by V. E. Ulett
“If you could get the right lift to carry you inshore, I should say it would be damned awkward landing in some farmer’s field rather than the forgiving sea.”
“You are very poetical,” Sir Edward said. “Speaking of the right conditions, how do you find young Dashwood take to his duty?”
“A finer hand with the Mechanism I’ve never seen, and apart from that Mr. Dashwood himself is like a rare old weathercock. Now if I may be so bold, Sir Edward, I’d like to pose a question of me own.”
Sir Edward nodded with an indulgent smile.
“What game is Lord Q playing at? Why the secrecy in my orders, and why is Miss Albuyeh ignored and not acknowledged for the service she has performed at great risk to her person? At Lord Q’s particular bidding, I might add. Code Black is what I will be remembering.”
The genial expression left Sir Edward’s face. “Who would have supposed the Golden Dragon, that viper of rapacity, would have been a woman, eh? A small Oriental at that. Do you know how it—she— died?”
“Miri...ah, Miss Albuyeh said it was the Hell-Cat, knocked her down and ripped the throat right out of her.”
“And you believe that tale, Maximus, an animal the size of a hedge pig?”
Maximus frowned. “And what tale would you be believing, Sir?”
“The one told by all three of the other survivors, and recollect that three people could not be more unalike. All agreed that it was Miriam who killed the Golden Dragon. Your seaman Krunk, who may be too bizarre even for your crew, saw the body. Throat torn out, but never a mention of a fabled cat. You just stated her clothes were covered in gore when you took her off the island, and her person bruised and battered.”
“You cannot really think...” Maximus fell silent, remembering the pressure of Miriam’s hand on his arm and the justice of her words on their walk to the quay. It would not do to defend her too vehemently. Maximus took a deep breath. “And so she is not to know the content of my orders because why—you suspect she is a savage murderess—yet Lord Q still wants to involve her in another mission?”
Sir Edward waived a hand. “I could say something pert like in Lord Q’s business a savage murderess may be of more use than not, but I won’t. We are not pert in the Navy, as you know very well. The secrecy is because there are too many unknowns and that is a thing his lordship cannot like. Will the young person agree to another mission or be taken away by her relatives? Will you carry her again knowing what she is? She seems to trust you, however, attending her to family meetings.”
“I shall certainly undertake the mission, Nonesuch and I are ever at the disposal of Government.” Maximus worked to keep the joy he felt from reaching his face. “Whether Miss Albuyeh will consent to another Code Black, is a matter for her to decide. If I were she, I would no risk it for an ungrateful nation.” He gave Sir Edward a level stare. “Returning to Nonesuch and her crew, Sir, I will say that Mr. Dashwood is a capable first officer. But he has a deal to learn about the ship’s ways and the people who work her. Someone just as promising for a crack ship’s officer, is the young lady herself, Miss Miriam Albuyeh Kodio Blackwell.” Thorpe, Maximus added with inward satisfaction.
Sir Edward choked, and almost spat out his wine. “Her? A woman, Maximus! Are you besotted, has your head been too long in the ether?”
Edward Pellew considered that only mutual esteem and long association kept Maximus Thorpe from coming to blows with him over his remarks. He’d put an official letter into Miriam’s hand, and then seen them both over Queen Charlotte’s side, attentive to any familiarity between them. Any little becks or glances or over solicitudes. None were shown, except when the gig had pulled a ways toward Nonesuch, Sir Edward did remark the two heads inclined together. Were he a score years younger he should like to be tête-à-tête with such a woman; beautiful, no fool, no quite the opposite, a luminous skin, eyes, and figure; but that was neither here nor there. The question that Lord Quondam put to him was whether Maximus was in fact besotted.
“I really could not say,” Sir Edward said, uncomfortable before Lord Quondam, an unfeeling reptile incapable of appreciation of a beautiful woman or much of anything else resembling human feeling. “What do you collect? You heard all he said from the sleeping cabin.”
Lord Quondam, an older man whose once ginger locks were now a pure white, stared at Sir Edward out of matching intense green eyes. “Not quite all, I stole down to have a look at our Miss. Having seen, and knowing what the lass is capable of, what I collect is if Maximus hasn’t managed to capture her attention, he is no connection of mine.”
“I thought you did not desire the connection?” Sir Edward’s voice was strident. He was certain he’d been asked to warn Maximus as to the inappropriate foreignness of the young lady. “Maximus and Miss Miriam’s connection I mean to say.”
A ghost of a smile played over Lord Quondam’s face, and he regarded Sir Edward as though he were a not very bright schoolboy. “You did not mistake me, I will not be approving of any love relationships. What would happen were I to let all my best operatives live happily ever after?”
Sir Edward could not like any of this. He reflected that he would far rather fight Barbary or South China Sea pirates or any number of fleet actions, than deal with his own country’s foreign service and its peculiar machinations. “Then what’s to be done?” he asked.
“Break them up, of course. This mission you’ve sent them on is admirably calculated to do just that.”
“I’ve sent them on!” Sir Edward cried. “Pray do not honour me with any credit in your schemes, Lord Q.”
A legitimate smile lit Lord Quondam’s face, it seemed he did not dislike his sobriquet. Sir Edward couldn’t understand Lord Quondam’s treatment of Miriam, and more especially Maximus. Kind, generous, honest soul that he was, Sir Edward wished God might speed the young people away from a life of intrigue, spying, deception, and bedevilment.
Chapter Eighteen
Mr. Dashwood found them weather, and Miriam was allowed to stand on the companion ladder, speaking trumpet in hand, to relay orders during the ascent. She was in full high altitude dress, including a new cap of alpaca wool and leather ear pieces Saramago had whipped up for her. Maximus was wrestling the yoke back when the larboard steering cable parted, throwing several of the seamen stationed there backwards in its wild trajectory. Nonesuch canted sharply to starboard. Miriam hung on with one hand to the companion ladder handrail, while in the other she clutched the speaking trumpet. She dangled for several seconds, until Mr. Dodd came pelting downstairs, knocking her loose of her hold and into the starboard bulkhead.
Among the larbowlines flung down, Krunk was getting to his feet. He pulled Miriam upright and gave her a shove back in the direction of the ladder. “Like no ship I ever—”
Krunk didn’t finish speaking because Maximus roared for the seamen to take stations for replacement of the steering cable. On deck Mr. Dashwood managed the scraps of canvas forward that kept Nonesuch’s head before the oncoming gale. Miriam clung to the companion ladder rail with both hands, speaking trumpet clamped under one arm, trying to focus on the steering cable operation led by Maximus and Mr. Dodd. Partly to concentrate her mind after the great thumping she’d taken, Miriam felt a knot rising on her scalp already, and so that she might see Mr. Dodd coming next time.
In less than half a glass, as Miriam was learning to calculate time, the spare steering cable was in, another laid neatly along the deck for redundancy, and the ascent sequence started again. The ship’s bows came up and up, Maximus wrestling the yoke, Mr. Dashwood clinging to the Mechanism when he wasn’t running from lower deck to upper, while Miriam shouted the Captain’s orders to adjust the stunsails. Then came the well remembered soaring up and settling down that caused Miriam’s stomach to flutter.
The helm changed. Mr. Dodd ran down to take it, and Maximus went on deck to supervise the getting up of the flotation. Miriam tried to squeeze small on the ladder each time they passed.
“How
do you do?” Maximus said, his voice full of concern, as he moved round her.
“Very well, Sir,” she said, “I thank you.”
Miriam had learned a thing or two about the Navy, and knew that was the only reply she could make unless she wanted Maximus to lose credit before his crew.
By the time the great balloons were filling, the air penetratingly cold, and the turbulent sea and winds left behind, Miriam did feel nearly well. Saramago brought her a second coca maté while the work of firing braziers and inflation began on deck. She sipped it through a silver pipette from a covered mug. The buffeting of air sounded against the ship’s hull, and it grew quiet and colder still. Mr. Dashwood came half way down the ladder.
“We are at altitude, Mr. Dodd. Keep her very well thus.” Mr. Dashwood turned to Miriam with a smile, and in a softer tone he said, “Miss Miriam, the Captain desires you will join him on deck with the atmospheric instruments.”
Miriam staggered aft into the open space that was the great cabin, and took the instruments in their strapped cases from the racks on the bulkhead. She hung them by the straps crosswise over her body. The journal of atmospheric notations she put in a pocket of the canvas harness she wore over trowsers, gown, and greatcoat. God be Merciful, she thought, hauling her load up the companion ladder, and don’t let me fall forward on my face this time.
Mr. Dashwood fastened her harness to the lifeline as soon as Miriam’s foot touched the upper deck.
“Captain Thorpe is right forward, ma’am,” Mr. Dashwood said with some gravity. And then he burst out, “This is my first love! Is it not the glory of the world? Hahaha!”
“It is, Mr. Dashwood. It is, indeed.” Miriam’s knuckles were turning white gripping the lifeline.
She clamped shut her chattering teeth and shuffled forward, forcing one foot in front of the other. After all this was what she’d longed for when imprisoned. Here was glory indeed, the sun going down, touching the surrounding clouds with rays of orange and pink, while in the east the heavens were changing from azure to darkest indigo to true black night. Miriam gazed around and was dizzied by the vista, by the great arc of heaven and earth and sea. Her legs tingled and felt as though they would not support her.
When Miriam reached Maximus she crumpled in a heap on deck, not face first thankfully, it was more a general collapse. Maximus bent kindly down, holding to nothing though also harnessed to the lifeline, and took the instruments from round her neck. By degrees Miriam let go her grip on the lifeline, in order to draw out the log book and note the readings. Her heart beat hard as Maximus shouted atmospherical pressure, elevation, and wind direction to her. She noted them down with a hand shaking in time with the hammering of her pulse.
Once the readings were done, Maximus knelt down beside Miriam, so he wouldn’t have to shout to be heard over the rush of wind.
“It is all about equilibrium,” Maximus said. “How she stays aloft. The pressure of air below the ship, the stunsails keeping her level, the balloons making her rise but no too high. Not into the rarified air itself, where we would be finding it difficult to breathe.”
“If only we could discover that in life, the perfect balance of forces.” Lord Q’s letter intruded upon her mind. Miriam pushed the thought of it away. What was it beside the beauty and terror of the present moment.
“You are a long-headed one, Miriam m’dear,” Maximus said, feeling the knot on her head through the material of the cap. “How I hope this great lump may not lessen your wit and penetration. Have you noticed how every generation thinks those that came before...that they were monkeys in our father’s day?”
Miriam wanted to laugh, but then she reconsidered. Wasn’t that how she viewed her mother and even, at times, Francis? Zahraa Albuyeh Kodio was something of an adventuress and what the unkind might call a bolter, flying from one man to the next as inclination and opportunity suited. Miriam glanced sideways at Maximus; she was not embarking on such a career, she would not merely borrow power from those that had it.
“I know just what you mean,” she said.
“I told you I felt my foster father’s presence aboard Queen Charlotte? As though the right old bastard were just in the coach or the next apartment. You are shocked, I apprehend.” Maximus stopped speaking, turning to check the flotation. The clouds were changing from shades of purple to gray, darkness and the first stars appearing. “When I was a saucy midshipman, I told this foster father of mine I wanted to command a crack ship someday. He cuffed me so hard, I—” Miriam interrupted with a gasp. After a pause Maximus went on in a gentler tone. “Polidari was called in, because he was a foreigner and under obligation to my father. My sight was saved, but ever after he behaved different toward me. As though he resented the freakish look of me, the cause of which only he, I, and Polidari know.”
“Oh Maximus!” Miriam cried. “I’m sorry, but what a perfect monster of iniquity. You must surely not still feel your looks, that is, your eyes are in any way—”
“No, I don’t.” He grasped her hand and put it on the lifeline. “Stand up slowly now, Miss Miriam, and we shall walk aft together. I don’t feel freakish, not since you have been so good as to see past the outside colour of things.”
Miriam’s step was livelier, more confident on the exposed deck with Maximus beside her. The Captain stopped to consult with Mr. Dashwood, overseeing the men at the braziers and the voltaic pile. Grasping the lifeline with one hand and a stanchion with the other, Miriam gazed up and around at the enormity of the heavens. The stars shining out ever more numerous in the sky, the clouds close in to the ship and passing right over her, the dimming panorama below of sea and islands and coastline. Vistas like these put heart into her when she was at her lowest ebb. Miriam wanted to be one of Nonesuch’s people, to live among those who took to the sea and sky.
When Maximus returned to her, Miriam said, “Can you stand to hear more Persian poetry, do you suppose?”
“If you please.”
“‘Oh this night! This night, it is fit to inspire, Every heart with the passion of love and desire. May these joys never cease to entrance them, O never; What a night! What a night! be it blessed and for ever.’”
Maximus turned away from her for a moment, raising one hand to his eyes. He cleared his throat. “So fitting, so beautiful and true, like you, dear Miriam.”
“No, Maximus, like this.” Miriam gestured at the heavens through which they sailed.
“Which reminds me of what I was telling you earlier of equilibrium,” he said, “and how important it is for the operation of a crack ship. I may have had a hard knock or two coming up, but to be captain of this ship, to sail in her with you, to find that I can possess the regard of such a woman as you, that is compensation more than equal to anything I may have suffered along the way.”
Miriam felt an inward glow of belonging, to the ship and to her people, from Maximus down to Thrax secreted somewhere in the hold. She even had kind feelings for Mr. Dodd. If Maximus could pass off being nearly blinded as a mere hard knock, Miriam thought she could likewise forgive and endure.
“You are generous, and I am beautiful,” Miriam said with satisfaction. “Whereas our forebears are unimaginative, unromantic, and at once brutish and pretentious. And yet...were not they the ones who dreamed of all this?” She waved her arm, meaning to encompass the ship and her incredible method of sailing. “Are other crack ships out there?”
He shook his head. “No one knows how many there are, except possibly that right old bas..., that is to say, Lord Q.”
“Oh him!” Miriam tried to sound unconcerned but that masterpiece of deception, Lord Q’s letter, would rise in her consciousness. She would not allow it to spoil her pleasure, the exhilaration of how equilibrium felt, up in the ether. “Do you know how that poem ends?”
“Oh aye. I do read you know.” He gave her a coquettish smile, out of keeping with the odd eyes, the sun and wind burned skin, and the flaming red tendrils escaping his cap and whipping in front of his face. �
��‘Though the lamps are all burning, the guests are now gone, and the bride and the bridegroom left happy alone.’”
Miriam was happy, on the deck of a ship thousands of feet in the air. Whatever might come to pass she had experience to sustain her, the good and the bad and the sublime: Like the present one. So high were her spirits that Miriam even allowed into imagination children with the man beside her, in some golden distant future, who would be brought up differently than she and Maximus had been. She would put their abilities and capabilities before whether they might be girls or boys, never dictate what they must aspire to, and so raise no monsters of vanity, iniquity, and entitlement. The notion made Miriam smile, her heart for once truly light and merry.
Author’s Note
An author’s note is the portion of a book where I’m permitted to address you directly, dear reader. I wanted to use this opportunity to note those words in GOLDEN DRAGON that aren’t my own, and where not attributed in the novel, provide the sources where I encountered them.
Persian characters in the book are fond of quoting poetry, engaging at times in their own versions of poetry slams, and rightly proud of such national treasures as Hafez of Shiraz, Sa‘di, and Rumi. The following two books were the sources for the Persian poetry quoted in GOLDEN DRAGON.
Customs and Manners of the Women of Persia and Their Domestic Superstitions, translated from the Original Persian Manuscript by James Atkinson (ebook available free on line)
The Education of Women and the Vices of Men, Two Qajar Tracts, translated from the Persian and with an introduction by Hasan Javadi and Willem Floor
The letter that opens Chapter Three was written by Edward Pellew, Admiral Lord Exmouth, commander of the combined Anglo-Dutch Fleet that bombarded Algiers on August 27, 1816. The Edward Pellew, Admiral Lord Exmouth of historical fact was a remarkable man, one bearing no resemblance to my fictional character I’m sure—please see Publisher’s Note at the beginning of the book. Everything in GOLDEN DRAGON is made up, except where it isn’t.