The Choir Boats (41 page)

“So, Reglum, show Sally, take her up to your department,” said
Dorentius with an expectant look and a small flourish. “You won’t
find any monsters down here, no ‘centaurs, gorgons or harpies, no,
our work relates to mankind.’”

Neither Sally nor Reglum reacted to his last statement, causing
Dorentius to sigh. “Oh, what’s the use of learning dead languages
from Karket-soom if not even you two get the reference?”

In his new office, Reglum said to Sally, “We Yountians started the
Catalogue of Monsters & Goettical Creatures over seven hundred
years ago. It’s a running treatise of comparative anatomy and
interpretative biology to match the descriptions reported by the
two to four strong ships sent out each year. Never-ending work,
more data pours in every year.”

He showed Sally page proofs, plate after plate of exotic creatures
with detailed descriptions.

“
Vizomri oon bjetti
?” she said. “What would you call these in
English?”

Reglum frowned and said, “Little Goblin Butchers, something
like that. See how they have a cleaver-like bone at the end of their
arms, instead of hands or paws? Only three feet tall but very fast.
Tentacles around the mouth to pull in what they chop off.”

Sally turned to the next page. Reglum frowned again, saying,
“The Pendryre-Bird, like a giant woodpecker. Feeds on brains.”

Reglum cleared his throat and added, “These are proofs for a
section about species that can fulginate. The little butchers infested
several islands in the southern Liviates last century — took us two
years to hunt them all down. There’s a similar story for each creature
described in this section, and it is not a short section.”

Sally turned the page, found herself looking at a picture of a
horghoid with its multiple mouths and six arms, pushed the pages
away and said, “Is it really nothing but monsters out there?”

Reglum scratched at his sore shoulder and looked out the window
at the harbour before answering. “That’s not really a question of
biology, which I am qualified to answer, so much as a question of
philosophy — or theology — or state policy, none of which I am
qualified to address as such.”

“Reglum,” Sally said, moving closer. She could see each one of his
eyelashes and the small hairs at his temples.

“I speak now as Reglum, not as a lieutenant in the Marines,” he
said. “Almost all of what we see, and everything we are trained to
observe and depict, are monsters by any definition. They have no
power of reason that we can discern, no conscience. They devour
any flesh they can find. The brood of Phorcys, one and all.”

He watched an osprey fly off its pole in the harbour, then
continued, “Yet are these beasts doing anything worse than
following the instincts they were born with, like a fish-hawk? Are
they not part of the natural world too? Who made them, if not the
Mother? God the Father as you style him in Karket-soom? Wurm?
Some other angel or demon?”

Sally thought about the deep green voice in her head at the Sign
of the Ear, and remembered the silence of Oos. She recalled the
booming of the Wurm-Owl.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It seems God takes many forms: here,
in Karket-soom, in the Interrugal Lands. But if God is everywhere,
so too is the Wurm. Even if we free Yount, true escape may never be
possible.”

“Now you take us far beyond the simple truths of teratology,” said
Reglum. “As I have told you before, I don’t pretend to understand a
being such as the Wurm, though I admit to you alone that I have
pondered his nature. At Oxford, I read Prinn’s
De Vermis Mysteriis
and the fragments of the
Pnakotica
and the
Liber Ivonis
kept in
the Bodleian, but to little avail. Is it not enough to know that he is
our foe?”

“In his beginning, the Wurm was not as he is today,” said Sally.
“I see that in his deepest eye, the lens that goes back to his birth.
He and his fellows chose their path, Reglum, unlike the monsters
in your catalogue. Which means they can choose again, if only their
pride will let them. Which means
we
can choose again too.”

“Oh Sally, you veer into what the Sacerdotes call unorthodox
philosophy when you make such claims. They will tell you to stay
with description and classification, and to leave thoughts about
first causes with the Learned Doctors.”

“As they tell us also in Karket-soom,” said Sally. “But I think they
cannot hear the Mother — or are wilfully blocking their ears.”

“Ah, now we come to it,” said Reglum, grazing Sally’s arm as he
spread his hands. “Here at the Abbey we have been thinking for over
a century about what the Learned Doctors say. The ichthyologist
Flureous Mur’a Hunce was most penetrating — you must read his work
sometime — and Vallussea Dwendify, who studied beetles, she was also
trenchant. We disagree with the Doctors on some matters that they
insist are objective truths. We learn from Karket-soom in ways they do
not. We read your Hunter and Blumenbach, Erasmus Darwin . . .”

Hearing those names, Sally’s heart skipped. Instead of Reglum’s
voice, she heard James Kidlington’s. She saw James on the deck of
the
Essex
, and on the swing at the Gezelligheid. She fought not to, but
she saw James sitting at a table in prison on Robbens Island, holding
her locket. With a small gasp, Sally backed away from Reglum, who
looked up in alarm.

“Sally, what is it?” he said, “I am sorry. First monsters and then,
worse, a lecture about them. Here, sit down.”

Sally shook her head. She willed James Kidlington out of her
mind for now and looked anew at Reglum. Reglum gazed at her,
while rubbing his shoulder. Sally walked over to the window and
pretended to watch the ospreys for a while. She was very conscious
of Reglum standing right behind her, was certain she felt his breath
on her neck.

“Tell me more, Reglum. If the monsters are no worse than lions or
tigers, then what about their normal prey? They must eat something
when they cannot attack tough ships or invade Yount itself. Do you
catalogue their prey?”

Reglum sighed, “Yes, but only as an afterthought. Once a new
species is determined to be non-threatening, we lose almost all
interest in it. We’re poor Linneans, I am afraid, in that regard.
We record such species in a supplementary catalogue, the
Auctary
of Innocuous Beings
. To be the sub-editor for the
Auctary
, that is a
position with no future, let me tell you.”

An osprey lumbered back to its pole with a fish. Sally and Reglum
watched the osprey rip into the belly of the fish.

Reglum
said,
“Some
of
the
Innocuous
Beings
are
strikingly
beautiful. In one place are little flying rodents that we call
druddi
,
which is maybe ‘applequits’ in English. Their wings are blue, their
bodies banded in black and white. In another place is a sort of antelope
we would call in English something like ‘Chiming Sebastians.’ As they
skip along they utter ringing notes that sound like they are chiming
out, ‘pass the mustard, pass the mustard.’ Imagine herds of them
loping over the savannah, how the air shimmers with their music!”

Reglum raced ahead like the antelopes he described, saying,
“Natural phenomena too are not always hideous in the Interrugal
Lands. Once, while serving on the
Curlew
, I saw a rainbow created by
starlight only, the oddest colours refracted over the sea. We do not
yet fully understand the optics but no Marine who saw that sight
shall ever forget its beauty. We have built a device to measure the
starlight rainbow. We can differentiate its colours, even capture them
on recording paper using silver nitrates and cyanotypic glues.”

Reglum no longer raced but soared, and Sally soared with him.

“Rainbows, Sally,” he exclaimed. “Like the one in Akenside, do you
know it, in the ‘Pleasures of Imagination’? Here, here, I have it . . .”

Reglum strode to a bookshelf and pulled out a well-thumbed
volume. “By my bedside at Brasenose College, and always close to hand
here. Ah, listen: ‘The melting rainbow’s vernal-tinctur’d hues . . .’
Yes, yes, farther down . . . ah: ‘through the brede of colours changing from the splendid rose to the pale violet’s dejected hue.’
Marvellous.”

Seeing Reglum’s face glow and listening to him recite English
poetry outside the world in which England was, Sally thought,
Herds
of ringing antelopes and starlight rainbows, I want to see these things.
With Reglum, I would brave goblin butchers and carkodrillos and all other
goettical creatures.

Later, back in her own room, holding Isaak in her lap, Sally had
another man’s voice in her head again, and the memory of him
holding her locket. Not for the last time, she wished the cook were
here, and Mrs. Sedgewick.

I can sing a ship out of an ocean, and force an owl back into his cage
, she thought.
But I cannot see my way clear on this other matter. And I do not have a Saint Morgaine for this affliction.

Maggie sat cross-legged in the alley, with a treatise of calculus in
her lap. The Sunday sounds of a London late afternoon faded in
her mind. The Irish children had watched her for a while but then
drifted away. Maggie solved equations, placed the solutions in her
mind, scratched arcs and tangents on the wall. Sitting cross-legged
on the alley floor, she raised up her mind and put herself along the
path of a tangent and walked, slowly at first but with increasing
confidence. London faded away behind her.

Maggie walked a long time alone in darkness. Stars emerged
overhead, one by one. When the moon rose, a lark landed on her
shoulder, and sang softly in her ear. The lark guided her feet, while
pouring forth polynomials, diophantine equations, notes on the
topology of curves, proofs relating to the existence of monodromic
groups. Maggie found the solutions to the lark’s equations, posed
problems of her own, which the lark solved and to which it then
responded with another series of equations. Maggie solved and
sang in turn, and so they went, intertwining their music. Maggie
walked
through
a
landscape
of
rolling
hills,
long
sweeping
grasslands without a single tree. At the top of one incline, she saw
on all horizons the first hint of dawn and dusk simultaneously.
The lark soared trilling from her shoulder, higher, higher, higher
until it was lost to sight. Spilling a torrent of song, the lark tumbled
back to Maggie. On she walked, with the lark periodically leaping
into the ever-dawning, ever-gloaming sky, singing.

She came to a wall at the top of a slope. Maggie heard the distant
crash of waves on a shore and tasted salt on the breeze. The wall
was made of red brick in one light, and grey brick seen in another,
and all colours in all lights, but never white or black alone. The wall
curved around into the rising and setting sun. Bell towers stood at
regular intervals along the wall. The path ended at a gate in the wall,
flanked by two griffins. Eyes rimmed the gate, fierce eyes, kind eyes,
stern eyes, eyes lined with tears. Atop the gate was a mouth that
spoke as Maggie approached. “Who/what/why do you seek?” it said
in every language at the same time, a perfect harmony coalescing
into the language that precedes all others. Maggie did not remember
answering but she must have because the griffins bowed to her and
the gate opened.

Inside was a garden, suffused in the never-ending dawn and
endless dusk commingled. The sea-tang merged with a thousand
fragrances, the bass of the surf supported the tenor of fountains.
Espaliered roses climbed the walls, fruit trees stood in rows,
flowering vines hung from arched trellises. Cats roamed terraces,
chasing after butterflies as big as hats, and dogs frolicked on
geometrical lawns. A bell tolled and then another and another. As
they did, Maggie entered a plaza flanked by columned walkways,
with an enormous fountain in the middle. At the top of the fountain
was a statue of a pelican piercing its breast: water gushed from the
wound, flowing down over rows of marble water-horses and sea-turtles. Dolphins swam in the fountain. Everything was tinged pink
and grey, peach, purple, and nutmeg from the perpetually rising and
setting sun. The lark left Maggie’s shoulder, alighted in a plum tree,
and joined its voice to the dawn/dusk chorus — the
Mantiq al-Tayr
,
the language of the birds.

Six African women and a woman from Asia Minor sat at tables
in front of the fountain. They looked up and smiled as Maggie
approached. One of them stood up and, bowing, said:

“Known now as Maggie Collins, be welcome.”

Maggie bowed and looked at the woman. She gasped:
“The Baby Macaroni!”

All seven women chuckled. The standing woman laughed most of all.

“Well, yes,” she said. “If you will. But I suppose Macrina the
Younger has a slightly more dignified ring, don’t you think? Of
course, I forgive you (how could I not?), if you will forgive me.”