The Choir Boats (10 page)

“Maggie, baby eagle,
nwugo
,” she whispered. “Remember your
story. You were born to me in a place called Maryland, near the
Choptank River, on the Baird plantation. . . .”

“I know, Mama,” said Maggie, smiling. “I know. My father was as
strong and handsome as Quaco Sam. . . .”

“Yes, yes,
nwugo
,” said her mother, smiling back. “Oh yes, and as
smart as John who beat the Devil at the crossroads.”

“What happened to my father, Mama?” Always the question,
down through the years, always the same answer.

“He was from Africa, he had been a prince there, and he was
smarter than the
buckra
,” said her mother, smile fading. “When first
quail calls, he took you and me, and we slipped away, following the
drinking gourd in the sky. Oh, the
buckra
masters, they set dogs
after us and men with guns on horses, but your father was too smart
and we got away clean. From Bee-luther-hatchee we got.”

“But not to Ginny-gal, Mama? Not like we hoped?”

“No, we came to New York, a big city like London. You were so
small, so small, you could only walk a few steps, you were so young.
But New York is not safe either. The Baird masters have spies in New
York,
obala obala
, blood of blood, wicked men.”

Maggie’s mother stopped there. The wind howled. The Irish
children moaned in their half-sleep on the other side of the wall.
Maggie saw sweat on her mother’s brow.

“Mama, no more now.”

“No, we go on,
ndem mbu enyi
, women are as strong as elephants,”
said Maggie’s mother. She coughed for almost a minute after that
but continued. “After some by and by, we lived with another family
of colour, only they were always free. The Weatherbys took us in,
like Abraham and Sarah they took us in as strangers. Remember
that, Maggie, like Abraham and Sarah.”

Maggie held her mother tight, the old sailor’s jacket scrunched
up between them.

“One night some
buckra
beat on the Weatherby door,” whispered
Maggie’s mother. “‘Who there?’ says Mr. Weatherby. ‘Got a law
paper says we can take the Baird family. Are they there?’ comes back
a voice on the other side of the door. We changed our name when
we came to New York, but still they find us! He was easy to find, I
guess, your father, ’cause of his country marks. On his face. I told
you he was a prince in Africa. So the takers are at the Weatherby
door. ‘Quick,’ says your father. ‘Hide in the attic.’ You and me, little
eagle, we run upstairs and hide in the attic. ‘You too,’ I say, but your
father shakes his head. He going to deal with this so they cannot
take his family. Last time I see your father, he is looking up at me
from the foot of the stairs. ‘Hide,’ he says. So we do. I tell you not to
make a sound or the
buckra
will take us. You are so scared you bite
your hand until you bleed.”

Maggie looks at the scar between thumb and forefinger on her
left hand.

“Mr. Weatherby tried to keep those men out, but they smashed
a window. They came in. From the attic I heard fighting and yelling.
Almost I ran back down.”

The cold is so intense in the cellar that even the rat in the far
wall is quiet.

“Well, you know what happens. They took your father. He kept
you and me safe. But he never came back from Maryland; now he’s
in Bee-luther-hatchee.”

Maggie rocked her mother in her arms, hummed an old song
about Elisha feeding the Shunammite widow and bringing back
the dead. Maggie knew the rest of the story: how Maggie’s mother
had determined to leave the United States of America altogether,
how the Weatherbys and others in the free black community had
collected funds for Maggie and her mother to sail to London, where
Maggie’s mother had found work as a seamstress making simple
waistcoats and ticken breeches. When they’d registered at the local
parish in Wapping, they’d called themselves Collins, the name
of the captain of the ship that had landed them in London. For a
while they more than made ends meet. Maggie was able to attend
the parish charity school, where she learned to read and do her first
sums. People talked about that, a poor black girl who could read
and add, but Maggie did not care, though she learned to play dumb
when she needed to (which was often). For a year or two they lived
above ground and shared a real bed, not just a pallet on the floor,
and had meat three times a week. One Easter, Maggie’s mother had
bought them both bonnets and they had walked all the way to St.
Pammachius Underhill for the noon service, and had tea after at a
public garden. But then the war with Napoleon and the French got
worse, and harsh winters followed poor harvests, so working folks
got squeezed between unemployment and high prices. Maggie had
joined her mother at the seamstress’s establishment but still they
found themselves back in the cellar without enough money for a full
week’s coal.

Maggie’s mother was slipping into fever. “Ol’ Heeg from under
cottonwood roots is snatchin’ my breath,” she wheezed. “Ol’ Heeg
the witch-owl has a-got hold of my breath, Maggie.” Maggie thought
of the owl atop the pillar on the border of the spirit-land, the owl
that was looking for her.

“Hush, Mama, no owl has you.”

“Squinch owl, white as
buckra
men,” husked her mother. “No
Ginny-gal for us, just a dry-bone valley. But the King will fly back.
Take force by force, he sings, with his fiery army.
Uche chukwu ga-eme
, God’s will be done.”

Maggie nodded. The fire had almost gone out. The pile of
newspaper scraps and other rubbish was gone. Morning was still far
off. The wind roared as loudly as ever. Maggie looked at her delirious
mother, and knew what she had to do. Easing her mother full-length
onto the pallet, Maggie went to the wall nearest the bed (and farthest
from the rat-infested wall). She pried away several bricks and felt
for her most precious treasures: three books purchased for pennies
from the peddlers who went street to street, in the years when she
and her mother could afford bonnets at Easter. The books were old,
ragged, missing pages; they were the sort sold by the pound at estate
auctions, books that often ended up as filler for walls in the terrace
houses being built in London’s growing suburbs. To Maggie they
were more valuable than diamonds.

Even in the dark she knew each book by its shape and state of
disrepair. She had memorized each one. The first one she retrieved
was
The Elements of Algebra
by Nathaniel Hammond. “‘In a New and
Easy Method,’” Maggie chanted to herself. “‘With their Use and
Application, in the Solution of a great Variety of Arithmetical and
Geometrical Questions, by General and Universal Rules. Published
in 1752.’” Page by page she fed the book into the fire, which blazed
for a while, reflected in her mother’s half-shut eyes. When the fire
had died down, and her mother began coughing again, Maggie took
out the second book:
The Compleat Compting-house
by John Vernon,
published in 1719. Slowly she stripped out the pages, crumpling them
before placing them carefully onto the embers. She watched as the
flames jumped up to devour “the young Lad’s first Understanding of
plain Arithmetick” and “Tables for Calculation of Interest.”

Her mother would need medicine, though Maggie had no idea
how they would afford that. She would ask for extra piecework to
take home, and perhaps the parish would provide some relief. Until
the fever broke, Maggie would have to tend to her mother. She
prayed for the cold to diminish. She saw two eyes flash in the far
corner, a naked tail whisk into the shadows cast by the fire. The
heat had also revived the bedbugs, several of which crawled over the
blankets covering Maggie’s mother.

“Women are as strong as elephants,” said Maggie into the
dawning light. The wind was dying down a little but so was the fire.
Her mother coughed up thin greenish spittle, which Maggie wiped
off with a bit of rag from the pallet. Summoning her strength,
Maggie pulled out the third book. She could just read it in the half-darkness, but she did not need to, knowing it by heart.

“
Cocker’s Arithmetick
,” she breathed as an incantation. “‘Being
a plain and familiar Method for the full Understanding of that
incomparable Art. Being the fifty-first edition, printed in 1745 by R.
Ware, at the Bible and Sun, Amen Corner.’”

Rip, rip, went the pages. Maggie half-sang Cocker’s preface:
“‘. . . by studiously conferring with the Notes, Names, Orders,
Progress, Species, Properties, Proportions, Powers, Affections, and
Applications of Numbers delivered herein, become such Artists
indeed . . .’”

Maggie kept the fire going until mid-morning when the cold
weakened its grip, and her mother’s fever abated slightly. The rat
retreated into his wall. Just before she collapsed into sleep next to
her mother, Maggie looked at the ashes of her books and cried. She
had their knowledge in her head but they had been her only real
friends, and now they were gone. Just before she fell asleep, Maggie
thought of the white woman, the one about her own age with the nice
clothes in the big house, whom she had seen in her far-dreaming.

“That fancy white girl, whoever she is,” thought Maggie. “
She
did
not have to burn books this night just to stay warm.”

The McDoon household resumed its usual rhythm as the winter
of 1812 ebbed. Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Harris became fixtures at the
house on Mincing Lane. Lady Day and then Easter week came in late
March, followed by the feast of St. Alphege in April, and of course
May Day. The events of the winter seemed a dream, or a vision
seen through grimed, frosty windows. Absolutely nothing out of
the ordinary had happened since the night of the break-in. Sanford
brought this up to Barnabas one day in early May as they prepared
to go to the coffeehouse.

“That man in the coat and his dog,” said Sanford. “They’ve only
gone into hiding, lurking concealed while we lower our guard.”

Barnabas whirled about. “Lower our guard?! Not on your life!”
He brought his walking stick up in a posture of attack, catching the
edge of the Rodney picture and almost knocking it from the wall.

“Nevertheless,” said Sanford, righting the picture so Rodney
could beat the French on the level, “that’s what our enemy hopes for.
To lull us while they lie close and wait to strike like a viper.”

They discussed their defences on the way, with Harris strolling a
few feet behind them as if he had nothing whatsoever to do with them.
Still, other matters pressed in on them again, matters of business and
politics that swirled through the coffeehouse. Barnabas and Sanford
felt the urgency of Yount slipping from their minds.

Sally too struggled to keep Yount in her mind. She read and reread
passages from
Journies and Travells to Yount and the Realms Within
,
cross-examined her dreams for signs and symptoms of Yount. Yet
there seemed to be a narcotic force at work in her mind, smothering the
urgency, stilling her wish to go. She often found herself in the partners’
office, gazing listlessly at the sandalwood box, the book of Yount open
but unread on her lap. From Mincing Lane came the cries of London:

“Buy my brooms!”

“Holloway Cheese Cakes!”

“Coal man, coal man here!”

“Ripe sparagas!”

“Pens and ink, who will buy my pens?”

With these cries as a lullaby, Sally would nod off, Yount a muddle in
her mind.

Until one afternoon in early May, when Sally dreamed of — or was
visited by, she could not tell which — the Cretched Man while she dozed
in the partners’ office. She awoke suddenly, but may have dreamed
she was waking. Either way, she turned around in her chair, like a
recalcitrant cork being pulled from a bottle.

He stood there in his raddled coat and outdated hat, not four paces
away. So close. She saw every detail of that coat, all its patterns and
striations. She sensed a message in the patterns, began to discern a
calligraphy in the threads. The longer she looked, the more she thought
she understood the message, considered it a beacon luring the unwary
to a deadly shore. The buttons of that coat were silver, embossed with
a half moon. His hands were pale, finely groomed, with fingernails cut
to match the buttons. Against her will, Sally’s gaze moved up to the
Cretched Man’s face. She gasped.

He was beautiful. His eyes were a galvanic blue that shifted
to green. Nose, cheeks, lips, chin, forehead, all were perfectly
proportioned, like the statue of an ancient Roman. She hated
herself for thinking so, but, dear Lord, he was beautiful. He held
out his hands to her. They held gifts, two books. His expression
was that of one long-pained, one who seeks to spare another the
grief he himself has suffered. Involuntarily, she reached out to
take the books. The distance between them closed. Two paces
away. She smelled almonds. His eyes were enormous, trapping her.
He beckoned with the books. Sally took a halting step forward,
towards an infinite library behind The Cretched Man, miles of
shelved books reaching to the heavens. From the celestial archive
came the whispers of a thousand scholars, welcoming her if she
just accepted The Cretched Man’s gifts.