Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology Read online

  “The matching funds. If I could get you to Jamaica, he would match whatever other investors gave you—gave the corporation.”

  “The matching funds? His club dues are more than his precious matching funds! You should have asked me, Heinrich. I could have got you better.”

  “You have no idea what it meant to have Rupert Rochester invest in us. He is respected, known for his perspicacity. His endorsement gave us gravitas. That he would not invest in his own son’s inventions—it damaged our cause more than you can imagine. But what harm could a trip to Jamaica do, eh? How much good would come of it . . . at least, so it seemed to me.”

  I snorted, then flopped to a chair and dropped my head into my hands. A storm raged within. I gripped my hair fiercely, clinging to something—anything—to keep from going under.

  My friend sat beside me and placed his hand upon my shoulder. “Mein sohn,” he ventured after a long moment, “no one could see you together and not know she loved you. That day—the day we left—when you were together in the cockpit, with the door locked and Rowland so frantic to get inside . . . I thought you had secured her promise. By my life, I thought you were secretly engaged.”

  The pall of his words settled over me and I looked up. I could not deny the overwhelming sadness in his eyes, a mere glimmer of the grief my new clarity gave me. “No, Professor . . . No. She would not hear me. She sent me away.”

  My anger vented, the resentment seeped from me. In the fog of my self-deception, I believed with all my heart she would wait, but the cold, stark truth revealed my folly, and I could not begrudge Herr Rottstieger his own.

  I leaned back in my chair and pushed the hair from my face. I heaved a sigh. “What now?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Besides hurl myself from the highest cliff?”

  “Junge . . .”

  “What is there for me now, professor? Everything—everything I have done has been for her, for our future together. What good are my dreams without her to share them?”

  “Edward, without you, I would be nothing but another iron monger, an engineer forging the inventions of other men without enough mettle to build my own. But with you—I became bigger than myself. Like all the men you employ, who now earn a fair wage and can send their children to school instead of into the fields, I flourish because of your dreams. If not for yourself, junge, soldier on for these people. They dare to dream because you live yours.”

  I could not say how deeply his words sunk into my heart then, but they have since become my mantra—more or less. Then, as now, I felt the caveat: I lived the dream I managed to scrape together from the rubble of my castles in the air. But that had to be enough. I had to prove to them all—to my father, the blasted blighter, to Rowland, to Yvette herself—that they had not inflicted the mortal wound to my soul that then bled bitter tears—and bleeds still.

  I rose to my feet and moved to collect the scrap of paper, but my hand hesitated over the desk, distracted as I was by an envelope edged in black sitting on the blotter. I glanced at Herr Professor. “Heinrich? Have you lost someone?”

  His brow furrowed with concern. “Nein, junge. That came for you this morning.”

  He must have moved a chair behind me, as I did not hit the floor when my knees buckled. The letter rattled in my hand. The black border hissed, rearing and ready to strike. I forced myself to rip open the envelope and read my brother’s smooth hand.

  I snorted. “The old buzzard popped off.” A bitter, ironic laugh surged through me. “He gives me precisely one hour to curse him to the devil, and then denies me the pleasure of hating him for the rest of his days.”

  “The man was the picture of health!”

  “Apparently, a rogue mechanoid didn’t like the cut of Old Man Rochester’s jib. He stepped from his carriage and . . . Do you recall, Professor, my outrage over their use as peacekeepers? He derided me for a stupid boy who could not understand such things. What do I know, eh?” I snorted my disgust.

  “And Yvette? She is well?”

  The name leeched a bit of acid from my soul and my manner softened. “Yvette is in indifferent health. They have taken a house in Athens for a time until . . . until she is safely delivered. Rowland will not leave her, thus requests that I see the solicitors myself.”

  Herr Rottstieger peered at me. “And you, Edward? You have just lost your father.”

  I flapped the papers at my friend. “And gained full ownership of the plantation and all of my father’s interest in the corporation.”

  “There. Do you see? He always intended—”

  “No, Herr Professor. I will not temper my feelings. Rowland had a momentary flash of guilt, not my father. My brother has relinquished the rights, and now fancies he has purchased absolution for his greed and treachery.”

  Silence descended over the office. I again stepped to the window and gazed at the horizon, where the sky melded with the sea. I felt Herr Professor’s eyes upon me . . . the only thing I felt. It seemed as if the loss of Yvette and the loss of my father canceled one another. The tidal wave of grief left nothing in its wake—not even the flotsam and jetsam of the cataclysm. I felt . . . blank.

  “So? Now, what will you do?”

  I turned and headed for the door. “Today, West End. Tomorrow, the Cubans; then, on to conquer the Yanks. Then, to England to do the dirty work while my precious brother enjoys his spoils.”

  I had no real business at West End, but I would have gone mad rattling about Spanish Town for the remainder of the day. As my sleek sailboat skirted the island, I found a bit of peace.

  The sun lowered in the west as I slipped into the inlet where we harbored the plantation watercraft. I paused at the path to the bungalow, on the cliffs by the lighthouse. The palms rustled above my head. The scent of jasmine and gardenia wafted on the breeze. How many evenings had I sat upon the veranda drinking in that very sight, imagining Yvette at my side, holding my hand, basking in the joy of living?

  As so often before, I found myself clutching the crystal she had fastened about my neck what seemed a lifetime ago. I wondered at the number of times I had felt a warm glow from it, encasing my heart, protecting it—protecting me. I recalled how its cool touch reached out and rescued me from what, I knew not. I had come to feel incomplete without it, and yet, in a matter of moments, it became a weight I could no longer shoulder.

  I watched the sun sink into the sea, setting the sky ablaze. I yanked off the chain and held the crystal up to the brilliant light. It seemed to sing in the evening air as it splintered the glory of Sol into a million shards of color.

  “No, Yvette,” I murmured above the hum. “I will never heal with this piece of you piercing my soul.” I hurled the crystal out over the Caribbean. It whistled as it flew, and a too-familiar voice wailed in my ears, ‘Oh, Edward! No, dearest Edward!’ as it shattered the surface of the sea.

  The next six months become a blur in my recollections. When I think back to the weeks and months that followed as we meandered our way to England, as I returned alone, it all runs together like a watercolor wash of grays and browns; overlaid by the stinging, acrid, cloying stench of coal oil and enterprise.

  Then, once returned to the only home that remained to me, more blur, more muddled, muddied color. It felt a dream. I cannot pinpoint when the insanity overtook me—for only thus can I explain it: a sort of grief-crazed delirium which plunged my soul into a purple haze, gripped my heart, and stole my breath. I can scarcely recall conscious choice, until one day—one revelatory day—the derangement receded.

  I came to myself standing in a bedchamber at the bungalow, staring at the woman passed out on the bed. Images of the previous night’s activities flashed through my head but otherwise failed to affect me. Instead of fire in my loins, I felt only disgust.

  The harsh morning light shone upon her, but I saw no stunning, exotic beauty, no object for sensual obsession. The illusion cleared and revealed a woman who appeared ten years my senior, prematurely a
ged by debasement and debauchery. Not even the thick mosquito netting surrounding her could soften the scene.

  Her face pressed into the bedclothes and drool dribbled from her mouth as she snored. Locks of her hair, tangled and wild, snaked over her face, around her throat and across her pillow. She sprawled across the mattress, the bed-linen knotted about her limbs. The room reeked of unwashed humanity.

  Driven by terror of my inescapable future, I fled down the path and flung myself into the sea, hoping it would somehow free me of the stench of my new bride.

  I swam until my muscles burned and my eyes smarted; until the pain blurred the image that Bertha Antoinetta Mason—Bertha Mason Rochester—had seared into my brain.

  After six weeks of matrimony, I could not explain why I had formed such an alliance. More still, as the weeks progressed, I grew ever more disconcerted with her aggression and unsettling propensities in our marriage bed.

  Returning to the house from the lagoon, as I strode around the veranda, the sound of voices coming through the open windows of Bertha’s bedchamber arrested my steps.

  “I tell you, Josie, the man has the touch. He sets me ablaze.”

  “Dat leedle toad, madame? Oh, no. How cood he?”

  Bertha laughed. “Not all men can be breeding studs, Josie.”

  “Eben so . . . I would nebbah—”

  “You do not understand, my girl. The man is an engineer. He makes a science of pleasure. I have never before had such a lover.”

  “And Meestah Rochestah?”

  “Mr. Rochester is a silly little boy, afraid of his own shadow.”

  “Den, why do ye let dat ape touch ye?”

  “Because Rottstieger is not here, wantwit. And Rochester—his physique surpasses Julian’s—all of Julian. He is not without promise.”

  “Den, ye muds let me hab Julian. You hab no fuddah use ub him.”

  “There you are wrong. Should I find the perfect man, with Herr Professor’s technique, Julian’s good looks, and Rochester’s stamina . . . well. Then, you could have my black. But until then, I require all three, especially since Rottstieger has been away for so long.”

  “But Rochestah—he will find ye out.”

  “Josie, one simply disappears into the cane fields, and Julian has such an appetite by noonday.”

  “Rochestah—he promise us a house een down—a proper English house. Ye must mek heem do eet.”

  “Patience, my girl. He cannot keep us here forever. After I have trained him up, then you shall have him for a plaything. And then, he shall be so wracked with his silly English guilt, I shall have him wrapped around my finger. He shall have you every night and do whatever I say all day long.”

  The maid tittered. “Oh, madam. I could nebbah like heem. He be far too oogly.”

  “Close your eyes, you simple thing. The face is not the business end of a man . . . or an ape for that matter.” A chuckle, deep and sensuous. “. . . and betimes one simply must have the beast.”

  I sat at the breakfast table across from the very picture of feminine modesty and conjugal devotion. I could not stand to look at her. Ire coursed through my veins, hot and quick, and I dared not speak. I stared at the fish on my plate.

  “You are not eating, my love,” my tender bride cooed. “I had thought you swam this morning.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Then you must be famished, especially after . . . last night.” She eyed me through her long, dark lashes. “You must keep up your strength.”

  “I told you, Mrs. Rochester, I do not care for the whole of the fish. In England, we gut it before we cook it.”

  “But we are not in England, my darling. Cook knows nothing of such food. We must go there soon, that she may learn—”

  “No.”

  “Fairfax, darling, you promised to take me to England to meet your family. Do I so shame you that you hide me away? I am good enough for your bed but not your friends? It’s because my father is in trade, isn’t it?” Her voice grew shriller as she spoke, until it spiked through my brain. “You are so much higher than me. You treat me like the dirt beneath your boot.”

  I simply eyed her. Her face screwed up into a petulant pout. Tears rushed her eyes. Her hands slapped down on the table. The crystal and china jumped. “I want to go to England!”

  “When I trust you within five thousand miles of my family, we will go to England, but not a day sooner.” My voice sounded cold and flat.

  “Trust me? Trust me?! You are a monster—a horrid, beastly monster!”

  “Better to say an ape.”

  She started at the words and glanced up at me. I stared at her blandly. She rose and went to the sideboard. She feigned concealing a fit of tears, but I knew it a ploy to add rum to her orange juice. My mind filled with images of my brother sharing his morning with the polar opposite of my angel wife. I jabbed my fork into the fish on my plate.

  The tines hit something hard and screeched across the china. The exposed and torn gut glinted in a stray shaft of sunlight. Dumbfounded, I stared at the mess.

  Bertha returned to her seat, glass in hand, once again the very image of a model wife. I carefully slit open the fish’s gut and spooned out the innards.

  “That really is the best part, you know,” Bertha instructed, her cheeks pouched with gobbets of her own mackerel. “After the eyeballs, of course.”

  I scraped away the offal, and there it was: Yvette’s pendant, chain and all. It felt as if the sun burst free of heavy clouds the moment I laid eyes on it. A freshening breeze cleared the cobwebs from my mind. I could breathe again. I still tumbled in unforgiving surf, but I thought, perhaps, I could at last get my feet beneath me.

  “What is that, my love?”

  I blinked, brought back to reality by the face beaming devotion from across the table. I pushed the crystal out of the sunlight with my fork. “Nothing. Just a bit of rock I found in the fish.”

  Bertha rose, her eye fixed on the stone. “A gift from the sea! A jewel, Fairfax. Let me see it.” She reached for the plate, but I withheld it and picked out the stone.

  “No, Bertha. It is indeed a gift from the sea and I mean to keep it.”

  She eyed first me, and then my fist wrapped around the gem. Had she been a cat, her hackles would have stood on end. Her tail would have been a bottle brush. “Give it to me, Fairfax,” she hissed. “I must see it. You do not understand the portents!” She lunged for my hand and fought uselessly to wrench open my fist. “Crystals possess great power!”

  “I understand more than you ever will, my darling wife. And, just now, you come precious close to rousing my temper. Now sit down and finish your breakfast.”

  My tone brought her up short. I held her gaze, implacable and threatening. She released my arm and retreated to her seat. Wide-eyed, she stared at me as I slipped the crystal into my breast pocket.

  “What is that?” Her voice came low and sinister, and it seemed all the shadows in the room collected about her.

  Startled, I followed the direction of her glare to where I had been absently twisting Yvette’s ring around my finger. I stared at it, baffled—and not—that I had not jettisoned it with the crystal when she broke my heart. Rather, it felt as if the weightless trifle had become part of my soul, and nearly my flesh.

  “It is from her!” Bertha’s wrath exploded with the crystal and china as she flew at me from across the table, her claws bared and aiming for my eyes. “That pasty little bitch you mooned over for so long! That whore who cannot bear the sight of your ghastly face!”

  I grappled with her as she clawed at me. Despite her size and surprising strength, I quickly pinned her, prone, her head to the floor with one hand, and her wrist to her spine with the other. I bore down my weight into the middle of her back with my knee, her face pressed into the tiles.

  “Heed me, woman,” I hissed into her ear. She struggled to free herself and clouded the air blue with invectives to make a stevedore blush. I pressed her more firmly into the ground.

&nbs
p; “Calm down, Bertha.” As I waited, I forced my temper into better control. She exhausted herself in her struggle, but at last, I felt her cede to my greater strength and lie still. I released her and sat upon the floor. Her face purple, gulping down great droughts of air, she pushed herself up onto her haunches, murder glinting in her eyes. Her rage throbbed in her jugular.

  “Here we are, wife,” I sighed. “You and I, the very picture of blissful domesticity . . . Howsoever we came to this pass, what do we do with ourselves now? A vexing conundrum indeed.” She merely glared at me, wild-eyed and feral.

  I leaned my elbows on my knees and watched her attempts to regain control. I could not accept the ruin before me as the sum total of my life. I refused to surrender to that fate.

  “As my lawful wife, you are duty-bound to obey me. Thus, I will tell you our course of action. You have only to listen and obey.”

  I rose to my feet, brushed myself off, and stepped away. I prayed for wisdom, guidance—the smallest inspiration to help me salvage something of that farce. I formulated a plan on the fly.

  “We will stay on Jamaica. For now, we will stay at West End. Daughter of a common tradesman you may be, but now, there is nothing for it. You are also the wife of a gentleman. Ladies of your station have no truck with the day labor. You will not traipse through the cane fields like a naked pickaninny. Julian and Josie have left our employ. Starting today, I will engage and discharge our domestics. When you—”

  “You cannot—”

  “You will not interrupt me. When you have earned my trust, when I believe you honestly wish a proper marriage—”

  “A proper marriage?! You wear that ring and dare—”

  “You will remain silent!” I paused, waiting for her to clamp her tongue. I must have appeared the devil himself, for she retreated.

  “When you conduct yourself as a proper wife should, and I trust your intent, we will take a house at Spanish Town. But you will earn it. With your obedience, your manners, your attempts at civility, your adherence to the rules of common decency. Do you understand me?”