The Choir Boats (13 page)

“And maybe he will invite Mr. Harris and, um, Mr. Fletcher to dine
with him sometimes,” said the niece, without looking at her aunt.
“Seeing as how they have returned to their original employer.”

“By Mother Bryce, he might do just that,” said the cook, chuckling.
“But in the meantime, the house is in a perfect scrimble-scramble.
We’ve much work to do, what with crates and boxes being stored but
others being readied for the journey. Here now, that trunk holds all
the new vests Mr. Barnabas had special made from Fezziwig’s, and
this trunk — mind the curtains! — is for his medicines. ‘I don’t care
what they say, I must have with me my Bateman’s Pectoral Drops
and my Turlington’s Balsam of Life’ — that’s what Mr. Barnabas said,
and so he shall have them!”

All that remained were goodbyes. The firm of McDoon &
Associates being so widely known and well reputed, Barnabas and
Sanford had many calls to make before the voyage. The news of
McDoon’s removal was overwhelmed that June of 1812 by other
events, reports of which washed over the City’s coffeehouses:
Napoleon had invaded Russia, and hostilities had begun between
Great Britain and the United States of America. Still, the departure
of one of London’s most respected merchants did not go unnoticed.
Had the McDoons but known it, the “transfer of McDoon &
Associates’ headquarters to Capetown” occasioned a file of its own
at the Admiralty, assigned to a young clerk named Tarleton. Other,
less official, ears pricked and tongues wagged in backrooms, cross-quarters, and shy-offices across the City about the departure of the
McDoons.

Not oblivious to the rumours their actions created, but in haste
now to pursue Tom’s tormentors, Barnabas and Sanford visited their
closest connections to fortify their story. They squared accounts
with the chandlers George & Son of Finch-House Longstreet, settled
with Mr. Leobald Grammer (the London factor for the Luebeck firm
of Buddenbrooks) and with the Caxeira and de Menzeu families in
Bevis Marks, spoke of “hypothecation” and “sub-rogation” with Mr.
Edward Gardner, the merchant in Gracechurch Street (whose niece,
Elizabeth Bennet, when visiting from Longbourn in Hertfordshire,
had become fast friends with Sally).

Barnabas and Sanford saved their final visit for Messrs. William
Mercius Matchett and Robert Eustace Frew in Crosby Square near
Bishopsgate, with whom they had done much profitable business.

“Something exceeding fishy here,” said Matchett to Frew, as they
watched Barnabas and Sanford disappear down the street after the
visit. “Preposterous, really, to think we’d believe they’ve sent the
firm’s heir, the young Tom, to Stockholm — in wartime, mind you! —
while the rest of them head to the Cape.”

“Unceremoniously too,” said Frew. “Not so much as a farewell
party at the Jerusalem. It doesn’t answer.”

“McDoon can tell us he is simply out to secure new sources
for Chinese smilax, but he’s always been better at what he calls
‘clarifyin’,’ than at the fine art of camouflage. I think we shall have
to send out some enquiries of our own. Who is this Brandt fellow
anyway?”

“More than that: we’ve heard rumours outside the sunlit
channels, haven’t we, about a certain someone seeking something
from the McDoons.”

“Curious, it is. We’ve done some work for Admiralty in our time,
oh yes, there’s a whiff of their special branch in all this. I have a
mind to call on young Tarleton, what say?”

“Yes. Tomorrow and oh so discreetly. We’ll investigate . . . as
friends.”

The McDoons departed on St. Modwenna’s feast day in early July of
1812. Sally lingered in the kitchen as long as she could. “Goodbye,
dear cook,” she said.

“But we needn’t weep so,” said the cook. “You will be back home
again soon, won’t you?”

Isaak rubbed against her ankles.

Sally looked at the floor.

“Ah, our little smee,” said the cook. “I figured as much. Not so
soon after all, is it then?”

Sally kept looking at the floor.

“Flying farther, are we?” said the cook in the tone she reserved
for her own musings, when she had only her own reflection in a
copper pot to talk to.

Still Sally said nothing, but looked up to meet the cook’s eye.

“Sometimes,” said the cook, “men haven’t a hen’s noseful of
sense. They ought to see better, and sometimes they do, but mostly
they don’t. That’s the way of it.”

The cook unbuttoned the top two buttons of her capacious
blouse, reached in, and pulled the medallion from around her neck.
It swung between her and Sally. “Here, our smee, take it,” said the
cook. “My Saint Morgaine. When your fears come at you like a husk
of hares and a dray of squirrels, hold tight to Saint Morgaine.”

Sally took the medallion.

“I don’t know all that is happening,” said the cook. “But I know
that whatever it is, it is big, and that you will be needed. There’s that
eel-rawney, the galder-fenny who has got Tom, for one. And more
besides, only I don’t know what it is.”

Sally held the cook tight. Sally scooped up Isaak, clutching the
Saint Morgaine in one hand. The cook held Sally’s shoulders, looked
Sally up and down and said, “When you have gone and done whatever
it is you must do — saved Tom, maybe saved Mr. McDoon — then
come home.”

The oven fire hissed. Sally saw in the open cupboard the blue
pheasant china, gleaming. Through the kitchen window, she saw
part of the garden, where a row of early peas flowered white beside
yellow campion and blue bixwort. Then her sight blurred.

“Thank you,” she gasped, hugged the cook one last time. She
half-stumbled from the kitchen.

The carriage awaited. Mr. Fletcher held the reins with one hand,
doffed his hat with the other. Mr. Harris stood on the footman’s
step. Barnabas, Sanford, and Fraulein Reimer were already inside.
Sally lifted a basket containing Isaak and climbed in.

“Tom?” said Barnabas. Sally brought out the pendant. It glowed
red.

The last thing they saw as the carriage rolled down Mincing Lane
was the cook and the maid waving in front of the blue-trimmed
windows and the dolphin door knocker.

The Nax brothers awaited them at the East India Docks. The
Yount-bound party said goodbye to those who would remain.
Barnabas asked Mr. Harris and Mr. Fletcher to watch over the house
on Mincing Lane and take care of the cook and the maid.

“With our lives, sir,” Mr. Fletcher replied, flourishing his hat.
“Upstripe and downstripe, sir, upon my word, sir.”

“As he says, Mr. McDoon,” Mr. Harris said, shifting in his big
brown boots. “If the smilax fails to take in the garden, sir, I trust
you will not fault us.”

“Goodbye, but not forever,” said Salmius Nalmius. “I stay here
as the merchant de Sousa, while my brother travels with you.” He
turned to his brother. Grasping one another’s shoulders, looking
straight into each other’s eyes, they whispered something that
sounded like “
Nahosh ulli posto
” several times. Then they touched
foreheads lightly, and drew apart.

The
Essex
, an East Indiaman of twelve hundred tonnes, got
underway. As it left the dock, church bells rang the hour. Barnabas
murmured the old rhyme he had taught Tom: “Bell horses, bell
horses, what time of day? One o’clock, two o’clock, time to away.”
The
Essex
worked its way down the Thames, and gathered with other
vessels on the Downs, to be convoyed through the Channel. Gulls
appeared, raising McDoon spirits a little. Barnabas and Sanford
busied themselves with other merchants and officers onboard,
leaving Sally with the fraulein. Sally tried sketching the ships, not
because she was very good at drawing, but because Tom drew well,
so drawing reminded her of him.

As she leaned against the railing, sketching a brigantine, someone
behind her said, “That’s a nimble likeness, if I may say so.”

Sally looked around to see a stocky young man, perhaps five
years older, dressed well but not ostentatiously.

“Thank you,” said Sally. “But you flatter me with too much
praise.”

“James Kidlington,” said the stranger, extending his hand.
“Medical student, going out to join my brother as a doctor’s assistant
in Bombay.”

“Sarah McLeish, of McDoon & Associates, merchant bankers
of London,” said Sally. “But you may call me Sally. And this is my
governess Miss Reimer, a German.”

“Sally it shall be, as you insist,” said the medical student, laughing.
“My compliments to you, and to your companion.”

At noon that day the convoy moved down the Channel protected
by two frigates against privateers from Calais and Dunkirk. Barnabas
and Sanford felt a familiar thrill as the sails billowed. Sanford even
capered a little, like a dobbin dancing. Barnabas remembered that
Sanford had galumphed the same sort of jig the first time they had
crossed the equator together. The only thing missing was Tom.
Barnabas looked at the sails, waved the wind on with his hands:
Haste, haste, haste
, he thought.
We’ll catch you this time, you crimson
devil. We’re coming
.

Shipboard life settled into a routine. The only thing unusual
about the voyage was that the
Essex
was leaving so late in the
season: East Indiamen typically departed England by late spring.
The unseasonal departure was due to the
Essex
transporting part
of a regiment to reinforce the Cape Town garrison. The
Essex
would
overwinter at the Cape before proceeding to China in the spring or,
more accurately, it would pass the southern hemispheric summer at
the Cape and sail on when the monsoons allowed in the fall.

The addition on the
Essex
of the soldiers — many of them with
wives, some with children — made for a lively ship’s company.
Children played unkitty-dunkitty-donkey and blind man’s buff on
the foredeck and re-enacted the defeat of Tipu Sultan amidst sailors
reefing and hauling. The McDoons enjoyed the tales told by the
soldiers and by the ship’s crew: accounts of Canton and Macao, of
berthing at Whampoa Reach and Boca Tigris, of coasting off the
Hooghly, and reports of British naval victories and prize-taking
by Nelson, Hoste, Pellew, and Lucky Jack Aubrey. Other stories
were stranger, of odd occurrences at Innsmouth on the coast of
Massachusetts, of the merrow-folk holding drowned souls in lobster
pots, of wyverns sporting on night horizons and lamia luring sailors
to their doom on deserted isles.

One evening, in a swaying circle of lamplight, they heard the
tale of Sam and Fred who took a magic ring into a bleak, murderous
country far to the east and cast it there into a mountain of fire and
thus destroyed a wicked sorcerer. Some claimed that “Sam and Fred”
were Yorkshiremen, others that they were from Oxfordshire. A fight
nearly broke out when a fellow from Cork swore they were Irish,
since only the Irish were that brave.

James Kidlington outdid all other storytellers, at least in Sally’s
estimation. She spent more and more time with him, listening to
the stories of his medical studies in London, which ranged from
the humorous (cures for flatulence) to the bizarre (the woman in
Ludgate who reportedly gave birth to rabbits) and the ghoulish
(anatomy lessons on corpses procured from who-knew-where).
Kidlington had an anecdote for every occasion.

The fraulein, Nexius, and Sanford raised an alarm about the
budding infatuation. “What do we know about this young man, his
station and situation?” asked Sanford. “He might be a spy sent by
Wurm or the Cretched Man.”

“Beans and bacon,” said Barnabas, alarmed now himself.

“He is a medical man,” Sally said, knowing that her uncle had
great respect for the medical world. “Training at Guy’s Hospital in
London, very knowledgeable. Going out to work in Bombay, seems
to know some of our connections there. Wonderful discussions
we’ve had, about the latest experiments, Erasmus Darwin’s work,
Hunter’s theories on the
materia vitae
.”

Barnabas was satisfied, but Fraulein Reimer, Nexius, and Sanford
exchanged a look that said,
We shall watch all the same.

The voyage to the Cape was a long one. The
Essex
stopped at
Funchal in the Madeira Islands to take on fresh food and water,
and to swap mailbags. (Sally had already written several letters to
the cook, as well as one to Mrs. Sedgewick and one to Mr. Gardner’s
niece, Miss Bennet of Hertfordshire.) Watching Funchal dwindle
astern as the
Essex
sailed on, Barnabas and Sanford asked Dexius
again about the roads to Yount.

“The main road to Yount is in the southern seas of this world,”
said Dexius. “For a long time this was the only road we knew. It is
the safest, though no way to Yount is safe. That is why we sail with
this East India ship to the Cape. From there we will take . . . another
ship, one of ours. But we also found another way, about one hundred
years ago. In the middle of the Atlantic, between Africa and the
Caribbean, south of Bermuda. It can be much faster but many times
it does not work at all. Worse for us, we think Wurm’s folk have
found other ways, ways we do not know. I guess that is how they
will take Tom.”

Barnabas and Sanford scanned the ocean, looking in all
directions, wondering where Tom might be, or if he were still in
their world at all.

Tom looked out the window at an endless expanse of brown seaweed.
The view was the same as it had been yesterday, and for windless
days before that. The ship’s bell sounded the start of the second dog
watch, so Tom knew he would soon be summoned to supper. He was
accustomed to the dinners now, even (he admitted angrily) looked
forward to them. He recalled the first one, on the third day under
sail, almost two months ago. Still seasick, he had lurched to the
captain’s cabin, clutching at his escort whenever a wave had caused
the ship to heave more than usual.

“Ah,” the Cretched Man said, as Tom was brought in. “Welcome,
young Thomas.” The man in the strange coat waved the escort away.
Tom almost threw up at the sight of the food.