the landing’s harder.”
With a rifle barrel in his back, the earl did not answer. Instead, with as much grace as he could muster, he handed his wife and Claire onto the ramp, then preceded them down an iron ladder in the tower, lit only by daylight at top and bottom. How the countess managed her skirts, Claire could not imagine. Even with her own tucked up, it was difficult.
This engine was nothing like the smooth, efficient wonders belonging to the Midland Railroad. This one might at one time have been pushed over a cliff, it was so banged up, and instead of normal four-and-six wheels, it had a kind of track that went round and round.
“Quit yer gawking and move.”
The rifle prodded her and she resisted the urge to jump ahead. Instead, she kept her step unhurried and ladylike, for all the world as if she were crossing a gallery to see an exhibit of famous masters.
No master would ever visit here to paint the landscape. During the walk into town—apparently the engine and tower did not proceed any further than from a shack up against the wall of a cliff to the field—she had plenty of time to see it.
Dry scrub. Soil so light and dusty it was clear all the goodness had been leached out of it by weather or some chemical disaster. Canyons that dropped unexpectedly away from one’s feet—some a foot across, some a hundred—and heaps of red rock like loaves of bread. And over it all stretched a pale, distant sky that neither knew nor cared that it had swallowed a boy’s life.
She could not help but look over her shoulder at the Lady Lucy, floating serenely with her bow moored to … ah, now she saw why they had had to disembark with the help of that tower. The Lady Lucy had been towed and was now snugged into a berth formed by the sheer red cliffs behind the shed, as neatly as any dock at Southampton.
Well. That would make escape problematic, but not impossible.
Her biggest concern at the moment was the increasing separation between herself and the children, to say nothing of the hatbox some two or three miles behind them, which she was now certain must contain Rosie and the Dunsmuir jewels. Otherwise, why take such a risk in launching it? The girls must have worked under some duress to rig such a contraption so quickly. Claire could only hope that they had not been discovered in the process.
*
“That’s it—she’s away.”
Clinging like monkeys to the guy ropes that crisscrossed the exterior of the fuselage of the Lady Lucy, the Mopsies and Tigg rested at the base of the enormous ventral fin and watched their makeshift parachute take Rosie and the jewels away out of danger. They couldn’t stay long or Weepin’ Willie would take it into his head to live up to his old nickname, but a minute to savor their success wouldn’t hurt.
“We best not be long in finding it again,” Maggie said. “Rosie won’t like bein’ stuck in a hatbox for much more time than she takes to land.”
“Better bein’ stuck than et.” Lizzie was practical to a fault. “And we tied the lid down so tight ent nuffink going to get in after her.”
“Lucky job the Lady’s hats come in leather boxes.”
“Lucky job Tigg knows ’ow to rig a balloon out of a landau cover.”
Tigg looked justifiably proud. “After all them fire balloons we made, it were easy. Though between Rosie and them diamonds, it weighed more’n I expected. Come on. Willie’ll be worrit.”
The hatch on the dorsal fin opened inward, and the wind blew the three of them inside and down the ladder. Willie was guarding the sternsman’s chamber deep in the rear of the ship, just above the loading bay—deeper even than the quarters where the captain and crew had been imprisoned.
There was no sternsman now. Every last crewman had been rounded up by the pirates. But his quarters had a bunk, and Maggie had to admit that it was right comforting to all sleep together in a tangle, like the old days in the warehouse squat on the banks of the Thames. This one had its own sink and no fleas, which in her opinion was a big step up.
Willie was under the bunk. “It’s all right, old man,” Tigg
told him, bending to look. “With the wind and our speed, Rosie shouldn’t be more’n a mile or two behind us. After the coast is clear, we’ll go get ’er.”
“But in the meantime, even if we’re took, Ned Mose and his lot won’t get what they’re after,” Lizzie said. “Your da wanted us to keep ’em safe.”
Willie crept out from under the bunk just as the ship gave a gentle shudder. Tigg took his hand. “Come on. Feels like we’ve docked. Let’s go ’ave a look-see and then find some grub.”
The navigational gondola had no ceiling passageway, so they couldn’t eavesdrop from above. But they hadn’t gone far on the way to the engine pod when they heard the racket of the crew being bullied along the corridors. “They’re takin’ everybody off,” Tigg whispered. “Quiet, now.”
The port side engine pod was empty, the mighty Daimlers silent and smelling rather burned after their long journey over the Atlantic and half the Americas. They had put down to take on kerosene, of course, but never for very long—and not at all on the forced flight into the middle of the Texican Territory.
Maggie pressed against the curved windows of the pod. “Willie, there’s your mum and dad, see? Going across the gangway. They’re all right.”
“And there’s the Lady.” Tigg’s shoulders relaxed just a fraction. “I reckon we get the lightning rifle back to her and start settin’ things to rights.”
“Rosie first,” Maggie said.
“We just sent her off,” Lizzie told her. “Wot we want to get her back for so soon?”
“I just don’t want us to forget her. We’re a flock.”
“Nobody’s forgetting anybody,” Tigg said. “Look. I never ever thought I’d see that.”
Two pirates were attempting to stuff her ladyship into the tower of an awful-looking engine. She slapped one of them, twitched up her skirts in one hand, and climbed into the mouth of it under her own steam.
“Good for you, missus,” Maggie breathed. “You tell ’em.” She glanced at Willie, whose eyes were shining. “Yer mum’s got a spine, she ’as.”
The possession of a spine, according to their Lady—Lady Claire, not Willie’s mum—was a person’s greatest advantage. Consequently, the children considered it a great compliment.
From the engine pod they watched their friends marched away under armed guard. They were high enough up that they could see the town, but not, sadly, exactly where the little group was being taken.
“Better get back astern before someone comes,” Tigg finally murmured, when they could no longer distinguish a man from the sickly-looking pines and spiny plants that clawed a living from the soil. “They’ll ’ave left a guard and we don’t want to get took by surprise.”
They’d no sooner got back into the ceiling when the ship moved. Maggie staggered and grabbed Lizzie’s arm.
“We can’t be lifting off! Not when everyone’s gone!”
Maggie lost her head and pelted down the passageway to the sternsman’s cabin, which had a porthole. Slowly, ponderously, the ship moved, the walls of a deep canyon closing in on it close enough that she could practically reach out an arm and touch the rock.
“They’re dockin’ us somehow,” she reported with some relief when Lizzie caught up. “That big tower is moving us. Hear it?”
Sure enough, the sound it made growling and roaring was amplified ten times by the close walls of stone. “It’s like bein’ cornered in a blind alley. And I bet anyone flyin’ overhead isn’t goin’ to look down ’ere. They’d be lookin’ for a proper landing field, wiv a mooring mast an’ all.”
“Nothin’ proper about this devilish place,” Lizzie said, pushing her out of the way so she could see, too. But there wasn’t anything but stone out there now.
“You wouldn’t use that word if the Lady was ’ere,” Maggie observed.
“Well, she ent, is she? An’ it is devilish. The very devil hisself wouldn’t come here on a bet, you ask me.”
“Nah, ’e sent Ned Mose instead.”
Lizzie grinned. “That were ’is mistake, innit?”
“We’ll make sure o’ that,” Maggie said stoutly. Lizzie’s grin could make anyone believe anything.
“We got the lightning rifle thanks to yer light fingers, so like Tigg said, all we ’ave to do is get over to that pimple of a town and break the Lady out.”
“Simple. A simple pimple it is.”
“It always is, Mags. You just got to have a spine.”
And a lightning rifle that worked.
And a crew that outnumbered that of the pirates.
And maybe a map of the town with a big X marked where they were holding everyone.
Easy peasy, Mrs. McGreasy.
*
Their prison turned out to be a ramshackle house in the middle of town. The locks on the room at the top of the stairs into which she was thrust, however, were anything but ramshackle—and they were on the outside of the door. The earl came to blows with two of the sky pirates over whether or not the countess would share his prison. Apparently even he had his limits, and it was not until Ned Mose intervened that he backed away, blood dripping from his nose and onto a shirt that was no longer as pristine as it had once been.
“Fine,” Mose snapped. “Let her stay with him. It’s not like they’re going anywhere. They can recite poetry to each other to pass the time.” He pushed them into a room, but the walls were thin, and on the other side Claire could hear every word.
“Now, let’s get down to brass tacks,” Mose said. “We’re holding you for a hundred thousand pounds’ ransom.”
“The family will never pay,” the earl said at once.
“Maybe not, but the pigeon didn’t go to your family. It went to that frumpy old bat you call a queen.”
Silence. Claire’s mind reeled as she tried to imagine the reception such a demand would get at Windsor. She hoped he had not addressed Her Majesty in such terms.
“I fail to see what Her Majesty has to do with this,” the earl said rather stiffly.
“Simple. Your family brings in a fistful of dough for the government, what with your holdings in the Canadas and whatnot. I’m thinking a little pressure from higher up might do the trick where a pigeon from old Ned Mose might not.”
“Her Majesty may be just as likely to send a zeppelin full of soldiers than a chest of money.”
“And she has so many of those hanging around? I hear tell of an uprising in the Near East that’s sucking soldiers like one of our dust storms.”
“If that is true, she will have even less cash to spare.”
“We’ll see, won’t we? Now, you just make yourselves comfortable. You’ve got a long wait ahead of you.”
He was, as ever, quite serious. The day passed with tedious slowness. Claire spent most of it alternately prowling around her prison and staring out the window.
She made a number of interesting discoveries. One, the house in which they were locked—all the houses and buildings, really—sat on sturdy stone footings, all of which were at least ten feet high. Hence the steep climb to get her into this room. Again, escape would be difficult, but not impossible.
Two, the town protruded out of an expanse of scrub that had been scored by some kind of force—as if it had been in the path of something with the power to score deep trails in the soil. It almost looked like the paths the creeks made in the sand at Gwyn Place as they ran to the sea—sinuous and braided, but relentless in their drive to join the larger body of water.
But there was no water here. Not for miles and miles. She felt rather lucky that there was a sprigged china pitcher full of it on the nightstand—and it was evidently meant to do double duty for washing and drinking.
Three, and most interesting of all, someone had forgotten to lock the single sash window. They must be laboring under the delusion that a drop of nearly twenty feet would dissuade anyone from trying.
At sunset, a woman brought her a bowl of soup and some bread, but Claire’s attempts at conversation only resulted in a terrified
look and a crablike scuttle for the door. The sound of locks turning put paid to that.
She polished off the soup, which contained not much more than beans and some kind of ground-up meat whose provenance she was in no position to question.
Then she tapped on the wall. “John? Davina?”
“Claire, are you all right?” The earl’s tone was low, but she could hear him clearly.
“Perfectly. Is your nose broken?”
“I don’t believe so. But Davina is not well. Fear for Will is wearing down her ability to cope.”
“Have you a window in your room?”
“No, I’m sorry to say. I suspect that’s the only reason they allowed us to stay together. There is no way out, no matter how much plotting we do to escape.”
“I have one. I simply need to engineer a way to use it.”
“Have you sheets with which to form a rope?”
“Sadly, no. That was the first thing I thought of. I wish now I’d brought my evening gown. It has a train that would have done the job admirably.”
“Alas. Hindsight. If I had not lost my head and hidden the jewels, we might have been—”
“Dead, John.”
“There is still the ransom.”
“They are only ransoming us as a fallback plan. If they had had the jewels, their hundred thousand pounds would have been in hand and there would be no reason to keep any of us alive.”
He was silent a moment. “And what of your family? Will they be willing to negotiate?”
Claire choked back a laugh. “My family—my mother and brother—have the land they sit on and not much else. She has leased our acres to a neighboring squire, but that income is only enough to keep them in pastry. There is nothing left to ransom me with.”
“Then escape is your only option.”
“Not without you. And the children. And Captain Hollys and the crew.”
“Don’t be foolish, Claire. How can one girl elude a shipful of pirates and set nearly thirty people free?”
Put like that, it was a little daunting.
Magnificent Devices Page 6
