by Jasmine Walt
"Do you enjoy your work?"
She paused, wondering if he was asking about the King. He nodded for her to continue. "Sometimes. I enjoy touching the fine things, making them shine. But I hate the futility of it all; rooms and rooms of exquisite artwork, precious metals, and dazzling jewels, all of it dusty and unseen. You can spend hours polishing, but really, you're just moving the emptiness around. If I ever own beautiful things, I shall enjoy them every day."
He turned off onto a divergent path, leading her through the rose bushes toward a covered gazebo. He said, "It's a curse of the rich to covet such beautiful things and yet to never truly enjoy them."
"Are you a lord?"
He laughed. "I could have been, Miss Brigitte, but instead I am an architect. I designed the exterior of Brunel's Dragon Wall. If you look toward the river you can see the shape of the first section being erected now."
They sat on a bench beside the gazebo, watching the pigeons pecking at scraps along the edges of the path and the gardeners repairing the flower beds damaged in the dragon attack. He asked her more questions: her favourite flower (water lily), her favourite foods (mutton and minted peas). Had she ever travelled outside London? (Once, to the country, when she was younger.) Which God did she worship? (She always liked Isis – she was the prettiest, and all the artists whose work hung in the castle worshipped her, too.) She wanted to ask him something of himself, but he avoided all questions, simply turning each inquiry back upon her.
The world around her disappeared, and she was lost in him, in the sound of his voice, the movement of his lips, the gentle creases at the corners of his eyes as he laughed at one of her tales.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder, startling her out of her trance. "It's time to return to the castle, Miss Brigitte." Maxwell held up his pocket watch for her to see.
Nicholas stood and offered her his hand. "Will I see you again?"
He wants to see me again! This can't be right. It must be some kind of cruel joke. Perhaps he is dangerous—
"I must go." She gathered her skirts, eyes downcast, suddenly afraid. The spell had been shattered, and now she wanted to get away.
"But will I see you?"
"I … I don't know."
"You will come to the palace again?" Maxwell asked.
Nicholas nodded. "Brunel will meet with the King and the Council members next Friday to give an update on the Wall's progress."
"After your meeting with the King, you will go to the courtyard outside the Curfew Tower. Brigitte will be waiting there."
Nicholas pressed a handful of coins into the gardener's hand. Maxwell tried to push them back, but the architect held up his hands. "For your kindness," he said, "and your silence."
He held her hand out and kissed it, his warm lips lingering for an eternity, his vivid grey eyes boring into hers. She trembled, though she was not cold. Finally, he tore himself away. "Good day, my Lady."
"G— g— good day," she choked. He turned and strolled away. She waited ‘till he was out of sight before sinking back into the park bench. Maxwell had to grab her and lead her to the carriage.
Only when the carriage pulled out onto West Carriage Drive did she let out the breath she was holding. Maxwell smirked.
"Why, Miss Brigitte, I've never seen your face so flushed."
"It's the heat. This dress is awfully stuffy."
"Of course," he laughed. "The dress."
While Nicholas met Brigitte in the park, Aaron took his two deputies out to Windsor to lay down the survey pegs for the site of the Windsor platform of the King's secret railway.
He'd wanted to take more men, but there was not a Stoker to spare. A skeleton crew ran the furnaces – men working sixteen-hour shifts just to keep the Ward functioning – and even the women were assembling Boiler mechanisms. Work on Brunel's two new locomotives had ground to a halt, and he'd had to go into the sheds at 6am and drag out two of the best men – William Stone and his son Benjamin – for this cursed job. Aaron hated leaving the Ward with so much work that needed doing, but since Brunel still believed they could make the King's impossible deadline, they had to press on with haste.
He'd never even been outside London, let alone to the imposing Windsor Castle, looming over the Berkshire countryside. He hung his head out the window and drank it all in – the tiny cottages, the towering barns, and the cacophony of thoughts from a myriad of animals. Sheep and cows grazed in the paddocks, birds and raptors circled the trees, horses pulled carriages and coaches that passed them on the narrow road, and neckers, those long-necked beasts bred in Scotland, pulled huge wagons of goods toward London for market.
He enjoyed the slow thoughts of the neckers the most: they'd walked the same stretch of road many times before, and they knew each turn by heart. He relished seeing this world – so new to him – through their knowing gaze.
The trip was over all too soon, and they introduced themselves to the guard at the castle gates, using the story Brunel had coached them on: the King had commissioned them to build a new shrine in the garden. The guards had evidently been given the same story, for they opened the gates and directed them to the edge of the terraced garden without further questions.
Aaron unfolded the plans and, being the only one of the three men who could read, directed the placement of the stakes and recorded the measurements. Hidden behind the high garden wall and located at the bottom of a steep terrace, the station would be invisible to anyone outside the castle or walking through the garden from the main path. It was to be a simple structure – a wooden platform, a shed to keep the locomotive and two carriages dry (which would probably be scrapped from the plans due to time constraints), and the trackbed itself, disappearing down into the natural valley of a dry stream bed that ran along the outskirts of the township toward London.
Aaron wanted to get the basic structure of the platform built today, so he and William unloaded the shovels and thick lengths of wood and steel, while Benjamin, a young lad with a strong back, began ripping up the lawn to dig the post holes. They worked for three solid hours in the biting cold wind, with only the sounds of the birds and their voices for company. William and Benjamin had many questions about the railway and its purpose, none of which Aaron could answer.
After lunch, William went up to the castle workshops to borrow a set square, and came back screaming, "The King is coming!"
"Don't be ridiculous. The King wouldn't—"
William dragged Aaron up over the edge of the terrace and pointed toward the castle. Aaron raised his head, squinting. He saw a line of tiny figures emerging from the inner gate and descending down the hill toward them. The procession was flanked on both sides by men carrying the Union Jack flag.
"By Great Conductor's steam-driven testicles, it is the King! Quick, William, clean up those tools! Benjamin, stack up the beams—"
They scrambled around, frantically trying to make their work area look less like a work area. When Aaron looked up again, the procession had reached the crest of the hill.
The King slumped forward in his wheeled chair, as though the leather straps around his arms and legs were the only things holding him up. Joseph Banks stood behind the King, his thin hands clasped so tightly around the handles of the wheelchair his knuckles were white. Flanked by his guards with their towering helmets dwarfing the figures of his retinue, the King seemed impossibly frail.
As they stopped on the slope of the hill, Aaron, William, and Benjamin bowed. Banks snapped his fingers and ordered them to rise. The King didn't acknowledge them, flapping his head against his shoulder and mumbling something unintelligible. Aaron saw his cheeks and the skin of his forearms were covered with dark, blistering marks. And his eyes, they were the most frightening of all – they were not the listless, unfocused eyes of a sickly man, but contained the fierce, rapacious gaze of an animal, a predator zeroing in on his prey.
"You are Isambard Brunel's men?" Banks barked.
"We are, sir." Aaron stepped forward. "I'm Aaron Wil
liams. This is William—"
"I don't care who you are. The King wishes to inspect your progress on his railway."
"As you can see," Aaron gestured behind him, "there is not much progress for His Majesty to inspect. Today we're marking out the position of the trackbed and erecting the posts to support the platform."
"And how long will it take you to finish the entire railway line?"
"I'm not yet privy to all the plans, sir, but we're working with haste to have it ready within His Majesty's two-month deadline."
"That's not nearly soon enough. The King needs the railway completed within the month."
"That's impossible, sir. Laying the rails alone will take six weeks—"
"Then lay them faster," Banks snapped. "Your king has commanded his railway be built within the month, and so you shall build it. Brunel's a clever engineer – he will work it out."
"With all due respect, sir—"
In a matter of moments Banks thrust the handles of the wheelchair into the hands of a waiting steward, crossed the lawn, and grabbed Aaron by the collar.
"Tell him," Banks whispered, his eyes bulging. "If this railway isn't completed by the end of the month, all the titles and renown in London won't save him from the King's wrath. Tell him, that he has thirty days to finish this railway, or I'll hang him with my own hands, to save him the agony of what the King will do to him."
The journey back to London passed in silence, each man staring out the window, lost in his own thoughts. Aaron's mind was dark – the sounds that had so delighted him that morning were nothing but a muddy blur.
A month to finish the railway was preposterous. He would laugh at the notion, had it not been for the menace in Banks' voice. It was as if they were treating Isambard and the Stokers to some great practical joke. He wondered if Banks and the King were laughing over their teacups as they watched Aaron, William, and Ben work at record speed to drive in all the piles.
As the carriage passed over London Bridge, Aaron caught a glimpse of the first section of the Wall, a few yards of scaffolding and steel pylons mounted in the ground. It seemed woefully small – just looking out across the great expanse of London's skyline brought home the fruitlessness of the whole task. This angered Aaron beyond all measure, and he balled his hands into fists.
As their carriage pulled up alongside the Boiler factory, Isambard was already outside, waving at them.
"Successful trip?" Brunel asked, after he'd shooed the Stone Brothers inside and practically dragged Aaron from the carriage.
Aaron snorted, and told Isambard what had happened at the castle. "It's over, Isambard. You won the prize, you built the Wall, but it's all a joke at the Stokers’ expense. We were never going to change anything."
"There must be another explanation."
"What other possible explanation could there be? I'm afraid we've been set up to fail by Joseph Banks. The King is clearly too far gone to have any say in the construction. Think about it – you said yourself he's become increasingly unintelligible in your meetings with him, and Nicholas said his entire body is covered in burns and cuts. But Banks is always with him, speaking for him. And he never wanted you to win in the first place, did he?"
Isambard was silent for a moment. Slowly he nodded his head. "You're right. But it's not over, Aaron. We're going to build the Wall, and that railway."
"In a month? Don't be ridiculous."
Brunel threw open the door of the shed. Inside, Aaron saw at least fifty Stokers working along an assembly line, some shifting raw materials and slag into huge furnaces, others manoeuvring parts into place or watching the progress of the new high-pressure engine as it shaped and hollowed lumps of metal. Along the front of the workshop, their unseeing eyes surveying the work, ten shiny Boiler units stood to attention.
"Another ten will be finished tomorrow," said Brunel. "And ten each day thereafter ‘till the job is done. By the end of the week we shall have fifty units, and that should be more than enough to lay the sleepers and rails on twenty-six miles within a few days. A Wall and a railway in a month, Aaron! If we can do it, can you imagine?"
Aaron stared into the cold, flat faces of the Boilers, and the anger in his belly turned to fear. "Yes," he said. "It's my imagination that worries me."
When Isambard told Nicholas over breakfast that the schedule had been moved from two months to one, he spat tea across the table in a most ungentlemanly manner.
"That's impossible!"
Isambard frowned, gesturing for the priest who hovered at the door of the chamber to clean up the stain. "Aaron thinks it's a plot by Banks and the Council to discredit me, to prove I'm no engineer. I'm rather afraid he's correct."
"What are you going to do?"
"The only thing I know how to do. I'm going to work, Nicholas. I'm going to pull out every trick I can think of, and a few I haven't yet dreamed up, and I'm going to get the Wall and railway finished if it kills me. But I need your help."
"How? Isambard, I am no engineer."
"I have a month," Isambard said, his voice grave. "I don't know why the King is in such a hurry, but I do know to disappoint him would mean my death, and the death of hope for the Stokers along with it. It is in both our interests," he said pointedly, his eyes fixed on Nicholas, "to complete this Wall on time. If I were you, I'd finish that cup of tea as quickly as I were able, and report to the workshops—"
He was interrupted by a young acolyte, who raced into the chamber and leaned against the table. "Presbyter," he gasped, "a package has arrived for you from the swamps."
Nicholas' ears pricked up. The Stokers have sent something to Isambard?
The Presbyter didn't seem surprised by the news. He shovelled another forkful of egg into his mouth. "Well, bring it here, then!"
"It's arrived on a wagon, sir. A large wagon."
Brunel leapt to his feet and dashed from the room. Nicholas and the acolyte followed close behind. What could be so large it needed an entire wagon?
The wagon had been parked outside the Boiler workshops, practically blocking the door. It was as wide as the roads would allow, and needed four horses to pull it. The six axles sagged under the weight of the crate – as long as the wagon and higher than a man – roped to the back of the wagon.
"Special delivery," said the grizzled man who sat on the footplate, the reins of the tired horses clutched in his shaking hand. He lifted the corner of his hood up and met Nicholas' eye – it was Quartz.
He's back. This will please Aaron—
The thoughts hit him like a wave smashing against a rocky shore, fracturing his own thoughts and sending him reeling against the wall of the Chimney. He rubbed his temple, not understanding at first. Through the haze, his mind clutched on to the truth.
There was something alive inside that crate. It was large – larger than the biggest creature he'd ever seen – and it was dangerous.
What does Isambard want with an animal?
It can't be. But it was. The way the thoughts narrowed, the hunger in his belly, the insatiable malice that crawled over his skin. His sense told him that inside that crate was a dragon, bigger and more frightening than any of the dragons he'd encountered in London. But why?
He watched Isambard lean in and exchange a few words with Quartz, then waved him onward, in the direction of the Boiler workshops and the entrance to the underground service tunnels. Pushing the horses to their last, painful trot, the old man leaned in toward Nicholas as he passed.
"Don't tell Aaron I was here," he said, pulling his hood low over his face. Nicholas could see a fresh cut running across Quartz’s face. "And don't let him go to the swamps, neither. I won't have him become a part of this."
Nicholas nodded, watching the wagon wind its way through the Stoker camp toward the service entrance to the tunnels, the hunger of the dragon settling in his stomach, and the frightening thoughts of the creature slipping from his mind.
Now what is going on?
Aaron watched, transfixed with awe, as
the Boilers whirred away, flinging down the sleepers, bending and cutting the rails to fit, driving down the nails and compacting the ballast, then rolling forward to begin on the next section. They used no tools, their mechanical arms completing each assigned task with frightening speed. Under Aaron's feet, a length of perfectly straight, perfectly laid broad gauge railway track stretched back into the darkness.
"They've laid ten miles of track in two days," he breathed, unable to believe it.
"And it's straighter and more accurate than we could've ever done." William stared at the pristine sleepers below his boots, his mouth agape in bewilderment.
Aaron had spent all day Monday with Nicholas and other workers, getting to grips with the Boiler controls. After several false starts and a couple of disastrous hours where the Boilers laid half a mile of sleepers on top of the rail, they were running through their tasks faultlessly. Aaron had programmed ten of the machines to machines to widen the old sewer tunnel ready for the locomotive, and another five carried away the debris. He set a twenty-four-hour guard on the machines, but after two days and nights of endless work, his men reported no difficulties.
It's easy, he thought, coughing as the Boilers discharged a cloud of soot from their chimneys. It's too easy.
"Well," William dusted his hands on his overalls. "If that's all the work that needs doing, I'm going home."
"But, you can't—"
"I can, Aaron. My shift is over. I've done my job. There's nothing I can do here that the Boilers can't do faster and better." He yawned. "All this standing around watching machines work has made me awfully sleepy. You can tell Brunel for me that these Boilers are the greatest invention ever. He's gonna make a fortune."
"I will. Goodnight, William."
The greatest invention ever. Aaron wondered whether William was right. They are remarkable. We'll be able to finish projects at lightening speed. Every engineer in England will want their own Boiler workforce.
He watched the machines bang, slap, bend, drill, and hammer with their eerie, remarkable precision. They did not talk and joke with each other, as men did. They did not drop tools or curse or misread the measurements.