From his outpost on the cliffs, Arthur Trevelyan saw the blue blink of the light.
On/off.
On/off/on.
The smugglers out of St Mawes, led by the genial but dangerous Barnabas Pendragon, a man shaped like one of his own brandy barrels and with a fringe of black whiskers recognized from Falmouth to the Lizard.
The revenue officers had been after him for years with little success. As large as he was, Barnabas still possessed the ability to vanish like smoke in the night, taking refuge in fishing shacks and church crypts in exchange for a small share of coin for people who liked the revenue officers as little as Barnabas did. There was a reason that the Crown and Compass in St Mawes harbor served brandy as fine as anything served at the Prince Regent’s court, but without the crippling taxes that made it impossible for ordinary people to enjoy it.
Ordinary people like Emory Thorndyke, who had called this evening and had departed not thirty minutes ago after refusing to accompany him next door to see what was going on upon the Penhale lawn. What would his friend think of him if he knew for certain that Arthur was in the smuggling business up to his neck? Not for barrels of brandy, but for information. Arthur might not work incognito behind enemy lines any longer, or serve as a soldier, either, until this blasted leg was in working order again, but he could still do his part by gathering information in the French ports. Barnabas Pendragon needed a translator to manage his French counterparts in the hidden coves and bays of the isle of Guernsey, which provided a kind of way station just outside the range of the French coastal emplacements. And in exchange, Arthur milked both sides for information about the movements of the French army and its sous-marins as skillfully as any maid ever milked a cow.
He picked up the lantern behind the flat rock. Using his coat sleeve to block the flame, he signaled back: On/off. On/off/on.
In the time it took Barnabas’s landing crew to put a longboat in the water, row across, and pull it up on the sand, he had made his slow way down the cliff path to the beach where Celeste Aven—Blanchard’s journal had been discovered.
Celeste Blanchard.
Had he not seen her face when he had removed the journal from her reach, he would never have believed it. But now there was the additional proof of the wildly colored balloon just visible over the treetops between their two estates. He had watched the strange vessel lift on its ropes and marveled at the determination and intelligence of its inventors. Those two young women had the grit and skill of any of the scientists employed by the Army.
He hoped Penhale would hire an aeronaut to test the ship with all possible speed, for the prince needed to know of it as soon as it proved workable. Thinking of how he might contrive to help with the location of such a man helped keep his mind occupied until he reached the bottom of the cliff. It was not an easy journey, and his leg ached like the devil by the time his boots landed in the sand where the crew was waiting.
Arthur lifted a hand in greeting, and the boatswain nodded. They saw him into the longboat and shoved off, rowing silently back out to where the two-masted brigantine waited. Voices carried over water. So no one spoke until they were within hailing distance of the ship.
After he was pulled over the gunwale in the boatswain’s chair, having endured the harrowing lift up the side of the hull with his teeth gritted, Barnabas Pendragon showed him into his cabin and offered him a glass of brandy. There was no way Arthur could have climbed a rope ladder up the side in his condition, so he had swallowed the humiliation of being treated like a woman or an invalid and simply ignored any remarks the men made under their breath about the extra labor the toff cost them.
“Fair winds tonight,” Barnabas said. “But me ankle says that we shall see some weather afore long.”
“Not that I do not trust your ankle, but can you be certain?” A paring of moon rode high, and stars frosted the sky in countless numbers, with not a wisp of cloud to dull their brilliance.
“Aye, as certain as a man can be who has seen summer storms all along this coast and been out in as many.” Barnabas indicated the bench along the rear of his small cabin. His was the only cabin on the brigantine—the other men slept in hammocks below, or wherever they could make a dry bed on deck. Valuable space was reserved for the cargo. “’Ave a seat, me ’andsome.”
When Arthur did so, Barnabas sprawled upon the bench with his own brandy while the low calls of the sailors readying the vessel to get under way sounded above them. Arthur’s gaze fell upon something fixed to a shelf that had not been there on their last voyage. “I didn’t take you for a clock watcher, Barnabas,” he said with a sip of his brandy. “Is that a new timepiece?”
The other man’s gaze swung to him with an intensity that might have made him step back had he been standing. “Ent a timepiece.”
Arthur rose with difficulty and hobbled over to the wall. Now that he was closer, he saw that it certainly was not. It was a low box of similar size in which a number of tubes and metal coils were fixed, but to what end he could not imagine.
“We been sailing with ’ee some time,” Barnabas said thoughtfully from behind him.
“Aye,” Arthur said, sensing the other man was not simply exchanging pleasantries.
“Seem a trusty ’un.”
“I hope so.” His instincts and his senses sharpened.
“D’ye really not know what that is?”
Something in Barnabas’s tone, some amusement, set Arthur’s teeth on edge, but he would never show it. “A barometer of some kind?”
Barnabas chuckled. “Nay, tez what all the Frenchies have been looking for these many long months. This un’s Old Job’s Pisky. Latest model. Heard of it?”
“I’ve heard of Old Job,” Arthur said slowly. “Zephaniah Job, the smugglers’ banker.”
“Aye, well, ’e do more’n banking. He be a tinkerer, like our Prinny.”
With a nod, Arthur examined the instrument again. “And what does this do?”
“What’s a pisky do, me ’andsome?”
“He mazes people,” Arthur said, resisting the urge to fall into the vernacular of his childhood. “Confuses them, causes them to feel they’re insane.”
With an outright belly laugh, Barnabas got up. “Aye, you’ve the right of it. If ’ee were a French soo-marran, and got within a hundred feet of yon Pisky, ee’d be right mazed and lose yer course. Might even run aground or broadside another of yer kind.”
And suddenly, with a flash of understanding, all the pieces fell into place in Arthur’s mind. “That’s why the smugglers have been so successful and Boney’s sous-marins have not. You’ve been mazing their navigation with Old Job’s Pisky.”
Barnabas clapped him on the back with such force that Arthur’s bad leg nearly collapsed. It was only sheer will that kept him on his feet. “’Ee be a good ’un, Arthur Trevelyan. Smart, too. Mum’s the word, now. Don’t want them Frenchies gettin’ wind of our tricks, do ’ee?”
“Certainly not. I must say, Barnabas, Job’s done a proper job of spoiling Boney’s ambitions for undersea vessels. Why has he not approached the War Office? Imagine if all His Majesty’s ships were outfitted with one of these!”
They would own the Channel and the Atlantic, too. Every sous-marin harrying the shipping lanes would be chasing its rudders, whirling in helpless circles while the English vessels passed without harm. And then could be blown to bits with good English deck cannons.
But Barnabas shook his head, and Arthur’s visions collapsed. “Can’t ’appen, and if I hear a word has passed yer lips, me ’andsome, I’ll be comin’ to find out why. We’d lose our trade, sure as it’s going to blow up a squall tonight.” Again that intense glare from under those black brows that could surely sear a man’s skin. “I’ll ’ave your word on’t.”
Arthur had no choice; Barnabas would put him over the side as soon as look at him if he didn’t agree.
“You have my word. I shall say nothing in my official capacity. I shall only wish you and your fellow captains good hunting.”
Satisfied, the man turned for the door. “Best make yerself to ’ome. We’ve an hour’s swift sailing ahead.”
He went topside, leaving Arthur to contemplate the Pisky and all its possibilities, the singing of waves under the hull in his ears… and to notice when they left off singing and began to slap. Arthur straightened on the bench, listening to the sea, to an increasingly disorganized note that resembled nothing so much as the bass drum in an orchestra, beating against the side of the ship as the swell lifted and tilted the vessel with alarming strength. A frisson of alarm darted through his belly, and he limped out on deck. The sight that greeted him was not the orderly management of a brigantine under full sail, but the chaos of men leaping and scrambling to save their vessel.
On the horizon lay the lights of Guernsey. But in the two miles between them lay waves the size of Boney’s behemoths. The size of the barrows on the Cornish hills that guarded the dead.
“What are you thinking, man?” the first mate shouted down at him as he staggered, trying to keep his footing. “Get below decks! We’ve no time to look after you!”
“Where is Barnabas?” Arthur shouted.
But the man merely flung an arm upward, where Barnabas and half his crew were reefing in the topgallants and foresails as fast as they could. And then with a crack of thunder, the skies opened up and a torrential rain drenched Arthur as thoroughly as if he had been tossed into the sea. The deck was suddenly awash, the water foaming over his boots, and then it tilted at such an acute angle that if Arthur had not leaped for the shrouds, he would surely have slid down the deck and into the waves.
There was no hope of getting back to the bulkhead or the door to the captain’s cabin, where he might rescue the Pisky from certain damage. For he was not the sort of man who hid inside while work needed to be done that might save his life and that of his companions. The wind was howling in the rigging now, that haunting sound he had heard only once before. Their sloop had gone down, that time, and it was only by the grace of the sturdier frigate escorting them that any of the crew survived at all.
Barnabas shouted something, but in the scream of the wind Arthur could not hear him. And then the sea seemed to heave, as though something utterly dreadful were coming up from the depths to capture their frail craft and drag it down.
Two of the sailors shouted in alarm as the sea rose. The wave lifted them up on its crest and for one frozen moment Arthur hung in the air, clinging to the mainmast shroud with both hands, staring into the awful depths of the trough below.
The brigantine shrieked like a live animal as it heeled into the trough and turned turtle. Its timbers tore with a rending crash. The mainmast came down, and Arthur was flung off the shrouds and into the sea.
Get clear of the rigging.
The brigantine and the wonderful Pisky would go down. There was no hope for them. The men might yet make it to Guernsey. But not he. He, a spy well known on this coast, could not be captured. It was hopeless—it was ridiculous—the thought of swimming the long miles home with his leg in its condition—he may as well fill his lungs with water and sink to the bottom now.
But he did not. Some spark of hope or sheer stubbornness still remained in his heart, so instead, he seized a chunk of torn spar stripped of both sails and rigging and heaved himself over it.
He could not swim so far. But he could kick, and hope for an ebb tide that would carry him toward England before his strength gave out. And perhaps in his last moments before he sank, he might see that dark and beautiful shore, and think of a girl with hair like ripe wheat and a mind like a calculating engine, and a life that would never now be his.
“So, this is one of the famous Channel squalls,” Loveday said, fingers braced on the padded bench. “I’ve only seen them from the land side. And usually from within doors.”
If only Celeste could be so calm as the air ship bucked and swung. Even with the envelope sheltering them, rain pounded the windows. Between the cracks of thunder, she could hear the spit and hiss of the steam engine in protest.
“Yes,” Celeste managed. “And it will only blow us closer to France.”
Loveday nodded, face striped by light and shadow as the lamp swung with the ship. “Let’s try the port flap again. Perhaps the water loosened it.”
Celeste slid to the opposite side of the seat, and Loveday fell across the coach to join her. Together, they shoved and pushed, but the lever only shuddered.
“It’s no good,” Loveday said, collapsing beside her. “We have to think of something else.”
Celeste stretched up to peer out the window, trying to catch a glimpse of where the flap was fixed to the side of the carriage. Why wouldn’t it open? The lamplight shining through the glass showed the piping leading from the steam engine back to the flap, with no hint of steam escaping in the wind.
The flash of lightning was mirrored in another sort of bolt.
“Someone’s screwed it to the carriage!”
Loveday pressed in beside her. “What? Where?”
Celeste pointed to the wood frame of the flap. “There. And we can’t possibly reach it from here, even if we lowered the window.”
Loveday sat back. “Perhaps the workers wanted it out of their way. Or decided to secure it for safekeeping.”
“Or,” Celeste said, “someone didn’t want us to succeed. We are like a pigeon flying with only one wing.”
As if giving up, the air ship canted. For a moment, Celeste was weightless, then she tumbled to the floor.
So did Loveday. “We must get out of this squall,” she said, head in Celeste’s lap, as the ship righted itself.
Celeste levered her friend up so she could perch on the bench. “C’est vrai. But it may not be possible to descend out of it. When I flew from France, the turbulence reached almost to the waves. And rising above this squall might compromise the integrity of the air ship.”
“Then it’s fight our way back or try to outrun it,” Loveday said.
Celeste managed to regain the seat as well. Lightning flashed, and thunder rolled, deafening to the point that she could not hear herself speak.
“If we outrun it,” she repeated in the brief quiet that followed, “we reach France. Even if we can slip through the coastal defenses, there is great danger.”
Loveday raised her chin. “I trust you to keep me safe.”
Celeste put a hand on her arm. “Merci beaucoup, my friend, but we must think of our work. The Emperor cannot be allowed to see this ship.”
And Loveday could not know what it cost her to say that. If Celeste came home with this marvelous ship, there would be parades, speeches. She’d be awarded the Grand Golden Cross for Advances in Engineering, l’École renamed in her honor. Her mother need never hang her head or try her dangerous stunts again.
But Celeste would be giving Napoleon everything he needed to invade England. And that she could not do.
Loveday’s face was ashen. Perhaps she did understand what was going through Celeste’s mind.
“Agreed,” she said. “We turn and fight our way home, and the storm be hanged. You work the good flap. I’ll staff the propeller.”
It took some effort just to position themselves correctly in the carriage. And they had to endure three sickeningly full rotations before Celeste managed to point them in the right direction. Now the air ship really bucked, nose pointing skyward at times, then plunging like a ship on the waves. The carriage shuddered and creaked as if determined to break free from its restraints.
“We have to descend,” she called to Loveday.
“That means taking on weight,” Loveday called back. “We can’t. And every moment we burn more coal and water.” She started. “Water! The rain! Open all the windows. Take in as much as we can.”
“Brilliant!” Celeste lowered the windows on her side, sending rain coursing down the paneling, soaking the cushions. She slid over to the other side and did the same there. Water began to pool on the floor.
She could no longer see the light at Porthkarrek, but flashes of lightning showed the waves drawing closer. “We’re losing altitude. It’s working!”
Slowly, the air ship eased toward the sea. The movement of the water in the cabin proved that at least some was leaking through the seams of the doors, but still the cabin filled, until the chill liquid lapped Celeste’s ankles and left damp spots on her pantalons.
She checked the anemometer. “The wind is shifting. From the south now and only three knots.”
Loveday peered out the window. “It’s too dark to spot the waves at the moment, much less land, but we appear to be heading in the right direction.”
“Thank a merciful God,” Celeste breathed, leaning back in her seat. “If the wind holds, we may make it.”
Loveday maneuvered across the carriage to her side. “This is too much like your crossing, isn’t it.” It was not a question.
“Oui. But this is more bearable. I did not have a friend beside me then.”
Loveday smiled. “Happy to face the elements with you.”
“Happier not to face them at all.” Celeste swung her feet and splashed in the water. “I will never take a hot bath for granted again.”
Loveday glanced toward the coal bin, which would be so much emptier now. “I should feed the firebox. See what you can make of our surroundings.”
It did seem less turbulent here, as though they were in the lee of an unseen land mass. She was able to shift on the bench without fear of falling into the water, which now reached her shins. The silk clung to her like a second skin. She craned her neck to peer out the window, and rain ran down her cheeks. They were low enough now that she could catch the swell and ebb of the waves, cold and grey and angry. A shiver went through her.
Lightning flashed, high above, anointing a shape in the water.
Celeste blinked as darkness swallowed the light. Surely the denizens of the deep had dived for safety. And the center of the storm would just now be meeting the French shore. Too early for driftwood to have been pulled this far out to sea. She focused on where she had seen the shape, counted off the seconds.
Lightning flashed again.
Celeste whirled to face Loveday. “There’s someone down there! In the sea!”