The Steampunk Trilogy (5 page)

Soon McGroaty was surrounded by enthusiastic young Amazons. Tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth, he placed an arrow in the bullseye. Then he presented his hindquarters to the target and, bending over and firing between his legs, split the first shaft with a second.

Applause and huzzahs filled the air. Lady Cornwall said, “Your servant seems to have found something to occupy him. Shall we adjourn to my private office and discuss what brings you here?”

“By all means.”

Seated in Lady Cornwall’s sanctum, holding a glass of port sangaree, Cowperthwait regarded the formidable woman before speaking. She had impressed him mightily with the acuity of her intellect and the strength of her mettle. He knew he must choose his words with care, so as not to anger or insult her.

“Ah, Lady Cornwall—”

“Please, I disdain titles. Call me Otto. And I shall address you by your Christian name also.”

“Yes, um, Otto, then. Otto, would it be safe to assume that you look with favor and hope upon the ascension of our new Queen to the throne, as an exemplar of competent womanhood?”

Lady Cornwall snorted. “After a year, she has yet to prove that she’s more than a poppet to Viscount Melbourne. I yet have my hopes. But she’ll have to do more than she’s done so far to merit them.”

Cowperthwait studied the depths of his sangaree. “Suppose I were to tell you that the Queen, in an assertion of her independence, has run away.”

Lady Cornwall jumped to her feet. “I’d shout bravo!”

“Please, Otto, calm down. While the Queen’s hypothetical desertion might appeal to your romantic side, if you stop to consider it practically it presents more cause for grief than rejoicing. If we don’t want to see the Queen lose the throne, then she must be cajoled to return to it.”

Dropping into her chair, Lady Cornwall favored Cowperthwait with a calculated look and said, “How does any of this relate to me and my school?”

Dropping all subtlety, Cowperthwait said, “I have reason to believe that you employ a veiled woman referred to as ‘Vicky.’ Might it be she of whom we speak?”

“What if I tell you no? Then I suppose you’ll demand that I haul poor Vicky before you, so that you can satisfy yourself. Why should I subject poor Vicky to your male imperiousness?”

Cowperthwait had no ready answer to this. Lady Cornwall eyed him piercingly, then spoke. “Cosmo, I respect you as a man of science, a male whose intellect and self-control raises him above the brutish level of his fellows.”

Such talk made Cowperthwait nervous. What would she think of him if she knew of the newtish Victoria, and how he had satisfied his base lusts upon it?

“Therefore, I will allow you to speak to my Vicky, but only on one condition. That you accompany me this moment on a mission that will perhaps open your eyes to the real condition of women in this isle. What do you say?”

“Well, if it’s the only way—”

“It is.”

“I consent.”

“Capital!” Lady Cornwall rose and took a dress off a peg and donned it unconcernedly. She changed her shoes, then pulled off her mob-cap, spilling out long auburn curls. Clapping a flat straw hat on her head and grabbing a reticule, she said, “Let’s go.”

“But my servant—”

“Are you afraid to venture unaccompanied someplace where I am not?”

“By no means!”

“Then we’re off.”

Leaving by a back door, Cowperthwait and Lady Cornwall made their way to an omnibus stand and were soon on their way cross town.

“Exactly where are we heading?”

“To Bartholomew Close, in the Smithfield Market. The central exchange for stolen goods.”

Cowperthwait fingered his cane nervously.

They disembarked at a dilapidated three-story building with gingerbread trim, whose lower floor held a meat-market. The sight of so much raw red meat and the smell of animal blood made Cowperthwait feel faint.

“We are looking for Liza, a flower girl. She normally stations herself here, although I do not see her now. I have been arguing for weeks with her parents, trying to enroll her in the school. I feel they are almost ready to consent.”

“What are we to do now?”

Lady Cornwall cupped her chin. “We’ll have to visit Liza’s home.”

Down several noisome alleys they treaded, arriving finally at a ramshackle tenement. Lady Cornwall went confidently in, Cowperthwait tentatively following.

Upstairs, in a darkened hall illuminated only by what light penetrated a small filthy cobwebbed window, the schoolmistress knocked on a door.

The door cracked open and a bearded, greasy face thrust itself out. “Which family?” said the man gruffly.

“The Boffyflows.”

“That’ll be one pence for crossing the Swindle establishment, one pence likewise for the Scropeses, and a third for the Snypes.”

“Very well. We’ll pay. Now let us in.”

The man opened the door fully. They entered.

The tiny candle-lit unpartitioned room held four families and their miserable possessions. The high-status Swindles occupied the quarter closest to the exit, and hence had to pay no tolls. Next came the Scropeses, then the Snypes. Lowest in stature were the Boffyflows, who cowered—mother, father, infants and adolescents—in the farthest corner.

Dispensing the pences, they made their way to the Boffyflows.

Father Boffyflow was a lardy fellow sitting in a rickety chair and nursing a black eye. Lady Cornwall accosted him. “Where’s Liza?”

“On her doss, snifflin’ and sobbin’.”

“Why wasn’t she at work today?”

“Argh, she warn’t makin’ nuffin sellin’ flowers, so I decided she had to go out as a cripple.”

“Cripple—?” Lady Cornwall hastened to the girl on her pallet and lifted up the slack form.

Liza’s fresh wrist-stub was wrapped in bloody rags.

Lady Cornwall wailed. “Oh, that I should have temporized with these savages! Now must I live with this on my conscience for the remainder of my life!”

She made to leave, carrying the unconscious girl. Boffyflow interposed himself, thrusting his stomach against the schoolmistress. “’Ere now, where are you takin’ my girl—”

Before Cowperthwait could interpose there was a gun-blast, and Boffyflow fell back in his chair, shot in the gut.

Lady Cornwall’s hand was in her reticule, which exhibited a smoking hole from the derringer within.

“Anyone else object?” she asked.

Mister Snype advanced cautiously. “No argyment from us, Ma’am, long as we get our pence on the way out.”

“Cosmo, see to it.”

With shaking hands, Cowperthwait paid the exit tolls.

The trip back to Number Twelve Notting Hill Gate passed for Cowperthwait as in a dream. Only when he was once more sitting in Lady Cornwall’s office and soothing his nerves with a rum and shrub did reality begin to resume its wonted dimensions.

When Lady Cornwall returned from letting out the female physician who had tended to Liza’s wounds, she said, “And now, Cosmo, I’ll keep my end of the bargain. Here is the woman you wished to see.”

Cowperthwait could hardly contain his excitement at the appearance of the veiled woman. At last, the real Victoria would be restored to the throne and his Victoria would be returned to him. . . .

The woman slowly lifted her muslin veil.

At first Cowperthwait could hardly believe that the face revealed to him belonged to a human, let alone a woman. A mass of keloid scars and twisted discolored flesh, it resembled that of some hobgoblin or creature out of Dante’s Inferno.

“A combination of acid and flame, administered by her bawd. Even women may hurt women, you see.”

Cowperthwait struggled for something to say commensurate with the horrible injustice of the situation. “I—my growth factor—perhaps it might repair some of the damage. I can’t guarantee anything. But regular applications might help.”

“Vicky would appreciate that. Wouldn’t you, Vicky?”

The woman nodded mutely, shedding a tear from one ruined eye.

“Thanks you, Vicky. That will be all.”

When the girl had left, Lady Cornwall came up by Cowperthwait’s side.

“Cosmo, you stood up admirably during that little contretemps at Smithfield Market. And your pity toward Vicky touches me. I would like to reward you, if I may.”

So saying, Lady Cornwall grabbed Cowperthwait in a grip of iron, tilted him backward and kissed him in the Continental manner, thrusting her tongue deep into his mouth.

Cowperthwait’s cane discharged thunderously into the floor.

5

THE FATAL DANCE

F
OR SEVERAL DAYS
after the visit to Lady Cornwall’s Lyceum, Cowperthwait moped about like a love-sick schoolboy. The surprising denouement to his visit, in which Lady Cornwall had revealed the passion which lurked beneath her competent exterior, remained vivid in his mind, obscuring all other matters. Even the notion of finding the missing Queen was cast into shadow.

Cowperthwait had for years dreamed of marriage to a perfect companion. The woman would have to be smart and amiable, literate and lusty, free-minded and foot-loose. Truth to tell, his creation of Victoria had been something of an experiment along crafting the perfect bride he could not find.

Now, in the person of Lady Cornwall, he was convinced he had found her. Smitten by her soul-kiss, he could think of nothing but joining their fortunes and estates together. A woman who could appreciate “Sexual Dimorphism Among the Echinoderms” was not to be found every day.

Seeking McGroaty’s opinion of the woman, Cowperthwait was somewhat dismayed by the manservant’s undisguised disdain of her.

“She puts me in mind of a sartin Widder Douglas I knew, back in Hannibal, Moe. Always a-trying to reform and change people, which in my book is about as pointless as tossin a lasso at the horn o’ the moon. Plus she’s all-mighty bossy. You mark my words—if’n you two get hitched, she’ll have you scrubbin’ her knickers on washday faster’n spit dries on a griddle.”

Cowperthwait would have liked to have McGroaty endorse Lady Cornwall, but it this was not to be the case, then McGroaty would have to simply lump it. After all, an opportunity like this came along only once in a lifetime. . . .

The lone difficulty in Cowperthwait’s view lay in how best to broach his proposal. It would have to be handled just right. . . .

When scarred Vicky visited shortly thereafter, for her first treatment with growth factor, Cowperthwait entrusted her with a note for her mistress.

Dearest Otto,

Our adventure is etched in flames upon my cortex. If you could possibly see fit to entertain me again, I would like to consult with you upon making our alliance a permanent one, so that we may offer each other mutual aid and comfort.

Your earnest admirer,

Cosmo.

The reply he received with Vicky’s next visit was rather brusque.

Dear Sir:

I am not at present of a mind to agree to any such permanent and exclusive arrangement as, if I read you aright, you are tendering. Let us submerge our feelings for the nonce, and remain simply friends.

Otto.

This cold water dashed on his marital hopes threw Cowperthwait into a blue funk. He spent the next few days homebound, reading and rereading a passage in Blore’s
Exceptional Creatures
about the Giant Rat of Sumatra. Eventually, however, he realized that such behavior ill-suited him. Thrusting aside all consideration of personal happiness, he plunged once more into his quest for his vanished sovereign.

Every waking hour was devoted to the increasingly futile search for the vanished Queen. Accompanied by McGroaty, the young natural philosopher combed the festering warren that was lower-class London; silhouette in hand, feverish, sleep-deprived brain alert for any trace of Victoria.

By daylight and gaslight, aboveground and below, amidst the noisy market crowds or alone in a rooming house with a work-worn suspect female, Cowperthwait pursued the mirage of Victoria.

From fish-redolent Billinsgate to the prison hulks at Gravesend, where convicts lay sickly in bilge-water; from Grey’s Inn law offices where pitiful petitioners pled their cases to tubercular sanitariums where angels like one named Florence Nightingale escorted him from bed to bed; from filthy dockside to plush gambling parlor—Through every stratum of the underworld, in fact—guided by McGroaty, whose knowledge of such places seemed encyclopaedic—Cowperthwait journeyed, footsore and obsessed.

And everywhere he searched, it seemed, a nemesis would greet him.

Lord Chuting-Payne, the arrogant, evil-tempered enemy of the throne.

Either Chuting-Payne was there waiting for him; or had just departed; or arrived as Cowperthwait was leaving. No matter what hour it was, the cruel and sardonic nobleman, always accompanied by the silent and forbidding Gunputty, appeared fresh and dapper, as unruffled as a calm lake. At those times when he and Cowperthwait came face to face, they usually exchanged no more than a brittle
bon mot
or two. Sad to relate, Chuting-Payne could be counted on to triumph in such exchanges, his rapier wit honed by a lifetime among the cynical rich.

Cowperthwait came to loathe the sight of the arrogant Lord with his precious-metal nose that made him seem half machine. He soon regarded the man as his own evil doppelganger, and the only comfort he could find in Chuting-Payne’s continued appearances was that it meant the Lord was having no more luck in his search for Victoria than Cowperthwait was.

Victoria. The name itself began to sound unreal to Cowperthwait. Who was this phantasm, this woman he had never met in the flesh? She lay at the heart of Cowperthwait’s life, at the center of the Empire’s power. On the one hand, although only on the throne a year, it could be generally sensed that, after a succession of old, doddering Kings, she was already the very lifebreath of a fresh new era, the embodiment of the sprawling political organism that stretched its tentacles across the globe. On the other hand, she was only one woman among millions, no more important in the ultimate scheme of things than the fishwife or costermonger Cowperthwait had just interviewed, no more to be loved and admired than the stoic Vicky whom Cowperthwait continued to treat. (And with some measure of success. . . .)

And what of his own Victoria? Melbourne’s dispatches had trailed off, and Cowperthwait had heard nothing of the hypertrophied Hellbender in days. The last missive had not been reassuring.

June 10

I fear the “black dog” of Melancholia has me in its jaws. I and the kingdom are positively undone, unless V. makes her reappearance. Whilst hopelessly waiting, I contemplate the merits of your creature: if only all women could be so tractable . . .!

From Stygian depths,

W.L.

Something of the same despondency gripped Cowperthwait. He hoped that the Prime Minister in his funk was not neglecting Victoria’s needs, but he had no way of finding out. It would hardly do to approach Buckingham Palace and ask whether the Queen’s skin appeared suitably moist . . .

Three weeks passed. There were now less than seven days until the coronation, and no sign of Victoria.

This evening found Cowperthwait preparing to embark one more time on another fruitless round of searching. On the point of setting out, a wave of ennui swept over him. He felt as if all his bones had been instantly removed.

“Nails, I fear I cannot continue this Sisyphean task. At least not tonight.”

“Cain’t say I blame you, Coz. I’m plumb tuckered out myself. What say we swing ’round to de Mallet’s, and take it easy for one night?”

“A capital idea, Nails. Although I fear I’m too weary to endure the embraces of any doxy, the atmosphere should prove congenial.”

Leaving the house, they encountered Tiptoft asleep under the front portico. Stepping quietly over the lad, so as not to awake him and be forced to endure a whirlwind of sweeping, they set out for Regent’s Street.

At the carven oak door of de Mallet’s luxurious establishment they employed the gilt knocker in the shape of a copulating couple and were quickly admitted by the majordomo. Their hats were taken, glasses of champagne were proffered on a golden salver, and soon Cowperthwait and McGroaty were seated in the large ballroom, watching couples dance to the stately strains of Mozart flowing from a gilt pianoforte, and eyeing appreciatively the corseted trollops sprawled on velvet chaises around the four walls.

The only incident momentarily to jar Cowperthwait’s composure occurred when he thought he detected a flash of reflected candlelight in an oddly fluted piece of silver borne aloft at nose-height across the crowded room. But if the glint indeed indicated the presence of Lord Chuting-Payne, that spectre did not materialize any more solidly, and Cowperthwait, by dint of his mental discipline, soon succeeded in banishing such fears.

Cowperthwait switched from champagne to Madeira, and the room soon took on an ethereal glow. The candelabra appeared to waver and flare, like will-o’-the-wisps. McGroaty disappeared at one point, presumably to display his Chickasaw scars to some lucky roundheels, and Cowperthwait found himself nodding off to sleep. He dozed for awhile and awoke feeling more refreshed than he had in ages. It was at this point that Madame de Mallet approached him.

Tall and buxom, swamped with jewels, perhaps overly made-up for some tastes, in the fashion of an older period, de Mallet was a well-preserved seventy. Rumor had it that she had been a chambermaid to Marie Antoinette (and sometime bedpartner of Louis), and had barely escaped the Revolution with her life.

“
M’sieu
Cowperthwait, may I interest you in a lady tonight? We have a new addition to the house.” Here de Mallet bent lower, and spoke in a whisper. “She is someone
tr
ès spécial, un bijoux.
I do not offer her to
tout le monde
, only my favorites. I can guarantee that it will be the chance of a lifetime.”

Cowperthwait was momentarily intrigued, but, not wishing to disturb his serenity with the rigors of carnal love, he ultimately declined. With a shrug, Madame de Mallet said, “
bien
,
as you wish.”

Feeling a pressure of a different sort emanating from his bladder, however, Cowperthwait said, “I could make use of a chamber pot, though.”

Madame de Mallet waved her beringed hand airily. “You are familiar with the house. But piddle,” she advised, “with discretion and a minimum of noise, please.
La chambre à c
ôté du pissoir
,
it is occupied.”

Cowperthwait got unsteadily to his feet. He made his tipsy way up the grand staircase, colliding off various couples in an illustration of Brownian motion which appealed to him.

In the second-floor corridor he began counting doors, but soon lost track. Cowperthwait opened what he recalled to be the correct door.

It was not.

Two women were in the room. One, clothed in a plain chemise, sat at a veneered secretary, her back to Cowperthwait as she vigorously scribbled in a small book. Upon hearing the door open, she cradled her arms around the diary, as if to shield its contents, and dropped her face down upon it.

The second woman, a veritable Amazon, filled the rumpled bed with her Junoesque naked body. Lying spread-eagled on her back, hands clasped behind and pillowing her head, she wore on her features an expression most obviously betokening sexual satiation.

“Otto!” exclaimed Cowperthwait.

Lady Cornwall was not embarrassed. “Yes, Cosmo, it’s I. How may I help you?”

Cowperthwait sank into a handy chair and held his head in his hands. “A daughter of Lesbos. No wonder you had no interest in my proposal. I should have guessed, from your mannish ways. How convenient for your perversion, you keeping all those young helpless chicks as your wards—”

Lady Cornwall leapt from bed and slapped Cowperthwait across the face. “How dare you impugn my motives! My girls are treated as chastely as nuns. Why do you think I’m buying my love in this place, if you imagine I sate my desires at the school?”

Lady Cornwall sat down on the bed and began to cry.

Cowperthwait could think of nothing to say or do except to mutter a useless apology and leave.

Finding the privy, he relieved his bladder. What a farce life was, he thought as he piddled. Missing queens, newts on the throne, Sapphic saviors. . . .

Ruefully buttoning his fly, Cowperthwait returned to the main salon.

The current piece of music was just ending. Cowperthwait was startled to see McGroaty standing next to the piano. A borrowed fiddle was tucked under his chin.

“Ladies and gents, pick up yer feet. Yer about to be ennertained by some authentic Virginny foot-stompin’ reels. Hit it, Wolfgang!”

McGroaty immediately began an enthusiastic sawing, the pianist managed to master the beat, and the floor was soon filled with energetically twirling couples. Cowperthwait found himself engaged by a red-haired whore and spun about. Reluctant at first, he found the lively music to be just the tonic his tired blood needed, after the dismaying revelation upstairs, and he was soon performing more spiritedly than anyone. Within minutes the dancers had stepped back to form a circle at the center of which Cowperthwait and his enthusiastic partner performed.

Cowperthwait’s head was spinning. He couldn’t remember when he had felt so wonderful. Damn all his troubles! By God, he’d give everyone a show! He hoped Otto was watching. Picking up his partner by the waist he began a particularly acrobatic maneuver. At that moment, two things happened simultaneously. From the spectators a disdainful voice said, “What an ignorant and savage display—” At the same instant, Cowperthwait lost his footing and launched his partner out of his sweat-slick hands and through the air.

After Cowperthwait had picked himself up off the floor and dusted himself off, he thought to look for the red-haired girl.

Her fall had been inadvertently cushioned by the body of Lord Chuting-Payne, who in so doing had lost his nose. The dead tissue and gaping holes in the center of face were revealed before the whole room. Strong men fainted and woman screamed.

Chuting-Payne calmly accepted his nose back from Gunputty and stuck it back on his face. Unfortunately, it was upside down.

“Dawn tomorrow at my estate, Cowperthwait. Your choice of weapons.”

Watching the misassembled nobleman haughtily depart, Cowperthwait wondered briefly if he could convince Chuting-Payne to agree to flying sword-canes at fifty paces.