The Choir Boats (9 page)

“Sir,” said Sanford, with a ferrous tone. “If you jest or make false
promise or in any fashion play with us . . .”

Again, Salmius Nalmius sat forward, palms outstretched, fingers
touching. He shook his head, restraint in his voice. “No,” he said.
“My world depends on what I say to you. I do not jest or speak idly.”

Nexius Dexius paced back from the window. “Not much time
today,” he said. “They are coming soon.”

Sanford turned slowly from Salmius Nalmius to Nexius Dexius.
He thought he sensed the sound of far-off footsteps on a hollow
staircase. Outside he heard the coach horse stamp its feet, and a
brisk word from Mr. Fletcher.

Barnabas spoke: “Here it is then: we cannot depart, not yet at
any rate, much as we recognize the need. We must defend our home.
Your proposal to take over McDoon & Associates is no more credible
today than it was on first utterance. Not so much for our sake but for
that of the market. Who would believe such a change? No, it would
not answer. McDoon & Associates would be reduced, ruined.”

The Naxes began to protest but Barnabas continued with a wave
of his arm. “I am sorry, but that is how it must be. For now. Let
us part today as friends and continue the conversation as wit and
weather permit.”

Nexius Dexius scowled, but Salmius Nalmius said, “So be it. As
friends.”

A knock sounded on the outer door, and then Harris drawled up
the stairs, “Time to be afoot, gentlemen.”

Nexius Dexius went down the stairs, taking the strange rifle
with him. Salmius Nalmius reached out to Sanford and Barnabas.
“Stay but one second longer,” he said. “I understand your choice,
though I regret it. No one knows about home more than I do, or
Nexius Dexius. Defending one’s home. Yes, we know about that. So
let us continue to help you, if we may. Take Harris and Fletcher, let
them live with you as guardians.”

They moved down the stairs. “The Cretched Man will never
desist,” said Nexius Dexius. “You know that, don’t you?”

At the door, Barnabas and Sanford halted. “Thank you,” said
Barnabas. “We accept your aid. Think us not ingrates. We may yet
go to Yount. Our reluctance is not because we don’t want to help
you, but because we must look first to ourselves. Send us Harris and
Fletcher, and we shall beat the Wurm on our own ground.”

Nexius Dexius called from the mews. Sanford felt the hollow
footfalls quickening in his mind.

“Thank you,” said Salmius Nalmius. “For this much, I thank you.
We shall speak again soon. Now, make haste, and Godspeed.”

A minute later, the coach rattled out of the mews. A bolt of
midnight-blue seemed to course after it, but flickered and was
gone.

The Naxes shut the door against the cold. “Another step has been
taken,” said Salmius Nalmius in his own language.

“The wolf takes six steps while the beaver gnaws the wood,”
replied his brother.

“This beaver has sharp teeth, you shall see, brother.”

“Let us hope so. We will need every tooth in our heads, and all
the claws on our feet.”

So Fletcher and Harris came to live in the house on Mincing Lane,
with its dolphin door knocker and its blue-trimmed windows. Almost
overnight the two men became part of McDoon & Associates, strange
as that seemed to Sally. Strange but welcome, she thought, as she sat
in the kitchen one evening a month later. Candlemas had passed,
and the feast of St. Polycarp, and the feast of St. Eudelme with its
procession of beribboned goats through the City. The most terrible
cold had passed, but still it was good to gather around the kitchen
stove for warmth and company. Mr. Fletcher was holding forth.

“They found a bag of bones in the foundation stones of a building
what was took down in Lambeth to make way for the new bridge
to be built over to Westminster,” he said, pausing for effect. “Small
bones, like maybe a baby’s.”

“Come now, Mr. Fletcher, if you please,” said the cook. “There’s
trouble enough without you going on about . . . baby’s bones.” She
imitated Mr. Fletcher’s London accent as near as her Norfolk village
tongue could manage. Her niece the maid smiled, her eyes round
and bright.

“No, missus, I know it to be true,” said Fletcher, with his hand
moving to his heart. “Because I have it on good account from my
cousin, who knows a man who works on the site.”

“Hmmph,” said the cook. “I’m wondering if your cousin would
know a hink from a twibill, that’s all, coming with stories about
baby bones in the groundstone.”

The reference to hinks and twibills swept right over Mr. Fletcher,
who would have ignored it anyway. But Mr. Harris approved.

“That’s a good one, missus,” said the man from Devonshire. The
cook stopped scrubbing a pot for a moment to acknowledge the
compliment.

Her niece used the moment to venture a query. “What else might
your cousin have to say, Mr. Fletcher?” The cook banged the pot
more than she needed to, but did not interrupt.

“Well,” said Mr. Fletcher, his face red in the glow of the stove fire,
“There’s talk of a sighting in the Garlickhythe of a ghostly old nun
walking back and forth wringing her hands.” He walked the length
of the kitchen and back, wringing his hands as he did so.

“Fallabarty and fol-dee-rol,” said the cook, but she was not the
least bit convincing. She had stopped scrubbing the pot, and was
hanging on Mr. Fletcher’s words.

Sally laughed good-naturedly. “Mr. Fletcher, really, that’s such an
old story, like the one about the haunting of Velvet Lane. Surely you
don’t believe — ”

Mr. Fletcher cut her off, while bowing to her at the same time.
“Oh, yes, Miss Sally, by Wee Willie Hawken, I do, as I have it well
affirmed, from another cousin, this one on my mother’s side, who
knows a woman who is married to the deacon in the church there.
Was him that saw the ghostly nun.” An artist wanting an image of
sincerity could not have found a better model than Mr. Fletcher at
that instant.

Mr. Harris laughed again, his big brown boots crossed in front of
him as he leaned back in his chair. “Hmmm, Mr. Fletcher, how many
cousins do you have?”

“No small number, Mr. Harris, a veritable tribe of us, all true
cock’s eggs, born within the sound of Bow bells.”

“Hah! Soused gournards then!” said the cook. “That proves we
ought all to stop our ears then whenever ‘your cousin’ holds forth.”

More laughter all around. Fraulein Reimer, who understood the
gist even when she missed some of the details in a language not her
own, put down her needlepoint. “Perhaps we shall sing together now
a song, yes?” she said. “I do not like this talk of ghosts and bones.”

So the company sang “The Merry Christ Church Bells,” the cook
beating time on the pot and Mr. Harris stamping his boots. Sally,
holding Isaak in her lap, joined the refrain:

Let none despise the merry, merry wives

Of famous London town.

Upstairs in the library Sanford put down a book to listen.
Barnabas was tapping time, and murmuring the refrain. Sanford did
not entirely approve of chat and singing in the kitchen, but allowed
that Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Harris had accommodated themselves
well to the household. Everyone’s morale was improved since their
arrival. Most of all, there had been no further attacks. No one had
seen any evidence of the Cretched Man or any other minatory being.
Sally said that her dreams were quiet. Sanford did not imagine the
enemy had retreated far but for now all seemed well.

Maggie thought her mother might die from the cold. The winter had
been the coldest anyone could remember and this night — January
22, 1812 — was the coldest yet. Maggie was wearing all the clothes
she owned, swaddled within the worn-out sailor’s jacket that reached
to her knees, and still she shivered. Her ears were cold under her red
kerchief: she wished she had kept the crownless hat she had found
two weeks ago instead of selling it to the rag-and-bone man. She lay
on the pallet on the floor, holding her coughing mother.

They lived in a cellar, like thousands of others throughout
London. Actually, they shared a cellar, with an Irish family, separated
by a thin, hastily erected wall. (The man who collected the weekly
rent smirked every time he came, calling the basement flats his
“salt-and-pepper cellar.”) Maggie heard muffled crying through the
wall, the ache of one of the little Irish children overcome by cold and
hunger. Sometimes on a Sunday in the summer, Maggie would join
in their games in the alley: hopscotch, unkitty-dunkitty-donkey,
tumble-sticks. They seemed to view her as a good luck charm, a
strange “blue” older sister. They never disturbed her when she
carved numbers on the walls of the alley with an old nail or drew
circles and lines with a pencil stub she’d found in the street. The
children’s mother seemed a bit scared of Maggie but since the Irish
woman did not speak much English, she limited her exchanges with
Maggie to “good morning” and “good night.” As the little girl cried,
Maggie felt sorry for her Irish neighbours, as sorry as she felt for
herself and her mother. And she was angry that you could not warm
two blocks of ice by rubbing them together.

The cold had stunned the wall-lice and bedbugs into temporary
submission, but the rat which lived behind the far wall was active.
He was drawn to the meagre heat of the fire Maggie kept alive in the
fireplace. As long as the rat stayed hidden, Maggie kept it out of mind.
Feeding the fire might bring the rat out, but Maggie had no choice.
She put another slip of scavenged newspaper on the fire, revelled in
the small gust of heat, held her mother close. They had spent their
last shillings on coal two days ago. Maggie calculated that the pile
of scrap paper, dried horse dung, and wood slivers would not last the
night. At least she’d have the pleasure of knowing the rat would freeze
as well once the remaining fuel was exhausted. What really pained
Maggie, besides knowing that the cold was eating her mother’s lungs,
was that every scrap of newspaper burned was a story she could no
longer read. She made sure to read every fragment before consigning
it to the flames, reading them out loud to entertain her mother.

“For young Gentlewomen,” Maggie read. “Lessons given in
waxwork, filigree, japanning, quill-work, painting upon glass,
embroidery with gold and silver threads, and other diversions not
here enumerated. Enquire at Mrs. Neeseden’s in Derby Close by St.
Blandina Priory.” Maggie and her mother had never heard of Derby
Close or St. Blandina Priory: wherever these places were, they weren’t
anywhere near by. The advertisement might just as easily have
referred to a location on the moon.

The fire dwindled again.

“Reward offered by the Constabulary,” she read. “For any knowledge leading to the capture of the person or persons responsible for
the murders December last in Ratcliffe Highway.” Maggie and her
mother shuddered even as they shivered. Everyone knew about the
murders in the Ratcliffe Highway, everyone had a theory about their
cause, and everyone claimed to know someone who knew or was
related to one of the victims.

The flames died down. Viscous smoke hung in the air.
“For sale,” she read. “At Mr. Brewster’s shop in Carnaby Street,
fine laced whisky-yellow gloves, white bird’s eye bone lace, gimp
lace, and other fine possaments for Ladies of refined taste.” Maggie
and her mother sighed, picturing these glories. They’d seen once or
twice from afar the Ladies for whom such articles were made.

The fire smoked and sputtered.

“Newly arrived on the
Gazelle
,” Maggie read. “Best Chinese
smilax root, also mastic gum, Gujaratee sandalwood, tragacanth,
mace from Amboina, pepper from Ternate, divers other spices and
apothecary wares.” Besides the pepper, Maggie had no idea what
these things were or what their use might be, but her mind soared
in the imagining.

In between readings from the doomed shreds of newspaper,
Maggie told her mother stories to keep the cold at bay. The stories
were the ones that her mother had told her over and over as a child,
stories from far away, some of them stories from places where
everyone looked like Maggie and her mother. “Well,” the story always
started, “once upon a time in the summer time, turtle chew tobacco
and spit white lime,” and then Maggie would tell how Woodpecker
got the red patch on his head from pecking on the hull of the Ark,
and how greedy Tortoise got his patchwork shell.

Her mother shut her eyes and sighed, her breath wisping from
her mouth. She coughed, overrode her daughter’s request that she
not overexert herself and said, “Maggie,
agamega
, leopard-woman,
I tell you now about
Ala
the Mother and
Ezebelamiri
, the Queen
who lives in the Water, and
Ikoro
the Drum-Spirit. Listen.” Maggie
knew the stories by heart but listened intently, blocking from her
mind the wind and snow outside and the cold inside. Her mother
told stories that had been passed down in secrecy about Tacky’s Rebellion in Jamaica and Kongo-Jemmy’s Revolt in Carolina, about the King of the Eboes flying across the ocean with an army
to free his people. Her mother barely had strength to speak but
insisted on continuing.