Arabella of Mars(3)

Arabella glanced to Michael, her father, and Khema for support, but in the face of her mother’s wrath they were as defenseless as she. “Only a few weeks,” she muttered, eyes downcast, referring only to the game of shorosh khe kushura. She and Michael had actually been exploring the desert under Khema’s tutelage—learning of Mars’s flora, fauna, and cultures and engaging in games of strategy and combat—since they were both quite small.

“Only a few weeks,” Mother repeated, jaw clenched and nostrils flaring. “Then perhaps it is not too late.” She stared hard at Arabella a moment longer, then gave a firm nod and turned to Father. “I am taking the children back home. And this time I will brook no argument.”

Arabella felt as though the floor had dropped from under her. “No!” she cried.

Without facing Arabella, Mother raised a finger to silence her. “You see what she has become!” she continued to Father. “Willful, disobedient, disrespectful. And Fanny and Chlo? are already beginning to follow in her filthy footsteps.” Now her tone changed, and despite Arabella’s anguish at the prospect of being torn from her home she could not deny the genuine sadness and fear in her mother’s eyes. “Please, dear. Please. You must agree. You must consider our posterity! If Arabella is allowed to continue on this path, and her sisters, too … what decent man would have them? They will be left as spinsters, doomed to a lonely old age on a barbarous planet.”

Arabella bit her lip and hugged herself tightly, feeling lost and helpless as she watched her father’s face. Taking Arabella, Michael, and the two little girls to England—a place to which Mother always referred as “back home,” though all of the children had been born on Mars and had never known any other home—was something she had often spoken of, though never so definitively or immediately. But with this incident something had changed, something deep and fundamental, and plainly Father was seriously considering the question.

He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. He stroked his chin and looked to Mother, to Michael, to Arabella—his eyes beneath the gray brows looking very stern—and then out the window, at the sun just beginning to peep above the rows of khoresh-trees.

Finally he sighed deeply and turned back to Mother. “You may have the girls,” he said in a resigned tone. “But Michael will remain here, to help me with the business of the plantation.”

“But Father…,” Arabella began, until a minute shake of his head stopped her words. The look in his eyes showed clearly that he did not desire this outcome, but it was plain to all that this time Mother would not be appeased.

Arabella looked to Michael for support, but though his eyes brimmed with tears his shoulders slumped and his hands, still stained with Arabella’s blood, hung ineffectually at his sides. “I am sorry,” he whispered.

Khema, too, stood silently in the corner, hands folded and eye-stalks downcast. Bold, swift, and powerful she might be in the desert, but within the manor house she was only a servant and must submit to Mother’s wishes.

“Very well,” said Mother, after a long considering pause. “Michael may remain. But the Ashby women … are going home.” And she smiled.

That smile, to Arabella, was like a judge’s gavel pronouncing sentence of death.





1

ENGLAND, 1813





1

AN UNEXPECTED LETTER

Arabella eased her bedroom door open and crept into the dark hallway. All about her the house lay silent, servants and masters alike tucked safe in their beds. Only the gentle tick of the tall clock in the parlor disturbed the night.

Shielding the candle with one hand, Arabella slipped down the hallway, her bare feet making no sound on the cool boards. She kept close to the walls, where the floor was best supported and the boards did not creak, but now and again she took a long, slow step to avoid a spot she had learned was likely to squeak.

Down the stairs and across the width of the house she crept, until she reached the drawing-room. In the corner farthest from the fireplace stood the harpsichord, and the silent figure that sat at its keyboard.

Brenchley’s Automaton Harpsichord Player.

Nearly life-sized and dressed in the height of fashion from eight years ago, when it had originally been manufactured, the automaton sat with jointed ivory fingers poised over the instrument’s keys. Its face was finely crafted of smooth, polished birch for a lifelike appearance, the eyes with their painted lashes demurely downcast. A little dust had accumulated in its décolletage, but in the shifting light of Arabella’s little candle it almost seemed to be breathing.

Arabella had always been the only person in the family who shared her father’s passion for automata. The many hours they had spent together in the drawing-room of the manor house at Woodthrush Woods, winding and oiling and polishing his collection, were among her most treasured memories. He had even shared with her his knowledge of the machines’ workings, though Mother had heartily disapproved of such an unladylike pursuit.

The harpsichord player had arrived at Marlowe Hall, their residence in England, not long after they had emigrated—or, as Arabella considered it, been exiled—from Mars. It had been accompanied by a note from Father, reminding them that it was one of his most beloved possessions and saying that he hoped it would provide pleasant entertainment. But Arabella, knowing that Father understood as well as she did how little interest the rest of the family had in automata, had taken it as a sort of peace offering, or apology, from him specifically to her—a moving, nearly living representative and reminder that, although unimaginably distant, he still loved her.