The Choir Boats (2 page)

“Well, beans and bacon, let’s have a look,” said Barnabas, who
retained a Scottish accent even after years in London. He cut away
the wrapper, revealing a wooden box. At that moment Barnabas
and Sanford heard, or thought they heard, a low, distant hum, like a
hundred bees moving together over a far-away meadow. They heard
the ticking of the clock on the mantle, the voice of their apprentice
(Barnabas’s nephew Tom) in the main office, the cry of rooks circling
the rooftops, the clatter of horses and wagons on Mincing Lane, all
the hubbub of London life. But under that was a humming. Barnabas
opened the box. The humming, still unacknowledged by either man,
grew louder in their ears, though it remained low and distant, as if
the bees had only gotten larger, not closer.

The box held a key, a book, and a letter. Seeing three new
mysteries in place of one, Barnabas nearly left his seat with
excitement. Sanford’s face became three times as dour as before.
Barnabas placed the three new things on the desk, thrusting
aside his inkbottle, quill, blotting paper, quizzing glass, and now-forgotten letter to the Bombay factor. Gripping his vest with one
hand, Barnabas held up the key and commented on its ordinary
appearance. Sanford nodded but disagreed inwardly: keys need
locks, and McDoon & Associates knew of no lock for this key,
which was disorder of the worst kind.

Clutching at his vest so a button nearly came loose, Barnabas
turned his attention to the book. On its age-mottled cover stood
in abraded gold print:
Journies and Travells to Yount and the Realms
Within, Being Divers Recollections of Those Who Wished Themselves
to Go
. The book listed no author. The two partners considered the
book. They knew every land, city, and fiefdom on all the trade
routes, and had shipped out to India when employed by Barnabas’s
uncle. They corresponded with merchants, bankers, naval agents,
and consuls around the world. Their library held maps, portolans,
atlases, travel accounts, histories, and descriptions of the known
parts of the globe. Yet they had never heard of any place called
Yount. Sanford’s face was beside itself with premonitions. A key
out of place was a travesty, but a country out of place was beyond
reckoning, a non-thing, a disorder, a debit without a credit. Divining Sanford’s feelings, Barnabas grinned and held out the book. Sanford declined. Barnabas pressed the book forward. Sanford, with a mulish quiver, refused again to take it.

Barnabas put the book aside, took up his quizzing glass, opened
the letter, and began to read. As he read, the humming grew louder —
not closer but as if more and larger bees joined the first battalion.
He breathed in time to the humming. Sanford’s face resembled a
winnowing blade: first a misplaced key, then a no-placed land, now
Barnabas about to go missing. “Not good at all,” Sanford thought.
“Bears close minding, someone to put the accounts back to rights.”

Barnabas handed the letter and the quizzing glass to Sanford.
As Sanford read the letter, Barnabas hummed and stroked his vest,
unaware that he did either thing. Despite himself, Sanford too
hummed. A thousand thoughts raced through Barnabas’s head,
spinning and whirling as they did when he was striking deals on
the exchange, only a hundred times more powerful. A thousand
thoughts marched through Sanford’s head, wheeling and stamping
as they did when he was closing the account books, only a hundred
times more powerful. Humming in unison now, the two men looked
at the letter and then at one another. They dimly heard the hurlyburly of Mincing Lane and apprentice Tom teasing his sister Sally as
she returned from lessons. The humming overlaid all else in their
minds. Barnabas hummed bees that coursed in mighty zigzags and
raced in golden loops. Sanford hummed bees that serried together
in purposed patterns.

“Yes,” they said together, “we will.”

The humming crescendoed and ceased. The ticking of the clock
was the loudest thing in the room again. The two men leaned back,
blinking. Barnabas continued to stroke his vest, fingers tracing
the pattern out of India, with its curling red tendrils and little blue
flowers on a cream background. His breathing slowed. Sanford
handed back the quizzing glass. Barnabas reread the letter, aloud
this time:

On the Day of Three Kings,

To Mister McDoon,

Merchant of Mincing Lane,

by Dunster’s Court

Dear Sir,

You seek something new, a way to your future by reclaiming your past. We can
show that to you, if you take the chance. Enclosed are a key and a book. The
book explains itself: others have gone before you, and have left instructions for
those who would follow. The key is another matter. We cannot tell you all you
need to know about the key, only that you must learn about its peculiar abilities
yourself. This is not a game. If you seize the chance, you will be engaged in a
great mission upon which the fates of many depend. More we cannot reveal until
your heart speaks for you and you pass certain tests.

Go Tuesday week to the Piebald Swan, in Finch-House Mews hard by
the London Dock. Two o’clock. Ask for the Purser. He will explain what
needs explaining in the first instance. Take a trusted companion, one who would
share hazards with you on a long journey if you were to undertake such.
Tell no one of your plans. Others seek the key. Their intentions are not
good. Above all, avoid the agents of N.C. Strix Tender Wurm.
This offer will not be repeated. If you do not meet the Purser on Tuesday
(being January 14
^th
), you will never be given this opportunity again. Will you
take it?

Postscript: We cannot promise heart’s desire. But we know what you seek and can help you regain what you have lost. Will you take the chance?

Barnabas rubbed his eyes. Sanford shook his head. Each man
wondered if the ink might suddenly fade or the letter evaporate,
so strange and unexpected was its message. Barnabas and Sanford
thought of another letter, almost a quarter-century old, locked in
a trunk, never revealed and never spoken of. The contents of
that
letter were stroked upon their hearts, Barnabas the recipient,
Sanford the confidante.

Barnabas leaped back in memory to a place smelling of coriander,
mangoes and sandalwood. Her voice was in his ear, the touch of her
arms around his neck. He saw her singing in a garden. Kneading his
vest, Barnabas stared at a print on the wall (one of his favourites,
depicting Acteon and Diana) but he did not see it. Sanford
remembered that place too, where the sun was as huge and red as
a pomegranate. He recalled the aftermath: the letter hidden in the
trunk, the arguments with Barnabas’s uncle (
the
McDoon in those
days), threats of dismissal from the firm and of disinheritance.
Barnabas had not had the strength to resist his uncle, and had
stayed in the firm and kept his inheritance, paying a heavy price to
do so.

Barnabas gazed at his calicosh vest. Without raising his face,
Barnabas said, “We should go, old friend.” Sanford waited. “We must
go, to discover whether the letter’s claims are true.”

Sanford said, “Heart’s desire. A most private affair, Barnabas.
How could strangers know?”

“Precisely,” said Barnabas. “How could they?”

“Speculation,” said Sanford, “or just business. Everyone knows,
for example, that McDoon & Associates lost on our ventures in clove
and nutmeg last year.”

“In which case, we should meet the letter writers if only to recoup
that loss,” said Barnabas, “But, nay, spices as heart’s desire? Surely
you, of all people, would argue that poetics ought best be left out of
the counting house.”

“The loss you would have the letter refer to cannot be recovered,”
said Sanford. His voice now bore traces of his Norfolk upbringing
(Sanford had come to London years ago from Norwich).

“No,” Barnabas said, gripping his vest. “But, oh Sanford, who
can say? I should have . . . What if she . . . ? Not one day in all these
years . . .” Barnabas sighed, then realized that Sanford alluded to
more than Barnabas’s own loss. Suddenly he saw in memory his
uncle, slamming a door, upsetting a shelf of ledger books. Old
McDoon had exiled Sanford when Sanford defended Barnabas,
ended Sanford’s employment. Damned as he was, Sanford could only
find employment as a wharfinger’s “boy,” a mercantile odd-jobs man
making barely enough to stay alive. Mrs. Sanford did not survive
the blow — she died of pleurisy that winter, a death Sanford laid at
the feet of the Old McDoon. Barnabas supported Sanford as best he
could in secret, and had been the only mourner at Mrs. Sanford’s
funeral besides Sanford and the McDoon’s cook.

In the end
, thought Barnabas, looking at his stockings, which
were quince-coloured because it was Monday, w
hat did he gain from
it, my implacable uncle? He died not long after he denied me my desire
and ruined Sanford. All his talk of our Edinburgh upbringing and our
reputation in London, our standing: those things did not warm him in
his waning hours. He was as good as his word, though, no matter how
hard that word was. He did not disinherit me.
The first thing Barnabas
had done as the proprietor of McDoon & Associates was to install
Sanford as his partner in the firm.

The ticking clock brought Barnabas back to the present. He said,
“You are right, dear Sanford, some things cannot be gotten again.”

“But some things might be,” said Sanford, the Norfolk thick in
his voice, holding his fist in the palm of his other hand. “One loss
shall not compound another.” He leaned across the desk, prodded
the letter. “If even one loss could be mended, then we would be
nearly as good as restored.”

For a second Barnabas and Sanford shared a montage of
memories: a chaffinch on the churchyard gate, a minaret against a
great red sun, the roar of surf under a ship the size of a castle. And
crabbed handwriting on a letter locked in a trunk upstairs. Barnabas
pushed his chair back, and strode forward to clasp his partner’s
hand. “Thank you,” he said, in a voice low and taut. “We shall double
this cape together, old friend. Together.”

The partners turned to practical matters, neither of them having
heard of the Piebald Swan. Sanford said, “Finch-House Mews is
above Hermitage Stairs near Brown’s Key and the Oil Wharf. George
& Sons, the chandlers, have their office at Finch-House Longstreet
and the New Deanery. You’ll recall they owe us for jute-sacking from
the
Gazelle
’s last voyage.”

“Well, buttons and beeswax,” said Barnabas, “We should ask ’em,
the Georges, about this Piebald Swan.”

Sanford shook his head. “The letter is clear about not telling
anyone.”

Barnabas would not be swayed. “Not to tell anyone of our
plans
,”
he pointed to the letter, adopting the tone he used with East India
Company officials and their lawyers when interpreting a clause in
a contract. The lips on Sanford’s face stretched briefly upward, the
nearest thing to a smile he afforded himself or others. Barnabas
was, he knew, “clarifying,” as Barnabas called it. He’d seen Barnabas
“clarify” contractual points to a profitable nicety many times before.
Sanford was an able practitioner of “clarification” himself.

“In formal terms, yes,” said Sanford. “But think what might
occur should we noise about our enquiries for an inn or coffeehouse
named the Piebald Swan. Quick ears will pick up our tale, pass our
scent for money in all the rookeries and dens from Cripplegate to
Whitechapel.”

“Fairly spoken,” said Barnabas. “Point to you, round still
undecided.” Sanford bowed his head. “No good to have every rascal,
wretch, and cutpurse from here to Limehouse swarmin’ ’round us.
Not that we couldn’t handle ’em, of course, just that the letter states
it pretty plain . . .” Barnabas lost his sentence as he thrust out his
arm, waving the quizzing glass in lieu of a cutlass to “handle ’em.”

Sanford ducked the sweep of the quizzing glass. “Quite,” he said. “And
then there’s the N.C. Strix Tender Wurm the letter warns us against.”

Barnabas paused in mid-stroke, looking like Playdermon, the
hero of the hills whose exploits were put on stage by Buskirk in the
year Barnabas was born. “Ah,” he exclaimed. “Surely a monstrous
brute, this Wurm fellow, a great villain . . . but we . . . aren’t . . . scared . . .
of . . . him!” Between each word, Barnabas took huge swipes with
his phantom blade, ending with an explosive chop to a globe that he
deemed suitable as a substitute for the Wurm’s head.

Once again, the merest rictus crossed Sanford’s face, the grimace
that was his mule’s smile.
Not scared, no,
he thought.
But best be wary,
all the same.

Satisfied that he had dispatched the Wurm, Barnabas thumbed
through the book from the box. As Sanford’s eyes narrowed,
Barnabas read aloud from a page at random: “‘On March 10, 1788
the two ships in the French naval expedition led by de la Perouse
left Port Jackson in Australia, witnessed by the British onshore,
and vanished. France has been searching ever since for the lost
expedition.’ Well, there’s some proof for you! Everyone has heard
about the lost Perouse expedition. There was even that play about it,
here in London. Not that I care for the French, mind you, but all the
same, poor devils. . . . Ah listen, here’s more: ‘Some believe that the
Perouse ships have wandered off our world onto the mist-wracked
roads that lead to Yount . . .’”

Words like “mist-wracked” nearly caused the tendrils on Barnabas’s
vest to uncurl with delight. Eyes shining, Barnabas was about to steer
the McDoon’s Mincing Lane counting house onto the salt-roads
in search of the Perouse expedition and Yount itself, when Sanford
pointed to the clock and reminded Barnabas that they were due at
the Exchange right after lunch. The India tendrils strained, and the
counting house bucked to leave the quay, but Barnabas with a great
sigh warped himself back to the clock and its demands. Barnabas
sighed, “Yes, yes, right you are,
tempus fugit
, as the old Tully would put
it. But tonight then, we can read the book this evening.”