Have you seen what our neighbours are building on the green outside our own gates to rub my face in it?’
She had. The ritual of Smoking Prester Charles. A bonfire platform topped by a straw figure covered in a silk gauze screen – a cheap effigy of the glass dome into which parliament’s soldiers had pushed the captured rebel five hundred years ago before burning chemically treated wood to fill the man-sized bottle with poison gases. As humane a method of public execution as any, she supposed. Centuries on, Smoking Prester Charles Night had become an excuse for a little fun in the capital, rather than the pretext parliament had needed to disinherit the losing side of the civil war of their remaining lands. Had the political police known about Prester Charles’ plot, and perhaps even encouraged it? Probably, but that wasn’t going to get in Molly’s way of a night’s much needed diversion from the worries the Hexmachina’s final fraught warning had filled her with.
She examined the faded label on her bottle. Perhaps the wine would lift the commodore’s spirits a little; he disliked the massive cellar levels and relied on Molly to ferret out the surplus bottles racked outside of their pantry. She walked up the stairs in search of the old u-boat man. There were eight storeys in Tock House, not counting the basement levels. Molly had once investigated getting a lifting room added onto the outside of the tower-like structure, but the architect she had wheedled into inspecting the building had sadly shaken his head, tapping the walls. Seven feet thick, built after the Jackelian civil war in an age of paranoia. A layer of innocent red brick concealed hard-cast concrete layered with rubber-cell shock absorption sheets. The mansion was a disguised Martello tower, a veritable fortress masquerading as a folly. Masons weren’t going to be knocking through to build additions to this place. Not without the assistance of a volley from the Jackelian Artillery Company.
Finding the commodore’s rooms empty, Molly continued up the stairs to the highest level of Tock House and sure enough, the old u-boat skipper’s complaints could be heard coming from the chamber that housed the tower’s clock mechanism and Coppertracks’ laboratory. But that was odd … None of the oil lamps in the corridor was lit …
She found Commodore Black in a room at the back, tugging on the handle of a winch with the help of three of Coppertracks’ diminutive mu-bodies. As the commodore and the drones heaved, the two halves of the dome above were creaking apart, revealing a cloudless, starry night. Molly buttoned up her tweed jacket tightly. No wonder it was so cold and dark up here, their steamman housemate was planning another series of observations on his telescope. Along with the oil lamps, the pipes that carried Tock House’s warming waters from the boiler downstairs were turned off across the top floor.
‘Ah, this is no night for your peerings and proddings about the firmament, Aliquot,’ said the commodore.
Alongside the submariner, Coppertracks’ drones raised cyclopean eyes to the heavens, extending them telescope-like to their maximum length, as if they might help the intelligence that inhabited their bodies in his endeavours of astronomy. ‘I believe our position at the top of Tavistead Hill will isolate us well enough from the firework displays this night,’ said Coppertracks.
‘The commodore might have a point, you know,’ said Molly. ‘Fireworks or no, they’re getting ready for a bonfire on the green opposite. When the smoke from that starts to fill the sky, you’re not going to be able to see much tonight.’
‘Then let us make haste,’ said Coppertracks. ‘If I were to abandon my work every time you softbodies held a celebration in the capital, I would spend more of the year playing chess against Jared here than I would in achieving anything of scientific merit.’
Commodore Black finished winching open the dome
She had. The ritual of Smoking Prester Charles. A bonfire platform topped by a straw figure covered in a silk gauze screen – a cheap effigy of the glass dome into which parliament’s soldiers had pushed the captured rebel five hundred years ago before burning chemically treated wood to fill the man-sized bottle with poison gases. As humane a method of public execution as any, she supposed. Centuries on, Smoking Prester Charles Night had become an excuse for a little fun in the capital, rather than the pretext parliament had needed to disinherit the losing side of the civil war of their remaining lands. Had the political police known about Prester Charles’ plot, and perhaps even encouraged it? Probably, but that wasn’t going to get in Molly’s way of a night’s much needed diversion from the worries the Hexmachina’s final fraught warning had filled her with.
She examined the faded label on her bottle. Perhaps the wine would lift the commodore’s spirits a little; he disliked the massive cellar levels and relied on Molly to ferret out the surplus bottles racked outside of their pantry. She walked up the stairs in search of the old u-boat man. There were eight storeys in Tock House, not counting the basement levels. Molly had once investigated getting a lifting room added onto the outside of the tower-like structure, but the architect she had wheedled into inspecting the building had sadly shaken his head, tapping the walls. Seven feet thick, built after the Jackelian civil war in an age of paranoia. A layer of innocent red brick concealed hard-cast concrete layered with rubber-cell shock absorption sheets. The mansion was a disguised Martello tower, a veritable fortress masquerading as a folly. Masons weren’t going to be knocking through to build additions to this place. Not without the assistance of a volley from the Jackelian Artillery Company.
Finding the commodore’s rooms empty, Molly continued up the stairs to the highest level of Tock House and sure enough, the old u-boat skipper’s complaints could be heard coming from the chamber that housed the tower’s clock mechanism and Coppertracks’ laboratory. But that was odd … None of the oil lamps in the corridor was lit …
She found Commodore Black in a room at the back, tugging on the handle of a winch with the help of three of Coppertracks’ diminutive mu-bodies. As the commodore and the drones heaved, the two halves of the dome above were creaking apart, revealing a cloudless, starry night. Molly buttoned up her tweed jacket tightly. No wonder it was so cold and dark up here, their steamman housemate was planning another series of observations on his telescope. Along with the oil lamps, the pipes that carried Tock House’s warming waters from the boiler downstairs were turned off across the top floor.
‘Ah, this is no night for your peerings and proddings about the firmament, Aliquot,’ said the commodore.
Alongside the submariner, Coppertracks’ drones raised cyclopean eyes to the heavens, extending them telescope-like to their maximum length, as if they might help the intelligence that inhabited their bodies in his endeavours of astronomy. ‘I believe our position at the top of Tavistead Hill will isolate us well enough from the firework displays this night,’ said Coppertracks.
‘The commodore might have a point, you know,’ said Molly. ‘Fireworks or no, they’re getting ready for a bonfire on the green opposite. When the smoke from that starts to fill the sky, you’re not going to be able to see much tonight.’
‘Then let us make haste,’ said Coppertracks. ‘If I were to abandon my work every time you softbodies held a celebration in the capital, I would spend more of the year playing chess against Jared here than I would in achieving anything of scientific merit.’
Commodore Black finished winching open the dome
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