Arabella the Traitor of Mars Page 6

  But even as Arabella’s feet carried her unconsciously downward, the soles of her boots tapping rapidly upon the stair treads, a plan began to form in her mind. And so, as she reached the base of the stairs, she did not proceed down the long gallery toward the entrance-hall, but doubled back … heading for the underground passage to the Royal Stables.

  The passage itself was chill and plain, uncluttered with either the Prince’s patent stoves or his execrable taste in Vénuserie, and as she clopped along its hard stone floor her tears dried in the wind of her motion, replaced by a cold hard anger and a will to action.

  She paused at the end of the passage, just before the door to the Royal Stables, and hiked up her skirts. Removing a brass winding-key from its recess by her artificial right ankle, she inserted it into its hole and wound the foot’s mainspring to its maximum torsion. She might not have another opportunity any time soon to pause and wind her foot, and it would not do to have it run down unexpectedly in the midst of her escape.

  Removing the key from its hole, she turned it over in her fingers, feeling its smooth brass and recalling how she and Captain Singh had selected it—of all the available keys, it had been the one with the smoothest finish, most suited in size and shape to the task at hand. But before the tears could start anew, she gripped the key in her fist, jammed it roughly back into its recess, straightened, and swept her skirts back into position. Then she seized the door handle, took a breath, let it out, and stepped into the Royal Stables.

  The arena stood dark and still, the air cold and a bright full moon shining down through the glass panes above. As she stepped briskly across the sawdust of the arena floor—the mechanism of her artificial foot just audible in the silence—one of the horses stabled near the arena raised its head, whickering a question. But she passed the stables without pause, heading for Kiernan’s workshop.

  The workshop stood empty at this hour, but the Draisine was exactly where she had last seen it—its brass fittings gleaming in the moonlight, the modifications they had discussed now complete. She bent and inspected the work, finding it satisfactory. The machine awaited only a test ride, to see how well the modifications worked.

  The test ride would be to-night. She hoped there would be no serious problems.

  The breeches she had been using also hung in their accustomed place, not far away. Heedless of possible observation, she hiked her skirts up to her waist and slipped the breeches on, tying the skirts in place with leather thongs. Another thong served to fix her bonnet to her head. The fur wrap she fastened about her shoulders as best she could, and her fine fur-lined gloves—a gift from the Port-Admiral—she pulled on and adjusted carefully, to avoid any wrinkles on the palms. She knew she could not afford blisters.

  She also could not afford the Draisine itself, of course, but its theft weighed lightly on her conscience. For the Prince could easily bear the expense, and furthermore he was in no position to make use of the stolen item himself. Not to mention that the pedals were Arabella’s own invention, and she no longer had any desire to share her innovation with him.

  Arabella walked the machine across the workshop to the door that led outside. A cold wind blew against it, making it rattle on its hinges and blowing sawdust around her feet. Grimly she adjusted her gloves, her wrap, and her bonnet, then eased the door open.

  A blast of frigid air struck her in the face, making her eyes tear up. Squinting against the cold, she quickly walked the machine outside and shut the door behind herself.

  Then she mounted the modified Draisine and rode off into the darkness.

  * * *

  The first half-hour of the ride was a tricky, juddering, slippery near-panic, as she learned how to work the pedals, manage the steering, and avoid running into trees all at the same time. Not only was the pedal mechanism entirely new—within the first mile she had already made mental notes of a half-dozen changes which would improve it substantially—but this was the first time she had ever driven the Draisine under the open sky, at night, or on rough ground, never mind all three at once. But the night, though cold and windy, was clear—Earth’s enormous moon shone down full and bright, illuminating her path most satisfactorily—and she soon learned the trick of keeping herself upright with the machine’s new configuration.

  As she had expected, the pedals allowed her to make even better speed than the machine’s original design, and with less effort. The motion was strange—traveling swiftly down the road with a smooth rotary motion of the legs, her head not going up and down as it usually did while walking, running, or riding, but rolling along at a constant height. It was also unlike riding in a curricle, for no horse or huresh clopped along before her; she, herself, was the vehicle’s only motive power. The experience was, all in all, very nearly like flying … except for the harsh vibration of the road’s rough surface, transmitted through the iron rims and wooden spokes of the Draisine’s wheels. Only the machine’s leather seat, and the natural padding of her own fundament, provided any relief from the continual jarring shocks. This, she thought, was another area where improvements would be necessary.

  The wind in her face was brutally cold—from it she estimated her speed at between six and eight miles per hour, even more down hill—but the rest of her soon grew overheated from the exertion. She tried loosening her fur wrap at the throat, but the chill air upon her perspiring skin was even more uncomfortable and she soon tightened it again.

  On and on she pedaled, mile upon mile, hour upon hour—her feelings of anger and betrayal propelling her forward through snow, ice, slush, and growing fatigue like a great propulsive sail at her back. Again and again she wobbled and slid on a rock or a patch of ice; sometimes she was able to recover, but other times she and her machine fell heavily to the hard, icy ground. Her clothing soon grew ragged and torn, and filthy with mud and blood, but, fortunately, despite the high gravity neither she nor the Draisine was ever seriously injured.

  Many another person, she thought, would be unable to keep up the effort so long, but aboard Diana she had frequently pedaled for an entire watch—four hours—without the slightest pause, and on the long chase while fleeing the French aboard Touchstone she had pedaled for ten hours or more at a stretch.

  But unlike pedaling a ship, where the air belowdecks was still, hot, dark, clamorous, and rank from the breath of dozens of airmen, here she pedaled in chill silence—save for the rush of the wind in her ears—with a constantly changing vista under the clear pale light of the moon.

  It was very nearly pleasant.

  Or so she told herself.

  She pressed onward.

  * * *

  As Arabella pedaled and pedaled, the full moon crept downward to her left, marking the passage of the hours from midnight toward dawn. Though the effort of pedaling kept her warm—or warmer, at any rate, than she would otherwise have been—the evening’s chill grew still deeper as the night advanced and her hands, face, and foot became first icy, then painful, then alarmingly numb. Her stump, too, began to ache dreadfully from the cold and from the repeated, unaccustomed motion and pressure. She continued pedaling.

  Her palms blistered, despite her gloves. The blisters broke open. She continued pedaling.

  She lost count of the number of times she fell. In one such fall she received a nasty abrasion on her cheek, which stung and persisted in bleeding despite the numbing cold. She continued pedaling.

  She met no one and encountered nothing other than endless roads and icy trees and fields crusted with patchy snow. She continued pedaling.

  Until she came upon a road sign which brought her to a shuddering halt.

  CROYDON, it said, with an arrow pointing to the right.

  Suddenly her eyes, already moist from the cold wind of her passage, became so flooded with tears that her vision was completely obliterated and her cheeks crackled with freezing salt water.

  Croydon. The nearest sizable town to Marlowe Hall, the Ashby family home in England. She had noted it in passing as the Prince
’s caravan had passed through on its way to Brighton, and had considered that she ought to visit her sisters as long as she was in the vicinity. But the very thought of facing her mother was intimidating, and at the time there had seemed no urgency to the idea, so she had allowed it to languish.

  But now she was cold, exhausted, and despondent, and only four-fifths of the way from Brighton to Greenwich, where Diana and Touchstone were docked.

  A very small detour—less than half an hour, at the Draisine’s speed—and she could have a bed, a hot bath, a change of clothes.

  She would also have to confront her mother, whom she had not seen since her sudden and unexpected departure from her cousin’s home in Oxfordshire three years earlier. The very prospect was nearly as chilling as the wind in her face.

  But after a long, long pause she pushed the tiller to the left, directing her machine to the right—toward Croydon, and Marlowe Hall, and her sisters … and her mother.

  * * *

  It was Cole, the butler, who met her at the door. He wore a dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap sat askew upon his head. “Miss Ashby!” he cried, astonished. From the expression on his face in the light of the lantern he carried, she must look a dreadful fright.

  “It is Mrs. Singh now,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. Her voice creaked from cold and disuse. “May I come in?”

  “Of course, of course!”

  Arabella did her very best to maintain decorum and composure as she entered. She would not show weakness in front of her mother. But as soon as she had crossed the threshold, something—the warmth of the air within, or the familiarity of the surroundings, or perhaps some quality of the Ashby house’s timbers—sapped the strength from her limbs and she collapsed in Cole’s arms.

  “Help!” he cried, struggling under the unexpected weight. “Oh, help!”

  “The Draisine…” she muttered, as the cook and stable-boy hurried to his aid. “Bring it into the stable…”

  And then, quite against her will, she fell asleep.

  * * *

  Arabella woke in her own bed, warm and safe and nestled between crisp cotton sheets, and for a moment she marveled at the implausibility of the long, strange, complex dream in which she had been ensnared. And then she woke fully, and realized that the dream had, in fact, been nothing more than reality … and that it was, indeed, still continuing. Her eyes snapped open and she sat upright with a gasp.

  “Arabella!” her mother cried, sitting up in the chair which stood near the head of the bed. She, too, had apparently been asleep. In a sudden and uncharacteristically uninhibited moment she embraced Arabella with firm and tender affection, and Arabella gripped her mother’s shoulders with equal warmth.

  There were tears.

  Eventually the moment passed, and Arabella sat back against her pillow, wiping her eyes and nose with the corner of her duvet cover—her very familiar duvet cover, with the Ashby monogram she had herself embroidered on its hem. Her mother leaned close, laying one finger gently upon her daughter’s abraded cheek. “We will have to have Dr. Freitag look into this. It may require stitches.” She shook her head and tut-tutted. “More stitches. What on Earth have you done to yourself this time?”

  What on Earth indeed, Arabella thought. Were it not for the accursed gravity of this wretched planet, she might not have fallen so hard. “I am sorry I was not able to visit sooner,” she said.

  “I do wish that you had,” her mother chided. “I would not even have known of your return to Earth, save that I read it in the Chronicle! I sent a letter to you at Greenwich, but it was returned.”

  “We had most likely left there by the time your letter arrived. We were very busy with the victory celebrations at first, and then we went to Brighton, where we were trapped by the snow.”

  “Oh yes, this beastly weather. But what took you to Brighton?”

  “A personal invitation from the Prince Regent.” Arabella felt a bitter satisfaction at the astonished, barely-contained envy on her mother’s face. But this emotion lasted only a moment, replaced by distress at the memory of the reasons for her sudden departure from Brighton.

  “You do not seem very happy at this state of affairs.”

  Arabella looked into her mother’s eyes—her loving, disapproving, concerned, judgemental eyes—and immediately burst into tears. Arabella embraced her mother and sobbed into the soft, warm flannel of her night-dress shoulder, while her mother patted her back and comforted her.

  Eventually Arabella recovered her composure sufficiently to give an account of the past week’s events—a confused and rambling account, to be sure—while her mother held her hands, alternating reassuring sounds with tut-tuts of disapproval.

  “I might have expected such a shambles,” her mother summarized eventually, “from marrying a Mussulman. Oh, if only I had been there to advise you against such a heedless course of action!”

  “My husband’s religion has nothing to do with the case!” she snapped. But then she pushed her anger down, took her mother’s hand, and looked deeply into her eyes. “What is done,” she said, “is done. But now I have no choice; I must proceed at once to Greenwich, in hopes of persuading Fox to carry me to Mars and warn every one there of the invasion which is to come.”

  “Impossible!” her mother burst out. “You are in no fit condition to travel even as far as the Claret and Ale”—it was a public house in the town of Croydon—“never mind Greenwich! And a voyage to Mars is absolutely out of the question.” She stood, crossed her arms upon her breast, and nodded decisively. “You will remain here until we can have your marriage to that beast annulled and a proper husband found for you.”

  “Annulled!” Arabella gasped.

  “Certainly. For a girl of nineteen to marry outside of her religion, under such trying circumstances, and without her mother’s permission? A plea of incompetence would meet with no opposition whatsoever.”

  “Incompetence!”

  “Legally unqualified to enter into the marriage,” her mother explained, unnecessarily. Arabella was well aware of the legal meaning of the word—it was the implication she resented.

  Arabella sat up, shoving the duvet aside and intending to leap from the bed. But her artificial foot, she discovered, had been removed while she slept. Instead she rose to her knees upon the bed, glaring down at her mother from the height thus achieved. “I am not incompetent in any sense of the word, Mother. I married Captain Singh of my own accord, with full consideration of the consequences, and with the permission of my brother in loco parentis.”

  “Sit down immediately, child! You are in my household now, you are under twenty-one, and in my house you will obey my rules.”

  “I am a married woman, and any regrets I may have at the moment regarding that situation are entirely my own affair.” She crossed her arms on her chest, realizing as she did that she was matching her mother’s posture almost exactly. “I thank you very much for your hospitality. But now I must ask that you return my artificial foot to me, and I will be on my way.”

  “I will not. You are a callous, headstrong child and you require discipline.”

  “You would keep me here against my will?”

  “If I must!”

  Arabella surged forward, landing on her hands and knees upon the bed and causing her mother to recoil most satisfactorily. “The last person who attempted to do so,” she snarled, “was cousin Simon. Despite the fact that he and his wife threatened me with pistols, I escaped that very night. And in the end he met his death.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “If I must,” Arabella replied, spitting her mother’s own words back in her face.

  The two women glared at each other across the rumpled bed-clothes. Arabella recognized that her position was by far the weaker of the two; her mother held her foot, her Draisine, and her clothing, and any protestations of independence by reason of marriage would fall upon deaf ears within this house. Yet she stood her ground, though she d
id so upon her knees.

  And then, suddenly, her mother’s face softened. “Oh, my dear child,” she said. “You have so much of your father in you.”

  “I do?” Arabella replied, taken aback. This was not a sentiment her mother had ever before expressed.

  “You do.” A small, sad smile crept upon her mother’s face, and her eyes grew distant. “You should have seen him when we were courting. Such a handsome lad, and so full of fire! He would have me, he said, and he would take me to his family plantation on Mars, and there we would build an empire of Marswood.” She sighed. “We faced many obstacles in those days, not least of which was his own father, who disapproved of me. Nevertheless, he persisted, and in the end we were married, and raised four lovely children.”

  “Oh, Mother … I am so very sorry for the pain I have caused you.”

  “You have always and ever done what you thought was right, no matter the cost. Do you recall the time Mopsy escaped her pen?”

  “Mopsy!” Arabella had not thought of her old pet skorosh in years. “She was so cold and hungry when I found her.”

  “We absolutely forbade you to run off in search of her. You were only eight, and it was the dead of winter!”

  “Yet if I had not, she would surely have died.”

  “She would surely have died,” her mother acknowledged.

  Again the two women gazed at each other across the duvet, but now their gazes held sympathy and understanding as well as disagreement.

  “My dear child,” Arabella’s mother said at last, taking Arabella’s hand. “My dear, willful, troublesome, terribly vexatious child. You know I cannot approve of your intended course of action. This is … this is treason you are contemplating.”

  “I understand,” Arabella replied—though, in fact, this was the first she had truly realized that she was, in fact, contemplating treason—preparing to defy the sovereign lord whom law and God had placed in authority over her and all her countrymen. The great consequences of this realization weighed heavily upon her heart … but she paused, swallowed, and steeled her resolve. “Nonetheless, I am determined in my course, and you cannot prevent me.”