The wind howled as rain pelted the ground filling the well worn ruts with a tannish gray slurry of water and gravel. The weeds overgrown and the fence posts in disrepair, Rutherford Clamwell crouched behind an outcrop of winter haystacks only a stone’s throw from the gate path, his charcoal cloak pulled over his head. He feverishly wiped down his flintlock pistol–a precious piece handled in carved mahogany and adorned with golden scallop shells and other fruits of the sea–wrapping it tightly to keep the powder within dry. He turned down the oil lamp beside him with his eyes fixed on the entry gate ahead.
* * *
The Clamwell estate was an absolutely marvelous place years prior, at one point having nearly sixteen servants to tend the property and wait on the every need of the prosperous family. The father, Clement Clamwell, was a seafaring adventurer turned industrialist. After first hearing news of his wife Edyth’s burgeoning baby, later to be christened Clyde, he set upon himself to find a reliable means of profit from his deep sea excursions. He had a family now and his fruitless treasure hunting wouldn’t put food on the table or grain in the feed troughs. He hadn’t the crew nor the tenacity to go up against the cohorts of commercial fishermen patrolling the coast of Mayne, so he ventured to find yet untapped rewards of the southern sea. As the story went, on one of his more raucous trips into the tropics he was recording his accounts in the lower deck of his lovely vessel the Caledonis, when one of the swing arms broke loose crashing into his inkwell, spilling its stainful contents all over his table and splashing up into his bearded face. Infuriated, not just because he couldn’t finish his precious captain’s log, but because he had planned to send a dispatch to his young wife at the next port of call, he grabbed the unfortunate item most near to him–a large spiral nautilus, limp and lifeless, having been trapped in his trolling net the day before–and threw it towards the wall, shattering its brittle encasement and leaving a large splat of innards in the shape of a cauliflower.
And it was this splat of sorts that birthed his greatest child yet. The Peekaboo Nautilus, a member of the Cephalopod family, contained a vestigial ink sac just behind the lesser anal glands on the inferior side (depending on how you hold it) of the curved sea creature. Even dripping down the sodden ship wall, the gleaming color of the purplish goo was impossible to turn his eyes from, and beautiful in its own right. Using a shard of glass from a lantern–another victim of the rolling waves, Clement delicately scooped the exquisite purple paste from the viscera and into a glass bottle previously used for perfume. Using his feather quill, he wrote to Edyth of his amazing discovery, scrawling it in his new found marine ink.
The rest was history, so to speak, as Clement dived into the task of harvesting these creatures and the precious pigment they contained, eventually keeping a crew of six to drop and haul weighted nets lined with chunks of rotting pork lung and cod guts (a rarely disclosed secret chum recipe) to extract these divine cash cows from their waters and process the bounty. He even designed a mechanical device to pull the small, squirmy creatures from their comfy abodes, thus leaving an intact shell which he could polish and grind to use as his trademark inkwell. He saw it as a way to honor the living fossils like fine Grecian vases. Unfortunately, as the flesh of the poor creature was too bitter and acrid for the common palate, he had to toss the carcasses back to the sea.
The news of this wonderful new ink didn’t take long to reach the ears of the upper gentry, including both fine calligraphists and even common bookkeepers in service. In the age of the quill, everyone wanted a sure supply of ink, and even more so they wanted the pizazz that only Clement’s purple ink offered. No longer were the RSVP’s of any respectable function–be it a debutante ball or a bonnet wakening–penned in what many of the upper class derided as ‘boring black.’ If you were anybody, you inked anything of import from Clement’s vessels in his royal purplish coloring. It was even well known that The Queen herself selected Clement’s ink to use to hand scribe all of the invitations for the reception in Sandringham following the gelding of her famed stallion Almeria. (This was often a lively story told at brandy sippings at the Clamwell estate.) All told, both demand and rarity would drive the price for Clement’s purple pen tincture to no less than twenty times the price per ounce as that of gold.
The prosperity gained from this item of utility and luxury afforded the Clamwells the ability to buy the eight bedroom estate surrounded by twenty acres of inland beauty. And over time, after a spattering of Clement’s biannual thrashings, Edyth would come to bear three more boys–Chas, Rutherford, and Lucian. The wealth amassed provided Clement the ability to devise new and ingenious devices for his fishing vessel and diving maneuvers. It also ensured a very comfortable living for his wife and sons. They even built a lawn tennis court on the estate so the children could invite the sons and daughters of the fellow bourgeois for gaming–though many of the established families of the region sneered at the Clamwells’s new found ascension. With months-long sea expeditions–Clement was hardly the father he wanted to be and his sons grew to indulge a bit too much on the family wealth. Clyde became fascinated with custom made horse carriages and had a passion for driving at reckless speeds often feeding his horses expensive dried plums and pomegranates. (Although resulting in a bit more gallup this often contributed to an ever rotating stable of horses.) Chas, on the other hand, took his allowance to the various pubs, inns and brothels in town, engorging himself and becoming somewhat the plump black sheep of the family. Rutherford was a smooth talking gentleman with a keen eye for business and an even keener eye for beautiful women–most of whom came from extraordinary wealth with expectations to match. And lastly was the youngest, Lucian, who shared in his father’s passion for discovery–building a sophisticated laboratory for his experiments at the age of fourteen by importing all sorts of tubing and instruments from upper Italia and the Allemagne.
As time went on, the harvests for the ink harboring nautilus would grow smaller and smaller, forcing Clement to find ways to dive deeper and deeper to capture the curious critters. The demand for the purplish ink was higher than ever and house inventories were running scarce. (In hindsight, Clement may have underestimated the capabilities of the gentle mollusc to replenish given his merciless hunting.) He spent a year’s worth of shillings to construct a solid brass diving bell for his latest expedition at nearly three hundred meters, hoping to find a secret crop to tend with a more delicate hand. With a large net fastened to one of the three jointed metal claws, he became stuck on a reef at the sea floor, unable to break free. He pulled to signal for his crew to bring him up, but a squad of squid swarmed his armored suit, thus keeping him below as the oxygen pumps bleated sputtering gasps. Eventually, with the hard wrenching of his loyal crew, Clement did reach the surface and after some time was revived. Unfortunately, he sustained what was called ‘the pressure sickness,’ leaving him alive but numb below the neck and with only the movements of his eyes to communicate.
Clement arrived at the estate strapped in his wheeled chair like a limpet cemented on a sea wall. He couldn’t tolerate being absolutely powerless, lacking the agency to move his limbs, speak, or position himself. Glancing at water spots below him on one occasion, he noticed they placed him in the salon where a potted plant once stood. He was no more useful than idle furnishing. Following this heartbreaking realization, he began to straw large amounts of strong cider, unconcerned by the new demands on his wait staff to keep him (and the floorboards,) dry. Shortly after this precipitation of his apathy and his resigned stonelike expression towards others, Edyth recused herself to her bedroom and entered a solitary period of mourning. The love of her life was a shell of a man she thought.
Clement’s sons, soon realizing the source of their income was drying up, set out to make use of their last remaining quantities of the precious purple ink and hire the crew to continue to harvest what little stock remained–even paying double the wages their father previously offered. Rutherford made the adept although risky marketing decision to shorten the product’s name from “Royal Periwinkle of the Dangerous Deep,” to a more manageable and less fateful “Deep Purple,” in part because they wrote all their signage with the precious ink and because it was a bit easier to say in passing. This opportunity for Rutherford to showcase his business acumen invigorated him. He immediately cleared out his father’s lab and built a stately and luxurious office fitting of the role of chief executive.
Meanwhile, Lucian went to work to formulate a way to lengthen the supply, trying all sorts of thinning agents to fulfill the needed inventory. He would wheel his father to his laboratory attempting to bleed off Clement’s knack for invention as well as enjoy some father/son time that was all too short in his youth. Throwing his pencil to the floor in defeat, Lucian turned down his oil lamp, readying for bed one night. But, as the amber and shadow flickered, two squeaks caught his attention. The first coming from the wheel at the foot of his father’s chair, the second coming from the large rat scurrying from the baseboard towards papa in a rage. His father, his wide eyes fixed on the raiding rodent, motioned and let out a vexing grunt.
“Yes father, I now see the genius of your gaze!” Lucian’s long silky hair flaring up as he turned towards the invader.
Capturing the elusive rat, he lifted it by the tail revealing the bulbous sacs that could be the salvation of Deep Purple–the precious urine held within. As if by sheer luck, the scare and anxiety of the vermin left a puddle in Lucian’s hand. Tossing the rat aside, he cupped the golden drippings and tilted them into a nearby beaker. To his amazement just two droplets of his father’s ink turned the contents dark as obsidian with the same purple sheen and density of the original Nautilus secretion. There was a slight odor, but nothing of worry thought the young man.
The next morning, Lucian posted a bill offering a heavy shilling for every muskrat delivered to his laboratory from the surrounding towns. He estimated that he could improve the yield five fold just by blending his stock with the rats’ refuse. It was a win-win to upcycle the pungent product while allowing the furry producers to live and flourish.
The family was agog at the prospects of continuing their prosperous endeavor–even taking out loans for carriages and funding an elaborate wedding for Rutherford and his new bride Mirabel Cosgrove. The posting worked almost too well providing Lucian with a surplus of muskrats–most being let free at his mercy to inhabit the lands. The new Deep Purple bottling continued, and shipments went out as planned.
It wasn’t long after the first delivery that inquiries to the new formulation surfaced,
“The color is right and bleed sufficient but god help us, does this not stink of rotting flesh?!?” wrote one faithful customer.
“I would like a refund in full and all portage costs paid”
And so it went for all the orders including the most ardent devourers of the purple ink. The remittances grew beyond their means and eventually liens were made against the Clamwell’s property in a devastating blow. Poor Rutherford, his wife a purveyor (and obsessive collector,) of fine umbrellas and parasols of the far east could not bear the shame of a life made naked by her penniless spouse, sued for divorce. In his last ditch attempt he gave Mirabel every last umbrella the family had, including the blackwood handled Hanway his father had first carried into court as a young man. This wasn’t nearly enough and for the time all seemed lost for the Clamwells.
But hope springs eternal. Lucian received a letter from his friend Hiram whom he had met at a mushroom foraging festival the prior year. An opportunity surfaced.
Hiram Warbler, an only child, bullied and teased for his short stature, puggish face, and feminate giddiness, spent the springs of his youth dancing among the fields and picking flowers to dry and press for his private collection. He cataloged over two hundred species of flora, including no less than forty-eight previously mis-recorded as common wildflowers. Hearing of Lucian’s misfortune, he endeavored to replicate the famed sea ink hue using the common bell flower. Through diligent experimentation, driven by his compassion for Lucian, he devised an almost pitch perfect substitute for the ink using a proprietary combination of petal mash coupled with shellac and linseed oil. His process was nothing short of bare elegance, and assured a profoundly more pleasant nose than the current Deep Purple formulation while producing reliable quantities. Guided by his prudent mother, he drafted a patent for his work, and sent word to Lucian on his findings so they may discuss in person.
Rutherford, sulking in the deep leather chair of his office, listened to the offer as Lucian read aloud in glee.
“Patent? Does this man intend to compete with us, to profit off our found fortune?” he said, digging his unkempt nails into the armrests.
“Brother, I believe he wants to partner in this venture. This could be the very break that saves us,” Lucian assured his brother.
“I trust you will not let him usurp our livelihood! And what of the inkwells!” Rutherford stormed off, his arms flapping about.
* * *
Upon reading the elegantly written response from Lucian, Hiram clutched it towards his breast and twirled. “I shall wear my red feathered cap for this occasion and prepare the others for further engagements,” he mused alone.
Clyde had offered to pick up Hiram from town the following day, despite the brooding clouds above. His carriage could quickly scoop and return the flower bearing lad in no less than two hours. He had just fitted his Phaeton with wide spoked wheels and freshly greased bearings. My fastest carriage yet, he thought.
But despite Clyde’s efforts, he was not able to miss the inclement weather entirely. The clouds broke on his return journey, forcing him to raise the calash top, which kept both driver and passenger from the worst of the rain but added a nagging drag on the ride. Looking for one last show of speed, Clyde cracked the whips as he entered the gates of the estate. Brimming with excitement, Hiram chanted him on.
Out of the shadows, Rutherford charged into the center of the path, struggling against the rain to hold up his cape and point the pistol in hand. He intended to cut off and confront the proposing partner. The carriage rattled as it roared towards the house at breakneck speed, the horses exhaling billows of breath like the nostrils of an enraged dragon. Barely catching sight of Rutherford’s silhouette, Clyde pulled the reins sternly to avoid collision. With a large thwack, one of the forward wheels pinned itself into the soggy road as it collapsed underneath, forcing the other side of the carriage to uplift like a fallen galleon. The rear wheel whirled madly and released from the axle in a wild fury. It tumbled and sprung towards Rutherford’s head delivering a fatal blow.
Lucian, roused from his work by the crash, rushed outside. He helped Hiram out of the fallen carriage–surveying and patting him up and down to see if he was unharmed. Clyde stood weeping above the fallen Rutherford, looking at the rainwater carrying his poor brother’s blood down a web of unearthed tunnels.
“Perhaps we should deal with your muskrats, brother. They’re eating up the road.”
