The Choir Boats (15 page)

“Look,” said Billy. “I won’t deny that you’ve gotten some rough
handling and that’s to be sorry for. But it is a needed thing. To be as
bold as a fox in a kennel, sir, we are poor and not used to the ways of
rich folks like you. So sometimes we may seem, well, wrong, when
we only mean what’s right.”

Tom kept silent.

“Back in London,” continued Billy, “we was all sinners but we
didn’t want to be — only need drove us to the sins we did. I am
ashamed of what I done but I am not at the same time because all
I done was because I am poor and others is rich, and which is the
greater sin? My mother was a hempen widow, my father hanged
when I was a boy, and for naught more than culching meat from the
butcher to feed his family. Nay, those what have lived in shoes like
mine have not seen the Great forced to sing small.”

Tom began to say something, but Billy gave him no entry.

“All the same,” said Billy in a far-away voice, “we listened hard to
the preachers, mind you, be they Muggletonians or Wesleyans or the
con-geration of the prophet Southcott. But nothing really took with
us until we heard his Grace, the Cretched Man, talk of this road,
what we call Thieves’ Redemption. Now we are set right, and know
that in this war, we are on the just side.”

Billy’s face had not changed expression, but his arms were down
at his sides with his hands in fists. Tom turned and spoke nearly
in a whisper, “What war is that, Billy? I don’t think there are any
Frenchmen in Yount.”

“Not that war I am speaking about,” said Billy, but he said no
more.

Back in his cabin, Tom read by the light of the moon. He put aside
Buskirk’s play and picked up a history of Wellesley’s campaigns in
India. “‘How the Maratha prince Jaswant Rao Holkar of Indore did
perfidiously and without just cause make war on his neighbours
and did defy the law that the Honourable East India Company was
sworn to uphold,’” he read.

Tom put the history down. He looked up to the sky, thought he
found the star Billy had called the Grail Star, and wondered.

While Tom, Billy, and Jambres awaited the winter stars, the rest of
the McDoons sailed into summer, having crossed the equator. Over
two thousand nautical miles to the south and east of the Cretched
Man’s weed-encircled vessel, the
Essex
sailed on.

In the few moments when Sally did not think of Tom, she felt
like Mrs. Thrale on the Grand Tour in Italy.
Sapere aude
, indeed!
When her anxiety about Tom threatened to overwhelm her,
Kidlington cheered her up. He seemed to have special words just
for her. Searching her vocabulary, Sally called his verbal freshets a
“gasconade,” though that might not have been exactly right, since
Kidlington was not boastful or conceited, so much as colourful
and self-assured. Or perhaps it was that he seemed to boast only
to encourage the listener to challenge and deflate his claim. Gentle
self-mockery laced his bravado.

One afternoon, under the fraulein’s keen eye, Kidlington said,
“Sally, that is a most lovely locket around your neck. May I be so
forthright as to ask what it contains?”

She opened the locket and showed it to Kidlington. “It holds a
picture of me on one side, my mother on another. Uncle Barnabas
had it made for me on my sixteenth birthday, using the sole portrait
of my mother, this cameo. I prize it above even my books.”

Kidlington remarked on the similarity between the two faces —
Sally did look much like her mother. “But,” he added, “I should think
the locket is at risk here, openly displayed onboard. Some thief or
besonian might rob you.”

Sally agreed. “That’s why I rarely go with it in public like this.
Otherwise, I keep it safe in my room, where I can look at it without
fear of loss.”

“A sensible course,” said Kidlington and changed the subject.

The
Essex
swung out almost to Brazil to avoid the doldrums off
West Africa before angling back on the trade winds towards the
Cape. They were fortunate with the wind but typhus spread among
the regimentals, killing five in a fortnight. Nexius and the McDoons
kept to their cabins for fear of contagion. Chamber pots went
uncollected, lice got into everyone’s garments, the women suffered
particularly from the lack of hygiene, and Barnabas lost his quizzing
glass on a trip to “the necessary.” In short, everyone was miserable.

Kidlington was their only inspiration. On they sailed, a little
sodality at sea, guided now by Kidlington the gascon. Like his hero,
Erasmus Darwin, Kidlington talked medicine and literature, he
talked flora and fauna, he knew the Bible as well as he knew the
broadsheets. “Hydrates of cubebene,” he’d say. “That’s the thing for
gout.” Or “Oil of cassia for the dropsy, unless it’s a gravid woman
who is the patient.” (Barnabas was relieved to hear that Bateman’s
Pectoral Drops and his other favourite cures were held in high
regard by Kidlington.) Kidlington would enthrall them with visions
of future technologies, about steam-propelled chariots flying on
“wide-waving wings” through “the field of air” and ships that would
sail under water. Over endless rounds of piquet and ombre, they
would debate everything from the Union with Ireland to the state
of King George III’s health.

Perhaps two weeks out from the Cape, Sally insisted on a walk
around the ship.

“I cannot stand being shut up in this horrid cabin any longer,”
she cried, overcoming her uncle’s protestations. “James will come
with me. I don’t fear disease with a medical student by my side.”
Isaak trotted after her, happy to expand her hunting territory.

Few people were about except for the crew. After a promenade on
deck, Sally and Kidlington — and the ever-present fraulein — went
below decks again to fetch fresh water from the aft stores. As they
filled several jugs with water, they heard voices close behind them.
Having become accustomed to close quarters, they thought nothing
of it until they turned to go and found their way blocked by two men
in canvas pants, one with a leather apron, both with short-brimmed
hats.

“Have we met?” asked Kidlington.

“No,” said the man in the apron. “And we won’t make your
acquaintance now.”

“What do you want then?” said Kidlington.

“You gournard,” said the apron-man. “It’s not you I’m a-speaking
to. My message is for the females here. You just keep out of what is
none of your concern.”

Kidlington started forward, but Sally grabbed his shoulder.

“She has more sense than you do, you lubbernowl,” said the
intruders’ spokesman. He turned to Sally and the fraulein. “Listen,
’cause I won’t say this but one time. I am instructed to tell you that
our business together is well looked after but that time is pressing
on. His Grace urges you not to tarry on your road. The exchange
must be completed.”

Kidlington looked at Sally. “What is he talking about? Who is
this man? How
dare
he threaten you!” Sally was about to reply, when
Kidlington wheeled from her and Fraulein Reimer, and, without
another sound, launched himself at the man in the apron. The two
went down together. The next seconds were a blur. A knife flashed,
and Kidlington lay on the floor. The man in the apron hauled himself
to his feet, bleeding from his lip.

“Fool,” he growled. “Thick gounard! Look what you did make me
do! I said this was no quarrel of your’n.”

The other man yelled, “Who’s the fool? Boss said no harmin’ ’em,
now look what you’ve . . .”

The assailants scrambled down the corridor out of sight.

Kidlington was the talk of the ship. His arm had only been
pricked and he recovered quickly. The soldiers’ wives cooed over
him, the sailors applauded. Kidlington, in a position to boast, did
not. Sally attended to Kidlington hourly. The fraulein praised him.
Nexius and Sanford reversed their earlier doubts about the medical
student. Barnabas was perplexed as well as angry, saying, “Poor Mr.
Kidlington, attacked by sailmakers from the sound of it, stabbed
with a sailmaker’s knife. Odd way to come at a man. Not dignified.
Oh, I wish we had been there. We would have handled those — what
did Sally say they called Mr. Kidlington? — those lubbernowls!”

The perpetrators could not be found. No one fitting the description
was known at all, giving rise to stories of ghosts or demons stalking
the ship. Kidlington’s stock rose still further. Kidlington was the
most curious of all about the nature of the attackers. Sally resisted
the temptation to bring Kidlington into her confidence. He asked
repeatedly what the men had meant, only to have Sally deflect his
queries. “I don’t know, James, really I don’t,” she would say. “It all
happened so fast. As you said yourself, it might be unsafe to walk
onboard — how I wish I had listened. Perhaps they saw my locket and
wanted to rob me, after all.”

Kidlington would look sceptical. “But they talked of delivering
a message.”

“Really, that can’t have been — how on earth could we ever
have known such people? What sort of business would McDoon &
Associates have with that sort? They must have thought the fraulein
and I were someone else. Or perhaps your wound has caused a fever
that has blurred your memory.”

Maggie’s mother survived the winter cull in Wapping but only just.
One of the Irish children was not so fortunate: Maggie watched
as they took away her little coffin to the Latin rite chapel near Oil
Wharf (the professional pallbearers complained because only two
were needed, but, on the other hand, they had more opportunities
for employment with the children). Others died in stranger ways:
the Prime Minister was stabbed to death in the House of Commons,
a woman in Limehouse was crushed by a falling wall, a man was
gored when he fell into the bull-baiting ring behind The Hope and
Anchor on Cinnamon Street (some said that the mastiffs gnawed off
half his legs before the body could be retrieved). Maggie heard these
and many other stories, prayed to keep her mother out of the stories
and safely alive.

Maggie’s mother was sick again in June. She coughed ceaselessly,
and suffered what she called “the mullygrews,” aches and fevers so
severe she could not get out of bed to go to work some days. Maggie
stayed home two days to care for her mother. They both got sacked by
the seamstress, who said that she had no need for lazy blackbirds when
there were so many bodies who wanted the work. Maggie pleaded for
piecework but the seamstress shut the door in Maggie’s face.

“Women are as strong as elephants,” murmured her mother that
night.

“Yes, Mama,” said Maggie. She poured weak tea, made from
“smouch,” which was what everyone in Wapping called used
tealeaves. Maggie bartered short bits of thread (the tail-ends she
had clipped with her teeth at work) for smouch with a maid servant
at a nearby inn, The White Hart. Maggie had met the servant at
a sermon preached in a field just outside London and occasionally
the two had gone together to the Wednesday tabernacles in Great
Eastcheap and in Moorfields. Best of all, the smouch came wrapped
in old newspaper, so Maggie had something to read to her mother.
“Mr. Joseph William Turner gives notice of his first lectures to the
Public, to be given at Somerset House,” Maggie read. “The thirty-eight-gun frigate,
HMS Pomone
, was lost by The Needles off the
Isle of Wight, but all crew rescued and the Shah of Persia’s gift of
horses to his Royal Majesty King George III saved.” “A report from
our correspondent in Whydah of the latest advances by the Sokoto
Caliph Usman dan Fodio in Hausaland.” “The Maratha prince
Jaswant Rao Holkar of Indore, who led the great uprising against
the Honourable East India Company in the last decade, has died.”
Even last year’s news helped keep hunger at bay, at least for a little
while. But it did not stop Maggie’s mother from coughing.

Maggie went the next morning — the feast day of St. Modwenna
in early July — round the back of The White Hart and spoke with
the maid servant there. Looking over her shoulder, the servant gave
Maggie a half-eaten kidney pie.

“But this is all I can do, see?” said the servant. “I can’t lose my
situation, you understand, right? I wish I could help more but . . .
Look here, I’ll ask around for you at Whitefield’s tabernacle, and
I has a cousin who visits the congregation at Glover’s Hall in the
Barbican. Maybe she can put out the word. I’ll scrape up whatever
other acquaintances I has, and see if they knows of any work.”

Maggie nodded her thanks.

“But it’s hard right now, calamitous hard,” said the servant. “My
mam back home in Lincolnshire, she says the men have no work, so
they’re burnin’ hayricks and breakin’ the landlord’s machines.”

From inside the tavern, someone called for the serving girl.

“I must go!” said the servant, reaching out to take Maggie’s
shoulder for one moment but hesitating to embrace her. “Be brave
like Esther! May the Lord protect you!”