by Juliana Gray
Now, I quite understand that a modern steamship is not a Napoleonic frigate, and I have studied the design and construction of a twin-screw propeller and the system of bulkheads that renders a vessel almost impervious to the dangers of moderate collision. Moreover, the Marconi wireless has made it possible for a ship in distress to communicate her emergency to a dozen waiting ears in an instant, thus improving the ordinary passenger’s chances for survival.
But I simply cannot overcome, in my logic, the extreme fragility of a ship on the ocean. The vessels of today may be larger by many multiples than those of a century ago, built of steel instead of wood, propelled by machine instead of wind and sail, but to the ocean itself, this difference is beneath notice. Against the infinity of nature, we remain but grains of sand. It is folly—hubris—to imagine our machines can prevail against God’s will.
Nevertheless, I had been ordered to take ship in search of the Duke of Olympia’s missing heir, so to the Isolde I repaired, disappearing like an ant into that massive steel hull, to be greeted by the respectful captain and shown to a stateroom by a white-clothed steward. The cabin itself was new and luxurious, having (as the duchess informed me) just benefited from a thorough refitting, and I fell asleep soon afterward on my brass-railed bed, not even noticing our grinding departure from England until I woke, some hours later, to the gray morning light in the porthole, and was promptly sick over a large portion of the expensive new carpet.
If you have had the good fortune never to suffer the misery of seasickness, I congratulate you.
You can then only guess my vexation at missing the entirety of the ship’s passage through the famously temperamental waters of the Bay of Biscay, and the debilitating sense of physical malaise that accompanied my confinement to my cabin. Let me assist you. Imagine that your stomach has been replaced by a butter-churn, and your brain has been removed from its stem and placed upside down in your skull, which has incidentally been filled, in the manner of a rubber balloon, with a mixture of pebbles and bicarbonate of soda. Owing to the severed connection between brain and stem, you are likely unable to move, and if you can, by immense concentration, manage to part your eyelids, the image you see before you will demonstrate an unfortunate tendency to roll about in exact opposition to the churn in your stomach.
Indeed, you are better off not opening your eyes at all.
But I did, eventually. Open my eyes, I mean, to the darkened cabin around me, sometime the next day, because I could no longer bear the sole company of my own overturned brain. The curtains had been drawn over the two portholes, and the lights were off, but when I trained my gaze on the benign gilt-framed painting across the room, ignoring the drunken swing of the room around me, the details of my surroundings began to take vague shape.
The cabin was not large, but it was beautifully furnished. The bed was made of brass and railed on each side, to prevent the sleeping occupant from being turned out of his berth. There was a door on the opposite wall, leading presumably to a private bathroom—all the Isolde’s staterooms now boasted individual facilities for the convenience of the duke’s guests—and a chest of drawers, secured to the floor. As I lay observing, the ship lurched into another wave, and the room and its furniture held me in firm grasp, coasting effortlessly over the top of the disturbance. The painting, I now saw, was of Arundel Castle on a golden autumn afternoon.
On the table to my left, some unknown steward had deposited a cup of water, made of metal and weighted at the bottom. I reached out a shaky arm and forced myself to sip. The tempest in my head, I knew, was the result of a drought of vital fluids, not the seasickness itself. The back of my throat welcomed the water’s coolness. I sipped again and sat up.
What time was it? I was not wholly certain, but I thought we had left Southampton no more than a day ago. The glow around the edges of the curtains was dim and gray and shifting, but certainly daylight. We must be in the Bay of Biscay, I decided, and the bay was notoriously violent against those ships that dared to cross her. My misery, therefore, would last some time. I might as well find a way to endure it.
Come on, Truelove. Get out of bed.
I lifted my legs free from the covers and discovered I was wearing a nightdress and dressing gown. My slippers had overturned and lay against the wall, near the door to the bathroom. I staggered toward them, clutching the furniture for support, and continued through the door to retch unsuccessfully into the bowl of the convenience.
When I was finished—that is to say, when my stomach gave up attempting to rid itself of nonexistent bile—I wiped my damp forehead with a towel and made my way back into the bedroom, where I settled myself into the armchair next to the porthole and stared at the ceiling.
Mr. Haywood. Mr. Arthur Maximilian Haywood—Max, it seemed, to those with whom he was familiar, like the amiable idiot Lord Silverton—was wholly unknown to me: a ghost who had, until now, occupied a vital yet theoretical role in my life. His letters and parcels I had forwarded unread to my employer’s attention, as I did with almost all of the duke’s personal correspondence. I knew him only by the handwritten direction on those letters, quick and precise, and by the portrait that hung above the mantel in the duke’s Hampshire study. It depicted a serious-eyed young man with dark hair and a thick mouth, and features that resembled the duke’s own, except for the coloring. He was not handsome, but his expression commanded attention. I had often felt that he was observing me as I worked at my small desk near the window, though of course the idea was absurd. A painting is only oil and pigment, after all.
In fact, I had only had anything at all to do with Mr. Haywood’s affairs since last winter, when he and the duke first conceived the notion of an institute for the study of ancient objects. I had never known His Grace to be especially interested in such things before, but his passion for the subject ignited at once. Perhaps it had something to do with the nature of these objects, which I understood were of an unusual sort. Mr. Haywood, in the course of his archeological investigations in Crete, had discovered a number of artifacts that—or so he insisted—possessed properties that could not be explained by ordinary science. At the time, I had not inquired what, exactly, those properties were. It was not my business.
The Duke of Olympia, however, had been intrigued by his grandnephew’s claims, whatever they were, and had spent the past year enthusiastically putting them in the way of further study. Tens of thousands of pounds had already been invested in the institute in Rye, and Mr. Haywood had forwarded regular parcels containing objects for its initial collection. Now, of course, the duke was dead, and Mr. Haywood could not be found. And here I was, roiling atop the sea in my prison of steel, charged with his urgent discovery.
How the devil was I going to do that?
I have every confidence in you, the dowager duchess had said, as we poised on the driveway to make our farewells. She had given me the packet of papers necessary for my voyage and kissed me on both cheeks. The sky had been very black, and her face almost purple in the light from the house. What had she said? You have a particular talent for detail, my dear, and I know you will not disappoint me.
An odd way to put things, I thought now, and I forced my torpid limbs to unpick themselves from the cushions and slump to the small writing desk a yard or so away, on which I had placed the packet of papers Her Grace had given me.
A mistake. The documents swam before me: passports, letters of credit, introductions to people I did not recognize. It was beyond my strength even to assemble the words into meaning. I would study everything later, I thought, and I cast about for my traveling desk, which went with me everywhere, and which I could use, if necessary, while sitting up in bed. Should I ever again commit so foolhardy a maneuver as to raise my head, of course.
The stewards had stowed my desk on the floor next to the bed, and I had just unlocked the bottom drawer and placed the papers inside, when the deck began to tilt in the slow, magisterial, vertical m
anner I recognized too well. An especially murderous series of waves followed, one after another, while the metal groaned from within and the wind raged at the portholes. I closed my eyes and anchored myself to the floor. When I opened them again, I saw that a few of the papers had come loose and scattered across the rug.
For a moment, I simply stared at them. I dislike disorder—my room, wherever it happens to be, remains always in immaculate organization—but I could not summon either the will or the strength to recover these errant sheets. The few feet of carpet seemed an impossible distance, and the ship would go on rolling to one side and then another.
Go on, then, Truelove, I told myself. You cannot leave the duchess’s papers lying on the floor like this. A disgrace.
I placed both palms on the rug and crawled carefully to where the papers lay, and one by one I gathered them together in a tidy stack. As I did so, I realized they were not documents at all, but photographs, each enlarged to the size of a sheaf of ordinary notepaper.
I turned to lean my back against the wall of the groaning ship, and I held the first photograph up to the faint light from the porthole.
If I hoped to find some clue to the new duke’s whereabouts, I was disappointed. The first photograph was of a stucco wall, covered by a series of peeling and disjointed frescoes. I held the photograph closer, but I could not quite make out the images in the paintings. I would require the magnifying glass in my traveling desk to see them clearly.
I turned to the next photograph, which depicted a similar scene, and then the third.
This one had been taken at a closer distance, and I could actually make out the furry gray figures in the frescoes. There was a woman, and an immense man next to her wearing a helmet of some kind, the top of which had been eroded away. Ahead of them stood a man, muscular and warlike though not quite so large as the first, holding a sword in one hand and an object in another, with which he appeared to be beckoning his companions.
I held the photograph higher, and a bar of light from the porthole crossed the image, in such a way that I imagined, for a confused instant, that the object in this ancient man’s frescoed hand was a No. 1 Brownie camera, of the type manufactured and sold the world over by the Eastman Kodak Company.
But of course I was mistaken—my God, naturally I must be mistaken!—and as the ship pitched back downward, shutting off the meager light, the bile rose up in my throat, and I threw down all three photographs and crawled to my private bathroom, the most miserable creature atop the seven seas.
The Lady did as her brother suggested, enlisting the help of her most trusted handmaid to secure the disguise of a humble peasant, and leaving word for her father and her husband that she had gone into her monthly seclusion. The handmaid borrowed a donkey from her brother, who worked on a small farm near the palace, and together the two women and the donkey walked down the long road from Labrys to the port.
When they arrived, the Athenian youths had already been taken from their ships and housed in great splendour. They were bathed and anointed with oil, and robed in rich silks and velvets. The Lady and her handmaid took up dishes from the kitchens to serve in the banquet hall, and it was there that the Lady beheld the sacrificial youths for the first time, and the man whose fate was already written alongside hers for eternity . . .
THE BOOK OF TIME, A. M. HAYWOOD (1921)
Four
That, my dear, is Gibraltar,” said Lord Silverton, propping his elbows on the topmost rail of the promenade deck some three days later. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“I do, but I would not deprive you of the pleasure.”
He reached deep into a waistcoat pocket and produced a pipe. “As a cure for seasickness, tobacco cannot be recommended highly enough.”
“I doubt any substance so noxious could be called a cure for anything.”
“Still cross, I see. Not that I blame you, mind. What a beastly old Biscay she was, this go-around. At her absolute worst.” He seemed to be having difficulty with his match, turning this way and that in an attempt to shelter from the draft that rushed along the sides of the ship. “Not that the bay is ever anything less than tempestuous. Ah, there we are.” He straightened and dropped the match into the navy water below. “This is more the thing, isn’t it? Clear skies, calm seas. Your face is looking decidedly less gray already.”
The scent of pipe tobacco filled the breeze. I tried to hold my breath, but you can’t avoid the draft of a modern steamship traveling through the February weather at sixteen or seventeen knots; it plows directly into your nose, whether you like it or not. I held my fist to my mouth and said, “So that is Gibraltar. I thought it would be larger.”
“Ha! Yes, these things are never so great as we imagine them, eh? But it’s a fine old rock all the same. I climbed to the top once, when I was a reckless young lad of seventeen. We had put in for coal, I believe.” He paused, sucking gently on his pipe, and patted the rail. “It was my parents’ honeymoon trip, in this very ship.”
“Your parents’ honeymoon? And you were there?”
“Well, my father and my stepmother, to be precise. Olympia lent us his ship for an entire year, almost. My half brother was born off the coast of Argentina, in the middle of a hundred-year gale.” He laughed. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen my father so frightened. At one point, my stepmother ordered him off the ship in a lifeboat. Luckily he ignored her and carried on, with the help of a bottle of Scotland’s finest, procured for him from the ship’s stores by yours truly. One doesn’t much listen to women in the throes of childbirth, you see. Anyway, she had another the following year, so I suppose it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.”
“You shouldn’t speak of such things.”
“What, childbirth?” He tilted his head to one side. “I never could make that out, actually. What’s improper and what’s not. Nothing more natural than having a baby, and yet we’re not allowed to speak about it. Why is that, do you think?”
“Because it’s—because—well, a woman’s delicate sensibility demands—”
“Oh, rot. If you had seen my stepmother laboring forth in the middle of a hurricane, you’d have no more regard than I do for this so-called female delicacy.” He knocked the ash from his pipe. “It’s because babies are the natural consequence of human concourse, I suppose.”
I choked into my fist. “Sir!”
“Yes, exactly. And there’s nothing dirtier, is there, than a man and woman coming together in mutual— Now, don’t flounce off, Truelove. You’re a sensible, emancipated woman. If a chap can’t have a sensible, emancipated conversation with a sensible, emancipated woman, what’s the point of civilization?”
“This is not a sensible conversation, and I don’t have the slightest idea what you mean by emancipated.”
He made a fluttering motion with his hands, as of wings. “Free. Independent. Able to think and act and decide for oneself.”
“I hope you’re not accusing me of being a suffragette, Lord Silverton.”
“Well, are you?”
“Of course not!”
His hands dropped to the rail. “But don’t you want the vote?”
“Certainly not. Why should I? It’s a nasty business, politics, and we women are well clear of it, in my opinion.”
“Oh, nothing more beastly than politics, I quite agree. Pigs in the sty and all that. But it’s rather essential, you know, if one wants to get one’s way in life.”
I looked down and smiled in the general direction of my hands, which were gloved in kidskin and folded, one above the other, on the rail before me. “I don’t mean to shock you, Lord Silverton, but women have been . . . getting their way, as you put it, for millennia, without recourse to voting for it.”
“Are you quite sure of that, Truelove? I can think of a few instances—”
“Such as?”
He pulled at the wisp of golden curl that escaped on
to his forehead from beneath the shelter of his woolen cap. “The suttee, for example.”
“Yes, a horrifying practice, quite repugnant to our British sensibilities. But do the widows themselves object? Do their families? Very rarely. So it is not the legality of the matter that must change—the politics, if you will—but the moral constitution of the people themselves, of which women are guardians. Once the women decide they want something else, I can assure you, they will shortly have it.”
“You dazzle me, Truelove. I’m dashed if there isn’t a fatal hole in your logic somewhere, but for the moment you have me at an absolute loss. Drawn, quartered, flopping in the wind.” He chewed on his pipe. “Though—and I don’t mean to be cheeky—doesn’t that make you emancipated?”
“Sir, I gather your notion of emancipation has mostly to do with the freedom to engage in improper conversation, by which definition—”
“I object. I only engage in improper conversation twice a day, at the outmost.”
“—by which definition, I insist that I am not emancipated at all.”
“Now, where’s the logic in that? Just because your rigid old society has decided that certain subjects—sexual relations, for example—are dirty things that must not be discussed.”
I said quietly, “You couldn’t be more mistaken, your lordship. We do not restrain ourselves from discussing human love because it is dirty.”
“What, then?”
“Because it is sacred.”
Silverton wrapped his hand around the bowl of his pipe and leaned forward on his elbows, contemplating the coast of Europe. A fishing smack caught the early sun, and its sail turned to gold.
“Now that,” he said, “is the kind of logic I can’t possibly answer. Have you stomach for breakfast, do you think?”
As it turned out, I did not have the stomach for breakfast, and found myself a short while later back in my berth, attempting to examine the stack of papers in the drawer of my traveling desk without losing what little porridge remained to me.