The Choir Boats

by Rabuzzi, Daniel

  Your humble servant,

  Oliveira de Sousa

  P.S.: Be sure it is really Mr. Harris. You can best know him by his Devonshire accent and his country boots.

  Tom broke in before Barnabas could speak. “Oh, may I go too?”

  Sanford and Barnabas were swift and united in their “no.”

  “Think on it, Tom,” said Barnabas. “There’s a home here that’ll need defendin’ while we’re away.”

  Church bells tolled the hour across the City, hard to hear above the increasing storm. By some trick of the wind, the bells of St. Margaret Pattens were heard over all the others. Barnabas sang to himself the old rhyme:

  “Bull’s eyes and targets, Say the bells of Saint Mar’grets.”

  By the time the bells had spoken of bull’s eyes and targets three times, he was back commanding a ship of the line, ordering grapeshot loaded into the cannons. Then the bells stopped, and nothing but the wind was heard, shaking the panes and going “flonk, flonk, flonk” across the chimney-top.

  Holding Isaak in her lap, Sally spoke into the sound of the wind. “You gave Uncle Barnabas three reasons, Mr. Sanford, but you have only told us two.”

  Sanford smiled, an alarming sight. “Ah, Miss Sally, ever attentive, as some apprentices I know might be more often. Third reason: Yount itself. Ridiculous concept. Unproven, probably unprovable, attack or no attack.”

  “Yet there it is,” said Barnabas. “We all long to go . . . to a place we’ve never heard of, let alone seen!”

  “Except it feels as if we have been there,” said Sally, her eyes focussed beyond the wind outside, her voice getting softer yet more determined. “A place we knew before we had words, someplace we have lost and must get back to. The corner of a garden, with a little fountain spilling its water and leaves falling from trees overhanging the wall . . .”

  Everyone pondered Sally’s words.

  “Bittersweet,” thought Sanford. “Imperfect memory.”

  “A garden, Sally?” said Barnabas. “I like that. Oh, very much I do. How I feel every spring when we first turn the earth out back. Or rather more how I feel now, in winter, as I imagine what is to come. Say, maybe we should try planting smilax this year, what?” Barnabas thought also of a garden long ago in Bombay, but did not speak of it now.

  “Makes me feel sad and joyful all at once somehow,” said Tom. “How is that possible?”

  “Sehnsucht,” said Sally. “Sehnsucht, German for this longing after a place we aren’t even sure exists. Cannot be translated into English, not fully anyway. Fraulein Reimer uses it. When we talk about Hamburg.”

  “Ah, smilax in a garden,” said Barnabas. “Ah, well . . . I suppose . . . Sanford, we’ll go tomorrow to the Naxes, but just to hear them out . . . no commitments. We cannot abandon everything, the business, the house, our home, to travel to a place no one has ever heard of, not without a great deal more explanation.”

  “Uncle,” said Sally. “You know you wish to go. We all do. Even you, Mr. Sanford.”

  Barnabas gripped the key in his pocket. “I know, my dear Sally, but nothing is that simple. None of this is according to Cocker! What becomes of McDoon & Associates if we leave?”

  “The Naxes will have a plan for that, surely.”

  “Yes, perhaps, but their first plan, well, less said about that, the better. Besides, the danger is here, Sally, against this house, our house. Why fly headlong into danger when it has found us right here? The brutes, hurting you like that, why, to think of it makes me . . . makes me . . .”

  Sally squeezed his hand. No Sankt Jakobi when Uncle Barnabas was here getting ready to “handle ’em.”

  Barnabas smiled at his niece. He thought of the one thing he and Sanford had not talked about with Tom and Sally: the claim the Naxes made that going to Yount would yield Barnabas’s heart’s desire. The thought that they might be able to bring her back to him . . . no, it simply could not be possible and, even if it were, surely there would be a price to pay, some favour or service or even money. No, it did not bear thinking about.

  “Deadly cold this morning, sirs,” said Harris, the tall Devonshire man, when Barnabas and Sanford appeared the next morning at the hackney coach stand. “Beggars found frozen in Islington doorways, crows burrowing into dungheaps to stay warm, a bitter night but we hopes a warmer day, right, sirs?”

  “You are . . . ?” said Barnabas.

  “Harris, sir,” said the tall man.

  “Not your real name, I’ll be bound,” said Barnabas.

  “No, sir, now that you ask, not rightly,” said the man in the big brown boots. “But I come by it honest, as it was my mother’s name before she married my father.”

  “It will answer then,” said Barnabas. “You are from Devonshire, or else you are a damned fine play-actor.”

  “Oh, yes, indeed,” said Harris. “True Devonshire, through and through.”

  Sanford asked, “Who is the coachman?”

  Harris stepped to the front of the coach, rapped on the coachman’s boot.

  A small man in a great cape leaned down, touched his hat, and said, “Morning, my gentlemen. I rejoice in the name of Fletcher.” The accent was all London East End.

  Barnabas put two hands on the ferrule of his walking stick, planted firmly in front of him, and put the clarifying tone in his voice.

  “Fletcher, is it?”

  “Well, chip chap chunter, I’m no arrowsmith if that is what you are driving at, sir,” replied the coachman before Barnabas had finished his question. “But where’s the fun, much less the profit, in using the name that’s scribbled in the parish book on the date when this body was baptized?”

  Under his hat, Fletcher winked. Barnabas and Sanford could not decide whether to be amused or affronted. Fletcher caught their look, and grew serious in an instant.

  “Solemn like,” he said, pulling back his cape to reveal two pistols and a knife strapped to his body. “Fletcher is as comfortable a cloak as this here one I am wearing, and just as serviceable against windy fingers and sniffing dogs. I am here to protect the quality against footpads, chowsers, varlets, and squoriers. Why, if Dick Turpin himself rode up against us, he’d not ride off again.”

  “God’s truth,” agreed Harris.

  “Well met then,” said Barnabas, and they set off in the coach for the Piebald Swan.

  “Welcome,” said Salmius Nalmius. “Today is no day for a visit but there you are, cannot be helped!”

  Nexius Dexius appeared with a pot of hot chocolate, saying, “I meet you in a minute upstairs. First, chocolate to Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Harris, who will wait outside in the mews.”

  Upstairs, Barnabas admired the prints on the wall. “Beans and bacon,” he said. “This is a fine one. But what is the tale here?”

  Salmius Nalmius said, “Ah, a favourite, a story from your world . . . do you not know it? The man riding the dolphin is Arion, a musician threatened by pirates. They were going to kill him, so he jumped overboard. The dolphin saved him, carried him to land, where later Arion got justice from the pirates. A good story.”

  “What about these?” asked Barnabas, pointing to a row of old-fashioned prints depicting beached whales.

  “Old Dutch pictures,” said Salmius Nalmius. “With meaning for us from Yount. Whales and dolphins are special friends of ours. You will learn this when you come. To see them run ashore like this is a terrible thing, a tragedy. We honour them.”

  Barnabas looked at the great creatures on the shore, flukes in the air, mighty mouths agape, with people swarming about. In one picture a man stood on the head of the whale. In another, a small dog played with its owners by the side of the dying sea-mammoth. The engraver had done a particularly good job on one picture: the eye of the whale seemed to plead with the viewer for time, love, and caution.

  Sanford had been looking out the window while the connoisseurs admired the prints. He watched Nexius Dexius talking with Harris and Fletcher. He looked at the sky. Not even a rook was up, with the win
d starting again. Yet Sanford thought he saw shadows sliding over the roofs, angle around chimney-pots and corbels. He turned back to the room as Nexius Dexius came up the stairs.

  The captain from Yount carried a rifle of strange design, which he placed by the door. “I will . . .” said Nexius Dexius. “I shall have . . .” Stumbling over the conditional, he looked at his brother.

  “Would have?” said Salmius Nalmius.

  “Would have asked Mr. Harris and Mr. Fletcher to come inside,” said Nexius Dexius. “It is hard cold outside. But our men must guard out there. You were followed part way.”

  “What do they know of Yount?” asked Barnabas.

  “Enough to know how important their services are,” said Salmius Nalmius. “Harris and Fletcher are estimable men. They work for more than their pay. They have each their own reasons for joining our fight. Trust them.”

  The word “trust” hung in the air. Each man sipped at his chocolate, indulged in the warmth of the fire for a moment. Barnabas stroked his vest (a pale yellow nankeen), cleared his throat.

  “Buttons and beeswax,” he said. “First, Mr. Sanford and I owe you an apology, if we offended on our last visit. Events and your rhetoric moved in unlikely avenues, caught us off balance. Second, we also owe you our gratitude for your appearance in the alley the night before last. A tight spot that was, not clear how we might have fared without your help. Thank you.”

  The Naxes inclined their heads, touched their caps.

  “So now, here we are,” finished Barnabas.

  The fire crackled. Outside the wind murmured.

  “You still have questions,” said Salmius Nalmius.

  “Yes,” said Barnabas. “There’s a Cretched Man and a Wurm who want the key in my pocket. There’s a place called Yount and you’re from there. Sanford and I are ready to concede all that, even though saying so much in public would have us locked up in Bedlam.”

  He paused.

  “Beans and . . .” he began. “We wish to go, make no mistake. It’s just that this is our home, don’t you see? McDoon & Associates, Mincing Lane, the City . . . we cannot just leave our home. Especially with it being attacked. Running off seems like running away. No. We won’t let them drive us away.”

  Another pause.

  “Besides,” said Barnabas. “Why can’t we send the key with you to Yount? It’s the key they want, right?”

  Salmius Nalmius shook his head. “No, it is not just the key they need. Or that we need. It’s the holder of the key as well. The key and the holder, together. One without the other is useless. The lock won’t open without both. My dear Barnabas, you must come to Yount or all our hopes are naught.”

  “Look,” said Sanford, his Norfolk accent more pronounced than usual. “I’m just an old moke from Mousehold Heath, but there is more here than you reveal.”

  Salmius Nalmius sighed. “Yes, but what we hold back is for your own good. And in truth there is much that neither I nor my brother understand of these events. We are, like you, just small threads in the grand weaving.”

  Nexius Dexius poured more chocolate, then paced to the window. He stood there for some time.

  Barnabas spoke again. “The letter spoke of my heart’s desire. What about that? How could you even know . . . ?”

  The merchant from Yount held out his palms, touched his thumbs to the forefingers then the little fingers. His dark eyes were bright in the firelight. “This is beyond me too,” he said. “But I know it to be true. The Learned Doctors in Yount understand. They will make it happen. All I know, all I have been told, is that you once long ago had . . . a liaison . . . a connection with a merchant’s daughter in India, a connection that was severed before it properly had a chance to grow. Am I not right?”

  Barnabas nodded. Sanford, the “old moke,” stared straight at Salmius Nalmius.

  “How your love — may I use that word? — for this woman is involved in our business, that I do not know,” said Salmius Nalmius. “Nor do I know how you are to be reunited with her. All I know is that this is what is supposed to occur, all linked to the key and your carriage of it to Yount.”

  “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 e
nough 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?”