“To properly meet the flower of my existence, my only purpose for living.”
“You do little for your case to speak of her with such bitterness.”
“I have a case, do I?”
“She means to sue for divorce. She claims your indiscretions have become too difficult to bear. You spurn her bed for housemaids and peasant girls.”
“The epitome of feminine delicacy has discussed with my brother our conjugal relationship. Indeed, I am impressed.” I slammed down the lever and the lights winked out. As I strode toward the door, Rowland eyed my automatons suspiciously, once again all ranked perfectly against the wall.
My mechanized velocipede hummed as we sped toward town. Rowland kept his shrieks of terror to himself, although he dug his fingers into my shoulders, clinging for dear life behind me. I had no time for niceties. I raced the clock and the storm.
A heavy brume clung to the atmosphere and darkened the night to pitch. At Kingston Bay, ranks of tall sailing ships and steamers cast off from the quays, heading for the better odds of open sea.
On a certain wharf, I pushed open the door to a seedy alehouse tucked between two warehouses. A giant of a man standing behind the bar looked up as we came in, met my eye, and nodded. Dark and ill-lit, I led Rowland to a table in the blackest corner. I ensured he had a clear view of the room as he sat, and the room had a clear view of him.
The barkeep approached. His neck and arms bare, his shirt thin, the muscles of his broad shoulders glinted from the sheen left by the torrid murk. On the right, instead of the bone and sinew of his arm, leather, copper, steel, and Herr Professor’s latest experiment with titanium glinted in the firelight against his coal-black skin.
“Evening, Julian.”
“Ebenin’, Cap’n. Ye be let.”
“I came as soon as I could.” The man eyed my brother warily. “A friend.”
“O’ course, Cap’n.”
“How are we this evening?”
“Bidness, she booms dees night. Sh’ad tree lines ahready—”
“Three lines of what?” Rowland demanded.
“De cocaine. Be ye daft, mon?”
Rowland continued to stare.
“I believe I told you of my experiments in prostheses for amputees?” I explained. “Julian, brave man, allowed me to test a few theories on him.”
Julian flexed his elbow, wrist, and fingers proudly, to the soft whir and snick of gears and pulleys in motion. “’Tis quite dee ting. T’almost makes me glad me gots caught een dee crushah.”
“Almost,” I agreed. Rowland grimaced.
“Sev me life, dee Cap’n deeds. ‘T’would ’ave bleeded to def ’eef not for ’eem.”
Rowland eyed me. “Julian and I are old friends,” I explained. “We have much in common.” Julian snorted. I turned again to my host. “The usual, Julian, if you would.”
“Ahready she done two draughts, Cap’n. As I seh, dee bidness she be breesk. Mighty high flyin’ dere be dees night, and da soonah what I geeb ’er takes ’old, the bettah, says I. But, dee physic, she don’t seem to ’fect ’er like she done.”
I glared off into the darkness. Another burst of bawdy laughter filtered to us. “Do what you think best. As you say, we haven’t any time. I mean to be at West End at dawn.”
“Travelin’ t’night, suh? Be dat wise?”
“Better than tomorrow, mate. You’ve business there as much as I.”
“Yes suh, Cap’n. Ye speak de troof. I sees to eet.”
After a moment, Julian returned with two flagons of ale. Rowland eyed it warily. “It’s my private stock, mate. Drink up.”
“Captain of what?”
I shrugged. “Of my airship? My sailboat? Would you prefer ‘Captain of Industry’?”
“You are too full of yourself by half, Fairfax. You cannot control the world.”
“You mistake me, Rowland. I find precious little within my control.”
The vocal protests from three or four men at the far side of the room drew my brother’s attention. Someone had abruptly brought an end to their revelries.
Out of the smoky murk slunk a tall woman as sultry as the night. Although still shapely, her addictions and my attempts at enforced restraint had stripped her of the Rubenesque qualities that had begun to plague her at the onset of our marriage. Her hair hung loose over her bare shoulders and arms. It ranged thick and wild, the soft curls coiling and uncoiling with each movement, as if alive. It caressed her skin and she encouraged the constant stimulation.
She wore a bustier cut of black leather but nothing beneath. Below the tight-cinched waist, a jewel clung to her navel. The cage-work of whalebone stays ended in half-cups in which she nested her ample breasts, although the faulty covering paid scant lip-service to decency.
Leather short-pants rode on her hips and scarcely covered her loins. The head of a cobra tattoo emanated from the open button of her fly. Its tail escaped the pant-leg to wrap twice around her left thigh. Garters held fishnet stockings in place, and stiletto heels added at least four inches to her statuesque height.
She wore a studded leather collar tight around her throat, and encircled her eyes with charcoal, thick and black. Her full lips pulsed a blood red. She walked like a cat in heat and drew just as devoted a following.
A waft of jasmine preceded her, but as she drew near, less pleasant scents bloomed in the mix. Unwashed and unkempt, what appeared seductive in the gloomy distance grew more repugnant with each advancing step.
I pushed my chair back into the deepest recesses of the shadows. She focused so intently upon Rowland, I escaped her notice. She never saw me when I checked on her. She spoke truthfully about one thing: I always knew where she was and who she was with. Always.
Rowland nervously looked to me for some sort of direction. I said nothing. He glanced again at the hellcat closing in on him. He swallowed hard. He turned to face me but kept his eye on the woman’s advance. His breath came in short starts and stops, and he drummed a tattoo on the table. “You . . . I . . . You promised to introduce me to your wife.”
“Indeed, I did.”
“Then what do we here? Show me where you have secreted her away.”
“Understand me, Rowland. Bertha Mason dwells in a prison of her own device. She chooses the where, when and how. I do my duty. I see to her needs. I do my best to keep her safe.”
The vamp reached us, acting as if we strained at the leash to get at her. Every calculated move insinuated sensuality. “You’re new here, no?” She caressed the posts of a chair as she turned it around to face her, then straddled it, leading with her hips as she sat.
Rowland rose to his feet. “Perhaps we should go.”
Bertha looked to him, and then at the corner where he had directed his comment, but she failed to recognize me. Her smile dripped with confidence and determination in the pause of Rowland’s hesitation and my silence. She rose and took him into custody. In her shoes, she towered over him.
“The evening is still young.” She pressed him back down into his seat, then straddled him as she had done the chair. She scraped a long, deadly claw across his jawline. “So pretty,” she purred. “You shall be pure pleasure.” She kissed him long and hard and deep. Rowland resisted for a full two seconds. He made me proud.
I cleared my throat—heavily . . . several times. Rowland drew breath enough to speak, although the trollop on his lap increased her exertions. “Madam,” he gasped. “We . . . have not . . . been . . . introduced.”
Bertha chortled and murmured something in his ear. He cursed beneath his breath, but his hands pursued their own pleasures just the same. Bertha’s powers of persuasion rarely met with resistance.
Julian appeared at Rowland’s shoulder. “For dee ledy, as ye ordeh’d, suh.” Bertha looked up enough to throw back the shot of rum, then renewed her assault with gusto. Rowland groaned. Julian eyed me. I jerked my chin and he retreated.
“Great Scott, woman!” Rowland gasped, his voice thick and guttural. Ple
a for deliverance or compliment on technique? To this day, I could not say. Bertha’s hands worked his coveralls feverishly, plunging ever lower in search of the deepest buttons.
“By Jove!” Rowland jumped to his feet. His burden fell unceremoniously to the floor. Hands shaking, disheveled, flushed and breathless, he struggled to strip himself of the coveralls, a task already half-completed. “Fairfax! Who is this catamount—this . . . this Jezebel! . . . And what have you done with your wife?”
Still panting and torrid, Bertha slowly emerged from beneath the table, her eyes narrowed and fierce. She peered into my dark corner. “Fairfax?” Her snarl could raise gooseflesh.
I lit my cigar. “Darling,” I said between puffs, “I thank you for greeting my brother so warmly. Allow me to formally introduce you. Rowland, you, of course, know my wife.”
Bertha rose to her feet, wild and wary. She glanced from me to my brother and back again. He had cast aside the drudge, yet still fumbled with the buttons and buckles of his more gentlemanly attire. Bertha worked with great efficiency when properly motivated. “Rowland?” she breathed. “Rowland Rochester?”
I chuckled. “In the flesh, as you see.”
Rowland labored frantically. Each fastener restored increased his agitation. “Fairfax, I know not what game you would be at, but either take me to your wife or I will have you in shackles within the hour!”
Bertha spun on him, transformed. Meek and imploring, her eyes wet and shining, she seemed to shrink with each hesitant step toward him. She visibly trembled. Her voice quavered, thick with tears. “Rowland . . . dearest . . . my only friend—my only hope.” She reached for him, but he stepped back, yanking away his hands in disgust.
She wheeled on me, wild-eyed, her face hard and flushed with her downfall. “You tricked me. You knew I wanted him. You brought him here to laugh at me. I hate you, you filthy bastard! Why won’t you die?!”
She launched at me, but I moved aside as she flew across the table. Amidst the clatter of wood on stone, Rowland gaped at the darkness into which she had disappeared. The color had drained from his face. He could no longer deny the truth.
A moment of silence, vacillation, then he stepped toward the wreckage. She crept into the light, rose to her knees. Where she secreted the Daguerreotype of Rowland, I can only imagine, but she produced it, grasped in both hands which she raised in supplication. Tears streamed from her charcoaled eyes in black rivers down her face.
“Dearest brother,” she implored. “My darling Rowland, have pity. See what he has done to me! See what he forces me to do for him to satisfy his perversions! He makes me his whore because he can! Do not abandon me to such cruelty. For the love of God, have mercy upon me.”
She broke down into uncontrollable sobbing and curled in on herself. He rushed to her, fell to his knees, and enfolded her in his embrace. She attempted to push him away, but he would not have it. She hid her face in his neck, clinging to him fiercely. Whether or not Rowland noticed she slipped the picture beneath his waistcoat, I could not say. Suddenly, she fell silent and lax.
Bertha’s head lolled back and she began to snore. Julian appeared with a bundle of clothes. “What have you done to her?” Rowland demanded.
I declined to answer. Rowland attempted to repulse me as I assumed custody of her, but with Julian looming over him, he had no choice but to comply. Together, my friend and I managed to cover my wife’s nakedness. The simple garb of a peasant best served my purpose.
Julian and I propped her between us and struggled to our feet. “Law, dees womon, she geet hebbiah ebey deh,” Julian groaned. “Geet de door, mon,” he chided Rowland. “Cannuh ye see we’s gots our hands fool?”
Julian manned the engine of the vulcanized rubber dinghy as it skipped across the surface of the choppy waves. Encircled with gas-filled envelops, it resembled an airship more than a watercraft. Three electrified iodine lamps mounted on the prow lit the foam-capped peaks before us. The froth glowed in ominous warning.
Rowland gripped the handles embedded in the sides of the skiff, his eyes wide, his knuckles white, his legs braced against the soft hull. It seemed he scarcely drew breath. He apparently cared little for my invention.
“Once one solves the problem of power, anything is possible.”
He glared at me, resentful of the place I had refused him but assumed myself. I reclined against the stern envelope, cradling sleeping Bertha in my arms. I pushed back her damp hair and resituated the slicker to better protect her face from the spray.
“Where are we going?” Rowland spoke at last.
“As I said, to West End.”
“Why? Why tonight, at this hour?”
I smirked. “You truly lack imagination, dear brother.” He glowered at me and I ceded the point. “The storm comes—”
“A storm would have been here by now.”
Julian and I exchanged glances. The skiff made a particularly high leap off the top of a large swell, then landed with a thump in the trough behind it. Rowland nearly flew over the side, then fell into the bottom of the boat, where he chose to remain.
“I go to West End to ensure my people are safe. And, West End is leeward. That has to be something.”
He jerked his chin at my wife. “Explain this abomination in your marriage.”
“Abomination, indeed,” I agreed.
Julian snorted his derision, but Rowland shot him a hateful look and the man retreated.
“My wife is ill. Her addictions of every kind—including copulation—her obsessions have reduced her to a kind of madness.”
“Why have you not sued for divorce?”
“One can escape infidelity, but the deranged are neither the guilty nor innocent party. Without somewhere to lay blame, the Law denies me any hope of reprieve, or even relief. I am shackled for the remainder of my days. This compassion you see—dare I say tenderness? I trust anyone would extend as much to a wounded and helpless animal.”
Rowland attempted to shake off the logic. “No . . . no. You told no one you wed. Only Yvette and I ever knew—and that from some slip of the tongue by Rottstieger.”
“Do you suppose I wanted Yvette exposed to this corruption?” I insisted, revealing Bertha’s haggard face.
Rowland’s anger seemed to rise with mention of his wife. “What have you done to Bertha? What did you give her?”
“What I must, as I have done for three years. I keep her as safe as possible without endangering the innocent with her violence.”
“The mad belong in asylums.”
“Rottstieger combed two continents for an acceptable facility and found none. In such a place, Bertha would become an animal because they would treat her thus. I will condemn no-one to such an existence.”
Rowland scowled doom and destruction at me but fell silent, which suited. Shouting over the noise of the engine and the rising storm had grown tedious. Lightning cracked open the scudding clouds and the rain began to fall. I shifted my wife into my brother’s arms and began bailing.
The lighter gray of dawn had crept upon us when Julian hurled the dinghy up onto the beach. His concern for his family broke free of his determined calm as soon as he drove the boat aground. He ran ahead. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the wind and sea continued to roar.
I hurried up the path toward the bungalow, torn between the people before me and those trailing behind. Bertha clung helplessly to Rowland, who smothered her with solicitous attention.
The darkening mantle scuttled across the sky. Another cloudburst broke loose, and I surged forward. A sound of pain—a grunt? A cry? Shredded by the growing gale, only the hint of distress reached my ears. As I turned, Bertha flashed past me. Behind me, Rowland had fallen to the ground.
I hurried to him. He held his head but rebuffed my attempts to assist him. His hand came away stained in red. I insisted, applied my handkerchief; dragged him to his feet. Talking into the howling gale proved useless. I compelled him up the trail and into the bungalow.
M
y people had been diligent: everything secured, the storm shutters in place, the house deserted. Hasty and careless, I tended to Rowland’s wounds as much as time would permit.
“Why would she do such a thing?”
“You tell me. What did she say?”
“I do not . . . something about . . . bond-yee? Gree-gree? Akachi making some sort of blood sacrifice . . . How the devil am I to know? It made no sense.”
I knew where she had gone and compelled my brother back out-of-doors. “Move, Rowland. The storm comes.”
“Are you mad?”
I wanted to smack some sense into that thick head but reminded myself he was Rowland. And English. He could not see how fragile became the bungalow in the face of the cyclonic forces bearing down on us.
We stepped from the lee of the house and the wind and rain slammed into us, nearly knocking us off our feet, saturating us to the skin. I pointed him up the path toward the rising hills.
“Follow the trail!” I shouted. “Do not stop until you get to the caves! Go! Run!”
Rowland turned to confront me. “Where are you going?!”
“After Bertha!”
“Not without me! You will never lay another hand on her!!”
I hadn’t the time to argue. He could keep up, or get left behind.
Our way wended through thick rainforest. The wind lashed us with vines and foliage, raising welts and breaking skin. I burst into a small clearing wherein a small shack stood on stilts in a rising torrent. We ducked into the lee of the house to reconnoiter. I knew better than to approach blindly. Bertha had before caught me by surprise. I had the scars to prove it.
Bertha’s shrill voice reached me, and I peered through the whipping curtains and into the shack. The room resembled a crow’s nest, with all manner of trinkets and baubles, strings of feathers and beads, bones of small animals, all flailing wildly in the wind which buffeted the scanty shelter. The extinguished wicks of candles still smoked—a crucifix hung on the wall above a shrine to the Holy Virgin, surrounded by other symbols I have never seen elsewhere. A human skull sat on a shelf. An iguana blinked at me from beside it. I imagine Rowland looked on with the same mixture of aversion and curiosity I had felt when I first came upon the place.
Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology Page 4
