The Choir Boats (11 page)

Sally wrenched her gaze away. The Cretched Man shook his
head, smiled. She detected a hundred emotions in that smile. His
face was too white. His teeth were too white. The smell of almonds
overwhelmed her. Her eyes teared. When her vision cleared, The
Cretched Man was gone. Or she woke up. Or both.

The Cretched Man struck the next day, Monday the 11
^th
of May.

Barnabas, Sanford and Fletcher went to the Piebald Swan
.
Tom
wanted to be part of the discussions at the mysterious Yountish
inn, having read too many histories of Nelson and Rodney, and
heard too many stories of Hornblower and of Lucky Jack Aubrey.
Tom slipped out of the house on Mincing Lane to follow his uncle,
but had not counted on two things: that those he followed would
take a hackney coach, and that he would get lost.

The coach was soon away from Tom. If he ran, he might keep
it in sight, but then he might also be noticed by the lynx-eyed
Fletcher. He tried to estimate where they were heading, but knew
only that their general destination was Wapping, and was soon
lost in a maze of lanes and alleys near the river.

That’s three men behind me, sauntering with purpose, I’d call it,
Tom thought.
Those two in the conduit, they’re all together, that’s five
following me.

Tom trotted.

I think this must be Blanchflower Street, not far from George & Son. If
I can just make it to George & Son, I’ll be quit of these rascals.

No one was about except the five men tracking him. Tom ducked
into an alley.

Smallbone’s Cutting, I think this is, Should leave me on Finch-House
Longstreet.

But he was mistaken. The cutting ended in a small yard with no
other entrance.

Tom turned to face his pursuers.

“What do you want?” he yelled at the five.

“You,” said the leader of the band, with a sad, knowing look in
his eye.

“Come on then, you chowsers!” said Tom.

The fight did not last long: five on one were impossible odds,
though Tom put up a game struggle.

Just before they bound his arms and put a sack over his head,

Tom thought,
Quatsch! I wish I had one of the fraulein’s pistols. Uncle
Barnabas, come quick!

“Where’s Tom?” asked Barnabas when he, Sanford, and Fletcher had
returned from their meeting. Everyone at Mincing Lane thought Tom
was with another member of the household. They turned the house
out looking for him, and then scoured the nearby streets. They called
on neighbours. No one had any word of Tom, nor would they since Tom
by then was a captive in a warehouse down the river in Shadwell.

Late that evening, someone thumped on the door with the dolphin
knocker. Barnabas almost yanked the door off its hinges, but no one
was there. A letter sat on the doorstep. No one could have delivered
the letter and then disappeared so quickly. The hairs on Barnabas’s
neck went up.

With trembling hands, Barnabas opened the letter. On cream-coloured stationery, and in a fine hand, it read:

Dear Mr. McDoon,

We are pleased to inform you that we have found the lost member of your
household and are caring for him in preparation for returning him to you. We look
sincerely forward to relieving ourselves of his care, in return for which we only (and
humbly) ask for your cooperation in joining us on a certain journey, a journey you
will undertake together with a certain article, viz. a key, that you possess.

To effect the transaction, we ask (amicably) that you meet us Tuesday,
May 12 at Saint Clare Minoresses without Aldgate at nine o’clock in the
evening. Come alone. Your failure to heed this latter request will be taken as a
grave trespass on our hospitality and good will, which might in turn have other
consequences.

In anticipation of a satisfactory resolution to the immediate concern, and
to furthering our heretofore only slight acquaintance, I am your most obedient
servant,

Pausanias

Barnabas said, “So our enemy has a name after all. Is he Greek?”

Sally said, “He . . . he taunts us, Uncle. Pausanias was one of the
ancients — a traveller and teller of tales.” She turned away in tears.
What good was all her learning if she could not save Tom?

Barnabas hugged Sally. What good were all his wealth and all his
connections, if he could not save Tom?

Sanford felt pain in his deepest being: a part of the very
household had been taken, creating not just disorder but an assault
on order itself. What good were discipline and detail if he could not
save Tom?

“Send word tonight to the Piebald Swan,” said Barnabas. “We
make plans for our counterstroke. But above all we must get Tom
back unhurt. Nothing else matters.”

In the kitchen, the cook held her niece. “There, there,” the cook
said. “Don’t you worry. The house is roused, at last! You’ll see. And
your Fletcher will come through unharmed. I’ll wager that.”

The cook looked about her, counted her knives. “Come on, lively
now, girl,” she said. “We may have to defend ourselves, against this
eel-rawney and his dis-holy brood.”

As she collected the knives, she chanted:

Willows walk and elders bleed,

Witches take what witches need.

“Witches got Master Tom,” she said. “Witches got Master Tom.”
She touched her St. Morgaine medal, then sharpened the blades.

In the attic, Sally cried with her arms around Isaak. “On our
mother’s grave,” she said. “That’s what Tom always swears by. Oh,
Tom.” She took out the locket from around her neck, opened it to
display the only picture anyone had of her mother.

In the back-house Fraulein Reimer sat alone with her needlework,
remembering how she used to tell Tom and Sally the story of the
wren and the bear.

“How is it called in English?
Zaunkoenig
?” she would ask.

“Wren,” Sally would reply.

“
Ja
, the wren. The wren was the king of all birds, but one day the
bear insulted him, so there was a war between the small creatures
that fly and all the animals. The animals were confident they would
win because they were so much bigger and stronger. But the wren
was too
scharfsinnig
, smart, for them. He sent hornets and wasps to
sting them and birds to peck out their eyes. In the end, the animals
gave up, and the birds and insects won.”

The fraulein put down her needlepoint, picked up the pistol
beside her, and polished and checked its workings.

Barnabas checked his pocket-watch again. Ten minutes to nine in
the evening. The night would be dark, only two days past the total
lack of the moon. He stood alone just outside St. Clare Minoresses
without
Aldgate,
staring
into
the
gloom.
The
church
was
a
ruin, burned in a fire fifteen years earlier, roofless, with empty
windows. Vines and creepers suckered to the walls, and a small
elm tree had taken root in the vestry. Rooks and crows were the
only visible guardians of the place. Barnabas would have laughed
if he could: this was a scene out of a romance. He half expected a
mad monk to shamble out of the ruins, seeking to carry him into
the catacombs.

“Only this ain’t a novel,” he said.

Five minutes to nine, darker, darker. Barnabas strode over rubble
and trash through the doorway. A paving stone was tipped up to
his left, leaning against a charred buttress. To his right, beyond the
young elm, was a pool of water and more heaps of broken stone.

Nine o’clock by the church bells from the City and Whitechapel.

“Well, come on then,” Barnabas shouted into the darkness.
“I’m here.”

Barnabas thought he saw something move at what would be the
far end of the nave.

“You’re good at hiding, and spying, and now kidnapping,” he said.
“What I want to know is, are you good at keeping your word?”

Out of the darkness in front of him came a voice sinuous and
clear: “A word is a breath of air, a rush of wind over the tongue and
between the teeth, leaping to be free, rejecting restraints, slipping
strictures and straits. My dear sir, you cannot
keep
a word, unless it
is unspoken, in which case it is unborn and not yet a word at all.”

Barnabas saw a figure in a dull red coat, flickering like embers.

“Where’s my nephew?” said Barnabas.

“My guest,” replied the voice. “Is right here.”

The dark did not lessen so much as Barnabas could suddenly see
in the dark. Or so it seemed. The man in the coat stood on a mound
of debris, with Tom beside him.

“Tom!” yelled Barnabas, lunging forward.

“Terms, Mr. McDoon, terms,” said the smouldering man. “I offer
to return your lost one, but first you must agree to my terms. You
know what they are.”

Barnabas pulled up short, breathing hard. The pistol under his
coat banged against his ribs.

“I will come with you to Yount,” he said.

“The key?” said the Cretched Man with the slightest sub-slide of
yearning.

“Here it is,” said Barnabas, pulling it from his pocket.

“You and the key together must come to Yount.”

“Yes,” said Barnabas. “First you release Tom, and guarantee his
safe passage from this place.”

“Of course. Walk forward. We will complete the exchange . . .
together . . . now.”

Barnabas shifted his gaze to the Cretched Man, saw his face for
the first time. (
Marvellous
, thought Barnabas.
Like alabaster, like a
living . . .
) All three were within six paces, five paces, four paces. For
an instant Barnabas looked into blue eyes that shimmered green in
the grisaille wash of witch-vision.

What happened next no one could ever reconstruct. Shots were
fired. Someone shouted to Barnabas’s left, someone else to his right.
More shots. A chorus of yells. Barnabas leaped forward, forgetting
his pistol. His only goal was to free Tom. But Tom was gone, all was
dark. Barnabas slipped, fell heavily to one knee. Something whizzed
by his ear. He pulled out his pistol.

“Barnabas?” Sanford was nearby. The two merchants made their
way to the far end of the ruins. After the shots and the cries, St.
Clare Minoresses was quiet.

“Mr. Harris?” said Sanford, holding his pistol before him.

“The same, sir,” came the reply. Others had gathered to Mr.
Harris. Even in the dark, Barnabas caught a glimpse of magenta on
a skullcap.

“Salmius Nalmius,” said Barnabas. “Did we bag ’em?”

“No.”

“Come, sir,” said Harris. “It’s no good here. Best we return home
before the watch arrives.”

Back at Mincing Lane, Barnabas sat staring into the small fire in the
partners’ office, a hand on Yikes. With his other hand he held the
key in his pocket.

“The Cretched Man had at least five men with him,” said Harris.
“We had more. How did his men get away? We had them surrounded,
men posted in Goodman’s Fields and Heydon Square, as far up as
the Whitechapel High Street. No one passed.”

“The Cretched Man can find doorways that others overlook,”
said Salmius Nalmius.

Sanford thought of weapons against those who walked through
oblique doorways. Jawbone of an ass? Jericho trumpets?

“No one hurt?” said Nexius Dexius.

“No,” said Harris. “Except Mr. Fletcher, who has a big gash across
his forehead. Nothing serious. He is being tended to in the kitchen
as we speak.”

Barnabas spoke, still staring at the small coals. “We failed. I
failed. They’ve taken Tom.”

Sanford put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find him,” he said.
But, in truth, no one could think of how. The next step, if there was
one, would come from the Cretched Man, or it would not come at all.
Barnabas stared into the flames as the others departed.

In the kitchen, the maid and the cook finished winding Fletcher’s
forehead with an old piece of linen. The maid had nearly fainted
when he came in, his face covered in blood.

“How did I get this?” said Fletcher. “Well, I’d like to say I duelled
that scarlet devil myself to win this . . . but, to speak less dramaticably, that is, fully accurately in all respects, well, I tripped and fell
on a stone.”

The cook smiled in relief. Mr. Fletcher, she thought, is just fine —
no one hurt bad would ever talk like he did now. The maid, shaken
by all the blood, was not so sure. Roaming the streets after dark in
pursuit of kidnappers could be left to others, it seemed to her, now
that Mr. Fletcher had been injured in the cause.

Harris walked in as Fletcher was finishing. “Humbleness,” he
said, “is a great virtue but it can be overdone. Our Mr. Fletcher led
the charge against the enemy, braving the bullets. The ground was
rough uneven: falling over a rock was all too likely.”

The maid looked with redoubled admiration at Fletcher, who
shot Harris a look of gratitude. The cook shooed everyone out of
the kitchen. As she banked the fire, she murmured a prayer to St.
Pancras, since his feast-day was just ending. “We’re in trouble, that
no one can deny,” she said. “Sweet saint, whose feast was ruined by
that eel-rawney, that witch-man, please help us save Master Tom.
And help preserve that Mister Fletcher from harm, for my niece’s
sake.”

In her room, Sally held a mirror to her face with one hand, and
covered the bottom half of her face with the other hand. She nearly
saw Tom: the flashing hazel eyes, the high cheekbones, the dark hair
that never sat where it was supposed to. She began to cry. “Tom’s
taken. We cannot get him back in London. What will we do?”

Isaak licked her face, jumped down to lunge at a dust mote.
Watching Isaak attack invisible foes, Sally laughed in her tears.
“We’ll go to Yount,” she said out loud, hugging herself. Isaak paused,
stretched a golden leg, then returned to the fray.

No word came of Tom’s whereabouts the following day. Salmius
Nalmius returned to Mincing Lane, Harris and Fletcher came and
went on unspecified errands. Strange men used the dolphin knocker,
entered with messages. Sanford was furious, on Peniel wrestling
with a spirit as Jacob did.