Arabella and the Battle of Venus

by David D. Levine

  Despite the absurdity of the man’s actions, the captain’s face turned grim. “He is packing down the air pockets. It is the most dangerous part of the job.”

  Even as the captain spoke, the jumping man’s feet crashed through the top layer of mud, leaves, and sticks, releasing a gout of smoke and flame. The man’s cries could be plainly heard even across the great distance from which Arabella observed him. “Oh my goodness! Who is it?”

  The captain peered in the man’s direction. “I cannot be certain. Parker, perhaps, or Bates.”

  At the man’s screams the French officer and several of his Venusians had immediately come running. But after they had clambered to the top of the mound and pulled the injured man from the smoldering pit in which his legs had become trapped, she was shocked to see that they simply rolled him down the mound’s side to the ground, concentrating their attention instead on repairing the damage to the mound itself. “We must help him!” Arabella cried.

  “We cannot,” the captain countered, holding her back with a firm hand. “I have given my parole and may not interfere.”

  “But he is injured!” The man was clutching his leg and howling piteously.

  “He will be attended to, once the mound has been patched. The bribes I have paid to the guards should insure that much, at least.” He turned away from the horrific sight. “In any case, if we were to approach, we would be shot.”

  But Arabella could not avert her gaze. She bit her lips, the smoky air coming hot and fast through her nose, as she gazed down at the unfortunate man. Several others had come running from the chopping and stacking operations nearby, but two of the Venusians warded them away from the damaged mound until the repairs at the top of it had been completed. After that, they permitted two of the men to carry their injured comrade away, accompanied by two armed guards. The other men were herded back to their work chopping and hauling wood. “Where are they taking him?”

  The captain, she realized, had already moved some way down the path toward the town as she had stood frozen with outrage. “To the barracks,” he replied over his shoulder. “We will meet them there. Come, we must alert the surgeon.”

  * * *

  Diana’s surgeon was a portly bespectacled man called Withers. They hastened back to the town where, after making inquiries, they found him playing piquet in the sitting-room of his rooming-house. Upon being informed of the situation, his expression turned grim and he hurried upstairs to fetch his medical bag. “Another burn,” he muttered as he departed the table. “Always burns.”

  From there they proceeded across the square, out the gate in the palisade—they were required to present their papers to the Venusian guards there—and down a path to a separate stockade she had not visited before. This high wall of logs, each sharply pointed at the top, enclosed the enlisted men’s barracks, and once admitted therein she found a scene of such dire squalor she let out a gasp.

  The barracks themselves were a series of long buildings, windowless and even more roughly constructed than the rude structures in the town, and beyond them lay an open latrine reeking with filth. “They will bring him to the mess-hall,” the surgeon said, hurrying toward a central square building from which rose a stream of greasy smoke and a most unappetizing smell.

  Within the hall they found long tables, each composed of a single large plank of wood laid over trestles, with an unpeeled log on each side serving as a bench. Venusian cooks, laboring over cauldrons of some bubbling, fishy-smelling concoction at the hall’s far end, looked up briefly at their appearance and then returned to their work. The surgeon, obviously far too experienced at this task, spread a waxed cloth on one of the tables and began laying out his instruments nearby. Among them, Arabella noted with horror, was a bone-saw.

  A moaning at the door drew her attention then, which was followed shortly by the door-flap opening to admit the men and guards she had seen departing the charcoal mounds. The injured man was indeed Bates, a member of Diana’s crew she did not know well. He had been a topman, and one of the mutineers, but as he had not injured any one during the mutiny he had been permitted to remain with the crew. The two carrying him she did not know at all. “Lay him on the table,” the surgeon instructed. The guards took places by the door, neither helping nor hindering, but keeping their wide and shining eyes upon the proceedings.

  Bates’s feet and legs were blackened and weeping blood from several long gashes. He had been barefoot and without hose, but the injuries extended above his knees, and his breeches were charred and shredded to the hip. As the surgeon began to cut them off he spared a glance for Arabella. “You should step outside,” he told her. “This is no place for a woman.”

  She was about to comply—the sight alone was stomach-turning, the smell of half-cooked meat and burnt cloth even more so—when her eyes caught Bates’s. His staring eyes held so much agony, so very fearful and alone, that she checked her motion immediately. “No,” she said, “I will stay.” And she took Bates’s hand.

  “Well, then, take that and put it in his mouth.” The surgeon nodded to a leather strap, deeply scored with tooth-marks.

  He spared no more time or attention for Arabella. “Steady, sir,” he muttered to Bates, and began teasing the charred fabric free of the skin to which it had adhered. Bates groaned past the strap clenched in his teeth, and his hand seized Arabella’s painfully.

  She placed her other hand on his shoulder. “Brave heart, Bates,” she said, and held his eyes with hers. “You are an able airman of the Honorable Mars Company. You have weathered storm, enemy fire, and Martian insurrection. You can withstand this.”

  Though the whites showed all the way around his pupils and his breath came hard and fast through his nose, Bates nodded, bit down harder on the leather strap, and clutched Arabella’s hand as though it were his last lifeline.

  “Just a little more,” the surgeon said.

  But it was more than just a little more—the process of cleaning and then stitching Bates’s burns and lacerations seemed to go on for ever. Bates moaned and writhed; the surgeon muttered occasional curses; Arabella kept her eyes on Bates’s and tried to ignore the comparatively minor pain of his hand crushing hers. The captain, she realized vaguely, was fully occupied in holding Bates’s body and other leg to the table against his thrashing.

  At last the work was done, and the surgeon washed the blood and char from his hands. Bates, trembling, had never lost consciousness but lay gasping, completely spent. “I have done what I can,” the surgeon told him. “The rest is in the Lord’s hands.” He looked to the captain. “He must not walk or do any work until the wounds heal.”

  “I will make the necessary … entreaties of the guards,” the captain said.

  “Can you give me something for the pain?” Bates’s voice was barely more than a whisper.

  “A little rum is all,” the surgeon replied with a shake of his head. “The laudanum is long gone.”

  “Can no more be obtained?” the captain asked him.

  “There is nothing those rapacious frogs can’t supply,” the surgeon replied in a venomous tone, “for the right price.”

  Arabella’s eyes met the captain’s then, across Bates’s trembling body, and she nodded.

  * * *

  They stayed with Bates for a while longer while the surgeon stowed his instruments and took his leave. Bates slept, or perhaps fainted; Arabella swabbed his chill and sweating brow with her handkerchief. The captain excused himself to negotiate with the guards for Bates’s care, then returned.

  Eventually the sound of conversation from without, and the stamp of many feet upon the dirt outside, roused her attention. Then the door-flap opened and admitted a crowd of blackened, weary airmen, many of whom were well known to Arabella. “Young!” she cried with a mixture of glee at the familiar faces and suppressed despair at their bleak condition. They were all sunken of cheek, with red eyes and drawn expressions. “Snowdell! Taylor!”

  “Miss Ashby!” said Young—ironically
, the eldest of her former messmates—his own delight at seeing her plainly warring with exhaustion. “What on Earth brings you to this stinking planet?”

  Before she could reply, the captain cleared his throat and stated mildly, “It is Mrs. Singh, now.”

  This announcement brought the men’s chatter, which had been composed equally of concern for the injured Bates and surprise at Arabella’s appearance, to a sudden halt—immediately followed by a clamor of reaction. “Give you joy of it, sir!” and “Congratulations!” and “Well now!” the Dianas said, pressing in on the captain to shake his hand and extending their felicitations to her. But the prisoners from other ships only trudged wearily past toward the bubbling pots at the far end of the hall.

  The whole performance left Arabella in a whirl of muddled feelings. She smiled and accepted the men’s congratulations, and was in fact quite glad to see their unfeigned joy at her supposed good fortune. Any thing at all, she realized, that could bring a bit of happiness to their terrible existence here was a benefit. But these were men with whom she had dined on salt pork, and swabbed decks, and battled corsairs and mutineers—they were, in some ways, closer to her than family. To deceive them, no matter how necessarily, brought her pain. Though of course, she reminded herself, their whole friendship had begun with a deception, regarding her sex, and that had turned out all right.

  She and the captain joined the men at their supper: a thin and fishy broth, full of bones and scales, which was eaten from wooden bowls with splintery wooden spoons. She told them of her voyage, the encounter with the wind-whales, and such, and shared what news she had of the state of the war since their capture. Their attitude toward her, in turn, was an uncomfortable amalgam of the easy camaraderie they had once shared with the respect due a captain’s wife.

  “But why did you come?” her messmate Snowdell insisted, after her third or fourth attempt to subtly evade the question.

  She hesitated before replying. “Although my husband”—she took the captain’s hand—“did request that I remain safely on Mars, I could not leave him alone here once I knew the demon Fouché was on his way.”

  “Aye, Fouché,” Snowdell acknowledged with a grim nod. “We’ve heard much of him.”

  “We’ve lived through every thing they’ve done to us up to now,” stated Young defiantly. “We’ll survive him too.”

  “Fouché!” said Taylor, raising his wooden cup of small beer, and he made it more of a curse than a toast. “Fouché!” chorused the others, and downed their drinks. The Venusian guards stationed at each end of the hall regarded this performance with cold indifference.

  Arabella, too, drank her beer, and though the stuff was sour and foul, the company of her former shipmates made it tolerable.

  * * *

  After the conclusion of their skimpy supper, the men were mustered, counted, and marched off to their barracks like so many draft-huresh being herded to their stalls. Arabella, promising she would return at her next opportunity, took her leave and returned to the town on the captain’s arm.

  “What frightful conditions,” she said as soon as they were well out of earshot.

  The captain, holding a torch aloft in the deepening gloom, only grunted in acknowledgement. Clearly he was lost in thought.

  “What is the purpose of all this dangerous toil?” she prompted, attempting to engage him in conversation. “Is it merely make-work, to increase their suffering?”

  “Far from it,” he replied after a pause. “The charcoal feeds the furnace, where iron ore is melted down and combined with limestone to remove impurities from the iron. The resulting pure iron is cast into bars, which are transported to the nearby ship-yard.”

  “What do they do with the iron there?”

  His fingers tightened visibly on the torch, such that its flame trembled. “I only wish that I knew. The ship-yard is under the very tightest secrecy. No news emerges therefrom, nor any workers; men are occasionally transferred from the plantation to the ship-yard, but never back. We do know that the quantities of iron emerging from this plantation are prodigious—though I gather the quality is inferior to that produced on Mars.” He sighed heavily. “The numbers of cannon and cannon-balls that could be produced from this iron imply a vast fleet of ships is under construction. But the size of the yard and the limited availability of suitable timber do not support this, and there is no sign of the large number of hot-air furnaces that would be needed to launch such a fleet … or, indeed, any such furnaces at all. It is a vexing mystery.”

  They passed through Marieville’s gate—their papers again being inspected—and made their way in silence through the rough town’s gloomy streets to their auberge. There the captain met with Stross, Richardson, and several other officers to discuss the happenings of the day, while Arabella excused herself to their bedchamber. There she threw off all her outer clothing and collapsed in her shift upon the hard and narrow bed.

  Despite her exhaustion, the darkness, and the somewhat reduced heat of the evening, she lay unsleeping, her mind all a-whirl and perspiration trickling down her neck and flanks.

  Clearly she must devote at least a portion of the five hundred pounds to procuring laudanum and other necessities to ameliorate the men’s horrid circumstances. But the only true and lasting relief lay in escape, especially with Fouché on his way, and the captain seemed uninterested in pursuing that avenue.

  What could she do without his participation?

  The sound of the door-flap, on the other side of the cloth that divided the room, interrupted her racing thoughts. A moment later the captain, in stocking feet, silently pushed aside the cloth and tiptoed toward the chair in the corner.

  “My dear captain,” Arabella whispered. “I will not see you sleep in that chair again to-night.”

  “It is no hardship,” he protested in a matching whisper. “And, whatever we may pretend to the rest of the world, you and I both know that we may not share the bed.”

  A wicked thrill ran through her at the thought, but her sense of propriety made her push it away. “The bed is not large enough for both of us, in any case. No, I insist that I take the chair to-night. We shall alternate, night by night, to spread the discomfort.”

  “Absolutely not. I am inured to discomfort; you are not, and besides you have just arrived.” He shook his head. “You will take the bed.” He removed his coat and spread it over the chair’s hard back and seat.

  “You must consider the men’s welfare, sir, if not your own! They require a captain who is well rested!” To this he made no reply, merely settling himself down on the chair, folding his arms, and ostentatiously closing his eyes. “Very well … if you will not accept comfort, then neither will I.” And with that she took the pillow and blanket—thin and inadequate though they both were—and lay down on the uneven and splintery floor-boards between the bed and the cloth that divided the room.

  For a time they lay thus in stubborn silence. Arabella did not sleep, and from the sound of his breathing neither did the captain.

  Then that sound changed … not to the slow rhythm of sleep, but to a shallow, gulping, muffled sound. She sat up and looked across the bed.

  The captain’s coat-sleeve was pressed against his mouth and nose, and his eyes were tightly closed. But his cheeks were wet with tears, glimmering in the wan greenish light from the window.

  Her heart went out to him then, and her body immediately followed. The chair made their embrace terribly awkward, but still they clung together for a long moment, he sobbing silently on her shoulder and she on his.

  “The men…” he whispered in her ear. “They need me. The officers too. I must be strong.” A trembling inward breath. “No one has offered any comfort to me in so long…”

  “Oh, my dear captain,” she whispered back. “I will do for you whatever I am able.” She pulled away and looked into his face, which still shone with tears. “And, just for to-night, that is to insist that you take that hard, narrow, shabby bed.”

  “You
r generosity is unbounded,” he replied with a small ironic smile, wiping his eyes.

  She shrugged, dabbing at her own eyes with the hem of her sleeve. “It is the least I can do.”

  They extricated themselves from the chair, and he folded his length into the bed. It was barely large enough for him alone. She brought the blanket from the floor and covered him with it, then tucked the pillow beneath his head. “Good night, my maharaja,” she said, and gently kissed his forehead.

  “Good night, boy second class Ashby.”

  The chair, even with the addition of the captain’s coat, was miserably uncomfortable. But still she found herself smiling as she slipped into sleep.

  * * *

  The next day, after breakfast, roll-call, and the morning colloquy with his officers, the captain said to Arabella, “My financial contact—the man who will discount your letter of note into French livres—is a suspicious man, and I must meet with him alone before introducing you to him. May I leave you to yourself for the day?”

  “Of course, sir,” she replied. “I shall endeavor to make myself useful here.”

  She made her way to the men’s barracks, intending to offer the men what comfort and assistance she could, but the only Englishman she found there was Bates, who wanted little more than to sleep; the rest were out performing their horrific labors.

  Left to her own devices, she decided to stroll nonchalantly about the barracks area and discover for herself its strengths and weaknesses. But two French guards—human, and officers by the amount of braid on their uniforms—immediately accosted her and requested, with polite but inflexible insistence, that she return to her lodgings in Marieville. They accompanied her to the stockade gate, and kept her under keen observation until she was well down the path to town.

  Returning to town, frustrated and feeling rather useless, she determined that she would not simply retire to the auberge, but would rather wander the streets and familiarize herself with the lay of the land.

  Most of the town was given over to the business of making iron. A heavy pall of rusty-smelling smoke and dust overlay every thing, and the natives’ carts rolled hither and yon, the great weight of their cargo driving the single wheel deep into the mud of the streets. Among that cargo she recognized iron ingots and the rough red rocks of iron ore; bags of white powder must be limestone from the quarry. Other carts bore foodstuffs, and stacks of limp weeds she assumed must be fodder for the animals.