Arabella of Mars (36 page)

Then, behind her, Arabella heard the sound of the door opening.

She turned and beheld her cousin Simon, standing with his hand on the doorknob and a rather abashed expression on his face.

*   *   *

Simon closed the door behind himself and cleared his throat. “Miss Ashby, I…”

“You
nothing
,” she interrupted in a harsh whisper. The others might be listening from the hall, but the fiction of privacy must be maintained. “You came here to kill him, and now it seems you have succeeded. You have won, and I and all my family have lost. So what now? Am I to beg for your generosity? I would not give you the pleasure.”

“Do not speak thus of your brother,” Simon replied with unctuous calm. “It is said that even the unconscious can hear words of encouragement, or otherwise, spoken at their bedsides.” He turned to Michael and, raising his voice as though speaking to a slightly deaf uncle, said, “We have every confidence that he will pull through.”

“You need not dissemble to me,
sir
,” she hissed. “Do you deny that the entire purpose of your journey to Mars was to murder my brother?”

He turned his eyes downward, away from her accusing gaze. She waited for a response.

“I cannot deny that I considered it,” he said at last, speaking to the floor. Then he raised his eyes to Arabella, his hands held out beseechingly. “Please understand, dear cousin, that when I left you in Oxford I was in a state of extreme confusion and despair. On the long voyage to Mars I confess that I entertained many different notions—of entreating your brother for funds, of demanding satisfaction for the thoughtless way his side of the family has treated mine, and, yes, of outright murder. But when I arrived here, and met him in person for the first time, I was so … so impressed by his unaffected charm that I found it impossible to either beg from him or kill him. And then came this … this
horrific
business with the queen's egg.” He hesitated, took a breath, looked at his feet. “I … I must confess that I…” Another breath. “… I do not know whether it was indeed he who stole the egg.” He looked up, his eyes beseeching. “But having met him, I am certain that he is incapable of such a dastardly act, and indeed that he is more knowledgeable of, and sympathetic to, the Martians than any man I have ever met. When your brother was wounded—and I swear by all that is holy that it was the Martians who wounded him, not I—I risked all to save him, not only out of love for my cousin, but also out of knowledge that, with his greater knowledge of Martian culture, he might be able to negotiate a settlement. But, alas, he has spent most of the time since then in an unconscious state.”

He paused, as though awaiting Arabella's forgiveness or at least understanding. She gave him neither, only a cold stare. Though his story seemed plausible, something in Simon's manner and her personal experience with him suggested that she should withhold judgement.

“Alas indeed,” Arabella said, and regarded Simon's face with careful consideration. His tale, with its self-centered motivations, might even be true. Even if it were not—if, perhaps, he had been discovered leaning over Michael, intending to finish the job the Martians had started, and had rescued him instead only because of the presence of a witness—it would be very difficult to disprove, especially now that every one in the house considered Simon a hero.

Simon dropped to his knees and clasped his hands imploringly before himself. “And so now, having confessed to you that which I have been unable to admit to any other soul, I throw myself upon your mercy.” He looked up at her with an apparently sincere expression of supplication. “I have seen that your understanding of the Martians is greater even than your brother's. It is my fervent hope that with a full understanding of the situation, you may be able to find some way to bring this violence to a close.”

Arabella looked down upon her cousin with mingled emotions of suspicion, pity, anger, and despair. Whether his story was true or not, she knew she must treat him with extreme caution, though to denounce him outright would never be believed.

Simon was correct in one thing, though: It seemed to fall to her to make peace between Englishmen and Martians. Yet even with the captain's brave and wise assistance, she had no idea how she might unravel this deadly conundrum.

She turned her back on Simon and looked to her brother, his face insensible and racked with pain. “What am I to do, Michael?” she whispered in an anguish of uncertainty.

Just then came a horrific crash from very nearby, a great grinding thud of stone against stone, followed by the tinkle of glass and the clatter of falling plaster.

A moment later, the screaming began.

 

23

ROCKS FALL

Arabella raced down the hall toward the sound, Simon forgotten behind her.

She soon found herself in the manor's grand dining room, whose great windows, now heavily shuttered, had once offered a magnificent prospect over Fort Augusta. But now a great swath of the shutters had been smashed to flinders by an enormous, craggy boulder of red rock.

The boulder lay atop one end of the Coreys' dining table, a precious antique brought out from Earth more than one hundred years ago, which now itself lay in splinters, two of its carved and gilt legs splayed out from the wreckage like those of a
thurok
that had been trodden upon. The massive silver centerpiece, which Arabella had always thought in ostentatiously poor taste, had slid down the length of the now-tilted table to crash like a ship upon the rock. All was covered by dust and bits of broken wood.

The screaming came from Lady Corey. But she was not the injured party—it was Lord Corey who gasped beneath the wreckage, his face gone deathly pale beneath a coating of plaster dust. Blood was splashed everywhere.

From without, through the gap in the broken shutters, came a great clattering war-cry of triumphant Martians, accompanied by rhythmic chanting.

Arabella recalled a similar scene from the French attack, and how a second ball had come crashing in shortly thereafter. “This place is dangerous!” she cried to the men who now crowded in the door. “We must leave here at once!”

“How dare you!” replied one of the men, a prosperous plantation owner called Sykes. “Our host is injured and requires succor!”

But a long arm in a buff coat held the man back. “She is correct,” said the captain. “Our defenses have been breached, and the enemy are very likely to strike again at this same spot. We must retreat.”

“Unhand me, you heathen,” Sykes spat, and extricated himself from the captain's grip.

“Very well,” the captain said, and backed away, deeper into the house. Arabella tried to push her way past the other men to follow him, but the press of their bodies blocked the door.

Sykes ran to Lord Corey, whose eyes had fallen closed. “I will assist you, sir,” he said, and picked him up by the shoulders to pull him from beneath the shattered table.

He came away easily. Too easily.

The upper half of his body, separated from the lower, left a long red smear upon the carpet.

Sykes looked up at Arabella in horror just as a second boulder came crashing in, sending glass and fragments of wood and plaster flying everywhere.

Arabella screamed, then coughed as a great cloud of dust burst from the point of impact. Strong arms grasped her and pulled her away, saving her from the trampling feet of the men who, up until a moment earlier, had been pressing to enter the room and were now trying desperately to leave it.

A moment later a huge slab of ceiling fell on the spot she had just vacated, spattering her and her protector with further stinging shards of plaster and stone. He shielded her with his body, his heavy buff coat serving to ward off the worst of the impact to himself.

It was the captain, of course. “Are you hurt?” he shouted over the continuing clatter of falling plaster.

“I think not, sir!”

“We must retreat to the drawing-room!”

*   *   *

Arabella and the captain gathered every one they could find, servants included, into the drawing-room, which faced only the impassable crags behind the house. They soon determined that only Lord Corey and Mr. Sykes had been killed by the two catapult-stones; all the rest were present save the inconsolable Lady Corey, the unconscious Michael, and Dr. Fellowes, who was caring for both of them in Michael's bedchamber.

Simon, too, was present. He lurked at the edges of the gathering as though afraid of her—and well he might be—and yet he seemed unable to take his eyes off of her. To him she said nothing, favoring him instead with a withering glance, to which he replied by skulking away with a satisfyingly mortified expression.

For the last two months she had looked forward to the day when she would publicly denounce her cousin for threatening her with a pistol, imprisoning her, and setting off to Mars to murder her brother … and yet, for now, she held her tongue. For all his faults, he had indeed saved Michael's life—whether that had been his original intent or not—and the current crisis, which threatened every one in the house, seemed far too pressing for Simon's crimes to obtain the attention they deserved even if she should mention them.

And so she would wait until the crisis had passed. And if the waiting made Simon anxious as a cat, so much the better.

Another loud crash sent dust pattering down from the ceiling beams and made the whole company look nervously about. A second crash followed shortly thereafter, then a long and nervous silence. After a time they all began to relax.

“How many catapults did you say they had?” Lord Bertram muttered to Arabella.

“We saw two nearing completion,” she replied, “but there were at least three more under construction. And no end of boulders.”

Captain Singh called her over to where he was conferring with several of the men over a plan of the house hastily sketched by Collins, the late Lord Corey's majordomo. “The dining-room, parlor, and master bedroom suite are lost to us,” the captain said, pointing. “They will certainly be destroyed by catapult soon, if they have not already been. Do we need to defend against boarders? Against Martians entering through the broken windows?”

“This house is impregnable,” Collins replied, his confidence undiminished by recent events. “Those windows are at least thirty feet from the ground. And the walls are sheer, quite secure from scaling.”

The captain glanced to Arabella, who shook her head. “I have seen Martians build ladders for descent into canyons far deeper than that.”

“Descent is not ascent,” Collins sniffed.

“But ladders are ladders,” the captain replied. He squinted at the plan, then at a staircase that spiraled up from one corner of the room. “How tall is that tower?” Another crash shook the house, rattling the table around which they stood.

Collins licked his lips nervously. “Sixty or seventy feet from base to top.”

The captain turned to Arabella. “Can the Martians' arrows reach that high?”

“Not with any accuracy, sir.”

“Nor will it be an easy target for their catapults,” the captain muttered, half to himself. “Which is not to say they will not try, once we begin shooting at them from it.”

“The gallery at the tower's top is crenellated,” Arabella said. “It would be extremely defensible.” To the questioning looks she received from Collins and the other men, she said, “My brother and I would retreat to that tower during our parents' whist games with Lord and Lady Corey. We would often imagine ourselves to be in charge of the house's defense.” Though the attackers they had envisioned in those playful days had been French soldiers, not the Martians who were their servants and teachers.

“Very well,” the captain said, and straightened from the plan. “We require three volunteers,” he called. “Have we any one here who is a particularly good shot with a rifle?”

Several of the gentlemen, and a few of the servants, raised their hands.

The captain pointed to three of them. “Take the best pieces you can find, and a quantity of ammunition, to the top of that tower.” He pointed to the staircase. “Stay out of sight as much as you can, but keep an eye on the wall below those smashed windows. If you see Martians making any attempt to climb it, shoot them. If you see any other unusual activity, send one of your number down to report it.”

As the men departed in search of rifles, another crash, this one considerably louder, echoed down the hall. “Damage report,” the captain called over his shoulder. No one moved. “You!” he snapped, pointing at a man standing near the door. “Go and find out what just happened.” The man stared, rabbit-like, at the captain for only a moment before bolting to comply.

“I should go to the tower as well,” Arabella said, “as an observer. I am best equipped to understand what I see.”

The captain relaxed from his attitude of stern command. “I thank you for volunteering, Miss Ashby,” he said gently, “but your services are required here, for possible negotiations with the Martians.”

He is trying to keep me safe
, she realized. But, as well, she understood that he was correct—they must negotiate with the Martians, and somehow bring the conflict to a close, or the house would eventually be battered to bits around them.

But there was only one thing that she could think of that might pacify the Martians.

Pray God it still existed.

“Please excuse me,” she said to the captain, and went off to find Simon.

*   *   *

She found Simon in Michael's bedchamber, whose location and thick walls made it one of the safest rooms in the house. Dr. Fellowes comforted Lady Corey at the side of the room, while Simon knelt at Michael's bedside with apparent solicitude.

Arabella knew not what scheme Simon might have in mind. Perhaps he intended to smother Michael at the first opportunity, though that opportunity seemed unlikely as Michael's bedchamber also served Dr. Fellowes as a private room for examination and treatment of the injured. Or perhaps Simon's attention to Michael was only an excuse for him to remain far from danger. In any case, she would have to keep a close eye upon him.