Leaving the navigator, they returned to the deck. The three huge balloons had vanished from the sky above the ship; instead, acres of billowing Venusian silk lay on the deck, lines of airmen chanting a rhythmic work song as they heaved and folded the fabric into a box the size of a carriage.
“Envelopes struck, sir,” said the same officer who had greeted them as they boarded, touching his forehead with a knuckle. “They’ll be stowed shortly. Furnace-men will be by at eight bells, and the harbormaster’s cleared us for departure.”
“Very good, Mr. Kerrigan. Ashby here will be joining the crew, so you may dismiss the last boat.” He turned to Arabella. “Unless you have some possessions on shore to retrieve?”
Arabella swallowed. “No, sir.”
“I had thought as much. Welcome aboard, Ashby.” The captain turned to Kerrigan. “He will be serving as captain’s boy. Have Faunt show him where to stow his hammock.” Then he turned away.
“Excuse me, sir—”
“Pipe down!” Kerrigan cried, and with a start Arabella shut her mouth. “You’ll speak only when spoken to!”
But the captain turned back. “That is the general rule, but as you have come aboard at my particular request I will make an exception”—he held up one long lean finger—“in this one instance. Be aware, though, that I treat all my people equally and fairly, and you will not receive any special dispensation in future. Now what is it that you wished to say?”
Arabella had a thousand questions, but just one leapt to the forefront of her mind. “Why me, sir?”
The captain regarded her levelly for a moment. “An excellent question, Ashby. You are untrained, pale, weak, and spindly. However, very few men show the affinity for automata that I have seen in you this day. In this one area, I believe you have exceptional promise. And also, very significantly, Aadim likes you.”
Arabella blinked as the captain turned away. Was he serious?
What kind of ship had she just signed on to?
* * *
“Pass the word for the captain of the waist,” Kerrigan said to one of the airmen nearby, who immediately scurried off. He then stood with his arms folded behind his pristine uniform coat, inspecting Arabella coolly. Not knowing what else to do, she stood where she was, following the officer with her eyes as he paced around her.
“Eyes front!” he bellowed suddenly. Wide-eyed, she stared straight ahead, reduced to listening as the booted footsteps plodded steadily around behind her.
“Captain’s boy, eh?” he said. “Never had one of them before. Perhaps the captain’s getting soft in his old age.” By now he had come around in front of her again. “How old might you be?”
She paused, uncertain, but eventually decided that it must be acceptable to answer a direct question. “S-seventeen, sir.”
“Old for a boy. I hope you’re up to it.” He crossed his arms on his chest, seeming to look down at her though they were nearly the same height. “You’ll be the most junior, lowest-ranked, lowest-paid member of the entire crew. Except and unless you are engaged in some specific task assigned to you by the captain—and there’ll be no shirking on that score—you’ll do whatever any one senior to you tells you to do. And that’s any one, even the cook. Especially the cook. You’ll clean, polish, mend, and paint. You’ll fetch and carry. You’ll kindle the fire and keep it going. You will do your turn at the pedals, oh yes you will. And if you are very, very fortunate, you may be allowed to haul on a line from time to time. D’ye understand?”
Trembling, Arabella nodded fractionally.
“The correct response is ‘aye, aye, sir.’”
“Aye, aye, sir,” she barely squeaked out.
* * *
Just then an airman appeared, knuckling his brow to Kerrigan. “Ah, Faunt,” the officer said, all cool professionalism again. “This is Ashby. He’s just joined the crew as captain’s boy. He’ll be messing with the waisters; please be so good as to get him situated. Ashby, this is Faunt, the captain of the waist.” He paused, considering Arabella for a moment. “I wish you luck.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” It was the only thing she knew to say.
Mr. Faunt was an older fellow, weathered and gray-bearded, with a knitted watch-cap pulled low over his eyes. “Ashby, is it?” His hand, hard and brown and seamed from sun and wind, had a grip seemingly capable of crushing a pewter tankard into a wad of scrap.
“Aye, aye, sir,” she replied, wincing.
“None of that guff,” Faunt said, and set off down the length of the ship. “I work for a living.”
Arabella scrambled to follow. “How shall I address you, then, sir?”
“Faunt will do.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Awfully high-spoken for a ship’s boy, ain’t ye?”
She had no reply to that.
“Ye’d best watch yer mouth around the men,” the airman continued. “Most of ’em don’t take so kindly as I to one who puts on airs.”
“I shall do my best.” She swallowed the sir that tried to follow.
They had to pause while a gang of men ran past, bearing a large crate. “Ye’ve never served on an airship afore, have ye?”
“No, I have not. I mean, I haven’t.”
“That way’s fore,” he said, pointing to the front of the ship. “Aft. Starboard. Larboard. Aloft. Below.”
“Six directions,” she muttered.
“Eh?”
“Nothing.”
Faunt led her forward and down a narrow stairway—“This here’s the fo’c’sle, and we call this a ladder”—to a tiny cupboard where Mr. Quinn, the ship’s purser, had her sign the ship’s muster-book.
Most of the other crewmen had marked nothing more than an X. Mindful of Faunt’s advice not to put on airs, she simply printed the name “Arthur Ashby” in a plain, unadorned hand.
“Welcome aboard, Ashby,” the purser said. “Now, d’ye have a hammock?”
“No, sir.”
The purser tut-tutted and opened a cabinet. “Here’s a hammock for ye.” He tossed her a wadded ball of canvas and rope half the size of her torso. As she struggled to untangle the ungainly thing, he examined her coldly. “And those slops’ll never do.”
“Slops?”
“Clothes,” Faunt clarified.
“Here’s the scran-bag.” The purser handed her a heavy canvas bag, which stank of mildew and unwashed airmen. “Take what you need.”
With Faunt’s help, she found a pair of duck trousers, a shirt, a kersey jacket, and a knit cap that would fit her slightly better than the ones she’d stolen. “These’ll do ye as far as Mars,” Faunt said, “in this season. Ye’ll be wanting warmer later.”
“Thank you.”
The purser cleared his throat. “That’ll be one pound, eight shillings, and ten pence.”
Arabella goggled. Almost a pound and a half, for these malodorous rags? But before she could protest, Faunt poked her shoulder hard and gave her a warning look. She pushed down her indignation and instead confronted the simple reality of the price. “Um, I am terribly sorry, sir, but I haven’t that much.”
“No matter,” the purser said with a shrug. “We’ll take it out of your pay.”
“Which would be … how much?”
“How old are ye?”
“Seventeen.”
She should be getting used to that dubious look by now, but at least he did not question her statement. “Boy second class…” he muttered. He flipped through his muster-book and ran his finger down a column of figures. “Here we are. Eight pounds per annum.”
Arabella gulped. “I see.”
All she needed to do, she reminded herself, was to get to Mars before Simon.
* * *
Faunt led her from the purser’s cubby and down another ladder to the lower deck, a long dark space crowded with cargo in crates and barrels. He pointed out hooks in the ceiling beams—“the overhead”—where she could hang her hammock. “Can ye read?”
“I can,” she acknowledged. “And do my sums, and I’ve been tutored in French.”
“Hunh,” Faunt scoffed, giving her a sour eye. “Well, there’s a number by each hook, d’ye see? Ye’ll be number seventeen.” But as she began to unfold the hammock, he held up a finger. “Not now.”
Back up on deck, he showed her a long narrow shelf into which dozens of tidily rolled hammocks were crammed. “Stow it anywhere ye like. Just don’t forget where.”
She rolled up the hammock and shoved it in amongst the others. She would have to find some private place in which to change her clothing later. Which reminded her … “Where do we, um, do the necessary?”
“That’ll be the head.”
The “head” proved to be a filthy, odorous, dark, narrow space at the very front of the ship, just below the bowsprit, equipped with a variety of incomprehensible bars and handles fixed to the walls. She did not look forward to using this facility in any kind of foul weather, but at least there was a tiny modicum of privacy.
She amazed herself by managing to change into her new clothes in the tiny, cramped space without smearing them with her own soil. “How do I look?” she asked Faunt when she emerged. “More like an airman?”
He did no more than grunt in reply. “Ye want yer old slops?”
She looked down at the small, pathetic bundle of stolen clothing that had seen her from Oxfordshire to London. In a way, it was her last tenuous connection to her old life … a life of ease, and boredom, and wealth, and stifling restriction.
A life which, if she did not prevent Simon from killing her brother, would be taken away from her mother and sisters as well as herself.
“No,” she said, and handed the bundle to Faunt.
* * *
After a whirlwind tour of the rest of the ship, during which Arabella was exposed to more new airfaring concepts and words than she had any hope of absorbing, Faunt took her back to the lower deck, the place where she would be hanging her hammock. “Ye’ll be messing with the waisters,” he told her. “Which is to say, ye’ll eat yer meals with them as works in the waist of the ship.”
The space was completely transformed from the afternoon, when it had been unoccupied save for clouds of dust shaken down from the overhead by many trampling feet on deck. Now it resembled a boisterous public house, with airmen seated on every available box, barrel, and bag. Most of them were engaged in shouted conversation at the tops of their lungs; the rest busied themselves in eating and drinking from square wooden plates and rough wooden cups.
“This’ll be yer mess,” Faunt shouted in her ear, indicating a group of five men who sat holding empty plates. “This’s Young, Hornsby, Snowdell, Taylor, and that’s Mills. Ye’ll eat with them every day. Where’s Gosling?”
“He’s mess cook today. Just got called up.”
“Right. Men, this is Ashby.”
They were all rough, surly-looking men, who regarded Arabella with what she considered a judging expression: not actively hostile, but not particularly friendly either. She felt as though she were a fresh horse that was just about to be broken. “Evening, sirs,” she said, raising her cap.
Young, paradoxically, was the oldest, a thin pale man whose sunken, gray-stubbled cheeks betrayed a severe lack of teeth. But he smiled nonetheless. “Evening t’ye,” he said, and the others did likewise, except for Mills, the black African, who merely nodded and handed her a plate.
Just then another man appeared, carrying a steaming covered bucket. “Fresh meat, boys!” he cried, to general sounds of delight.
“This’ll be Gosling,” Faunt explained. “Now I’ll leave ye to yer dinner.”
To Arabella’s surprise, Gosling seated himself on a barrel facing away from the rest of the men. He placed the bucket between his legs, drew a large and well-used knife from a sheath tied to his leg, then leaned down into the bucket. After repeated sawing motions, he called out, “Who shall have this?” without looking up.
“Snowdell,” said Young. Arabella noticed that he had a hand clapped across his eyes.
Snowdell, a muscular young man with a long plait of hair down his back, passed his plate to Gosling, who filled it with a cut of some kind of meat, a dollop of stewed cabbage, and a big wedge of bread. Snowdell immediately picked up the meat with his hands and began gnawing with vigor.
“Who shall have this?” Gosling called again, and again the blind distribution was repeated. Arabella came third, and Young last.
The whole process had been a kind of Punch and Judy parody of the way Arabella’s father had always carved the Sunday joint for the family. “Why do you not look at the men as you cut their meat?” she asked Gosling after he’d turned around with his own plate.
“It’sh the fairesht way,” he said, chewing a mouthful of meat, then swallowed. “No one knows who’ll be getting each bit, so it’s all even-like. And we each take our turn as mess cook, t’ mix it up even more.”
Arabella took a bite. The meat was tough, grayish, and had an unfamiliar flavor.
“Good, innit?” said Taylor, the youngest, a lean fair-haired fellow with tattoos all over his arms.
“I have never tasted the like,” Arabella admitted neutrally. “What is it?”
“Horse, I think. And look a’ this! Greens! An’ fresh bread!” He tore off a hunk of bread with his teeth and chewed noisily. “Enjoy it while you can—once we leave port it’ll be naught but salt beef, salt pork, and ship’s biscuit.”
Arabella did her best to enjoy it.
“Ye’ve not touched yer grog,” Young said. “I’ll take it, if ye don’t want it.”
Every one laughed heartily at that, though Arabella had no idea why. To be polite, she grinned and took a sip from her cup.
The drink was not nearly as bad as she had feared—a little sour perhaps, a little bitter, but actually quite nice after a day spent running around in the sun. She was sure she would appreciate it even more once she really started working. She took a deep refreshing draught.
Then she noticed the sensation of warmth spreading down her throat and through her stomach.
At her expression the men all laughed again. “What is in this?” she asked.
“Four parts water, one part good Navy rum, and a bit of lime juice,” said Young. He raised his cup to her and drained it off.
Four to one … this stuff was nearly as strong as Madeira! And her father had only let her have a sip of that at Christmas! “Is there any thing else to drink?”
“You can have it with small beer instead of the water.”
“Oh.”
She would have to be careful. If she allowed herself to become at all tipsy, her secret would surely be undone.
* * *
After dinner, Arabella was sent to the kitchen, which was called the “galley,” to clean up—a greasy, smelly, backbreaking task. The cook, a one-legged man called Pemiter, took what she felt was entirely too much pleasure in having someone who ranked even lower than himself to order about, and by the time she was finished scrubbing the last wooden plate she was nearly dead with fatigue.
The sun had already set when she emerged from the galley, and the lights of London shimmered in the Thames. Carriages with their lanterns clopped across a bridge nearby.
She took a moment to regard the view before searching for her hammock. London! How she had wondered what that shining capital city might be like, reading a book by the fire before bedtime in the manor house at Woodthrush Woods. And now here she was, about to depart it, having seen practically nothing of it.
She wondered when, or if, she would see it again.
Then, suddenly, she remembered that, despite her best intentions, she had not sent word to her mother about her situation. A sharp pang of guilt ran through her at her preoccupied self-absorption.
Though the deck was nearly deserted, one elderly airman sat quietly nearby, smoking a pipe. “Excuse me, sir,” she said to him, “but might there be any way for me to mail a letter before we depart?”
The man glared from beneath his wild, gray brows, seemingly annoyed at her polite query, and she realized she had forgotten her station and slipped into an inappropriately elevated diction. She would have to take care not to do that again. “Last boat’s already gone,” he grunted, and turned away.
Her eyes threatened to spill over with tears, and she wiped them quickly with her rough sleeve. But now there was nothing to be done about it.
The lights of London suddenly seemed ten thousand miles away.
* * *
The hammock was right where she had left it, alone on the shelf. She gathered it up and returned belowdecks, which had again transformed itself in her absence. All lights had been extinguished, but as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark she perceived that the space was now filled with dozens of bundles—airmen in their hammocks—slung from the overhead beams. Many snored with great vigor; a few engaged in low, muttered conversation.
Ducking beneath the sleeping men, she made her way to the space she had been told was hers. And, indeed, though the room was too dark to read the numbers, she found a pair of unoccupied hooks in the right place, with nearly a foot and a half of space clear between the snoring bundles to either side. Standing on a barrel, she looped the ropes of her hammock over the hooks.
Getting herself into the hammock was another problem altogether. She found herself nearly glad of the close press of bodies, for without them to lean on she would certainly have tumbled unceremoniously to the floor—or “deck”—below more than once. As it was, she was forced to apologize repeatedly to those she had jostled.
Finally she found herself, fully clothed, settled and stable in the hammock’s tight embrace, and tried to sleep. But, tired though she was, the sound and movement of so many men sleeping nearby, not to mention their warmth and smell and the rocking motion of the ship, were too unfamiliar and sleep refused to come.
Had it really been just five weeks since that horrible black-bordered letter had arrived? The time since then seemed an eternity crowded with dreadful people, hideous food, filth, stink, and endless wearying labor.
And she would never see her beloved father again.
Lying in the swaying, odorous darkness, Arabella wept.