Chapter Text
Aemond Targaryen, fourth heir to the Duchy of Cambridge1, watched with his chin lifted to the fine blue skies above, heavy with white clouds. His lone eye trailed up, up, up to the height of the top of the copper-coloured funnels. Steam wafted from three of them, curling up into the sky.
“Well, it seems to be a fine accommodation, at least,” he said dryly, looking out of the window of the car as it slowly crept through the thronging crowds amassing at the dockside White Star Line offices. Southampton was quite lively. Thousands were in attendance today, more than one would usually expect from such an event. Well, it was a maiden voyage, after all. He supposed some fanfare should be required. Every last man, woman, and child on the dockside was staring at the ship with excitement, their eyes shining with the delight of perceiving something so opulent and grand, an indistinguishable mass of faces and mouths open and pointing. Personally, Aemond did not find that the sight of the ship which would be delivering him to New York did not inspire any particular joy in him. It was almost too gauche, too nouveau-riche. He could practically smell the new paint even with the cab doors shut. He may as well be packaged to America in a clown car.
His mother looked over at him. Her ostrich-feather hat, adorned with a multitude of false fabric roses, was so large that it hardly seemed to fit within the cab and nearly brushed the side of Aemond’s head when she leaned forwards. “There is no finer sailing the seas,” she corrected him. “The Titanic has never taken passengers aboard before. Fresh air, fresh sheets, fine dining…much lovelier than the Mauretania. Your fiancée is sure to enjoy it.”
This last bit was said pointedly, and Aemond took the hint. His eye shifted to studying the docking-bridges, loading first and second class onto the upper decks. Off to his left was the health inspection line and gangway for those in steerage, getting their mouths and gums poked and swabbed with cotton wads on sticks by stern-faced nurses. No doubt that lot were all riddled with lice. He watched the drudgery with boredom. “And where is the Lady Rhaena?” he asked. “Powdering her nose?”
Mother opened her bamboo-lacquer fan and fanned her face with it in slow, bored sweeps. “I believe she will be arriving at our rendezvous point shortly. The Baroness wished to see her off, after all. I imagine it must be difficult, to send your last granddaughter off to America to get married.”
Aemond’s fiancée, Lady Rhaena Targaryen of Stratford, was seventeen and her family had recently fallen on a difficult time after the death of House Velaryon’s heir apparent, Ser Laenor, leaving them with no real viable male heirs but Rhaena and her sister through their mother’s side. Just like the Targaryens, House Velaryon was of old, noble Valyrian blood, and of course the polite thing to do in such a situation was to join the families in a marriage pact, sustaining both Houses, and, eventually, producing heirs. Lady Rhaena was his first cousin on his paternal side, and such a match was not uncommon.
Now, Aemond did not exactly like his cousin Rhaena. There was a bit of bad blood involving the two of them, historically, which may or may not have something to do with the reason why he was one eye short of the two that God had blessed him with. He found her naïve, boring, and vain. Between the two Velaryon sisters, he would have much rather been paired with Baela, her more exciting sister, but Baela had eloped to France with some botanist she had met while she was studying at the Queen’s College and the family had not seen much of her since.
And so he was stuck with Rhaena.
“Then I hope she will at least be somewhat punctual,” Aemond said, irritated. “What will people think if I end up having to board the ship without my fiancée on my arm?”
“Aemond,” Mother said, clearly annoyed. The large emerald rings on her fingers glittered as she waggled a warning gesture at him. Hightower colours. “She will be your wife once we reach New York. Perhaps you should make a habit out of speaking of her in a polite manner before you are in the domain of her father.”
Lady Rhaena’s father was Daemon Targaryen, Aemond’s uncle, and a veteran of the Marine Corps. He had been awarded the Medal of Honor for almost singlehandedly saving his unit out on the beaches of the Philippines during the war with the Spanish way back when Aemond was a skinny Year Three. He possessed a wicked humour and was a private friend of Theodore Roosevelt2, with whom he had once or twice gone hunting with out in Indian country. From what Aemond remembered from his last trip to New York—years ago, now—there had been a mounted bison head from one such expedition over the entryway to his uncle’s dining room. To Aemond, all those glass-eyed stuffed animals had always felt like a threat.
Not that Daemon wasn’t above making more direct threats to him, either. The last time he’d come to England on business, bringing the rest of his family for a family dinner, Aemond had gotten into a minor scrap with his oldest nephew Jace and Daemon had told him afterwards that if he ever stepped to his stepson with a blade ever again he would get his head blown off with a shotgun. On that occasion, Aemond had been holding a knife; however, it was of the fruit-paring variety, which was not so threatening as Daemon acted like it was. And now he was to live in New York. Constantly under that smug bastard’s watchful eye. He might as well welcome the shotgun.
“To slay one’s nephew and future son-in-law would be an act of Kinslaying,” Aemond said, looking distractedly out the window. He drummed his fingers, clad in smooth auburn leather, against the edge of the sill. The driver was laying on the klaxon, trying to clear the mass of commoners clogging up the route to the gangway. What was taking so long? At this point he might as well board separately. “I doubt he would dare risk a family war simply because my face bothers him. Driver?”
The chauffeur, a gentleman named Bill, with a fine moustache, turned when Aemond rapped sharply on the glass separating the compartments. He had been serving the family for the last three or so years, and enjoyed telling bawdy jokes. Aemond would often hear him and the gardener chuckling on all day during their smoke breaks about scarlet ladies and the Piccadilly Circus.
“I’m not sure that I can bring her any closer, sir,” he said, motioning to the crowd. “They’re packed right in.”
“That’s fine,” Aemond said impatiently. “Let us out. I wish to show my mother the ship.”
“Right away, my lord,” Bill said, and with a final blast of the horn, he put the car into park and exited, opening the gold-plated door handles on Mother’s side with his usual flourish and a tip of the hat. Once she was out, Aemond handed her woollen tasselled shrug—the cloudiness of the day had lent itself to a bit of a chill—and then as etiquette demanded, he exited the car. He picked up his hat, a flat boater with a dark green ribbon, and took up his walking stick. As he put on his hat, he took care to arrange it so that he did not mess up his hair. He was very particular about this; it was one of his best features. Though it was the common and fashionable look among gentlemen in this age to cut the hair short and comb it with mousse, Aemond still sported the long, platinum-white locks that had once made his house famous all over the world. He and Uncle Daemon were the last holdouts of this Valyrian tradition: his brother Aegon, heir to the Dukedom, had cut his off some years before. Today Aemond wore it in a long, neat single braid, and had affixed a matching thin sliver of green ribbon to it to tie it up.
Mother was standing at her side of the car when he came around, satisfaction radiating from her very being. She had done the booking, of course, with her usual scrutiny and attention to detail, being sure to only choose rooms with private promenade decks and the finest panelling and baths. “I have heard that Singer-Sargent contributed a piece to the first-class salon,” she said, looking to the upper floors of Titanic’s white superstructure expectantly.
John Singer-Sargent3 was one of Mother’s absolute favourite artists, and she had once sat for him a few years after he had moved to London, when she was a young lady. The portrait hung prominently in their family home. Aemond remembered it well in his head. Her serious expression, combined with one of her finest dresses, all green and gold and embroidered crosses and small, glittery beetle-wing sequins made her seem strangely ethereal. It was no wonder that his father had chosen her for his second wife.
“Mm,” Aemond remarked in answer. A porter made his way up to him and inquired about the baggage. Most of it—Mother’s clothes and her endless cases of creature comforts—he was happy to leave to them to store between the cargo hold and their suites, which were B Fifty-Two through Fifty-Four, one for himself, one for his mother, and one for Rhaena. But there was one thing which he was determined to supervise. He inquired about it and was directed to look about two hundred paces down the dock to where the dockside crane was stood. There, five or six men were strapping down a fine black car with wine-red spokes and matching leather seating. This was his pride and joy, a 1912 Pathfinder Model E. It was an open-roof model, a gorgeous boattail speedster that was all strong, elegant lines, and had small gilt lanterns on each side. There were emerald-green stripes siding the bottom of the car, sweeping up along the hubcaps. This was a custom paint choice, one that his mother had hated. She thought the vibrant colour to be flashy, God forbid he have anything to enjoy but austerity and the sanctity of a church. Aemond had chosen it because it was flashy. He could already imagine driving down the East Coast in it, the feeling of the wind whipping through his hair, perhaps some pretty company to enjoy it with. This car was his freedom.
He watched with a gimlet eye as they secured a tarp over it and the order was given to start up the crane, not blinking for even a second as his precious car was lifted into the air on its platform and maneuvered to the open forward cargo doors. There was another car waiting after his as well, one similar to the one he and Mother had arrived in. He did not move until he watched the car be safely driven off the platform and into the darkness of the ship.
“Oh, that car of yours,” Mother’s voice said huffily over his shoulder, making him startle. She had come up on his blind side and he had not seen her as she slipped up to him and linked her arm with his own. “Honestly, all young men worship these days are automobiles and tango! Come, Aemond, it is chilly, and I wish to settle in. The car will surely still be there when we arrive in New York.”
Aemond sighed, forced to concede this fair point, and led his mother towards the D-Deck gangway. As he stepped off English soil and onto the gangplank, he felt a sense of finality that he did not at all like. It was a shackling. Binding him to everything that would follow in America as if by marriage.
And so he would be married, and grow old and die in New York. What a repugnant idea. But what choice did he have, in this matter?
As mother and son entered the first-class reception area, Aemond was visited by the malignant wish that this boat would never even see New York at all. That perhaps there would be inclement weather, and they would be forced to turn around. Or there would be some issue with the engine room. Or perhaps, with luck, they would go instead to Asia. He had once dreamt of visiting Singapore, after all.
Unfortunately, he was a very unlucky man, and the whistles of the ship soon began to blast, signalling only a few minutes left before departure.
It seemed that he would be going to New York no matter what. He supposed that he might as well make the best of it.
-
Meanwhile, Lucerys Dawson was desperately trying to win a round of poker in a pub a stone’s throw from the White Star Line dock, and of all the games of gambling in all the world, of course this had to be the one that he was mostly shite at.
So, as he sat, staring at his hand in a huddle with two Swedes and his partner-in-crime, a freckly fellow named Hamish, he did the one thing that he was known for doing successfully. This, of course, was throwing everything into the mix even with the lowest chances of success that any one man could have.
“Raise,” he said, slapping down the engraved silver lighter he always carried onto the betting pile. There was a seahorse carved into it, and a spot on the top lid that had been worn away over the years by the constant presses of his thumb to open and close it. “All of it.”
Hamish looked at him, appalled. “Everything we ‘ave?” he hissed over the table. The two Swedes looked on with dour expressions. One was scoffing as he drank down his gin, glaring at the other intermittently. The shorter one, a fellow named Sven, plied with alcohol and the exhilaration of the day, had just added his and his partner’s two tickets for the RMS Titanic to the betting pile. This was the result of a small steering by Lucerys, really, he didn’t even have to do much. He had simply loudly pointed out the moored ship out of the window and then bet every last scrap of coin in his worn overcoat; in the spirit of the game Sven, drunk off his ass, had tossed down the tickets with hardly a reservation. “You’re utterly mad, Luke—!”
“What the fuck else do I have to lose?” Lucerys asked, shrugging, and tapped off the end of his cigarette onto a dirty, stained little teapot lid before bringing it back to his teeth. He said this often, but this time it was actually true. It was very important that he get on board this ship and to New York at all costs. Normally he would have tried to stow away on a cargo ship and taken his chances with the eagle-eyed ship’s officers, bitter cold, starvation, and smell, but this was the Titanic, wasn’t it, the biggest ship in the world, and shouldn’t he sail off to his new life in style and as soon as possible?
Yesterday morning, Lucerys had received a letter from his older brother, Jacaerys. It had been highly unusual; the last letter he’d received from anyone in his family had been over two years ago. It was for that reason that he knew that whatever was in the letter was bad news. And so it was.
His mother Rhaenyra was dead.
And, his brother had added, Lucerys had, by some miracle, made it into the will, and not only that, but a large seaside property in Stamford, Connecticut had been left to him, alongside an honorary title as Lord of High Tide. Lucerys’s eyes had nearly bugged out of his head when he read those words, neatly typefaced, indelible, undeniable, real. In a fraction of a second, he had gone from a penniless street artist living in the Whitechapel slums to a property-owning toff.
Lucerys had not lived in Whitechapel his whole life. In fact, he had been born into a rather wealthy family, which he did not have any particularly strong memories of. A series of unfortunate events had begun, ostensibly from his contested status as a legitimate child of the family but came to a head after a dramatic event that had occurred when he was only five. The fallout of that disaster had resulted in him, against the will of his mother, being packed off to the Scottish hills with some estranged relatives. These relatives had always treated him rather poorly and so by the time Lucerys had turned fourteen he’d leapt at the chance to run away from home and hitched a ride on a lorry carrying some goats, headed to London. He had dreamed of striking it big in the big city, as do many troubled young men. He had such an idealistic image of London as a boy. Of its fashion, its beauty, its opportunity—all of which, he soon discovered, were locked doors to him as he had only gotten up to about Year Eight while living in Scotland and thus had not much of an education to speak of.
Efforts to reach his birth family were thwarted when he at last managed to get an inquiry with the government office using his old address only to find out that all of the tenants had moved to America some years prior. Even though he hardly remembered them, let alone their names, this was a hard blow and so, skill-less, job-less, and penniless, Lucerys had turned to his old childhood habit: drawing pictures.
In the dim, crowded pub, Lucerys drew another card, studied it without any commentary or reaction, and took a long drag of his cigarette.
Most of his work was done in the middle-class suburban areas around London, odd jobs, families wanting portraits done at inexpensive prices. Occasionally whenever Lucerys managed to somehow scrape up enough money for both his rent and a train or boat ticket, he would travel to do sketches of the sceneries of the coast, which tended to sell better. On one such occasion, when he was across the Channel in Calais, he met strangers and drew portraits of them. Fondly among his customers, both knowing and unknowing, were the bowlegged old fisherman with the hangdog face and a few pretty young French girls, aspiring actresses and prostitutes. They had posed for him in series. He still kept some of these portraits in his satchel; the others he had successfully sold.
It was a hard way to live. The winters were especially nasty—few were out, and those who were most certainly did not want to stand and pose for a picture out in the cold, let alone pay for it. In those times, he turned to manual labour. The dockyards were always hiring. So too were the street cleaners. No matter how many times Lucerys had been fired for his conduct, they always rehired him. Lucerys had done many an odd job in his twenty-odd years of life. Chief among these was when he was once hired by a medical society to wade into a stagnant, dirty pond in nothing but his skivvies and stand there to get leeches to latch onto him.4 After a couple of hours, he was pulled out and the little black creatures that had sunken their little jaws into his legs were removed and collected in glass jars for later medicinal use. He was paid surprisingly well for his trouble, but alas it was a job so odd that it was not exactly a returning position and so he went back to combing the banks of the Thames with a rake to collect coins and other things to clean and sell.
For these reasons, Lucerys’s favourite season was the summer, and he was pleased that it was at last April, for things would surely be looking up for him again soon, even more so now that there was a seaside manor somewhere in America with his name written on it.
And they would, if the full house of cards that was now currently sitting cozily in his hand had anything to say about it.
This was the other thing which one should know about Lucerys Dawson.
Lucerys always got what he wanted. Whenever he gambled with his life, no matter how bad the odds were, no matter how he lied or cheated or bluffed, he always won. Call it luck of the draw; call it fate; call it God. No matter what, Lucerys succeeded in surviving with a constancy that made men curse and rage and call his good fortune cheating, or unjust, or ridiculous.
With his latest raise, he knew the Swedes would no longer able to hold. Unlike him, they weren’t insane. They wouldn’t bet everything. They couldn’t. How could they? They were sailors. They hadn’t been shovelling shit off the streets for the past three years. Not like Lucerys, who was willing to do absolutely anything—and he meant anything—to escape England.
And so when they folded, one after the other, Lucerys felt his heart skip a beat.
He watched the first Swede lay his hand down. Nothing to be concerned about. With his heart in his throat he watched with piercing, darting eyes as Sven put his hand down. It was a good hand—great, even, but—
“We’re going to be ruined,” Hamish groaned. “What am I going to tell my mother?”
Lucerys’s grin was wide, as wide as the Cheshire Cat’s. Once again, the lowly bastard had landed on top. “Well, I don’t think you’re going to be seeing your mother for a very long time, Hamie.”
With a very magician-like flourish, he laid out his full house—three nines and two sevens—and let the commotion unfold. The burlier Swede stood up, nearly flipping the table as he shouted at Sven for wagering their tickets. He looked threatening, but in this moment Lucerys was so wildly happy he couldn’t care less. The relief bubbled out of him like a geyser, and he laughed and cheered, flinging his arms wide in the air. “We’re going to America!” he yelled.
“America!” Hamish screamed, tearing off his hat. “Luke! We’re going to America!”
“Yes, yes!” Lucerys repeated, shaking the grinning Scot up and down. His own curls, so brown that they were almost black, bounced along. “America!”
For a moment, he was caught by the arm by the burlier Swede and he thought that the man was about to take his anger out on him but before Lucerys could even ready his own fist, the man had swung past him and smashed Sven straight in the jaw, screaming at him in Swedish, and a very one-sided brawl ensued, during which time onlookers cheered for their respective side noisily as the bartender rushed out to restore order and Hamish and Lucerys began sweeping those holy Titanic tickets and grubby coins into their satchels by the fistful.
“America!” Hamie said again, and he looked faint. He laid rail ties for the local railways and he had met Lucerys two days prior when they were both smoking outside their favourite prostitute’s house at the same time, waiting for her to come out. The two men had immediately hit it off and forgotten all about the woman, spending the long night half-lying on each other, absolutely legless and singing drinking songs as they paraded down the streets like kings. “We’re going to America!”
“No, mate!” the bartender yelled back. “The Titanic is going to America, and in five minutes!”
Five minutes! Lucerys’s eyes widened. “We’ve got to go, Hamie, now!”
Hamish began sweeping the coins directly off the table into his bag, but Lucerys grabbed him by the back of the shirt and pulled him along towards the exit, making him stumble along. “Forget the coins, mate! We’ll be making coins aplenty in New York!”
“New York!” Hamish echoed, and jammed his cap onto his head, his pale blue eyes hopeful and excited. “New York—whoa!”
They stumbled out of the pub and back into the overcast daylight, running towards the ship and holding their coats together, pushing through a sea of people, muttering apologies as they jostled and shoved their way towards the beautiful, towering black hull of the Titanic.
“We’re really riding in style now!” Lucerys exclaimed as he ran, ducking under the gangplank, luggage bouncing over his shoulder. Perhaps calling it luggage was an exaggeration; it was more of a sack, fashioned from an old set of sheets. It contained everything he owned, every last thing down to his toothbrush, his folder of drawings, his one good pair of shoes and now his ticket to the greatest ship in all the world. This morning he had slept in an abandoned rail car; tonight he would sleep on fine sheets and dine on fine benches. Tonight would be the first day of the rest of his life. He was so excited that he didn’t know if he wanted to scream or cry. Perhaps both. “We’re practically goddamn royalty, aren’t we?”
Hamish was just a step behind him, the two men holding hands as they fought their way through the waving crowds to stay together, pushing past porters who were dropping luggage and even startling a pair of chestnut horses. Hamish was laughing and looking around, still seeming dazed from the rapid turn of events. “I’m going to America!” he shouted at various onlookers, who looked very bemused. Some even cheered them on. “America! Whoo!”
“Run faster, Hamie!” Lucerys yelled. Up ahead, the gangplank was starting to pull back. This whole thing—it would be for nothing if they didn’t make it onto that ship—nothing at all—back to being chased by police and common pickpocketing and mudlarking—!
He and Hamish sprinted up the gangway hollering and hooting and kicking up a fuss; the plank had already been withdrawn about a foot and a half from the door.
“Passengers!” Lucerys shouted at the officer and crewman standing at the door, waving his papers in the air. “We’re passengers!”
The officer was a clean-cut man, if not a bit young-looking, and he studied the papers he was handed momentarily. The red flag pin with its white star gleamed, and Lucerys held his breath. At last, he looked back up at the two panting, out-of-breath men. “Have you been through the inspection queue?” he asked suspiciously.
“Of bloody course,” Lucerys lied easily, “we haven’t got any lice! We’re Americans!”
The officer hardly gave them another glance. If anything, he rolled his eyes. “Right then,” he said, motioning to the open door, and without any further prodding, Lucerys and Hamish leapt the small gap over the water and tumbled headlong into the bowels of the Titanic. The ropes were cast off at last, and Titanic was set free from the dock.
Right away, Lucerys could see that this ship was nothing like he had ever experienced before. The wood was new and varnished; it gleamed. The white paint of the corridors, equally as glossy, shone in the bright lighting. He ran his fingers over the walls, fascinated and in awe. It was truly the ship of dreams. Clean. Not a rat in sight. On his few expeditions to France, he’d been in steerage and had woken up in a crowded bunk once when a mouse landed on his head. This ship didn’t even have steerage, that was how fancy it was. Third class, a crewman had called it. Third class passengers this way! Lucerys had never been third-class before. He liked it already. After a few more excited moments of taking in the lobby and pushing past the purser’s desk, he and Hamish decided to head topside, pushing through throngs of excited strangers until they reached the third-class promenade near the stern of the ship.
From there, they leaned over the railings, at last finally being able to appreciate the crowd of well-wishers that had amassed to see them off, and waved valiantly back, grinning and smiling right back at the faces looking up at them. The scale of the ship seemed massive. How magnificent life was, that he had just been one of those small, wide-eyed faces down on the land and now he was one of those small, cheerful countenances up on the tippy-top of the Titanic! Every last promenade deck was packed with waving hands.
“Goodbye!” Lucerys called to each of them as he waved, as if giving farewells at some particularly smashing posh party. “Goodbye, Miss Finch! Goodbye, Madam Mason! And to you, sir! And to you sir! Good-bye, and to all a good night!”
“I’ll never forget you!” Hamish yelled at nobody in particular, taking off his cap and holding it over his breast, pretending to swoon. “Good-bye Southampton! Hello America!”
The horns of Titanic blared and soon the boat began to move forwards, towed by its tugboats. Lucerys and Hamish stood there for quite some time in awe together, watching gulls swoop in and out of the cables strung between the masts, the great wake that was left as the ship sliced through the water like an arrow. She moved smoothly, stately, and boldly with all the stability of a young ship; not even when he closed his eyes and stood still for several moments could he feel any rocking, only the gentle faint soothing vibration of her engines and systems. He could have gladly stayed here forever if not for Hamish, who eventually with much excitement demanded that they head down to see their accommodations. They re-entered the maze of corridors, turning countless corners as they neared the low front of the ship in search of cabin G-60.
At last they found it, piling into the room with excitement. G-60 was a small cabin of six bunks, with clean, vertical white cladding. There were two other men there already sitting about the bunks, Swedes. These, then, must have been Sven and his friend’s companions. Lucerys happily introduced himself to them and then set to rubbing the corner of the flannel sheets in between his fingers. Oh, it was so soft, and so warm, and delightful! He hadn’t slept on a bed so fine in years. As thin as the mattress was, it was still a mattress and better than anything in the flat he rented in Whitechapel. The mirror alone, nearly the height of a man and framed with dark polished wood, was fancier than anything else he owned. Hamish delighted himself with crawling up onto the top bunk and claiming it for himself, which Lucerys took the piss for, but eventually settled with watching the view of the ocean from beneath the lone porthole as the two other men looked on with bewilderment.
As Lucerys looked out the window, fingers splayed across the glass, he couldn’t help but smile. There was only one thought in his mind, and one thought only.
This would be the most wonderful trip of his life.