Maggie’s heart sank, but she did not allow it to show in her face. “How considerate of you. I very much appreciate an escort—especially in these exciting times.”
“Consider me your personal escort, mademoiselle,” Jean-Luc said. He would have bowed over Maggie’s hand again if she had not wrapped both of them around his elbow in a convincing imitation of a fragile society flower.
“Do show us Neptune’s Fury,” she pleaded. “I wish to be as informed about her as possible when Papa arrives. He would expect no less, as I am sure you can appreciate.”
Maggie kept a smile upon her lips and did her best to suppress the uneasiness in her stomach as they proceeded back down to the subterranean caverns. She was not afraid of water, nor of dark, enclosed spaces, but there was something about the aura of hidden power, of a concealed threat, down here in the dark and damp that made her scalp prickle and goose bumps rise on her arms.
Neptune’s Fury was easily the size of Athena, that former Meriwether-Astor transport which, five years ago, had been used to ship weapons from one end of the Americas to the other in hopes of provoking an international incident and possibly even a war. And from the hints that Jean-Luc had dropped, Meriwether-Astor had not changed his spots despite the severe crimp the Lady of Devices had put in his plans at that time. But unlike Athena, the crew’s quarters and navigation gondola were of minimal proportions, leaving the vast remainder of her carrying capacity for cargo.
The captain of the Fury was pleased to escort them below, and Jean-Luc surrendered her arm with great reluctance. Maggie kept the conversation light and full of admiration, and to her enormous relief, Claude played along, acting the utter flibbet with such success that even the stoic and watchful Serge cracked a smile.
The more their captors underestimated them, the better Maggie would feel. Wise as serpents and harmless as doves, the Lady said, and it had become a strategem that had served her well.
The possibility existed that Claude was not in fact acting. He was very convincing, though, and that was all that mattered.
“And here is the heart of Neptune’s Fury,” the captain said, ushering them into an enormous cargo hold—so big that the ceiling was obscured in darkness. It needed to be big. For concealed in the heart of the Fury was a machine of such size that Maggie wondered how on earth they had got it in here short of building it on the spot.
It was easily the size of Neptune’s Maid, with giant circulating treads on iron wheels. Its engines lay in pods to either side, and above that was what Maggie could only describe as a rotating gun fortress, with small glass windows set about it so that gunners could operate the firing mechanisms. Below that was a separate edifice that housed a cannon, its barrel so large that the projectiles must be the size of fishing boats.
It took a lot to silence Maggie, but this massive war machine—for that was what it must be—did it. Horror fought with despair inside her, and if it had not been for the eerie green light in the cargo bay, the captain would have seen instantly that she had been stricken speechless by fear, not admiration.
Claude whistled as he examined one of the circulating wheel assemblies. “Big as a volcano and just as dangerous, what?” he said. “But what’s it for?”
The captain smiled. “Can you answer your young friend, Mademoiselle Meriwether-Astor?”
Maggie waved a hand that only trembled a little and struggled to control her emotions. “Why, I assume this is what Papa plans to land on the Seacombe beach, is it not?”
The captain laughed, clearly pleased at her grasp of the situation. “It is indeed.”
Claude leaned back to try to see past the wheel assembly, but could not. “What—is he declaring war on Cornwall? For this jolly great thing doesn’t strike me as being meant for fishing.”
“You are quite correct on both counts, Monsieur, but your scope is much too limited. Your presence here not only guarantees that the beach will remain clear for the landing, but that the Royal Aeronautics Corps will not be mobilized to stop it. With this war machine, France will launch its campaign against both England and Prussia, and reclaim the kingdoms for our King that were stolen in centuries past.”
“You mean there is more than one of these?” Maggie finally managed to get past her chattering teeth.
“There is—one on each front. The other launches with the second half of our fleet off the coast of Jutland, where the landing is equally amenable.”
“But—how is it to be accomplished? Mechanically, I mean. For it looks too big to get through Fury’s hatch.” She had seen the drawings in the cabin on the Maid, but could not see the corresponding mechanical equipment here. Or was the scale simply so vast that her mind could not take it in?
The captain’s black eyes shone with masculine appreciation. “An excellent observation, mademoiselle. In fact, you are standing very near the solution. Regardez, if you will, the hinge that runs the length of this deck. And imagine the jaw of a whale, opening to admit the fish upon which she feeds. When we are close enough to our landing, the hinge will tilt down, the Kingmaker will roll to the seabed—while it cannot tolerate submersion, you understand, as long as the engines are clear of the water line, it can proceed up out of the water and onto land. Hence our requirement for a gradual, sloping beach, such as that on the far reaches of the Seacombe lands.”
“Goodness,” Maggie breathed, her hand tightening involuntarily on his arm as the full horror of the plan became clear. “You have thought of everything. I never dreamed that Papa’s tinkering would someday come to this. How utterly thrilling.”
“What about the Aeronautics Corps outpost on St. Michael’s Mount?” Claude asked. “They might not see you coming, or have any warning, but they’ll certainly see this old girl waddling up out of the water.”
The captain nodded again, as though pleased his students had learned their lessons so well. “Neptune’s Lady, which displaces twice the water of the petite navire on which you came, is equipped with missiles. The young lady’s papa, you will recall, owns a munitions factory that has been very busy lately.”
“Too busy,” Maggie pouted. “I hardly see him anymore.”
Were all Meriwether-Astor’s vessels named after Neptune? Is that how he saw himself—as the king of the sea, with his sneaky underwater ships and smuggling and armaments for foreign governments, merrily breaking every possible law? He certainly had enough minions to do his bidding—and from what she knew of the silly young Bourbon presently on the throne, she wouldn’t give the latter a worm’s chance in a henhouse before he was pushed aside and the real power behind the throne took his place.
“So after the first salvo, the aeronauts will not trouble us,” Jean-Luc put in. “I doubt that anyone will trouble us. Local militia cannot stand up to the Kingmaker, and we will be halfway to London before the other detachments get wind of us.”
Maggie could see it now—a swath of destruction miles wide, from Penzance to Exeter to Windsor. A swath that would level the countryside … and Gwynn Place … and Polgarth and Michael … and all Polgarth’s prize hens.
Maggie set her teeth. Someone had to stop them. Someone who wasn’t mad or blinded by greed or fantasies of lost kingdoms. Someone who had a bit of spirit—who could do the unexpected because no one took her seriously or even believed she had any value.
Someone like herself.
25
By the time the tour concluded, Maggie had educated both herself and Claude as well as could be expected considering that they weren’t supposed to know very much. She was not sure of Claude’s education at the Sorbonne, but her own had included enough of mechanics and engineering that she now possessed a rough idea not only of how the Kingmaker worked, but how the Fury was intended to support its incursion onto English shores.
Two things were painfully, frighteningly clear: One, she could not be present when Meriwether-Astor arrived expecting to see his daughter. And two, she must be on the Fury when it departed for Cornwall.
Since thos
e two events were, from what the captain had proudly reported, to happen within hours of each other, it was obvious that solving the first meant accomplishing the second.
Which was going to be the hard part.
They were escorted back to the inn and given separate rooms in the rear, the windows on each side generous in order to catch the greatest amount of light allowed by the escarpment of the cliff behind it. As soon as the door closed behind Jean-Luc and she heard him giving instructions to Serge standing outside, Maggie flew to her windows and opened them, leaning out as far as she dared.
“Claude! Open your window!”
He did so, craning to look up at the sliver of sky between roof and cliff-top, then over at her. “I believe they’ve locked me in and taken the key, Gloria, old thing. Have they no faith?”
“You’re too valuable. Of course, once they’ve landed in England, you’ll be worth about as much as a chamber pot to them. I’m a bit worried about what they plan to do with you then.”
“I confess that same thought crossed my mind. I’ve been considering a daring escape, but the exact logistics of it are defeating me at the moment.”
“Whereas I am considering the opposite. I need to get aboard Fury unseen and scuttle the Kingmaker.”
His elbows slipped off the sill and he practically fell out the window. “Are you mad?” he said hoarsely, tugging at his sleeves and brushing away the lichen from the old stone sill that clung to them.
“If I were, I should be joining this insane enterprise. Claude, what if we were to do both? You engineer a distraction by escaping that will allow me to get aboard that navire. Both our ends are then accomplished.”
“Delighted, I’m sure, but how? I am locked in, there is a guard upon my door, and we both appear to be on the third floor.”
“Let us then catalogue our resources and use our imaginations, shall we?”
She wriggled out onto the sill and, holding on to the frame on either side, leaned out to see what the prospects might be for climbing onto the roof. Sadly, it protruded out too far for her to scale it without falling, though once up there, it would have brought her closer to the cliff, which might be scaled.
She twisted the other way on the sill to examine the cliff. It was granite, and fissured and seamed with weathering, but definitely not climbable.
“Mademoiselle, please be careful.” A woman’s voice floated up from below. “If you fall, I will not be able to catch you.”
A woman’s English voice.
Maggie slithered back into her room and leaned on the sill to look down. A woman in a flowered dress and a white lace cap pleated and frilled in the French manner gazed up at her, and as she saw Maggie’s face in full, her eyes widened and her grip on her basket loosened in surprise. “It’s true!” she exclaimed, though no one else was down there to hear her. “I’m glad to know that Katrine wasn’t simply spinning one of her fancies.”
“What fancies? Who might Katrine be?”
“I know that Mr. Meriwether-Astor’s daughter is a guest here. Are you she—or someone else? Her maid, perhaps?”
Here was a conundrum. She had to maintain her false identity until the very last possible moment or risk that burlap sack. But this lady was clearly English—and from Cornwall, if Maggie’s ears didn’t deceive her. She was not a guest at the inn—the basket full of what looked like herbs and flowers was proof of that. Would it be safe for Maggie to say who she really was, and seek an ally? Or would the woman simply go straight to Serge or any one of the bathynauts and turn her in for a handful of sous as a reward?
“And who wishes to know?” Questions were easily answered with more questions.
“I am Katrine’s mother—Katrine is the maid who waited on you earlier.”
“But you are not French?”
“No, though I speak the tongue well enough after nearly twenty years. My name is Marie Lavande.”
Hadn’t that been Serge’s surname? Was this kind lady a relative? “Mary Lavender—that’s lovely. Do you work with herbs and simples, then?”
“I do. I came here as a nurse, and stayed because of Henri, the man who became my husband—and because they have no doctor closer than Brest, which is miles away. Can you come down to the garden, miss, while I pick a few herbs? I am getting a crick in my neck from looking up.”
“Certainly.” Maggie glanced to her left at Claude, who was listening in with the interest of someone who has nothing else to do. “I’ll be back shortly.”
“I’ll be here,” he said, his chin on his hand. “Tell Serge to bring a key and another cup of café au lait, there’s a good girl.”
She found Marie Lavande in the sunny garden on one side of the inn next to the kitchen door, her basket at her feet. She offered her hand, and when Maggie shook it, did not release it, but examined her face as though it were a scroll and she a scholar of Hebrew.
“I cannot get over it,” she said at last, releasing Maggie to sink onto the stone wall that divided the garden from that of its neighbor. “You are not adopted, are you?”
A tingle ran over Maggie’s shoulders and up the back of her neck. She paused in the act of shaping the word No, and changed her mind. “I am, in fact.”
“By Mr. Meriwether-Astor? How old were you?”
Maggie regarded her for a moment. “May I ask why you wish to know something so personal about a stranger?”
The woman smiled, self-deprecation in every line, and her lashes fell over speedwell-blue eyes. “You must think me terribly rude, barging in here and asking such intrusive questions. But you look so much like the portrait of a friend that hangs in our hall that it’s uncanny. Your mouth, your jaw, even the way your hair waves back from your face—” She stopped, and drew in a breath. “I am sorry. I am reminded of an old grief, that is all. I do beg your pardon, mademoiselle.”
“Allow me to ask you a question in return,” Maggie said. “Are you a supporter of Mr. Meriwether-Astor’s aims here in Baie des Sirenes? Are you even aware of what they are?”
Marie’s face clouded, and when she met Maggie’s gaze, fury snapped in the depths of her eyes. “And will you turn me over to the royalist bathynauts if I give you the wrong answer?”
Her tone of disdain would seem to indicate she was not related to the guard on Claude’s door—or if she was, that family dinners might be rather tense.
“I will not.”
“But you must, if you are Monsieur Meriwether-Astor’s daughter.”
“We have already established that I am not.”
“Then who are you?”
Do not be afraid to listen to your heart, Maggie, the Lady said in the back of her memory. A thimble of your intuition is worth a cup of anyone else’s logic. If she could not trust that compass inside her—what the Lady called her intuition, that had not led her astray yet—then what else could she trust in this strange place with all its danger?
“My name is Maggie,” she said, her stomach plunging at the magnitude of the risk. “I am the ward of Lady Claire Trevelyan, of Gwynn Place in Cornwall, and the step-cousin of Claude Seacombe, whom you observed in the other window. We are both here against our will, and I am masquerading as Gloria Meriwether-Astor to keep us both alive.”
It took several moments for Marie Lavande to absorb these astonishing facts. And then Maggie saw the moment when she seized upon one in particular.
“You are the cousin of Claude Seacombe? By what connection?”
“His father married my aunt, Elaine Seacombe.”
“Your aunt!”
“Yes. My mother was her sister. Claude’s father adopted me when—”
“—when Catherine died. Yes, I know. And there was not a blessed thing I could do to stop it.”
For the second time that day, Maggie stared, utterly bereft of speech.
“I knew it!” Marie pressed both hands to her cheeks, slipped from her seat on the wall, and took several rapid steps down the nearest row of kitchen herbs. “I knew it!” When she whirled and
marched back, tears glistened on her cheeks. “I knew the resemblance was too strong for chance. Oh, Marguerite, I never thought this day would come. Look at you—how grown up and lovely you are! Just as lovely as she was—how can it be possible that you can be here, and against your will at that?”
Maggie had no reply—and couldn’t, in any case, as she was pulled against Marie’s bosom and enfolded in the kind of motherly hug that she’d only ever experienced from the Lady.
“But—but who are you?” she finally managed when Marie released her a little to look at her again, as if she could not get enough of drinking her in.
“My maiden name is Mariah Polgarth. I was Catherine’s nurse, engaged by her parents to see her through her confinement,” she said softly. “I came well recommended by Lady Flora at Gwynn Place.” A deep dimple of mischief came and went in one smooth cheek. “What they did not know is that I was also Kevern’s sister, just back from nursing school and eager to try my wings in the world.”
“Sister!”
“Yes. I am your aunt, and Katrine—who is named for your dear mother, my closest friend—is your cousin. Oh, my dear, the sight of you is a gift from God that amply repays any good thing I was ever able to do for Catherine. But you must tell me, how do you come to be alive? We heard the Seacombe airship went into the Thames and all aboard were lost.”
“I must save that tale for when we meet again … Aunt Mariah.” Oh, what a strange and wonderful thrill to say those words for the first time! “But I must ask you at once—it is true that I am Kevern’s daughter? Because my grandparents are convinced that Charles de Maupassant Seacombe is my father, through such a horrible—I cannot even bear—”
Mariah drew her into her arms again and held her while Maggie wept, her emotions swamping her so that her very ribs ached with sobs of mingled joy and pain.
“Let me reassure you, my dearest one, that you are Kevern and Catherine’s daughter, and no one else’s. Those Seacombes put that story about when it became clear she did not plan to return to England without you. If she was to be ruined, I suppose, better to be ruined by being taken against her will than because she loved a man who was beneath her.”
Magnificent Devices 6: A Lady of Spirit Page 18