Magnificent Devices [5] A Lady of Resources (20 page)

Fireworks exploded into the sky, the sound of cheering soaring into the air along with bright colors of red, gold, and green. Lizzie wrenched the firing lever back and her father’s cannon roared and spat out cold death into the festive night.

Ahead of
Athena
sailed the majestic bulk of the
Princess Alexandra
, passing over the village already welcoming its future ruler with fireworks and snatches of “God Save the Queen.” Her pigeon had clearly not been taken seriously. Now she must focus solely on Colliford Castle, isolated in its park and the next landmark over which the royal ship would sail.

Between the fireworks and the last of the sunset, Claire had just enough light to make out a tiny figure as it burst out of a door near the top of the telescope’s tower—a figure with hair the color of Brazil nuts and wearing a chestnut suit that had been made for her in Munich.

Maggie—alive!

“Snouts, bring her around over that long, flat roof,” she commanded, relinquishing the helm to him and freeing the lightning rifle from the holster on her back. “I am going to let down the basket.”

“Can you see Lizzie?”

“Not yet, but—great Caesar’s ghost!”

From the top of the tower, the telescope that was not a telescope spat fire, illuminating the slender figure in the white dress at the controls, and the darker, bulkier figure with one arm extended.

Claire’s blood stopped cold in its frantic course as she stared across space from Lizzie to the royal airship. The missile raced toward it, powered by a rocket that had been ignited in the bowels of the firing mechanism. Closer—closer—it would take the gilded gondola amidships—and then, at the last possible second, it veered aside. Once, twice, it bounced along the gondola’s keel—and then it found its direction. Its deadly speed had been halved, however, and it raced through the sky to plunge into the River Colley. It exploded with violent force, a plume of water cascading high into the air.

“Praise God and all the little angels!” Snouts shouted. Had Claire’s mind not been otherwise occupied, she might have marveled at this—she had never suspected Snouts of harboring any affection for the royal family at all.

But her mind was wholly occupied. They had only minutes to effect a rescue—if not seconds. “Snouts, Lewis—he has forced her to fire on the princes at gunpoint—and he will not like being foiled!” Claire pushed the power switch of the lightning rifle to the active position as she ran out of the gondola. “Four, open the lower hatch!”

She reached the hatch below in record time—three gasps of breath, in fact—to find that Four already had it open. She snatched up a safety line and clipped it to her leather corselet, then pulled her driving goggles down over her eyes to protect them from the wind. Snouts was bringing them around in a tight circle, but
Athena
could not adjust her course quickly enough. Lizzie was being marched over to a door let into the floor of the parapet, and before Claire could speak to countermand her own order, they disappeared from sight into the bowels of the tower. He would shoot her inside, and Claire could do nothing!

But outside, clinging to the ivy twining up the tower, her feet on the coping, Maggie wrenched open the door outside of which she was concealed, reached within, and dragged Lizzie outside onto the roof. Both of them leaped to the door to shut and lock it—oh, well done, Maggie!—but Seacombe was too quick—and physically, more than a match for the two of them. Inexorably, he pushed the door outward until the girls must yield or be unbalanced and pushed off the roof to their deaths.

“Snouts! Tighter!” Claire shrieked. They would not make the turn in time. The lightning rifle hummed, already at firing pitch.

Holding hands, both girls fled across the roof, legs pumping, skirts flying up before and behind as they fought the mismatched stone and slate. But Seacombe did not follow. For he did not need to.

Claire’s worst fear came alive in front of her wide, horrified eyes as he raised his pistol, aimed it with the casual negligence of the superior marksman, and fired.

The gun spat a foot of flame, and Maggie fell forward, her own momentum and that of the bullet carrying her across the roof to land in an untidy heap against an embrasure, a host of dead leaves flying up around her.

Claire screamed in pain and rage, and time—her pulse—the very rotation of the earth—slowed to a crawl. Her mind calmed as it iced over with the sheer necessity of ridding the world of this menace. Her focus narrowed to a single target, and she brought the lightning rifle to her shoulder. Sighting through the lens, she observed the moment when Seacombe became aware that he and Lizzie were not alone on the castle rooftop—that an avenging angel sailed overhead with grief in her heart and cold accuracy in her eye.

Lizzie flung herself upon her cousin’s body, screaming, as Seacombe swung the pistol around and brought it to bear on the open hatch of
Athena
.

Claire pulled the trigger and a bolt of blue-white light sizzled across forty feet of empty space, catching him full in the chest. Tendrils of light splashed outward over his jacket, his trousers, his head, and his bowler hat fell off. Before it hit the rooftop on which he stood, his eyes bugged out and evaporated. All his clothes fused to his body as it slumped to the rooftop, fell, and slid down the long pitch. It caught briefly on a stone rain gutter, flipped over it, and plunged a hundred feet to the ground, where it rolled into the shadows that had already filled the moat.

Overhead, the black clouds that had sailed in to intercept the course of the two airships, broke with all the fury of a hot summer storm.

“Four, ready the ship for mooring!” she shouted. “Lewis, winch me down!”

Lewis, panting from running from one end of the ship to the other, leaped to the winch and Claire flung herself into the basket.

Maggie could not be dead. God would not have given her into her care and then torn her from her at the hands of a madman. And—and blast it all—she simply would not allow it!

With the basket still four feet from the roof, Claire leaped over the side and landed in a crouch, the rifle still in one hand, then gathered up her skirts with the other and ran. Overhead, lightning leaped out of the sky, thunder cracked with a ground-shaking concussion, and the heavens opened up and wept.

*

“Maggie—Maggie—oh, please don’t be dead! Please, Maggie!” Blinded by tears, Lizzie crouched next to her cousin’s body, terrified to turn her over, yet desperate to know if that beloved heart still beat, if the life she valued more than any other was housed yet in this dreadfully still form.

Around her, thunder crashed and lightning lit up the rooftop as she gently pulled on Maggie’s shoulder and rolled her to her back. Her right arm flopped to the ground, as inanimate as clay. Every lesson Lizzie had ever learned in anatomy and biology clean fled her brain in her panic. Pulse? How did one check a pulse? How—

“Is she alive?” A feminine voice. A rush of wet skirts. The scent of roses and cinnamon. Who—? “Lizzie, you must pull yourself together,” the Lady said in a rush, already pulling Maggie’s jacket aside, her hands frantic on her chest, her ribs, her shoulders. “Is she
alive?
”

Lizzie’s mind seemed to snap back into operation as though a switch had been thrown. “Lady, de Maupassant—!”

“—is dead. I shot him. Dear heaven, Lizzie, is Maggie—what on earth …?”

For there was no blood. There should be blood—Maggie’s wet blouse should be running with it. The only blood she could see welled from a cut on her forehead where she had struck the wall in her forward momentum.

And then Lizzie’s frantic hands encountered something hard under Maggie’s waist. Hard and rectangular and utterly out of place. Not a corset. Then what? She yanked the batiste out of Maggie’s waistband, raised it up, and stared.

“Lizzie, what in heaven’s name is that?”

Lizzie’s mouth hung open, and it was only with difficulty that she got it shut and working again. She drew the objects—for there were two, one in front and one in back—out from under Maggie’s clothes. “They—they are mnemosomniographic plates. Dream plates. But why …?” The glass of the one in her right hand was cracked all the way across from the force of Maggie’s landing upon it. The one in back bore a dent as big as a robin’s egg in the brass backing, and the glass plate had been shattered altogether. Glass tinkled under Maggie’s body as they lowered her gently to the slate.

“Lizzie?” came a whisper, faintly under the sound of the wind and driving rain. “Lizzie, are you alive?”

She dropped the plates and gathered Maggie into her arms, hot tears welling in her eyes and running down her icy cheeks. “Mags! You’re alive! Tell me where it hurts, darling—are you hurt?”

“My back—something awful.”

“And no wonder,” the Lady said softly, gathering them both into her arms, her own face awash with rain and tears of joy. “Maggie, dearest, did you really use those plates as
armor?
”

“I couldn’t think of anything else.” Maggie’s voice strengthened with every word. “They were lying on the dream table so I just snatched them up in case he was armed.” Her eyes widened and she tried to sit up. “Is he—Lady, watch out—”

“He’s dead, Mags.” Lizzie helped her sit up. “The Lady got here just in time.”

“You got my message, then,” Maggie breathed. “The postmistress was dreadfully annoyed—she was just closing up to go to the fireworks and she—” With a gasp, she exclaimed, “The princes!”

“Safe,” the Lady said. “For some strange reason, the missile veered away from the ship at the last moment, and plunged into the river. They will have a bathing-pool there now, I daresay. It was quite the spectacular excavation.”

Lizzie might have laughed in sheer relief if her blood hadn’t still been thundering through her veins in the aftermath of terror. “I wrapped it in a corset bone,” she said, “while de Maupassant wasn’t looking. From my antigravity corset. It was repenthium—that useless element with the bad reputation.”

The Lady’s and Maggie’s eyes both widened in such comical astonishment that this time, Lizzie did laugh. She laughed and laughed, until finally she began to cry. But it was a good kind of crying. Sometimes life was such a wonderful gift that laughter was simply not adequate for the occasion. And like laughter, tears could be shared with those you loved.

“Lizzie,” Maggie said softly through her own tears, “the plates—they were the ones of your mother. I was in a hurry and—oh, Lizzie, if they were the only images of her that you had, I am so sorry!”

Lizzie shook her head, and wiped her cheek with the flat of her hand. “Don’t ever be sorry. My mother gave her life to save us all those years ago. Don’t you think it’s wonderful that her memory was the very thing that saved your life tonight?”

“Her memory, and your own resources,” the Lady said tenderly, smoothing Lizzie’s wet hair off her face, and touching Maggie’s cheek as if she were infinitely precious. “I can think of no better legacy a woman could leave the children she loved, can you?”

And as the Lady and Lizzie helped Maggie to her feet, Lizzie had to admit that she could not. Perhaps she would not destroy her mother’s portrait after all. In fact, if the Lady agreed, it would fit rather nicely over the mantel in the drawing room at Wilton Crescent.

The Evening Standard

July 23, 1894

TREASON RESULTS IN SHOCKING DEATH

In an act of treason that has shocked the nation and shaken the Empire to its core, it has been discovered that industrialist and financier Charles Seacombe, born Charles de Maupassant before he changed his name to evade capture and questioning for the murder of his wife, has made an attempt on the lives of Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and Prince George of Wales.

The motivation behind this dreadful act has its roots in the tide of republicanism that has swept the colleges and streets of England. Far from being a harmless belief to be argued over in lecture halls and public houses, this sedition has culminated in action upon the part of de Maupassant and persons unknown. These miscreants attempted to launch what is believed to be a bomb at the
Princess Alexandra
, His Highness’s personal airship, as it bore him and the newly wed Prince George to his country estate and thence to Balmoral in Scotland for the grouse season.

The bomb, this newspaper may report with unbounded relief, was successfully diverted, and in the course of a summer storm which passed over the neighborhood at the same time, de Maupassant alias Seacombe, on the roof of his house, was struck by lightning and instantly killed.

Lady Claire Trevelyan, lately inducted into the Royal Society of Engineers and resident of Belgravia, while travelling to visit friends along the same route as the royal party, was witness to the entire shocking scene. “It was my observation that heaven itself intervened to save the heir to the throne,” she said in an interview together with Lady Davina Dunsmuir, close confidante and representative of Her Majesty, from the Prince’s summer estate. “God may not be an Englishman, but I venture to say that our beloved country must have a special place in His heart.”

Private funeral services are being held for Charles de Maupassant alias Seacombe at an undisclosed location in order to avoid the risk of public demonstrations.

*

Two weeks later

“I see that you are not wearing black.” Lizzie sat up on the blanket spread on the broadmead in the shade of
Athena
’s deceptively shabby fuselage, and gazed at Evan and Claude.

“I see that you are not, either,” Claude observed, all traces of his usual insouciance and humor gone. The Sorbonne set, alarmed at the prospect of actual notoriety, had fled back to Paris, leaving him alone to face the consequences of his father’s actions. Alone, that is, except for his half-sister and cousin, who had returned to the castle to help him clear out.

Evan was watching the workmen down the river, who were busy digging out the crater caused by the missile and turning it into a bathing-pool, as the Lady had predicted. Lizzie had suggested it to Claude herself, though none of them would have the pleasure of swimming in it. Colliford Castle was to be sold, and as far as any of them were concerned, the sooner the better.

“I find it very difficult to put on mourning for the man whose only object since I met him was to take my life.” Claude winced, and Lizzie touched his arm. “I am sorry, Claude. I know you loved him.”

“I feel a perfect fool,” he said bitterly. “How could I not have known the kind of man he was?”

On the other side of the picnic basket, the Lady finished slicing the first of the Colliford orchard’s peaches, and handed half to Claude and half to Maggie. “Do not blame yourself, Claude. You are not alone in this—I was once engaged to a man who had an entire country fooled. The important thing to remember is that he did love you, and you loved the father in him, though the man was flawed.”

Claude nodded, his gaze cast down, and took a reluctant bite of the peach.

“Lady Claire is right,” Evan said. “I’m in the same boat as you, old chap—on the leakier end, at that. After all,
you
did not attempt to force opium elixir down your sister’s throat against her will.” He sighed, his shoulders drooping under his seersucker jacket.

“Evan Douglas, if you do not stop moping about that, I shall drag you over to the river and drop you in,” Lizzie said. “And you know I can do it.”

Evan gave a rueful smile and touched the back of his head, where the goose-egg had long since subsided. “I do indeed. But I hope I made up for it in some small degree by seeing your mother’s portrait safely aboard
Athena
just now. When do you plan to lift?”

“Soon,” the Lady said. “After lunch.” She gazed about, taking in the castle sleeping in the sun, the gardens, the river. The sweet smell of cut grass and the roses dozing in the moat wafted to them on the summer breeze. “Such a shame. This was a home, once. But I suppose now the new owners will be obliged to deal with the thrill-seekers who come to the gates to stare.”

“I am half tempted to change my name,” Claude said miserably. “But I suppose I must think of my grandparents and my responsibilities to the Seacombe shipping enterprise. They will be depending on me now.”

“If you are to remain a Seacombe, then perhaps I should become one,” Lizzie said. “You are my half-brother, and I certainly do not want to carry
de Maupassant
and all the horror associated with it for the rest of my life. Is that not so, Maggie?” The Mopsies, in great decisions and small, stuck together.

“No, it is not,” Maggie said.

The Lady straightened in surprise, and Lizzie felt a shock, rather as though someone in the river had dashed water on her.

“I don’t know what name I am entitled to, nor anything about the Seacombes except what I’ve been told,” Maggie said, a little defiantly. “I am half tempted to choose a name for myself. One of the Lady’s family names, perhaps.
Maggie Carrick
has rather a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

The Lady’s gaze warmed. “I do indeed—though you must think carefully on such an important decision. During a trip to Penzance, perhaps?”

“Capital idea,” Claude said, showing the first signs of animation all afternoon. “I must go in any case to see the grands—been putting it off far too long. We shall beard the Seacombe lions together.”

“Together—but not alone,” the Lady said firmly. “With the Dunsmuirs at Balmoral for the shooting, Tigg is free until they decide to return. If you are going down to Penzance after Emilie’s wedding, then I should feel easier if he went with you.”

Lizzie’s heart gave a bound, and to hide it, she touched Maggie’s fingers and redirected the subject, hoping no one would notice the color in her cheeks. “Whatever name we choose, Mags, it’s up to us to bring honor to it at least, if we cannot make it memorable.”

Evan gave a bark of laughter, and the Lady smiled. “My dearest girls, if anyone can make a name—or anything else, for that matter—memorable, it is you. Now, if someone does not cut that orange chiffon cake and give me a slice, I shall expire of sheer longing.”

Lizzie squeezed Maggie’s hand and amid the laughter, reached for the silver knife. In a world that was full of discovery, of friends and enemies, and of bewildering change, it was reassuring to know that there were some things one could always count on.

THE END