The Choir Boats

by Rabuzzi, Daniel

  The addition on the Essex of the soldiers — many of them with wives, some with children — made for a lively ship’s company. Children played unkitty-dunkitty-donkey and blind man’s buff on the foredeck and re-enacted the defeat of Tipu Sultan amidst sailors reefing and hauling. The McDoons enjoyed the tales told by the soldiers and by the ship’s crew: accounts of Canton and Macao, of berthing at Whampoa Reach and Boca Tigris, of coasting off the Hooghly, and reports of British naval victories and prize-taking by Nelson, Hoste, Pellew, and Lucky Jack Aubrey. Other stories were stranger, of odd occurrences at Innsmouth on the coast of Massachusetts, of the merrow-folk holding drowned souls in lobster pots, of wyverns sporting on night horizons and lamia luring sailors to their doom on deserted isles.

  One evening, in a swaying circle of lamplight, they heard the tale of Sam and Fred who took a magic ring into a bleak, murderous country far to the east and cast it there into a mountain of fire and thus destroyed a wicked sorcerer. Some claimed that “Sam and Fred” were Yorkshiremen, others that they were from Oxfordshire. A fight nearly broke out when a fellow from Cork swore they were Irish, since only the Irish were that brave.

  James Kidlington outdid all other storytellers, at least in Sally’s estimation. She spent more and more time with him, listening to the stories of his medical studies in London, which ranged from the humorous (cures for flatulence) to the bizarre (the woman in Ludgate who reportedly gave birth to rabbits) and the ghoulish (anatomy lessons on corpses procured from who-knew-where). Kidlington had an anecdote for every occasion.

  The fraulein, Nexius, and Sanford raised an alarm about the budding infatuation. “What do we know about this young man, his station and situation?” asked Sanford. “He might be a spy sent by Wurm or the Cretched Man.”

  “Beans and bacon,” said Barnabas, alarmed now himself.

  “He is a medical man,” Sally said, knowing that her uncle had great respect for the medical world. “Training at Guy’s Hospital in London, very knowledgeable. Going out to work in Bombay, seems to know some of our connections there. Wonderful discussions we’ve had, about the latest experiments, Erasmus Darwin’s work, Hunter’s theories on the materia vitae.”

  Barnabas was satisfied, but Fraulein Reimer, Nexius, and Sanford exchanged a look that said, We shall watch all the same.

  The voyage to the Cape was a long one. The Essex stopped at Funchal in the Madeira Islands to take on fresh food and water, and to swap mailbags. (Sally had already written several letters to the cook, as well as one to Mrs. Sedgewick and one to Mr. Gardner’s niece, Miss Bennet of Hertfordshire.) Watching Funchal dwindle astern as the Essex sailed on, Barnabas and Sanford asked Dexius again about the roads to Yount.

  “The main road to Yount is in the southern seas of this world,” said Dexius. “For a long time this was the only road we knew. It is the safest, though no way to Yount is safe. That is why we sail with this East India ship to the Cape. From there we will take . . . another ship, one of ours. But we also found another way, about one hundred years ago. In the middle of the Atlantic, between Africa and the Caribbean, south of Bermuda. It can be much faster but many times it does not work at all. Worse for us, we think Wurm’s folk have found other ways, ways we do not know. I guess that is how they will take Tom.”

  Barnabas and Sanford scanned the ocean, looking in all directions, wondering where Tom might be, or if he were still in their world at all.

  Tom looked out the window at an endless expanse of brown seaweed. The view was the same as it had been yesterday, and for windless days before that. The ship’s bell sounded the start of the second dog watch, so Tom knew he would soon be summoned to supper. He was accustomed to the dinners now, even (he admitted angrily) looked forward to them. He recalled the first one, on the third day under sail, almost two months ago. Still seasick, he had lurched to the captain’s cabin, clutching at his escort whenever a wave had caused the ship to heave more than usual.

  “Ah,” the Cretched Man said, as Tom was brought in. “Welcome, young Thomas.” The man in the strange coat waved the escort away. Tom almost threw up at the sight of the food.

  “Here,” the Cretched Man said. “The first time at sea is always difficult. The sea may have birthed us all but, alas, it does not admit us back without first exacting a penalty. Here, dear boy, drink this. It will palliate and stimulate. Drink.”

  Tom balked at the outstretched glass and the coated man laughed. “Thomas, this is no fairy feast. One sip will not damn you. To the contrary, I assure you. Please drink!”

  Tom sniffed the liquid, drank it, and felt better almost at once. The speed of the potion made him even more suspicious.

  “Thomas,” the Cretched Man said. “You doubt me still.”

  Tom found his voice. “Why not? You’ve waylaid me, kidnapped me. Your men broke into our house. Shall I go on?”

  The Cretched Man replied, “Nay, that will suffice. I know you feel this is . . . unpleasant for you. But, if you will allow me, I can show you that much of what you believe to be true about your situation and that of your uncle and your house is, in fact, misguided, incomplete, under . . . under-nourished. That’s what it is, young man, under-nourished. Which reminds me of dinner, doesn’t it you?”

  The pale man continued as they ate: “You are my guest, Thomas, my guest, do you understand?”

  “Guests come of their own choosing and can leave at any time.”

  “Sophistry, Thomas. Guests rarely come of their own accord but are compelled by greed, envy, lust, all of the base emotions, when they are not directed outright by those who ostensibly ‘invite’ them. As for leaving, why, you are as free as any of us to leave at anytime.”

  Tom opened his mouth to answer, then shook his head in disgust.

  “Let us be friends, Thomas. Truly I mean you no harm.”

  “Release me then.”

  “Your release is entirely in the hands of your uncle, you know that. I would gladly have released you in London.”

  “Friends have names for each other,” Tom said.

  The Cretched Man smiled, like a bust from Pompeii come to life. “Very true, Thomas, very, very true. What name shall I use with you? I have so many.”

  For the first time, Tom felt the Cretched Man was thinking through something he had not prepared in advance. After a pause, the Cretched Man said, “Call me by my true name, which is Jambres. I have not been called that in a long time.”

  “Jambres?” said Tom. “I know that name but cannot place it.”

  “Indeed you do,” said the Cretched Man, his lips like bowstrings. “Think of Moses, think of the trial of the rods in the court of the Pharaoh.”

  Tom’s eyes widened as he said, “Jambres was the Pharaoh’s sorcerer. He challenged Moses . . .”

  “And lost,” said Jambres. “And was punished for it.”

  “No,” said Tom, half-rising. “I do not believe you. You cannot be that person!”

  “I wish what you say were true, young Thomas,” said the Cretched Man.

  “Do not take me for a fool,” said Tom. “None of what you say is according to Cocker! I am a modern person, with modern understanding, like Sir Newton and Pitt and, well, all the thinkers Sally knows so well!”

  “As may be, but there is much more to the world than you seem to think, young sir. History for one. Living repercussions for another. Besides, Sir Isaac suspected my existence, and the mathematics of Mr. Cocker confirm me.”

  “Quatsch!”

  “As for your sister, she already knows the truth of me, though she fears that knowledge at present.”

  Tom was silent for a minute, shaking his head.

  “What about Strix Tender Wurm?” he said. “Is that his real name?”

  For the first time, Tom thought the Cretched Man felt something he had not expected to feel, something he wanted to keep hidden. The blue eyes glinted, the beautiful mouth tautened the least of fractions.

  “His real name? Even I do not know that, Thomas, though I h
ave sought long to know it. The creature called Wurm has existed since the beginning, or nearly so, if you can believe that. Everything you do and could have done, everything you think and should have thought, everything you feel and would have felt, all go into your true name. In the end, and often long before that, you will have to do penance for your name.”

  Tom still did not understand what Jambres, the Cretched Man, had meant, but on that first evening dining together he had caught a note in Jambres’s voice, as a finger sliding over the most minute hairline crack in a glass catches the imperfection. He had not been able to tell what the note was but he knew it was there, buried, tiny but real.

  Jambres had continued: “‘Wurm’ rings well enough for this world. It has a certain simplicity and directness about it, dispatches with the flamboyant, the orotund, the irrelevant. If you prefer something more historical, you might also call him Pechael or Sesuzmeniel.”

  The ringing of the second dog-watch tailed out in the stillness surrounding the ship, bringing Tom out of his memory of that first dinner nearly two months ago.

  Someone knocked on the door. Tom put down his book (Buskirk’s play “Hero of the Hills”); his cabin held a small but well-appointed library. Someone put a key in the lock, opened the door. Billy Sea-Hen stood there.

  “Time, sir,” said Billy, who was one of the group that had seized Tom in the Wapping alley, a group Tom had come to call his Five Minders. Tom was certain he had seen Billy Sea-Hen before, but could not say where. Besides Billy Sea-Hen, there was Brasser, Old Lobster-hide, Pinch, and Tatterhead, usually called Tat’head for short. Lean but thick-armed, with ears seemingly cocked for a call yet to come, all but Billy were from Lancashire or Yorkshire originally, driven to London by hunger and the want of work. Billy was London-born, as he put it: “Twenty-four years ago, born to me mum in the blissful bosom of Wapping.”

  “No movement today,” said Tom as they walked from Tom’s fore compartment to the captain’s cabin.

  “No,” said Billy. “But we’ll move soon.”

  Tom wondered at Billy’s certainty. The sails hung limp. Hanging down from the topmast was the ship’s long pennant, a white banner with a red orb trailing streaks and smears of red. Some held that it was a red-rimmed moon dripping blood, others an eye streaming fire and sparks. As they passed the cabhouse, they heard a muffled bumping sound below deck, a noise that would have gone unremarked when sailing but which could not be ignored in the quiet.

  “His pet,” said Billy. “Restless today.” Tom looked at the deck, ears straining to hear the sound of a great head rearing up beneath his feet, the head falling back again as he passed. Billy left Tom at the door to the Cretched Man’s cabin.

  “English justice?” said Jambres, as the white, white man opened the door.

  Every evening they picked up their debate from the evening before. Tom was ready. “Yes. English justice and fair play. That’s why we have the Empire, why we will beat Napoleon.”

  “Justice?” said the Cretched Man as they sat down at table. He smoothed back a cuff. Tom had never seen him without his coat on. No matter how hot it became — and it was terribly hot as they languished in the tropics — Jambres always wore his coat.

  “Yes,” said Tom, helping himself to pudding. “We are bringing law and justice to the world, to those unfortunates trapped by tyranny and choked by the chains of unequal custom.” He had practised that sentence all day. He thought it sounded pretty much like Hume, or maybe Burke, impressive in either case.

  The Cretched Man smiled, while finely dissecting a cutlet, and asked, “Was it justice when the English fleet bombarded Copenhagen?”

  “It was . . .” Tom hesitated. “Necessary. A necessary expedient in the war on Napoleon. It could not be helped.” McDoon & Associates had many connections in Copenhagen. Tom recalled the letters they had received describing the three days of fire and devastation. He was angry at the Cretched Man in his bloody coat for reminding him of this.

  “Ah,” said Jambres. “Expediency. No different then, I assume you will concede, than your being temporarily detained to further another just cause? I and my confederates mean the McDoons no more harm than the English meant the Danes — our actions are merely, as were the English fleet’s, a matter of expediency.”

  Tom dug at a lump of pudding but said nothing.

  “Do not be angry,” said the Cretched Man, smearing lemon-and-raisin jelly on a bit of pork. “The English are probably no worse than others who have enjoyed your degree of power, nor even more hypocritical. Arguments of expediency in times of war have a long pedigree. Why, you’ve read your Thucydides, every English schoolboy has. Think what the Athenians demanded of the Melians!”

  Tom said nothing. He wished Sally were here.

  “You think me your enemy still?” said Jambres. The Cretched Man’s face seemed even whiter that evening. “Am I more a shrike than the Duke of Marlborough or Wellesley, more than Rodney or Nelson? I hardly think I have as much blood on my conscience as they do.”

  Tom pushed his plate aside. “They fought for justice, to defeat infamy and to bring civilization to those who — ”

  “Wellesley hunting down Tipu Sultan in Mysore . . . justice?”

  “Necessary in time of war. Tipu Sultan was allied with the French.”

  “Just but not cruel, was it?”

  “No, not cruel! The French with their guillotines are cruel. And the Muslims, well, they’re — ”

  “The English, not cruel? I wonder. Are the English a kind race then? Do you know what takes place in your sugar colonies, your Jamaica? There’s blood in every cup of tea you drink. Under the minuets played at great English country-houses, your Mansfield Parks, there is the sound of sobbing from the cane fields. Oh yes, kind all right — as kind as Gorgon’s milk.”

  Tom pushed back from the table, stood. “I won’t have it,” he said. “I won’t stand for this from . . . from you . . . you bastard!” Tom strode from the cabin, grabbing his hat on the way out. The Cretched Man did not pursue him, but sat wrapped in his rudling coat, with his long white fingers pressed together in front of his face.

  Outside, Tom felt better. Billy Sea-Hen stood at the railing. Night had come, with a sky full of stars and a bright moon such as no Londoner ever had seen.

  “Evenin’, sir,” said Billy Sea-Hen. Billy was talkative, more so than the other Minders. As for the rest of the crew, the proper sailors, they never spoke at all, at least not to Tom. Tom called them The Others. There was something strange about them, the way they moved so swiftly and silently. They appeared to be Lascars or Africans for the most part, dark-skinned, with black hair and odd head-gear.

  “It’s a sight to be sure, isn’t it?” said Billy. The moon was nearly full. Flying fish skipped out of the sea of kelp, silvery streaks like harpoons from mermen under the surface. “The great Sargasso Sea. And up above us all, them stars.” Tom looked up. The starfields were a revelation to him. He dawdled every night after dinner to see them. He wished Sally could see them too; she would see more in an hour here than in a month of “lunaticking” at home.

  “No wind, still no wind,” Tom said. The ship’s pennant hung, the red moon or eye with its streaks and curls of red downcast.

  “True enough,” said Billy. “But it’s not wind we are waitin’ on now. We’re needing the winter stars to steer by. See, up there now are summer stars: the Bear-Watcher and the two Bears, with the Pole Star and the Ploughs in ’em, and the Triangle with Jubal’s Star, The Grail Star, and Zephiel’s Star. All very fine stars, naught can be said against them, but we need others.”

  “How long must we wait? Winter, you say?”

  “Yes, sir. Early December will answer. Then we’ll have the Eye of the Bull lined up with Ermandel’s Toe, and both lined up with the Dog Star. That’s on the one side. On the other side, we’ll have the Mouth of the Fish lined up with the Crossing Star at the end of Judgement’s River, and with the Ark Star. That’s six stars, counting Ermandel’s To
e as one, so we will miss only the seventh to make our voyage. And there she’ll be, our seventh, the May Star. She sits among the Sisters, on the Bull’s cheek. It’s her sweet influence we must bind. Being careful, of course, not to call the other sisters, the Weepers, as they seat the King in Yellow, him with the silky hands.”

  Little of this made sense to Tom, who said only, “Where are we going again, Billy?”

  “You know, sir — to Yount.”

  Tom, certain he had seen Billy’s face before their meeting in the Wapping alley (there was something about the sharp nose, the cut of the eyes), said, “Tell me again how it is that you know of Yount? You, a Londoner like myself.”

  “Well, sir, it’s like this: we are all following his Grace,” Billy twisted his wrist, extending his thumb in the direction of the captain’s cabin.

  “But why, Billy, why?”

  “For salvation.”

  This was as far as they ever got. Tom could not grasp what Billy said. Tonight he pushed further.

  “Salvation? Billy, that man, the Cretched Man . . .” Tom lowered his voice in the immensity of silence around them. “. . . that man in there is . . . the Devil.”

  Billy raised one eyebrow and said, “No, that is just precisely what he is not, begging your pardon. You’ve gotten the wrong impression, is all. We’re on the road to Yount, which is the road to salvation.”

  Tom turned full towards Billy, who stood as easily as ever. “That can’t be,” said Tom. “Who goes to salvation locked in a ship’s cabin?”

  “I’ll allow as that is a mite strange,” Billy said. “But then perhaps, and meaning no offense, there’s them as need to be brought to the truth a little against their struggling. If you know what I mean.”