The Sunken (26 page)

During his first few weeks on board the
Euryalus
, Nicholas hardly thought of Isambard at all. He spent every waking moment clutching the rigging for dear life every time the ship lurched on a wave, and learning the skills of a sailor: splicing and knotting ropes, folding sails, keeping time, and ringing the ship’s bell every half-hour.

His small frame made him the perfect size for a sailor, and soon he was swinging from the rigging with the midshipmen. His hands tore and bled as he hauled in the ropes — the boys at night compared their wounds and watched with fascination as their scabs healed into calluses.

And he
listened.
He had hoped being on the ocean might offer him some relief from the voices, but he had been wrong. He could not ignore them, for they were so different from anything he’d ever heard before: schools of fish who thought like compies — one mind with a thousand vessels; molluscs with thoughts like treacle — thick and syrupy as they clung to the rocks for dear life. And far below the surface, in cracks and crevices that stretched right down to the centre of the earth, flickerings of much older creatures, whose thoughts seemed to stretch across eons, alien, and indiscernible.

The
Euryalus,
a 36-gun
Apollo
-class frigate, was one of the few English ships not destroyed in the Battle of Trafalgar, that terrible day in 1805 where Britain suffered such heavy losses to the French and Spanish fleets that her naval power had been crippled ever since. The
Euryalus
’ orders were to patrol the Channel in a squadron with four other frigates, and engage the French ships that were disrupting trade between England and her colonies.

It was five months before he had his first taste of battle. He was on the foredeck when the call went up; a strange sail was sighted on the southwest, bearing up the coast toward them. She must’ve spotted them, because she gave tack, running away toward Ostend. The captain ordered the crew to raise sail, and they gave chase.

Nicholas was with the gunners. His job was to spread the sand on the deck – it would absorb the blood and water that pooled on the deck during an engagement and prevent the men and guns from sliding on the slick surface. He watched the men rolling out the guns – twenty-six eighteen pounders on the upper deck, where he was stationed. The more experienced sailors laughed and joked with each other as they prepared the guns, but the young boys exchanged worried glances. Nicholas knew he should feel scared, but he was excited at the prospect of meeting the French in battle and seeing the guns in action.

With the wind behind,
Euryalus
quickly drew ahead and the Captain gave the order to tack in front of the French vessel, a 31-gun frigate. She fired a broadside. Nicholas ducked as splinters exploded all around him, and the deck beneath him shuddered. He glanced around, but apart from a couple of boys cowering behind the mizzen, no one seemed that concerned. The French ship had tacked away in an attempt to escape, but Nicholas could already see they had made a fatal mistake. The
Euryalus
swung round and, with the favourable wind, was able to cross their line and the Captain gave the order to fire.

All along the decks, the cannons went off. Nicholas’ ears rang from the sound, and the acrid smoke clouding the deck quickly extinguished his vision. He coughed, and crawled forward to the bulwark to try to see if they had hit.

When the smoke cleared, he could just make out the deck of the French ship. Her sails had been shredded by their shot, and she was dead in the water. He could see her crew scrambling to ready their guns. The Captain was yelling orders, but Nicholas could barely hear him over the ringing in his ears and the shouts of the men around him as they loaded the guns again.

Another broadside rocked
Euryalus
, splintering the mast above his head and showering the deck in wooden shards. Nicholas leaned against the bulwark and covered his head. The deck shook violently as the guns fired again, spewing powder into the air. Nicholas rolled out of the way as one of his crewmates fell off the arm and crashed onto the deck beside him, blood pouring from his mouth.

A cheer rang out along the deck. The enemy ship had been sighted, and she was in bad shape.
Euryalus
made another pass with the guns, and the French surrendered. The Captain ordered a boarding party over, and Nicholas was chosen to help carry spoil back across to the
Euryalus
. At barely sixteen years of age, he stood for the first time on the deck of a naval prize and felt something like pride for his country, like he might finally have found where he belonged. It was a small victory in an ongoing war that the English were losing, but it filled Nicholas with hope for his future.

Weeks turned into months, and the months faded into a year. Nicholas’ voice broke and stubble appeared on his chin and his skin cracked and blistered. He began to feel at home on the sea and with the new voices that inhabited his head. Now that he knew his duties by heart, he spent his days learning about navigation and repairing sails from the midshipmen and officers. While on watch at night he would lean over the edge of the deck and call dolphins to dance alongside the ship. He even tried to summon up one of those monsters of the deep. But as soon as he grabbed a mind, it would push him out again. But he kept trying.

Euryalus
travelled down the coast of Europe, chasing down several Spanish privateers along the way, and finally put in at Gibraltar — her first time in port in fourteen months. The crew were let loose on the dockside to stretch their sea-weary legs. While the rest of the men headed to the taverns and bawdy-houses along the docks, Nicholas found the post office to deliver his letters to Isambard. He’d written several while on board, and these he stuffed into an envelope with some sketches he thought would interest his friend.

As he waited in line to buy stamps, he noticed a stand of British newspapers for sale — a few months old, but he hadn’t heard news of England in even longer. He picked up a copy of the
Times
and leafed through it while he waited for the line to move.

STOKERS TO BLAME FOR ENGINE WARD FIRE

Following the deportation of Stoker Marc Brunel for causing the death of a child at his school, a gang of Stokers armed with torches attacked the Navvy district in the Engine Ward, killing thirty-seven and razing most of the buildings, including a wing of Stephenson’s Cathedral, to the ground …

Marc Brunel — Isambard’s father, his beloved teacher and the only person ever to encourage Nicholas’ love of architecture — had been deported. Nicholas checked the date on the paper.
He’ll probably in Van Diemen’s Land by now
. He skimmed the rest of the article. The Navvies had left London, and anti-Stoker sentiment seemed at an all-time high.

Isambard.
His heart ached for his friend, now truly alone.

James Holman’s Memoirs — Unpublished

My ship, the HMS
Cambrian,
was heading to the Americas to join an English force to attempt to win back some of her lost territory. The excitement of finally being on board a vessel and bound for adventure soon wore off when I realised I had months of nothing to look forward to but miles and miles of ocean. I concentrated instead on working hard, taking regular exercise to prevent illness, and earning a good reputation on board, and so it was that by the time we put in at the port of New York, I had earned the esteem of the senior officers and was well on my way to making midshipman on board the
Cambrian,
a fifth-rate frigate in His Majesty’s Navy.

Without a huge English naval presence in the Americas, the French and Spanish had been systematically gaining control of the ports, and were exercising monopolies on some of the most sought-after goods; Venezuelan coffee, Cuban sugar, and South American indigo. King George wanted to re-establish a viable trade route, which meant first taking back, and then holding, the strategic port of New York.

After nine months at sea, I was itching to set foot on foreign soil and explore a country completely foreign to me. But it was not to be. The hard work of returning the port to British control had been done before we arrived, so we had entirely missed our chance for glory. Our orders were to patrol the mouth of the port, inspecting the crew and cargo of the vessels entering to ensure they weren’t French or Spanish. “Reflagging” of ships (forging their papers) was common practice, so any ship we deemed suspicious was sent to Halifax in Nova Scotia, where its goods could be seized and any American men found on board was impressed into the British Navy.

While the whole operation sounds terribly cloak and dagger, an adventurer couldn’t have asked for a worse posting. Since we inspected vessels as they came into harbour, we remained at the harbour entrance and after five further months, we had still not put in on dry land. I saw the ruddy peaks of the new land, of America, jutting up from the horizon, but she was as impossible to reach now as she was from England, and the sight of her taunted me so.

I wish Nicholas were here with me.

The Stokers and the Navvies had never trusted one another, but after the fire they were the bitterest of enemies. Stephenson’s response to the disaster was quick and devastating. Rather than rebuilding the Navvy camp, he simply moved his entire operation to Manchester, depriving the Engine Ward and the City of London of one of her most profitable businesses. And every time an engineer wondered why there was a lack of skilled workers, or the Royal Society lamented the loss of great minds to lesser cities, they had only to look to that charred patch of the Engine Ward to see where to lay the blame.

And during all this uproar, when the Stokers became overnight the most hated of all men in London, Isambard and Aaron toiled away on their engine, on their own private protest against the loss of Marc Brunel.

Isambard’s life took a turn for the worse after the protests. Aaron’s own unpleasant home life distracted him from his friend’s increasingly manic state, but he couldn’t fail to notice Isambard wincing as he worked. No matter how uncomfortable the temperature in the cellar, Isambard pulled his shirtsleeves down, attempting to cover dark bruises and burns on his arms and shoulders.

One day, about a year after they started work on the engine, Aaron entered their secret workshop to find his friend hunched over the bench, his face in his hands.

“Isambard?” Aaron reached out his hand, tentatively brushing his friend’s shoulder.

Isambard shrugged his hand away. He lowered his hands from his face, revealing a swollen black eye.

“What happened?” Aaron asked, no longer able to hide his concern.

“Mother has taken up with a new suitor,” said Isambard, his voice bitter. “The priest Merrick. He’s a brute of a man, more animal than priest. They are to be married next week.”

“Do you want to—”

“I
want,
” Isambard growled, “to finish this engine.”

In a rare moment of maternal kindness, Aaron’s mother took him and his older bothers Oswald and Peter to see a menagerie in Regents Park. Perhaps she’d simply wished to escape the tension of the Engine Ward for an afternoon, or perhaps she hoped the fresh air would wash away the stench of alcohol and sadness that pervaded her body.

Since Aaron’s father, Henry Williams Senior, had been killed by a falling pylon five years previously, his mother had raised the boys alone, although Aaron often joked with Isambard that whisky had been his real father. After losing her husband and favourite son, she’d found solace in spirits. Her dull eyes barely strayed from the bottle at her side, and her listless voice could scarcely exert any kind of authority over her home. Since Oswald and Peter had both enrolled in the Great Conductor’s seminary, Aaron looked after the home, made the meals, brought in a meagre wage from the scrap pits.

Although the Stokers were forbidden from working outside the Engine Ward, and the populace made it clear they wanted nothing to do with the “Dirty Folk”, they could not be prevented from otherwise enjoying the pleasures of the city. Being poor, mostly illiterate, and mistrusted by the majority of the populace, the Stokers found that most of London’s attractions — the lecture halls, the British Museum, the teahouses and bakeries — were out of reach, but the menagerie cost only a penny, and the proprietor wasn’t too fussed about who came in, so long as they paid up.

Aaron had to rise at 4am in order to finish the day’s work before lunch. He arrived back at the house to find his brothers, dressed in their black robes, helping their mother outside. She clutched their arms as though they were all that held her upright. They set off, not talking, slipping through the Ward’s high double gates and wandering toward the park. Aaron walked ahead, amusing himself by reciting the names of all the animals they would see. For once, their mother didn’t seem to mind.

“… llamas and monkeys and ostriches …”

Aaron heard from another boy that this menagerie included a swamp-dragon, and it was this he most wanted to see. His grandfather had always talked about the dragons — their stealth, their strength, their intelligence. Quartz loved to tell him tales about his grandfather battling with the fearsome creatures. Aaron could barely control his excitement.

As they crossed the city, the familiar thoughts of birds and horses and compies passed through his head. He revelled in their presence, not listening for their individual thoughts but enjoying the sensation of flitting in and out of their consciousness. His mood lifted.
Today will be a special day.

The menagerie was set up in a corner of the Regents Park. Two wagons stood against an ornate wooden gazebo, and makeshift wooden fences divided off separate open enclosures. Children tugged their parents between the wagons, exclaiming over each exotic beast.

At once, Aaron’s head churned with activity, as these large, exotic creatures pushed aside the thoughts of his usual animals. He raced toward the wagons, not heeding Oswald’s command to stop. More and more animals pounded against his skull — memories of far-off lands, deserts and jungles and watery swamps. He could see the head of a giraffe above the wagon roof—