The Choir Boats

by Rabuzzi, Daniel

  “May I return?” asked Maggie.

  “You need not ask,” said the scholars together in every language. “You are of this place and can never leave forever. In the end you must return, not having left, to complete with us the Great Psalter — which has already been written and sung — to solve the Great Equation — which was solved before Time began.”

  A lark of many larks flew from a plum tree of many plum trees and alighted on Maggie’s shoulder, a little streaked golden fire on Maggie’s brown shoulder.

  “Goodbye for now,” said all the scholars.

  “Goodbye,” said Maggie.

  She walked out the gate, patting the flanks of the bowing griffins as she passed. Down a long road over the swales she walked, with the lark for company. The darkness grew, the stars came out. On and on, colder and colder. The lark sang, “What is the square root of infinity?” and, before Maggie could answer, it flew back up the moon-lit road.

  Maggie woke up in the alley, cross-legged with a book in her lap, almost unable to stand.

  Chapter 14: Endued with Particles of Heavenly Fires

  At the winter solstice, all of Yount celebrated kjorraw, the chant of solemn joy, the wistful search for memory, and the shield against loneliness. At dawn, every house, every ship, had a Small Moon hanging from roof or mast to reflect the sunrise. At dawn, the harp-boats and ship-violins rode in Yount Great-Port harbour, as they did everywhere in Yount, playing the symphony of longing and hope, fanned by the wind and poured out into the water through resonating strings hanging from the keels.

  The dolphins sang back first, crowding around the breakwater and leaping high before all two hundred thousand residents of the city. Then the whales sang back, their great heads and fins surging in the waves just off the breakwater. The humans and the cetaceans sang to one another, whale-matins in exile, a shared melody to kindle light in the darkness.

  The Mother’s Song , thought Sally, watching the proceedings from the royal barge. I know this melody. I sang it to defy the Owl in the Temple.

  Sally moved to the bow and sang, waving her arms like the conductor of an orchestra. As she did so, the dolphins raced towards her, leaping and tumbling to match her gestures.

  “A lail-obos!” cried people on the barge, and the word spread throughout the multitudes. “The Karket-soomi woman rules the dolphins!”

  Afsana, Tom, and Barnabas joined Sally, held hands, and sang as well.

  “Kaskas, look!” cried the people. “A whale enters the harbour! Not in living memory has one passed the breakwater. They’ve called the grandsire of whales, look how he lifts his head, his tail must be thrust into the harbour mud. His eye is enormous. See how he looks at the Karket-soomi singers. . . . Ah, now he sings with them. Oh, by the Nurturing Mother, such a singing!”

  And all two hundred thousand sang together, and millions more did the same everywhere in Yount, led by four Big Landers and, above all, by two young women, cousins warily clasping hands in front of Neptune’s herald.

  As the crowds dispersed to the rest of the kjorraw ceremonies, Sally thought, So now we are four. Afsana is strong. We are too alike and not alike enough, but we need her strength, her anger. Who shall be our fifth?

  “Glorious, that’s what it was!” said Reglum. “A song for the ages! Now come, let us enjoy the rest of kjorraw. There are Dorentius and Noreous on the next ship — I hope they are not too envious of my good fortune in being onboard the royal barge — we can all go together to break our fast.”

  Sally, aware of the spreading talk and what her performance would do to fuel it, was glad for diversion. As they were rowed back to shore, she said to Reglum, “I feel funny inside right now. Empty and full all at once. I cannot put it any other way.”

  “You are a marvel,” said Reglum. “Truly, you begin to scare me a little too with what you can do. You scare others as well, you know. Some people think you might be the sukenna-tareef, the Saviour. Others say that is heresy. Some fear you are in league with the Cretched Man. And now Tom and Mr. McDoon, as well as Afsana! Old prophecies are on many minds now. Be watchful in the midst of our rare moment of joy!”

  Sally looked back at the Arch-Bishop, who affected a look of bland hauteur.

  “But forgive those who fear you. Our fear springs from our situation, alone here in the wilderness. We do not know our origins,” said Reglum. “We do not know where we came from or why we are here or where we are going. We lost our history when we arrived here and, at first, we had even forgotten the concept of what history is or what it means. The Great Confluxion was like an explosion from which the survivors awake with no memory. We are amnesiacs. Our only progress has been, over the past two thousand years, to become aware that we are amnesiacs.”

  Sally remembered a man who had fallen off a roof on Dunster Court by Mincing Lane. He had survived but could not remember his name or where he lived.

  Reglum brightened and said, “But enough of the mournful and solemn! Now we eat — I could eat an entire star-duck stuffed with pears! — and enjoy the pageant and pantomimes and all the other entertainments. See, Barnabas, kjorraw breakfast is like a gigantic poisille, not too sweet, not too bitter. Try the rice-and-thyme cakes dipped in honey, for example.”

  The McDoons enjoyed the rest of the day’s festivities, but were aware that, everywhere they went, they were the centre of attention, however surreptitiously or politely people looked at them. They laughed at what they understood of the comic skits and staged fables: the story of the addled brill, a flatfish who fell in love with the reflection of the moon (“Which is why we speak of needing more than one eye in matters of the heart,” said Dorentius, with a wink at Reglum), the tale of the dog who wanted to swim with the dolphins, and that of the human mother who raised two bear-cubs and how the bears thanked her.

  They tried to follow the duels in which competitors traded traditional proverbs in search of the most ingenious and illuminating ripostes, and the riddling contests, and the competition to create epigrams extemporaneously. They listened to the Rescue Stories, told especially to the young, real examples of bravery and camaraderie in the Lands In-Between. They enjoyed the music, joining in where they could on “Far Benison, the Sainted Seas” and “The Sun We Hail with Song Profound.” In the evening they attended a performance of “The Carnation on the Mast,” a classic drama about the Lanner, a Yount Major frigate that sacrificed itself to save a city during the War of the Affirmation — “Remember the Lanner,” they roared with the rest of the audience at the curtain call.

  Several days later the McDoons celebrated Christmas. Yount Great-Port had, besides two mosques and one synagogue, three churches: one Roman Catholic, one Lutheran (run by the Pietists), and one shared by several other Protestant denominations, all serving the small communities of Karket-soomi who had come to Yount one way or the other, plus a handful of converts from the Sabo-soomi. Sanford had misgivings but agreed that finding a service at all so far from home was commendable and that they could all be excused for liturgical inexactitudes under the circumstances. In fact, as Barnabas pointed out, the McDoons could feel doubly righteous since they attended not only the rather shambolic Anglican service but also the well-ordered Lutheran one, having been invited by Fraulein Reimer’s sister on behalf of the entire congregation.

  “She sings beautifully, the little one there with the unkempt hair and the light in her eyes,” whispered Sally to the fraulein as they listened to the children’s choir perform J.S. Bach’s “Ach wie Fluechtig, Ach wie Nichtig. ”

  The fraulein smiled but said nothing.

  Afterwards, the McDoons held a private Christmas dinner in their quarters. As far as any of them could remember, it was the first time they had gathered without at least one Yountian present since they had boarded the Gallinule in Cape Town, or maybe even since boarding the Essex almost eighteen months earlier. They realized that it would soon be the year 1814 back in England, that they often forgot which saint’s day it might be, and that they missed Minc
ing Lane terribly, no matter how much they had longed to come to Yount.

  “Figs and feathers,” said Barnabas, wearing his now-stained buff-coloured nankeen vest and frayed quince-coloured stockings. “What I would not give for some of the cook’s best for our Christmas feast!”

  “Roast goose!” said Tom.

  “At least Fraulein Reimer has been able to make us her traditional plum tart,” said Sanford, bowing to the fraulein.

  They spent the next minutes saying things like “Remember the time you . . . ?” and “I wonder if Yikes has moved from the hearthside?” and “Has Mr. Fletcher proposed to the cook’s niece yet, do you think?” Each in his or her mind’s eye saw the print of Lord Rodney attacking the French, the dolphin door-knocker and the blue trim around the windows, the bean-poles in the garden surrounded by blue bixwort. Each heard the call of rooks and the cries of the oysterman, the milk seller, and the broommaker in the streets.

  Only one person at table was dry-eyed, the sixth, their only guest: Afsana. Sally caught the look of feigned indifference and real scorn in Afsana’s eye, like the look of a beggar with her face pressed against the glass of an elegant tavern or food shop. Sally moved to curtail their crawl towards self-pity.

  “Hear now,” Sally said. “Let us toast this feast and our being together . . . and welcome our cousin.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Tom, more loudly than he needed to. Everyone raised their glasses. Barnabas, striving to please his daughter, had banned alcohol from the table. Although he thought nothing would be finer at the moment than a little toddy or punch, he hoisted his mulled pear juice and said “Hear, hear” even more loudly than Tom had.

  “Thank you,” said Afsana. “Most certainly my first Christmas dinner. You do know that we honour Jesus in the Koran?”

  Before Sanford could explore that topic, Sally said, “We need to talk about our plans. Thank . . . heavens we have our Tom back, but our task here is not fully done. Uncle Barnabas opened the Door but we could not keep it open. To do that, we must help in other ways.”

  “How?” said Sanford.

  Before Sally could reply, Afsana said, “War is coming with Orn. They have been talking about that since I arrived. I feel that we have a role to play in that conflict.”

  “Is that our conflict or theirs?” said Sanford. “Besides, we are merchants, not warriors.”

  “It is our conflict if it is part of liberating Yount, helping them find their way home,” said Afsana. Sally was not the only one who noticed that Afsana said “our.” No one spoke to Sanford’s second point, but the Londoners thought of Barnabas challenging the Cretched Man in the church ruins and Sanford himself attacking the carkodrillos and Tom losing two fingers against a leaping monster and . . . the fraulein standing with a smoking pistol over a woman bleeding to death.

  The fraulein said, “I have feet in both worlds. I think Afsana is right.”

  Sally leaned down to give Isaak a scrap of star-duck, and said, “I agree. A war with Orn, if war comes, is tied somehow to Yount’s ultimate freedom.”

  Tom nodded. He saw Jambres on the Seek-by-Night, its blood-dappled moon flag fluttering, and he saw Billy Sea-Hen tipping his hat as he walked unbowed into darkness to confront a monstrous owl.

  “Thomas,” Tom murmured with a slight Wapping accent. “Tommy Two-Fingers.”

  Sally caught Tom’s emotion and pushed her point further, saying, “The Learned Doctors called us. The Arch-Bishop and others among them may regret that now, thinking they have unleashed more than they wished for — which may be right. But the main point is still unresolved: how to end Yount’s captivity.”

  Sanford wiped his hands of duck grease with a thoroughness that suggested he was cleansing himself of something else, and said, “I wished myself to come but only to help Barnabas find his heart’s desire — and to rescue Tom-lad. Now that he is rescued and we are all well, I say that we should leave this place and its troubles to itself.”

  Isaak moved stealthily beneath their feet, hunting scraps, wrestling with bones, but otherwise all was still.

  Barnabas said at last, “Quatsch. Sanford has a point, you know. Sally . . . ?”

  Sally sat long in thought before she answered. “Sanford . . . I love you as I love my uncle. Your counsel is always good, we have always listened, but think on it: if Tom wishes to remain, would you still wish to return home?”

  Tom swallowed hard and said, “Sanford — second father — I cannot leave yet. We have a thing to do here that must be done. And I believe the Cretched Man will return to our aid . . . Yes, hear me out! . . . and when he does, with his soldiers, well, I need to be there.”

  Sanford said no more, looking convinced of neither the one thing nor the other. Barnabas said little more but his eyes made it plain that, if Afsana remained in Yount, then so too would he for now.

  “Let us agree on this much then,” said Sally. “We cannot leave in any event until the first tough ship sails in the spring. That is at least three, possibly four months, hence. Much can happen in that time.”

  The McDoons, now including Afsana, all nodded. Isaak jumped from the floor into Sally’s lap, and put her head up over the table, scanning for scraps, sweeping everyone with her invincible and haughty gaze, daring all comers with her outthrust chin. Everyone laughed.

  “Besides,” said Tom, as they left the table. “We are going to stage Buskirk’s ‘Hero of the Hills’ at the Marine soiree in the spring. We cannot leave before we do that!”

  Again everyone laughed, including Afsana, who had that morning accepted Tom’s invitation to perform opposite him in the play.

  The McDoons would look back later at the next three months as being nearly idyllic, though they hardly thought so at the time.

  Barnabas and Afsana continued their daily conversations in the Winter Garden. Afsana and Sally spoke frequently, and Tom found many excuses to join them or to make sure his daily routine included being where Afsana might be at a given moment. Not every meeting between Afsana and the other McDoons, especially Barnabas, was an unqualified success but, on the whole, the two sides continued to creep towards reconciliation. Watching Barnabas and Afsana gesticulating as they spoke to one another, Sally, at the other end of the garden, thought that Afsana “clarified” as well as any other McDoon.

  “When the English were still using wood for coins and did not know how to count in a ledger book,” Sally heard Afsana lecturing in a tone that was not unfamiliar to those who had heard Sally’s lectures, “Ibn Hawqual and Al-Muqaddasi and Ibn-Majid were charting and sailing the trade routes from the Malabar Coast to Penang and from Socotra to the Bengal!” Watching her cousin handle Barnabas, Sally had no doubt that Afsana could sail with Lord Rodney, and had no doubt that Barnabas knew this too.

  The winter was very cold, without much snow but racked by dry gales. Pack-ice crept into the northern waters, making navigation hazardous, so the departure of the first tough ship of the year, the Pratincole, was delayed until Plassy-Month (which is early April). The only advantage of the dry weather was the lack of cloud cover, so that Sally was able to scan the heavens at night, “lunaticking” as Tom called it. As many evenings as she could, and for as long as she could withstand the cold, Sally — sometimes with Reglum, sometimes also with Afsana and Tom — would stand on the rooftop and search the sky. She marvelled at the strange constellations, which Reglum identified for her: The Oarsman, The Physeter or Spouting Whale, The Dabchick, The Mother-Dragon, and dozens of others, an entire sky full.

  “And there,” Reglum added one evening. “Two that mariners know from Karket-soom: what you call Sirius, the Dog Star (which we name The Wolf’s Eye, which is near enough), and Ermandel’s Toe (which we call simply The Thumb). No one can explain how these two stars appear in both Karket-soom and Sabo-soom — in fact, can be tracked through many of the places in the Interrugal Lands. Like the starlight rainbow . . . something inexplicable.”

  The wind made Sally’s ears hurt as Ermandel’s Toe gleame
d without flickering. “Of course,” said Reglum, laughing, “old Dorentius has a theory about it — but then he always does!”

  Sally was intrigued by the concept of a starlight rainbow, wanting to know more about the device for measuring and capturing the stellar spectrum, how it worked, how it recreated the light on sensitive paper and so on. Reglum was happy to talk about what he saw as a clever toy without much application. Sally saw in her mind’s eye a mechanical finger for drawing star-colours on paper, an indexical to draft the stars into artistic service. She wondered if it could be used on moonlight as well.

  Tonight a half-moon should have begun to rise when Reglum pointed out the Dog Star and Ermandel’s Toe. Sally stared at the spot where the moon ought to be but wasn’t, willing it to appear but to no avail.

  “Like Rapunzel,” murmured Sally to herself. “Easing the tedium of captivity by pacing the rooftop, her hair reflecting the moonrise. Chanting to herself, ‘Stars up above and thorns down below, the prince’s arrival was cumbered and slow.’”

  “I’m sorry, did you say something?” said Reglum.

  “Oh, nothing, Reglum,” said Sally, flushing as she thought of James Kidlington.

  The weather was not the only reason they stayed the entire time in Yount Great-Port and limited themselves to a few places within the city: after the events at the Temple and the kjorraw, they were objects of continuous scrutiny whenever they went out in the streets. Most of the attention was welcoming but even that was overwhelming. A cobbler (a woman, Sally noted, still adjusting to the idea) would press a pair of boots on the McDoons, a baker a cake, parents would hoist children to see them, work would stop as people looked out of windows and doors, and all before the Karket-soomi had gone one hundred yards down any lane or street in the Great-Port. And some of the attention was less welcoming: a scowl, a hardened gaze, people furtively whispering to one another in the rows farthest from the McDoons; nothing overt but always the susurrus of suspicion ran with them. The McDoons soon kept to themselves, venturing out only with Marine escorts in carriages within what became a limited circuit of visits.