The Choir Boats (51 page)

In vain? No, not entirely, for Tom pushed his way through the
crowd, yelling in English and broken Yountish. The crowd gasped as
Tom ran to the Cretched Man and took his hand.

“Jambres,” said Tom.

“Young Thomas,” said Jambres, though it almost sounded as if
he said “Jannes.”

Over the Cretched Man’s rusty shoulder, Tom caught sight of
Billy. He yelled, “Dumbledores don’t die!”

“Not this day, Tommy, not this day,” said Billy. “But there’s others
will if they don’t get help and fast.”

Nexius appeared at Tom’s side. He looked the Cretched Man long
in the eye, then turned to the crowd and shouted orders to the many
Marines nearby. Marines took the wounded from Billy and the other
Minders, and moved onto the
Seek-by-Night
to begin immediate aid
and removal. The
Seek-by-Night
’s crew moved down the gangplank,
Yountians all, some with the marks of Ornish enslavement on arms
or legs made visible by torn clothing. The crowd on the quay was
startled to see a Yountish crew.
Seek-by-Night
sailors spoke with the
crowd, and word spread quickly of the existence of Sanctuary and
the Cretched Man’s mission. Some in the crowd believed, others
were still to be convinced.

A woman in the crowd screwed up her courage and shouted to
the Cretched Man: “What is your ship called?” Nowhere on the
Seek-by-Night
was its name painted. The crowd hushed, waiting to hear
the Cretched Man speak. He said its name to the woman. The name
travelled quickly throughout the crowd.

The woman hesitated and then said, “Thank you. May the
Mother bless the
Seek-by-Night
.” This too rippled through the crowd.
Many nodded and cast blessings upon the ship. Jambres thanked
the woman. Tom saw that Jambres’s hand trembled as he did so.

Jambres said to Tom and Nexius, “I have crossed a threshold
now and can never go back. Take me to the Queen. But first, tell me,
please, where my crew will be housed, and where our wounded will
be repaired. And how we shall bury our dead. We lost twenty-two,
and I fear several more shall succumb to their wounds.”

Nexius answered the Cretched Man’s questions as they walked
to the Palace. Besides the Marines, a swelling crowd accompanied
them.

Eyes red, Billy leaned to Tom and said, “We lost Pinch, taken by a
musket ball square in his cheekbone.”

Tom bowed his head. Pinch had been the youngest of the Minders,
from a Lancashire weaving village, quick to offer a song or a bit of
tobacco (hence his name). He would be badly missed.

Rifle slung over his shoulder, Billy looked around at the crowds
and said, “So, now the fight is on, like I said, Tommy boy. We can
give ’em worse than we get, only we need more fighters.”

Someone in the crowd came alongside Billy and Tom, gave them
each a carnation. They put them on. Billy smiled and said, “This is
like Vauxhall Gardens, ain’t it just? Pinch would have liked this; he
was partial to fairs and flowers. Here we are, on the other side of the
bloody rainbow, and it’s like Vauxhall!”

As they reached the gates of the palace, the woman who had asked
the Cretched Man for the name of the
Seek-by-Night
reappeared at
Jambres’s side. She shyly held out a bunch of carnations. Jambres
stopped and took them. Everyone watched as he did so. He held the
flowers up in a salute to the crowd, which sighed in a peculiar half-cheer. But even a half-cheer jolted Jambres: his arm trembled and
his voice shook as he thanked the woman again.

Taking his hat off and pointing to the carnations, Billy had the
last word: “See, Tommy me boy? Our redemption begins. Twenty-two dead, including little Pinch. But see? The flowers, them’s the
immarcesible
palms of glory. Yes, Tommy, trust my word on this,
we’ll reach the crown of heaven, one bleeding bloom at a time.”

“Figs and feathers,” said Barnabas to Sanford a week after Jambres,
Billy, and the
Seek-by-Night
had sailed into Yount Great-Port. “These
Ornish devils are worse than Turks or Saracens.”

Sanford raised an eyebrow.

“Well, I mean,” said Barnabas, suddenly remembering Afsana
and her religion. “Confound it, then, man, I meant no disrespect,
leastways not to her. Anyway, Afsana’s an Indian, not a bloody
Levantine . . . oh,
Quatsch
.”

Sanford cut his remaining husk of bread in two, and offered half
to Barnabas. Rations were short, and tempers shorter in the city
under siege.

“Thanks, old friend,” said Barnabas. “Not much of a dinner for
either of us, is it? Here, have a drink of my beer, make us quits.”

Sanford drank and said, “The Ornish
are
devils.”

Barnabas looked over the rooftop wall of the palace at the line
of Ornish warships outside the breakwater. An osprey circled the
harbour, flew over the ships into the dusk.

“Though they’re no different from the planters in Jamaica or the
Carolinas when it comes to it,” murmured Barnabas. “Funny to see
that so clearly only when we are quite fully out of our own world.”

Sanford nodded.

Tom came up behind them, followed by Afsana. One was rarely
seen without the other. Afsana said something softly in Hindi as the
last light of day caught the silver threading in her hair.

“No change in their position, I see,” said Tom, pointing at the
Ornish ships with his good hand.

“No,” said Sanford.

“Any word from Nexius?” asked Tom.

“No, nephew, nor from Dorentius or Reglum or Noreous. Seems
they’re all off at various points in the line, little time for chat with
foreign guests these days. Not as I blame them, of course; I would
just like to hear a bit more about what is happening.”

Tom and Sanford smiled. Poor Barnabas! He so wanted to be part
of “handlin’” the Ornish, and was despondent that no one consulted
him on strategy. Most days Barnabas was seen bustling through the
palace halls, still cutting a figure even if his stockings were faded
and his vest frayed, his hands full of maps, approaching anyone in
uniform with his latest scheme for victory. The Queen listened to
Barnabas one morning — “Most interested, she was too, indisputably
liked my idea about hauling ten-pounders up onto the Commissary
roof” — but had not yet put any of his plans into action.

“Where is Sally?” asked Afsana.

“With the fraulein,” said Barnabas, happy to speak with Afsana
on a topic without sinkholes. “Visiting the fraulein’s little niece.”

“Malchen,” said Tom. “Amalia Elisabeth.”

“The very one,” said Barnabas. “The little songster.”

“I hope they are back soon then,” said Tom. “We Karket-soomi are
not welcome everywhere in this city right now. There’s been trouble in
the streets, stones thrown, beatings. Reglum should be with them.”

“He is,” said Sanford. “I made sure of that.”

Boom! A cannon on one of the Ornish ships fired, a red streak in
the dark. Boom! Boom!

“Come,” said Barnabas. “The nightly bombardment begins, let’s
get below.”

Sally and the fraulein heard the first cannon of the evening and knew
it was time to leave the fraulein’s sister and niece.

“Oh please, Auntie, let us sing one more song,” said the little girl.

“
Ach, warum nicht
?” the fraulein said. “Why not? Something with
oomph, ja? The sound of the Ornish cannons will be our — what is
the word, Sally — powk-drums?”

“Kettle-drums,” said Sally. They might have been at Mincing
Lane, gathered for a family evening. She looked at Reglum, drinking
tea in a corner, and smiled.

So Amalia sang, accompanied by her mother on a spinet. Sally
joined in as she began to understand the melody (from
Stabat Mater
),
matching her voice to Amalia’s. For a few moments everyone forgot
the siege.

An explosion nearby forced them to stop.

“Come, time to go,” said Reglum, boots creaking.

“Alas, you are right,” said Sally. “Malchen, my dear, you are almost
a choir unto yourself.”

The girl’s eyes gleamed in the candlelight. Sally carried that
image with her as she, the fraulein, and Reglum walked back to the
palace.

“Here is Isaak, ready to pounce on Ornish raiders,” said Sally
when she returned to her room. The cat leaped onto her shoulder.

“What news?” asked Tom.

“Very little. We get grim looks in the streets from some, and
flowers given us by others. Disconcerting. Ornish cannonballs fall
at random and people worry about food supplies. What news here
today?”

“None, really,” said Afsana before Tom could reply. “Stalemate.
The Ornish sit just beyond reach of our cannon. They have us half-encircled, so supplies can still get in overland to the city. Very odd,
and not well thought out, if you ask me.”

“Indeed, something is amiss here,” said Tom. “The latest news is
that the Ornish are negotiating with the Land of the Painted Gate to
thwart Farther Yount’s embassy. But there is so much rumour. This
morning I heard that Ornish troops were being ferried about in hot-air balloons, hundreds of ’em ready to descend on the city! That’s a
good one. ‘Why not imagine the Ornish will sprout wings and fly
themselves?’ I said.”

The truth was more prosaic. Four days after Sally sang with Amalia,
Reglum interrupted the McDoons’ meagre breakfast.

“Disaster!” he said. “Oh damn it! We underestimated Ornish
cunning: they landed troops far to the west, screened by their
fleet so that we caught no news of them. Their soldiers marched
through the Nale, the hills ramping the city, whose hikes and hews
we thought to be impenetrable. This morning they overran our
landward pickets — too few, for we never expected assault from
that direction — and now we fight for life and liberty above the city.
Come and see!”

The McDoons raced to the ramparts and looked behind the city,
not out across the harbour. The wind was from the sea so they could
not hear the sounds of war, but the smoke rising from the hills told
them all they needed to know. Nexius stalked up as they stared
landwards.

“The Ornish outwitted us,” he said, before he stormed off.
“Shame on us. But we will make them pay. We will fight for every
house and every street.”

The city was now surrounded and, with every hour, the Ornish
tightened the vise. All day the McDoons heard tales of the dawn’s
surprise attack, of Ornish legions crashing out of the woods, the
patrols of Farther Yount overwhelmed. Nexius and the other
captains had stopped the onslaught in the city’s outer precincts, but
all day Ornish troops flowed down out of the Nale.

“The battle joins in earnest very soon,” said Reglum. He looked
at the McDoons with a peculiar glint in his eyes. “Well, now we
have our chance for glory. Which will it be: the Teutoberg Forest or
Alesia?”

“Are we the Romans or the barbarians?” asked Jambres, who had
just walked up, along with Billy and the other Minders.

Reglum bowed his head.

“We aren’t in a tutorial at Oxford — it was Oxford, wasn’t it?”
continued Jambres. In his red coat and pants, he looked ready for
the parade ground, a hussar lost from heaven.

Reglum inclined his head again.

“Ho, Tommy Two-Fingers,” said Billy Sea-Hen. “I don’t know
nothing about Toodleburgers or who is a Roman and who ain’t. All’s
I know is true-born Englishmen must fight now. You coming with
me? Will you help an old dumbledore one more time?”

Tom stepped forward. Afsana did too.

“He goes only if I am with him,” she said. Isaak ran around her
ankles.

Billy smiled and took off his hat.

Barnabas clutched at his vest and stepped to his nephew’s side.

“No, uncle,” Tom said, gently. “Stay here. We may need you, and
Sanford, for the final defence. Seek the Queen. Help protect her if it
comes to that. And protect Sally, above all.”

Tom hugged his sister and moved off with Billy and the other
Minders. Afsana took Sally’s hands.

“We’ll be back, I promise. But our duty here is less, I think, than
the responsibility laid upon you,” Afsana said.

Releasing Sally’s hands, Afsana looked swiftly at Barnabas and
Sanford before racing off to join Tom on the way to the front.

“Oh, figs and feathers! What a wretched mess!” said Barnabas.
He brushed past Jambres and stamped away.

The siege dragged on. Some outer neighbourhoods changed hands
several times in the course of a single day. The dead and wounded
filled the streets. Rumours leaped from mouth to mouth, stories of
assassinated cattle, prisoners flung into wells, houses burned with
the inhabitants inside. Some called for the Queen to surrender Sally
to the Ornish, others marched to the palace swearing to die in Sally’s
defence.

Amid the fevered talk and garbled news, one story grew steadily
in the weeks after the Ornish broke through the pickets on the Nale:
a tale of a Karket-soomi pair, a young brown woman and a young
white man, who fought side by side wherever the fighting was most
desperate. Many recalled the forbidden prophecy, wondered if Tom
and Afsana were the heirs to the Hullitate throne.