The Choir Boats (43 page)

Sally remembered a man who had fallen off a roof on Dunster
Court by Mincing Lane. He had survived but could not remember
his name or where he lived.

Reglum brightened and said, “But enough of the mournful and
solemn! Now we eat — I could eat an entire star-duck stuffed with
pears! — and enjoy the pageant and pantomimes and all the other
entertainments. See, Barnabas,
kjorraw
breakfast is like a gigantic
poisille
, not too sweet, not too bitter. Try the rice-and-thyme cakes
dipped in honey, for example.”

The McDoons enjoyed the rest of the day’s festivities, but were
aware that, everywhere they went, they were the centre of attention,
however surreptitiously or politely people looked at them. They
laughed at what they understood of the comic skits and staged
fables: the story of the addled brill, a flatfish who fell in love with
the reflection of the moon (“Which is why we speak of needing more
than one eye in matters of the heart,” said Dorentius, with a wink at
Reglum), the tale of the dog who wanted to swim with the dolphins,
and that of the human mother who raised two bear-cubs and how
the bears thanked her.

They tried to follow the duels in which competitors traded
traditional proverbs in search of the most ingenious and illuminating
ripostes, and the riddling contests, and the competition to create
epigrams extemporaneously. They listened to the Rescue Stories, told
especially to the young, real examples of bravery and camaraderie
in the Lands In-Between. They enjoyed the music, joining in where
they could on “Far Benison, the Sainted Seas” and “The Sun We Hail
with Song Profound.” In the evening they attended a performance
of “The Carnation on the Mast,” a classic drama about the
Lanner
,
a Yount Major frigate that sacrificed itself to save a city during the
War of the Affirmation — “Remember the
Lanner
,” they roared with
the rest of the audience at the curtain call.

Several days later the McDoons celebrated Christmas. Yount Great-Port had, besides two mosques and one synagogue, three churches:
one Roman Catholic, one Lutheran (run by the Pietists), and one
shared by several other Protestant denominations, all serving the
small communities of Karket-soomi who had come to Yount one
way or the other, plus a handful of converts from the Sabo-soomi.
Sanford had misgivings but agreed that finding a service at all so
far from home was commendable and that they could all be excused
for liturgical inexactitudes under the circumstances. In fact, as
Barnabas pointed out, the McDoons could feel doubly righteous
since they attended not only the rather shambolic Anglican service
but also the well-ordered Lutheran one, having been invited by
Fraulein Reimer’s sister on behalf of the entire congregation.

“She sings beautifully, the little one there with the unkempt hair
and the light in her eyes,” whispered Sally to the fraulein as they
listened to the children’s choir perform J.S. Bach’s “
Ach wie Fluechtig, Ach wie Nichtig.
”

The fraulein smiled but said nothing.

Afterwards, the McDoons held a private Christmas dinner in their quarters. As far as any of them could remember, it was the
first time they had gathered without at least one Yountian present
since they had boarded the
Gallinule
in Cape Town, or maybe even
since boarding the
Essex
almost eighteen months earlier. They
realized that it would soon be the year 1814 back in England, that
they often forgot which saint’s day it might be, and that they missed
Mincing Lane terribly, no matter how much they had longed to come
to Yount.

“Figs and feathers,” said Barnabas, wearing his now-stained
buff-coloured nankeen vest and frayed quince-coloured stockings.
“What I would not give for some of the cook’s best for our Christmas
feast!”

“Roast goose!” said Tom.

“At least Fraulein Reimer has been able to make us her traditional
plum tart,” said Sanford, bowing to the fraulein.

They spent the next minutes saying things like “Remember
the time you . . . ?” and “I wonder if Yikes has moved from the
hearthside?” and “Has Mr. Fletcher proposed to the cook’s niece yet,
do you think?” Each in his or her mind’s eye saw the print of Lord
Rodney attacking the French, the dolphin door-knocker and the blue
trim around the windows, the bean-poles in the garden surrounded
by blue bixwort. Each heard the call of rooks and the cries of the
oysterman, the milk seller, and the broommaker in the streets.

Only one person at table was dry-eyed, the sixth, their only
guest: Afsana. Sally caught the look of feigned indifference and real
scorn in Afsana’s eye, like the look of a beggar with her face pressed
against the glass of an elegant tavern or food shop. Sally moved to
curtail their crawl towards self-pity.

“Hear now,” Sally said. “Let us toast this feast and our being
together . . . and welcome our cousin.”

“Hear, hear,” said Tom, more loudly than he needed to. Everyone
raised their glasses. Barnabas, striving to please his daughter, had
banned alcohol from the table. Although he thought nothing would be
finer at the moment than a little toddy or punch, he hoisted his mulled
pear juice and said “Hear, hear” even more loudly than Tom had.

“Thank you,” said Afsana. “Most certainly my first Christmas
dinner. You do know that we honour Jesus in the Koran?”

Before Sanford could explore that topic, Sally said, “We need to
talk about our plans. Thank . . . heavens we have our Tom back, but
our task here is not fully done. Uncle Barnabas opened the Door but
we could not keep it open. To do that, we must help in other ways.”

“How?” said Sanford.

Before Sally could reply, Afsana said, “War is coming with Orn.
They have been talking about that since I arrived. I feel that we have
a role to play in that conflict.”

“Is that our conflict or theirs?” said Sanford. “Besides, we are
merchants, not warriors.”

“It is our conflict if it is part of liberating Yount, helping them
find their way home,” said Afsana. Sally was not the only one who
noticed that Afsana said “our.” No one spoke to Sanford’s second
point, but the Londoners thought of Barnabas challenging the
Cretched Man in the church ruins and Sanford himself attacking the
carkodrillos and Tom losing two fingers against a leaping monster
and . . . the fraulein standing with a smoking pistol over a woman
bleeding to death.

The fraulein said, “I have feet in both worlds. I think Afsana is
right.”

Sally leaned down to give Isaak a scrap of star-duck, and said,
“I agree. A war with Orn, if war comes, is tied somehow to Yount’s
ultimate freedom.”

Tom nodded. He saw Jambres on the
Seek-by-Night
, its blood-dappled moon flag fluttering, and he saw Billy Sea-Hen tipping his hat
as he walked unbowed into darkness to confront a monstrous owl.

“Thomas,” Tom murmured with a slight Wapping accent. “Tommy
Two-Fingers.”

Sally caught Tom’s emotion and pushed her point further, saying,
“The Learned Doctors called us. The Arch-Bishop and others among
them may regret that now, thinking they have unleashed more than
they wished for — which may be right. But the main point is still
unresolved: how to end Yount’s captivity.”

Sanford wiped his hands of duck grease with a thoroughness
that suggested he was cleansing himself of something else, and said,
“I wished myself to come but only to help Barnabas find his heart’s
desire — and to rescue Tom-lad. Now that he is rescued and we are all
well, I say that we should leave this place and its troubles to itself.”

Isaak moved stealthily beneath their feet, hunting scraps,
wrestling with bones, but otherwise all was still.

Barnabas said at last, “
Quatsch
. Sanford has a point, you know.
Sally . . . ?”

Sally sat long in thought before she answered. “Sanford . . . I love
you as I love my uncle. Your counsel is always good, we have always
listened, but think on it: if Tom wishes to remain, would you still
wish to return home?”

Tom swallowed hard and said, “Sanford — second father — I cannot
leave yet. We have a thing to do here that must be done. And I believe
the Cretched Man will return to our aid . . . Yes, hear me out! . . .
and when he does, with his soldiers, well, I need to be there.”

Sanford said no more, looking convinced of neither the one thing
nor the other. Barnabas said little more but his eyes made it plain
that, if Afsana remained in Yount, then so too would he for now.

“Let us agree on this much then,” said Sally. “We cannot leave in
any event until the first tough ship sails in the spring. That is at least
three, possibly four months, hence. Much can happen in that time.”

The McDoons, now including Afsana, all nodded. Isaak jumped
from the floor into Sally’s lap, and put her head up over the table,
scanning for scraps, sweeping everyone with her invincible and
haughty gaze, daring all comers with her outthrust chin. Everyone
laughed.

“Besides,” said Tom, as they left the table. “We are going to stage
Buskirk’s ‘Hero of the Hills’ at the Marine soiree in the spring. We
cannot leave before we do that!”

Again everyone laughed, including Afsana, who had that morning
accepted Tom’s invitation to perform opposite him in the play.

The McDoons would look back later at the next three months as
being nearly idyllic, though they hardly thought so at the time.

Barnabas and Afsana continued their daily conversations in the
Winter Garden. Afsana and Sally spoke frequently, and Tom found
many excuses to join them or to make sure his daily routine included
being where Afsana might be at a given moment. Not every meeting
between Afsana and the other McDoons, especially Barnabas, was
an unqualified success but, on the whole, the two sides continued
to creep towards reconciliation. Watching Barnabas and Afsana
gesticulating as they spoke to one another, Sally, at the other end
of the garden, thought that Afsana “clarified” as well as any other
McDoon.

“When the English were still using wood for coins and did not
know how to count in a ledger book,” Sally heard Afsana lecturing in a
tone that was not unfamiliar to those who had heard Sally’s lectures,
“Ibn Hawqual and Al-Muqaddasi and Ibn-Majid were charting and
sailing the trade routes from the Malabar Coast to Penang and from
Socotra to the Bengal!” Watching her cousin handle Barnabas, Sally
had no doubt that Afsana could sail with Lord Rodney, and had no
doubt that Barnabas knew this too.

The winter was very cold, without much snow but racked by dry
gales. Pack-ice crept into the northern waters, making navigation
hazardous, so the departure of the first tough ship of the year, the
Pratincole
, was delayed until Plassy-Month (which is early April).
The only advantage of the dry weather was the lack of cloud cover,
so that Sally was able to scan the heavens at night, “lunaticking”
as Tom called it. As many evenings as she could, and for as long
as she could withstand the cold, Sally — sometimes with Reglum,
sometimes also with Afsana and Tom — would stand on the rooftop
and search the sky. She marvelled at the strange constellations,
which Reglum identified for her: The Oarsman, The Physeter or
Spouting Whale, The Dabchick, The Mother-Dragon, and dozens of
others, an entire sky full.

“And there,” Reglum added one evening. “Two that mariners
know from Karket-soom: what you call Sirius, the Dog Star (which
we name The Wolf’s Eye, which is near enough), and Ermandel’s Toe
(which we call simply The Thumb). No one can explain how these
two stars appear in both Karket-soom and Sabo-soom — in fact, can
be tracked through many of the places in the Interrugal Lands. Like
the starlight rainbow . . . something inexplicable.”

The wind made Sally’s ears hurt as Ermandel’s Toe gleamed
without flickering. “Of course,” said Reglum, laughing, “old
Dorentius has a theory about it — but then he always does!”

Sally was intrigued by the concept of a starlight rainbow, wanting
to know more about the device for measuring and capturing the
stellar spectrum, how it worked, how it recreated the light on
sensitive paper and so on. Reglum was happy to talk about what
he saw as a clever toy without much application. Sally saw in her
mind’s eye a mechanical finger for drawing star-colours on paper,
an indexical to draft the stars into artistic service. She wondered if
it could be used on moonlight as well.

Tonight a half-moon should have begun to rise when Reglum
pointed out the Dog Star and Ermandel’s Toe. Sally stared at the
spot where the moon ought to be but wasn’t, willing it to appear but
to no avail.

“Like Rapunzel,” murmured Sally to herself. “Easing the tedium
of captivity by pacing the rooftop, her hair reflecting the moonrise.
Chanting to herself, ‘Stars up above and thorns down below, the
prince’s arrival was cumbered and slow.’”

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” said Reglum.

“Oh, nothing, Reglum,” said Sally, flushing as she thought of
James Kidlington.

The weather was not the only reason they stayed the entire
time in Yount Great-Port and limited themselves to a few places
within the city: after the events at the Temple and the
kjorraw
,
they were objects of continuous scrutiny whenever they went out
in the streets. Most of the attention was welcoming but even that
was overwhelming. A cobbler (a woman, Sally noted, still adjusting
to the idea) would press a pair of boots on the McDoons, a baker a
cake, parents would hoist children to see them, work would stop as
people looked out of windows and doors, and all before the Karket-soomi had gone one hundred yards down any lane or street in the
Great-Port. And some of the attention was less welcoming: a scowl,
a hardened gaze, people furtively whispering to one another in the
rows farthest from the McDoons; nothing overt but always the
susurrus of suspicion ran with them. The McDoons soon kept to
themselves, venturing out only with Marine escorts in carriages
within what became a limited circuit of visits.