Echoes of Aether

by Gail B Williams

  “What the hell are you doing up here?” Lagina demanded.

  “Saving Stephen Russell. I stumbled over this.”

  “Stumble back out.”

  No surprise there. Lagina wouldn’t want him to mess up whatever he was doing. “No. I have access to someone who might be able to stop the weapon we think the New Jac’s have.”

  “How?”

  Jenson had to shrug. “I’m not the mechanic. You know about the weapon?”

  “Rumours. It’s one of my goals.”

  Jenson nodded. “You stop it. I’ll counter its effects. We’ll talk back in London.” Leaving Lagina, Jenson returned to the bar, to the same spot as before. He bought another beer, risked a sip.

  A drunk fell into him, three sheets to the wind. “Sor’ mate. Din see youse there. Li’ me get you ’nuvver. Bar!”

  Jenson tried to refuse, but the drunk was determined. An arm and the attendant body stink was thrown around him, and he was pulled away from the bar with a promise of meeting ‘me mates’. Jenson went with the drunk - this was exactly the kind of inclusion that he needed.

  The group was talking rubbish, well lubricated by the beer. Jenson sat with them, laughed at their ribald jokes. The barmaids did what they could to serve the beer and avoid the hands, not that all of them were that bothered about the second part of their jobs. The man opposite him grabbed one of the girls. Jenson guessed he was well into his cups given the state of the one he grabbed when the younger prettier girl walked by.

  “How you feel about climbing this Apollo’s Tower?” He grabbed his crotch, and the woman melded her mouth to his. And lifted several coins from his pocket. Jenson laughed. Older and wiser. Not that the reference made much sense. Apollo was the Greek god of many a thing, but not love, that was Eros. But then Jenson should give a drunk credit for knowing any of the classical gods at all.

  Another hour of this and Jenson remembered why he usually went for the more direct route of dragging suspects in and questioning them. This sneaking and hiding wasn’t something he enjoyed. There again, neither were multi-course dinners with snobs who called everything about him into question. It was questionable which was worse.

  Stretching his back and neck, he looked around the room. Vostock and a fat man –

  My God.

  He tipped his head, hiding as much as he could behind the stiff collar, and looked again. Sir Giles Chalmers. Pembrey was the name that had come up, and that wasn’t a lead he would just let go even for Maker, but Chalmers was here, and that was an undeniable connection.

  “So’w’ brin’ back wot was lost!”

  The cheer went up from the group, tankards were clanked, Jenson joined in.

  “Who be that?”

  The West Country voice cut cold through Jenson’s sober head, though a number of others looked around, peering through bleary eyes up at Vostock. Confusion and befuddlement reigned in the sozzled expressions. The man a third of the way around the circle looked at Vostock; that was the optimistically-named Temperance Smith, Temp to his mates. Since everyone else was looking round, Jenson knew he had to too or mark himself out as different. When he turned, Chalmers was gone. And Vostock was pointing directly to him.

  “’Az Ash.”

  Vostock glowered. “Next to Ash.”

  “’Az Roy,” Temp stated with the kind of absolute certainty only a drunk could slur. “’S’won of the lads Ash said he’d bring up from the Smoke. Innit, Ash?” Temp slapped Ash’s knee, and the drunk from the bar slumped, slid to the floor, dead away. “Iz Roy,” Temp looked up to tell Vostock and he smiled. “He’s good bloke.” Temp raised his tankard again. “The Queen is dead.”

  “Long live the King!” Jenson returned and the tankards clashed with others as they cheered and laughed. It was a cry that had gone up several times during the evening, and this time it got a roar from the rest.

  “Settle down!” Vostock roared. He looked back at Jenson like something was bothering him.

  Jenson suspected that Vostock guessed, whoever Roy was, it wasn’t Jenson. But while he was too uncertain to act, Jenson was safe.

  “Get to yer beds, the lot of yer!” Vostock shouted, bringing the noise and sense of fun to an abrupt end. “Big day tomorrow lads, don’t want to be sick for that one, do yer?”

  With much grumbling, not to mention a fair bit of stumbling, the patrons quaffed what they could and started to stagger away. Pushing down revulsion at the idea, Jenson grabbed Ash’s arm and between them, he and Temp managed to drag the man into a vaguely upright position, which had the added bonus of hiding Jenson’s face from Vostock as they dragged him out.

  They headed towards a barn, like most of the others. Jenson reckoned that at least thirty of them bedded down on the straw that night. It wasn’t going to be a comfortable night, but all in the name and service of the Crown.

  By the time he and Temp allowed Ash to flow to the hay-covered floor, Jenson looked back to see the way back out was blocked by body after body. He was staying the night, like it or not. With a sigh, and the last deep breath he was probably going to be able to stomach that night, he sank to the floor and sat against a bale, Temp mirrored on the far side of the fallen Ash.

  “So, what is the plan?” he whispered to Temp. “Got here too late to hear it.”

  “We and the activists head up the hill to the tower, make a big crowd, Vostock’ll do whatever is pro’est is and then we’re done.” The man cuffed him on the arm. “We get paid if there’s a punch up or not, but I’m ’oping there is.”

  Jenson gave the obligatory laugh-like agreement. “You don’t care about the New Jacobites then?”

  Temp shrugged. “Some French twat or some German bird on the throne, dun’ make no difference to me, they’re all just posh gits. Like that tosser, Sir C.”

  “That fat one what come in?” Oh, dear Lord, he’d taken on that dreadful East End accent now.

  Temp nodded and yawned.

  “Bloke deserves a punch or two.” Jenson didn’t like that side of himself, but he kept it in check.

  Temp laughed. “Yeah.”

  “So what hill?” No answer came from the dark. “Temp?”

  Like too many others, he was already snoring. Enough beer had been drunk that it was little surprise most of the men were snoring in moments. Tiredness ached every bone in Jenson’s body too, but there was little comfort to be had among straw bales and poking sticks. The rats were chittering around, not caring if the men they crawled over were snoring or quiet, living or dead.

  He could be in a big comfortable bed with clean cotton sheets and warm blankets now. Only he wouldn’t be. If he were at the estate, he’d be sitting in a stiff chair outside of Amethyst’s bedroom, keeping watch. No, being here was definitely the best way he could protect her tonight. Comfortable or not, he had to get some sleep.

  Chapter 54

  There was something overly smug about Willimena as she joined them for dinner. Whatever was going on between her and Monty had an unnatural feel about it. Amethyst found having Jade at her side comforting, but he wasn’t Jenson. Maker was around, and they shared a look or two, but there wasn’t much he could do with Violet right beside him. Jade was good to the promise she had had to drag from him not to reveal anything, and he treated Maker no differently, or perhaps a little more distantly.

  Blanchard and Arthur were both lurking too. And Stephen had been told of the threat to her, which seemed to mean Edwina knew. They were all on high alert. It wasn’t fun to be the focus of so much attention. She didn’t like the idea that they were there, but she liked the fact that they were needed even less.

  “We should go shopping!”

  Amethyst ignored the comment, and the discussion that it started.

  “Tomorrow, then. All us girls, just us girls together. It’ll be fun. Won’t it, Amethyst?”

  It was the quiet awaiting a response more than the question itself that that made Amethyst drag her attention back to the table and the people around her. She s
tared up at Willimena.

  “Go shopping?” she asked. “With you?”

  Willimena’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. Cold dead fish eyes that didn’t make a move even as Montgomery’s forced jollity expounded the virtues of Ripon for shoppers and young ladies. Eventually he ran out of things to say and all the time Amethyst watched Willimena, whose painted-on smile quaked with the effort necessary to keep it on her face.

  “I’d sooner gouge my own eyes out.” Amethyst pushed back her chair. “Excuse me.” Even as she strode out, she heard Bobbie laughing and Jade’s cutlery go down as he excused himself and rushed after her. He caught up halfway up the stairs.

  “Are you determined to starve me out?”

  She stopped and frowned at him. “What?”

  “Well, you skip breakfasts and lunches, now you’re not finishing dinner.”

  The smile spread warmly as she resumed going up the stairs. “You’re hardly going to starve. Don’t think I haven’t seen you eating my share of any food provided. Besides, you’re a big boy, you’ll survive. I’ll ask Dickens to bring you up a snack later.”

  “You’re really getting into all this ‘lady of the manor’ stuff, aren’t you?”

  She shrugged. “Why not? I have the money. Blanchard! What on earth is the matter?” she asked as the valet came running down the corridor towards them.

  “Nothing, Miss Forester,” he said as he reached her bedroom door. “I was told you’d left the dining room and just came up to ensure all was well.”

  “All is well, and you don’t have to do this.” She moved up to him, put her hand on his arm to lean up and kiss his cheek. “So thank you.”

  She went to the bedroom door, but Jade caught hold of her, Blanchard going in to check the room first. He quickly came back out, nodded to Jade, who finally released her to go in. Her first action was to tug on the bell pull. If Blanchard knew she was going to bed, Dickens probably would too, so it wouldn’t hurt to make the summons official.

  Twenty minutes later, she was in bed and Jade was sitting by the fire eating the second of the procured puddings.

  “What’s wrong, Amme?”

  “What makes you think anything is wrong?”

  “Well you wouldn’t usually snap at someone like you snapped at Willimena.”

  “No.”

  “Not that it wasn’t funny. Not that she didn’t deserve it.” Jade moved over to sit on his side of the bed. “It’s just not like you.”

  It wasn’t, but perhaps it should be. If being up here had taught her anything, it was that she wasn’t likely to find the kind of man she was looking for, so maybe it was time to face facts. She was a woman of means, she’d have to find a way to be a woman of substance in her own right, without reference to any man. She had little chance of finding a husband.

  “I just want to go home.”

  “I can understand that feeling, but that’s not the problem. What is?”

  She looked up at her too knowing twin. If anyone was going to understand, it was him. “How do you feel about the fact that you’ll never be able to be with the one you love?”

  For a moment he considered it. Such seriousness was unlike Jade, so she would take note. “Miserable.” He thought some more. “Even if I find my forever one, given that it’ll be another man, Society will never accept it. It even presents the possibility of a gaol sentence. But I’m not the only one facing that prospect. People manage. Maybe knowing you’re loved is more important than Society accepting that fact.”

  She smiled and sat up to hug him. “I’ll always love you.”

  He hugged her back and laughed. “And I’ll always love you, but it’s not the same is it? This all about Maker?”

  She shook her head as she lay back down. “Not sure what it’s about. Just have this distinct feeling that something is changing. Maybe I’m just growing up.”

  After kicking off his shoes, he stood to remove his trousers before getting into the bed. “Get your cold feet over your own side.”

  With a tut, she moved over a little.

  “It’s difficult to hold on to innocence without ignorance, and you’re not stupid.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I think.”

  “Do you think going back to London will keep you safer?”

  “Depends on what Jenson finds here. What he can do.”

  “Who he can arrest.”

  “Hmm,” she murmured. “Thanks for that depressing thought.”

    

  “You don’t have to leave so quickly,” Stephen said as he joined Amethyst and Jade in his workroom.

  “Oh, I do.” Amethyst didn’t even pause from where she was packing up DMAC.

  “She won’t listen to me either,” Jade advised the older man as he stood by his sister’s side, arms crossed and stance solid. “Won’t even consider coming to stay with me for a while.”

  She looked up at him. “You’re the one who said you don’t have room for me, let alone my lady’s maid, and that there isn’t a hotel in the area. Besides, I’ll be safer and more comfortable in London, in my own home. And a lot less likely to insult some worthy.”

  “Wouldn’t worry about that, deary,” Great-Aunt Flora said as she swept in.

  “The Chalmers’ are a long way short of worthy,” Lady Garrington-Smythe confirmed as she entered just behind her friend, Bobbie coming a close third. Lady Garrington-Smythe moved over to face Amethyst. “I’ve sent my man to organise a charter airship, to be here this afternoon. We’ll have a lovely quiet day here in the house, then we’ll glide down to London at our leisure this afternoon.”

  Amethyst smiled at the older woman. “Sounds wonderful. Thank you.”

  “How were you planning to get home?”

  “Train.”

  Lady Garrington-Smythe tutted. “Unless you have a private carriage I don’t know about, that would be a particularly foolhardy option, ladies have vanished from trains before now. We’ll fly privately later today. Now all you have to do is pack and tidy up this‒” Her hand flapped around to indicate the whole room, “‒whatever you want to call it.” Her work done, Lady Garrington-Smythe swept out of the room.

  Bobbie, leaning against the wall beside the door, watched the reactions of the others, grinning broadly. “Well that’s Mother, giving her orders and leaving. All we have to do is obey.”

  “It’s a bit presumptuous.” Jade said.

  Bobbie shrugged. “That’s the aristocracy for you.”

  “Of which you are a member,” Amethyst pointed out, frowning as she and everyone else started to hear the pounding footfalls approaching. “Besides, in this case, she’s absolutely right. She’s being really helpful. Jenson?”

  Red-faced, panting and sweating, Jenson doubled over, hands just over his knees to lean on, as he tried to speak but couldn’t.

  “Important enough to run all the way from Deeping Hallows?” Amethyst guessed.

  Jenson nodded.

  “Vostock?”

  He nodded again.

  “The protest?”

  Another nod.

  “You know where?”

  Another nod as he stood up. Swallowed and pushed the words out. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  “Talking to him,” she explained, pointing at Maker. “It’s the one-word thing.”

  “Right here,” Maker grumbled.

  “I had to get used to guessing.”

  “Still here.”

  She grinned at Maker, then turned back to Jenson. “Besides, there are few things that are going to warrant you running ten miles to come back and tell us.”

  “Three,” Jenson corrected. “Horse threw a shoe.”

  “So, both Vostock and the protest? Tell me they haven’t got the acoustic weapon.”

  “Can’t.”

  “What acoustic weapon?” Stephen asked.

  Amethyst and Jade looked to him. “Yours.”

  Stephen looked confused. “I made the A-Guns, but no acoustic weapon.”

&
nbsp; “Yes, actually you did,” Amethyst said. Jade moved over, took Stephen aside to explain it to him. She turned her attention back to Jenson. “So why are you back here?”

  Now he had his breath back, he moved closer to the desk and Amethyst. “You said it had to be cancelled out. That even if we stop the machine we have to stop the effect and you use the opposite frequency to do that.”

  She nodded. “I said that.”

  “Can you do it?”

  She pulled her lip between her teeth. Could she? She looked over to Jade and Stephen. “Mechanically, it’s not that different from the receiver here.” She pointed to the machine still on the desk.

  “Will that work without the prismatic crystal?”

  “Yes, we only needed the prismatic crystal to re-focus Stephen. To emit a cancelling transmission, we just use another crystal. But for it to work, we have to know what frequency to transmit at.”

  “The Royal Barge is a Mark 12,” Jade said.

  Amethyst nodded, doing the calculations in her head. “If we use the quartz crystal and calibrate the transmuter…”

  “We’ll need to replace the converter to invert the Mark 12 frequency. If we‒”

  “You can do it, deary!” Great-Aunt Flora cut in. “That’s all we need to know.”

  Amethyst smiled at the indulgent amusement on Jenson’s face. “All right, we can build it, but how long do we have?”

  “If the Royal Barge does come this way, which we need to assume it will, it will be here between one and two o’clock. I can’t guarantee the exact schedule.”

  “Do you know where the other machine will be?” Jade asked as he wiped the blackboard clean. As soon as it was empty, he drew an oblong in the top left-hand corner of the board.

  “Apollo Tower?”

  Jade nodded. His technical drawing skills showed in the way he swiftly and accurately drew the shape of the tower and the landscape on which it sat. Next, he was writing dimensions.

  “Where are the protestors going to be?” Amethyst asked.