Praise for The Ship of Doom:

‘A hugely entertaining mystery’ – The Bookseller

‘An exciting and intriguing adventure.’
– The Week Junior

‘This is a stunning start to a new series.’
– Margaret Pemberton

‘Highly entertaining and thought-provoking in equal measure, The Ship Of Doom is a breath-taking adventure through time aboard the RMS Titanic.’
– Miss Cleveland is Reading

‘The end is just the beginning and I for one look forward to joining the Butterfly Club and travelling with them to different times and places. This is a series to devour!’
– My Shelves Are Full

‘It is so clever to combine fantasy with history in this way. It was tremendously exciting.’
– Toppsta Reader, age 14

‘Well worth reading’ – Toppsta Reader, age 11

‘I would recommend this book as it is simply a pleasure to read and the storyline is a thoroughly gripping adventure.’ – ReadingZone reviewer

Also by M.A. Bennett

The Butterfly Club series:

The Ship of Doom

The Mummy’s Curse

The Mona Lisa Mystery

Series for older readers:

STAGS

DOGS

FOXES

TIGERS

HAWKS

Published in 2023 by Welbeck Flame

An imprint of Welbeck Children’s Limited,
part of Welbeck Publishing Group.

Offices in: London – 20 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JW &
Sydney – Level 17, 207 Kent St, Sydney NSW 2000 Australia

www.welbeckpublishing.com

Design and layout © Welbeck Children’s Limited 2023

Text copyright © M.A. Bennett 2023

Illustrations copyright © David Dean 2023

M.A. Bennett and David Dean have asserted their moral right to be identified as the Author and Illustrator of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN: 978 1 80130 043 8
eISBN 978-1-80130-044-5

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners and the publishers.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Disclaimer: Any names, characters, trademarks, service marks and trade names detailed in this book is the property of their respective owners and are used solely for identification and reference purposes. This book is a publication of Welbeck Children’s Limited, part of Welbeck Publishing Group and has not been licensed, approved, sponsored or endorsed by any person or entity.

To Donna
who is up in the heavens with her boys

Dear Reader,

If you are reading this you are already a time traveller, because this is the year 1894 and Queen Victoria is on the throne.

and if you are reading this you must be a friend, so I feel all right about sharing with you the secrets of The Butterfly Club.

Let me begin at the beginning. My name is Luna and I suppose you would call me a time-thief. I live in a rather smart part of London with my Aunt Grace, who’s been looking after me ever since my father disappeared. One Thursday Aunt Grace took me with her to her secret society, The Butterfly Club.

The Butterfly Club meets every Thursday afternoon in Greenwich, at the famous Royal Observatory, which is the Home of Time. It’s called that because there is a long brass line running through the courtyard of the observatory called the Prime Meridien, the point from which all time is measured.

Deep in the belly of the observatory is the Butterfly Room, a twelve-sided secret chamber where the Butterfly Club meet. It’s called the Butterfly Room because there are butterflies on the walls – those dead ones pinned to little cards – in all the colours of the rainbow. The members of the Butterfly Club are the finest minds of Victorian society – people you might have heard of even in your time, people like Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin and Florence Nightingale.

and that’s where I met my fellow time thieves. You see, there are three of us.

Konstantin is from Prussia, he has loads of brothers who are all soldiers, and his father, Dr Tanius Kass, is a very clever inventor. Konstantin loves everything military, but because he was so ill when he was little, he couldn’t be a soldier himself. But Konstantin is special in his own way, because he has a mechanical heart. His own heart didn’t work so his father replaced it with a clockwork one.

The third time-thief is Aidan. Aidan is Irish, and he is a navigational engineer (or ‘navvy’) who’s been working on the railways ever since he was ten. Aidan knows everything there is to know about machines, and sometimes I think he loves them better than people. And, like Konstantin, Aidan has a secret too; which he also keeps his very close to his chest.

The three of us are called time-thieves because we’ve been travelling in time, carrying out missions for the Butterfly Club. We use a contraption called the Time Train, which was designed by HG Wells, one of the club’s members. We travel forward in time to collect inventions and treasures from the future. We never go backwards. The whole point is to bring back things which our age doesn’t have yet, to speed up progress. Aunt Grace says our thieving is for ‘the betterment of society’. I hope she’s right. The Butterfly Club certainly seem to get a lot of money and prizes out of it.

Well, dear reader, Aidan, Konstantin and me have had quite a few journeys through the decades since the day we met, and faced many dangers, and you can read all about them.

I hope you enjoy our adventures!

Yours until the end of time,

Luna Goodhart x

PS: I’ll write again, but always look out for the ink butterfly (above) when I do. It’s called a Rorschach blot, every one is different, and that’s how you’ll know the letter is from me.

LONDON

14 FEBRUARY 1894

14 FEBRUARY 1894

11 p.m.

On Valentine’s night 1894, Konstantin Kass found it impossible to sleep.

He thought it pretty ironic that on a day when the whole nation was concerned with matters of the heart, he too could think about nothing but the little engine ticking inside his own chest. But he wasn’t pining for some young fräulein, or wondering why he hadn’t received one of the sickly cards the shops were suddenly full of, featuring lovesick shepherds or doves or cherubs. His worries were a little more serious, a little more life and death-y.

For Konstantin was genuinely concerned that his heart would stop.

He lay on his back, as he’d lain awake for hours now, just as he had last night. And the night before. And the night before that. In fact, ever since his clockwork heart had failed on the bank of the Arno river, by the Buriano Bridge, that night in 1914, he had been waiting for the inevitable. Arthur John Priest’s prophecy that Konstantin’s heart would one day stop, delivered in a vicious whisper back at the Butterfly Club, had entered his system like poison and now infected every minute of his day. Konstantin laid his hand on his chest. The clockwork ticking was unmistakably fainter, more irregular. At times it seemed to miss a beat, and Konstantin would have to wait for a sickening second, which seemed like a lifetime, before the clockwork started again. But he knew that one day, it would not.

He wished that Aidan were here. Aidan would know what to do. Konstantin had never seen anyone understand machines like Aidan. He remembered those nights in Tuscany, sitting on a barn beam with Luna, watching Aidan recreate Leonardo da Vinci’s diving suit in a miracle of engineering. Suddenly, ridiculously, he wondered if Luna had sent Aidan a Valentine’s card.

‘I need help,’ he groaned aloud, then turned over and reached for the tinderbox.

He struck a light and touched it to the wick of the oil lamp at his bedside. As the match flared he caught sight of the butterfly tattoo on his wrist. Barely a week old, it had just about stopped hurting. It made him proud: proud to be a time traveller, proud to be part of something. He just wished Luna had got one too. There was a Butterfly Club meeting tomorrow, on 15 February, but he had to assume she wouldn’t be there. She’d vowed never to travel in time again. The thought made him sad, but he couldn’t think about Luna now. His heart wouldn’t let him – it ticked with more urgent matters.

Konstantin got up and, wearing just his nightshirt, padded downstairs. The big house was as quiet as the grave. His father and the servants were asleep, and through the windows Konstantin could see that the big dark square of Horseguards Parade was empty. No prancing cavalry, no marching infantry. Only a lone soldier stood awake and upright in his sentry box, keeping guard.

Holding the oil lamp high, Konstantin went down one flight of stairs, then another, then a third right down into the cellars. He took a key from a hiding place well known to him, and turned it in the door of a place he wasn’t usually allowed to go.

It was the workshop of his father, Dr Tanius Kass.

14 FEBRUARY 1894

11.15 p.m.

It was a wonderful room with a wonderful Prussian name: a Wunderkammer, a Cabinet of Wonders. Whenever Konstantin had come down here to snoop, he had always enjoyed the experience, for the room was stuffed with his father’s incredible inventions – automata, timepieces and clockwork devices. Brass cogs and springs lay around in little heaps like dragon treasure. Today, though, he was too troubled to fiddle with the mechanisms or admire the workmanship. He was looking for something – anything – that would indicate that his father had the necessary equipment to upgrade his failing heart.

That heart nearly leapt out of his chest when he heard the door creak open behind him. His father, in a nightshirt and nightcap and also carrying an oil lamp, entered the room and shut the door behind him. He studied his son, but his eyes were troubled, not angry.

‘Konstantin? Are you all right, lieber Sohn? What is the matter?’

Konstantin set down his own oil lamp on the workbench. The little brass mechanisms gleamed in the light. ‘It’s my heart, Father. I think it’s beginning to break.’

Dr Kass set down his lamp too, and sighed. ‘I knew this day would come. Machines, like people, fail in time. Fortunately, a machine can be improved and finessed.’

Konstantin looked around him at all the machinery. ‘Is that something you can do?’

His father shook his head. ‘No. I have a certain mechanical skill, which I inherited from your grandfather. He was a watchmaker in Königsberg, did you know that?’

Now Konstantin shook his head, mirroring his father. ‘No, I didn’t know.’

‘Your grandfather taught me what he knew about mechanics and clockwork, and then I became more interested in the workings of human beings. That’s when I trained as a doctor.’ He dropped a fond hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘I found the heart that ticks in your chest. But I did not make it.’

‘Who did?’

‘A very clever man called Otis Boykin. He invented a tiny machine called a pacemaker. It is implanted in the body and stimulates the heart using electrical pulses – the same force that illuminates Mr Edison’s electric lightbulb.’

Konstantin was lost. ‘But… how is such a thing possible?’

‘Now it would not be, of course,’ said his father. ‘But I met Mr Boykin in 1969.’

Konstantin was not at all surprised. He had suspected for a long time that his father had travelled far forward in time to save his son’s life. Now Konstantin knew what he must do. ‘Father. I think I have to go and see him.’

Dr Kass sighed again. ‘I knew you were going to say that. But it is very dangerous to go so far into the future.’

‘More dangerous than waiting to die?’

For a moment his father didn’t reply. Then he said, ‘We would have to convince the Butterfly Club to allow you to go on a special mission. There’s a meeting tomorrow.’

‘You could do that,’ urged Konstantin. ‘Luna’s Aunt Grace – she would do anything for you.’

Dr Kass studied his son with interest. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Well, she’s… she’s your… Valentine, isn’t she?’ The foolish word had lodged in his head – because of the date, because of his heart.

His father smiled a little. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose she is.’

‘Well, then.’

‘Would you take Luna and Aidan with you? I’d be happier if you did.’

Konstantin remembered that morning in the tattoo parlour at Camden Lock. ‘Aidan, yes. Luna has sworn that she won’t time travel again.’

His father looked interested. ‘Why?’

This was awkward. Konstantin could hardly say that Luna had her doubts about the motives of the Butterfly Club, and that she suspected they were only interested in making money. Since she’d made her vow, and refused to get the butterfly tattoo, he and Aidan had tried and tried to persuade her to change her mind. But she had the Goodhart stubborn streak, and had refused. ‘I just think she’s had enough.’

Dr Kass studied Konstantin closely. ‘You like Luna, don’t you?’

‘Very much,’ Konstantin admitted.

‘Well, that is good,’ said his father. ‘Because there may come a day when she means more to you than just a friend.’

Konstantin blushed. Had his father guessed that his clockwork heart belonged to Luna? Was he suggesting that some day, far into the future, they would be Valentines too?

‘I mean that she may in time become your sister.’

That wasn’t what Konstantin had expected at all, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. If Father married Luna’s aunt, they would presumably all live in the same house, as a family, and that made him very happy. But at the same time he felt a funny misgiving in his clockwork heart. Your sort-of sister could never be your Valentine, could she? He put that thought to one side. There was no point thinking about things that might happen far into the future, if he had no future at all. He had to concentrate on the next Butterfly Mission – a personal mission of his own, to get a new heart. ‘This inventor. This Otis Boykin. Where does he live?’

‘In America. In the United States.’

‘And did he…’ Konstantin struggled to form the question. ‘Has he improved his design since?’

‘I don’t know. What I do know is that 1960s America was an extraordinary time of innovation and technology. When I was there, they were on the cusp of sending a man to the moon.’

Despite his worry, Konstantin let out a little shout of laughter. ‘Are you joking?’

His father’s face was totally serious. ‘No. When I met Otis Boykin they were just about ready to launch their rocket. Apollo 11, it was called.’

But Konstantin wasn’t interested in moon rockets. He only had one question in his mind. ‘We just need to know if Mr Boykin made his pacemaker better.’

‘That I cannot tell you. But I know someone who can.’ Dr Kass walked to a nearby shelf and took down a familiar figure. A cuckoo automaton, made of bright brass filigree and featuring two bright ruby eyes.

‘Chronos!’ exclaimed Konstantin, who felt as if he was reuniting with an old friend. ‘I thought he lived in the Time Train all the time.’

‘Only when it is in use,’ said Dr Kass. ‘As he is my invention – perhaps my finest – I keep him here for just the reasons we said. I am constantly finessing him, making him better.’

‘All right,’ said Konstantin. ‘Let’s ask him about that pacemaker.’ He prepared to turn the key anti-clockwise.

‘Ah, that he will not know,’ said his father, ‘for it was invented far into the future. I was not talking of asking Chronos. I was talking of the professor.’

Dr Kass turned the key clockwise, for the future, and in the dim Wunderkammer the professor’s image sprang into life. But this was quite a different professor to the usual one. The whitish blue hologram was not still and stable, but switching back and forth, glitching and fizzing. Far in the future, Professor Edward Norton Lorenz was pacing distractedly. When Dr Kass greeted him, he stopped pacing and faced them.

‘Thank God,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve been so hoping you guys would check in. Listen.’ His pleasant face was contorted with worry, and his slightly bulbous eyes stared in consternation. ‘You’ve asked me for help in the past, and I’ve been happy to assist you. But now…’ He pointed his forefinger into the past. ‘You guys have gotta help me.’