The Choir Boats (32 page)

One by one everyone on the beach began to sing, a wordless
harmony to a song that Tom shared with them. Later, no one
remembered what the song sounded like or how long they sang, only
that it was a delicious moment and all too brief. Tom cried out and
fell back. The song ended on that note.

Blinking in the firelight, everyone looked around a bit shyly, as if
they had just been properly introduced for the first time. The sailor
with the mouth-harp tried softly to recapture the song but could
not. Tom sat up with tears on his face.

“Sally’s brought them back,” Tom said.

Jambres nodded. Billy helped Tom to his feet, and then he and
Jambres walked Tom back to the house with the flagpole. Everyone
else sat around the fire for a long time after that.

“Sally rescued them,” said the Cretched Man the next morning.
“They should be in Yount soon.”

“I saw a strange ship and a strange machine and then a dolphin
plummeted out of thin air,” said Tom. He yawned. He had slept a
long time.

“Your sister is another Belladonna, and more,” said Jambres,
offering Tom a biscuit. “I saw her on the ansible-scope suddenly,
which is why I came to you. They were lost entirely in some ancient
pocket of silence, a remainder from the
tohu-bohu
at the Beginning.”

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” said Tom,
taking the biscuit and heaping on the last of the marmalade from
the ship’s stores.

“I doubt it will be the last time it happens to you.”

Tom shook his head, paused to devour the entire biscuit, and
said, “You sang too.”

The Cretched Man wiped a bit of marmalade that had fallen on
the table from Tom’s knife before saying, “I did. I wonder at that
myself. Sally’s song was compelling.”

Tom put down his napkin, shoved aside his plate, and said, “You
are playing a longer game than me, but you sang for Sally, for Uncle
Barnabas, for all the Yountians on that ship.”

“I told you, Thomas, I am not your enemy, no matter how bizarre
or ill-mannered my carriage towards you may sometimes seem,” said
Jambres, holding the sleeve of his right arm as if the coat ached.

“Ill-mannered is an understatement,” said Tom, but he said it half
in jest. “How can you expect people to see you as an ally, let alone
trust you as one, if you persist in sending knuckle-dogs and, what
are they called, hyter-spirits after them?” He looked to the side of
the house where a kennel sat in a small stockade. Only the knuckle-dog’s tail could be seen hanging out of the kennel. Tom remembered
the print of Diana and Acteon at home in the partners’ room.

“I admit that the knuckle-dog has a rude appearance, that its
fingered paw is an eerie extravagance, but it is hardly more savage
than the wolfhound or mastiff kept by any squireen in the shires,”
said Jambres. “As for the hyter-spirits, they are scouts only, no more
harmful than carrier pigeons. They have no appetites other than the
ones I give them. I shape them from clay and breathe a pneuma into
them. Jesus is said to have done the same and he is not castigated
for it!”

Tom shook his head. “I have given up my defence of reason since
coming on this quest,” he said. “Too many occult matters have
manifested themselves. But, for most people, talk of breathing life
into clay is cause for fear.”

Jambres sighed. “This is why my task is made so difficult. When
I speak the truth I am the object of fear and enmity. When I speak
other than the truth, I am rightly called out for a liar.”

Tom could think of no reply.

Jambres continued. “The Yountians insist on the truth but then
deny it when it is presented to them. Show them a truth and they
seek a base motive or baleful desire behind it. Sometimes a beast is
just a beast, not a monster moved by another’s will, such as the Sow
of Crommyon egged on by its witch owner.”

“Or the giant’s pet manticore that Gosse of Frinder slew!” said
Tom.

“I don’t know that one,” said Jambres. “Rare and pleasing to
discover a new story after all my years.”

“An old Scots ballad that Uncle Barnabas sings on occasion,” Tom
shrugged.

“You
are
Belladonna’s grandson!” said Jambres.

They left the table, dispersed the gulls, walked down to the beach.
The sanderlings had migrated, leaving only a pair of yellowshanks
and a lone whimbrel searching for food on the tidal flats.

“What comes next will be difficult and may go awry, Thomas,”
said Jambres. “The Yountians have schemed and plotted a long time
to bring the key with the right Key-bearer to Yount. I set our meeting
by design at the very place where the key must be used, at the Sign of
the Ear. I too need to confirm the key’s authenticity and validate its
Bearer. So far are our needs identical.”

“What will this key do?” asked Tom. “
Quatsch
to me, but I have
never really followed this — just took what Sally and Uncle Barnabas
said on faith. Sally’s hardly ever wrong about anything.”

“The key is exactly what it sounds like, Thomas,” said Jambres.
“It will open the door to the Yountians’ prison, end their exile — and
give them a bridge to Earth if they want to take it. Or elsewhere. I
have given up, or nearly so, trying to tell them that the time for their
release has not yet come. They have not met all the demands for their
redemption. To go now, with conditions unmet, is premature at best.
By the terms of my own assignment, I am barred from intervening
too directly — they must be allowed the freedom to choose.”

The lone whimbrel pattered off in front of them, calling
“peeyeeee-yeeee-yik” as it flew over the surf.

“If you cannot intervene, then how do you intend to lead Billy
and the Minders, and whoever else, on a mission against those
slavers?” said Tom.

The Cretched Man smiled one of his perfect smiles, highlighting
the anguish beneath his brittle masterpiece of a face, and said, “One
in my position learns to parse all terms and conditions to granular
particularity. I am an accomplished jurist in the courts of heaven,
having often pled my own case before judges of novembered diction
and austere visage. In my carceral role, I have some latitude on how
my talents may be used or withheld for the benefit of the immured.
My expedition against Orn, Nearer Yount, is a private project.”

“Unsanctioned, you mean,” said Tom.

“But justified in its purpose, a furthering of the levitical
construct,” said Jambres, licking his lips as if something acrid were
on his tongue. “So I would argue in the celestial house of forfeiture,
should I be discovered.”

Tom looked at the Cretched Man’s coat and wondered how
many more tailorings Jambres would have to undergo if he were
discovered or if his interpretation of terms were overruled. Tom
and the Cretched Man walked in silence for some time, their only
companion the whimbrel that flew from spot to spot, always fifty
yards or so in front of them. Its white and black wings flashed
against the blue-green sea.

At last Tom said, “Another thing I do not understand is how the
Yountians even came to have a key, and why, if you are their bailiff,
you cannot simply change the lock.”

The Cretched Man said seriously, “This is not Newgate or the
King’s Bench, where one simply bribes the warden for a day-leave!”

“Well, no, I hardly meant — ” said Tom.

“As for their possession of the key, they stole it,” said Jambres.
“From me.”

“But you are so . . .” Tom stopped in the sand and looked right at
Jambres.

“Powerful? Yes but the Learned Doctors are not bookfull
blockheads, no matter how doomed their actions might be.
Desperation drives them to prideful feats. I understand their
desperation — indeed, I share it. They have gathered a great
armamentarium of hopeless wisdom — not enough to win them
their freedom, but enough to give them a glimpse of unfenced sky
and homeward highways. Enough for them to purloin a key from
their jailer while he dreamed of his own long-awaited return.”

The Cretched Man licked his lips again, and said, “There are
three locks. Such things always come in threes, except when they
come in sevens. The Learned Doctors have contrived to open two
of the three with the key. Two others from our world who wished
themselves to go have come over the last century. Now the Doctors
invest all their power and knowledge in opening the third in the
trinity.”

Tom thought of Uncle Barnabas, with his vests and funny little
sayings and his habit of leaping out of chairs to handle and clarify
what he could, as saviour of a world. Tom looked sideways at the
man beside him, the pallid man in the red coat that he could not
remove, as the gatekeeper who must refuse Uncle Barnabas and the
Yountians.

“Yes, Thomas,” said the Cretched Man, as if he had read Tom’s
mind. “I am constrained to retrieve the key. There is more. What
Barnabas McDoon can unlock, he can also re-lock. I cannot do that
myself, once the locks have been opened. He must re-lock the two
locks that have already been opened.”

Tom remembered the botched exchange in London. This time
there would be more men, more weapons.

“Yes,” said the Cretched Man, once again anticipating Tom’s
thought. “We will be ambushed at the Sign of the Ear, beyond doubt
or estimate. They will stop at nothing to ensure that the final lock is
unlocked. I must not let that happen, for their sake and for mine.”

“But there’s Sally and the fraulein, Uncle Barnabas and Sanford
on the other side,” exclaimed Tom, stopping again. Deep in his eyes,
the Cretched Man registered an infinite sadness.

“Thomas,” said the Cretched Man with a tenderness that Tom
did not want to hear. “We must make them understand that we are
all on the same side, despite appearances. All of us are Proetids,
wandering witless and mad for having insulted the divine, looking
for our saviour.”

Tom waved his arms at the sea, putting the whimbrel to flight. He
would have yelled but perhaps some of the Cretched Man’s sangfroid
was becoming part of his own constitution. They said little as
they walked back to the house with its little yard in front and the
kennel on the side. At the door, Jambres stopped. He winced, his
perfect brow and his unmatched nose marred by an equally perfect,
unmatched pain. Tom put his bandaged hand on the Cretched Man’s
shoulder to steady him. For the first time, he felt the blood coursing
through Jambres, and below the blood, much deeper, the wells of
anguish still to be emptied.

Jambres said, “The Yountians make their plight worse by
attempted flight. We must make them see this. Their sentence
cannot be completed until they fulfill all their obligations. Oh
Thomas! If your namesake could convince King Hyndopheres of the
passage to heaven, then so can we make the Yountians see!”

Tom left Jambres at the door and walked out on the heath, where
he came upon Billy Sea-Hen an hour later. Billy had a rifle in his
hand, and two of the rabbit-like creatures in his other hand.

“Afternoon,
Tommy,”
said
Billy,
swinging
his
bag
in
a
companionable way. “Shall miss the hunting when we leave, and our
baggins on the beach.”

“We’ll be leaving soon,” said Tom.

“Oh yes,” said Billy. “We knows that. Getting our rifles ready for
more than coney-hunting, if it comes to that.”

“But they’re my family on the other side,” said Tom.

“That’s a terrible fact, it is,” agreed Billy. “Caught betwixt a bear
and a lion, that is. But me and Tat’head have been thinking upon it,
and hope we can help avoid trouble.”

A late autumn wind soughed over the heather. A great bumblebee
sat on a gorse-flower, slowly flexing its wings. It lumbered off to
another flower and then flew away.

Billy followed its flight intently, and said, “The last dumbledore
until next spring!”

“A good sign?” said Tom.

“Chip chap chunter, indeed so! He’s a tough old bloke is the
dumbledore. We’re like him: rough and slow as it might seem, but
we’ll be here next spring. You’ll see.”

As they walked back to the spit on which the Minders had their
cottages, Tom pointed to the rifle and said, “Use it only when you
truly must.”

“Yet there may be true need, Tommy,” said Billy. “We aren’t
heading to Cockaigne with marzipan mountains and trees spun of
sugar. Could be some hard graft before we’re done. Just so’s you are
ready like.”

As the kelp-fire flared up on the shingle, Tom put his hand on
Billy’s shoulder so that they stopped just at the edge of the beach,
where the heather ran out and the sea kale began.

Tom said, “I will be ready. Just keep our heads about us, that’s
all I ask.”

“Depend upon it, Tommy Two-Fingers,” said Billy, who turned
and headed to the fire and the frying pan for the conies. Tom stayed
a moment longer on the edge of the beach. He looked past the
Minders as they prepared baggins. He looked past the
Seek-by-Night
as it bobbed at anchor. He looked far out to sea.

Well
, Tom thought.
If this doesn’t top all: a kidnapper is a hero, and
the prisoners must stay locked up for their own good, so Uncle Barnabas
must be stopped. And Sally sings ships out of the dark.

The Minders were calling him to the fire for their last baggins on
the beach before departing for Yount in the morning. Tom saluted
the darkening horizon with his maimed hand and walked down
to join the group. Picking up a mug of hot tea, Tom cast one more
thought out over the waters: “Sally, sister dear, sing us a song . . .
sing us all home.”

Spent, Sally slept much of the three weeks the
Gallinule
took to sail
from Oos to the Fences of Yount. She dreamed constantly, small
dreams only, the kind with no great power beyond the personal. She
thought of her dreams during the voyage out of voiceless entrapment
as small incidental scenes behind the main subject of a portrait. She
saw Mrs. Sedgewick sitting by a fireplace, reading. She saw the cook
and her niece in the kitchen at Mincing Lane, polishing the indigo
pheasant plates. Twice she saw the African woman in the old sailor’s
coat and red neckerchief, standing alone in an alley yard surrounded
by tall, drab buildings. Always she hoped for a glimpse of Tom or of
James Kidlington, but they did not come to her.