The Choir Boats (37 page)

Sally looked up from the floor. Behind her stood Fraulein Reimer,
holding a smoking pistol. She followed the probable trajectory of the
fraulein’s shot, and found herself looking at two bodies on the floor:
Reglum and the woman with the tube. Neither moved. The tube lay
a few feet from the woman’s outstretched hand. Reglum’s sword,
unbloodied, lay on the other side of their bodies.

“Reglum!” Sally yelled. “Reglum!”

Dorentius Bunce ran up, bounded over Sally, shouting. He slid
on his knees to Reglum Bammary, his Oxonian rival, his
hatmoril
.
Dorentius, a head shorter than the tall lieutenant, heaved Reglum
off the woman. There was blood on Reglum’s shoulder.

“Oh
Kaskas
!” yelled Dorentius. “Oh Dear Mother!”

Sally, half-blind, ran to the pile of bodies. Reglum opened his
eyes. He groaned and swore. Dorentius yelled for help. Reglum
looked at Sally, tried to speak, locked her gaze on him. Nexius stood
over them.

“Look,” Nexius said. “She’s dead. Shot dead.” He pointed to a
gaping wound in her neck, and a spreading pool of blood on the floor.
Nexius raised his head, pointed at Fraulein Reimer. “The Reimer hit
her before she could fire.”

Reglum tried to sit up, fell back with a gasp. Blood ran from his
shoulder. Nexius knelt down. “You’ve been hit, Lieutenant Bammary,
clipped in the shoulder by the bullet that killed the Learned Doctor,”
he said. “Broke the top of your shoulder blade, it looks like. Painful.
Lie back. Here’s help.” He and Dorentius eased Reglum back, pressing
the wound to stop the bleeding. Sally heard a crunching sound from
Reglum’s torn shoulder.

Marines with a stretcher took Reglum outside. Dorentius
went with him. Sally wanted to follow but Nexius, hands red with
Reglum’s blood, waved her back. All around were Marines disarming
Sacerdotal Guards and pointing weapons at the Learned Doctors.
The Arch-Bishop walked up to Nexius.

“This is sacrilege,” said the Arch-Bishop, in a tone that would
congeal fire. “You will be imprisoned for this, Captain, if not
worse.”

Nexius said nothing but appraised the Learned Doctor and Chief
Sacerdote with a calmly belligerent look.

“Oh,” Nexius said at last. “Sacrilege, yes. But not by me or mine.
You have much to answer for, using a weapon that is forbidden, and
in the Temple of all places.”

“Don’t act the Dusiflux with me, Captain,” said the Arch-Bishop.
“No righteous indignation about a weapon that your Marines covet
for themselves.”

Nexius shook his head. “You truly misunderstand us, Arch-Bishop, for which I am sorry.” Nothing could have enraged the Arch-Bishop more, which was, of course, Nexius’s intent. Before the Arch-Bishop could retort, Nexius waved up his troops and ordered the
Arch-Bishop and the other Learned Doctors taken to their carriages
and kept under guard. When he was done, Nexius turned to the
McDoons. His face was suddenly weary, his voice mournful.

“He is right about one thing,” Nexius said, shaking his head.
“This is sacrilege. We have spilled blood, blood of our own people, in
the Mother’s Temple.”

“What happened?” said Barnabas.

“It may take a while for us to know,” said Nexius. He walked over
to the body of a Sacerdotal Guard, a young woman, arms splayed,
her rifle still gripped in her hand. Two Marines bent down to pick
her up.

“Gently,” Nexius said. “Honour her as a fallen comrade. This
should not have happened.” As the Marines took her body away,
Nexius lowered his voice and said, “They were better equipped, but
the Marines were better trained.”

Nexius walked to Fraulein Reimer, who stood staring at the
Learned Doctor wreathed in blood on the floor. Sanford had one
arm around her. The other McDoons gathered round. Nexius took
the pistol from the fraulein’s hand.

“A clean, honest shot, made in your own defence,” the Captain
Emeritus said. “You saved Sally’s life, maybe the lives of us all. Hitting
Lieutenant Bammary was an accident of war. He will understand.”

Fraulein Reimer looked up with tears in her eyes. She shook
her head, mumbled something in German, crossed herself. Sally
and Tom embraced her, then led her outside. Nexius saluted the
McDoons and moved away to complete the clean-up of the Temple.
Noreous Minicate walked to the McDoons and said, “Come, let’s
go to the carriages for the journey home. We have had enough of
legend-making for one day.”

In the carriage, Sally opened the basket where Isaak had been
kept while they were in the Temple. “
Tes muddry
,” said Sally, and
burst into tears.

“Like the Ornish,” the Queen said in the way that only a sovereign
can speak. “We have behaved like the Ornish, defiling the Mother’s
Temple.”

The Arch-Bishop returned her look. He stood in the audience
hall, not the small reception room where the McDoons had first met
Her Majesty. Over one hundred people filled the room: the heads
of the major Optimate houses, the deans of the Learned Doctors,
the Tragiarchs of the Gremium for Guided Knowledge, senior
officers from the Marine & Army, councillors from the Collegium.
The Queen’s ministers sat behind her, with the chief justices of the
Royal Courts flanking her. The Lord-Chancellor sat at her side. The
McDoons sat at a table of their own. Outside the hall swarmed the
writers of libelles and broadsheets, eager to interview the departing
dignitaries and to be the first with the news for a public clamouring
for information about the events at the Sign of the Ear. Also outside,
and just as keen for news, were diplomats from the Free City of
Iquajorance, from The Land of the Painted Gate, and from the
Ornish Coerceries.

“Surely Your Majesty recognizes the rationale for what the Learned
Doctors did,” said the Arch-Bishop.

“If I did, Arch-Bishop, I would not have asked you here today to
answer my questions,” replied the Queen.

So the exchange went for over an hour. Besides the Learned
Doctor whom Fraulein Reimer had killed, six Sacerdotal Guards
had died and three Marines, with Reglum Bammary and others
wounded. Each side accused the other of firing first. The Wurm-Owl’s appearance and the disappointment of having the door closed
were cited as explanatory factors: it was said the owl’s malevolence
had gusted into the soldiers’ heads, deluding them, caused panic
and misjudgement. (Left unspoken was the long-standing rivalry
between the Marines and the Sacerdotal Guards, symptomatic of
the deeper and even more tacit rivalry between the Chamber of
Optimates and the Royal House.) Each side blamed the other for the
failure to keep the door open.

“The Karket-soomi were bewitched by the Cretched Man,” cried
the Arch-Bishop. “The boy, the Key-bearer’s nephew, spoke on the
Cretched Man’s behalf!”

The crowd buzzed. All eyes moved from the Arch-Bishop to the
McDoons and back again. Sensing his advantage, the Arch-Bishop
turned to the assembly and raised his voice as if he were preaching
a sermon, which, in effect, he was. He said: “The Cretched Man had
poisoned the boy’s mind, turned him against us. We feared a dire
alliance, were forced to use drastic means to remind the Key-bearer
of his duty. The Marines clearly supported the boy and the Key-bearer in their willingness to abide by the Cretched Man. We acted
to save our colleagues from dereliction of duty!”

Nexius was on his feet, along with a half-dozen other Marine
officers. Sally would have laughed at the pugnacity of the short,
absented-minded Dorentius Bunce and the slender, nervous-fingered
Noreous Minicate but for the cold fire in their eyes. (She knew how
Reglum would react if he were here instead of recuperating in the
lazarette; she had a sudden sharp memory of him leaping in front
her, yelling madly and sweeping out his sword.) The hall erupted in
shouts, the Lord-Chancellor called for order, and members of Her
Majesty’s Household Guard banged their rifle-butts on the floor to
remind everyone where they were.

The Queen pondered the Arch-Bishop’s allegations but focussed
on the issue of the tube-weapon the Learned Doctors had wielded.

“The Verniculous Blast is forbidden,” she said. “By our own law
and by our treaty with the Coerceries of Orn. You defied the law.”

“In the name of a higher necessity,” said the Arch-Bishop. “Our
law allows, even requires, such actions when undertaken for the
greater and higher good.”

So it went for many more hours. The judges thumbed through
codices and pandects, the Optimates debated, the Major-Captain
defended Nexius and the Marines. In the end, the enquiry was
inconclusive as such proceedings often are: any higher truth that
might have been abstracted from the strange events at the Temple
was thoroughly enmeshed in human error. The Queen was advised
that neither law nor politics would make it easy to ascertain
culpability, and that more would probably be lost than gained in the
attempt. Zinnamoussea had not been Queen for over two decades
for naught, and she was a Hullitate to boot. She issued a ruling that
avoided further crisis while putting the Learned Doctors on notice.

“No charges will be brought against either the Marines or the
Sacerdotal Corps, provided each drops the complaints against the
other,” she said. “With one exception: the Learned Doctors shall be
fined for possession of and attempted use of the Verniculous Blast,
and must surrender that technology to the Crown immediately,
while foreswearing future possession.”

The Arch-Bishop glared at the Queen but held his tongue. Many
among the Optimates did the same thing.

“No charges will be brought against any soldier for discharging
his or her weapon in the Temple or for the consequences thereof,”
said the Lord-Chancellor. “The fallen will be given state funerals,
and will be buried, not in the cemeteries of each corporation, but
intermixed in a special section of the Royal Burying Grounds.” The
Arch-Bishop and the Major-Captain shared a dislike for the last
provision but admired begrudgingly the political finesse of the
offering: the families of the fallen were being afforded the highest
possible honour.

The Lord-Chancellor clapped her hands and said, “As her final
ruling in this matter, the Queen requires the Sacerdotal Corps to
hand over the key to the Royal House for safekeeping.” Before his
arrest by Nexius in the Temple, the Arch-Bishop had been careful to
extract the key from the keyhole. Nexius had been careful to notice
the Arch-Bishop doing so.

The Sacerdotes and many of the Optimates roared their dismay
but the military and the merchants and others of the Optimates
roared louder their approval. The Queen turned to the McDoons
and said, “Before we close this enquiry, and send our prayers of
thanks to the fallen, and our pleas for forgiveness to the Mother, let
us consider for a moment the remarkable bravery and astounding
accomplishments of the Key-bearer and his companions from
London in far-off Karket-soom.”

All heads strained to see Barnabas and the others. Nexius spoke in
simple terms, a soldier’s description, of what had happened from the
time the door opened to the time the Wurm-Owl flew back into the
moon. The Arch-Bishop interjected with different interpretations,
more florid and elaborate than Nexius’s account, but otherwise the
audience hall was silent. Those waiting outside pressed their ears to
the great doors.

The Queen stood up and made a great circle with her right hand,
then bowed to the McDoons, and made a great circle with her left
hand and bowed again. “In the name of the Trees and the Great
Mother,” said the Queen, “we thank you for wishing yourselves to
come to Yount, and we beg forgiveness for the pains and sorrow we
have caused you.” One by one, with greater or lesser enthusiasm,
every person in the audience hall rose to bow to the McDoons.
The McDoons looked around the room and were embarrassed and
doubtful and a little bit angry all at once. Barnabas said, “
Quatsch
,”
and rose to make a speech, but Dorentius Bunce, who was translating
for them, pulled him back down, saying, “Not necessary here, old
chap; save your speech for private talk.”

Barnabas had plenty to say in private: “What an earful that was,
some of the best clarifyin’ I have ever seen, or the worst, depending
on your point of view. That rascally bishop and his crew pretty
much had their way, especially seeing as how they started it all by
bringing that what-did-you-call-it forbidden weapon! And then they
complained about being dealt with unfairly! Hah, and what about
us, then? Rushin’ through unnatural wind and down strange roads
to get here, to save them, and then the Learned Doctors try to kill
us, not to mention we almost get eaten for their sake by an owl the
size of an elephant. It’s all topsy-turvy now, and I almost feel sorry
for the Cretched Man, which makes no sense at all!”

The other McDoons nodded vehemently. Sanford asked, “What
was
the weapon the Doctors brought?”