Arabella of Mars

by David D. Levine

Keeping one eye on the larboard mast, she slowly edged out onto the keel … now fully visible to the topmen, though they did not seem to notice.

  She swallowed, drew up her knees to her chest, took a deep breath, gripped the keel hard with her heels, and pushed off hard.

  Arabella’s heart pounded as the keel’s copper surface flew by just inches below her chin. Cold rain battered like hail at her face and shoulders.

  A flash of lightning limned the rudder ahead, drawing rapidly closer.

  Too rapidly.

  She reached out her hands to slow herself.

  And then a projecting flap of copper caught her hand! Pain tore across her palm and stabbed up her arm as she tumbled away, stifling a cry of pain and alarm. The world spun around her—hull and keel and masts and black, roiling clouds tumbling crazily past in rapid succession. Thunder boomed, disorienting her still further.

  Arabella flailed in the air, straining her blood-smeared fingers toward the keel as it flashed past again and again. The first time she missed. The second time she brushed it with her fingers, serving only to send herself tumbling in a different direction. Disoriented, she missed the keel again on its next pass, and again.

  On the next pass, stretch though she might, the keel flew by beyond her fingers’ reach.

  And again.

  Panic flooded her throat. The ship was receding from her, farther and farther on each rotation. Thunder and lightning disoriented her still further.

  She stretched out a leg, reaching with her toes, but the keel only smacked her foot, adding a nauseating spin to her existing tumble.

  And then something slammed into the back of her head.

  Stunned by the pain though she was, she quickly groped behind herself for the offending object. One hand found rough, wet wood and gripped it with panicked strength.

  With a painful wrench of her shoulder, her dizzying tumble slowed; a moment later the wood struck her across the hips. She folded herself across it, clinging like a desperate monkey.

  Her head still spun, though her body’s rotation had stilled. Her right hand throbbed with pain. She tasted blood.

  She was clinging to the rudder, a massive plank of khoresh-wood which creaked ponderously in her arms, swaying slowly from the impact.

  Looking around, she saw that both masts were bare of people. Had they completed their task and returned to the deck without seeing her? Or were the mutineers rushing toward her even now?

  She wiped her eyes, shook her head to clear it, and began clambering up the rudder.

  * * *

  Climbing the rudder was far easier than moving along the keel, as the enormous black iron hinges, attached with bolts, that connected it to the keel provided many handholds.

  At the top, two mighty chains floated free, their links clinking in the roaring wind. Arabella pulled herself along the larboard chain, where great blasts of wind-driven rain tried to pluck her from the ship, but as each gust came she clung tightly to the chain until it passed. At last she reached the ledge below the great cabin’s window.

  Carven vines, highlighted with gold leaf, bedecked the window’s lower edge. Cautiously, keeping herself out of sight, she pulled herself along the vines, leaving behind herself a series of bloody hand-prints quickly erased by the storm. When she reached the window’s lower starboard corner, she slowly put her head over the edge so as to peer into the cabin.

  Her first view was of nothing but a buff coat.

  Moving her head to one side and wiping the rain from the window with her sleeve, she had to suppress a gasp. Every one of the officers was crammed into the great cabin, with hands bound behind them, eyes covered with blindfolds, and mouths stopped with gags. Even Aadim had a cloth bag pulled over his head.

  One midshipman, a very young boy by the name of Watson, floated in the center of the cabin, slurping from a bottle of Captain Singh’s very best wine. The butts of two pistols projected from the waist of his trousers.

  Arabella bit her lip. Watson’s participation in the mutiny surprised her; he’d seemed a pleasant enough sort. But here he was. How could she get past him to free the captain and the other officers?

  Just then the hatch to the maindeck burst open and one of the two men outside stuck his head in. “Watson!” he cried, wiping rain from his face. “Get yerself and them pistols on deck! That blackamoor Mills is kicking up a fuss!” Behind him, Arabella heard shouts and growls of anger.

  Watson hastily corked the wine and departed, leaving the bottle spinning in the air behind him. The hatch slammed closed, and she heard it being securely dogged.

  Thank God for Mills!

  The great cabin’s window was not designed to be opened from outside, but neither was it intended to be secure, and in a few moments she had worked one casement free from its catch, swung it wide, and slipped inside. The cessation of the pounding rain on her back was a small relief. “It’s Ashby, sir,” she muttered in the captain’s ear, and slipped off his blindfold. One eye was swollen and purple, which filled her heart with compassion toward him and anger toward the mutineers. “I’ll have you free in a moment.”

  But as soon as she reached behind the captain to untie his hands, she regretted that rash promise. Rather than merely being tied, the captain’s hands were locked to the bench with iron shackles. The other officers were similarly secured.

  Panic squeezed Arabella’s chest. Watson or one of the other mutineers would surely return soon. She untied the captain’s gag. “Do you know who has the key, sir?”

  “Binion,” he replied, his one good eye narrowing. The single word seemed more packed with loathing than its two syllables could accommodate.

  Arabella swallowed. Getting the key from the head of the mutiny would be difficult indeed. “I’ll try to get it, sir.”

  “Hurry,” said the captain. “And put the gag and blindfold back. In case they return, they will not suspect you are still at large.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” she said, though it pained her to put the stained and filthy rag back into her captain’s mouth and tie it behind his head. At least it was not so tight this time. The blindfold, too, she intended to tie but loosely.

  But as she was pulling the cloth across his eyes, a sound came from behind her. She turned to see the hatch swinging wide, and a figure entering the cabin.

  Binion.

  The expression of surprise on his face was quickly supplanted by a sneer. “Well, well, so here you are. We’ve been looking for you.” He drew a pistol from beneath his shirt—it was, she could see, quite dry—and pointed it squarely at Captain Singh’s head, drawing back the hammer with an emphatic click. “Now yield, or the captain dies.”

  * * *

  Arabella grimaced as she was hauled onto the deck by Gowse and the other airman who’d been guarding the captain’s hatch, and not only because the cold rain began to pelt her face once again. Her arms were shackled behind herself—oh, how her heart had ached when the keys had rattled from Binion’s pocket!—and the belaying pin, never used, had been taken from her belt.

  The first thing she noticed as she emerged from the cabin was Mills, who had been lashed to a grating fastened to the mainmast. He was breathing hard and grimacing, and blood seeped from a cut over one ear. Clearly he had put up a considerable fight, though, as many of the airmen gathered around him sported injuries of their own.

  “Look here, lads,” Binion called, and the heads of the men on the storm-lashed deck swiveled to face him. “We’ve caught our last missing fish!”

  A rough cheer greeted this news.

  Binion turned to Arabella. Putting a solicitous expression on his face, he shook his head and tut-tutted.

  “I’m terribly disappointed in you, Ashby,” he said. His words were directed to Arabella, but his voice was pitched to be heard above the storm by every mutineer. “You gave your solemn word to join and support us in our endeavor, and yet, as soon as we took rightful possession of our ship, when we went looking for you … you were nowhere to be found! And
as though that weren’t bad enough, when we did find you, you were attempting to free our darkie former captain from the shackles in which, after a fair trial, we had placed him!”

  Arabella did not dignify this tirade with any response. She merely glared at the man, blinking the rain from her eyes. But the mutineers on deck, looking to be less than a third of the original crew, laughed and jeered, the thunder seeming to laugh along with them. Arabella wondered where the rest of the crew might be.

  “But we are magnanimous, are we not?” Binion called to the men. “And despite Ashby’s violation of his solemn oath, we would happily accept him into our number.” The men’s reaction to this news was mixed—as many grumbled as cheered. “Now, now, lads, do keep in mind that Ashby is quite conversant in the usage of the clockwork navigator, a skill which, in the absence of our dear departed Kerrigan, we lack.” The grumbles stilled.

  “And yet…” Binion grabbed Arabella’s shirt-front and pushed his spotty face into hers, though he still spoke loudly to the assembled mutineers. “And yet, Ashby has shown we cannot put our trust in his oath.” He turned and faced the men, still gripping Arabella’s shirt. “How then shall we ensure his cooperation?”

  “The lash!” chorused the men. “The lash! The lash!”

  At this, Binion laughed. “Just so, lads.” He turned again to Arabella, putting on a contemplative expression. His hair whipped in the wind. “Ten lashes for now, just to show we mean business. If you don’t follow orders after that, twenty lashes for the first offense, thirty for the next, and so on.”

  Though Arabella’s heart raced, she set her jaw and raised her chin. “Lash me if you wish, but I’ll never aid you,” she declared, though her quavering voice belied her brave words. All she could do was hope that her resolve would prove firmer than her elocution.

  Binion stroked his beardless chin. “Very well … twenty for you, and forty for your precious captain.” Arabella growled inarticulately and tried to struggle free, but the two men who held her arms kept her firmly pinioned. “Then thirty and sixty. Then forty and eighty, and so on, until you either acquiesce or succumb.”

  Arabella, straining against the hands that held her fast, spat in Binion’s face. But the flying glob of spittle was lost in the driving rain.

  “I see I’ve touched a nerve. But we’ll start with just ten for you.” Binion pulled the precious key from his pocket, unlocked Arabella’s shackles, then gestured with his pistol to the grating where Mills was already bound. “Seize him up.”

  The two airmen pushed off from the bulkhead behind them, carrying the struggling Arabella unwillingly across the deck, and brought themselves to a halt just above the grating. “Hold his legs,” said Gowse, and then, without ceremony, yanked Arabella’s sodden shirt from beneath her rope belt.

  Panicked, Arabella crossed her arms tightly across her chest before the shirt could come off any further. “I’ll k-keep the shirt,” she stuttered through chattering teeth. “G-grant me that much d-dignity.”

  Gowse leaned in close, his broken and still swollen nose just inches from Arabella’s ear. “It’s for yer own good, lad,” he whispered, not unkindly. “Bits of shirt in the wound can fester and kill ye.”

  And then, in one smooth move, he broke Arabella’s grip on her chest and stripped her shirt off her body. The hard, chill rain struck her exposed skin like a slap.

  For a moment she managed to shield her breasts with her arms. But then, with the same great strength that had removed her shirt with barely any notice of her resistance, Gowse pulled her hands apart. “Don’t struggle, lad, ye’ll just make it wor … what the h—l?”

  Arabella squirmed in the man’s inexorable grip like a trapped rat, squealing incoherently, trying valiantly not to cry. But though she did her best to extricate herself, or even to cover her nakedness with elbows or knees, the wind and the rain and the men’s eyes still penetrated to her soft unprotected flesh.

  “Yer a girl!” cried Gowse.

  * * *

  Arabella stood exposed on the deck, the driving rain cold on her bared bosom, tears hot on her cheeks.

  Time seemed to stop still in its tracks. All around her men and boys stared at her, shocked expressions frozen on their faces. Even Gowse, still holding her arms, seemed paralyzed where he stood.

  Arabella herself was the first to break the moment, yanking her arms from the man’s grip and folding them across her chest. But having accomplished that much, she could manage no more. All she could do was hang miserably in the gusty, soaking air, hugging herself, blinded by tears. After a moment the man holding her legs released her as well, and she curled sobbing into a ball, a tight little knot of abject wretchedness.

  She was ashamed. Ashamed of her nudity, ashamed of her femininity, ashamed of herself for being too weak to prevent this moment. What would become of her now? A half-naked girl, exposed on an airship full of mutinous airmen?

  “I won’t whip a girl,” came a voice. Something brushed her hand. Wet cloth. Her own shirt. It was Gowse, who’d stripped it off, now handing it back to her.

  She took it and clutched it, wadded up, to her chest. Putting the sodden, stained, and ragged thing back on was entirely beyond her.

  As her shuddering sobs subsided, she began to be able to pay attention to what was happening around her. She wiped her streaming eyes and nose with her shirt-tail.

  “I won’t whip a girl,” Gowse repeated. He floated between Arabella and Binion, arms crossed on his chest; she couldn’t see his face, but the set of the shoulders beneath his sodden shirt indicated grim determination. The other man, the one who had held her legs, had drifted to one side, his eyes flicking indecisively between Gowse and Binion. The other mutineers also seemed to be hanging back, watching the situation. Distant thunder rumbled uncertainly beneath the roaring wind.

  “Girl or not,” Binion replied with some heat, “she’s still the only navigator we’ve got.” A flash of lightning froze his face for a moment in a sneering rictus. “You’ll whip her, Gowse, or I’ll whip her myself, and you as well!”

  “I’d like to see ye try,” growled the airman, the great muscles in his shoulders bunching as the thunder rolled.

  Binion glared at Gowse, then, without taking his eyes off the man, extended a hand behind himself. “Watson,” he called, “bring me the lash.”

  Behind him Watson, the young midshipman who had been guarding the officers, floated trembling and uncertain.

  “Watson!” Binion snapped, and turned to face the smaller boy. “The lash!”

  Recoiling from the force of Binion’s command, Watson moved in the direction of the red cloth bag, floating attached to a peg on the quarterdeck bulkhead, that held the loathsome item.

  “Y-you don’t have to do it,” Arabella said.

  Her voice shook as she forced the words past the sobs that clogged her constricted throat. Her eyes were blinded by tears and rainwater, and her nose stuffed. Yet she spoke, and loud enough to be heard above the storm.

  All eyes turned to her.

  Arabella wiped her eyes again and tried to straighten herself in the air—to take up again the airman’s bearing which had been stripped from her along with the shirt. It was hard to draw herself upright while still clutching the wadded shirt in front of her nakedness, but she did the best she could.

  “You don’t have to do as he says, Watson,” she repeated.

  “Yes, he does,” Binion countered. He drew the pistol from his shirt and leveled it at Arabella. “Or you’ll get worse than a whipping.”

  The black O of the pistol’s mouth gaped directly at her. But despite Binion’s harsh words and the rain and the lightning, she saw the pistol tremble and knew that the man was afraid.

  “He’s nothing but a bully and a martinet, Watson,” Arabella said. Even as she spoke, she realized the truth of her own words, and she found strength returning to her voice—shouting into the teeth of the storm. “He’s a petty, insecure boy, and if you let him whip me now, sooner or later
you’ll find yourself at the end of that same lash.”

  The airman who had held her legs now moved toward Binion. “Really, Binion,” he said, “this ain’t what we signed on for. Taking from the Company’s one thing, but I’d rather make my way by dead reckoning than put an innocent girl to the lash.”

  Binion’s pistol swiveled rapidly between Watson, Arabella, Gowse, and the second airman. “You’re all fools,” he declared in a low and deadly voice, though the pistol hand now shook so hard that all could plainly see it. “She’s no innocent! She had you all thinking she was a man! I’ll wager she’s been diddling the captain the whole time!”

  “Now I’ve heard just about enough,” said Gowse, and lunged toward Binion.

  Binion aimed the pistol at Gowse and drew back the hammer.

  And Watson slammed into him from the side, the two midshipmen tumbling together in a sodden, spinning midair ball. The pistol fired, a thunderbolt of smoke and flame shooting off harmlessly upward.

  A moment later Gowse joined the tumble, his massive arms pinioning Binion’s arms to his sides while Watson plucked the pistol from his fingers.

  “Parker! Bates!” Binion cried. “Somebody suppress these insubordinates!”

  Some of the mutineers immediately came to Binion’s aid. But others rose to oppose them, and though the two groups fought hand-to-hand for a time, the mutineers fought without conviction, and the number of men supporting Binion dwindled quickly. The mutiny soon began to lose its momentum, then collapsed completely.

  Nonetheless, Binion continued to shriek commands in every direction until Gowse put a gag in his mouth.

  16

  PASSENGER

  A knock came on the cabin door, a welcome distraction from her racing thoughts. She arranged herself in the tiny space to allow the door to open. “Yes?”

  It was Watson. “M-Miss Ashby,” he stammered, “The captain requests your presence in his cabin.”

  The response “Aye, aye,” tried to spring to her lips, along with a salute, but she pushed it down. “Certainly, Mr. Watson,” she replied.

  After the officers had been freed and the mutineers sorted out, Arabella had been whisked away to the carpenter’s cabin—more like a closet—on the lower deck, so that she might clean herself up in privacy. Soon thereafter a dress had been obtained from somewhere, probably requisitioned from the cargo over Quinn’s strenuous objections, and conveyed to the cabin with the captain’s compliments.