In the Company of Thieves

by Kage Baker

  Marsh, propped in the other corner and observing him through half-closed eyes, was struck by the change in the man when he slept. With the pale eyes shut, all their persuasion ceased; with the golden voice silent, all its charm was dispelled. He seemed like a lamp whose flame had gone out, leaving a dull, inanimate and inexplicably fearsome thing of clay.

  Mrs. Shelley’s book...Frae Ghoules, gheesties an’ long-leggety beasties, Guid Lord deliver us!

  Marsh shook himself awake, unwilling to sleep yet.

  A thought had been waiting, patiently, at the back of his mind for a time when it might have his full attention.

  Now it stepped forward, and begged him to consider the technological marvels he had just observed. The Improved Spectrometer was a far more complex achievement than the Gyttite, which was, after all, merely an alloy of base metal that conducted supremely well. If the Society to which he now belonged had such working wonders...why were none of them already in evidence in the world?

  He realized that it was entirely likely that the Gyttite, and all the other treasures of invention sought by the Society, were being sought not to “elevate suffering Mankind above the pit,” but for private gain. Perhaps to amass power...So do thrones topple.

  But if that were the case...well, when all was said and done, wasn’t it better to be on the side that held the most power?

  Jerome Gytt had somehow entered the compartment and was sitting across from him, shaking his head.

  “You think you’ll use them to mount to the stars,” he told Marsh. “I thought so. I was so clever; yet I could no more extricate myself from the trap than a fly can win free out of a cobweb. I was only safe so long as I was useful, you see. I was so clever...but a bullet is cleverer.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Marsh was affronted. “The Vespertiles are merely professional criminals, whereas I have joined an ancient and honorable Society intent on the pursuit of knowledge. They’re entirely different!”

  Gytt’s faintly mocking smile widened. He began to laugh, as though that had been quite the best joke he had heard in a while. He rocked to and fro, he held his sides and pointed at Marsh. Marsh was insulted, and sought to protest further; but felt his heart fail him as blood began spilling from Gytt’s laughing mouth. The blood got everywhere. It ran all over Gytt’s clothing, it stained the seat, it spattered even Edward’s gray exhausted face, and Marsh tried to rise—

  He jolted awake and stared about wildly. Edward slept on, oblivious.

  Marsh turned up his collar and leaned back, blinking. No use to fight sleep any more; nature could only be resisted so long, after all, and the rocking of the carriage on its iron track was irresistibly soothing, and in any case the train had increased its speed and was going far too fast for him to jump off now.

  THE WOMEN OF NELL GWYNNE'S

  This was the second of Kage's novel-length steampunk series of stories—well, almost a novel. Nell Gwynne's, a brothel that houses the Ladies Auxiliary of the Gentlemen's Speculative Society, was originally introduced as a small side plot in Not Less Than Gods, which is the story of Edward Bell Fairfax's introduction to a life of eccentrically accoutered espionage. The Ladies as presented in that book simply would not be still—their voices, especially the cool and well-bred voice of Lady Beatrice—would not be silenced. Kage wanted to show the world how women can be heroes even when driven to what has always been regarded as a fate worse than death...by mere men, anyway. Hence this bedroom adventure, complete with subterranean labyrinths, unearthly hybrids, antigravity, dastardly industrial spies and the professional rigors of the lives of some unusually resourceful demimondaines.

  —K. B.

  ONE: WHICH IT IS ESTABLISHED THAT

  In the city of Westminster, in the vicinity of Birdcage Walk, in the year of our Lord 1844...

  There was once a private residence with a view of St. James’s Park. It was generally known, among the London tradesmen, that a respectable widow resided there, upon whom it was never necessary to call for overdue payment. Beggars knew she could be relied upon for charity, if they weren’t too importunate, and they were careful never to be so; for she was one of their own, in a manner of speaking, being as she was blind.

  Now and again Mrs. Corvey could be observed, with her smoked goggles and walking-stick, on the arm of her adolescent son Herbert, taking the pleasant air in the park. It was known that she had several daughters also, though the precise number was unclear, and that her younger sister was in residence there as well. There may even have been a pair of younger sisters, or perhaps there was an unmarried sister-in-law, and though the daughters had certainly left the schoolroom their governess seemed to have been retained.

  In any other neighborhood, perhaps, there would have been some uncouth speculation about the inordinate number of females under one roof. The lady of the house by Birdcage Walk, however, retained her reputation for spotless respectability, largely because no gentlemen visitors were ever seen arriving or departing the premises, at any hour of the day or night whatsoever.

  Gentlemen were unseen because they never went to the house near Birdcage Walk. They went instead to a certain private establishment known as Nell Gwynne’s, two streets away, which connected to Mrs. Corvey’s cellar by an underground passage and which was in the basement of a fairly exclusive dining establishment. The tradesmen never came near that place, needless to say. Had any one of them ever done so, he’d have been astonished to meet there Mrs. Corvey and her entire household, including Herbert, who under this separate roof was transformed, Harlequin-like, into Herbertina. The other ladies resident were likewise transformed from Ladies into Women, brandishing riding crops, birch rods and other instruments of their profession.

  Nell Gwynne’s clientele were often statesmen, who found the place convenient to Whitehall. They were not infrequently members of other exclusive clubs. Some were journalists. Some were notable persons in the sciences or the arts. All were desperately grateful to have been accorded membership at Nell Gwynne’s, for it was known—among the sort of gentlemen who know such things—that there was no use whining for a sponsor. Membership was by invitation only, and entirely at the discretion of the lady whose establishment it was.

  Now and again, in the hushed and circumspect atmosphere of the Athenaeum (or the Carlton Club, or the Traveller’s Club), someone might imbibe enough port to wonder aloud just what it took to get an invitation from Mrs. Corvey.

  The answer, though quite simple, was never guessed.

  One had to know secrets.

  Secrets were, in fact, the principal item retailed at Nell Gwynne’s, with entertainments of the flesh coming in a distant second. Secrets were teased out of sodden members of Parliament, coaxed from lustful cabinet ministers, extracted from talkative industrialists, and finessed from members of the Royal Society as well as the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

  Information so acquired was not, as you might expect, sold to the highest bidder. It went directly across Whitehall and up past Scotland Yard, to an unimposing-looking brick edifice in Craig’s Court, wherein was housed Redking’s Club. Membership at Redking’s was composed equally of other MPs, ministers, industrialists and Royal Society members, and a great many other clever fellows besides. However, there were many more clever fellows beneath Redking’s, for its secret cellars went down several storeys, and housed an organization known publicly—but to very few—as the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society.

  In return for the secrets sent their way by Mrs. Corvey, the GSS underwrote her establishment, enabling all ladies present to live pleasantly when they were not engaged in the business of gathering intelligence. Indeed, once a year Nell Gwynne’s closed its premises when its residents went on holiday. The more poetical of the ladies preferred the Lake District, but Mrs. Corvey liked nothing better than a month at the seaside, so they generally ended up going to Torbay.

  Life for the ladies of Nell Gwynne’s was, placed in the proper historical, societal and economic
context, quite tolerably nice. Now and then it did have its challenges, however.

  TWO: IN WHICH OUR HEROINE IS A WITNESS TO HISTORY

  We will call her Lady Beatrice, since that was the name she chose for herself later.

  Lady Beatrice’s Papa was a military man, shrewd and sober. Lady Beatrice’s Mamma was a gently bred primrose of a woman, demure, proper, perfectly genteel. She was somewhat pained to discover that the daughter she bore was rather more bold and direct than became a little girl.

  Lady Beatrice, encountering a horrid great spider in the garden, would not scream and run. She would stamp on it. Lady Beatrice, on having her doll snatched away by a bullying cousin, would not weep and plead; she would take back her doll, even at the cost of pulled hair and torn lace. Lady Beatrice, upon falling down, would never lie there sobbing, waiting for an adult to comfort her. She would pick herself up and inspect her knees for damage. Only when the damage amounted to bloody painful scrapes would she perhaps cry, as she limped off to the ayah to be scolded and bandaged.

  Lady Beatrice’s Mamma fretted, saying such brashness ill became a little lady. Lady Beatrice’s Papa said he was damned glad to have a child who never wept unless she was really hurt.

  “My girl’s true as steel, ain’t she?” he said fondly. Whereupon Lady Beatrice’s Mamma would purse her lips and narrow her eyes.

  Presently Lady Beatrice’s Mamma had another focus for her attention, however, for walking out in the cabbage patch one day she found a pair of twin baby girls, as like her and each other as it was possible to be. Lady Beatrice hadn’t thought there was a cabbage patch in the garden. She went out and searched diligently, and found not so much as a Brussels sprout, which fact she announced loudly at dinner that evening. Lady Beatrice’s Mamma turned scarlet. Lady Beatrice’s Papa roared with laughter.

  Thereafter Lady Beatrice was allowed a most agreeable childhood, by her standards, Mamma being preoccupied with little Charlotte and Louise. She was given a pony, and was taught to ride by their Punjabi groom. She was given a bow and arrows and taught archery. She was taught her letters, and read as many books as she liked. When she asked for her own regimental uniform, Mamma told her such a thing was wicked, and retired with a fainting fit, but Papa gave her a little red coat on her next birthday.

  The birthdays came and went. Just after Lady Beatrice turned seventeen, Lady Beatrice’s Grandmamma was taken ill, and so Lady Beatrice’s Mamma took the twins and went back to England for a visit. Lady Beatrice was uninterested in going, having several handsome young officers swooning for her at the time, and Mamma was quite content to leave her in India with Papa.

  Grandmamma had been expected to die rather soon, but for some reason lingered, and Lady Beatrice’s Mamma found one reason after another to postpone returning. Lady Beatrice relished running Papa’s house by herself, especially presiding over dinners, where she bantered with all the handsome young officers and not a few of the old ones. One of them wrote poetry in praise of her gray eyes. Two others dueled on her account.

  Then Papa’s regiment was ordered to Kabul.

  Lady Beatrice was left alone with the servants for some months, bored beyond anything she had believed possible. One day word came that all the wives and children of the married officers were to be allowed to go to Kabul as well, as a way to keep up the troops’ morale.

  Lady Beatrice heard nothing directly from Papa, as it happened, but she went with all the other families. After two months of miserably difficult travel through all the red dust in the world, Lady Beatrice arrived in Kabul.

  Papa was not pleased to see her. Papa was horrified. He sat her down and in few words explained how dangerous their situation was, how unlikely it was that the Afghanis would accept the British-backed ruler. He told her that rebellion was likely to break out any moment, and that the order to send for wives and children had been perfectly insane folly.

  Lady Beatrice had proudly told Papa that she wasn’t afraid to stay in Kabul; after all, all her handsome suitors were there! Papa had given a bitter laugh and replied that he didn’t think it was safe now to send her home alone in any case.

  So Lady Beatrice had stayed in Kabul, hosting Papa’s dinners for increasingly glum and uninterested young suitors. She remained there until the end, when Elphinstone negotiated the retreat of the British garrison, and was one of the doomed sixteen thousand who set off from Kabul for the Khyber Pass.

  Lady Beatrice watched them die, one after another after another. They died of the January cold; they died when Ghilzai snipers picked them off, or rode down in bands and skirmished with the increasingly desperate army. Papa died in the Khoord Kabul gorge, during one such skirmish, and Lady Beatrice was carried away screaming by a Ghilzai tribesman.

  Lady Beatrice was beaten and raped. She was left tied among the horses. In the night she tore through the rope with her teeth and crawled into the shelter where her captors slept. She took a knife and cut their throats, and did worse to the last one, because he woke and attempted to break her wrist. She swathed herself in their garments, stole a pair of their boots. She stole their food. She took their horses, riding one and leading the others, and went down to find Papa’s body.

  He was frozen stiff when she found him, so she had to give up any idea of tying him across the saddle and taking him away. Instead she buried him under a cairn of stones, and scratched his name and regiment on the topmost rock with the knife with which she had killed her rapists. Then Lady Beatrice rode away, weeping; but she felt no shame weeping, because she was really hurt.

  All along the Khyber Pass she counted the British and Indian dead. On three separate occasions she rode across the body of one and then another and then another of her handsome young suitors. Lady Beatrice looked like a gray-eyed specter, all her tears wept out, by the time she rode into Jellalabad.

  No one quite knew what to do with her there. No one wanted to speak of what had happened, for, as one of the officers who had known her family explained, her father’s good name was at stake. Lady Beatrice remained with the garrison all through the siege of Jellalabad that followed, cooking for them and washing clothes. In April, just after the siege had been raised, she miscarried.

  Her father’s friends saw to it that Lady Beatrice was escorted back to India. There she sold off the furniture, dismissed the servants, closed up the house and bought herself passage to England.

  Once she had arrived, it took Lady Beatrice several weeks to find Mamma and the twins. Grandmamma had died at last, and upon receiving word of the massacre in Afghanistan, Mamma had bought mourning and thrown herself upon the mercy of her older brother, a successful merchant. She and the twins were now living as dependents in his household.

  Lady Beatrice arrived on their doorstep and was greeted by shrieks of horror. Apparently Lady Beatrice’s letters had gone astray in the mail. Her mother fainted dead away. Uncle Frederick’s wife came in and fainted dead away as well. Charlotte and Louise came running down to see what had happened and, while they did not faint, they screamed shrilly. Uncle Frederick came in and stared at her as though his eyes would burst from his face.

  Once Mamma and Aunt Harriet had been revived, to cling to each other weeping on the settee, Lady Beatrice explained what had happened to her.

  A lengthy and painful discussion followed. It lasted through tea and dinner. It was revealed to Lady Beatrice that, though she had been sincerely mourned when Mamma had been under the impression she was dead, her unexpected return to life was something more than inconvenient. Had she never considered the disgrace she would inflict upon her family by returning, after all that had happened to her? What were all Aunt Harriet’s neighbors to think?

  Uncle Frederick as good as told her to her face that she must have whored herself to the men of the 13th Foot, during all those months in Jellalabad; and if she hadn’t, she might just as well have, for all that anyone would believe otherwise.

  At this point Mamma fainted again. While they were attempting to revive her, Ch
arlotte and Louise reproached Lady Beatrice in bluntest terms for her selfishness. Had she never thought for a moment of what the scandalous news would do to their marriage prospects? Mamma, sitting up at this point, tearfully begged Lady Beatrice to enter a convent. Lady Beatrice replied that she no longer believed in God.

  Whereupon Uncle Frederick, his face black with rage, rose from the table (the servants were in the act of serving the fish course) and told Lady Beatrice that she would be permitted to spend the night under his roof, for her Mamma’s sake, but in the morning he was personally taking her to the nearest convent.

  At this point Aunt Harriet pointed out that the nearest convent was in France, and he would be obliged to drive all day and hire passage on a boat, which hardly seemed respectable. Uncle Frederick shouted that he didn’t give a damn. Mamma fainted once more.

  Lady Beatrice excused herself and rose from the table. She went upstairs, found her mother’s room, ransacked her jewel box, and left the house by the back door.

  She caught the night coach in the village and went to London, where she pawned a necklace of her mother’s and paid a quarter’s rent on a small room in the Marylebone Road. Having done that, Lady Beatrice went to a dressmaker’s and had an ensemble made in the most lurid scarlet silk the seamstress could find on her shelves. Afterward she went to a milliner’s and had a hat made up to match.

  The next day she went shopping for shoes and found a pair of ready-mades in her size that looked as though they would bear well with prolonged walking. Lady Beatrice purchased cosmetics also.

  When her scarlet raiment was ready Lady Beatrice collected it. She took it back to her room, put it on, and stood before the cracked glass above her washstand. Holding her head high, she rimmed her gray eyes with blackest kohl.