“We wish you Godspeed,” she said. “For each of you, your heart’s desire is bound up in this quest. I cannot see how this will end, for you or for us, but I sense a greatness in both of you, uncle and niece.”
Barnabas started to mutter “ Quatsch” but stopped himself. He was going to miss the Mejuffrouw very much.
Sally took the Mejuffrouw’s hands. “Thank you and your husband for your hospitality,” Sally said. “If we can ever repay you, we shall.”
“Success in your venture will be repayment enough,” said the Mejuffrouw.
Barnabas said, “I fear, my dear lady, that we have nothing suitable to leave in the Gezelligheid’s curio room.”
The Mejuffrouw shook her head, her lacquered hair making impressive shadows. “There is no need,” she said. “Do so when you return; leave us a keepsake then!”
Barnabas took his leave. Sally pressed into the Mejuffrouw’s hands a packet of letters for the cook and Mrs. Sedgewick, asked her to have them sent on the next ship to London.
“Of course, dear girl,” said the Mejuffrouw. The Dutch woman reached out, cupped Sally’s chin, and looked long at Sally. “Strange paths lie before you, and much danger. Trust is your best weapon but, as you have already seen, trust is hard to win. A final word: I cannot foresee what will come but, Sally, I believe you will see your James again. Dat haal je de koekoek, as we say in Dutch, meaning ‘I truly believe that.’ He has fallen but is not lost.”
Sally’s heart raced. She hesitated, then embraced the Mejuffrouw. “Thank you,” Sally whispered. Then she turned and disappeared up the stairs.
The next morning, a grey day in May of 1813, with early winter winds whispering, McDoon & Associates departed. Their last glimpse of the Gezelligheid was of the Termuydens in the front garden waving goodbye, Cornelius holding his black hat in the air and the Mejuffrouw’s white hair piled high and swaying. Jantje, with his front paws on the gate, barked a farewell.
Sally stared into the water as the McDoons sailed in a small cutter out to the ship from Yount. Barnabas, Sanford, and Fraulein Reimer watched as the Gallinule slowly hove into view. Three-masted, shallow of draft, it was boxy and bluff-built.
Slow bacon, this one , thought Sanford. We won’t crack on in this tub. But then he brightened when he recalled that Cook had sailed his epic voyages in a sturdy little Northumberland collier. Perhaps there was more to the Gallinule than met the eye. Sanford noticed the copper sheathing on the hull (standard in the British Navy since the 1780s, but unusual in the merchant fleet), the gun sockets along the deck-railings, and the gun-ports in the hull. He wondered at the two shed-like structures on the deck, one on each side between the first and second masts, and the smaller structure in the middle of the deck, like a pedestal or dais. Sanford assumed they were storage huts for provisions since ships typically took livestock on long trips. Or perhaps the Gallinule had been a whaler and the sheds had held the cauldrons used to boil the train-oil.
The Gallinule weighed anchor, caught the wind, and set a south/ southeasterly course away from Cape Town. An English ship that had laid over in Rio de Janeiro from Christmas until Easter had brought them their last news of the outside world on the day of their departure. They learned that Lord Liverpool’s government, having taken over from the assassinated Perceval, continued the debates about the East India Company’s trade monopoly, that the Duke of Wellington had defeated the French at Salamanca and then occupied Madrid the previous summer, and that Napoleon had also suffered a reversal in Russia in the fall of 1812. They reflected on the oddity of news already months out of date and on the eeriness of knowing that it was their last news of home for a long time.
Chapter 9: Pilgrims’ Progress
At dusk on the second day out from Cape Town, a ceremony was held on the Gallinule. The entire crew, over one hundred men, lined up in three companies. Facing the crew, next to the ship’s captain stood Nexius, with McDoon & Associates at his side. The McDoons realized for the first time, seeing the entire ship’s company so arrayed, that most of the Yountians were brown-skinned, darker by far than the Nax brothers. Like being in India again, thought Barnabas, which caused a sudden pang that should not have surprised him but did.
The ship’s captain called out something in Yountish. Every crew member put on a dark blue, padded vest. One company had a scarlet collar on their vests, one a white collar, the third pale blue, in each case matching the band on their caps. A small silver brooch of a leaping dolphin gleamed from every breast. The ship’s captain began a speech, during which he paused at intervals so that Nexius could translate into English. “We welcome you, Big Landers. We welcome you who have wished yourselves to go to Yount. We welcome you who bear and guard the key. The key returns to Yount. The key has found its appointed ones. Show forth the key!”
All eyes watched as Barnabas held the key up. The entire crew made a motion with their right hands. The ship’s captain continued, “We are the crew of the Gallinule, being officers, sailors, and marines, that is, the Fencibles.” As he mentioned the three companies, the head of each bowed in turn. “We, the men of the Gallinule vow to protect and guide you, as you will protect and guide us, so we vow by the Nurturing Mother.”
Then he chanted, and each company followed, half-singing a prayer in a round:
Kaskas muri ankus’eem,
Kaskas selwish pishpaweem,
Kaskas puro post’i feshdadeem,
Kaskas muri ullo darpapeem,
Kaskas muri ankus’eem.
The McDoons stood transfixed. Barnabas felt a humming in his temples. Sally felt the verse that was in her. As they chanted, the Gallinule’s crew held out their right hands, making small circles in the air. They repeated the chant three times, the words cascading as each company took up and finished a line or two behind the others. Nexius turned to the McDoons, who felt they understood the chant without translation. “It is our Common Prayer,” he said. “We call it ‘The Plea’”:
Dear Mother, end our loneliness,
Dear Mother, protect and guide us,
Dear Mother, remove the mists that blind,
Dear Mother, unloose the chains that bind,
Dear Mother, end our loneliness.
“Nexius, you told us before that Yountians pray to a Mother,” Sally said that evening at the captain’s table. “Can you tell us more with your colleagues here?”
Nexius, with a shrug that indicated he was a warrior not a theologian, looked at the other Yountians around the table.
Shaking his head in disbelief, yet not so vigorously as to close off discussion, Sanford said, “Worshipping a female! I have puzzled over this since that day, Nexius, when you deciphered Sally’s dream. I can only conclude that you are a strange breed of papists, elevating the Virgin over the Father. But that hardly makes sense to me. I confess I am at a loss.”
“No,” said a tall officer sitting next to the ship’s captain, laughing a little. “Though we have Catholics in Yount. And Jews and Muslims too. You will see.”
Sanford pondered these tidings. His years in India and China had forced him to wider thinking than his demeanour might sometimes suggest. He pressed his enquiry. “So you know the Bible in Yount?”
“We do, Mr. Sanford,” replied the tall officer. “But from your world, from Big Land, not as a part of our own. We believe in the Nurturing Mother, who had two sons. Like you, we do not always agree among ourselves on matters of faith. Some believe both sons rebelled against their mother, but that one atoned while the other remains adamant in his rebellion. Others say only one son rebelled, he who still disobeys. All agree, however it started, that the two brothers are at war, and that the Mother weeps.”
“Cain and Abel,” said Sanford.
“Yes, perhaps like Cain and Abel,” agreed the tall officer. “Also like in Big Land, blood has been spilled over these rival interpretations. The only certainty is that the Mother weeps.”
The tall officer addressed his dining companions as a group. “But,
come, surely these are matters better addressed if we make it through to Yount: you will have ample opportunity to speak with the Learned Doctors, with the Gremium for Guided Knowledge, with the Rabbi of Palombeay if you wish. The Rabbi would be a good source for your questions.”
“How is that?” asked Sanford.
“I know little of him myself,” said the tall officer. “But I do know that the Rabbi serves as a spokesman for all the Karket-soomi religious communities that have washed up on our hidden shores.”
“A Jew?” Sanford said. “To represent Christians?”
“Yes,” said the Yountian. “Speaks for Muslims too, as I understand it, for Hindus and so on. Probably I, who knows so little of your faiths, should not say this, but perhaps the case is that, no matter how different your faiths seem to you in their native soil, they are less different in truth and principle when seen in a foreign place.”
“Buttons and beeswax,” Barnabas said. “Where is this Palombeay then? Far?”
The ship’s captain answered, “No farther than anywhere else on Yount, at least viewed from our current vantage point. Palombeay is a district in Yount Great-Port, what you could call The Foreigners’ Quarter. Most of the arrivals from Big Land live there, under Crown protection.”
“Palombeay’s nickname is ‘Sabi-na-karket-soom,’” said the tall Yountish officer. “Which means ‘Little Big Land,’ if you see the play on words.”
For the first time since leaving James Kidlington, Sally smiled. The smile faded quickly when she realized that such wordplay reminded her of James.
Barnabas noticed the smile, and sent a grateful look to the tall officer who had so graciously answered their questions. It struck Barnabas that the tall officer was handsome and young, with an assured manner.
Without being a coxcomb, thought Barnabas. Poor Sally grieves for her Mr. Kidlington, and I understand why, but she cannot grieve forever. Who knows how long we may have to reside in Yount?
The tall officer raised his glass to the McDoons. “Now I beg leave to turn the topic elsewhere. First, allow me to introduce myself: I am Reglum Bammary, head of the scientific team onboard. The Gallinule is what we call a ‘tough ship’ or ‘fierce frigate’ in translation from the Yountish, an explorer’s vessel fit for battle. Every tough ship carries a scientific team, like Banks and Forster on Cook’s voyages, or the apostles of Linneaus on Swedish East Indiamen. I am a lieutenant, serving in the Fencibles, of which Nexius Dexius is highest ranking onboard. The Fencibles have a special branch, which can be translated as the ‘Analytical Bureau,’ or ‘A.B.’ for short. We Anglophones joke that it is actually the ‘Abbey.’ The A.B.’s task is to assist the crew and the marines with our knowledge of zoology, botany, mathematics, whatever is required. More broadly, we gather data for analysis in Yount, in our search for answers to . . . our current circumstances — our dilemma.”
Barnabas thought, Handsome, young, and a scholar it seems. I do hope Sally is able to see past her grief. If not now, perhaps in a while. Out loud, he said, “Your English is exceptionally fine, Mr. Rammary, excuse me, Bammary. All of you officers speak lovely English but yours, sir, is a marvel. How did you come by it?”
Reglum nodded. “English is my native tongue. Actually, I am bilingual. My maternal grandfather was English, you see, Lieutenant Humphrey Hiller-Thorpe, who served with Commodore Anson and who, in your year 1742, fell overboard during action against the French off the Mascarene Islands. By great good fortune, though he did not think so at the time, the gateway to Yount was near, he fell through, and washed up in Small Land. He married a woman of Yount, who bore him three children, including my mother. We spoke English as a cradle-tongue. Also, I was sent back. I went up to Oxford, took my degree at Brasenose. Passed as the son of an Indian prince, don’t you know? Even learned a spot of Hindi to pull it off, even though I was hardly pucka.”
Barnabas laughed. “Good one, that!”
“Ah,” sighed Reglum. “I miss those days. Above all, the access to knowledge from ancient to modern, and from all corners of the globe — your globe.”
Sally, dabbing her mouth with a napkin, said, “The Termuydens took care to send out several cases of books . . .”
“Oh yes,” said Reglum. “Means more than you might realize, Miss McLeish. Of all the treasures we fetch back from Karket-soom, the books and journals are among the most precious. Right now, for instance, we must settle for copies of The Quarterly Review and The Edinburgh Review that are three years old!”
Barnabas said, “Sally could make you au courant before the bells stopped pealing on St. Adelsina’s day, couldn’t you, Sally?”
“No time for that this evening, I fear,” said the captain. “We need our rest now, as we begin to test for the gateway on the morrow.”
The next day, far away from shipping lanes in the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean, Sanford got the answer to his questions about the structures on deck. The crew gathered at the “sheds.” They dismantled part of the sheds, revealing machinery within, and a great wheel in each. The wheel, like a mill-wheel, had shovels attached, and was itself attached to a great hinged, brass rod that disappeared below deck. The hinges were opened so that the mill-wheels hung suspended over the sides of the ship, half in the water. Other crewmembers removed the hatch-cover from the pedestal or dais mounted in the middle of the deck between the wheelhouses. Another team removed a tarp off a long object lashed on deck to the side. Sanford had assumed cannon might be under the tarp, but it was a long iron tube, nearly as tall as the main mast. The team carried the tube to the opening on deck, hoisted the tube up, and inserted it, securing it with great bolts and a flange. The captain led the McDoons below, to a room into which the tube descended. The captain unlocked the door, stepped back, and revealed . . .
“A steam engine!?” said Sanford. “Our engineers at home have tried for years to build one that will drive a ship, but without success. Some trifling efforts up in Scotland, and we hear reports that the Americans have made headway, but nothing that could move an ocean-going vessel.”
“We Yountians only introduced engines ten years ago,” said the captain. “The sails are not just for disguise, since the engines are still weak and unreliable.”
The steam engine and paddle-wheels were not the only surprise on the Gallinule. The day after the steam engine was unpacked, the captain unlocked another foreroom. In the middle of the room was a cabinet reaching to the ceiling and about five feet long on each side, set within an armature and on gimbals so that the entire construct stayed level while the ship pitched and rolled. The cabinet was a complicated mass of brass rods, levers, and loops, polished teak slats and shelves that could be pulled out, that rotated and swivelled, with coloured bands and dots painted on in enamel and hundreds of numbers and geometrical figures engraved on faceted surfaces. Large books sat on tables flanking the cabinet. The walls of the room were covered floor to ceiling with charts and maps. The hair on the back of Barnabas’s neck prickled: he knew every major and minor trade route in the known world, but those routes were not pictured here.
Reglum joined them, along with another man. The ship captain said, “Reglum will need to explain most of this because the concepts are difficult for me to tell you in English. And also Mr. Dorentius Bunce, whom I introduce to you now as our Chief Fulginator.”
Dorentius Bunce bowed, a slight man whose cap sat crumpled atop his head. His English was as good as Reglum’s, which seemed to peeve the latter. “Thank you, Captain,” said Dorentius. “I suppose our guests will wonder first about my title, and then about the machine behind me. Mirabile dictu, the two matters are related, as I shall now explain.”
Sally leaned forward to catch a better glimpse of the machine behind. Something about the geometrical figures resonated deep inside her; she thought she understood for a second the logic of the interlacing rods and levers.
“We sail soon off Big Land’s maps,” said Dorentius. “We seek the gateway and then we must navigate with great
precision through the Interrugal Lands, the places in between, to arrive in Yount. The process we render as ‘fulgination’ in English. I am the one who directs and controls this operation. You are familiar with the ansible? Right, well, this is the next development along the ansible trajectory — an ansible amplified and tuned beyond any ansible of the usual kind. The machine in this room is the apparatus necessary to detect the right roads, to calculate our position, to extrapolate the correct trajectory — ”
Reglum Bammary interrupted. “The Great Confluxion conjoined our worlds, but not so literally as if the Liverpool docks were suddenly to appear in the London basin. The connection is more ethereal, a series of gates and strands that allow visitors to pass from one world to the other almost without seeming to. Fulgination is a metaphysical art, buttressed by mathematics, pneumatics, eudiometry, and hydrostatics.”
Dorentius reclaimed the explanation. “The mathematics is infinitely complex. Do you know Euler’s rendition of the calculus? Lagrange’s?”
“Rotational symmetry groups, bichromatic plane patterns,” broke in Reglum again.
“ — conics and spirals, tangents and vortices — ” redoubled Dorentius.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” laughed the ship’s captain. “You make our heads ache with your knowledge!” He turned to the McDoons and winked, “Mr. Bammary and Mr. Bunce are competitors, you see, since the one is an Oxford man and the other went to Cambridge.”
“Caius College,” said Dorentius, with a challenging glare at Reglum, who affected Oxonian disdain.
“Tell us rather about the Fulginator itself,” pled the ship’s captain, hastening to add, “You first, Dorentius, then you, Reglum.” He winked again.
“There is nothing like this in Big Land. The closest analogy might be to Pascal’s ‘sautoir,’ his calculating machine, but that never worked, and besides it was not intended for the same purpose. Though Pascal’s hexagram theorem resembles the alphanumerical 42.b on the inverse field of quadrant 17 on the Fulginator’s right octasphere . . .” Dorentius trailed off, lost in thought.
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