Gilded Lily

by Delphine Dryden

  “Fair enough. Oh . . . shine the light forward again? Not on the tunnel,” she corrected, “on the bar in front of us. We’re both idiots.” Leaning forward, she pulled a lever and the tracks before them were flooded with light from the velocipede’s headlamp.

  “Of course it has one. And of course we only find it after I’ve been turning the crank on this silly thing until my hand is ready to come off at the wrist.”

  “That thing isn’t silly. It’s gotten us this far. And your wrist will recover, I’m sure. Oh, seeing farther ahead doesn’t make it any less unnerving, does it?”

  “Not one bit.”

  They tried not to dwell on what would happen if there were an unexpected obstacle up ahead, an unfinished track or construction debris in the way. Freddie couldn’t see a way to adjust the speed, so they continued their dizzying, heart-stopping pace for the full half hour. When she finally shifted down to begin the braking process, it was almost a relief to feel the strain on her legs return, the sensation that the beast below them was once again under their control.

  With the brake engaged, they slowed to a halt, and as soon as the engine stopped, the headlamp flicked out as well. Fortunately, Freddie had already noted an important feature of the tracks. At regular intervals, there were panels with levers on the tunnel wall, and they’d stopped close to one. A closer look with Barnabas’s pocket torch confirmed her hypothesis.

  “It’s a turnaround. See there?” Training the light on the track, she followed along until she found a curved set pulling away from the straight track and leading back to the other side. She attempted to pull the lever, but to no avail. She put the torch between her teeth, using both hands to haul down on the thing. Finally, when she was literally dangling from it, she sighed and flashed the light toward a smirking Barnabas. “That’s unchivalrous of you.”

  As she was speaking around the torch, it sounded more like “At’th udsiwawous oh you,’ but he seemed to understand her quite well.

  Shielding his eyes from the glare, he grinned back, unrepentant. “You’re highly entertaining to watch.”

  She removed the torch from her mouth. “Would you just help, please?”

  Together they managed to activate the switch, and they used pedal power to ease the cart around to the facing track before restoring the switch to its original position.

  “I don’t suppose this means we can go straight back?” he asked, without much hope.

  “Of course not. Keep the torch fired up, my lord. Now we explore.”

  The tunnel where they’d stopped looked much like it had all along, a featureless dark corridor of stone and a gridwork of comfortingly solid-appearing beams of some hardwood. Unlike the polished, shining wood in the vestibule, the beams here were yet to be finished. A few bore painted markings, possibly instructions of some sort for the workers. Other than that, however, there was not much to distinguish one section from another.

  “Do you suppose they’ll bury them all when they’re finished, like the slaves who built the pyramids at Giza?” she mused, as they ventured deeper along the corridor.

  “What, the builders? I think they’ll just pay them a good deal of money to keep quiet.”

  “That would certainly be the more civilized thing to do. Wait, what was that?”

  He swung to face her, nearly blinding her with the torch, his hand shaking. “What was what?”

  “My eyes.”

  “Oh, I apologize. Better?” He flicked it away, and Freddie blinked until the stars cleared from her vision. She pointed to where the light now fell on the wall, which finally looked different here from one beamed-off section to the next. On one side of the beam was stone. On the other, the torch revealed a section of riveted metal sheeting. As her vision resolved further, she made out a row of three round glasses in brass frames, at roughly eye level. It took a moment for her to realize they were portholes.

  “That there. Oh! We must be nearly to the mouth of the estuary by now, almost to the channel itself, if we’re headed in the direction I think we are. Turn out the torch. The moon is up and it’s nearly full; perhaps we’ll be able to see into the water.”

  “I doubt it.”

  He closed the device anyway, and they waited for their eyes to adjust to the gloom. The darkness was disorienting, and Freddie nearly lost her balance when she stepped closer to the faintly visible circle of the nearest porthole. It seemed to brighten as she watched, her eyes making out more of the dimly illuminated underwater scene.

  “It just moved,” Barnabas whispered.

  “What just moved?”

  “Everything.”

  As if in confirmation, everything moved again, a disturbing sideways jolt underfoot.

  At the same time, something flashed outside the porthole, and they jerked their heads in unison toward the unexpected light. Barnabas leaped to press his nose to the glass, and Freddie heard him say a word no gentleman should, as the world shifted again and the metal panels groaned. Flying to the next porthole, she gasped as a huge, dark shape in the water resolved into an approaching submersible. It shone a light on the seabed below and in front of it, nearly blinding them when the sub turned and the light blazed into the window for a moment.

  Close, far too close and too fast, the sub loomed toward them, then passed mere inches overhead, just as a klaxon began sounding in some distant part of the tunnel.

  “We need to move!” shouted Barnabas, grabbing her hand and jerking her back down the corridor in the direction they’d just come from. “It’s an earthquake!”

  She scrambled to keep up with him, wishing she’d been more enthusiastic about sport in school. “I thought it was a submersible!”

  “Are you joking?”

  To her dismay he let go of her hand and let her lag behind. He was only procuring the torch, however. As soon as he’d cranked it back into glimmering life, he turned and caught her hand up, pulling her along as the ground shivered beneath them once again. They made it to the velocipede and likely set a record for starting it up and bringing it to full speed, racing down the track in the direction they’d come. Freddie lost count of the times one or the other exclaimed as they went how clever they’d been, to turn the cart around before exploring. She knew it was a lie, every time. It had been luck, nothing to do with cleverness. But she would take it, either way.

  The journey was an exercise in the relativity of time. The speed of the velocipede was constant, so they knew it was a half hour out and a half hour back in. But it had seemed like hours as they traveled the distance the first time, into the unknown darkness. On the way back, with their hearts racing from fear, the trip seemed the work of mere moments. They came to a jerky halt as soon as the vestibule was in sight, abandoning the velocipede and heading for the exit at a dead run.

  “We’ve left the cart on the wrong track, and far too close to the entrance!” Freddie realized with horror. “Somebody will know it’s been used!”

  “I’m not going back to turn it around. You can do what you like, but you’ll never get that lever down alone.”

  Neither of them stopped running, in any case.

  Barnabas hit the lift first and tugged the door open, then slammed it decisively behind Freddie once she was safely in. The device jerked upward as soon as the door was secured. Overhead the bulb guttered madly, but the motor operated smoothly, to Freddie’s vast relief.

  “It was an earthquake,” Barnabas repeated, sinking down to the floor and resting his arms on his knees as he caught his breath.

  “I know. We had two in Le Havre when I was living there.” The space was cramped, but she slumped down beside him, sides heaving. Now that they were relatively safe, she felt foolish for having run. Surely the tunnel had been built to withstand a few minor tremors.

  “But you said—”

  “I was joking.”

  “Oh.” He blinked, then smiled
hesitantly. “That was quite good, actually.” The smile faded almost immediately and was replaced with a grim look that made Freddie even uneasier.

  “Thank you. Are you all right, Lord Smith-Grenville? You look—” Serious. Adult. Not as though you’re having a bit of a lark. “Concerned about something.”

  He nodded, his lips tightening even more. Now that she was learning what to look for, Freddie saw all sorts of emotions on Smith-Grenville’s face.

  “Did you notice anything unusual about that submersible?”

  “Other than the fact it nearly plowed into the porthole and killed us?” But she was already thinking back, trying to remember the details. There had been something, she was sure of it. She cursed herself again for bolting.

  Barnabas shrugged. “That too. I meant the bristles all over the front of it.”

  That was it! “I know what those are, I think! Or at least I know something about them. I overheard my father talking about some prototype of a device for catching smugglers. And something about a lily. There was a flower painted on that sub; I saw it when the thing banked, right before it swooped over the tunnel. A big yellow flower. The sub must be called the Lily. Though I can’t think why; it doesn’t look even vaguely floral. And Father seemed to think it was too small, but that one looked enormous to me. Perhaps the water made it look bigger?”

  “That was no military vessel,” Barnabas corrected her. “And it wasn’t a lily painted on the side. It was a poppy. A golden poppy.”

  He’d grown paler still, and without thinking she reached over to touch his hand. He took her fingers in his, and a queer feeling sifted from her chest down to the bottom of her stomach. “Why is the poppy so important?”

  “It’s the emblem of an opium smuggler. Baron Orm, but he called himself the Lord of Gold. He’s in prison in the Dominions, and in theory his operations were shattered. Obviously not, however.”

  The lift creaked to a halt, but Freddie remained where she was, her heart beating as fast as it had when the earthquake began. “I read about him in the newspapers. You’re not telling me everything, are you?”

  Barnabas lifted his gaze to hers, frowning with his mouth but smiling with his eyes. “I’ve always had an excellent poker face, Miss Murcheson. I can’t tell if you’re unusually perceptive or just more persistent than most in trying to see past it.”

  She matched his somber moue. “Unusually perceptive, of course.”

  He snorted, then got to his feet, offering her a hand up. “So I might as well go on and tell you everything to save time, I suppose? I don’t want there to be a submersible owned by opium smugglers. Particularly not that opium smuggler. Because I fear that somebody I know may be involved.”

  They exited the lift together, and Barnabas cracked the door to the alley to scout for passersby.

  “Who is it? Who’s involved?”

  He put a finger to his lips and held the door open to let her pass first. As she brushed by him, he murmured his answer.

  “My brother, Phineas.”

  SEVEN

  HE HAD SLEPT, which helped immensely. But Barnabas still felt a touch of the surreal as he guided the curricle around the park the next afternoon. Miss Murcheson sat behind him, prim and lovely in a pale green frock that managed to be entirely modest yet show off her curves to great advantage. He wasn’t sure if he preferred the fashionable ensemble to her workman’s attire. He did know, however, that he had never courted anyone remotely in Frédérique Murcheson’s category. Here, in this setting and in these garments, she was the paradigm of fashionable, demure loveliness. He found himself convinced, even though he knew full well it was a sham. She had a charmed glow about her, something indescribable and irresistible.

  Barnabas eased the pair of matched grays past a halted landau and matched the deliberately sedate flow of traffic along the broad avenue. He enjoyed the responsiveness of the animals, the quiet surrounding them. Steam vehicles were not permitted in Hyde Park, a stricture most of the current generation railed against. Barnabas liked that the horses knew where they were going without constant monitoring. This team had come with his cover story, apparently. They’d been waiting for him this morning along with the keys to a reasonably fashionable steam car for longer excursions. Everything a young man-about-town might need.

  “Father has spared no expense in outfitting my latest suitor, I see,” was Miss Murcheson’s comment once they were moving along again and past the risk of being overheard.

  “He’s certainly made me plausible,” Barnabas agreed. “If I last, he said he’d arrange a house for me, as well. As my family no longer maintains a London residence, I have to admit it’s welcome. Saves me the time of finding a place to let and a decent livery. And this probably does a great deal to restore your status on the marriage mart. Having a well-bestowed chap such as myself so eager to ignore his business obligations and drive out with you instead.” He spoke with a cheer that was not entirely false. It was far from an unpleasant task to take this drive, and throwing himself into the role of ardent suitor was still the best way to go about it.

  “He said, humbly,” she retorted. “I have no desire to restore my status on the marriage mart. But more importantly, you fell asleep again on the way home last night and never told me the rest of your brother’s story.”

  He glanced around automatically, paranoid about the proximity of the surrounding carriages. Nobody was close, and aside from a few curious glances at the new lordling from the Dominions, nobody seemed to be paying them any attention. Most of the talk he’d caught centered on last night’s earthquake, which the members of the ton seemed to consider a bit of a thrill. The morning paper reported three dockworkers dead from a building collapse. Barnabas suspected the rank and file were less than thrilled by the quake, and he wondered how any of them would respond if they knew a much larger quake had been predicted to occur soon. Or so Miss Murcheson claimed to have overheard. Such news might cause a panic, even among the jaded aristocracy.

  “I shouldn’t have told you what I did about Phineas. I was exhausted and delusional.”

  “I saw the poppy on that submersible too. It was no delusion.”

  “Yes. But perhaps it was simply an old mark, or a coincidence. It can’t be Orm. When I left the Dominions he was still incarcerated. Isolated. No communication with the outside world, not so much as a carrier pigeon.”

  She pulled a fan from somewhere about her person and snapped it open, waving it prettily in front of her face as she thought. “You thought of this man Orm and your brother instantly. One should always trust one’s first instincts. And what about the whiskers?”

  “What whiskers?”

  “On the submersible. If that wasn’t some sort of sensor array, my name’s not Fred Merchant.”

  “Your name isn’t Fred Merchant.”

  “You know exactly what I mean. The point is, there was some sort of nonstandard equipment, and that was no military vessel. You knew that instantly, and I must concur. What’s more, I’ve consulted a map my father had handy—”

  “He had it handy? Just lying about in a parlor, I suppose?”

  “Don’t interrupt, please. I have my ways. If we were where I estimate we were, that part of the channel is supposed to be off-limits to all but the military. There’s a narrow passage for commercial vessels into the estuary, but most of it was never opened up after the war ended. Not so much as a fisherman squeaks by. The military doesn’t like to cede ground or water once it controls it. But if that was a civilian sub we saw, and it had some sort of underwater sensor attached, perhaps a proximity detector . . . well, it could be using that to sneak past the Navy patrols.”

  “That would definitely give the smugglers an advantage,” he admitted. It would allow one smuggler the drop on not only the authorities but any competition as well. And if the criminal in question were indeed smuggling opium, he might gain the upper hand even a
gainst the British East India Company’s monopoly.

  It was bizarre, discussing matters of such great secrecy there in the sunlight, in the midst of so many peers. These were topics for clandestine whispers in the darkness, not open discussion in carriages in broad daylight. Miss Murcheson’s lace-bedecked parasol did not provide nearly enough cover for all they had to say. She looked extremely fetching beneath it, however. But then she always looked fetching, even dressed as a plump male tinker with grease smears on her face.

  “If Father suspected a civilian, a smuggler, had already developed the equipment his men were still trying to build, that would explain his determination to speed up testing. To use something larger than whatever the Lily is. And he hasn’t returned home. I think he is in France. I believe we still have some sort of military installation in Le Havre. No, listen,” she insisted, when he started to protest that the terms of the treaty with France prohibited such a thing, “that storeroom in his factory there. Exactly the same, my lord. What if it leads to another tunnel? Another underwater passage? What do the tunnels lead to?”

  “A faster way to get across?” he suggested. “People have talked for years about building a tunnel under the channel. If the Navy started working on such a thing during the war, they’re hardly likely to have abandoned it just because of the treaty. As you pointed out, they don’t like to cede territory.”

  “But this side’s tunnel looked new. They were still building it. There was fresh sawdust. A new lift cage. Lighting still to be rigged. I saw the Le Havre entrance—”

  “If that’s what it was.”

  “I saw it years ago. When his factory was only a few years old. He used to take me there all the time when we first moved to France; it was only a year or so later that my mother started to forbid it. The tunnel wouldn’t have led to nowhere, would it? There’s a destination down there somewhere. That’s why they’re still keeping people out.”

  “But the channel is hundreds of feet deep. What would be worth the inconvenience and danger of keeping it under that much water?”