Yet this maternal aspect of Victoria was still implicit, not dominant. At the moment, she looked anything but motherly. Her exquisite body yet unmarred by any pregnancies, she was as inviting a woman as any Cowperthwait had seen.
On a card-table in a corner was a partially completed dissected picture, one of the puzzles Victoria enjoyed assembling. Next to it rested her inevitable diary.
Cowperthwait dropped to one knee. “Your Majesty—”
Victoria’s voice was throaty. Cowperthwait knew she had trouble with septic tonsils. “You can forget all titles now, silly boy. I’m not queen here. In this house, there are others who know so much more than I, and deserve that title. But I’m learning. Come here, and I’ll show you.”
Victoria lifted her arms out imploringly. Shocked, Cowperthwait stood and came to sit on the edge of the bed where he could press his case more convincingly.
“Your Majesty, I realize that the demands of your high office have caused you untold grief, and that it is only natural you would seek to forget all your troubles by adopting a wanton’s role. But you must realize that the nation needs you. The coronation is imminent. And do not forget the personal anguish you have caused your Prime Minister. Viscount Melbourne is beside himself, wondering where you are.”
“Whatever are you talking about, you foolish man? It was Melbourne who put me here.”
Cowperthwait felt as if his brain were about to tear itself apart. “Melbourne—?”
“Yes, Lambie told me it would be part of my education. And he was so right. Why, I’ve met many of the most important figures in the country, on more intimate terms than I could ever achieve in the sterile corridors of state. Writers, artists, members of Parliament, educators. Men and women both. Why, there were even some common laborers who had saved up their money for ages. And the talk has been almost as stimulating as the loving. The secrets I’ve learned, the bonds I’ve forged, the self-confidence I’ve cultivated, not to mention the tricks I’ve learned that will certainly please my darling Albert when we’ve married—These will stand me in good stead for my whole reign. I shan’t have any trouble getting my way from now on, I feel. Oh, I’ve enjoyed it so! It’s a shame it’s almost over.”
Cowperthwait tried to find his tongue. “Then you have no intention of abdicating—?”
“Of course not! I’m returning to the Palace tomorrow, for the Coronation rehearsal. It’s all arranged. Now, forget all this talk of matters politic, dear boy. Come here to your little Victoria, and let her make everything all better.”
Victoria flung her arms about Cowperthwait, pulled him down and began unbuttoning his fly.
At first hesitant, Cowperthwait soon began enthusiastically to comply.
After all, one simply did not casually disobey one’s sovereign, however demanding the request. . . .
It was no trouble to break into Buckingham Palace under the cover of darkness. Security was quite primitive. As an example, in December of that year 1838, “the boy Cotton” would finally be apprehended, after inhabiting the Palace uncaught for several months. Twelve years of age, he was perpetually covered in soot, having often concealed himself in chimneys. He blackened the beds he chose to sleep in, broke open sealed letters to the Queen, stole certain small geegaws and food, and when caught was found to be wearing a pair of Melbourne’s trousers.
Cowperthwait did not encounter “the boy Cotton” as he made his way down the echoing passages that night toward the Queen’s private bedroom. He followed the directions Victoria had graciously given him earlier that day, after their bout. Cowperthwait had explained his involvement in the subterfuge surrounding Victoria’s absence. It turned out the Queen knew nothing about the mock-Victoria occupying her bed with Melbourne, and he thought he could detect no small jealousy on her part. He did not envy Melbourne the explaining he would have to do tomorrow.
At the same time, Cowperthwait was quite angry with the way the Prime Minister had duped him. He was now determined to secure his Victoria, and have it out with the man.
Only once did Cowperthwait encounter anyone, a patrolling Beefeater whom he avoided by ducking into a niche holding a bust of Ethelred the Unready.
At last Cowperthwait stood outside the royal bedchambers. Without knocking, he let himself in.
Melbourne lay abed with the salamander. When the newt saw Cowperthwait she let out a croak of joyous recognition and slithered out of bed. Completely hairless, her sinuous form combined mammalian and amphibian characteristics in an unearthly beauty. The wig she used to impersonate the Queen graced a stand across the room.
Melbourne leapt naked out of bed, his burly hairy body a gross contrast to the ethereal, sylphlike splendor of the Hellbender.
“Sir,” uttered Cowperthwait, “I know all! You have tricked me in a dastardly fashion. I suppose you had the interests of the country at heart, but I believe there was also a component of unholy lust in your actions. I now reclaim my ward, and leave you to your conscience.”
Cowperthwait took Victoria’s hand and turned to go.
Melbourne grabbed her other hand and held on. “No, don’t take her. You’re right, I am besotted with this creature of yours, have been from the moment I first had her at de Mallet’s. I couldn’t stand the notion of others enjoying her. The Queen’s sojourn away, already long planned, seemed the perfect excuse to arrogate the newt to myself. I can’t do without her now!”
“Sir, let go,” Cowperthwait urged, tugging on Victoria. “Do not make me employ force with you!”
Melbourne did not listen, but instead continued to pull on the newt. Cowperthwait pulled back, and there ensued a tugging match which soon grew to ferocious proportions.
Without warning Melbourne suddenly shot backward onto the bed.
Looking down, he found himself holding Victoria’s severed twitching arm, from which dripped a pale fluid.
“My God!” cried the Prime Minister. “Where have my brutish lusts led me!” He dropped the limb and, cradling his head in his hands began to weep.
Cowperthwait looked at the Prime Minister with disgust. “You have abused a helpless animal, and now feel the appropriate pangs. Let it be a lesson to you that even the highest worldly powers are not exempted from common morality. You may take comfort from the fact that Victoria will quickly regenerate her arm, as she still possesses that newt-like faculty.”
Tossing a blanket around the uncomplaining creature, Cowperthwait said, “Come, dear, let us go.” He left Melbourne weeping.
In the hansom cab heading home, cradling Victoria’s elongated head against his chest, Cowperthwait mused aloud.
“I could wish it were Lady Cornwall by my side at this moment, dear Victoria, but what good would such impossible longing do? No, it is you and I, poor thing. You and I once more.”
Cowperthwait stroked her head, and Victoria butted it against the underside of his chin.
“Ah, my dear, you have been through many rigors in your unnatural life. And much as any man loves his creations, I can only hope that your existence is not further prolonged by very many days. If only I knew your natural span. . . .”
And with that sentiment echoing in the coach, the vehicle rolled on through the night—
—through the decades—
—through sixty-three years, until February 1, 1901, when the same city thoroughfare, draped with purple and white banners (Victoria had in her will asked that the black hangings she abhorred be banned) was thronged with weeping crowds watching the horse-drawn gun-carriage bearing the short coffin of their elderly Queen make its slow way from Victoria Station to Paddington Station, on its way to the mausoleum at Windsor.
Among the mourners was a hunched figure dressed in black, her face veiled from sight. She was accompanied by an elderly bald man with a moony face, leaning on a cane whose hairline joint revealed it to be of a deadly nature. The duo were soon joined by a gap-to
othed old codger who was slyly tucking a wallet not his own into his breast pocket.
“So long ago,” said Cowperthwait. “But the cards at Christmas never stopped coming.”
“Wimmen air like elleyfants,” said McGroaty. “They never forget.”
And as if in silent agreement, Victoria pulled back her veil and snapped a passing fly from the air.
HOTTENTOTS
1
THE FACE OF AN APE
THE BIG FISH was plainly stitched together at its midsection. Sloppy looping overhand whiplashes formed of black waxed twine ran around its entire circumference like the grin on an insane rag doll, holding its two disparate halves together. Mismatched slightly in size, the halves of the hybrid did not fuse neatly, but revealed the pinkish white inner meat of the larger front. With its long tapered head, protruding lower jaw and leading grasping teeth, the forepart plainly belonged to the family Sphyranidæ: one of the Barracudas. The rear portion was less identifiable, although a highly educated (Lausanne, Zurich, Heidelberg, Munich, Vienna, and Paris) guess would place it within the family Acipenseridæ: the Sturgeons. One fact, however, was incontestable: the tail was mated upside down to the head, so that the ventral fin was now impossibly in a dorsal position.
The monstrous miscegenation lay on a piece of damp canvas with ripped edges and a single brass grommet, its eyes glassy, pale serum slowly leaking from its jointure. The canvas lay in the lap of a seated man.
This man was Louis Agassiz.
Swiss-born scientist, master of paleontology, ichthyology, and zoology, doctor of medicine, public lecturer, formulator and popularizer of the Eiszeit Theory, Naturalist Laureate (in journalistic parlance) to his adopted America, Agassiz had only recently turned forty. Tall and strong, yet somewhat portly, he was dressed in wool pants, vest and double-breasted suitcoat, with a white foulard at his neck. His face was dominated by brown eyes as sharp and piercing as the spikes of a sea urchin (or common echinoid), and a broad square jaw. His lips and nose were rather fleshy. He was clean-shaven, save for longish sideburns, and possessed of a rather florid complexion. The tide of his still dark hair, now ebbing slightly, revealed a highly philosophical brow. (Samuel George Morton, distinguished Philadelphia colleague of Agassiz, had estimated his peer’s cranial capacity at 115 cubic inches, plainly above average for a specimen of the white race ((and hence for all races, white representing the pinnacle of creation)), and Morton, although he had refrained from revealing his desire, had already made plans to secure Agassiz’s skull for his immense collection, should he, Agassiz, chance to perish before Morton himself. . . .)
Agassiz now regarded the abomination on display in his lap. He hardly knew what to say. Was he supposed to take this crude hoax seriously? Just how gullible did these Americans imagine the average European to be?
During the ten months of his American experience to date, Agassiz had formed certain conclusions regarding the national character. The typical citizen of the United States was brash, cunning, energetic and liberally supplied with glibness and low morals. At their most likable, they were spoiled children, full of a youthful enthusiasm. Good in a sprint, they had no endurance. The best of them, such as his compatriots at Harvard (those who had managed to establish clean breeding lines within their own class) were intellectually and ethically equal to the best of the Europeans. The bourgeois, such as John Lowell and Samuel Cabot—well, bourgeois were the same the world over. But the mass of Americans, unlike their Old World counterparts, were wild and unpredictable.
It stemmed, of course, from interbreeding. The country was a hodgepodge of races, all mixing their bloods without proper regard for the ancient geographic divisions that had prevailed since the Creation. Aryan, Anglo-Saxon, Gallic, Slavic, Iberian, Mediterranean, Hibernian, Celtic, Mongol, Han, Semitic, Scandinavian, Baltic, Red Indian—Was it any wonder that the progeny of such egregious mongrelization were capricious, unorganized and avaricious, or that they should assume that their betters would be as easy to hoodwink in a business transaction as their own simple-minded fellows?
And the worst component of the mix, the vilest, most polluted stream feeding into the muddy river that was America, the most offensive taint in any putative white man’s blood, a contamination which reeked to heaven and violated all moral order, was—
The Negro.
Agassiz shuddered, recalling his first encounter with American blacks—with any member of the African races, for that matter—which had taken place just last year. He had written about it last December, in a letter to his sainted mother, Rose, thankfully safe at home in Neufchâtel.
It was in Philadelphia that I first found myself in prolonged contact with Negroes; all the domestics in my hotel were men of color. I can scarcely express to you the painful impression that I received, especially since the feeling that they inspired in me is contrary to all our ideas about the confraternity of the human type and the unique origin of our species. But truth before all. Nevertheless, I experienced pity at the sight of this degraded and degenerate race, and their lot inspired compassion in me in thinking that they are really men. Nonetheless, it is impossible for me to repress the feeling that they are not of the same blood as us. In seeing their black faces with their thick lips and grimacing teeth, the wool on their head, their bent knees, their elongated hands, their large curved nails, and especially the livid color of the palm of their hands, I could not take my eyes off their face in order to tell them to stay far away. And when they advanced that hideous hand toward my plate in order to serve me, I wished I were able to depart in order to eat a piece of bread elsewhere, rather than to dine with such service. What unhappiness for the white race—to have tied their existence so closely with that of the Negroes in certain countries! God preserve us from such a contact!
Eyeing the piscine horror in his lap, Agassiz suddenly saw embodied in it all his fears of cross-breeding. With a shiver, he recalled the similarly stitched creature born in Mrs. Shelley’s imagination. What if Nature should ever permit such monsters? Even the fancy was too much—
Agassiz tore his gaze away and confronted the man standing expectantly before him.
A rough-hewn fisherman of indeterminate age, with a seamed face like tanned leather in which were set squinty eyes, dressed in a turtle-necked cabled sweater greasy with lanolin, watch cap and baggy trews, a long-stemmed unlit clay pipe poking out of one corner of his mouth, the hopeful seller now deemed it appropriate to speak up in favor of his wares.
“So, young fella, what d’ye think? The boys down at the wharves all say you’re lookin’ for queer specimens, and you’ll not see many queerer than that ’un.”
Agassiz was astonished at the man’s temerity. The Professor’s Swiss accent—which so many of the ladies had found charming, and which consisted mainly of Frenchified vowels—became highly pronounced now, in an attempt to cow.
“Do you expect me to believe, sir, that this fish ever swam whole and entire through the seas of this world?”
The old salt scratched under his cap. “Ah, them eagle eyes of yourn has done detected the slight repair which I was forced to make in the rascal. One o’ my crew was preparin’ to fillet the critter for our shipboard supper when I comes upon him and, recognizin’ its scientific value, put a halt to his butchery. Unfortunately, not before he had separated snout from flipper. Seein’ as how it’s slightly damaged, I will consider lowerin’ my price. Which is four bits, cash on the barrelhead.”
Agassiz removed the canvas and its contents from his lap and stood up. “Please, go now. You’ve wasted my time.”
“Wait, old hoss, I can see ye be too many for me. Hold on, and I’ll tell ye the truth. I was only holdin’ back cuz I warn’t sure ye could appreciate it.”
“Very well, proceed. I am all ears, as you say.”
Cupping his chin and squinching his eyes even further, so that he looked like a mole (Talpa europad), the fisherman said, “Well,
we pulled our nets aboard, and in them was a barracudy and a black sturgeon—”
“That much I had deduced.”
“Mebbe so. But what ye cain’t know was that there was also a swordfish with ’em. Now, that there swordfish had the most peculiar instrument. Namely, a spike with a hole in its tip like the eye of a needle! Before my unblinking gaze, that swordfish proceeded to slice them two other fishes in half. Then it flopped across the decks to where we was mending our sails. It got the end of some cord in its eyelet, and proceeded to stitch the fishes together, just as ye seen ’em. I merely brung them by as proof, since the swordfish was too big to lug along. And it’s this swordfish what I propose ye should buy offen me!”
Concluding triumphantly with a huge grin, the fisherman awaited Agassiz’s reaction.
For a moment, Agassiz was stunned. Then he began to roar in laughter. The foul mood he had been laboring under all day—which had many unavoidable causes—evaporated in a moment under the flow of the typically American tall tale.
When he had mastered himself, Agassiz said, “Very good. You bring me this surgeon swordfish, and I’ll pay you handsomely.”
The fisherman extended a horny hand, and Agassiz took it. “That I’ll do, old hoss, or my name’s not Captain Dan’l Stormfield out o’ Marblehead.”
And with that, Captain Stormfield departed, taking with him both the vivisected fish and also a pleasant personal briney odor Agassiz only noticed in his absence.
Spoiled children, indeed!
Agassiz’s study was a comfortable den where he had spent many a lucubratory hour since his arrival on these foreign shores. Several glass-fronted bookcases held ranks of large scientific volumes from Linnaeus to Lyell; their open lower shelves were devoted to the well-read volumes of the elephant-folio edition of Audubon’s Birds. A sideboard was scattered with the fruits of recent composition, neatly stacked into separate monographs. A round-topped table pushed into a corner was littered with correspondence to be answered. A comfortable couch, occasionally used for postprandial naps, was now occupied by large cardboard portfolios secured with ribbon ties and containing various expeditionary sketches. Several leather-cushioned chairs and throw-rugs were scattered around the wooden floorboards. (Hardly Biedermeier, but what could one expect from such a rude nation . . .?) A watercolor of Agassiz’s birthplace, the lake-surrounded village of Motier, composed by his longtime artistic assistant, Joseph Dinkel, who had regrettably chosen not to accompany his master to America, graced one wall. On another hung a map of North America, studded with green-flagged pins indicating points already visited—Niagara Falls, Halifax, New Haven, Albany, Philadelphia—and red-flagged ones betokening planned jaunts: Lake Superior, Charleston, Washington, the Rockies. . . .
The Steampunk Trilogy Page 7