Arabella of Mars(65)

The two airmen pushed off from the bulkhead behind them, carrying the struggling Arabella unwillingly across the deck, and brought themselves to a halt just above the grating. “Hold his legs,” said Gowse, and then, without ceremony, yanked Arabella’s sodden shirt from beneath her rope belt.

Panicked, Arabella crossed her arms tightly across her chest before the shirt could come off any further. “I’ll k-keep the shirt,” she stuttered through chattering teeth. “G-grant me that much d-dignity.”

Gowse leaned in close, his broken and still swollen nose just inches from Arabella’s ear. “It’s for yer own good, lad,” he whispered, not unkindly. “Bits of shirt in the wound can fester and kill ye.”

And then, in one smooth move, he broke Arabella’s grip on her chest and stripped her shirt off her body. The hard, chill rain struck her exposed skin like a slap.

For a moment she managed to shield her breasts with her arms. But then, with the same great strength that had removed her shirt with barely any notice of her resistance, Gowse pulled her hands apart. “Don’t struggle, lad, ye’ll just make it wor … what the h—l?”

Arabella squirmed in the man’s inexorable grip like a trapped rat, squealing incoherently, trying valiantly not to cry. But though she did her best to extricate herself, or even to cover her nakedness with elbows or knees, the wind and the rain and the men’s eyes still penetrated to her soft unprotected flesh.

“Yer a girl!” cried Gowse.

*

Arabella stood exposed on the deck, the driving rain cold on her bared bosom, tears hot on her cheeks.

Time seemed to stop still in its tracks. All around her men and boys stared at her, shocked expressions frozen on their faces. Even Gowse, still holding her arms, seemed paralyzed where he stood.

Arabella herself was the first to break the moment, yanking her arms from the man’s grip and folding them across her chest. But having accomplished that much, she could manage no more. All she could do was hang miserably in the gusty, soaking air, hugging herself, blinded by tears. After a moment the man holding her legs released her as well, and she curled sobbing into a ball, a tight little knot of abject wretchedness.

She was ashamed. Ashamed of her nudity, ashamed of her femininity, ashamed of herself for being too weak to prevent this moment. What would become of her now? A half-naked girl, exposed on an airship full of mutinous airmen?

“I won’t whip a girl,” came a voice. Something brushed her hand. Wet cloth. Her own shirt. It was Gowse, who’d stripped it off, now handing it back to her.

She took it and clutched it, wadded up, to her chest. Putting the sodden, stained, and ragged thing back on was entirely beyond her.

As her shuddering sobs subsided, she began to be able to pay attention to what was happening around her. She wiped her streaming eyes and nose with her shirt-tail.

“I won’t whip a girl,” Gowse repeated. He floated between Arabella and Binion, arms crossed on his chest; she couldn’t see his face, but the set of the shoulders beneath his sodden shirt indicated grim determination. The other man, the one who had held her legs, had drifted to one side, his eyes flicking indecisively between Gowse and Binion. The other mutineers also seemed to be hanging back, watching the situation. Distant thunder rumbled uncertainly beneath the roaring wind.

“Girl or not,” Binion replied with some heat, “she’s still the only navigator we’ve got.” A flash of lightning froze his face for a moment in a sneering rictus. “You’ll whip her, Gowse, or I’ll whip her myself, and you as well!”

“I’d like to see ye try,” growled the airman, the great muscles in his shoulders bunching as the thunder rolled.

Binion glared at Gowse, then, without taking his eyes off the man, extended a hand behind himself. “Watson,” he called, “bring me the lash.”

Behind him Watson, the young midshipman who had been guarding the officers, floated trembling and uncertain.

“Watson!” Binion snapped, and turned to face the smaller boy. “The lash!”

Recoiling from the force of Binion’s command, Watson moved in the direction of the red cloth bag, floating attached to a peg on the quarterdeck bulkhead, that held the loathsome item.

“Y-you don’t have to do it,” Arabella said.

Her voice shook as she forced the words past the sobs that clogged her constricted throat. Her eyes were blinded by tears and rainwater, and her nose stuffed. Yet she spoke, and loud enough to be heard above the storm.

All eyes turned to her.

Arabella wiped her eyes again and tried to straighten herself in the air—to take up again the airman’s bearing which had been stripped from her along with the shirt. It was hard to draw herself upright while still clutching the wadded shirt in front of her nakedness, but she did the best she could.

“You don’t have to do as he says, Watson,” she repeated.

“Yes, he does,” Binion countered. He drew the pistol from his shirt and leveled it at Arabella. “Or you’ll get worse than a whipping.”

The black O of the pistol’s mouth gaped directly at her. But despite Binion’s harsh words and the rain and the lightning, she saw the pistol tremble and knew that the man was afraid.

“He’s nothing but a bully and a martinet, Watson,” Arabella said. Even as she spoke, she realized the truth of her own words, and she found strength returning to her voice—shouting into the teeth of the storm. “He’s a petty, insecure boy, and if you let him whip me now, sooner or later you’ll find yourself at the end of that same lash.”