Etiquette & Espionage

LESSON 2: BEWARE FLYWAYMEN, FOR THEY ARE ILL-DRESSED AND ILL-MANNERED

The carriage was amazing, outfitted with the latest in automated roof removal, retractable footstool, and collapsible tea caddy. It was a hired transport but decked out like a private conveyance, with walls of midnight-blue quilted velvet to reduce road noise, and gold-fringed blankets to ward off the chill.

Sophronia barely had time to take it all in before Mademoiselle Geraldine banged the ceiling with the handle of her parasol and they lurched forward.

More startling than the decoration was the fact that the carriage was already occupied—by two other students. They had, apparently, been sitting patiently the entire time Mademoiselle Geraldine took tea and Sophronia fell out of dumbwaiters and packed all her worldly goods into a portmanteau.

Directly across from her sat a bright-eyed, lively looking young lady, a little younger than Sophronia, with masses of honey-colored hair and a round porcelain face. She wore an enormous gilt and red glass brooch pinned to her bright red dress. The combination of the hair, the jewelry, and the dress made her look quite the scandal, as though she were in training to become a lady of the night. Sophronia was duly impressed.

“Oh, goodness!” said she to Sophronia, as though Sophronia’s appearance in the cab were the most delightful thing to happen all day. Which, for one left to sit idle in a carriage with no distraction or entertainment, it might well have been.

“How do you do?” said Sophronia.

“How do you do? Isn’t this a spiffing day? Really, quite spiffing. I’m Dimity. Who are you?”

“Sophronia.”

“Is that all?”

“What, isn’t it enough?”

“Oh, well, I mean to say, I’m Dimity Ann Plumleigh-Teignmott, actually, in full.”

“Sophronia Angelina Temminnick.”

“Gosh, that’s a mouthful.”

“It is? I suppose so.” As though Dimity Ann Plumleigh-Teignmott were a nice easy sort of name. Sophronia dragged her eyes away from the girl to examine the final occupant of the carriage. It was difficult to make out what kind of creature lurked under the oversized bowler and oiled greatcoat. But, if pressed, she would have said it was some species of grubby boy. He had spectacles that were very thick, a brow that was very creased, and a large dusty book occupying the entirety of his lap and attention.

“What’s that?” she asked the girl, wrinkling her nose.

“Oh, that? That’s just Pillover.”

“And what’s a pillover, when it’s at home?”

“My little brother.”

“Ah, I commiserate. I have several of my own. Dashed inconvenient, brothers.” Sophronia nodded, perfectly understanding the outlandish hat and coat.

Pillover glanced up from behind his spectacles and issued them both a look. He seemed a few years younger than his sister, who was, Sophronia guessed, about thirteen.

“He’s slated for Bunson’s.”

“For what?”

“Bunson and Lacroix’s Boys’ Polytechnique. You know, the other school?”

Sophronia, who had no idea what Dimity was talking about, pretended to follow out of politeness.

The girl prattled on. She seemed to be a bit of a prattler. Sophronia was comfortable with this after living with her own family. They were big talkers, but with a lot less interesting things to say than Dimity. “Mummy and Daddy want him to be an evil genius, but he has his heart set on Latin verse. Don’t you, Pill?”

The boy gave his sister a nasty stare.

“Pillover is terribly bad at being bad, if you take my meaning. Our daddy is a founding member of the Death Weasel Confederacy, and Mummy is a kitchen chemist with questionable intent, but poor Pillover can’t even bring himself to murder ants with his Depraved Lens of Crispy Magnification. Can you, Pill?”

Sophronia felt as though she was progressively losing the thread of the conversation. “Death Weasel Confederacy?”

Dimity nodded, curls bobbing. “I know—can you countenance it? I tend to look on the bright side; at least Daddy’s not a Pickleman.”

Sophronia’s eyes popped. “Uh, oh yes, rather.” Pickleman? What in aether is a Pickleman?

“But Pill here is a sad disappointment to poor old Daddy.”

The boy in question put down his book, clearly driven to defend himself. “I made the articulated hassock that moved when someone went to sit on it. And there was that custard pot that never got cool enough for the pudding to set.”

Dimity provided parenthetical information against this defense. “The hassock always ended up moving forward helpfully. And Cook simply used the Custard Pot of Iniquity for keeping her buns warm.”

“Oh, I say. That’s not on. Telling family secrets like that!”

“Face it, Pill, you’re disappointingly good.”

“Oh, I like that! And you’re so evil? Why, you want to get married and be a lady. Who ever heard of such a thing in our family? At least I try.”

“Well, finishing school should help with being a lady. Shouldn’t it?” At least this was something Sophronia knew about.

The boy snorted derisively. “Not half. Not this finishing school. Wrong kind of finishing altogether. Or should I say right kind, but only on the surface? I’m sure you follow.” Pillover made a funny little leer at Sophronia, then, seeming to have embarrassed himself, resumed his book.

“What could he possibly be implying?” Sophronia looked to Dimity to explain her brother’s behavior.

“You mean, you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Oh my goodness. You’re a covert recruit? No family connection at all? I knew they took them, of course, but I didn’t think I would get to meet one. How charming! Have you been under surveillance? I heard they do that sometimes.”

Mademoiselle Geraldine interceded at that juncture. “That’s enough of that, Miss Plumleigh-Teignmott.”

“Yes, Mademoiselle Geraldine.”

The headmistress went back to ignoring them.

“So where are we traveling to?” Sophronia asked, figuring that was a safe question, since they clearly weren’t allowed to talk about the school itself.

“You don’t even know that much?” Dimity’s tone was full of pity. “Why, to Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.”

Sophronia shook her head. “No, I mean, where is the location of this school?”

“Well, no one knows exactly, but to the south. Dartmoor, or somewhere around there.”

“Why so mysterious?”

Dimity shook her head, curls flying. “Oh, no, you see, I’m not meaning to be. It isn’t, you understand, at a fixed location.”

“What isn’t?”

“The academy.”

Sophronia imagined a building, filled with shrieking girls, scooting about the moor on tracks, like some massive, overexcited mechanical. “The school is mobile? What, on hundreds of tiny little legs?”

“Legs? Well, yes, moving, only not on legs. I think it’s, you know.” Dimity tilted her head back and looked to the ceiling.

Sophronia was about to inquire further when a terrific jolt shook them where they sat and the carriage came to a stop so abruptly that it pitched Dimity on top of Sophronia, and Pillover on top of Mademoiselle Geraldine.

Mademoiselle Geraldine screamed, probably upset by extended contact with Pillover’s grimy coat, and flapped her arms and legs to get the boy off.

Sophronia and Dimity untangled themselves, giggling.

Pillover extracted himself from the headmistress with remarkable dignity for a boy of his age and dress and retrieved his bowler from the floor.

“What on earth is going on?” Mademoiselle Geraldine banged on the ceiling of the cab with her parasol. “Coachman? Coachman!”

The carriage remained still. Or at least it didn’t appear to want to move forward. Every so often it would bob upward, as though it were afloat on the open sea.

The door to the carriage was yanked open to reveal not the coachman, but a bizarre-looking gentleman. He was dressed for the hunt in tweed jodhpurs, boots, red jacket, and riding hat, but he also wore goggles, with a long scarf of the type donned by arctic explorers wrapped around the lower part of his face.

The carriage lurched again. One of the horses neighed in alarm.

The strange man had a massive brass onion pinned to his cravat and was pointing a wicked-looking pistol at the occupants of the carriage. Sophronia’s eyes, once caught by the weapon, remained fixed upon it. Never before had she come face-to-face with an actual gun. She was shocked. Why, that thing could go off. Someone could get hurt!

“Highwaymen!” squeaked Pillover.

“No,” corrected Mademoiselle Geraldine, her teeth gritted. “Worse: flywaymen.” There was something in her tone, felt Sophronia, that suggested she was not surprised. Sophronia was instantly suspicious of both Mademoiselle Geraldine and the flywayman.

The headmistress batted her long eyelashes. “Why, sir, what could you possibly want from us? I’m simply a headmistress transporting these children to their final destination.”

Laying it on a bit thick, isn’t she? thought Sophronia.

“We have nothing of great value. We—”

The flywayman interrupted Mademoiselle Geraldine. “Silence. We know perfectly well what you’ve got those pretty little mitts on. Hand over the prototype.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you are on about.” The headmistress’s trembling smile was well executed, but apparently not convincing.

“ ’Course you do. Where is it?”

Mademoiselle Geraldine shook her head, eyelashes lowered prettily.

“Well, perhaps we’ll simply have a look for ourselves.”

The man stuck his head, briefly, back out the door and yelled something indistinguishable up to the sky.

There came a thump on the top of the carriage. Sophronia and the others could do nothing but watch, mutely, as their trunks, bags, and hatboxes were thrown from the roof to crash to the ground. There they fell open, littering the dusty road with clothing, hats, and shoes.

Two more flywaymen, dressed much like their leader, jumped down after and began rifling through the spilled contents. Whatever they were looking for appeared to be relatively small, as every piece of luggage—no matter what the size—had to be emptied. One of the men even used a knife to slash the bottoms of the trunks, searching for hidden pockets.

This was all highly embarrassing, to have one’s private possessions strewn about in public! Sophronia was particularly mortified that Pillover could see all her underthings—a stranger, and a boy! She also noted that Mademoiselle Geraldine’s trunks included some very salacious night garments. Why, there was a nightgown of purple flannel. Imagine that!

The flywaymen’s movements became increasingly frenzied. Their leader, while still guarding the occupants of the carriage, glanced frequently behind him at the activity in the road.

After a quarter of an hour, the man’s hand, the one holding the gun, began shaking from fatigue.

“Where is it?” he hissed at Mademoiselle Geraldine.

“I told you, young man, you will not find it here. Whatever it is.” She tossed her head. Actually tossed it!

“Impossible. We know you have it. You must have it!”

The headmistress looked off to the far distant horizon, nose elevated. “Your information would appear to be faulty.”

“Come with me. You, children, stay here.” The man dragged Mademoiselle Geraldine from the carriage. The headmistress struggled briefly, but finding the man’s strength superior to her own, she subsided.

“Where’s the coachman?” Sophronia hissed to Dimity and Pillover.

“Probably overcome by physical assault,” said Dimity.

“Or dead,” added Pillover.

“How’d they get to us? I didn’t hear any horses or anything.”

Pillover pointed up. “Sky highwaymen. Haven’t you heard of them?”

“Well, yes, but I didn’t think they actually existed.”

Pillover shrugged.

“Must have been hired by someone,” Dimity said. “What do you think the prototype is for?”

“Does it matter?” her brother asked.

“You think she actually has it?” Sophronia wondered.

Pillover looked at Sophronia with something like pity in his dark eyes. “Of course she has it. Question is, did she hide it well enough?”

“Or did she make a copy?” added Dimity.

“Is it safe to let them think they’ve won?”

“And was she thinking that far ahead?”

Sophronia interrupted their speculation. “That’s a lot of questions.”

They heard Mademoiselle Geraldine say something sharp to the men rifling through the luggage. All three looked out the open door to see what would happen next. The flywayman with the gun struck the headmistress across the face with his free hand.

“Oh, dear,” said Sophronia. “Violence.” She suppressed panic and a strange urge to giggle. She’d never before seen a grown man actually hit a woman.

Dimity looked slightly green.

Pillover’s small face became drawn behind his round spectacles. “I don’t think she planned for this.”

His assessment seemed correct, for Mademoiselle Geraldine proceeded to have a bout of hysterics, culminating in a very dramatic faint in the middle of the road.

“Quite the performance. My sister Petunia once acted like that over a mouse.”

“You think she’s shamming?” Dimity was inclined to be impressed.

“Shamming or not, she seems to have hung us out to dry.” Sophronia pursed her lips. I don’t want to go to finishing school, but I don’t exactly want to be kidnapped by flywaymen either.

The carriage lurched up again.

Sophronia looked at the ceiling. The flywaymen’s transport must be tied to the luggage rails above. She put two and two together: the flywayman’s goggles plus his onion-shaped pin. Balloon transport. At which point Sophronia decided she had better do something about their predicament. “We need to cut the balloon’s ties to the carriage and get to the driver’s box and take command of the horses. Once we get moving, can we outrun them?”

Pillover nodded. “No scientist has figured out how to make air transport move as quickly as ground. Although there were some interesting dirigible prototypes in last month’s Junior Guide to Scientific Advancements and Amoral Superiority. Something about utilizing the aether currents, but nothing on balloons, so—”

Dimity interrupted her brother. “Yes, thank you, Pill.” Clearly, prattling was a family trait even Pillover was prone to indulge in sometimes.

“So?” said Sophronia. “Resources. What do you two have?”

Pillover emptied the pockets of his oversized greatcoat: some pine-sap gum, a monocle on a stick—the Depraved Lens of Crispy Magnification, perhaps?—and a long piece of ribbon that probably started life in his sister’s hair. Dimity produced a box of sandwiches, a wooden spoon, and a knitted stuffed octopus out of the small covered basket at her feet. All Sophronia had was the piece of sponge she’d swiped at tea and stashed in her apron, now sadly crushed.

She split it into three and they ate the cake and thought hard.

None of the enemy paid them any mind. The three flywaymen had given up demolishing the luggage and now stood about arguing. Mademoiselle Geraldine was still firmly fainted.

“No time like the present,” said Sophronia, grabbing Pillover’s magnification lens. She climbed out of the small window of the carriage, the one on the side facing away from the flywaymen.

Carriages, as it turned out, were a whole lot easier to climb than dumbwaiters. Sophronia hoisted herself onto the top of the cab, unseen by the men below. There she found a large and colorful airdinghy tied to the roof. It wasn’t made of one balloon, but four, each attached to a corner of a passenger basket about the size of a small rowboat. In the center of the basket sprouted up a mast, higher than the balloons, with a sail unfurled. Steering propellers were suspended below. These were moving slightly, hovering directly above Sophronia’s head as she crawled across the carriage roof. They looked quite sharp. Keeping an eye on them, she made her way over to the mooring point.

The rope was tied firmly about the luggage rail and impossible to work loose.

Sophronia pulled out Pillover’s magnification lens and, angling it to catch the sun, began to burn through the rope. The acrid smell of scalded fiber permeated the air, but her activities remained unobserved. It seemed to take forever, but eventually the rope burned away to a point where Sophronia could break it. The airdinghy bobbed up, caught a slight breeze, and drifted away.

Without pausing to survey the effects of her handiwork, Sophronia crawled over and lowered herself down onto the driver’s box. The coachman lay slumped to one side. There was a large red mark on his forehead. She relieved him of the reins and clucked the horses into motion. She was perfectly well aware of how inappropriate it was for a young lady of fourteen to drive a coach, but circumstances sometimes called for extreme measures.

At that point, the flywaymen noticed what was happening and began shouting at her. The leader shot his gun rather ineffectually into a nearby tree. Another took off after the airdinghy, chasing it on the ground. The third began running toward her.

Sophronia whipped the horses up and set them a brisk canter. The cab behind her swayed alarmingly. It might be the latest design, but it was not meant for such a frantic pace. She gave the horses their heads for a few minutes before drawing them back to a trot. When she came upon a junction wide enough, she turned the carriage about and pulled up. She jumped down and stuck her head inside the cab.

Pillover and Dimity stared with wide, awed eyes back at her.

“All righty, then?”

“Tremendous,” said Dimity.

“What kind of girl are you?” grumbled Pillover, looking rather yellow about the gills.

“Now I see why you were recruited,” added Dimity. “I’m surprised they left it until you were so old.”

Sophronia blushed. No one had ever praised her for such activities before. Nor had anyone looked upon her as old. It was quite the honor.

“How on earth do you know how to drive a carriage?” Pillover asked, as though this were some kind of personal affront.

Sophronia grinned. “I spend a lot of time in stables.”

“Nice-looking stable boys?” suggested Dimity.

Sophronia gave her an arch look. “So what now—go back for the headmistress?”

“But we’re safe, aren’t we?” Pillover looked alarmed by the idea. “Is she really worth it?”

“It is the polite thing to do. Hardly fair to abandon her among criminals,” pointed out his sister.

“Plus the coachman is insensible. And he’s the only other one who knows where we are heading.” Sophronia was all for logic as well as manners.

“But they have guns,” replied Pillover, also logically.

Sophronia considered this. “True.” She looked at Dimity. “Mademoiselle Geraldine—how useful do you think she is?”

Dimity frowned. “Did she fib with you?”

Sophronia nodded.

“I’m not convinced she can be relied upon to follow any kind of plan; you know how adults are. However, we must do something.”

“Did I mention the guns?”

“Oh, stuff it, Pill.” Dimity dismissed her brother, turning her attention entirely on Sophronia. “What do you suggest?”

“If I go in quick, could you and Mr. Pillover tie yourselves down and see if you can’t simply grab her off the road?”

“Remember, ladies, the guns?” Pillover repeated.

Dimity was nodding. “It’ll require both me and Pill. Mademoiselle Geraldine is slim, but not that slim.”

Pillover would not let up. “What about the whole shooting at us part of the equation?”

Sophronia and Dimity said together, “Stuff it, Pill.”

“We don’t have any rope.”

Sophronia dangled the long ribbon from Pillover’s pocket. Dimity firmed up her mouth, grabbed it, nodded her head sharply, and went to work.

Sophronia shut the cab door and climbed back up onto the driver’s box.

The coachman was blinking blearily and clutching his head.

“Hold on, sir,” suggested Sophronia. “It’s about to get a mite bumpy.”

“What? Who are you?” was all he managed to say before the young lady in the blue dress grabbed up the reins of his horses and whipped them into a fast trot.

They dashed back toward the pile of clothing and luggage in the middle of the roadway. Mademoiselle Geraldine now stood a short distance away from the head flywayman, wailing tragically over one of the hatboxes. The other two men had vanished.

Seeing the carriage charging toward him, the flywayman took aim and fired.

The bullet whined over Sophronia’s head. She thought dark insults at the man—slander she’d learned from Roger, the stable lad.

The coachman, after a yell of horror, hunkered down. Luckily, he did not try to wrest the reins away from Sophronia. He probably thought he was in the midst of a bad dream.

She slurred the carriage around, bringing it up alongside the headmistress and pulling back on the reins at the same time. On cue, the cab door banged open and four little hands scrabbled for purchase on the black lace of Mademoiselle Geraldine’s fabulous dress. They yanked. Something tore. Mademoiselle Geraldine squealed and fell forward and into the carriage. Her legs dangled.

The flywayman dropped his gun and dove for Mademoiselle Geraldine. The headmistress dropped her pathetic act and kicked frantically, eventually losing her shoes, but also the flywayman’s grip. He fell to the road, clutching to his chest a pair of black satin slippers.

Sophronia turned to face forward, flashing the whip. The horses hardly needed the encouragement, as they were already terrified by the gunfire and the erratic driving methods of their new coachgirl. They sprang into a gallop.