“Rue, and I mean this most kindly, but perhaps in future you should act with a little bit more prudence.”
“Oh, ha ha, thank you very much. Is that all?”
“And I shall be writing a letter to your mother to post as soon as we land in India on the subject of your choices thus far.”
“You are a very hard-hearted female.”
Prim made a kissy face at her and that was that. No further scolding was needed – twenty years of friendship has its benefits.
The two ladies made their way to Percy’s quarters, one half of which was also the ship’s library. The suite had started out as one of the largest but now looked as if it were the smallest. The arched chamber was a warren of books with stacks and shelves and piles everywhere. The beams supporting the deck above were the only component of the Custard still visible. Somewhere there must be walls but it was difficult to spot any. There was no doubt in either of their minds that Percy had some manner of organisation system in place, but they couldn’t figure it out.
“Yoo-hoo?” called Rue into the stacks in case there was someone else infiltrating.
Footnote appeared, stretched at them in his version of a bow and sniffed their shoes. They stood still, allowing him to do so until, gatekeeper-like, he magnanimously began leading them through the books, tail high.
“Lady Captain?” Virgil appeared, wearing an apron and carrying one of Percy’s boots, obviously in the middle of blacking them.
Footnote sniffed his feet and then flopped over on top of them.
“Ah, Virgil, you wouldn’t clock a tick about Professor Tunstell’s filing system, would you?” asked Rue.
“Not exactly, captain. Of course, you could always ask one of the ladders.”
“Pardon?” said Rue.
Virgil put down the boot. Footnote transferred his affection to this interesting new smell. Virgil approached a ladder which hung from a long top rail that snaked about the perimeter of the room. Clearly the ladder was designed to slide for easier access to the highest shelves. Rue had thought it quite ordinary, except for being metal instead of wood, but Virgil seemed to know otherwise. On one side, down near the first rung, was a dial, and the ladder had a cranking mechanism with a pin reader at the railing above. The railing was perforated at multiple points with patterns of holes so that when the operator set the dial, the ladder would roll along until its pins dropped into the matched holes, stopping the ladder abruptly at a prescribed point.
Rue said, all innocence, “The professor lent me this slim travel memoir and I wanted to return it. To the, erm, the section with travel journals.”
Virgil bent down and clicked the dial over to the number seven. Rue made a mental note. The boy jumped onto the ladder and flattened himself against it, clutching with both hands. He then pressed a button on one side and in a puff of steam, the ladder whooshed off more rapidly than Rue thought possible. With an audible click, it stopped some distance away behind the stacks.
“This way, Lady Captain,” sang out Virgil’s disembodied voice.
Rue and Prim wended through the shelves and piles of books. The ladder was near the only porthole left unblocked in the room. Virgil jumped off.
“Of what type is the travel book, Lady Captain?” he asked.
“Bad?” said Rue cautiously.
The boy grinned. “No, I meant what part of the world, flowery retelling or solid factual detail?”
“Oh. Egypt.”
Primrose added, “And flowery. Definitely flowery.”
Virgil led them around the back of two chairs, both covered in rolls of maps, metal scrolls for aetherographic transmitters, and current charts. He pulled one of the chairs away and pointed down to a shelf near the floor stacked with small, cheaply made, slim travel memoirs. There were an awful lot of them. Fortunately, none of the others was pink. Percy, great collector of the written word though he may be, evidently did not already own a copy of his mother’s infamous work. Rue tucked the volume in among its fellows in as innocuous a location as possible.
She straightened. “Thank you very much for your help, Virgil.”
Prim asked, “Does my brother have anything in a less flowery vein on travelling in India, do you know?”
“Over here.” Virgil pointed up at a higher part of the same shelf. The books there had been disturbed and stuffed with bits of notepaper marking pertinent sections. Percy had obviously been following instructions to read up on their destination.
Prim stood on tip-toe to read the spines. She selected The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook by Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner.
“Thank you kindly, young man. I believe this will do nicely.”
They made their farewells to Virgil and Footnote, both young males pleased to have been of assistance but eager to get on with their regular tasks – in Virgil’s case, as boot-black, and in Footnote’s, interfering with the boot-black.
“What is that about?” Rue pointed to The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook clutched in Prim’s hands as they exited.
“Best to give Virgil something more to report to my brother than us returning a book. If we took something from his collection, Percy will focus on that and forget the one we added.”
“Very nice tactic.” Rue respected Prim’s manipulative talents.
“Besides, this looks like an interesting read.”
At which statement Rue, who preferred adventure novels, was properly horrified.
Three days later, they left off their slow spinning, to the great relief of all. It had become disorientating, even in the grey nothingness of the aetherosphere. Prim had stopped taking tea on deck, claiming the stateroom was more restorative. Rue made a vow to eschew the waltz at future balls – it may be old-fashioned of her, but she had a newfound respect for the quadrille.
Percy de-puffed them expertly into a more relaxed and standard current, the Central Hyderabad Waft, which would take them on to India and down towards Bombay. From the maps, Rue knew that they must be above the Baghdad Environs at the moment, but the aetherosphere provided no evidence to this fact. Much as she loved to float, Rue was finding that she preferred the slower method inside the actual air, where one could see the landscape below.
It would take another three days to reach Bombay but Rue insisted they continue without pause. This might tax their stores and leave them low on fuel, but there was no convenient tower near the Hyderabad Waft. They’d have to go to ground for a restock and dipping down would severely waste hours.
Everyone was prosaic about this decision except Primrose, who panicked over the prospect of running low on milk. She instructed Cook to take all non-dairy essentials, including Rue’s favourite custards, off the menu until further notice – all milk being required for tea – and even considered extracting the Swiss condensed reserves out of storage.
“I don’t think we need go that far,” was Rue’s response to the idea.
“Extreme measures,” hinted Prim darkly.
Despite her friend’s doom talk, they made it to Bombay with little fuss and no shortage of milk. They de-puffed out of the aetherosphere to find India spread below them like a great red and brown apple fritter nestled in a pool of blue sauce. There were sprinkles of green jungle, which, if one continued the comparison, meant the fritter was mouldy.
Rue had no idea if Bombay was typical of the colonies, but it was not typical of any city she’d ever visited before. Which she guessed meant the onus was on her to change what she considered city-like. It was lyrically beautiful, a place of colour and spice. Aunt Ivy would have waxed most verbose at the sight. Possibly even written another slim travel memoir.
Rue, while impressed, was frightened of flowery language even when faced with such an amazing sight as Bombay.
“Oh, my,” was the sum total of her commentary, as Percy guided them slowly through the atmosphere, ever downward towards the mass of buildings, dirigibles, roads, rails, and humanity that made up the First Great Port of the Great British Empire.
Later, Rue added to her eloquence with, “Gracious me.”
Bombay was, ostensibly, a peninsula, but it looked from above more like an island, surrounded on almost all sides by water. Percy was directing them towards the southern-most tip where a parade ground gave way to an old cemetery and the Colaba Battery. A muddy beach along the western edge had been misappropriated for airship use and was dotted with dirigibles, ornithopters, and balloons, plus associated loading docks and mooring points. The airships were tied down using long lines fixed to bollards set into the ramparts of the parade ground. In cases of very high tide, the airships were given lee to rise up above the water. It was impossible to board at such times, but given the crowded city, this made for a sensible use of an otherwise unreliable beach.
Fortunately, it was low tide as The Spotted Custard floated in to ground.
The ship caused no little fuss upon arrival. Bombay and her resident regiments were accustomed to airships in many shapes and sizes but The Spotted Custard was a cut above the rest, and rather shiny. Officers liked flash, particularly red flash, and they were suitably impressed by a large ladybird bobbing into port. A few of the off-duty foot even wandered over to see who might disembark from such an impressive ship.
Also, as Rue was to shortly discover, the native population appreciated transport disguised as animals.
“Let’s give them a show as we disembark, shall we?” suggested Rue to Prim’s evident delight.
Primrose was fond of the military – rather too much for Aunt Ivy’s comfort; Rue a little less so, as she grew up with werewolves who were always attached to some regiment or another.
“Shall we change?” suggested Rue.
Prim was grinning.
Rue turned to her crew, busy battening down the Custard for docking. The mainsail was in, the mooring ropes out, and the propeller wound down.
“You all right from here on without me, Navigator Tunstell?”
Percy nodded without bothering to reply.
Rue wondered if she should ask him if he wanted to come along but, knowing Percy, calculated that this was a waste of breath.
The two ladies linked arms and headed across the poop deck to the ladder down to their quarters.
Since the idea was to impress, they chose two of their best walking dresses – after consultation to ensure the outfits would display well together. Primrose selected a lemon-yellow organza with black velvet trim in petal-like layers over the skirt and black flower appliqué on the bodice. It had a wide black velvet belt to emphasise the slenderness of her waist. The sleeves were the latest in leg-of-mutton cut with wide black ribbon cuffs. And, of course, it boasted a matching black hat decorated with yellow bows and a huge ostrich plume out the back.