Steampunk Voyages

by Irene Radford

  “Machines with souls,” the Frenchman sniffed with disdain. “I care not for this. I care only that tomorrow night I must produce a ballet. A lovely ballet that will touch the hearts of many. Women will cry openly at the ending. Men will turn away to hide their emotions. This is true art. I begin now with the understudy.”

  “Understudy! I did not authorize an understudy when I funded this production,” Charles Babbage shouted.

  “We always have the understudy. And now I put her on stage while you play with your mechanical toy.” He clapped his hands and walked rapidly past my hiding place among the curtains.

  “Carlotta, you are now Giselle. Change your costume quickly. Quickly, I say.” He clapped his hands. “Georgette, you will dance Carlotta’s solo. Come, come my children, take your places.”

  I tried moving behind the set piece to speak to Lady Ada. A crush of dancers pushed me deeper into the black draperies. I fought the twisting fabric only to find myself tangled further.

  “Help!” I squeaked among the muffling folds.

  “How’d you get there?” the young lady who had come in with me said as she parted the fabric.

  “An accident. Where is your costume, girl? You’ll be late for the rehearsal.”

  “Oh, that.” She dismissed my concern with a gesture.

  “Madame Magdala?” Lady Ada asked. She appeared in front of me. “What are you doing in Paris?”

  “I have come with distressing concerns about your current project, my lady.” I dipped a small curtsey, as much as the curtains would allow.

  My rescuer faded away.

  “I don’t have time to deal with your concerns, Madame. I have a codex to repair.”

  “My lady, you can’t allow the automaton to perform. You dare not even allow it to rehearse,” I protested.

  “Don’t tell me you fear it will grow a soul. I know it can’t.” Lady Ada strode away.

  I followed. We rounded the flat scenery and I confronted the silver dancer of my vision.

  It stood medium height with long slender legs. They’d painted her skin a convincing flesh colour and given her an idealized face with more intense pigments. Her eyes stared blankly, without blinking, under dark lashes and brows enhanced by makeup, the same as the real dancers that mingled about preparing for the dance. The automaton wore the stylized stage peasant costume of short Madonna blue skirt and white apron (symbolic of her innocence and chastity) with multiple petticoats and ribbon trim. Her blouse and tightly laced bodice mimicked the simple garb of farm girls from previous centuries. She wore braids of real human hair coiled into flower be-decked knots above her ears.

  I stared at her, truly amazed at her life-like qualities. If she lifted her chin and stepped out to join the corps de ballet I’d not have known that she was made up of gears and levers, without a bit of blood and bone.

  Those unblinking eyes betrayed her lack of humanity.

  “My lady, do you know how dangerous this enterprise is?” I asked.

  “Don’t distract me, Magdala. I need to adjust the codex. I was sure I’d gotten all the pieces right. We’ve been working on this for over a year.” She bent to open the mechanism’s back where the golden cards, punched to a lacelike fineness, fitted into their appropriate slots.

  “My Lady Ada, do you know the story behind this ballet?”

  “I never asked. That isn’t what interests me. This is the most complex machine Mr. Babbage and I have ever built.”

  “Then you do not know that the lost souls of this story might hover nearby, waiting to take over this mechanical body?”

  “I haven’t time for your mystical nonsense now, Magdala.”

  I stiffened. Indignation roiled inside me. I almost, almost turned on my heel and returned to London. But no. I had not risen from nursemaid to social doyenne on wounded dignity.

  “My lady, you of all people should remember that your father’s Great Experiment in the summer of 1816 proved without a shadow of a doubt that the soul is measurable, quantifiable, moveable, and capable of manipulation. Sometimes not for the good of all people involved. These are scientific facts.” I forced myself to remain straight and dignified rather than retreat into tears and faints, as I had wanted to do on my desperate flight away from Lord Byron, twenty-five years ago.

  Then, I’d had to remain strong for my dear Mary Shelley and her precious baby. Today, I remained strong to keep the true Wili from taking over the ballet and all of Paris.

  “My father’s conspiracy is not to be mentioned in my hearing!” Lady Ada stamped her foot and planted her fists on her hips.

  “Very well, my lady. Then remember my own adventures, adventures you dispatched me upon, to rescue a series of young girls lured into the clutches of one Lord Ruthven for the purpose of stealing their souls and their blood for his experiments in the dark arts. What happened to all the souls that fled when his Leyden jars were broken? Where did they go?”

  Lady Ada paused, almost as still as the automaton. Then she breathed deeply and returned to counting the golden cards of the codex.

  “My lady, the story of this ballet is about what happens to young maidens who die of a broken heart after being betrayed by lovers who profess undying love, then marry another. Those maidens become spirits who wreak most horrible vengeance upon all men who cross their paths. Imagine if one of those wrathful spirits inhabited this machine and then turned her near-indestructible strength upon the other dancers—the orchestra —the audience!”

  “Impossible. Souls cannot inhabit machines. If they could, then my father . . . my father . . .”

  “Can’t they?” I wanted to march her out and introduce her to Bellerophon.

  “If you wanted free tickets to watch the ballet you only needed to ask.”

  “I have no wish to see this ballet performed by an automaton. There are some things machines should never be allowed to do.” I stomped off, convinced I’d have to stop this dangerous project on my own.

  But how?

  The steam engine beneath the boards hissed. The backdrop of a painted forest with a castle on the hill rising above it slid into place.

  I ducked behind the stage manager’s podium. I found there a thick sheaf of papers denoting lighting and set instructions, along with notes on his musical and dance cues.

  Dancers poised in their starting positions. The conductor raised his baton.

  All eyes turned toward him.

  On the downbeat, the attentive musicians began the brief Overture of bright, lively, and flirtatious music. Dancers tapped their toes, bent and twisted in time with the music as they worked to keep their muscles ready, but not so much as to overtire themselves.

  Then a pause and the first dancer ran on stage, Hillarion the huntsman who loved Giselle from afar. He performed a brief and undemanding solo, leaving a nosegay on the porch of Giselle’s “house.”

  Duke Albrecht leaped on stage, resplendent in red and gold cloak and be-plumed cap, followed by his more ordinarily dressed servant. Albrecht shed his cloak, cap, and sword, revealing a handsome leather tunic symbolic of the hunt he pursued, and yet common enough to disguise his noble heritage.

  As if any costume could disguise his tall and regal bearing. The blond dancer was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen. Twenty years ago I might have pursued him.

  He leaped and bounded across the stage, landing frequently in front of Giselle’s door with heartfelt pantomime. Then Giselle, wearing a duplicate of the automaton’s blue and white costume, stepped through the door and danced to meet her one true love.

  I gasped at the charm of the girl dancing the role. She betrayed her emotions with delicate flicks of her glance followed by demure lowering of her gaze, by intimate touches of her hand against Albrecht’s sleeve, and the pure joy of dancing in perfect synchronization with him.

  No automaton could imitate that joy.

  Part of my attention strayed backstage, where Lady Ada continued to fine tune the codex. Mr. Babbage stomped around her with o
il can, screw driver, and tuning fork ready for any task.

  Mostly I watched the dance, amazed that human bodies could perform these feats of athleticism with such grace.

  In my imagination, I lived with the dancers the idealized, carefree celebration of a peasant festival. I shared the wonder of young love with Giselle and Albrecht. I wanted to curse when proud Princess Bathilde entered with her hunting party and accepted hospitality from Giselle and her mother. All the huntresses wore riding habits in the latest fashion, with top hats tilted at the precise rakish angle.

  And then, to heap irony upon betrayal, Giselle and Princess Bathilde danced together, extolling? celebrating? their joy as newly betrothed maidens. They compared the handsomeness and loving attention of their men, not realizing they were engaged to the same man.

  Lady Ada closed up the back of her mechanical dancer. “It’s ready,” she whispered to Mr. Babbage on a satisfied sigh.

  “Activate her,” he ordered. “We need her to dance as much as possible for the experiment to work.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Charles. Let the understudy at least finish the first act. This may be her only chance to dance this role, and she deserves it,” Lady Ada admonished him. She patted the pocket of her leather apron for the key.

  I had to get the key away from her.

  But keys can be duplicated. The codices, on the other hand, were complex, and had to be hand punched so that no two were ever alike. The chances of a replacement working as well as the original were slim.

  Onstage, Giselle learned the truth about her lover and began to go mad. She danced a sad echo of the earlier pas de deux in broken and jerky attempts to deny the truth.

  Chills began to crawl along my flesh. More than just dancers had come to this rehearsal. I saw misty forms gathering in the flies above the scenery. The same talent that gave me the occasional true vision also allowed me to sense the presence of the Wili.

  The dark haired girl in the Spanish shawl came up behind me. “It’s so sad,” she sniffed.

  “Why aren’t you in costume, on stage?” I asked, jerked out of the pathos occurring on stage and the gathering storm of emotion above us.

  “Oh, I’m not a dancer. I came looking for Lady Ada, Countess Lovelace. I have a packet of messages for her from George Fraser. Are you she?”

  I snorted. “Do I look like the wealthiest woman in the United Kingdom?” Well actually, my gown and its black lace were fashionably cut by the same modiste used by the Queen’s ladies in waiting.

  A quick glance at Lady Ada, and I knew why the young lady had made the mistake. In her plain brown gown of sturdy linen and her leather apron, her Ladyship could pass for any of the dressers and servants who worked backstage.

  “Save the letters for now. I am one of Lady Ada’s agents.” George Fraser, cheeky young man, I trusted to send accurate and useful information. I did not trust him with this girl’s virtue. “I have a job for you. Can you distract that woman for a few moments?”

  “I think so.”

  On stage Giselle stole Albrecht’s sword, which had been given back to him the moment Princess Bathilde claimed him as her own. She continued her mad dance as Albrecht and Hillarion tried desperately to get the weapon away from her.

  Too late. Giselle ran the blade through her body. A blossom of red silk scarves streamed from the “wound.” A collective gasp rose from the cast. The music paused.

  Giselle stumbled forward a few more steps in the last parody of life, then collapsed into her mother’s arms.

  Albrecht erupted in an angry dance of grief and blame. He browbeat Hillarion for betraying him, his servant for bringing Bathilde to this village, and Bathilde for not being Giselle. He blamed everyone for Giselle’s death except himself.

  From my angle, I could tell Giselle held the blade beneath her arm, clutched tight to her side. She fought to keep her breathing shallow, not betraying that she actually lived. The audience could well believe she had killed herself.

  The curtain sank down from the flies and the dancers all scurried away to prepare for the second act, while stagehands reset the stage to a woodland with a fresh grave and marker.

  “I’m Emma,” the girl beside me said, shouting into my ear to be heard above the stagehands cursing and dropping things, of dancers shouting at each other and the conductor admonishing his musicians. Noise we wouldn’t have during an actual performance.

  “And I am Madame Magdala, proprietoress of the Book View Café and agent provocateur of Lady Ada, Countess Lovelace.”

  We shook hands.

  “Tell me, are you acquainted with the Abbess of the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration?” she asked during a lull in the commotion.

  Somewhat shocked by this girl’s connection to an old friend who once gave me refuge, I replied curtly. “Of course.”

  Emma nodded agreement, as if she also were willing to say as little as possible about connections. “I’m thinking I could replace Mr. Fraser as an agent of Lady Lovelace now that he’s . . . um . . . dead.”

  “Georgie dead? Oh my. I knew he’d come to a bad end, but I’d hoped he would survive his current mission. He was one of my favourites. A bit cheeky and forward, but a damned good agent.”

  “Damned is right,” she muttered darkly. Then she brightened and looked me directly in the eye. “My thoughts exactly.” She flashed me a grin akin to George Fraser’s.

  “Come, we must get that key in Lady Ada’s apron pocket.”

  Too late. Lady Ada inserted the notched instrument into the centre of an artificial rose on the automaton’s waist corsage. Its hands came to life first, flexing fingers, then hands and arms. It rose up on pointe, barely needing the special dance shoes to support its body.

  Lastly its eyes blinked and a bit of animation came to its mouth.

  It betrayed no emotion. How could it duplicate the innocent joy of Giselle at the beginning and the sad madness at the end?

  I stopped my progress through the backstage maze and held Emma back with my hand. “We have to try something else.”

  The ill managed engines whistled, releasing pent up steam.

  The automaton winced and slapped its hands over its imitation ears.

  I remembered the butler at Lord Reedstone’s home deliberately creaking the stairs in an annoying pattern. I remembered using my own steam whistle in the café as a precaution to detect artificial beings.

  I had an idea.

  “Wait here Emma. When you can, steal the key!” I dashed off for the orchestra pit.

  The musicians stretched and chatted. A few took sips from flasks. The conductor paced. He paused here and there to make notations on a musical score, to hum a note for a violinist to retune, to pat a flautist on the back for a job well done.

  I wanted that flute. Too many men stood together blocking my access. Instruments are expensive. They would not give one over to me, despite my connection to Countess Lovelace and Charles Babbage, who had put up the production money.

  I tapped my foot to the rhythm the drummer sketched on his instrument.

  As the stagehands moved the last imitation tree into place then shuffled offstage, the dancers took their places, and technicians hooked a flying harness to the soloist who would dance the role of Myrta, queen of the Wili.

  Carlotta waited among the corps de ballet, demoted from the starring role, now that the mechanical dancer had been repaired. She scowled, thrusting her toe shoes into the rosin box and grinding the yellow crystals angrily.

  The ballerinas now wore elegant ball gowns made of filmy, green-tinged tulle, cut to mid calf, with wide necklines and puffy short sleeves, made shorter than fashionable gowns so they wouldn’t trip on the layers. If the dresses had been longer, they could have worn those costumes to any grand party in the city. Except that each of them had a pair of tiny wings, more tulle stretched over fine wire, attached to the back of her dress.

  They looked very much like the woodcut in the book of German folklore with only slight variations on the g
owns.

  Lady Ada guided her automaton to the dressing room to change her costume for the second act.

  We had to wait. I needed that dancer on stage, the only place where it could be separated from Lady Ada’s protective presence.

  The orchestra and dancers took their places. I edged behind the percussion section, avoiding the man with small hammers poised above the chimes. His concentration was riveted upon the conductor and his score. Hiding behind the huge kettle drums, I waited well out of his peripheral vision.

  Act two began. The engines beneath the stage pumped out steam that drifted about the stage in clouds and wisps, hot and smelling of the sulphurous coal that spawned it. The humidity was almost like being inside a laundry.

  Myrta in her harness flew across the stage. The audience glimpsed her briefly between two trees. Clever lighting darkened the area above and behind her, making the chain that held her disappear from view. Then she came back the other way, closer to the front, looking more real and substantial. Then she flew a third time, this time coming near the proscenium, descending until she landed soundlessly on pointe. She took tiny steps that made her seem to float between trees. Behind a tree, a stagehand slipped the hook off her harness. The steam thinned.

  Hastily I searched what I could see of the backstage area for indications of the valve for the stage manager to release steam when he needed.

  Emma wandered about in her Spanish shawl, also seeking something.

  A hunting party led by Hillarion the huntsman entered from stage right, lost in the dark woods. He’d delayed the nobles’ sport too long. Midnight approached. They all shivered in dread as the mist thickened and forms moved within the concealing steam. When they hurried off, the hunting party did not notice the mound of a new made grave upstage, far left. A cross with the name Giselle marked it.

  The Wili entered, filling the forest glade. They danced in sad, silent groups, delicate, ethereal ghosts. Their wings fluttered and some of them rose up, flying. The music became as much a part of them as the steps, haunting. Gentle notes soared and played.

  I gasped in awe at the beauty and precision of the dance and the staging, and hoped to view the entire thing uninterrupted on another night.