The Choir Boats (8 page)

“Settled then,” said Sanford. “The Naxes are not enemies, though
what sort of friends they might be is yet to be determined.”

The fourth visitor of the day used the dolphin knocker. At the
door was a tall man with big brown boots like farmers wear, pressing
to his head a floppy hat against the wind and the increasing snow.

“Today we admit no visitors,” said Sanford.

“No visit, sir,” said the man, with a noticeable Devonshire accent
(his “sir” sounded like “zahr”). “Message only. From Mr. de Sousa,
sir, by special delivery, as I am his confidential clerk.”

Sanford thought he had never seen a man less likely to be a City
merchant’s confidential clerk. He looked at the messenger’s huge
hands, thick and red like collops of meat, and could not imagine
those hands holding a pen. Though, he thought, they would be well-suited to other purposes. The man in the country boots handed
Sanford a letter.

“What’s your name?” asked Sanford.

“Harris, sir,” said the man, smiling easily so that his side-whiskers rippled. “Good day to you, sir.” Harris’s brown boots
ploughed through the muck on the cobblestones, and disappeared
past Dunster Court.

Sanford read the letter aloud:

January 22, 1812

Dear Mr. McDoon, with greetings to McDoon & Associates,

Last night’s unfortunate but inevitable events underscore the urgency of this business. Those who struck last night will strike again. We beg you, in all sincerity, to consider again what we discussed last week. Will you come tomorrow at noon to the Piebald Swan? Do not come on foot. Go to the hackney coach stand at the Minories near Tower Hill. Seek there Mr. Harris, who delivered this letter. He will escort you in a hackney coach that we have arranged for you. We will await you as before.

Your humble servant,

Oliveira de Sousa

P.S.: Be sure it is really Mr. Harris. You can best know him by his
Devonshire accent and his country boots.

Tom broke in before Barnabas could speak. “Oh, may I go too?”

Sanford and Barnabas were swift and united in their “no.”

“Think on it, Tom,” said Barnabas. “There’s a home here that’ll
need defendin’ while we’re away.”

Church bells tolled the hour across the City, hard to hear above
the increasing storm. By some trick of the wind, the bells of St.
Margaret Pattens were heard over all the others. Barnabas sang to
himself the old rhyme:

“Bull’s eyes and targets, Say the bells of Saint Mar’grets.”

By the time the bells had spoken of bull’s eyes and targets three
times, he was back commanding a ship of the line, ordering grapeshot
loaded into the cannons. Then the bells stopped, and nothing but
the wind was heard, shaking the panes and going “flonk, flonk,
flonk” across the chimney-top.

Holding Isaak in her lap, Sally spoke into the sound of the wind.
“You gave Uncle Barnabas three reasons, Mr. Sanford, but you have
only told us two.”

Sanford smiled, an alarming sight. “Ah, Miss Sally, ever attentive,
as some apprentices I know might be more often. Third reason:
Yount itself. Ridiculous concept. Unproven, probably unprovable,
attack or no attack.”

“Yet there it is,” said Barnabas. “We all long to go . . . to a place
we’ve never heard of, let alone seen!”

“Except it feels as if we
have
been there,” said Sally, her eyes
focussed beyond the wind outside, her voice getting softer yet more
determined. “A place we knew before we had words, someplace we
have lost and must get back to. The corner of a garden, with a little
fountain spilling its water and leaves falling from trees overhanging
the wall . . .”

Everyone pondered Sally’s words.

“Bittersweet,” thought Sanford. “Imperfect memory.”

“A garden, Sally?” said Barnabas. “I like that. Oh, very much I
do. How I feel every spring when we first turn the earth out back.
Or rather more how I feel now, in winter, as I imagine what is to
come. Say, maybe we should try planting smilax this year, what?”
Barnabas thought also of a garden long ago in Bombay, but did not
speak of it now.

“Makes me feel sad and joyful all at once somehow,” said Tom.
“How is that possible?”

“
Sehnsucht
,” said Sally. “
Sehnsucht
, German for this longing
after a place we aren’t even sure exists. Cannot be translated into
English, not fully anyway. Fraulein Reimer uses it. When we talk
about Hamburg.”

“Ah, smilax in a garden,” said Barnabas. “Ah, well . . . I suppose . . .
Sanford, we’ll go tomorrow to the Naxes, but just to hear them out . . .
no commitments. We cannot abandon everything, the business, the
house, our home, to travel to a place no one has ever heard of, not
without a great deal more explanation.”

“Uncle,” said Sally. “You know you wish to go. We all do. Even
you, Mr. Sanford.”

Barnabas gripped the key in his pocket. “I know, my dear Sally,
but nothing is that simple. None of this is according to Cocker! What
becomes of McDoon & Associates if we leave?”

“The Naxes will have a plan for that, surely.”

“Yes, perhaps, but their first plan, well, less said about that, the
better. Besides, the danger is here, Sally, against this house, our
house. Why fly headlong into danger when it has found us right here?
The brutes, hurting you like that, why, to think of it makes me . . .
makes me . . .”

Sally squeezed his hand. No Sankt Jakobi when Uncle Barnabas
was here getting ready to “handle ’em.”

Barnabas smiled at his niece. He thought of the one thing he
and Sanford had not talked about with Tom and Sally: the claim the
Naxes made that going to Yount would yield Barnabas’s heart’s desire.
The thought that they might be able to bring her back to him . . .
no, it simply could not be possible and, even if it were, surely there
would be a price to pay, some favour or service or even money. No, it
did not bear thinking about.

“Deadly cold this morning, sirs,” said Harris, the tall Devonshire
man, when Barnabas and Sanford appeared the next morning at the
hackney coach stand. “Beggars found frozen in Islington doorways,
crows burrowing into dungheaps to stay warm, a bitter night but we
hopes a warmer day, right, sirs?”

“You are . . . ?” said Barnabas.

“Harris, sir,” said the tall man.

“Not your real name, I’ll be bound,” said Barnabas.

“No, sir, now that you ask, not rightly,” said the man in the big
brown boots. “But I come by it honest, as it was my mother’s name
before she married my father.”

“It will answer then,” said Barnabas. “You
are
from Devonshire,
or else you are a damned fine play-actor.”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” said Harris. “True Devonshire, through and
through.”

Sanford asked, “Who is the coachman?”

Harris stepped to the front of the coach, rapped on the coachman’s
boot.

A small man in a great cape leaned down, touched his hat, and
said, “Morning, my gentlemen. I rejoice in the name of Fletcher.” The
accent was all London East End.

Barnabas put two hands on the ferrule of his walking stick, planted
firmly in front of him, and put the clarifying tone in his voice.

“Fletcher, is it?”

“Well, chip chap chunter, I’m no arrowsmith if that is what
you are driving at, sir,” replied the coachman before Barnabas had
finished his question. “But where’s the fun, much less the profit, in
using the name that’s scribbled in the parish book on the date when
this body was baptized?”

Under his hat, Fletcher winked. Barnabas and Sanford could not
decide whether to be amused or affronted. Fletcher caught their
look, and grew serious in an instant.

“Solemn like,” he said, pulling back his cape to reveal two pistols
and a knife strapped to his body. “Fletcher is as comfortable a cloak
as this here one I am wearing, and just as serviceable against windy
fingers and sniffing dogs. I am here to protect the quality against
footpads, chowsers, varlets, and squoriers. Why, if Dick Turpin
himself rode up against us, he’d not ride off again.”

“God’s truth,” agreed Harris.

“Well met then,” said Barnabas, and they set off in the coach for
the Piebald Swan.

“Welcome,” said Salmius Nalmius. “Today is no day for a visit but
there you are, cannot be helped!”

Nexius Dexius appeared with a pot of hot chocolate, saying, “I
meet you in a minute upstairs. First, chocolate to Mr. Fletcher and
Mr. Harris, who will wait outside in the mews.”

Upstairs, Barnabas admired the prints on the wall. “Beans and
bacon,” he said. “This is a fine one. But what is the tale here?”

Salmius Nalmius said, “Ah, a favourite, a story from your world . . .
do you not know it? The man riding the dolphin is Arion, a musician
threatened by pirates. They were going to kill him, so he jumped
overboard. The dolphin saved him, carried him to land, where later
Arion got justice from the pirates. A good story.”

“What about these?” asked Barnabas, pointing to a row of old-fashioned prints depicting beached whales.

“Old Dutch pictures,” said Salmius Nalmius. “With meaning for
us from Yount. Whales and dolphins are special friends of ours. You
will learn this when you come. To see them run ashore like this is a
terrible thing, a tragedy. We honour them.”

Barnabas looked at the great creatures on the shore, flukes in
the air, mighty mouths agape, with people swarming about. In one
picture a man stood on the head of the whale. In another, a small
dog played with its owners by the side of the dying sea-mammoth.
The engraver had done a particularly good job on one picture: the
eye of the whale seemed to plead with the viewer for time, love, and
caution.

Sanford had been looking out the window while the connoisseurs
admired the prints. He watched Nexius Dexius talking with Harris
and Fletcher. He looked at the sky. Not even a rook was up, with the
wind starting again. Yet Sanford thought he saw shadows sliding
over the roofs, angle around chimney-pots and corbels. He turned
back to the room as Nexius Dexius came up the stairs.

The captain from Yount carried a rifle of strange design, which
he placed by the door. “I will . . .” said Nexius Dexius. “I shall have . . .”
Stumbling over the conditional, he looked at his brother.

“Would have?” said Salmius Nalmius.

“Would have asked Mr. Harris and Mr. Fletcher to come inside,”
said Nexius Dexius. “It is hard cold outside. But our men must guard
out there. You were followed part way.”

“What do they know of Yount?” asked Barnabas.

“Enough to know how important their services are,” said Salmius
Nalmius. “Harris and Fletcher are estimable men. They work for
more than their pay. They have each their own reasons for joining
our fight. Trust them.”

The word “trust” hung in the air. Each man sipped at his chocolate,
indulged in the warmth of the fire for a moment. Barnabas stroked
his vest (a pale yellow nankeen), cleared his throat.

“Buttons and beeswax,” he said. “First, Mr. Sanford and I owe
you an apology, if we offended on our last visit. Events and your
rhetoric moved in unlikely avenues, caught us off balance. Second,
we also owe you our gratitude for your appearance in the alley the
night before last. A tight spot that was, not clear how we might have
fared without your help. Thank you.”

The Naxes inclined their heads, touched their caps.

“So now, here we are,” finished Barnabas.

The fire crackled. Outside the wind murmured.

“You still have questions,” said Salmius Nalmius.

“Yes,” said Barnabas. “There’s a Cretched Man and a Wurm who
want the key in my pocket. There’s a place called Yount and you’re
from there. Sanford and I are ready to concede all that, even though
saying so much in public would have us locked up in Bedlam.”

He paused.

“Beans and . . .” he began. “We wish to go, make no mistake. It’s
just that this is our home, don’t you see? McDoon & Associates,
Mincing Lane, the City . . . we cannot just leave our home. Especially
with it being attacked. Running off seems like running away. No.
We won’t let them drive us away.”

Another pause.

“Besides,” said Barnabas. “Why can’t we send the key with you to
Yount? It’s the key they want, right?”

Salmius Nalmius shook his head. “No, it is not just the key they
need. Or that we need. It’s the holder of the key as well. The key
and the holder, together. One without the other is useless. The
lock won’t open without both. My dear Barnabas, you must come
to Yount or all our hopes are naught.”

“Look,” said Sanford, his Norfolk accent more pronounced than
usual. “I’m just an old moke from Mousehold Heath, but there is
more here than you reveal.”

Salmius Nalmius sighed. “Yes, but what we hold back is for your
own good. And in truth there is much that neither I nor my brother
understand of these events. We are, like you, just small threads in
the grand weaving.”

Nexius Dexius poured more chocolate, then paced to the window.
He stood there for some time.

Barnabas spoke again. “The letter spoke of my heart’s desire.
What about that? How could you even know . . . ?”

The merchant from Yount held out his palms, touched his thumbs
to the forefingers then the little fingers. His dark eyes were bright
in the firelight. “This is beyond me too,” he said. “But I know it to
be true. The Learned Doctors in Yount understand. They will make
it happen. All I know, all I have been told, is that you once long ago
had . . . a liaison . . . a connection with a merchant’s daughter in India,
a connection that was severed before it properly had a chance to
grow. Am I not right?”

Barnabas nodded. Sanford, the “old moke,” stared straight at
Salmius Nalmius.

“How your love — may I use that word? — for this woman is
involved in our business, that I do not know,” said Salmius Nalmius.
“Nor do I know how you are to be reunited with her. All I know is
that this is what is supposed to occur, all linked to the key and your
carriage of it to Yount.”