appendages and a small engine as well. Claire watched, hands nervously clasped, as the bags filled, the twin fuselages leveled out, and the Lass slowly freed herself from her untidy nest. The trees brushed the lower surfaces of the fuselages as they rose, until finally the airship stalled.
“Gondola’s stuck,” reported Tigg from the far side. “C’mon, everyone, it’ll be like pushin’ that barge off into the Thames once we got all the chickens into the garden at ’ome.”
Home. The warmth of affection flooded Claire at the thought of the shabby cottage in Vauxhall Gardens—the first place in Tigg’s memory where he had an actual pallet to himself and “three squares” a day.
If she had accomplished nothing more on this earth, she had at least done that—given these children their first home.
Maybe some day they whise day tould even see it again.
Heaving, pushing, and commanding Nine to help, they dislodged the Lass from her clinging prison. With a sucking sound, she lifted a few inches, like a char who remembered better days shaking mud off her shoes. Rosie the chicken, who had been hunting in the fallen leaves as they worked, immediately jumped into the gash in the earth and yanked a fat worm out of it.
“That’s it,” Alice muttered to the old ship. “Come on, girl. Eight, keep pumping on the starboard side.”
The fuselage fattened until it curved like the breast of a healthy hen, lifting the gondola until it bobbed a couple of feet off the ground.
“There.” Alice patted a ripped piece of brass, whereupon a number of rivets hit the stones with a tinktinktink. “Eight, that’ll do.” The automaton fell silent and she disconnected the hose.
Then, elbow to elbow with Claire, she studied the hull. “Bow’s stove in, but Nine and Andrew can bang it back into shape.”
“Tigg and Jake and I can replace rivets.”
“The girls can take the ballast out so we can see what’s what inside.”
Andrew looked from one to the other, then at Tigg. “Aren’t we forgetting something?”
“We ain’t forgot,” Alice said tersely. “We’re merely thinking out what we’re going to do while we try to figure out what to do about that.”
“About wot?” Maggie asked.
“About the fact that we have no engine,” Claire said gently. “We can bring the ship’s body back to life, but if she has no heart, she can’t sail.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Tigg said stoutly.
“Yeah?”
Claire wished Alice would not sound so grim in front of the children. Or in front of her, for that matter.
“We got no boiler. Without a boiler, we can’t make steam. Without steam, the pistons and props won’t turn.”
Claire clutched what remained of her chignon with both hands. “Good heavens. I completely forgot! Oh dear. Oh dear. I hope no harm has come to it.”
She gathered up her skirts and scrambled into the hatch, heedless of the mud that rimmed it. In a moment she reappeared with her valise.
“Going someplace, Lady?” Jake inquired.
“Maybe there’s a nice hotel we ent seen yet,” Lizzie told her twin in an aside that ought to have been on the vaudeville stage. “Maybe she ordered roast beef an’ Yorkshire puddings for all of us.”
“Very funny. Andrew, Alice, look.” She pulled the valise open to reveal Dr. Craig’s power cell nestling like a great bronze cat on her shirtwaists and spare skirt. “Is there any reason we cannot power the Stalwart Lass with this?”
*
Alice handed Andrew Malvern the smaller wrench so he could tighten the bolts on the far side of the hastily fabricated housing for the power cell. The silence as they buttoned up after the flurry of work, while companionable, had gone on long enough. If somebody didn’t say something, she was going to leap out of her skin.
“I got to hand it to Claire, she knows how to pull a rabbit out of a hat.”
Outside, Claire and the Mopsies were pounding dents out of the brass plates of the gondola with rocks wrapped in spare canvas, which meant she could hardly hear herself speak. She’d heard a wax recording once called the Anvil Chorus—if the girls ever wanted careers in music, they could start with that.
“What mystifies me is that she kept it a secret. We’ve been in flight for days—I would have thought the subject might have come up in that time.”
“We didn’t need it, Mr. Malvern.”
“Alice, we have stared death in the face together more than once. Under the circumstances, I believe it would be quite proper for you to use my given name.”