Missionary cum Soldier of the British Raj Captain Thomas Pidgeon has desires to become the Charas Commissioner at Srinigar where he will be able to protect the Tomb of Jesus (Rozabal Shrine) and The Rod of Jesus.
The Indian Mutiny of 1857 is in full swing and he has obtained a temporary commission although he also is agent for British Empire Aviation with plans to operate airship transport. But his fourteen year old wife has been kidnapped by the rebels from their home in Lucknow. He has to ignore his orders so as to retrieve the Koh-I-Noor diamond which he has hidden in a safe deposit box in Delhi. This priceless diamond is the ransom for his young wife.
Queen Victoria has refused to come to India to negotiate with the rebels and so the government in London sends a clockwork cast-iron talking statue of her to negotiate. As part of a healing ritual Pidgeon is given a drink of snake venom by a sadhu and becomes sedated. Whilst unconscious a disaster occurs at the negotiations and he later flees in a Russian airship in the hope of finding his young wife. But this is a trap set by the Russians who only want him to take them to the Rod of Jesus which they believe to be a powerful portable symbol of Christianity.
A Steampunk story involving suttee, love and jihad.
Genre: FICTION / Alternative HistoryThis book was published 10 June 2019, no sales information is available.
On the ground looking up at the blue sky he watched the wicker basket ascend. Captain Thomas Pidgeon been away from home longer than planned and his missionary responsibilities combined with his engineering work demanded his absence. He had a young wife not much more than a child at home waiting for his return but his mind always wandered to his previous love. The current incumbent was an accident. The previous role holder was acquired because of lust and his first spouse, obtained for family ties and to satisfy responsibility.
Pidgeon’s time in India had been marked by tragedy caused by war and disease and now he no longer had the means to return to England even if he had wanted to. His life in India had not been uneventful and he reasoned that if he’d remained in Shrewsbury it would certainly have been less interesting, boring even. It was a place distant in his heart and in his mind. His soul was here in India. So he found himself plenty of things to do in order to keep his active mind occupied even if it meant being away from his wife and home much of the time.
From inside the basket several hundred feet up, the view across the wide Punjab plain was spectacular. Here was a boy, floating high above the land of The Five Rivers with the Thar Desert visible in the distance to the South and with the sea lying unseen many miles beyond. The sun was climbing behind him and he could feel the heat of the day building on his back. Judging by the amount of rope that the balloon wallahs below had paid out, he must be about two hundred and fifty feet above the ground he thought. The air was still hot enough in the bag above his head to keep it aloft, but the rope was preventing the balloon from going higher.
