by Peg Kingman
“Thank you, Mr MacDonald. I do not mind its being old.” The woolen seaman’s jacket was so shrunken by repeated wettings and dryings that it was nearly impervious to the wind. Gradually her shivering lessened.
Hector sat down near her; he held his hands out to the boiler and rubbed them together. “Pray tell me, Miss—Miss, ah…”
“Swarnokar. In English it is ‘goldsmith.’”
“How does it happen, Miss Swarnokar, that you figure once again in my sister’s affairs? That you act as my sister’s messenger in this catastrophe?”
“Only that I was there, you see—”
“Where?”
“At the inn at Leith, sir, where your sister has rooms. I am in service at that inn, a temporary arrangement only.”
“What an astonishing coincidence that of all the inns in the city, you should be in service at the very one where my sister had found rooms.”
“Oh, not astonishing, sir. Is not that inn favored by all the sea captains? The Captain Dale, of the ship which brought me here, kindly sent me to that inn with his good word, knowing that I had somehow to keep myself until I could find a place with a lady going to India. My own lady had died on the voyage here, you see. Poor Mrs Guthrie, and her infant, too! She had such longing to see Scotland again, but her fate was not so kind. Thus I arrived here without place and without money, but upon Captain Dale’s kind word, the innkeeper has given me a bed among the maids.”
It was plausible, Hector thought—astonishing but plausible. His next question was this: “How could such a thing take place, this bold abduction of my niece in the broad day, and from a respectable inn? Were you there yourself when it happened?”
“Oh, yes, sir, I was in the next room. I saw it, but I was powerless to stop it, though I tried my best.”
“Be so good as to tell me just what happened.”
“Yes, sir, I am telling you. I was cleaning the next room, for the men there had just gone away and I must air the room and clean the ashes from the fireplace, and put fresh linen to the beds. First I was opening the window to let in the fresh air, and seeing a carriage halting in the street below. So curious, for usually, you see, the carriages are driving directly into the stableyard behind. The inn’s boy came running out to stand at the horses’ heads as his duty requires, but the driver chased him off with rude words, and instead a man who was standing nearby came to hold their heads, and this the driver permitted. So very odd it was seeming to me. No one got out of the carriage, nor got in, and that was seeming curious also, and therefore I was lingering at the window a moment. Just then I heard the door to the next room crash against the wall dividing the rooms, and I was startled, for I knew that your sister was gone out and the mute girl was in the room alone. I looked into the passage, just a narrow crack—like this—to see. And a man went running, and down the stair, carrying the child, all wrapped in the bedcover—quite wrapped, head and all, and unable to move except for kicking, nor did she cry out. In an instant I went running down after him, but he was so very quick, and everyone was unprepared. No one hampered him at all, and I saw him thrusting the girl inside the carriage. I ran up to it, but the door was quickly shut and latched from the inside. I seized the handle, and it would not open, although I was having a glimpse through the glass of the faces inside.”
“And you recognised these faces?”
“Yes, oh, yes. It was Miss Johnstone, and her servant with her, who is my friend.”
“Then they drove off?”
“Yes, the driver laid his whip to the horses, and the man holding their heads jumping quickly aside and running away. I had got my knife in my hand, so that I might slash the straps that hold up the carriage, for that is how the bandits in my country cripple the carriages of rich travelers sometimes. But your carriages are built differently, I think, for the straps at the back of the carriage, which I succeeded in slashing, were serving only to hold the trunk.”
“And you saw them take the turn to the Queensferry road?”
“I ran after, and it was easy to see where it had passed, for people were shaking their heads and looking after it, and then there was the trunk fallen to the pavement and split open. When I came upon your sister, she sent me to seek you, while she herself went to pursue them directly.”
“And how did you know where to find me?”
“I was running first to your house in East Thistle Street, where your kind wife gave me a strong drink to restore me; and she told me that you were perhaps at one place, or perhaps at another, or perhaps most likely near the ships upon the water, where I was finding you at last by greatest good luck.”
Greatest good luck indeed. “Aye, thank you. That is an admirably clear account.” Hector pondered in silence for a few minutes.
“How does this boat go?” asked the foreigner presently. “I see it is having sails; and having also a steam engine, but no paddles, neither at the stern nor at the sides.”
“Quite. It is my own design. Instead of the usual paddle wheel, it has a device which I call a rotary oar. It resembles the screw in an Archimedean water pump, which draws up water from a ditch, you know,” explained Hector, making rotary motions with his arms. “This rotary oar is entirely submerged, mounted horizontally under the surface of the water at the bow. It bites into the water, you see, and draws us forward through the water, just as a wood screw bites into a plank of wood, and draws itself into the wood. The steam engine, here, powers this piston, and the piston’s motion is transformed to a rotary motion by this crank. The crankshaft’s rate of rotation is increased by these gears, and this long rotating shaft, which passes through the hull there, on bearings, through a watertight gasket—well, nearly watertight—has mounted at its tip the rotary oar.”
“So very ingenious,” she said. “And it is your own invention?”
“Oh, many men have proposed, and even contrived, similar devices—Mr Brunel, Mr Fulton, Colonel Stevens in America, and perhaps others. But this particular design, with the rotary oar driven by steam power, is my own. Have you never been aboard a steamboat?”
“Oh, yes, but I have indeed, at home in India. The Nawab of Oudh has a steamboat which an Englishman made for him, and I have been on that boat, on the river below the palace at Lucknow. But that steamboat is having a paddle wheel.”
“Aye, that has been the usual arrangement until now. Yet paddles have their drawbacks. Oh, yes—considerable drawbacks.” He hesitated a moment, but this foreign woman looked so intelligent and so interested; and, after all, the subject was so intrinsically interesting! He plunged ahead: “The paddle structures themselves are very large, heavy and unwieldy; excessively vulnerable to enemy gunfire. And only a small proportion of the paddle structure is in the water—and therefore driving the craft—at any given time, while the large surface area above the water presents far too much area to the wind. If the ship should be heeled hard over, or pitching fore and aft, paddles may be alternately immersed too deeply or else lifted out of the water altogether, causing loss of power and of control. And then side-wheelers are so wide, which is a drawback for canal work. My submerged rotary oar suffers from none of these disadvantages.”
“This boat is very fast,” she said. “No doubt we shall be overtaking them.”
Hector was suddenly recalled to a sense of his mission. “If only we could guess just where they were headed,” he said.
“Oh, to America, certainly,” she said.
7
Runnings, Variations, Allegro
“The inn here at the pier would suit me best,” said Catherine to the poulterer. “It is the Hawes Inn, I think. Yes, and thank you for the lift!” she called after him as the wagon drove off into the dusk, the horse now wringing wet but still nervous and pulling hard.
The main part of the town of Queensferry was a little further along to the west, but this inn lay near the pier where travelers boarded the ferry which ran to and fro across the Firth of Forth. Catherine doubted that Miss Johnstone would run away northw
ard, across the Forth, but she could not pass without making sure. If the chaise had not crossed on the ferry, she could feel quite certain that they had continued westward on the road. In either case, she should be able to hire a horse here.
She hastened through the carriage gate, which opened into the cobbled stableyard behind the inn. There in the lamplight were two men tending to an unwilling horse. The taller of the two had the horse’s tender upper lip secured by a twisted loop of chain on the end of a stick. He also had a tight hold of one ear, so that the threat of pain held the horse more or less immobilized. The other man, muscular but shorter, had one of the horse’s hind legs pulled up and back. The man was bent over the upturned sole of the hoof, carving at it with a long curved knife.
Catherine checked herself, not wanting to interrupt so delicate an operation. Just then the horse plunged forward, dragging the taller man and knocking down the muscular one. The taller man held on, however, and brought the horse to a standstill again while the smaller one picked himself up, grabbed his knife, and kicked the trembling horse twice in the belly while uttering an oath. Then he lifted the hind foot and set to work on it again with the knife. “There!” he cried after a moment. The horse lurched and hopped, but the two men kept hold of him. “That’s a nasty one. Oh, the stink! How long has he been lame on it then?”
“Oh, on and off, on and off, I could not say. Is it an abcess after all?”
“It is—a big one, full of rot and pus. Ye’ll have to keep it packed with moss—or a turpentine dressing if ye’ve got it—until it heals.”
“There’s a whiff of it. Eeeuch! He can’t work, I suppose.”
“Impossible.”
“Well, it’s the knackers then. This is no hospital.”
“Do I clean it and pack it or not?” said the strongly built little man irritably, holding up the hind hoof.
“Oh, go ahead then. They can decide in the morning. There aren’t so many others sound just now.”
The strongly built man called for a boy, who brought wads of dried moss, a bucket of turpentine, and cloths for a dressing. The man set to work again on the hoof with the knife, carving away slices of the infected tissue. Now that the abcess was open and draining, its painful pressure relieved, the horse balanced stoically on his three remaining legs with his head drooping, flinching only occasionally. The man at his head released the twisted ear. Deftly the other man packed the cavity with turpentine-soaked wads of moss. Then he ordered the boy to tear the cloth into long, wide strips, which he used to wrap the entire foot, around and around, over and under. Finally he set the big cloth-wrapped foot gently on the cobbled floor of the yard, and the horse gingerly tried a little weight on it. Straightening up slowly, the man stretched to ease his cramped back, and caught sight of Catherine at the gate.
“Where did that cloth come from?” she demanded, pointing at the horse’s hoof, newly wrapped in strips of bright mustard and turkey red chintz.
The two men looked blank; it was the boy who answered. “The chaise that came through just now—they threw this cloth out in the yard and left it behind—an old bedcover rent in pieces and spoiled. They had lost their trunks off the back, too, and hadn’t even noticed until I remarked on it.”
“How long ago?”
“Not much more than the quarter of an hour, I make it.”
“Did you see who was in the chaise?”
“Womenfolk, I think. With a black African servant. But they never stepped out. And they had a hired driver, not postilions.”
“Where were they going? Did they say?”
“Grangemouth, it was.”
“At the terminus of the Forth and Clyde Canal?”
“Just so. They’ll have missed the night boat across to Glasgow, and so I told the foreign lady when she inquired, for she was in a terrible haste; but she might surely hire a private boat, if she is willing to pay enough for it, and so I told her. ‘Ask for Captain Curry,’ I told her, ‘Captain Robert Curry or his son John if old Captain Curry is out, for their boats are always ready at a moment’s notice for the convenience of private travelers.’ So I told her.”
“How far to Grangemouth?”
“Just eleven miles precisely from this very yard.”
“Well, then, I want your fastest conveyance, as quick as you can, to take me there,” said Catherine, and she pressed a coin into the boy’s palm for being both observant and informative.
But there was no conveyance to be had. The last sound horse had just gone out with that very carriage full of luggageless womenfolk, and there was not an animal in the yard that could be expected to cover the eleven miles without falling down. Then the men discussed between them where they might send for a horse, and which of the nearby farmers or tradesmen might part with a horse just for the night. At length they agreed that the quickest and surest course, if a horse and chaise she must have, would be to inquire at the other inn, in the main part of the town of Queensferry.
The boy offered to go there and inquire on her behalf. “Or there’s just the odd chance, ma’am,” he added, “if you’re Grangemouth bound, that a boat here at the pier might take you up. That’s a fresh east wind blowing tonight, and I trust you’d make very good time all the way. You might even beat them, if you lost no time getting started.” Catherine strode out toward the wide stone pier that jutted into the Forth. The wind whipped at her shawl, which now seemed distressingly thin. There was no ferryboat here; it must be making its crossing. Several small boats were tied alongside, creaking and bumping against their canvas fenders. Moored in the deep anchorage just offshore in the lee of the pier were a number of boats bobbing gently on the invisible black water. Some showed lights, but most were dark.
The beacon lanterns posted on the pilings at the end of the pier beckoned. Catherine walked quickly to the very end of the pier, feeling the deepening water along each side of her. Turning her back to the wind, she looked upriver toward Grangemouth. Here and there lights glimmered along the black shore, and she could sense the distant looming weight of the Fife shore opposite, seven miles across the Forth.
Where was everyone? She would have to go back to the inn itself; the boatmen must be warming themselves and slaking their thirsts in its public rooms. Every lost minute was precious, irretrievable, and boded an unthinkable defeat. She turned to hurry back to the inn—but what was that? That familiar distant rhythmic thump, carried down to her on the wind? It faded to nothing though she strained to hear it. Then it came back, stronger than before. She was peering into the wind now, her eyes tearing as she tried to see what she hoped she was hearing. Then it seemed to her that voices came down the wind, too, snatches of male voices. And then, because she knew the shape her eyes were seeking in the darkness, she was quite sure she saw it: a low sleek launch sailing down fast before the wind and bound for the pier where she stood—a boat equipped with a steam engine hissing and throbbing at full power.
Had she wished it here, an apparition? No, it was real. The sails fluttered down onto its deck as the launch approached, and it coasted smoothly alongside the pier. A seaman jumped onto the landing and cranked his painter around one of the stone stops set at intervals for tying up.
“We came inshore to find out if they had crossed here on the ferry. No? On to Grangemouth? You are quite certain?” said Hector to Catherine.
“Dead certain,” declared Catherine, squeezing his strong hand, which steadied her as she stepped aboard. And here, too, somehow—but no longer astonishing—was her own dark angel, the Indian maid, huddled in the drafty lee of the boiler. Silently Catherine praised the fate that delivered them all here, now! A praise like a bagpiper’s flourish: “Moladh Catriona!”—“Catherine’s Praise for Her Gift.”
So Dram Shell cast off again with no more than a moment’s pause. By the time they cleared the end of the pier, the two seamen had hoisted the sails and set them thrumming, tight as drumheads. Captain Keith and the men were excited by the prospect of closing on their quarry, by the charm o
f taking on a new and unexpected passenger, and by several good pulls on the ale and the whisky.
INSIDE THE JOLTING carriage, Annie felt a stifled sob wrack the pale little orphan wedged into the narrow seat beside her; but the child made no sound. It was hard to tell, in the darkness, whether tears were tracking down her face; but when Annie heard her sniff, she surmised that the child was silently crying. Annie’s hand stole over, seeking the orphan’s hand, and found it. It grasped hers in return—surprisingly hard. Annie’s mistress, bouncing on the facing seat, neither saw nor heard, for she was loudly and continuously complaining, as was her habit.
“The design of the carriage is atrocious,” Miss Johnstone was saying. “My trunk should have been strapped onto the roof behind rails, as any fool can see. Besides, it’s the worst-hung carriage I was ever in. I never was so jolted about in my life. At this rate my teeth will rattle right out of my head before we ever get to the canal. And the roads are shocking. The horses are the sorriest screws I ever laid eyes upon, and I’m a pretty good judge of a horse. Even Judge Grant says so. Do move your feet over, Annie. You keep jostling me.”
Annie moved her feet, and the orphan sniffed again.
“That’s disgusting,” said Miss Johnstone. “Doesn’t she have a handkerchief? Now why are we stopping? I guess this dolt of a driver has gotten us lost in the dark.” She opened the hatch and barked something at the coachman.
Annie could not hear his reply. Then Miss Johnstone said, “Here? This is the Forth and Clyde Canal? But I can’t see a thing. Where do we book our passages? It’s pitch-dark. Driver, you do it. You can’t expect a lady to blunder around in the dark looking for boats to hire…. What’s that? Send my servant, says the man! Ha! Trust her to hire a boat? No, no, driver, you have to do it, I insist…. Listen to the fellow! He will not! The horses? Isn’t there a boy who can hold the horses? Not a boy to be seen? Such a country! So I myself, a lady traveler, I have to get out and fix up everything myself. All because you, Annie, are so bad and untrustworthy. Give me my cloak there.”
