Gwynn Place by Shelley Adina

Author:Shelley Adina [Adina, Shelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781950854004
Publisher: Moonshell Books, Inc.

Chapter 7

Something struck the stern with a tremendous clang! and Claire gasped. “We’re hit!”

“By whom?” Andrew turned from the helm, while Maggie, Lizzie, and Michael scanned the skies anxiously for evidence of a ship that might have shot at them. “No one but the field master on Jersey knows we are in flight over France.”

Clang!

“Lady, look!” Maggie pointed out the rear viewing port, where an ungainly craft seemed to be banging on poor Athena’s stern above them like a bumblebee trying to get into a room through the glass. It flew in and out of sight behind the vanes, trying repeatedly to gain entry.

Clang!

“It’s a cargo pigeon,” Claire said in astonishment. “But it cannot get into the cage. The port isn’t big enough.”

“It seems awfully determined,” Maggie said, craning her neck to see the damage the wretched thing was causing. “It must be something important.”

“It would be nice if it carried a cannon,” Michael said, displaying a bloodthirsty streak none of them had suspected before the events at Windsor. “How are we going to get it to berth?”

Clang!

“It will have to come in next to the basket,” Andrew said. “None of the viewing ports are big enough. I’ll use a grappling hook.”

“Eight, stay on present course to Rocamadour,” Claire ordered the automaton intelligence system, and she and the others followed her husband aft.

A cargo pigeon! For goodness sake. Had someone aboard Lady Lucy decided that they needed new equipment? Had Alice heard of their plight and invented something that must be installed immediately? But why not send a letter by conventional pigeon first, so they would be expecting it and able to make at least a few modifications before its arrival?

When Andrew opened the aft hatch, the wind came howling into the engine room and around the platform that housed the rescue basket. First securing himself with a safety line, he looped the rope attached to the grappling hook around his hand, and leaned out. “Come along, you. Enough knocking on a door that won’t open.”

His first throw missed, so he was forced to haul in the rope.

Clang!

The second throw fell over the cargo pigeon’s back, and hooked on its wing. The other wing flapped awkwardly before its gyroscopes realized it was being towed, at which point it gave in and allowed itself to be pulled off its target and through the hatch.

“Oof!” Andrew staggered back as it buffeted him. “Heavy. Michael, Mopsies, give me a hand.”

It took all four of them to drag the pigeon into the engine room while Claire closed the hatch. The wind, made even more violent here on the fringes of the storm, died away to a mutter.

“This bird is far heavier than it looks,” Michael panted. “It must be a hundred pounds at least. I’m betting on a cannon.”

Andrew unlatched the cargo pigeon’s door as Claire joined him. “What on earth—”

A heap of clothes? Dead bodies? Clothed automatons? Was this a joke? Or had the cargo pigeon been misdirected?

Claire reached in and tugged on the first thing she could see.

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