Empire of Ruins (9 page)

Modo read the last few lines again. There it was in writing. Anyone who read it would believe he was Mr. Socrates’ son. He assumed that Mrs. Finchley hadn’t had to change her name because she wasn’t an agent. And it was curious that Tharpa wasn’t listed by name as a passenger. If the ship went down and all souls were lost, would he even be counted?

Modo memorized the list. He would make it a game to put a name to each of the faces. He would do the same with all of the ship’s cabin boys, stewards, seamen, and officers.
Mr. Socrates didn’t expect any sort of trouble on the ship, but it was wise to know with whom they were spending so much time.

There were other distractions, of course. He tried to learn as much as possible about Australia by listening to the accents of the colonial passengers and quizzing any with whom he chatted. Being in first class also meant painting lessons (which he skipped), card games, sing-alongs, croquet on the deck, and even cricket in one of the open holds. Modo had never played cricket, but he’d read the rule book over a year ago. A passing knowledge of the game would be important to survival in the British Empire, he’d decided.

He’d expected to be spending more time with Mr. Socrates, but his “father” was either in his cabin doing research or with the officers of the ship. Mr. Socrates did dine with Modo and Tharpa at breakfast, but the discussion was mostly about the weather.

“Will we be playing any cricket, Father?” Modo asked on the sixth morning of their voyage. He enjoyed calling his master Father. Mrs. Finchley had said he should throw himself into his part and so he would!

Mr. Socrates laughed. “My cricket days are done.”

“Would you play, Tharpa?” Modo asked.

“The rules of propriety don’t allow me to play,” Tharpa said.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t be softheaded, son,” Mr. Socrates said. “Tharpa is a servant. He cannot play cricket with the first-class passengers. Besides which, his place is at my side.”

“I bet you could knock the ball right across the Atlantic,”
Modo said. “You’d hit it so hard their first-class lily-white pants would fall right off.”

Tharpa laughed. “You are kind, though incorrect. It is their socks I would knock off.”

Modo signed up for the next game that afternoon and spent a few hours in the open hold playing against a collection of officers, doctors, a hotel owner, an engineer, and even a priest, memorizing their names as he did so. It was a sunny day, and down in the hold he began to sweat.

When it was his turn at bat, Modo stood behind his wooden wicket and stared at the bowler, Mr. Haroldson, a clerk from London. Modo knew the point of the game was to prevent the ball from striking his wicket and to hit it far enough to give him time to change places with the second batter, fifteen feet away. He glanced at the upper deck and was surprised see Mr. Socrates looking down at him. Alongside him were Captain Adamson and a few other elderly gentlemen.

Modo gripped the white willow cricket bat too tightly and his first swings were utter misses, allowing the ball to strike his wicket and knock down two of its “stumps.” He was already nearly out and he hadn’t even hit the ball! He released his breath and relaxed his shoulders, just as Tharpa had told him to do a thousand times. With his next swing he struck the ball hard, ringing it off the metal wall and hitting Lieutenant Sanders in the stomach, knocking him to the ground.

“My son doesn’t know his own strength,” he heard Mr. Socrates say.

Modo rushed over and apologized to the lieutenant, but
even as he did so he couldn’t help feeling a little pride. He could play cricket! He was just like a regular Englishman after all. Who needed a fancy education at Oxford? Ravenscroft had been good enough.

The lieutenant waved him away. “It’s a minor injury, take your place.”

As Modo walked to his wicket he glanced back up at the spectators. Mr. Socrates had turned his back and was discussing something with the captain. Wasn’t he going to watch the rest of the game? There were only five other spectators. Modo was pleased that he could immediately recall the names and occupations of four of them. The fifth was a dark-haired man with glasses who seemed to be traveling alone. Modo had yet to match a name with his face. However, as he picked up the cricket bat it came to him with a laugh. The only name he hadn’t matched was Mr. Carpenter. Now that he knew the man’s name, he’d have to discover his occupation.

Modo was delighted. A run scored in cricket, and now he had matched every passenger’s name to a face. He glanced back at Mr. Carpenter, who was still watching him. Modo nodded at him and prepared to swing, whispering at the bowler, “You can’t have my wicket!”

W
hen the
Rome
resupplied at Gibraltar, passengers were given a few hours to visit the shops. Visser took a cab from the docks and down the central streets. His cabbie, like most other residents of the port city, had a British accent; essentially this little jut of rock in the Mediterranean at the bottom of Spain was British soil. It irked him to know that they had already left their footprints on so many parts of the world. Their incursions and domination of the Boers in South Africa was particularly galling. His people. He’d learned to hate the English at the foot of his father, a Dutch farmer, who eked out his living in the Orange Free State.

He stopped at the Piazza, stepped out onto the paved square, and went into the Club House Hotel, a three-story building. After waiting in line at the desk, he asked for any messages being held for Mr. Charles Godwin, one of his several identities. The clerk handed him a telegram and Visser
read it immediately, deciphering the Guild code without need for pen or pencil:

Agent Modo! Visser had read the young man’s file several times. He was described as being extremely strong and with the uncanny ability to physically change his appearance. Visser would have thought it a wild exaggeration if the information hadn’t come directly from Miss Hakkandottir herself. Why did they prefer him captured, or a body sample obtained? Was Visser to dismember him? How much of his body was required? Visser would need clarification. He shrugged; orders were orders. He wouldn’t have to kill any of them immediately, which was disappointing. It would be a relatively easy task to stalk them; after all, they wouldn’t be leaving the ship until they arrived at Sydney.

He sent the Guild a message:
Orders received
. When he turned around, he found himself face to face with Mr. Socrates.

The old man nodded and said, “I recognize you from the ship. I hope your voyage has been proceeding well.”

“Yes, yes, it has, sir, thank you,” Visser mumbled, then quickly stepped around him.

Was it just coincidence that he was here at the hotel?
After all, it was one of the few telegraphs available to the public. Visser stood at the door long enough to observe that Mr. Socrates was receiving messages of his own.

Then he noticed Tharpa waiting outside the hotel—but the servant didn’t seem to take any notice of him, so Visser hailed a cab and ordered the driver to take him directly back to the ship. On the way he mulled over his meeting with Socrates, but in the end was satisfied that it had indeed been nothing but coincidence.

“O
ff with your head!” Mrs. Finchley rose from her seat at the table in their cabin and stood before Octavia, hands on her hips. “That’s the proper pronunciation! Not ‘off wit’ yer ‘ead.’ An ‘h’ should never, ever be dropped!”

“ ’Od rot it!” Octavia exclaimed, exasperated after three straight hours of practicing her accent. She’d much rather be training with Tharpa. At least his kicks to the ribs kept her awake.

“Don’t use any oaths in my presence, young lady!”

Octavia bit back another curse. Mrs. Finchley, normally quite calm, seemed to be in an extremely perturbed state. Angry, even.

Mrs. Finchley took her hands from her hips and burst out laughing.

“My dear Octavia, I’m reminded of my own youth when I was a budding actress. I was always saying ‘werry’ instead
of ‘very.’ ‘I grow weary of your werrys, you wicked witch,’ my old acting master would shout at me.” She put one hand on Octavia’s shoulder, and with her other, adjusted a lock of her hair. “You are doing exceptionally well.”

“Thank you,” Octavia said, then added, “Off with my head! Off with my head!”

“Perfect! Perfect!”

As the weeks aboard the
Rome
had passed, Octavia had found that she was actually enjoying Mrs. Finchley’s company. She had never known a motherly type, only the headmistress at the orphanage, who believed that the best lessons were taught one smack of the rod at a time. Mrs. Finchley even surprised Octavia with gifts! When the
Rome
had stopped at the island of Malta, Mrs. Finchley had dragged her off the ship in search of lace and material to make more clothes for her. “A beautiful young woman like you needs a different dress every day,” she had explained.

Mrs. Finchley’s calling her beautiful without the slightest hesitation made Octavia glow.

They returned with a steamer trunk of material, and, as each day passed, Mrs. Finchley sewed for Octavia. Corsets, petticoats, gloves—all fitted perfectly.

“It’s late afternoon, Octavia,” Mrs. Finchley said one day. “Time to switch to a dinner dress. Which will it be? Green? Red? Violet?”

“Violet!” Octavia said, and Mrs. Finchley began helping her change into a dinner dress with an impressive bustle.

The number of dresses that had been brought on board for her astonished Octavia: she had dresses for afternoon, dinner, evening, and balls. She even had a special green
and black dress for Sunday service. Church was a foreign experience, but Mrs. Finchley had coached her, so she lowered herself to her knees and rose again at the right times and could recite the Lord’s Prayer.

Octavia also attended many of the evening sing-alongs, each time wearing her best feathered hat. The first-class passengers gathered on the poop deck and sang for the second-class passengers, a gift for those below them. Mrs. Finchley had trained Octavia until her voice was as clear as a bell. Two lieutenants and even the captain had commented on her pleasant tone. She loved the song “Dream-Pedlary” because of the lines “
If there were dreams to sell, merry and sad to tell, and the crier rang the bell, what would you buy?
” She liked to imagine what she would buy. More dresses! No. She returned to her favorite fantasy: she would buy an island and wear trousers all the time. She could run so much faster in them.

Though she had to admit that while wearing dresses, she did enjoy the looks she got from some of the officers.

She was surprised that Modo sang in a pleasant and rather beguiling baritone. It must be his barrel-like chest that gave it such a rumble. She didn’t completely understand why she was spending so little time with him. Yes, she saw him at breakfast and dinner, but their conversations were about the weather or whatever landmark they were passing at the time. This was their third assignment together, and she felt quite suddenly as if she didn’t know him at all. She often thought of the trick he and Mr. Socrates had played on her, having Modo pretend he was a doctor. It made her angry that she hadn’t recognized him. Whom did she know better than Modo? And yet he could sit across a
table from her and be someone else. But his face was so different from the only other one she’d seen, which had also been handsome! How many faces did he have?