Not Yet Drown'd Page 19

  Hector was best qualifed to answer this, but he remained silent, contemplating the windmills. “It is just like a child’s pinwheel,” replied Mr Sinclair, glancing to Hector for confirmation.

  “Aye, that much I see,” said Catherine. “But why should the vanes turn? Surely there is just as much air behind the vane as in front of it. I do not understand the mechanical principle that makes it move.”

  “I have always understood—I have supposed—that it functions on the principle of the Archimedean screw, only in this case the movement of the fluid—that is to say, the air—acts to move the screw, rather than the screw acting to move the fluid,” said Mr Sinclair, but without his usual assurance. “Is that not so, Mr MacDonald?”

  “Yes, more or less,” said Hector. “It is at least a useful way of thinking of the forces in operation. And yet our actual trials do not always bear out our suppositions. I am thinking of my rotary oar—in essence another Archimedean screw—of which I have recently received some baffling news. You must remember, Catherine, that last night aboard Dram Shell—”

  “I am in no danger of forgetting,” said Catherine.

  “We ran afoul of some submerged object, and I feared that the rotary oar had been damaged?”

  “But apparently it was spared,” said Catherine, “for it continued to propel the boat as well as ever.”

  “Aha! A fair conclusion. But untrue.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have had a letter from Captain Keith, who tells me that upon subsequently hauling out Dram Shell to examine her hull and oar, it was found that the forward half of the oar had indeed been broken off entirely, the shaft snapped quite through. Where there had been originally two complete turns, or spirals, of the thread, only one full spiral remained.”

  “Yet the performance of the boat seemed not at all impaired,” said Catherine.

  “Not only was the performance unimpaired, but in the trials which Captain Keith has run since, using that same damaged oar, Dram Shell has achieved consistently greater speeds than before.”

  “How can that be?”

  “I am baffled. I had supposed that the greater the biting surface of the oar through the water, the greater its pulling power—like a screw driving into wood. Yet it appears that I have overlooked some fundamental mechanical principle; there is apparently some interference for which I have not adequately accounted. It occurs to me now that a vane arrangement similar to that on those windmills might be worth trying.”

  They had come out into the wide harbour, and a steam-powered tugboat fitted with side-wheels took their barge in tow for the short trip down to where Increase now lay at anchor. A beamy Flemish pleit beating up to windward passed close across their wake, then came about, shifted her big-bellied triangular red sails, resheeted, and crossed their wake again, the wind now across her other bow.

  “To be frank,” said Catherine, watching all this, “I don’t quite see how boats can sail upwind either.”

  “Undoubtedly they do it, however,” said Hector. “It is so fascinating to observe mechanical principles functioning quite independent of our comprehension of them.”

  “Divine principles, too,” said Mr Sinclair.

  11

  the particular excellency of this Grace

  “What is that?”

  A wailing, an unearthly wheezing, a dying breathy gasping. Some creature in the galley below was being slaughtered with a dull knife. It expired, a merciful release from suffering.

  Then it took a deeper breath and wailed again. In agonies, choking, then sighing, then silence.

  It inhaled, a long deliberate measure; now it shrieked in a new powerful voice: loud, rude, and uncannily thrilling, a broadsword, a claymore of a voice, bursting out of unbearably narrow tight dark dense wood and reed.

  “Oh, that Hector,” said Catherine to Grace and Mrs Todd. “I didn’t know he had brought his bagpipe. He hasn’t played in years, as anyone with ears can tell. What will Captain Mainwaring say?”

  Gladly they put aside their employments—canvaswork, sketchbook, sewing—for it was too bright, too dazzling, to be working on the main deck in the middle of the broad blue Atlantic on a brilliant September afternoon. They descended into the dimness below.

  Captain Mainwaring had already arrived in the galley. He was pointing at the ungainly device squatting on the cook’s big stove, and Mr Sinclair answered his question while Hector bent over the machine to anoint it with grease from the cook’s can of drippings. The foreign cook stood in the passageway to his inner storeroom, perhaps guarding it.

  “It was a wager,” explained Mr Sinclair to the captain. “I had bet Mr MacDonald a shilling that he couldn’t contrive a steam engine that could blow a set of bagpipes. And you see he has won his wager. Although I helped a good deal, didn’t I? Against my own interest.”

  “Against your own interest indeed!” said Hector. “It was entirely in the cause of our common interest. And curiosity.”

  “Your machine can blow, to be sure, but I can’t say I admire its playing,” said Catherine.

  “No, not particularly musical, is it? But what can one expect of a machine?” said Mr Sinclair.

  “How does it work, Mr MacDonald?” said Mrs Todd very seriously.

  “Is the principle of steam engines familiar to you, at all?” asked Hector.

  “Not in the slightest,” said Mrs Todd. “But I am most eager to learn.”

  “Are you? Here you see an ordinary copper boiler; it is the cook’s second-best boiler, which we have borrowed of him. It is half full of water, boiling briskly, thanks to this good fire going under it. No, you cannot lift off the lid to see, for we have riveted it on tight—for purposes of this experiment—and sealed it with tar and oakum, in the same way as the ship’s seams are sealed, except for this pressure-relief valve, just as a precaution. No, no, captain, we are using seawater, not your precious freshwater.

  “So here we have a sealed copper of boiling seawater, which produces steam under pressure. And the steam passes out through this tubing to this Y-shaped valve, you see, which I operate by hand to direct the steam pressure alternately through these two tubes—first to one end, then the other of this bilge pump, which we borrowed of the mate. So we have got the bilge pump operating rather like a piston, up and down, thus moving its handle—this long lever—up and down. And the moving handle, you see, operates the bellows, which we borrowed of the smith. And the bellows blows air into the bagpipe through its mouthpiece, here, sealed as snug as possible.”

  “Oh! How strange to see it all moving—so steadily, so vigorously—and yet untouched!” said Mrs Todd. “But would it not be simpler to put the steam directly into the bagpipe?”

  “Steam in my bagpipe! Oh, no, Mrs Todd, that is no way to treat a set of pipes. I could not do that, not even for science,” said Hector.

  “Oh, is steam so very…I did not think of that. So that is a bagpipe! Just how does it produce that very—that very particular sound, pray?”

  “Have you never examined a set of Highland pipes?”

  “Never at such point-blank range. I am from Newcastle, you know, and lived there all my life, until—until I met Mr Todd. Of course I have heard pipers play, but I have never exactly seen how a bagpipe works.”

  “This is the mouthpiece, through which the piper—or in this case the steam-powered bellows—blows air. Ordinarily the piper’s arm keeps a steady pressure on the air in the bag. But for our experiment I must press the bag against the deck with my foot, you see, because we haven’t got enough airtight tubing to raise it any higher. There is the chanter, on which the piper plays the tune—just the nine notes, you know. And these are the three drones which ordinarily stand over the piper’s shoulder—a bass and two tenors, all tuned to A, the bass an octave lower than the others, it being twice as long, you see. Oh, yes, each of the drones has its own reed; and the chanter has a double reed. That is why so much air pressure is needed.”

  “Can it play a tun
e?” asked Mrs Todd. “Some simple little tune?”

  “Well, that is a difficulty, because I must operate this valve here while also pressing my foot on the bag there to moderate the pressure in it; so I cannot reach the chanter, and I have only one hand free in any case.”

  “I can reach the chanter,” said Mr Sinclair, “if I lie down here and dispose myself thus, on my side. There! Now you can operate the valve and press the bag with your foot; and I shall lie here and play a tune on the chanter.”

  “The truth emerges at last,” said Hector. “You are a piper yourself? You did not admit so much before.”

  “A bit, just a wee bit of a piper. A tune or two. Let us try it.”

  Hector freshened the fire under the boiler; tapped the pressure-relief valve; greased the bilge pump again; checked the seal between bellows nozzle and mouthpiece; and set his foot upon the bag. The drones stiffened, raised themselves, became erect—and howled.

  “Harder,” shouted Mr Sinclair, his fingers lightly covering the holes of the chanter.

  Hector pressed harder with his foot, and a shriek came from the chanter. Mr Sinclair played a little phrase—two bars of “John MacKechnie,” before the bag slipped under Hector’s foot and lost pressure. Hector adjusted its position and tried again. This time Mr Sinclair played a whole measure of the reel. Mrs Todd’s hands covered her ears, but Captain Mainwaring wore a look of pure gleeful delight at the loudness of the sound. Grace had retreated into the passage.

  “You’re hideously out of tune,” shouted Catherine, but her words were inaudible. She reached out to the bass drone and stopped it with a light touch to the top; then stopped one of the tenors in the same way. Now only one drone accompanied the little melody that Mr Sinclair was playing on the chanter. Hector kept pressing the bag and operating the valve. Catherine used two hands to twist the drone downward, shortening it just a little. Its pitch brightened slightly. Catherine listened to it against the slow tuning phrase that Mr Sinclair was now playing—base; fifth; third; octave—then shortened it a little more. There; that was precisely right. She flicked a finger into the top of the other tenor drone to restart it, and shortened it, too, listening to the wow-wow-wow waugh-waugh-waauugh-waaaauuuugh, slower and slower as the frequencies came closer, then stopped when the two drones were playing exactly the same frequency, both playing exactly the same pitch as the chanter’s A. That was better; she could feel the sound ringing inside her body now. Then she started and tuned the tall bass drone, which by chance had to be lengthened, not shortened, lowering its pitch, dropping down into tune with the other drones; the same note an octave lower, exactly half their frequency.

  Mr Sinclair nodded approvingly at her—a quick lift of his eyebrows—and played a little spring, a brief ornamented phrase, then repeated it with a more elaborate ornament. His fingers were light and easy on the chanter, entirely at home. He tried a few more practice phrases, then played the first line of “Alike to the War or Peace.”

  Catherine smiled, taking it as a particular compliment to Hector and herself, for they knew the tune by its other name: “The MacDonalds’ Gathering.”

  Grace reappeared in the doorway, with Sharada behind her.

  “HECTOR,” SAID CATHERINE one afternoon a week later while stitching steadily at her canvaswork (fine crimson wool for an outsized strawberry peeking from under a leaf) and ruminating on domestic comforts, “why did that chimney at home suddenly take to smoking?”

  “What? What do you mean?” said Hector, his reverie interrupted. He was reclining on a coil of thick hemp rope and gazing upward, where the blue clear sky was filled by luminous curved sails, masts, yards, and an unintelligible system of halyards, sheets, shrouds, stays, lines, cables, and other miscellaneous and mysterious ropes.

  “The great fireplace in the hall, behind the table where we always dined. Our father had that great carved marble chimneypiece carried in boats all the way from—I don’t know where. It was when he was building the new east wing on the house. But as soon as it got its handsome new chimneypiece, that old fireplace began immediately to smoke and balk, though it had always been so well behaved before. It smudged the beautiful marble a filthy black, don’t you remember? And impossible to clean; the maids tried scrubbing it with coral sand until the carving began to wear away and our father put a stop to it. The other chimneys didn’t take to smoking—only that one. Though it was swept and was straight and unblocked, still it would not draw unless we kept open the door across the room—not at all pleasant with snow on the east wind.”

  Hector laughed. “I do remember,” he said. “And I told our father the reason, too, but he refused to believe me. It had nothing to do with the elegant carved marble chimneypiece, of course; it was because of the new wing he’d built. Those new walls were too high and too close to the top of the old chimney, which was in their lee. So whenever a wind blew—and when did it not?—the air would eddy about the top of that chimney; nothing could get up it. I told him, but he did not believe me. He could not see how turbulent eddying air at the top of the chimney could disrupt its ability to draw at the bottom. I…but…oh! oh! Catherine! I wonder…” He was gazing fixedly at the broad curving sails overhead. Then he abruptly leapt up from his comfortable coil of rope and hastened away without any explanation or apology. Catherine, more amused than amazed, watched him disappear through the hatch, his hand running distractedly through his hair. This kind of behavior was not without precedent from Hector; this conduct was in fact quite typical of Hector in the grip of a new idea.

  “I WISH I HAD a twin,” said Grace to Catherine in the dark one night.

  “Do you? Why?”

  “To play chess with me when Anibaddh is too busy.”

  “Aye, chess. How did Annie learn to play chess, I wonder?” asked Catherine.

  “A boy in that family in Virginia made her learn so he would have someone to play against. She always had to let him win, no matter what silly moves he made. But it is so very maddening when she has to break off—at the trickiest moment!—to wait on Mrs Todd. If I had a twin, you see, there would always be someone handy to play with me.”

  “Perhaps the twin might have views of his own about that.”

  “Did you and Uncle Sandy sometimes disagree?”

  “Oh, aye, very often. Nevertheless, he was always my choice companion. And I, his, too, I suppose. It is true that he was always handy, for play or for quarrels.”

  “The twins in Sharada’s stories don’t quarrel. Kusa and Lava—they are the twin sons of Queen Sita, and they can sing all of Valmiki’s great song about Rama, which takes up many days. And I like to hear of the Asvins, the celestial twins who never can be defeated.”

  “Never can be defeated, is it? That must be pleasant.”

  “Well, they are heroes, you know, not just people. They drive a chariot drawn by falcons through the sky, and sometimes they come to the aid of mere mortals in dire straits and rescue them.”

  “Has Sharada a great many stories, then?” asked Catherine.

  “Oh, aye, a great many, and very good ones they are. I like her singing, too. I like her. She is brave, I think, like Queen Sita,” replied Grace.

  “Brave! Hmmm. I suppose you are right.”

  “And she knows things. The very first time I ever saw her, she told me my fortune, and some of it has already come true. You remember, at Uncle Hector’s and Aunt Mary’s house, when she brought the parcel from Uncle Sandy.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “That very first time when she delivered that parcel for you. With the tea and the Kashmiri shawl. And bagpipe music. You know.”

  “It was Sharada who brought that? She delivered it that night?”

  “Of course. Oh, Catriona, surely you knew that.”

  “But why in the world did you never say so?”

  “No one ever asked me.”

  “Aunt Mary said she asked everyone in the house, and no one knew a thing. It was the great mystery.”

 
“She never asked me. No one ever speaks to me at all.”

  “Of course they don’t; you never answer anyone.”

  “But I remember it perfectly well. It was when you and Uncle Hector went to Mr Clerk’s ball, the night of the bonfires when the king finally arrived. The footman was out, the baby was howling because of his tooth and Aunt Mary was with him, and the maids were craning out the attic windows at the great bonfires on the hills instead of attending to their duties. There was no one to open the door but me, so I did. And the woman asked if Mrs Catherine MacDonald lived here, and I nodded yes. Then she showed me the package with the writing on it. Of course I could not make it out, but I did not let on; I just held out my hands to take it. And she took my hand—this hand—in hers, standing there in the open doorway with the rain pouring down, and turned it over and over and looked at it. And told me my fortune. Then she gave me a coin, pressed into the sweet spot in the center of my palm, and handed me the parcel to give to you. So I put it on the table, upstairs in our bedroom.”

  “So you did. And what did she tell you of your fortune?”

  “Mmmmm. I would rather not say just now. But a bit of it has already come true. And I would show you the coin if you like. I think it is from India. Afterward I thought that I should have been the one to give her a coin, for bringing the parcel, but I did not think of it at the time. Besides, I had no coin to give her.”

  “I think it is alright,” Catherine assured her. “I do not think she expected you to pay her.”

  “No, I suppose not. She is not much like other servants, is she?”

  “Not much,” agreed Catherine.

  After Grace had fallen asleep, Catherine turned over and over in her mind this new fact about the mysterious parcel—and this mysterious maid who was so unlike other servants. Be resolute, Catherine admonished herself. It is time you found out the truth about this woman. She is only a maidservant. Ask her.