Britannia Unleashed - Richard M. Ankers

Victorian Steampunk Fantasy Adventure

Britannia Unleashed by Richard M. Ankers

Book excerpt

It was a singular individual who stood at the forefront of the Zeppelin’s viewing deck. Arms held tight behind his dark suit, back ramrod straight, he observed the unobservable. Dawn had still not breached the horizon, and the moon had deemed not to show. It was that darkest part of the night, those minutes before sunrise, where only memories of the past linger, as the future has yet to be born.

“Look at him stood there like he owns the place,” the larger of two obese gentlemen spat, as he and another entered the opulent decor of the viewing deck. “Just because a man is dressed in Savile Row does not mean he should frequent it.”

“Is there still a Savile Row?” the other replied.

“That is not the point,” the first scowled.

“Downright disgraceful, I say!” the second spewed, hurrying to cover his lapse. “The man is a poor excuse for a Britannian. He hides away for thousands of miles then deems it appropriate to rise from his chamber without so much as a by-your-leave. I think I shall give him a piece of my mind, Jackson. Yes, that’s just what I’ll do.”

“I think you ought, Charlesworth.”

But before the two men of equally jowled corpulence could commence in their reprimanding a radiant canary of a figure arrived in their wake. “Gentlemen,” said she, inclining a bonneted head that rested in elegance upon a swanlike neck.

“Miss Grace, so good to see you,” Jackson slobbered.

“Oh, at long last, some class on deck,” blustered Charlesworth purposely loud.

“You are too kind, sirs. But might I enquire as to whom was about to incur your wrath?”

“Ah, you heard,” Jackson said sucking in his globular cheeks.

“I believe everybody heard.”

“Everybody?”

“Yes, all the guests have finished breakfasting and will soon join us.”

“Yes, well,” Charlesworth interceded, taking up the baton from his fellow Lord.

“Well,” Grace replied with such a sweet smile as for it to be impossible for either of the two noblemen to take offence.

“It’s him,” said Jackson with a dart of his eyes. He nodded his head at the man stood in silent repose at the window just in case Miss Grace had not seen his antagonist.

“What has he done?” replied Grace leaning in a little. The act let loose a lock of brunette curls that slipped against her porcelain cheek. It did not go unnoticed. Both men licked their lips in a wanton and not undisguised manner. If Grace noticed, her sparkling, emerald eyes gave nothing away.

“It’s not so much what he’s done, as the contempt shown in the not doing.”

“And what is he not doing?” Grace’s conspiratorial whisper.

“Should I have to spell it out to you, my dear?” Charlesworth sneered.

“I fear you must,” Grace spoke with a calm the man’s tone did not merit.

“Respect, dear girl.”

“Yes, respect,” parroted Jackson.

“The Britannian Empire was founded on respect. There is a natural succession to the order of things. We are Lords.”

“Yes, Lords,” agreed Jackson. But a withering glance from Charlesworth silenced his only marginally less rotund twin.

“As I was saying, we are Lords. If anybody should be stood at the front of this infernal machine, then it should be us, not he. If anyone should greet the dawn and declare it Britannia’s, it should be we.” Charlesworth spoke with such contempt that anybody should have thought the whole empire slandered.

“I’m unsure if one can commandeer nature?” Grace mused.

“Charlesworth here was just about to give him a piece of his mind,” interjected Jackson with a sage-like nod of approval.

“Oh, I should not do that if I were you.” Grace shook her head and pulled a face.

“And why not!” bellowed the raging Charlesworth almost at the point of combustion. “I ought to teach the blaggard some manners.”

Grace leaned in further to the point of indecency and said in words of honied silk, “Because that, Gentlemen, is Mortimer Headlock, Britannia’s greatest living investigator and foremost mind.”

The fading from insipid grey to ashen took but an instant. Jackson, always the less ebullient of the two, even dropped his cane with the shock. The ping of a brass eagle’s head striking one of the Zeppelin’s metal stanchions, those which comprised the craft’s inner frame echoed through the viewing deck.

“Gentlemen,” Grace said, stepping away from the two and inclining her head once just briefly. The two responded in identical fashion as the beauty dressed as always in her favourite canary-yellow finery moved away to the front of the airship. She did not look back.

***

“Is that a smile I spy reflected in the window glass? Does the noble and impassive Mortimer Headlock know the pleasure of humour?”

“Grace. Or should I say, Miss Grace?” Mortimer Headlock neither confirmed Grace’s assumptions nor shifted in the solidarity of his stance. Neither did he remove the smile that played across his handsome features.

“Ah, so you know me,” whispered Grace as the viewing area came alive with the sounds of bustling passengers.

“I know everyone, my dear. And everything about everyone,” he added in a very matter-of-fact way.

“Do you not think it odd for both my fore and surname to be identical?”

“Grace Elizabeth Constance Grace, I think it a most striking name, a most unforgettable combination.”

“You do!” exclaimed the emerald-eyed beauty. “Most people thought papa quite mad.”

“I thought him one of the most astonishing and broad-thinking men I have ever met. When all’s said and done if it were not for his brilliance then we should not be sailing into the forever as we are.”

“Thank you,” Grace replied not knowing what else to say.

“My pleasure, Grace. I assure you, praise from me is the very least your father deserved.” Mortimer gave his female acquaintance a sideways look and the slightest of nods. “Ah, forgive me,” he exuded, turning back to the window. “Dawn over the Himalayas.”

Mortimer vocalised his thoughts more for himself than anyone else. But the gasps of the fast-filling deck confirmed the majesty of the moment.

“Oh my,” said Grace placing a velvet-gloved hand on the copper railing. The designer’s embellishment, which ran the full perimeter of the viewing area, had never seemed so necessary.

“It remains magnificent no matter how many times one sees it,” Mortimer whispered. “Even more so since war has charred the world.”

If Grace saw the tear in the corner of Mortimer’s eye, she did not say, instead, standing beside him in silent reverence of that most astonishing of views, the Tibetan Plateau.

***

The two watched the sun’s first ruby rays ignite the peaks as flambéed dishes as once had in the top restaurants of Paris. They said nothing as others gabbled nonsense around them. The Zeppelin rose higher into the atmosphere much to the relief of the passengers, who for all but a few this was their first time in one of the Britannian Empire’s recently stolen and even more recently improved upon Zeppelin airships. One would have said if Queen Victoria and her children were on the trip that all the nobility of the realm should have been present. However, they weren’t, and the airship had to settle for an only slightly less glorious guest list.

“So, is it true, Headlock?” a rather loud individual boomed, slapping Headlock on the back.

“Is what true, Field Marshal Devonshire?” a clipped response.

“Shangri-La, of course! I for one think this jaunt a waste of time. Then again, we have an abundance of time to waste,” said Devonshire in a rare moment of contemplation. “Do you think we shall find its hiding place?” he blurted, lessening the effect of his prior words.

“I cannot say.”

“But I thought that’s why Her Majesty sent you, though I believed you to have declined the expedition. After all, if one believes the rumours, you are the only man who knows its whereabouts, are you not?”

“I never once claimed so.”

“You implied, dear boy.”

“Pardon?”

“Yes, we were all there,” said an elderly dowager who was in the process of being lowered into a wicker chair close to the window. “You told Her Majesty you would find it,” she said after settling into her seat and adjusting a purple, velour curtain to shade her ageing eyes. “I might add that it was the height of bad manners to decline the invitation to do so. Not so long ago, one might have lost their head for less.” The dowager wriggled like a broody hen.

“I said if it were to be found, then I would find it. That does not imply it is there to be found, nor does it indicate that I can find the unfindable.”

“Good God, man! Must you always spout such balderdash!” Devonshire roared, rolling his eyes in mock dismay.

“Is it right to mock Britannia’s greatest hero?” asked Grace as she stepped into the war of words. “At least in Sir Belvedere’s absence,” she added, with a quick wink to Headlock.

“Ah, Grace Grace, her father ’s a disgrace,” laughed Devonshire, the highest ranked of all the military personnel on parade.

Whether the words were spoken in jest or defamation nobody had time to consider, for, in a blur of motion, the Field Marshal found himself on his back with the head of his own cane thrust upwards beneath his chin. Although blood had not been drawn, the result was the same, the man on the floor lay defeated.

“I have already told Miss Grace that her father was the most brilliant mind I have ever known, and I have known them all. I am only sorry that due to the carelessness of others it is not he but you that holds authority here. Plus, I might add, I would be a greater respecter of his authority than of yours.”

A gasp of dismay went up from the astonished onlookers as Mortimer gave Field Marshal Devonshire a stare to wither a cobra.

“Now, see here!” another man of bullish build growled. The man pushed his way to the front of the crowd chest thrust forward and machismo running at full throttle. A moment later, he, too, found himself splayed out next to his senior officer. No one else uttered a word.

“M… my apologies, I meant no harm,” stuttered Devonshire from his recumbent position, as he tried to extract the cane head from his jugular.

“Do you accept his apology, Miss Grace?” asked Mortimer not for a second taking his eyes of the Field Marshal and would-be Lord.

“I believe I do,” said she, turning her back on the furore and gazing back out at the ever-lightening morn.

Mortimer bent down so that his clean-shaven face was less than a foot from the two he had reprimanded and spoke in a clinical voice. “I suggest you two gentlemen find somewhere else to frequent for a few hours.” Stepping back, he then permitted the two to get unsteadily to their feet. Neither man looked to Mortimer as they exited the room.

It appeared to be the cue for a mass evacuation. The whole deck cleared within minutes. Even the elderly dowager vacated her leather seat with the help of two middle-aged ladies and hobbled from the deck. They all followed the Field Marshal into exile, all except Miss Grace and the object of their distaste. Lords Jackson and Charlesworth were the last to leave, a most unpleasant scowl exchanged between the two as they muttered their way from the room.

“I’m not sure that went too well,” said Grace, sculpted eyebrows raised in arched perfection.

“Now you know why I remained in my cabin.”

“Do you not care for the others?”

“Do I look like I care?”

“Well…”

Mortimer sniggered, something he had not done for a long time. Miss Grace responded with surprise, then the tentative teetering of a giggle of her own. Mortimer, unable to look at the giggling girl without the contagion of humour affecting him, laughed some more. Within moments, the two had burst into joint hysterics and clutched the copper rail to prevent their toppling overboard. Despite their mirth, the judder of air as the Zeppelin crossed the threshold between India and Tibet soon returned them to their senses.

“Do you really think we shall find Shangri-La, Mister Headlock?” asked a becalmed Grace.

“Please, Mortimer.”

“Thank you. Then I ask the same to you, Mortimer.” Grace smiled with the sweetness of a child, but it did nothing to cover her apprehension.

“Only Britannians would treat the search for Shangri-La, a city of legend hidden deep within the world’s most inhospitable landscape, as though an unexpected pleasure trip to the seaside on a snowy January morn.”

“That is not a denial.”

“No, it is not.”

“Then, please, for me, shall we find it?”

“Oh, yes, Grace, I’m certain we shall,” replied a serious looking Headlock.

“Really! I didn’t expect you’d say that.”

“It’s what we do with it once we find it that troubles me.”

Book Details

AUTHOR NAME: Richard M. Ankers

BOOK TITLE: Britannia Unleashed

GENRE: Fantasy

SUBGENRE: Victorian Steampunk

PAGE COUNT: 326

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