by Jasmine Walt
Like all the engineers of the Ward, Brunel delivered nightly sermons from his church, mostly on matters of locomotion, mathematics and the science of machinery. Tonight, he was speaking on his favourite topic: the advantages of his broad gauge railway design. With Brunel's name gaining notoriety, there would be a crowd for sure. Aaron slapped Quartz on the shoulder as he passed, and clambered up to level two.
Aaron took a shortcut through the tunnels and emerged on a staircase, which he ascended into the shadows at the rear of the Chimney. Brunel had extended the shell of the old chimney into a high circular nave, and had incorporated some of the Stoker workshops into wings that stuck from the structure like the legs of an insect. The rest of the workshops – and the shacks and tenements the Stokers inhabited – were hidden behind the complex. From the street the building was dwarfed by the majestic churches surrounding it, but Brunel had already extended many of the Stoker tunnels deep underground. If the Royal Society ever found out …
Lit by strings of flickering Argand lamps cascading from the vaulted ceiling, and enclosed by the comforting sounds of shuffling feet and subdued coughing, the space seemed homely, a place of solace and learning. As Aaron had suspected, every pew was full. He recognised the faces of many prominent engineers – influential men who wanted to see this upstart Stoker for themselves – and in the far corner, nearly concealed by the shadows, Aaron recognized the gaunt face of Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society.
What's he doing here? He has done nothing but denounce Isambard to the other sects. If Banks was listening to Isambard's sermon, it meant he must consider the Stoker "engineer" a real threat.
As Isambard spoke – his tone rising and falling with vehemence as he explained why broad gauge railway would be the future of England – Aaron felt the tension in the room rising; a palpable film of outrage and antagonism clung to the air. While Isambard was popular among the workers of Engine Ward, here among the elite, among his true peers, he had few real supporters.
At just twenty-five years of age, Isambard was an imposing presence, even to his childhood friend. Despite his short stature, he carried himself with an air of quiet confidence, his work in the Engine Ward keeping him thin and muscular. His eyes – wide and sparkling – betrayed his boyish enthusiasm. He didn't rest his arms or elbows on the pulpit, as other preachers did, but kept them at his sides, occasionally raising or lowering them to emphasise a point. His voice, clear and animated and tinged with a rasping edge from his time by the furnaces, soared through the vaulted metal nave, so every soul present heard every word, though they would not understand them all. Aaron barely understood anything Isambard said these days.
When the sermon finished, Aaron watched as Banks got up to leave, slipping quietly into the retreating crowd so no one would notice him. A Messiah could not be seen in the church of another sect without arousing suspicion, as the fear of plagiarism was rife. Wealth, status, and prestige followed the men who invented the most useful and brilliant machines, and everyone wanted a part of that. It was not unknown for men to become mercenaries of scientific information, trading ideas and designs between competing engineers, but it was a dangerous profession – one wrongly recounted fact and an experiment could literally destroy an engineer. If Banks was here himself, it meant understanding Brunel's innovation must be worth the risk.
Aaron waited ‘till the church had emptied before approaching the pulpit. Above the altar, a dusty skylight cast a shaft of light down on Isambard's crouched form. He leaned over his notes, furrowing his brow and rubbing his temples, as he always did when he was stressed.
"I took these numbers from a book of algorithms, but I think they're incorrect," he mumbled, scribbling notes in the margin of his page. "It will take me days to correctly compute these sums."
"Charles Babbage is creating a machine that will calculate the equations itself, eliminating the problem of human error," said Aaron, who'd heard gossip about it from Quartz.
"I know, and I wish he'd damn well hurry up about it. I heard he's been charged with blasphemy – not much hope for a counting machine now. Come down to the workshop."
Isambard's workshop mimicked the secret basement room they had used in their youth. He'd built it several storeys below the church, accessible only by a steam-powered lift or a winding staircase guarded by several booby traps. He pushed Aaron inside the tiny lift shaft, and cranked the handle to send them on their way.
"I want to show you something," he said. "You're the first to see it, and I want your honest opinion."
"Is this your entry to the King's competition?"
"Ah, so you saw the article in the Times." He mimicked Joseph Banks' refined voice. "'If the Stokers hadn't killed all the tricorns, the dragons would never come to London and eat all our bonny bangtails.' And how many times can the man say the word ‘engineer’ in one sentence? He would do anything to sour public opinion against me."
"He hardly needs to worry. I don't know why you're bothering, Isambard. They will never vote for a Stoker design, even if it is brilliant."
"And yet, I have made all this," Brunel swept his hand through the air, indicating the clanging elevator, and the Chimney, high above. "The King believes in broad gauge, Aaron. That's why he allowed me to build all this. That's why he sent Banks here tonight to spy on me."
"So you saw him, then?"
Brunel ignored Aaron’s question. "King George created the gods and the churches and the Royal Society, so he can bend them as he wishes. And if I could win—"
"You hope for too much."
But Brunel wasn't listening. "Presbyter!" his eyes danced. "Imagine one of the Dirty Folk being able to jump to the rank of Presbyter! The winner will sit on the Council of the Royal Society – imagine that! The result of this competition could alter the course of Stoker history."
The elevator creaked to a halt, and Brunel pulled the grating open. Aaron followed him across the tiny landing to the heavy iron door, which stood open most of the time (being rather difficult to move) but was now shut and bolted.
"I didn't want any prying eyes to steal my idea," he said. He unlocked the door, slipped off the bolts, and he and Aaron each leaned a shoulder against the door and pushed.
The door creaked open to reveal the high, airy chamber, at odds with its underground location. Ventilation shafts carried fresh air from the city (if any air in London could be defined as fresh), and a system of pipes discharged waste and fumes into rubbish pits behind Engine Ward. Long workbenches lined every wall and stretched across the centre of the room, covered in every manner of contraption imaginable. In the far corner, a furnace flared, sending flickering shadows across the room.
Aaron had visited many times before, but still he found himself in awe of the expansive space. Isambard seemed utterly at home here, as though he had become part of the machinery himself.
Brunel strode across the workshop and pointed to a model spread across the central workspace. "Look!" he cried, his eyes dancing with excitement.
Aaron bent over the model, seeing immediately it represented an exquisite miniature cityscape of London, perfectly rendered in clay and metal. Around the entire boundary of the city proper, a great wall towered, the smooth sides high and imposing even on such a small scale.
"It's a wall," he breathed, at once grasping the simplicity of Brunel's plan. "A wall to keep out the dragons."
"Not just any wall. One-hundred foot high, made of iron, and powered by steam. With controlled entry and exit points, not only will she protect London from further dragon attacks, but she'll help with crowd control and the checking of goods coming in and out of the city. And when the French finally get up the balls to invade, she'll help our army to protect and defend the city. And the best news of all, she'll be wide enough to run a rail line around the city. A broad gauge line."
He showed Aaron the working model of a locomotive and two carriages, which he placed on the rails on top of the wall. Aaron watched in awe as the train wound its way ar
ound the model, passing tiny stations in each district.
A wall – so simple, yet so ingenious. A solution employed by cities for thousands of years. Aaron smiled at his friend and said, "You're sure to impress the King with this design, Isambard."
"I pray you speak the truth, friend."
"Do you have any idea what Stephenson plans?"
Isambard spat. The very mention of Stephenson's name induced a deep fury within him. While Brunel toiled in the Engine Ward, building his first locomotive engine from stolen plans and snippets of overheard lectures by the eminent locomotive engineer and Messiah, Richard Trevethick, Stephenson, son of a wealthy civil engineer, had built his locomotives using his "standard gauge" of four feet, eight and a half inches, and had laid down track for a line between Stockton and Darlington in the north of England. With money at his disposal and a ten-year head start, Stephenson was poised to be the man to accomplish Isambard’s greatest dream – to build a cohesive, functioning train line between every city in England.
After Trevethick died, Stephenson's work had earned him – or, as Isambard claimed, bought him – the honour of being declared the Messiah of the Church of Great Conductor, the God of steam machinery whom the Stokers – along with Stephenson's Navvies and some other, smaller churches – worshipped. As Great Conductor's representative on earth, Stephenson had complete power over England's expanding rail network, and he constantly blocked the proposals of smaller engineers and bought up the choice plots of land. Besides this, Stephenson was responsible – in Isambard's mind, at least – for his father's deportation. It was no wonder Isambard grew ever more hateful of the man he deemed his greatest rival.
If the winner of the King's competition were granted the position of Presbyter, then that man would have a vote in the dealings of the entire sect. Stephenson would no longer be able to ignore him, and Isambard wanted that honour more than anything.
If only Isambard could win, which he wouldn’t.
"I shall complete the plans shortly," declared Isambard. "And take them to Somerset House within the week. What do you think, my friend? Do you believe I have a chance?"
"More than a chance," Aaron lied, lifting the tiny locomotive in his fingers and watching the pistons moving the wheels around the shaft. "We'll be building this Wall together by next month, of that I am certain."
"The only problem is the exterior." Brunel threw a set of drawings on the table. "The King favours designs with a strong aesthetic, and I have no eye for such trivialities. My Wall is ugly, and this will count against me. But I won't have someone from the Church of Isis turn it into a Romanesque bauble. I need an industrial architect, someone who cares more for steel pylons than Corinthian columns and acanthus leaves!"
"As fortune would have it, there is an architect just arrived in London," Aaron said. "I met him on Tuesday, after I rescued his friend from the dragon in Kensington Garden. He has trained in France."
"He sounds perfect. What is his name?"
"Nicholas Rose, although you might know him as Nicholas Thorne."
Brunel's face paled. "And his friend you rescued?"
"James Holman, the Blind Physician."
Brunel slumped into his chair. "Both James and Nicholas? In London – together?"
"Nicholas has only just returned from France under strange circumstances. How he got across the blockade he didn't say, but they both asked after you most profusely. They are anxious to meet you, and wonder why you have not answered their letters."
With trembling hands, Brunel reached behind him and withdrew from the desk beside the furnace a small drawer. He tipped a stack of letters into his lap. "All unopened, all unread. I thought they blamed me for Henry's death, for I was the one who dragged them on to the platform. I blamed myself … and then my father was sent away. I just wanted to forget, to throw myself into the world of machines. And so, I could not bring myself to answer either of them. But now it is too late. It has been so long—"
"If they did blame you, that blame has long faded. They express only concern, and pleasure at your success."
Brunel's eyes did not leave the stack of letters in his lap. "They truly do not hate me?"
"They worry that you harbour hatred for them."
He looked up then, and Aaron saw the beginnings of tears glistening in the corners of his eyes. "Tell Nicholas I would be honoured to receive him, and that I have urgent work for him if he requires it."
Nicholas had seen the paper, too. He'd paid a matron of the guesthouse a small fortune to get him a copy of the Times with his breakfast, and he'd roused himself from his melancholy long enough to flip open the pages. He hadn't seen a British newspaper in several years – they were in short supply on the ships, and they'd been banned in France since George III denounced Christianity. Not that he could've got his hands on one anyway from his mountaintop prison—
He scanned the headlines. The announcement of the engineering competition sounded vaguely interesting – perhaps he could find work with whoever won. Suddenly, a sentence popped out at him.
"Excuse me?" he called to the landlady. She bustled over with her tray of tea things, but he held his hand up to stop her filling his cup. He pointed to the article. "The paper talks about the King recovering from an illness. When did this happen?"
"Gor, you been living under a bridge, sonny?"
"Something like that," he said gravely. "I had no news where I've been. Last thing I'd heard, he'd made a complete recovery from his malady and sent his eldest son to the block."
She snorted. "That nasty business was some years ago, now, though the next two sons is dead too. The King was distraught – he’s only got daughters left now, and he keeps them locked in the castle for their own protection."
"What did the princes die of?"
"Well, that Joseph Banks – he was only the Royal Physician then – said it was venereal disease on account of all the ladies they were having relations with – but both of them within days of each other? Most say 'twas poison, the poor dears. George hasn't married again, and with none of his immediate family still livin’, no one knows who'll be crowned when he dies – I get men in here all fired up over the Council debates, an' they think we're headin' for another Cromwell. But dammit if George ain't ninety years old and no sign of him bein’ infirm ‘till he took ill a few months ago—"
"And that's why Banks—"
"—is now the Prime Minister. You're a clever lad." She patted his shoulders. "More tea?"
He obliged, hoping she didn't charge extra for the tea. His financial situation was already dire. He'd left France with all he had, but that wasn't much. He could only afford a few more nights at this guesthouse – one of the cheapest, seediest ones overlooking Convent Garden – before he'd be on the streets.
Everything must go well with Isambard today, or I am doomed. How fitting that my future now lies in the hands of the schoolboy whose own future had seemed the bleakest of all.
Wringing his fingers in the napkin until the ends turned white, Nicholas stared at the crusts of his toast, his mind unfocused – travelling in endless circles. Another guest entered the dining room, dragging a mangy dog on a chain. The mutt yapped at the table legs, its eyes wide as it took in the room. The dog's thoughts floated into Nicholas' head – the curious smells emanating from every surface, rising like clouds and swirling together into a haze of colour. Nicholas rubbed his neck, feeling the bite of the chain against his skin.
If I return to the Ward, to the machines, perhaps the voices will finally be silenced.
Nicholas retired to his room to prepare for his meeting with Isambard. He spread his things out on his desk. He didn't have much – he had brought only a small satchel from France – some papers, his faded lieutenant's jacket, the cuffs stained with blood, a Lammarchean bible, a tiny switchblade, and a small flask of his favourite whisky. He stuffed the switchblade into his pocket. Clasping the bottle, he unscrewed the lid and swallowed the entire draught.
"You know, most Eng
lishmen drink tea at this time of the morning."
Nicholas jumped, startled. He turned around and saw Aaron leaning against the door to his room, his face and clothing even blacker with coal dust than the previous day. A trail of dirty footprints followed him up the hall.
"Isambard sent me to collect you." Aaron pushed past Nicholas and surveyed the room. "By Great Conductor's lead-soaked testicles, this room is barely better than my Stoker hovel."
"I am capable of walking to the Engine Ward myself."
"Suit yourself, but the place is a madhouse – engineers rushing everywhere, trying to finish their designs for the competition. Everyone is terrified their idea will be stolen. They're not letting anyone in or out without an insignia. Here." Aaron pushed a Stoker pin – the insignia of St. George's cross made of gauge nails adopted by Brunel's church – into Nicholas’ hand. "Put this on."
Nicholas pinned the tiny crossed railway nails to his lapel. Taking his ratty satchel in one hand, he tipped his hat to Aaron. "Ready to go."
In the muddy London daylight, Nicholas could finally see the Engine Ward in all her glory. For the briefest time he'd once called that neighbourhood of handsome churches and soot-cloaked workhouses home, but now he could only regard her with the awe of an architect confronted with the greatest masterpiece of his time. The Engine Ward had tripled in size since Nicholas had last seen her, her smoky expanse engulfing the surrounding tenement blocks, pushing the bulge of black smoke further out across the city. The surrounding wall – built slapdash of riveted iron plates – did little to hem in the continual hiss and slam of beam engines, the roar of the furnaces or the hammering of metal, but seemed instead to amplify it, so the very streets trembled with a furious energy.
As they walked toward the Ward, the city changed. The streets were empty of people – those who did go out darted between buildings, their faces and clothing stained with soot. They passed block after block of tenements, the windows smudged with a black slime so thick the tenants must live in constant darkness. The usual city noises – hooves clopping against the cobbles, street vendors yelling the daily specials, clerks scribbling away in stifling offices – fell away under the hum and belch of the Engine Ward.