The Choir Boats

by Rabuzzi, Daniel

  He stood there in his raddled coat and outdated hat, not four paces away. So close. She saw every detail of that coat, all its patterns and striations. She sensed a message in the patterns, began to discern a calligraphy in the threads. The longer she looked, the more she thought she understood the message, considered it a beacon luring the unwary to a deadly shore. The buttons of that coat were silver, embossed with a half moon. His hands were pale, finely groomed, with fingernails cut to match the buttons. Against her will, Sally’s gaze moved up to the Cretched Man’s face. She gasped.

  He was beautiful. His eyes were a galvanic blue that shifted to green. Nose, cheeks, lips, chin, forehead, all were perfectly proportioned, like the statue of an ancient Roman. She hated herself for thinking so, but, dear Lord, he was beautiful. He held out his hands to her. They held gifts, two books. His expression was that of one long-pained, one who seeks to spare another the grief he himself has suffered. Involuntarily, she reached out to take the books. The distance between them closed. Two paces away. She smelled almonds. His eyes were enormous, trapping her. He beckoned with the books. Sally took a halting step forward, towards an infinite library behind The Cretched Man, miles of shelved books reaching to the heavens. From the celestial archive came the whispers of a thousand scholars, welcoming her if she just accepted The Cretched Man’s gifts.

  Sally wrenched her gaze away. The Cretched Man shook his head, smiled. She detected a hundred emotions in that smile. His face was too white. His teeth were too white. The smell of almonds overwhelmed her. Her eyes teared. When her vision cleared, The Cretched Man was gone. Or she woke up. Or both.

  The Cretched Man struck the next day, Monday the 11th of May.

  Barnabas, Sanford and Fletcher went to the Piebald Swan. Tom wanted to be part of the discussions at the mysterious Yountish inn, having read too many histories of Nelson and Rodney, and heard too many stories of Hornblower and of Lucky Jack Aubrey. Tom slipped out of the house on Mincing Lane to follow his uncle, but had not counted on two things: that those he followed would take a hackney coach, and that he would get lost.

  The coach was soon away from Tom. If he ran, he might keep it in sight, but then he might also be noticed by the lynx-eyed Fletcher. He tried to estimate where they were heading, but knew only that their general destination was Wapping, and was soon lost in a maze of lanes and alleys near the river.

  That’s three men behind me, sauntering with purpose, I’d call it, Tom thought. Those two in the conduit, they’re all together, that’s five following me.

  Tom trotted.

  I think this must be Blanchflower Street, not far from George & Son. If I can just make it to George & Son, I’ll be quit of these rascals.

  No one was about except the five men tracking him. Tom ducked into an alley.

  Smallbone’s Cutting, I think this is, Should leave me on Finch-House Longstreet.

  But he was mistaken. The cutting ended in a small yard with no other entrance.

  Tom turned to face his pursuers.

  “What do you want?” he yelled at the five.

  “You,” said the leader of the band, with a sad, knowing look in his eye.

  “Come on then, you chowsers!” said Tom.

  The fight did not last long: five on one were impossible odds, though Tom put up a game struggle.

  Just before they bound his arms and put a sack over his head,

  Tom thought, Quatsch! I wish I had one of the fraulein’s pistols. Uncle Barnabas, come quick!

  “Where’s Tom?” asked Barnabas when he, Sanford, and Fletcher had returned from their meeting. Everyone at Mincing Lane thought Tom was with another member of the household. They turned the house out looking for him, and then scoured the nearby streets. They called on neighbours. No one had any word of Tom, nor would they since Tom by then was a captive in a warehouse down the river in Shadwell.

  Late that evening, someone thumped on the door with the dolphin knocker. Barnabas almost yanked the door off its hinges, but no one was there. A letter sat on the doorstep. No one could have delivered the letter and then disappeared so quickly. The hairs on Barnabas’s neck went up.

  With trembling hands, Barnabas opened the letter. On cream-coloured stationery, and in a fine hand, it read:

  Dear Mr. McDoon,

  We are pleased to inform you that we have found the lost member of your household and are caring for him in preparation for returning him to you. We look sincerely forward to relieving ourselves of his care, in return for which we only (and humbly) ask for your cooperation in joining us on a certain journey, a journey you will undertake together with a certain article, viz. a key, that you possess.

  To effect the transaction, we ask (amicably) that you meet us Tuesday, May 12 at Saint Clare Minoresses without Aldgate at nine o’clock in the evening. Come alone. Your failure to heed this latter request will be taken as a grave trespass on our hospitality and good will, which might in turn have other consequences.

  In anticipation of a satisfactory resolution to the immediate concern, and to furthering our heretofore only slight acquaintance, I am your most obedient servant,

  Pausanias

  Barnabas said, “So our enemy has a name after all. Is he Greek?”

  Sally said, “He . . . he taunts us, Uncle. Pausanias was one of the ancients — a traveller and teller of tales.” She turned away in tears. What good was all her learning if she could not save Tom?

  Barnabas hugged Sally. What good were all his wealth and all his connections, if he could not save Tom?

  Sanford felt pain in his deepest being: a part of the very household had been taken, creating not just disorder but an assault on order itself. What good were discipline and detail if he could not save Tom?

  “Send word tonight to the Piebald Swan,” said Barnabas. “We make plans for our counterstroke. But above all we must get Tom back unhurt. Nothing else matters.”

  In the kitchen, the cook held her niece. “There, there,” the cook said. “Don’t you worry. The house is roused, at last! You’ll see. And your Fletcher will come through unharmed. I’ll wager that.”

  The cook looked about her, counted her knives. “Come on, lively now, girl,” she said. “We may have to defend ourselves, against this eel-rawney and his dis-holy brood.”

  As she collected the knives, she chanted:

  Willows walk and elders bleed,

  Witches take what witches need.

  “Witches got Master Tom,” she said. “Witches got Master Tom.” She touched her St. Morgaine medal, then sharpened the blades.

  In the attic, Sally cried with her arms around Isaak. “On our mother’s grave,” she said. “That’s what Tom always swears by. Oh, Tom.” She took out the locket from around her neck, opened it to display the only picture anyone had of her mother.

  In the back-house Fraulein Reimer sat alone with her needlework, remembering how she used to tell Tom and Sally the story of the wren and the bear.

  “How is it called in English? Zaunkoenig?” she would ask.

  “Wren,” Sally would reply.

  “Ja, the wren. The wren was the king of all birds, but one day the bear insulted him, so there was a war between the small creatures that fly and all the animals. The animals were confident they would win because they were so much bigger and stronger. But the wren was too scharfsinnig, smart, for them. He sent hornets and wasps to sting them and birds to peck out their eyes. In the end, the animals gave up, and the birds and insects won.”

  The fraulein put down her needlepoint, picked up the pistol beside her, and polished and checked its workings.

  Barnabas checked his pocket-watch again. Ten minutes to nine in the evening. The night would be dark, only two days past the total lack of the moon. He stood alone just outside St. Clare Minoresses without Aldgate, staring into the gloom. The church was a ruin, burned in a fire fifteen years earlier, roofless, with empty windows. Vines and creepers suckered to the walls, and a small elm tree had taken root in the vestry. Rooks a
nd crows were the only visible guardians of the place. Barnabas would have laughed if he could: this was a scene out of a romance. He half expected a mad monk to shamble out of the ruins, seeking to carry him into the catacombs.

  “Only this ain’t a novel,” he said.

  Five minutes to nine, darker, darker. Barnabas strode over rubble and trash through the doorway. A paving stone was tipped up to his left, leaning against a charred buttress. To his right, beyond the young elm, was a pool of water and more heaps of broken stone.

  Nine o’clock by the church bells from the City and Whitechapel.

  “Well, come on then,” Barnabas shouted into the darkness. “I’m here.”

  Barnabas thought he saw something move at what would be the far end of the nave.

  “You’re good at hiding, and spying, and now kidnapping,” he said. “What I want to know is, are you good at keeping your word?”

  Out of the darkness in front of him came a voice sinuous and clear: “A word is a breath of air, a rush of wind over the tongue and between the teeth, leaping to be free, rejecting restraints, slipping strictures and straits. My dear sir, you cannot keep a word, unless it is unspoken, in which case it is unborn and not yet a word at all.”

  Barnabas saw a figure in a dull red coat, flickering like embers.

  “Where’s my nephew?” said Barnabas.

  “My guest,” replied the voice. “Is right here.”

  The dark did not lessen so much as Barnabas could suddenly see in the dark. Or so it seemed. The man in the coat stood on a mound of debris, with Tom beside him.

  “Tom!” yelled Barnabas, lunging forward.

  “Terms, Mr. McDoon, terms,” said the smouldering man. “I offer to return your lost one, but first you must agree to my terms. You know what they are.”

  Barnabas pulled up short, breathing hard. The pistol under his coat banged against his ribs.

  “I will come with you to Yount,” he said.

  “The key?” said the Cretched Man with the slightest sub-slide of yearning.

  “Here it is,” said Barnabas, pulling it from his pocket.

  “You and the key together must come to Yount.”

  “Yes,” said Barnabas. “First you release Tom, and guarantee his safe passage from this place.”

  “Of course. Walk forward. We will complete the exchange . . . together . . . now.”

  Barnabas shifted his gaze to the Cretched Man, saw his face for the first time. (Marvellous, thought Barnabas. Like alabaster, like a living . . .) All three were within six paces, five paces, four paces. For an instant Barnabas looked into blue eyes that shimmered green in the grisaille wash of witch-vision.

  What happened next no one could ever reconstruct. Shots were fired. Someone shouted to Barnabas’s left, someone else to his right. More shots. A chorus of yells. Barnabas leaped forward, forgetting his pistol. His only goal was to free Tom. But Tom was gone, all was dark. Barnabas slipped, fell heavily to one knee. Something whizzed by his ear. He pulled out his pistol.

  “Barnabas?” Sanford was nearby. The two merchants made their way to the far end of the ruins. After the shots and the cries, St. Clare Minoresses was quiet.

  “Mr. Harris?” said Sanford, holding his pistol before him.

  “The same, sir,” came the reply. Others had gathered to Mr. Harris. Even in the dark, Barnabas caught a glimpse of magenta on a skullcap.

  “Salmius Nalmius,” said Barnabas. “Did we bag ’em?”

  “No.”

  “Come, sir,” said Harris. “It’s no good here. Best we return home before the watch arrives.”

  Back at Mincing Lane, Barnabas sat staring into the small fire in the partners’ office, a hand on Yikes. With his other hand he held the key in his pocket.

  “The Cretched Man had at least five men with him,” said Harris. “We had more. How did his men get away? We had them surrounded, men posted in Goodman’s Fields and Heydon Square, as far up as the Whitechapel High Street. No one passed.”

  “The Cretched Man can find doorways that others overlook,” said Salmius Nalmius.

  Sanford thought of weapons against those who walked through oblique doorways. Jawbone of an ass? Jericho trumpets?

  “No one hurt?” said Nexius Dexius.

  “No,” said Harris. “Except Mr. Fletcher, who has a big gash across his forehead. Nothing serious. He is being tended to in the kitchen as we speak.”

  Barnabas spoke, still staring at the small coals. “We failed. I failed. They’ve taken Tom.”

  Sanford put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find him,” he said. But, in truth, no one could think of how. The next step, if there was one, would come from the Cretched Man, or it would not come at all. Barnabas stared into the flames as the others departed.

  In the kitchen, the maid and the cook finished winding Fletcher’s forehead with an old piece of linen. The maid had nearly fainted when he came in, his face covered in blood.

  “How did I get this?” said Fletcher. “Well, I’d like to say I duelled that scarlet devil myself to win this . . . but, to speak less dramaticably, that is, fully accurately in all respects, well, I tripped and fell on a stone.”

  The cook smiled in relief. Mr. Fletcher, she thought, is just fine — no one hurt bad would ever talk like he did now. The maid, shaken by all the blood, was not so sure. Roaming the streets after dark in pursuit of kidnappers could be left to others, it seemed to her, now that Mr. Fletcher had been injured in the cause.

  Harris walked in as Fletcher was finishing. “Humbleness,” he said, “is a great virtue but it can be overdone. Our Mr. Fletcher led the charge against the enemy, braving the bullets. The ground was rough uneven: falling over a rock was all too likely.”

  The maid looked with redoubled admiration at Fletcher, who shot Harris a look of gratitude. The cook shooed everyone out of the kitchen. As she banked the fire, she murmured a prayer to St. Pancras, since his feast-day was just ending. “We’re in trouble, that no one can deny,” she said. “Sweet saint, whose feast was ruined by that eel-rawney, that witch-man, please help us save Master Tom. And help preserve that Mister Fletcher from harm, for my niece’s sake.”

  In her room, Sally held a mirror to her face with one hand, and covered the bottom half of her face with the other hand. She nearly saw Tom: the flashing hazel eyes, the high cheekbones, the dark hair that never sat where it was supposed to. She began to cry. “Tom’s taken. We cannot get him back in London. What will we do?”

  Isaak licked her face, jumped down to lunge at a dust mote. Watching Isaak attack invisible foes, Sally laughed in her tears. “We’ll go to Yount,” she said out loud, hugging herself. Isaak paused, stretched a golden leg, then returned to the fray.

  No word came of Tom’s whereabouts the following day. Salmius Nalmius returned to Mincing Lane, Harris and Fletcher came and went on unspecified errands. Strange men used the dolphin knocker, entered with messages. Sanford was furious, on Peniel wrestling with a spirit as Jacob did.

  Barnabas barely spoke except to say to Sally. “I swore to my sister long ago to protect you and Tom.”

  Sally said, “It’s not your fault, Uncle.” She took out her locket, handed it to her uncle, who opened it. He looked down at his sister’s picture, head bowed like the pelican who would pierce its own heart to guard its young.

  “She loved you then, she loves you now,” said Sally. “And so do I.”

  Barnabas, vest rumpled, one stocking nearly to his ankle, hung his head. “I hate that . . . man,” the merchant said with such a savage expression that his niece stepped back. “This is . . . I hate his wicked vermissage . . . is that a word?”

  “I don’t think so, Uncle, but we all know what you mean.”

  Barnabas snapped the locket shut, handed it back to Sally, and said, “We’ll go to the ends of the earth if need be, beans and bacon, we will.”

  “Yes, Uncle, we will.”

  “Chock,” said the parrot.

  A knock followed on the door, s
o loudly that Sally jumped. Sanford threw the door open, to find . . . no one — only a box on the doorstep. Sanford rushed out the door, looking up and down Mincing Lane. All manner of traffic passed, but nothing out of the ordinary. He walked back, picked up the box. He turned around and scanned the street one more time. There! High up on the house across the way was a small bird-shape, like a wren only not so, with a dull blank face. It disappeared behind a chimney. Sanford spat and went into the McDoon house.

  Barnabas looked at the box on the table. “Our troubles began with a mysterious box . . .” he said, casting a glance at Salmius Nalmius. This box held a letter and a glass pendant on a fine chain. The pendant was claret red. Barnabas read the letter, nodded grimly, handed it to Sanford, who read it aloud.

  Dear Mr. McDoon,

  You disappoint us. You violated the terms of our exchange. Therefore, and alas, we are obligated to begin the journey without you. We will, of course, take our guest with us, for his safekeeping. You know where we shall journey. Our offer still stands, on the same terms, to be consummated at our journey’s destination. Come as expeditiously as you can. Meet us at the Sign of the Ear as soon as you are able. (Your new friends can tell you where that is.) We will await you, though our patience is not unlimited. More there is not to say. By the time you receive this, we will have departed. Make haste!

  With regrets, but with hope for a successful resolution,

  I remain yours, sir,

  Phlegyas

  Postscript: As an affidavit of our good faith, enclosed is a token that will assure you of our guest’s continued well-being. Carry it with you if you desire to know how he fares. Your new friends can enlighten you further.

  “Now he’s ‘Phlegyas,’” said Barnabas. “More mockery, I guess. What does he mean — do you recognize it, Sally?”

  “I don’t know — Virgil, maybe . . . oh, what does it matter?” said Sally.

  “Where’s the Sign of the Ear?” asked Sanford.

  “In Yount,” said the Purser. “I can show you the way.”

  “What’s this for?” asked Barnabas, holding up the pendant.

  “It is connected to Tom,” said Salmius Nalmius. “It is a kind of ansible, a device for communicating across long, strange distances.”