Rebel Mechanics

by Shanna Swendson

  That got the attention of most of the younger ones. To the older children, a row with the soldiers was more appealing. I herded all the children I could onto the bus just as another airship approached.

  I turned back to see what was happening. Lizzie was still haranguing the soldiers, even as their commander tried in vain to make them stand down. More children ran toward the bus. Some of them were crying. Colin and a couple of the men carried the wounded. “See what you can do for them, Verity,” Colin said as he placed a bleeding child on the floor of the bus. Then he ran back, shouting for his sister.

  The second airship had landed, bringing with it even more soldiers. Colin and Lizzie returned with the last of the children, and as Lizzie jumped on board the bus, Colin shouted to Alec, “Go!” He stood in the doorway of the bus, his goggles over his eyes and a pistol in his hand.

  I ripped strips off my petticoats to bandage the wounded child in front of me. Lizzie tended another with a brisk efficiency. “How weak are those soldiers that they’re terrified of children?” she sputtered in fury as she worked. “Shouldn’t Imperial Regulars be made of sterner stuff than that? The kids only wanted to see the airships.”

  “Seeing that bunch running at them must have been frightening,” I attempted to joke, even as my voice shook. More seriously, I added, “I don’t think their commander was very pleased with them.”

  As we entered the maze of downtown streets, the bus slowed and Colin stepped aside from the door. One of the women came forward. “You know the message to send?” he asked her.

  She nodded as she pulled a telegraph rig from her corset. “I’ll send to all, urgent.”

  He bent to kiss her cheek. “Off you go, then,” he said, patting her on the behind as she stepped off the bus and ran for an alley. Colin signaled to Alec, and the bus sped up again.

  A voice piped up, “Miss, what about the candy?”

  “Just a moment,” I said. “We have to care for the injured.” That wasn’t easy with the bus careening down the streets. The mad race my first day in the city had been a stately procession in comparison.

  “Go on and pass out the candy, Verity,” Lizzie said. “I can deal with the rest.”

  The bus swayed so wildly that I could barely stay on my feet by hanging on to the hand straps as I made my way up the aisle to the stash. I distributed the candy, then waited until we were on a straightaway before passing the bag through the back window to a woman in the rear car.

  As we approached the block where we’d picked up the children that morning, Alec sounded a long blast on the engine’s whistle. Even before the bus stopped, Colin jumped off and climbed up behind Alec on the engine. A crowd formed as people drifted out of alleys and buildings or came from nearby streets to find out what the noise was.

  From my position kneeling on the floor by the wounded, I could see Colin through the front windows of the bus. He took off his hat and waved it for emphasis as he spoke in a dramatic oratorical fashion that wouldn’t have been out of place in a revivalist’s pulpit. “My good friends and fellow citizens,” he began. “We hoped to do some good today by using our machine to take your children out for an innocent picnic and a chance to play in fresh air and sunshine.

  “But the British wouldn’t allow that. British troops fired on your children!” He paused to allow the gasps of shock and outraged shouts to work their way through the crowd before continuing. “We’re returning the healthy children to you. We’ll take the wounded to our doctors. If your children are among the wounded, you may come with us.”

  He tapped on the window, and Lizzie told the uninjured children to go home. Anxious parents boarded the bus, though there were far fewer parents than wounded children.

  Colin addressed what was left of the crowd. “Those cowards who fear children are marching up Broadway even now to remind us how mighty they are. After we tend the wounded, we’ll meet them at Eighth Street to make them account for what they’ve done. Come with us now if you want to make your voice heard.”

  A few of the older boys boarded the bus, and several young women and a couple of young men followed them. I spotted Mick on the engine, waving a red kerchief over his head. The rest of the people scurried back into their buildings and alleyways. Colin jumped off the engine and boarded the bus as it began moving uptown again. “Humph,” he snorted. “What a bunch of mindless sheep.”

  “Colin!” Lizzie chided, gesturing with her head toward the “mindless sheep” who were sitting with their wounded children—children who had been wounded for the Mechanics’ political display.

  The bus slowed again as we neared Lizzie’s neighborhood. Lizzie grabbed my arm and said, “We must go—now.” Colin swung me off the bus after her, and I let her drag me down the street toward her boardinghouse.

  Once inside her room, Lizzie shoved me into a chair, took a towel off a hook, poured water over it, and wiped my face. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Getting you cleaned up.”

  “But why?”

  She scrubbed the blood off my hands. “We need a reporter on the scene who can blend in as an ordinary citizen. You’re our best bet for that.” She leaned back to check her work, plucked a bit of hay out of my hair, and gave me a wry grin. “I doubt the soldiers will forget the mad redhead who harangued them. You’re less memorable.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said dryly.

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. You’re respectable. No one would imagine you to be a troublemaker. You look every inch the governess—and don’t you dare take offense at that.”

  She attempted to smooth my hair, but gave that up as a lost cause. “Your dress doesn’t look too bad, and the blood doesn’t show on the dark blue, so you shouldn’t stand out as someone who was on the Battery today. Well, without that.” She removed the Mechanics’ insignia from my bodice, dropped it in my bag, then handed me the bag and said, “Now, head for Broadway and Eighth. Watch what happens and write an article tonight. We’ll get it from you in the morning.”

  She went downstairs with me, pushed me toward Broadway, then ran uptown. Too exhausted to run, I settled for a brisk walk. It was only a block to Broadway, and there didn’t seem to be anything happening yet.

  The crowd grew denser as I approached Eighth Street, and the signs of protest became evident. Some people held sticks with red paint–smeared white cloth tied to them. Others held placards printed with the words “The Blood of Our Children.” The ink was still wet, and men moved through the crowd, distributing signs. Most of the protesters looked like the Mechanics I knew. A few had tried to dress as though they represented the people of the slums, but having seen the actual slum residents, I could tell these were merely costumes.

  Not everyone present was part of the protest. When someone asked, “What is this?” I realized that some of the bystanders didn’t even know what was happening.

  “It’s those damned Mechanics,” a nearby man muttered. “They’re causing trouble again.”

  Soon, a rhythmic click, click, click echoed down the canyon of the street, and a moment later the red-coated soldiers came into view. The drums began playing a cadence, accompanied by the shrill tone of dozens of fifes. I held my breath as I waited to see what would happen when they reached this crowd. The mob was looking for a fight, and if the troops were as well, then there could be even more bloodshed.

  But the crowd merely held their signs and bloody banners and stood in accusing silence as the troops marched toward them. When the soldiers neared Eighth Street, the crowd filled the street, blocking the way. I had to fight to hold my position on the sidewalk as people around me surged into the street. They made no threatening moves but just stood there, staring down the British.

  General Montgomery, still on horseback, called a halt when he was nearly half a block from the crowd. The soldiers stopped behind him, but he rode forward until he was directly in front of the human barricade. “My good people,” he shouted. “Please clear the street.” The people
didn’t move, but they also didn’t say anything. They simply stared at the general, who grew flustered. “You don’t want trouble, do you?” he asked, his voice darkening. “We will not hesitate to use force.”

  “We have no doubt about that,” a woman’s voice called out from within the crowd. “If you’ll shoot at children, you’ll shoot at us.”

  A red flush rose from the general’s high collar to his hairline. He glanced around, and his eyes widened as if he’d just then noticed the placards and the “bloody” cloth banners. He’d been with the first group of soldiers. Did he even know what had happened behind him?

  He gestured to another officer on horseback, who took something that looked like a small hand mirror from a pouch on his saddle. He glanced at it, then the color drained from his face. It took him a moment to recover before he kicked his horse forward and showed the object to the general. The general’s flushed face went stark white.

  After that, he didn’t ask again for the crowd to move, nor did he order his men forward. Some of the soldiers shifted uncomfortably in their ranks as they glanced at the crowd. These men probably had more in common with the people blocking their way than with the people giving them orders. I wondered if they realized that or if they truly believed in the British cause and the superiority of the magister class.

  The British drums had stopped, but a new drumbeat entered the uncomfortable silence. This sound was deeper than the clicking of the British drums and much slower, like a dirge. As the sound came closer, the crowd in the street parted, and a funeral procession came through.

  I couldn’t stop myself from crying out in dismay when I saw that a child’s body lay on the bier a group of Mechanics carried. I hadn’t thought that any of the children had been mortally wounded, but I might have missed an internal injury. I fumbled for a handkerchief and clutched it against my mouth as I fought back tears.

  The procession stopped directly in front of the general. He’d gone a horrible pasty color, with beads of sweat on his forehead that were visible even from where I stood within the crowd on the sidewalk.

  A ragged, dirty woman with a shawl over her head emerged from the funeral party and approached the general. “How dare you?” she sobbed at the general in a heavy Irish brogue. “He was merely a child on a picnic, and your men fired upon him! Do you think we’re no better than animals?”

  The woman’s voice was familiar. I stared at her for a long moment, then was glad I had my handkerchief over my mouth because I couldn’t stop from gasping in shock as recognition struck me. It was Lizzie! I turned to look at the body on the bier and realized that it was Mick, doing an admirable job of playing dead. Several of the older boys from the tenements surrounded the bier, barely fighting back smiles as they hung their heads in mock grief.

  My relief quickly turned to anger. While British troops had indeed fired on children, this was a lie. Had that been their plan all along, to stir up an incident that they could then magnify to gain even more sympathy? Had they expected me to fall for the act and report on it?

  The general took off his hat and held it against his heart. “Madam,” he said, inclining his head toward her, “you have my sincere condolences. I will investigate this incident thoroughly, and the men who broke discipline to fire upon children will be punished.”

  “They ought to be!” she snapped. “And what were ye doin’ bringin’ soldiers to the park on a Sunday?”

  Angry murmurs spread throughout the crowd. The general stammered for a moment, then addressed Lizzie. “Madam, please accept this token of our remorse for your loss. It should provide a good funeral for your boy and something for yourself.” His aide bent in his saddle to hand Lizzie several banknotes.

  “But it won’t bring my boy back!” she wailed. Colin—also dressed in slumlike rags—stepped out of the funeral party to put his arm around her and lead her back to the group.

  The general said something to one of his men, who then shouted at the assembled troops, “About-face!” The soldiers snapped about briskly.

  “You know whose fault this really is, don’t you?” the general said to the people blocking the street. “It’s the rebels’. We have no quarrel with the people of this city, but those Mechanics stir up trouble, and you’re the ones who suffer for it. Someday the Mechanics will pay for the damage they’ve done.” Wheeling his horse around, he called out, “Sergeant! Block off the streets at Fourteenth. We don’t want that rabble getting uptown.”

  The sergeant called men out of the ranks and sent them off, then ordered the remaining soldiers to march. The procession moved slowly down Broadway.

  As the crowd started to disperse, Lizzie saw me and hurried over. “I hope you saw all that!” she called out.

  Feeling sick from betrayal, I turned and tried to get away from her. The crowd was too dense for me to make it very far, and she easily caught up to me. “Verity, whatever’s the matter?”

  I didn’t want to face her because I couldn’t hold back the tears that stung my eyes. “That was all a lie,” I said, my voice coming out in a sob instead of in the sharp retort I would have liked. “If your cause is so just, you shouldn’t have to lie about it.”

  “Hush, Verity!” she hissed, dragging me out of the throng.

  I resisted, snapping, “Why? You don’t want everyone hearing about your lies?”

  “It could have been true,” she insisted when she’d propelled me into a relatively quiet doorway. She kept a firm grasp on my arm, preventing me from escaping. “For all we know, it is true, but the parents aren’t bold enough to confront the general.”

  “One of the children died?”

  “One could have. The military needed to see the possible consequences of their actions. Maybe they’ll think twice before they act the next time. That little bit of theater may save countless lives in the future.”

  “Was that the plan all along, to provoke an attack and then stage that scene? You told me the children would be safe, that the troops wouldn’t dare fire on them.”

  She shook her head urgently. “No, we didn’t expect this at all. But when it did happen, we took advantage of it. We weren’t deceiving you.”

  I jerked my arm out of her grasp. “Don’t count on me deceiving anyone else. I won’t report on this.”

  “We don’t expect you to. It served its purpose of making the soldiers look bad in front of a crowd, which makes our cause look better.” She took my arm again. “Now, come on, we’re having a party, courtesy of the general.”

  “No, thank you,” I said stiffly. “I need to get home. I have an article to write—a true one.”

  As I pulled away from her, she said, “Verity, please don’t be angry.” Her voice was rough with emotion, sounding like she was near tears herself, but I didn’t let myself look back. I wasn’t ready to forgive, and if I saw her cry I might relent.

  I caught an uptown bus, but it only traveled a few blocks before stopping. “Looks like a roadblock,” the conductor reported. I craned my neck to look out the front window and saw red-coated soldiers questioning and searching the passengers on vehicles ahead of us—only the horse-drawn ones, of course. Magical carriages were waved forward. I realized with a jolt of horror that I had my book full of notes about the Mechanics and the Mechanics’ insignia in my bag.

  Trying to look as casual as I could when my whole body was shaking, I got up and said to the conductor, “I may as well get off here. I don’t have far to walk.”

  Once off the bus, I headed up the sidewalk and saw that no one was getting past the roadblock. Even people who looked as respectable as I did were being stopped and searched. I headed down a side street as though that had been my aim all along, then stopped to consider my options. I wondered if I could bluff my way past the roadblock by invoking the name of my employer and acting like a governess on her day out. I feared I was too nervous to manage that.

  I appeared to be trapped.

  IN WHICH THE FIGHT MOVES UPTOWN

  I whirled in surprise a
nd terror when someone called my name. For a moment, I feared my role with the Mechanics had been discovered and the authorities had come after me, but then I recognized Nat running toward me. “Hey, Verity! There you are!”

  “Did Lizzie send you?” I snarled.

  “Nope. Alec did.”

  Had Alec been in on the deception? He hadn’t been there, but had he known? “What does Alec want?” I asked.

  “We’re havin’ a big party with the general’s money, and he was afraid you got lost.” His eyes narrowed as he apparently put together the tearstains on my face, the fact that I was fleeing, and my agitated state. “Is something wrong?”

  “I—I need to go home,” I stammered, the tears threatening to spill again. “B-but the roadblocks. I’ll never make it through.”

  He patted me on the arm. “Easy, there, Verity. I can get you outta here. Don’t you worry about that. Come on.” He led me down a short flight of stairs to a basement door, which he opened, gesturing for me to follow him into the gloom. I felt my way through a narrow passage toward a square of light at the end, where Nat held open a door that led into a barren yard between buildings. We crossed the yard and entered another basement, then came up onto the sidewalk on a major street.

  “There you are, on Fourteenth, past the roadblock,” Nat said, brushing his hands together in satisfaction. “The roadblocks only keep out people like you who follow the rules. The ones they’re guarding against know how to get past. Now, d’you need me to get you home, or can you make it from here?”

  “I can make it on my own,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure. I knew the way, but my strength was failing.

  He disappeared back into the basement, and I waited for a break in traffic to cross the busy street and head for the nearest bus stop. Fortunately, the bus I caught wasn’t the one I’d just left. It was practically empty, so I had a seat to myself for the long ride. I was so lost in thought that I almost missed my stop.