The Year's Best SF 11 # 1993

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “Halyards and topping lift!” Bysshe gasped. He was clinging to the weather rail: a breaker exploded in his face and he gasped for air. “Let ’em go!”

  If the sail filled with water all was lost. Mary let go of the shroud and palmed her way across the vertical deck. Freezing lakewater clutched at her ankles. Harriet Shelley shrieked her triumph in Mary’s ears like the wind. Mary lurched forward to the mast, flung the halyard and topping lift off their cleats. The sail sagged free, empty of everything but the water that poured onto its canvas surface, turning it into a giant weight that would drag the boat over. Too late.

  “Save the ladies, George!” Bysshe called. His face was dead-white but his voice was calm. “I can’t swim!”

  Water boiled up Mary’s skirts. She could feel the dead weight dragging her down as she clutched at George’s leg and hauled herself up the deck. She screamed as her unborn child protested, a gouging pain deep in her belly.

  George raged wildly. “Damn it, Shelley, what can I do?” He had a leg over one of the shrouds; the other was Mary’s support. The wind had taken his hat and his cloak rattled around him like wind-filled canvas.

  “Cut the mast free!”

  George turned to Mary. “My sword! Get it from the cabin!”

  Mary looked down and into the terrified black eyes of Claire, half-out of the cuddy. She held a wailing Alba in her arms. “Take the baby!” she shrieked.

  “Give me a sword!” Mary said. A wave broke over the boat, soaking them all in icy rain. Mary thought of Harriet smiling, her hair trailing like seaweed.

  “Save my baby!”

  “The sword! Byron’s sword! Give it!” Mary clung to George’s leg with one hand and thrust the crying babe away with the other.

  “I hate you!” Claire shrieked, but she turned and fumbled for George’s sword. She held it up out of the hatch, and Mary took the cut steel hilt in her hand and drew it rasping from the scabbard. She held it blindly above her head and felt George’s firm hand close over hers and take the sabre away. The pain in her belly was like a knife. Through the boat and her spine she felt the thudding blows as George hacked at the shrouds, and then there was a rending as the mast splintered and Ariel, relieved of its top-hamper, swung suddenly upright.

  Half the lake seemed to splash into the boat as it came off its beam-ends. George pitched over backwards as Ariel righted itself, but Mary clung to his leg and kept him from going into the lake while he dragged himself to safety over the rail.

  Another wave crashed over them. Mary clutched at her belly and moaned. The pain was ebbing. The boat pirouetted on the lake as the wind took it, and then Ariel jerked to a halt. The wreckage of the mast was acting as a sea-anchor, moderating the wave action, keeping the boat stable. Alba’s screams floated high above Ariel’s remains.

  Wood floats, Mary remembered dully. And Ariel was wood, no matter how much water slopped about in her bottom.

  Shelley staggered to his feet, shin-deep in lake water. “By God, George,” he gasped. “You’ve saved us.”

  “By God,” George answered, “so I have.” Mary looked up from the deck to see George with the devil’s light in his eyes, his color high and his sabre in his hand. So, she reckoned, he must have seemed to Napoleon at Genappe. George bent and peered into the cuddy.

  “Are the ladies all right?”

  “Je suis bien, merci.” From the Austrian princess.

  “Damn you to hell, George!” Claire cried. George only grinned.

  “I see we are well,” he said.

  And then Mary felt the warm blood running down the insides of her legs, and knew that George was wrong.

  * * *

  Mary lay on a bed in the farmhouse sipping warm brandy. Reddening cloths were packed between her legs. The hemorrhage had not stopped, though at least there was no pain. Mary could feel the child moving within her, as if struggling in its terror. Over the click of knitting needles, she could hear the voices of the men in the kitchen, and smell George’s cigar.

  The large farm, sitting below its pastures that stretched up the Noirmont, was owned by a white-mustached old man named Fleury, a man who seemed incapable of surprise or confusion even when armed men arrived at his doorstep, carrying between them a bleeding woman and a sack filled with gold. He turned Mary over to his wife, hitched up his trousers, put his hat on, and went to St. Prex to find a doctor.

  Madame Fleury, a large woman unflappable as her husband, tended Mary and made her drink a brandy toddy while she sat by Mary and did her knitting.

  When Fleury returned, his news wasn’t good. The local surgeon had gone up the road to set the bones of some workmen caught in an avalanche—perhaps there would be amputations—but he would return as soon as he could. The road west to Geneva was still blocked by the slide; the road east to Lausanne had been cleared. George seemed thoughtful at the news. His voice echoed in from the kitchen. “Perhaps the chase will simply go past,” he said in English.

  “What sort of pursuit do you anticipate?” Bysshe asked. “Surely you don’t expect the Austrian Emperor to send his troops into Switzerland.”

  “Stranger things have happened,” George said. “And it may not be the Emperor’s own people after us—it might be Neipperg, acting on his own.”

  Mary knew she’d heard the name before, and tried to recall it. But Bysshe said, “The general? Why would he be concerned?”

  There was cynical amusement in George’s voice. “Because he’s her highness’s former lover! I don’t imagine he’d like to see his fortune run away.”

  “Do you credit him with so base a motive?”

  George laughed. “In order to prevent Marie-Louise from joining Bonaparte, Prince Metternich ordered von Neipperg to leave his wife and to seduce her highness—and that one-eyed scoundrel was only too happy to comply. His reward was to be the co-rulership of Parma, of which her highness was to be Duchess.”

  “Are you certain of this?”

  “Metternich told me at his dinner table over a pipe of tobacco. And Neipperg boasted to me, sir!” A sigh, almost a snarl, came from George. “My heart wrung at his words, Mr. Shelley. For I had already met her highness and—” Words failed him for a moment. “I determined to rescue her from Neipperg’s clutches, though all the Hungarian Grenadiers of the Empire stood in the way!”

  “That was most admirable, my lord,” Bysshe said quietly.

  Claire’s voice piped up. “Who is this Neipperg?”

  “Adam von Neipperg is a cavalry officer who defeated Murat,” Bysshe said. “That’s all I know of him.”

  George’s voice was thoughtful. “He’s the best the Austrians have. Quite the beau sabreur, and a diplomat as well. He persuaded Crown Prince Bernadotte to switch sides before the battle of Leipzig. And yes, he defeated Murat on the field of Tolentino, a few weeks before Waterloo. Command of the Austrian army was another of Prince Metternich’s rewards for his … services.”

  Murat, Mary knew, was Napoleon’s great cavalry general. Neipperg, the best Austrian cavalryman, had defeated Murat, and now Britain’s greatest horseman had defeated Napoleon and Neipperg, one on the battlefield and both in bed.

  Such a competitive little company of cavaliers, she thought. Madame Fleury’s knitting needles clacked out a complicated pattern.

  “You think he’s going to come after you?” Bysshe asked.

  “I would,” simply. “And neither he nor I would care what the Swiss think about it. And he’ll find enough officers who will want to fight for the, ah, honor of their royal family. And he certainly has scouts or agents among the Swiss looking for me—surely one of them visited the commissaire of Montreux.”

  “I see.” Mary heard the sound of Bysshe rising from his seat. “I must see to Mary.”

  He stepped into the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, took her hand. Madame Fleury barely looked up from her knitting.

  “Are you better, Pecksie?”

  “Nothing has changed.” I’m still dying, she thought.


  Bysshe sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, “to have exposed you to such danger. And now I don’t know what to do.”

  “And all for so little.”

  Bysshe was thoughtful. “Do you think liberty is so little? And Byron—the voice of monarchy and reaction—fighting for freedom! Think of it!”

  My life is bleeding away, Mary thought incredulously, and his child with it. There was poison in her voice when she answered.

  “This isn’t about the freedom of a woman, it’s about the freedom of one man to do what he wants.”

  Bysshe frowned at her.

  “He can’t love,” Mary insisted. “He felt no love for his wife, or for Claire.” Bysshe tried to hush her—her voice was probably perfectly audible in the kitchen. But it was pleasing for her not to give a damn.

  “It’s not love he feels for that poor woman in the cellar,” she said. “His passions are entirely concerned with himself—and now that he can’t exorcise them on the battlefield, he’s got to find other means.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “He’s a mad whirlwind of destruction! Look what he did to Claire. And now he’s wrecked Ariel, and he may yet involve us all in a battle—with Austrian cavalry, forsooth! He’ll destroy us all if we let him.”

  “Perhaps it will not come to that.”

  George appeared in the door. He was wrapped in a blanket and carried a carbine, and if he was embarrassed by what he’d heard, he failed to display it. “With your permission, Mr. Shelley, I’m going to try to sink your boat. It sits on a rock just below our location, a pistol pointed at our head.”

  Bysshe looked at Mary. “Do as you wish.”

  “I’ll give you privacy, then.” And pointedly closed the door.

  Mary heard his bootsteps march out, the outside door open and close. She put her hand on Bysshe’s arm. I am bleeding to death, she thought. “Promise me you will take no part in anything,” she said. “George will try to talk you into defending the princess—he knows you’re a good shot.”

  “But what of Marie-Louise? To be dragged back to Austria by force of arms—what a prospect! An outrage, inhuman and degrading.”

  I am bleeding to death, Mary thought. But she composed a civil reply. “Her condition saddens me. But she was born a pawn and has lived a pawn her entire life. However this turns out, she will be a pawn either of George or of Metternich, and we cannot change that. It is the evil of monarchy and tyranny that has made her so. We may be thankful we were not born among her class.”

  There were tears in Bysshe’s eyes. “Very well. If you think it best, I will not lift a hand in this.”

  Mary put her arms around him, held herself close to his warmth. She clenched trembling hands behind his back.

  Soon, she thought, I will lack the strength to do even this. And then I will die.

  There was a warm and spreading lake between her legs. She felt very drowsy as she held Bysshe, the effects of the brandy, and she closed her eyes and tried to rest. Bysshe stroked her cheek and hair. Mary, for a moment, dreamed.

  She dreamed of pursuit, a towering, shrouded figure stalking her over the lake—but the lake was frozen, and as Mary fled across the ice she found other people standing there, people to whom she ran for help only to discover them all dead, frozen in their places and covered with frost. Terrified, she ran among them, seeing to her further horror that she knew them all: her mother and namesake; and Mr. Godwin; and George, looking at her insolently with eyes of black ice; and lastly the figure of Harriet Shelley, a woman she had never met in life but who Mary knew at once. Harriet stood rooted to a patch of ice and held in her arms the frost-swathed figure of a child. And despite the rime that covered the tiny face, Mary knew at once, and with agonized despair, just whose child Harriet carried so triumphantly in her arms.

  She woke, terror pounding in her heart. There was a gunshot from outside. She felt Bysshe stiffen. Another shot. And then the sound of pounding feet.

  “They’re here, damn it!” George called. “And my shot missed!”

  * * *

  Gunfire and the sound of hammering swirled through Mary’s perceptions. Furniture was shifted, doors barricaded, weapons laid ready. The shutters had already been closed against the vaudaire, so no one had to risk himself securing the windows. Claire and Alba came into Mary’s room, the both of them screaming; and Mary, not giving a damn any longer, sent them both out. George put them in the cellar with the Austrian princess—Mary was amused that they seemed doomed to share quarters together. Bysshe, throughout, only sat on the bed and held Mary in his arms. He seemed calm, but his heart pounded against her ear. M. Fleury appeared, loading an old Charleville musket as he offhandedly explained that he had served in one of Louis XVI’s mercenary Swiss regiments. His wife put down her knitting needles, poured buckshot into her apron pockets, and went off with him to serve as his loader. Afterwards Mary wondered if that particular episode, that vision of the old man with his gun and powder horn, had been a dream—but no, Madame Fleury was gone, her pockets filled with lead.

  Eventually the noise died away. George came in with his Mantons stuffed in his belt, looking pleased with himself. “I think we stand well,” he said. “This place is fine as a fort. At Waterloo we held Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte against worse—and Neipperg will have no artillery. The odds aren’t bad—I counted only eight of them.” He looked at Bysshe. “Unless you are willing to join us, Mr. Shelley, in defense of her highness’s liberty.”

  Bysshe sat up. “I wish no man’s blood on my hands.” Mary rejoiced at the firmness in his voice.

  “I will not argue against your conscience, but if you won’t fight, then perhaps you can load for me?”

  “What of Mary?” Bysshe asked.

  Indeed, Mary thought. What of me?

  “Can we arrange for her, and for Claire and Alba, to leave this house?”

  George shook his head. “They don’t dare risk letting you go—you’d just inform the Swiss authorities. I could negotiate a cease-fire to allow you to become their prisoners, but then you’d be living in the barn or the outdoors instead of more comfortably in here.” He looked down at Mary. “I do not think we should move your lady in any case. Here in the house it is safe enough.”

  “But what if there’s a battle? My God—there’s already been shooting!”

  “No one was hurt, you’ll note—though if I’d had a Baker or a jäger rifle instead of my puisny little carbine, I daresay I’d have dropped one of them. No—what will happen now is that they’ll either try an assault, which will take a while to organize, because they’re all scattered out watching the house, and which will cost them dearly in the end … or they’ll wait. They don’t know how many people we have in here, and they’ll be cautious on that account. We’re inside, with plenty of food and fuel and ammunition, and they’re in the outdoors facing unseasonably cold weather. And the longer they wait, the more likely it will be that our local Swiss yeomen will discover them, and then…” He gave a low laugh. “Austrian soldiers have never fared well in Switzerland, not since the days of William Tell. Our Austrian friends will be arrested and imprisoned.”

  “But the surgeon? Will they not let the surgeon pass?”

  “I can’t say.”

  Bysshe stared. “My God! Can’t you speak to them?”

  “I will ask if you like. But I don’t know what a surgeon can do that we cannot.”

  Bysshe looked desperate. “There must be something that will stop the bleeding!”

  Yes, Mary thought. Death. Harriet has won.

  George gazed down at Mary with thoughtful eyes. “A Scotch midwife would sit her in a tub of icewater.”

  Bysshe stiffened like a dog on point. “Is there ice? Is there an ice cellar?” He rushed out of the room. Mary could hear him stammering out frantic questions in French, then Fleury’s offhand reply. When Bysshe came back he looked stricken. “There is an icehouse, but it’s out behind the barn.”

  “And in enemy hands.” George sigh
ed. “Well, I will ask if they will permit Madame Fleury to bring ice into the house, and pass the surgeon through when he comes.”

  George left the room and commenced a shouted conversation in French with someone outside. Mary winced at the volume of George’s voice. The voice outside spoke French with a harsh accent.

  No, she understood. They would not permit ice or a surgeon to enter a house.

  “They suspect a plot, I suppose,” George reported. He stood wearily in the doorway. “Or they think one of my men is wounded.”

  “They want to make you watch someone die,” Mary said. “And hope it will make you surrender.”

  George looked at her. “Yes, you comprehend their intent,” he said. “That is precisely what they want.” Bysshe looked horrified.

  George’s look turned intent. “And what does Mistress Mary want?”

  Mary closed her eyes. “Mistress Mary wants to live, and to hell with you all.”

  George laughed, a low and misanthropic chuckle. “Very well. Live you shall—and I believe I know the way.”

  He returned to the other room, and Mary heard his raised voice again. He was asking, in French, what the intruders wanted, and in passing comparing their actions to Napoleon’s abduction of the Duc d’Enghien, justly abhorred by all nations.

  “A telling hit,” Mary said. “Good old George.” She wrapped her two small pale hands around one of Bysshe’s big ones.

  The same voice answered, demanding that Her Highness the Duchess of Parma be surrendered. George returned that her highness was here of her own free will, and that she commanded that they withdraw to their own borders and trouble her no more. The emissary said his party was acting for the honor of Austria and the House of Habsburg. George announced that he felt free to doubt that their shameful actions were in any way honorable, and he was prepared to prove it, corps-à-corps, if Feldmarschall-leutnant von Neipperg was willing to oblige him.