“I’m following your advice,” said Julia, who now would not meet her eyes. “You said I should never give in. You said it was up to me what I did in the world. The universities back home don’t let women study, so I came here. And now in London they won’t have a married woman as a student. But in the Free States of America…”

  Elizabeth’s hand shot to her mouth to cover the shock and the unexpected stab of sorrow.

  “Robert’s practice has an office in New York,” Julia continued. “After we’re done with all this – the wedding and everything – he’ll be flying out there. I’ll follow just as soon as he’s found a place for us to live. Columbia University has offered to take me. I’ll be studying Patent Law. It’s what I always wanted.”

  America. Under those broad skies even the impossible might find a place to hide, beyond the gaze of propriety or reason.

  Elizabeth burst into tears. “I’m so happy for you,” she said.

  The arrangements took a month longer than expected. But at last the day of departure was fixed. Elizabeth left the boy, Tinker, under the watchful eye of a neighbour and accompanied Mr and Mrs Swain to wave off their daughter on her long journey.

  Mrs Swain’s eyes were wide as she stepped into the hangar of the St Pancras Air Terminus. It was only her second visit to London and everything must still have seemed brash to her.

  A thin veil of smoke hung in the air, lit gold by beams of sunlight lancing down from windows in the high canopy. The vast scale of the arched roof would have been hard to comprehend but for three airships, which lay at berth side by side.

  They found Julia standing next to a pile of tan suitcases. A private porter was harrying her for work.

  “No thank you,” she was saying.

  “Oh go on,” he said. “Wouldn’t want a case to go missing.” He delivered his threat with a smile. The man was a shark.

  Elizabeth was hurrying forwards to intervene, but Julia leant closer to him and said something, whereon he glanced around and hurried off, ducking into the crowd.

  Mrs Swain enfolded her daughter in a tearful embrace. Julia would have normally extricated herself. But perhaps understanding the magnitude of the parting, she endured. Her father kissed her on the forehead and then held her at arm’s length with an expression that spoke of both pride and pain.

  “What did you say to the porter?” Elizabeth asked, when it was her turn to be embraced.

  “I told him he’d violated three separate bylaws of the terminus.”

  Elizabeth found herself laughing, in spite of it all. “He must have thought you the bait in a police trap!”

  “Perhaps,” she said. Then her grin dropped and she held both of Elizabeth’s hands. “Thank you for coming. You will look after Mother, won’t you?”

  “As best I can.”

  “And you’ll write.”

  Elizabeth buried the pang of impending loss with a grin. “I might just do that.”

  Julia glanced at the waiting airship. “I’ve been so busy with arrangements, I hadn’t thought how it would feel to go. And now here I am.”

  “Don’t think too much,” said Elizabeth. “Things only become impossible when we think they can’t be done. Your journey is a marvel. I’d always thought to go to America one day. But it’s you who’s doing it.”

  “Then come! You can stay with us. Robert won’t mind.”

  “Robert is yet to understand what your goodness will cost him!” Then Elizabeth leaned close and whispered. “You know I’d be following you out on the next flight if I could. And you know what holds me here. But I hope. One day.”

  Julia said: “If it wasn’t for your example, I’d never have set out.”

  “Then it seems I’ve done something to be commended after all.”

  They hugged each other, then. And when it was done, Elizabeth turned away to wipe her eyes.

  The boatswain called for loading to begin. Everything was suddenly practical. Scales were hauled in. The cases had to be weighed and labelled. Elizabeth’s father tried to insert himself into proceedings by checking that all the details had been correctly copied onto the manifest. But Elizabeth noted that it was Julia, her one-time student, who properly oversaw everything. And if she allowed her parents to help it was only to keep them occupied.

  “You have gone beyond me,” Elizabeth whispered, though no one could hear. “I’m so proud of you.”

  She watched her friend step to the barrier, joining the men who queued to have their tickets checked. Then she hurried after Julia’s parents, who were heading to the next platform, where others had gathered for the best view of departing loved ones. Julia was already halfway up the steps to the alighting platform. At the top, a steward checked her ticket once more and directed her into the foremost of the two carriages. Elizabeth shielded her eyes but couldn’t see beyond the reflections in the porthole glass.

  A horizontal jet of steam had been hissing from the engine since they arrived. But in the last minute its pressure had increased, turning to a shrill whistle. Now it cut and, with a sharp exhalation of smoke, the engine began to turn. Doors slammed closed. Ground crewmen threw free the mooring lines. Then the propeller fired up with a dreadful roar and the airship began to slide forwards.

  Elizabeth hurried to the end of the platform, waving in the hope that Julia could see her. The nose of the airship emerged from the shadow of the arched roof. Smoke came thumping out of the engine vents, the beat accelerating as it pulled away. The last detail she could see before it dissolved into the London haze was the name, the black lettering stencilled huge on the side of the canopy: AS American Frontier.

  Chapter 3

  Whaling ship Pembroke made contact with the first outlier before ten bells. The watch shouted and Captain Locklight ordered the helmsman to steer towards it. One by one, more of the fleet came into view; smudges of smoke at first, then discreet dots, which seemed to hover above the mirage of the horizon before resolving into the profiles of ships.

  Elizabeth looked out on the scene as best she could through the salt-encrusted glass of her porthole window. She’d not dared to leave the cabin since the captain’s threat. Indeed, she’d kept the door double bolted. A noise had woken her in the night. After that she’d not been able to sleep again until her pistol lay within reach. Locklight’s anger had unsettled her. If the crew had woken to find her gone, she would simply have been marked down as missing; presumed fallen overboard.

  People were changed by the wilderness of the ocean. But as they drew in among the fleet, it seemed that the restraints of civilisation might return. With breasts bound and her uniform buttoned, she emerged from the cabin, rolling her shoulders like a man as she stepped out into the sunshine.

  The crew were rushing about their tasks and seemed content to ignore her. The unnatural act of cutting adrift the whale could not have been forgotten. But in the morning light she could at first see no anger. They had more pressing concerns. They’d been out of communication for three weeks. There would be news, perhaps. They could hope for deliveries from home, though home was a different compass point for each. And despite their recent loss, they were returning with one hundred and twenty barrels of oil. That meant money to spend, though not as much as might have been.

  Elizabeth climbed the steps to the quarterdeck and stood, feet slightly spread, hands clasped behind her in the manner of the other officers. Waiting below had become unbearable. But here she felt exposed to their judgement.

  With his eye to the helio telescope, the signalman was calling out the names and bearings of the other ships. Captain Locklight stood close to him, head angled to read from the calculation book.

  Keeping track of a fleet was held to be the most demanding job on ship, but for the captain’s. Every five minutes, each ship would use the helio to flash its name to all others in view. And every half hour each ship would signal the bearing of others within their knowledge, by which method the positions of all could be triangulated, though most lay beyond the curve of the horizon.

  The fleet spread or gathered to match visibility. Rain or fog would have them close to a tight knot. But on this day of clear skies, the fleet might occupy two thousand square miles of the North Atlantic.

  Captain Locklight straightened himself and turned to face her. “Seven and a half miles and we’ll be back with Mother.”

  Other officers grinned.

  “Why the bitter face, Mr Barnabus?” Locklight asked, before marching from the deck.

  Feeling the gaze of the others on her false birthmark, Elizabeth stepped to the port bow and peered out at two of the distant ships, shielding her eyes from the sun.

  “That’s Blackbird and the Port of Liverpool,” said the first mate, who’d come to stand beside her. He could be just as sharp in speech as the other officers if the occasion merited it. But he’d never gone out of his way to belittle her. It was a small mercy, for which she felt grateful.

  “Are they heading away from the fleet?” she asked.

  “Since as we’re coming back, others must go out.”

  There was a sting in his words. His grey-green eyes were fixed on her, as if searching for clues in her reaction. Unusual for a sailor, he kept himself clean shaven.

  “None of this was my doing,” she said.

  “Captain thinks it was.”

  “Blame Mother. The order came from her.”

  “That’s the thing,” said the first mate, dropping his voice. “They can’t blame Mother. But someone must stand for it. And here you are.”

  “You don’t believe me then?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter what I think.” He pointed beyond the prow to where a column of engine smoke hung above a dark shape, bigger than any of the ships. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  Mother was more than a ship. Her three iron hulls lay side-by-side, bridged above the water by a crisscrossing of girders in compression and cables in tension, all topped by a wide deck. Viewed from the waterline, she could have been mistaken for a pleasure pier that had broken free and drifted a thousand miles into the ocean.

  That was the only view Elizabeth herself had had of it. But on the wall of Locklight’s cabin there was displayed an ornamental plate featuring an illustration of the leviathan viewed from overhead. From that angle, with its smokestacks and the upper parts of the paddlewheels encased in sheet metal, it seemed to her not so much a ship as a floating town; which indeed it was. Asymmetry added to the impression, the portside hull being half as massive again as the other two.

  It was from that side they now approached. With most of the paddlewheel cased in, there was no sign from a distance that it was moving at all. But as they drew to a quarter of a mile, Elizabeth borrowed the first mate’s telescope and was able to see a faint frothing of the water next to the hull. The mother ship was turning. The movement was too slow to see, but when the half hour was called, the angle had changed, the stern rotating to face them. She felt the tilt of the deck shift under her feet and the whaler began to turn, bringing the bowsprit closer into alignment with the gap between Mother’s central and portside hulls.

  The first time she’d witnessed the manoeuvre, it had seemed graceful. But that had been from a distance. A whaler steaming into the gap had been no different to a ship returning to harbour. She’d not understood why the sailors around her tensed as they watched.

  But now she did.

  The beat of the engine slowed for the final approach and the crew began hauling a rope to lower the crow’s nest. The top of the mast slipped down inside the lower section, making clearance for them to pass below the crisscross of girders and cables that supported Mother’s deck.

  Locklight had taken over at the wheel as they approached. Within seconds they were easing in between the iron walls. She watched the shadow of one giant hull sweeping towards her from the prow. The sheer scale of the thing had made their approach seem slower than it really was.

  “Paddles dead stop!”

  The captain’s order was immediately echoed by the watch officer shouting into a speaking tube. The note of the engine changed. There was a rushing sound, like a canal lock filling. The paddles had become water brakes. Elizabeth staggered with the sudden slowing. At another time they would have laughed at her. Even the first mate. But everyone on deck stood fully alert and focussed for action should an order be called.

  “Reverse, quarter power!”

  The paddles began slapping the water again. This time Elizabeth was ready and braced for the abrupt change of momentum.

  Ropes clattered down onto the deck from above. As crewmen took them up and began hauling in the slack, she looked up and saw that they’d been thrown from both sides.

  “All stop!”

  During the approach, they’d been wallowing, the waves hitting them abeam. But in easing between Mother’s iron hulls they’d entered a calm space, for a system of metal gauzes below the waterline served to dampen the swell.

  The ropes grew taut as the men hauled them tighter around mooring cleats. There were two lines port and two lines starboard, holding them steady mid-channel, with a few yards of clearance on each side. The gap had seemed so much more from a distance.

  A ratchet clattered above and a cargo net, bulging with crates, began to descend towards the main deck. It landed with a bump, and when its cable had reeled out enough slack for safety, the men jumped to work. The main cargo hatch had already been opened. As soon as the net had been emptied, they dragged it to the edge and dropped it into the hold. There it would be filled with barrels of whale oil, ready to be hoisted back up to Mother.

  The first mate had extracted a leather document wallet from among the newly arrived crates. Gripping it under his arm, he climbed stiffly to the quarterdeck and presented it with all formality.

  Elizabeth tensed as Locklight unbuckled it and began to peruse the papers inside. He stepped away, turning his back on her and the other officers. They were all watching, like her, though there was no clue to be had from his stance or the angle of his head.

  The deck tilted slightly and the ratchet clattered as Mother’s engines lifted the first load of cargo from the hold. Elizabeth became aware of the tightness of the binding cloth pressing in on her.

  “Mr Barnabus,” said the captain, turning. His face wore a cruel smile.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “It seems this is to be a sad day for us. Our scientific officer returns to Mother. We must say goodbye. You’re riding the cargo net.”

  There was a proper way to travel from the ship to Mother. They called it the gig: a framework of protective struts within which an officer could sit, strapped in, whilst the hoist lifted him from the deck.

  There was no time for that, the men said. The young scientific officer could ride like an ordinary seaman. If it hadn’t happened so fast she might have seen the trick. But her caution had been thrown out of kilter by the speed and turn of events. The cargo net lay flat and open on the deck. They placed her sea trunk in the middle and indicated that she should go to sit on it.

  “You’ll be safe that way,” someone said as she stepped out.

  But she had only set foot on the webbing before the boatswain shouted, “Take in the slack!”

  The ratchet rattled and loops of rope whipped taut. The corners lifted and she was upended, limbs poking through the net, her legs flailing above her. Then she slipped back, bringing a shoulder down sharply on the corner of the sea chest.

  “Haul away!” called the boatswain.

  The net rocketed up from the deck, pressing her stomach into her lungs so that the breath left her. Then she was swinging sideways and dropping. The impact of landing sent a second jarring shock through her back. Then the net relaxed, the cables fell slack beside her and she found herself lying flat out next to her upturned trunk.

  Men were laughing. She had the impression of a crowd of faces looking down out of the dazzling sky. Then there was a smell of body odour and she was being dragged free of the net. Legs clothed in calico stood all around. Between two of the sailors she glimpsed the slight figure of a ship’s boy. He reached out and touched her on the shoulder. The contact set her heart beating faster. Desperately, she tried to keep track of him as he retreated into the crowd, but he had already slipped away.

  “Well? Make report, sir!”

  The words came from above, shrill and impatient. Elizabeth got first onto hands and knees, then stood, legs unsteady. She found herself facing a man in officers’ uniform. The rank marks on his shoulders were unfamiliar.

  Trying to put the boy out of her mind, she said: “I’m Scientific Officer Barnabus of the whaling ship Pembroke. I was sent for.” Her throat was tight. The words had come out higher pitched than she’d have liked.

  “Welcome to the mother ship,” said the man.

  There was nothing welcoming in the tone of his voice.

  From a distance, the mother ship might have seemed like a pleasure pier set to drift. But on its deck Elizabeth felt as if she was standing amid the factories of Manchester. The extraordinary expanse, the height of the deck housings, the chimneys and the columns of dark smoke all added to the impression. But more startling yet was the unnatural steadiness of the surface on which she stood.

  The officer of unknown rank led her at a brisk march. From months at sea, Elizabeth had become accustomed to the whaler’s tilt and ride. Now she found herself stumbling.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  He must have heard the question, but made no answer.

  Attempting to stride like a man and cope with the unnatural steadiness, she followed him up a flight of grey painted metal steps that clanged with each footfall. There was no rust to be seen. Then they were across another deck. It was impossible to say how it should be named, such was the confusion of different levels and platforms. Up they climbed, stairway after stairway, traversing gangways between deck housings and an increasingly vertiginous drop. The final flight of stairs was the steepest, taking her to the highest point over what had to be the portside hull.

 

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