Cuttlefish (8 page)

So Clara found herself with her mother's idea of schoolwork, and a fair amount of free time. Mother was so absorbed in her own work, whatever it was. She seemed very frustrated by the lack of a laboratory. “I am convinced osmium is not necessary,” said her mother, in the midst of setting her some mathematical problems.

Clara blinked. Osmium? It was on the table of elements…she was almost sure. “Er. For what?”

“Oh. Sorry. Your grandmother's work with her almost-husband,
before she left Germany.” Mother kicked the trunk. “Your great-aunt Irmengarde in Breslau had some of her things, still. When she died, I inherited part of the estate from her, remember. This trunk is full of my mother's notes and letters. A solid quartz pressure vessel…some chemicals. It's…interesting.”

Almost-husband. It was a story that Clara had grown up with, how
Oma
Clara had fought with the man she was about to marry and broken off the engagement. And how the family had felt it better to send her away to stay with the cousins in England—where she'd fallen in love with and married an Irish engineer, and had never gone back to Prussia.

Her mother shook her head, as if trying to clear it. Then she said, “Why don't you go and ask if you can get some air? We are on the surface at night anyway. I'm sorry. I need to think about this.”

Oma
had been a chemist too. The first woman to gain her doctorate from the University of Breslau. Clara knew that she was supposed to follow the tradition set by her grandmother. Only she really didn't like chemistry all that much. She went up to the bridge to ask Captain Malkis if she could go out on the deck.

He rubbed his chin. “It's a bit risky, young lady. We run very low in the water. Waves break right over the top of the ship, sometimes. It's not exactly a pleasure promenade.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Mind you, you have shown us you're not afraid of getting wet. Go to the quartermaster, get him to issue you with wet-weather gear, and a deck harness. There'll be no malarkying about without it, mind. Lieutenant Willis here, will be doing a deck-round at oh one hundred, and you can go out with him, but not to the masthead! You're not to distract the watch. When we get to safer waters you can spend a bit more time on deck. It's rougher out in the Atlantic, but quieter there away from the shipping lanes.”

The heavy Shetlands cabled jumper, oilskin, sea boots, and a sou'wester were all a little bit large for her—at the smallest size the quartermaster had. She felt a bit like a scarecrow, clumping back to
the bridge. She obviously looked it too. The captain and lieutenant smiled. “Breeches are called for too, I think,” said Captain Malkis.

So she had to go back to the quartermaster again. She changed in the heads so as to avoid explaining all of it to her mother, who might object, and went back up, and was taken to the inner door to the deck well.

She shivered. “It's a bit like the escape hatch.” It still made her feel cold, looking at it.

“A bit. But the pit doesn't seal off on top, and the outer door can't open if there is pressure on it. We have to pump it out before we can exit this way,” explained the lieutenant, leading her out and up the spiral stair, up onto the deck cowling and out under the dark star-spattered open sky, with the wind and the scent of fresh salt-laden air filling her lungs.

“You clip on here.” He pointed to a brass rail recessed into a groove on the deck. “There's a second snap-link on your leash too, see. You never clip off the first until you've clipped on the second. Got me?”

She nodded, clipped in, and followed him down the deck to the bow. Out in the darkness spray splashed at them, and the wind bit into her face. And she revelled in it. In the feeling of space, and the fact it didn't smell like the inside of the submarine—of coal, rust, oil, and mostly people. This air didn't feel shared.

The submariner on the bow heard them coming, and turned and saluted. He had water dripping off his nose and forelock, and on his oilskins. It was amazing how well you could make out things just by a sliver of moonlight. “T'sea's picking up a bit, sir. Evening, miss,” he said.

“It is. No more ship-sign?” asked the lieutenant.

“Not since just after I come on watch, sir. Lost sight of him, quick enough,” said the watchman.

“Well, keep them peeled, Nicholl,” said the lieutenant.

“Aye, sir.”

They went back, past the low cowl of the deck shaft, and to the stern. That watchman didn't hear them coming. He was peering intently into the dark. The lieutenant cleared his throat. The poor submariner nearly jumped into the sea with fright—the lieutenant had to catch his leash.

It was the cabin boy, Tim. “Sorry, sir. I think I see something, sir.” He stared at the sea again, intently. “On the skyline, sir.”

They all stared into the dark, to where he'd pointed.

On the up-roll Tim pointed again. “There.”

“Didn't see anything. But I'm going up to the crow's nest,” said the lieutenant. “You stay here, Miss Calland. Clipped on. Don't move.”

So Clara did, staring into the dark too. “What did you see?” she asked, not seeing anything.

“Square black edges,” explained Tim. “I think…a ship's superstructure, and maybe funnels. But she doesn't have any lights on. But the sea doesn't have any square things about it.”

“It's eyes like a cat you must have! I can barely see anything!” she said, staring again.

Tim was feeling a little foolish about not having heard them coming. But the belief and, well, trust in her voice set his prickles at ease a bit. “It's from living in the tunnels. You spend a lot of time looking into the dark. Get used to it, I guess,” he said gruffly, not stopping looking at the sea. “There it is again. See. On the upswing. Just there.”

“I…think I might have,” said Clara, doubtfully.

Lieutenant Willis came back as they stared out into the night together. “Good spotting, youngster. The masthead watch had just signalled the bridge about seeing something when I got there. I got a sighting of it through the masthead night-glasses. It's a four-stack destroyer, Margot-class. Running without lights, she's hunting.”

“So what do we do now, sir?” asked Tim.

“Pretty much what we were doing, son. Watch her. We'll reset the sails a bit and run slightly more easterly, I'd guess. She's maybe eight knots off, and probably won't pick up our sails or mast in the dark. She might hear our engines, so we're unlikely to use those until we've added a bit of distance between us. Come, miss. I'd better get you belowdecks. We'll have a sail-crew up here in a few minutes.”

So Tim was left to look out alone again until the sail-crew came up to reset the sails, and then he went off watch.

D
uke Malcolm was doing his best to remain patient with the Lord High Admiral. Visiting the admiral in the Admiralty irritated him. Duke Malcolm liked people to come to his offices, but the admiral had asked the duke first. “It's uncertain how the Russians knew that we had planned an intercept when the airship docked in London. The point is, they did and organised a very effective distraction. It was obviously decided that it would be safer to send her by submarine, something they were quite correct about,” said Duke Malcolm.

Lord Admiral Lesseps nodded. “You've told me before, Your Grace, how allowing these submarines to survive serves our purposes. But they're underhand and unfair and un-English.”

Not for the first time Duke Malcolm wondered if the Lord Admiral had quite understood that the submarine traders weren't particularly concerned about being “un-English.” Unfortunately the Lord Admiral was far too well connected for Duke Malcolm to be rid of him easily. His family had influence that was of value even to the house of Windsor-Schaumburg-Lippe. They owned vast steelworks and collieries in the colonies as well as here and in Germany. The duke therefore chose to ignore this idiocy. “The question now is just where we anticipate them going to port, as it appears the Royal Navy can't find them at sea.”

The admiral looked mildly offended, but not quite ready to start a fight with the head of Imperial Intelligence about it. “The new equipment we're fitting does mean we can triangulate on them when they use their engines, provided we have two ships with the new gear, within a ten-mile radius of the submarine. We can detect them
at twenty miles, but not work out where they are. But when they run under sail, not. And there is a lot of ocean out there.” The admiral pointed at the large wall-map stuck with varicoloured pins. “It seems unlikely that they will try to run the Baltic Sea, so that leaves the North Atlantic route to Romanov-on-the-Murman.”

“Which means they have to re-coal at either their nest on the Shetlands or Trondheim's Fiord,” said Duke Malcolm, tired of being told what he already knew.

The admiral bowed. “Quite so, Your Grace. My aide, Captain Margolis, has the disposition of the fleet elements ready to deal with these nests,” said the admiral, with a small smile of satisfaction.

The aide got up and indicated on the map with his long wooden pointer. “Because of the possibility of trouble with the Norwegians, the dreadnought
Invincible George
and her group will be steaming here. They will be on station from the twelfth. The armoured cruiser
Martinique
, and the Margot-class destroyer
Camberwell
, and their coaling support vessel are already in Scapa Flow. If we fail to detect them, or receive information from you, Your Grace, they are scheduled to sail to join the
Invincible George
on the morning of the thirteenth. We have the submarine access channels mapped, and those will be mined.”

The duke didn't listen to the admiral's aide droning on about coaling and the plans on how to raid the nests. Instead he was thinking about the report from Professor Browne. It appeared that Dr. Calland was a Cambridge graduate. She had worked on azoic dye isomers—whatever that meant. There had been an explanation. Nitrogen came into it somewhere. Browne had some of his men checking her work at Imperial Chemicals and Dyes.

In the meantime he had better get the Irish Interest section to compile a complete dossier on this woman. She had a child. That presumably meant that it had a father.

And that might be a lever.

The duke did not understand familial love at a personal level. But he knew it worked on lesser persons.

T
he submarine ran on its coal-fired Stirling engines, just below the surface, all day, diving on a couple of occasions to avoid spotter airships. Once they heard the distant sound of drop-mines. Tim knew this was unusual—once the subs had got out to sea, they seldom used their engines, as the coal dust was heavy and took up cargo space, and besides, the blowers had to be re-ceramic-coated after they'd done a certain number of hours. The boat would have to be laid up in a safe port, not working, while that happened. And usually, once away from the cities and the coast, the submarines had a peaceful enough time of it.

Usually.

Not this time.

“Looks like we'll be running for the Faroes instead of the Shetlands. They're hunting us hard,” said one of the senior ratings.

Tim had to wonder just why they wanted this submarine so badly. It had to be the woman. But why on earth was she so important? She seemed quite ordinary, if rather bookish. She was a doctor. But not a people-doctor, as some of the crew had found out. “I asked her for something for my chilblains,” said Smitty, the bosun. “She said she might be able to help if I had chemical problems, not medical ones. Dyeing clothes was more her line than curing the dying, she said. Used to work in that big industrial dye-works in Ireland, she did.”

“So why are they looking for her?” asked Tim. Maybe everyone else knew?

Smitty shrugged. “Maybe she made King Ernest's new weskit the wrong colour.”

That got a chuckle from the mess-crew. The king was famous for setting the fashion, and his bright cravats, waistcoats, and odd-coloured knee-breeches were as much privately laughed at as publicly imitated. He was most unlike Duke Malcolm, who only appeared to wear military uniform. They said the duke even wore his shako to bed. And everyone knew that the duke really ran the British Empire.…

Tim decided to ask Clara the next time he met her, which happened while he was cleaning cabins. She was becoming quite friendly with all of them, although Tim didn't quite know what to make of the way she treated him. He wasn't really used to girls, and knew nothing about the way top-siders behaved.

“Oh, you're talking to me now,” she said, smiling to take at least some of the sting out of the words when he asked. “I don't really know. Mother won't tell me. And to be honest I don't know if I would understand. Or really want to.”

Tim was taken aback by that. “But why don't you want to?”

She sniffed. Pulled a face. “You didn't have to grow up being expected to also be a chemist. I want to do something else, thank you. And you? What do you want to be?”

Tim blinked. “I guess I never thought about it much back home. It was always about getting enough for dinner, really. My mam”—he swallowed, wishing he knew exactly what had happened in the tubes under London—“she said I should be a submariner, because they ate well.” He looked down at his feet. “I worry about her. I used to look out for her. She…she should get some of my wages. If…if she's all right.”

She squeezed his arm. “She will be, I'm sure. I worry about my dad, too.”

“Oh. Where is he?” he asked.

It was her turn to swallow, and pause. “In jail in Ireland,” she said quietly. “He's a rebel.”

She didn't know why she'd told him that. She'd lied about it often enough before. Been found out and been teased and bullied mercilessly. But here they would hardly know if she made something up.

“I'm sorry they caught him,” he said sincerely, without a single trace of the mockery she was used to about it, on his broad face. “You must be very proud of him.”

Clara blinked. For a moment she thought she was going to explode with fury and hit him. And then she realised he was not persecuting her. Not teasing. His brownish face really was earnest, and his voice showed no hint of the usual sneers she'd lived with. “Proud?” she asked, warily, almost tasting the word, attached to her father.

He looked rather confused at her response. “Well, um, yes. Aren't you? I mean, my mam said that Duke Malcolm's men would as soon shoot a rebel as look at him in Ireland. He must be very brave.”

Clara thoroughly embarrassed herself by bursting into tears.

Tim gaped. Then hastily said, “Here. I'm sorry.…” He reached a tentative hand out to her.

She shook her head. “Thank you,” she somehow managed to say, and then retreated to the heads to cry…and think.

Tim wondered if he should go after her. Women. The older lads were right. There was no understanding them. He went back to work, still wondering just what he'd said wrong. Only that “thank you” seemed, well, grateful. But exactly what was going on inside her head he was not too sure. Cotton, hay, and rags in a woman's head, according to the other lads, but his mam was as sharp as a tin-tack. She'd been a teacher once upon a time, before she'd had to flee underground with him as an unborn baby. But the Irish girl had got him
thinking about this “what do you want to be” business. Now that he was well fed, food didn't seem quite so much of all that there was to life. Maybe he could add “safe,” he thought wryly as the “all quiet” light came on again.

They'd run hard and fast toward the Shetlands. They had days more running to get anywhere else that the boat could refuel. There were submarine lairs off Ireland, in the Hebrides, and several along the wild coasts of Norway. Of course the Royal Navy knew roughly where these were, if not their precise locations. It was just to be hoped that they didn't realise they were pushing on for the Faroe Islands. The weather helped in its own way, by getting worse. It kept the spotter airships at anchor and gave them lots of wind to run with. It also made using the engines during the day difficult, with the engine-snuiver catching too many waves, and the sub bouncing and pitching and rolling. So it took them three days to catch sight of the cliffs and mountains of the Faroe Islands. The weather chose to settle too, meaning near-windless conditions.

“It's shaping up for a big blow,” said the old submariners as they packed the gossamer sails into the deck-hatch in the outer hull. At least the submarine could travel below the surface when the weather turned really bad. That helped a little, although they still rolled. Tim hoped it would hold off for a few more days. It would be wonderful to walk on land for a bit.

Clara had fought hard against the wait for nightfall, so that the
Cuttlefish
could come inshore, heading for the second largest island of the Faroes, Eysturoy. She'd done her best smiling at the officers on the bridge, and been granted a quick look through the periscope. In the moonlight it seemed entirely made up of cliffs, chasms, and peaks. There wasn't a light to be seen, but they still crept in, underwater, into one of the fiords. And then in a secluded bay, onto the
surface. The submariners preferred marine caves, but this was so out of the way, and they needed to get alongside the coaling barge. The high walls of the fiord kept it still and dark and safe seeming.

Clara had even managed to slip out on deck—wishing she could go on land while the sacks of washed and desulphured coal dust were carried in. The high walls of the fiord cut down the light, and with scudding cloud blacking everything out intermittently, it was too dark to see much. By the race of the clouds across the moon, the weather, so steady before, was beginning to pick up.

The remoteness of the place nearly lulled the
Cuttlefish's
crew into a false security. It was only the sharp eyes of a lookout that saved them. “Airship!” he shouted.

Everyone looked up, and there it was, high and distinct, and unlike the wispy clouds. Silhouetted against the moon, it was long, silent, and sharklike, closing on them. “Close hatches!” yelled one of the officers. “All below.”

They scrambled and fell down the stair. Clara found herself under someone and hauled into the pit, as something made a ripping sound across the water, and a sharp metallic
spang
! sound. They all bundled through the hatchway. Then the captain said through the speaking tubes, “Secure the deck-shaft doors. Prepare to dive.”

Already the electric motors were throbbing, and a few moments later the vibration of the Stirlings' feed compressors cut in too as the boat angled down into the fiord. In the meanwhile Clara, various submariners, and two of the Faroese from the coaling barge untangled themselves and hastened to where they were supposed to be. Well, except for the two Faroe Islanders—big, blond-bearded, scared-looking men who didn't seem to speak much English. They were confused and afraid. Clara tried with her few words of German to help. The last place they'd be welcome right now would be the bridge, but short of their cabin she couldn't think of where else to take them. Fortunately, Tim came hurrying by. “Where shall I take these people to?” she asked, grabbing his arm.

He blinked at them. “Oh. The mess, I reckon. I'll ask the mate. He speaks their lingo.”

So Clara led them down to the mess. The sub was not diving anymore, but was plainly moving as fast as possible. There was a far-off boom of explosions, but they were some distance away. They waited. Clara tried to explain the “all quiet” light to the two Faroese. Quietly. It didn't stop her feeling guilty when the mate, Mr. Werner, came down as she was speaking.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “Was trying to explain.” She pointed.

“I think you should get back to your cabin, miss,” he said sternly. “But it's not likely that the enemy are listening.” He spoke to the two Faroese in their own language while Clara slunk off, feeling guilty. She met Tim again, this time carrying a tray and several empty cups. Whistling as usual.

“Shh!” She looked up pointing and saw that the “all quiet” light she was pointing at was off. “Oh. Sorry.”

He grinned. “As Cookie says, no worries. Sparky got his aerial up and picked up their transmissions. The wind is getting up and they report that they can't keep their station. Probably halfway to Norway by now. Said they were going to try to drop some troops, and they were talking to a ship. A dreadnought yet!”

“However did they find us?” asked Clara.