The Choir Boats

by Rabuzzi, Daniel

  Maggie succumbed to temptation not long after. Mrs. Sedgewick was at tea with some other ladies. Maggie had emptied the old coals from the study fireplace, and put in new coals for the evening fire. She had replaced all the candles, carefully putting the stubs in one place for counting by the head-maid. The late afternoon house at Archer Street by Pineapple Court was dozy. Maggie shut the study door almost all the way, leaving it just ajar enough to allay suspicion, and went to a bookcase. Hesitating only for a moment, she selected a book and sat in the big chair behind the escritoire to read it.

  The study door opened some time later and Mrs. Sedgewick walked in. For a second she and Maggie stared at one another. Then Mrs. Sedgewick did something that Maggie would never forget: she laughed, stepped inside, and closed the door behind her.

  “Well, well, well,” said Shawdelia Sedgewick. “So there are wind-wagons on the plains of Sericana, after all!”

  Maggie looked to see if Mrs. Sedgewick had anything in her hand with which to hit Maggie. Not seeing anything, Maggie relaxed a little.

  “Come, my dear,” said Mrs. Sedgewick. “I won’t bite you, though perhaps I ought to. What are you reading?”

  Maggie’s hand did not tremble and she kept her chin jutted out as she held up the book.

  “Aeneral Equations of Motion in a Dynamical System,” read Mrs. Sedgewick. “Remarkable! I understand almost nothing that stands in this book, and not for lack of trying, I can assure you. Do you comprehend it? Speak truthfully.”

  Maggie had only read a little in the book. What she had read sent a shiver through her, excited her to draw notations in the air with her fingers. In the voice they had taught her at the charity school, she said, “Not all, ma’am, but enough to inspire further, um, reflection.”

  Mrs. Sedgewick laughed again. “How well you speak, especially since you are . . . since, well . . . I believe you, though I suppose I ought to test you, but then again, I cannot because I don’t know enough to do so.”

  She went to the bookcase and pulled down another book, saying, “Here, have a look at this. Isoperimetrical Problems and the Calculus of Variations by Woodhouse. Even more impenetrable, I’m afraid, but perhaps not for you. Herschel and Somerville recommended it to me. Mr. Sedgewick knows nothing of my studies, would scorn them if he did. What do you say, girl?”

  Maggie did not know what to say. She dropped her eyes, then stopped herself and brought them level again with Mrs. Sedgewick’s. The two women regarded one another for some time. Maggie relaxed a little more. At last, Mrs. Sedgewick smiled and said, “Well, there is a great deal more to you than anyone could ever suspect, isn’t there? Oh yes, a great deal more.”

  Chapter 8: Pious Drops for the Closing Eye

  James Kidlington looked at the judge, who was about to issue the sentence. The McDoon household sat in the front row. Sally could neither take her eyes off Kidlington nor stand to look at him.

  Only two weeks had passed since Sally’s discovery of Kidlington in her room. In an action unheard of in England, the judge had ordered a speedy trial. This was not to be like the cumbrous machinery of the law at home, where a case might take months or years to come to trial at the Old Bailey, where a suit such as that of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce could last indefinitely. No, here at the furthest rim of Great Britain’s expanding empire, in a place where British rule had only just been secured, and where the military was the essential authority in a time of war, the case of James Kidlington would be adjudicated quickly. He was offered up, pulled in to be made an example of, to show the Cape that English law and justice were fair, swift, and awesome, altogether different from the lackadaisical application of Dutch law the Cape had known before.

  Sally had not wanted this. Hardly able to think, she had held fast to the hope that this was all a grotesque misunderstanding or, failing that, nothing that should become a matter for the courts and, worse, public speculation. Kidlington might have wronged her, but surely the best court to set his punishment was the court of her own heart. She pleaded with Barnabas and Sanford to have the case dropped. Hurt and puzzled, Barnabas would possibly have done so, for her sake, but he had no control in the matter.

  Sally kept returning to the events of that evening. Why, she thought, did I insist on Roderick Random? More than that, why did I cry out so? Over and over she opened the door, saw Kidlington in the candlelight, an enigmatic smile on his face. Time had frozen right then and there. Kidlington had not moved. She wanted him to, would have let him go if he had asked. But he did not. He had not moved even when the soldiers had grappled him.

  “How’d this man get by us?” the corporal yelled.

  “I don’t know, sir,” the other soldier said. “Looks like he slipped into the garden from some other angle, and then found a route up through the window there, sir.”

  The soldiers searched Kidlington. He had a key to the lockbox. Held tightly in Kidlington’s right hand, the hand he used to turn the pages of the journal, was Sally’s locket. Calm until now, Kidlington refused to surrender the locket, looking at Sally with an expression she could not read. Kidlington had to be pinned against the wall, his hand pried open. The corporal took pains to open the locket. Sally saw her picture looking back at her in the lamplight. The corporal wore a nasty look of satisfaction. “There’s trespassing, and maybe unauthorized possession of a key to this lockbox — would that be right, Miss? — and now burglary, in the lady’s private room, no less. What else might you have been doing, you puttock?”

  Kidlington, crying “Sally” in a hoarse voice, scuffled with the soldiers and was marched out. He locked his gaze on Sally’s face until he was shoved from the room. In the combination of lamplight and moonlight, Sally thought he looked like a fallen angel.

  The McDoon’s plans of departure were thrown into uncertainty. Nexius’s anger grew, both at the breach of security and at the delay. He was angriest at himself for being duped by Kidlington. Barnabas and Sally were often together in the next few days, but neither knew what to say.

  Sally had barely endured the trial. Kidlington’s testimony confused and excited her even as it plunged her into despair. He had begged the court’s forgiveness, acknowledging the wrongness of his actions but insisting that he had done what he had done not to harm Sally in any way but to gain a better understanding of her sentiments towards him.

  Eyes fixed on the judge, Kidlington said, “Her anxiousness for my well-being heightened my resolve to gain her good feeling. I urge you, sir, and this entire court, to leave her utterly out of these proceedings. Her good name and character should not be embroiled in this catastrophe solely of my making. Her character far surpasses mine.”

  The judge snorted. “On that last remark, Mr. Kidlington, I think we shall all agree. Now then, the most serious charge against you is that of burglary. You opened the lockbox with a key that you apparently had purloined or copied. A precious article belonging to Miss McLeish, namely a locket containing pictures of her and her mother, were in your hand when you were apprehended. Do you have any explanation for this?”

  “Yes, I held the locket in my hand. Indeed, I was examining it because its contents I value not in pecuniary terms, but in another way altogether. I had no intent to remove the locket. I intended to replace it, along with the journal, within the lockbox, and to leave the lockbox as I found it. I would have taken myself from the premises close to immediately, with nothing more than I had come with, except that I was unexpectedly discovered.”

  The first blow fell: the jury found Kidlington guilty on all counts. (The corporal felt sure he had a commendation coming, and the prosecutor swelled with pride about the efficacy of English law.) The second blow fell: the judge sentenced Kidlington to seven years transportation to Australia. English law, the Law, had spoken. Kidlington was led back to jail to await the first Sydney-bound ship. Sally could not see — Barnabas had to help her find her footing on the way home.

  The McDoons avoided everyone but the Termuydens and Nexius. Sally could neith
er eat nor sleep, even in the Gezelligheid.

  “Sally,” Barnabas said. “Nothing to be done. Rum affair all way ’round. No way to handle ’em, I’m afraid. I’ve spoken with the Termuydens and with the judge and even that mastiff of a prosecutor.”

  Sally looked up with wild hope.

  “No, my dear,” said Barnabas. “Not to get anything changed. Can’t, you know, it’s the law. But to see if maybe you and I might speak with Mr. Kidlington . . . in jail before we set sail for Yount.”

  So Barnabas and Sally visited Kidlington, being taken to Robbens Island on one of the sloops Sally had seen from her window. Kidlington sat quietly as they entered, his mouth drawn, looking nothing like the gascon he had been. Australia! The penal colony. Many never survived that, and very few ever came back. He trembled as he spoke. No one else was in the room; the jailer waited outside the door.

  “I am sorry, so truly sorry,” he said. “Mr. McDoon, sir. Sally . . . Sally . . . I did not mean to hurt you, not by the end, not at all. What I said in court was the truth. But I have not been truthful at all times. I am most sorry about that.”

  Sally reached out to take his hand, but stopped herself.

  “My father did not hang himself,” said Kidlington. “He is a squire in Shropshire, very well-respected in that part of England. The gambling debts were mine, not his. Never gamble in Bath — they will strip you clean! He disowned me; my entire family cast me out. I have no brother in the medical profession, nor in Bombay ’tall. But I did come to London like Dick Whittington, and I am in the medical way. That is, I received a small inheritance that my father could not hinder, and used it to study medicine, and I took employ as an apothecary’s assistant.”

  Barnabas asked, “How did you happen to be on the Essex then, if you have no brother in Bombay?”

  Kidlington started to answer several times, finally found the words. “I had heard that a certain McDoon family would be travelling aboard that ship, and that they carried with them items of interest to . . . certain people in London.”

  Barnabas and Sally were stupefied.

  “There is more to my tale,” he said, looking desperately at Sally. “My life is a fiction, a Shandy.” His face was stricken. “Those to whom I owed money, my gambling debts from Bath, they found me out in London. They sold those debts to wormy bailiffs and dubious men of business. You may have heard of such men, though I know your trade never touches on their sort, Mr. McDoon. Ralph Nickleby of Golden Square, to name one, and Daniel Quilp of Tower Hill for another, he who holds an interest in the Old Curiosity Shop.”

  Barnabas nodded. He knew those names, and felt pity for the man in front of him.

  “They in turn sold the debt to still others,” Kidlington said. “Oh yes, there is a thriving market in gall and misery. At last I ended in the clutches of another sort of person altogether, individuals of ungentle mirth, whose means of collection lack all refinement. I had no hope of repaying my debts except to perform various tasks that my final debt-holders presented to me from time to time.”

  Sally tried to focus on James’s words but could not. Why did I cry out? Why did the corporal have to be so officious? Why did the judge have to be rigid? I would have given the locket to James.

  “My upbringing, my studies, my position at the apothecary, all these things my new associates found novel and useful. Step by step, I descended into a world unknown to you, a side of London that dwells and spins far below the world of your City counting houses and the sunlit terraces of Mayfair. Connected though, always connected, and I was — I am — a very useful means of connection.”

  Kidlington found it hard to go on. “This other world is a hard one, with no tolerance for error and no care for those who fail. A thousand sorts populate it: squoriers, night pryers, chowsers, guest-takers, mudlarks, slick-slack men. There is an organization to it, very hard to pin down. The medal has its obverse: above is Whitehall and the Palace, below their counterparts. There is a villains’ parliament of sorts, and an uncrowned king of them all. No one knows who he is exactly. Some say he is a Professor Moriarty, others say a Dr. Silvanus. The stories get mixed up. But there is a band which controls much of what goes on in London’s underworld. Headed by ‘the Chief,’ a strange chap in an old-fashioned coat.”

  Barnabas and Sally grabbed the table to steady themselves.

  “Oh yes, we’ll come to that. In any case, this band ultimately controls my debts, you see. As a result, I am frequently required to assist in the, hmmm, mortuary trade, procuring bodies for anatomists and such. Not that I do the actual . . . procurement . . . but I deal with there surrectionists, arrange for transport and disposition of the cadavers. I have all the right contacts in my line of work.”

  Now the words poured out of Kidlington. “A few weeks before we met aboard the Essex, I overheard two of the ’snatchers talking about another piece of work they had done for the Chief. Something about a break-in on Mincing Lane, and an article of great value, highly prized by the Chief, but that they had not found it. The Chief was very angry, and everyone was looking to get this thing. What it might be they did not seem to know exactly. Some kind of jewellery, they thought, though their instructions included reference to a key, which they figured was a ruse on the part of the Chief.”

  Kidlington’s voice became a monotone. “I had been looking for such an opportunity, you see. To gain a bargaining lever, something to break their awful hold over me, something to repay my debts and secure my freedom. I quickly found out that ‘McDoon’ was on every varlet’s lips, found out about the Essex, and decided to work my dodge.”

  He refocused on Sally and Barnabas. “I was not working for them when I booked my passage. I hate them. I wanted to ransom whatever the item of value was for my freedom. Yes, I intended to befriend you to rob you, I confess that. But I befriended you all too well.”

  All three wept now. What else was there to do?

  “I know you must have difficulty deciphering truth from falsehood when you hear me,” Kidlington nearly moaned. “That is far worse punishment than transportation to Australia. Please, please believe me when I say that I did not perjure myself but spoke the truth in court: I did not intend to steal the locket, except only to steal a glimpse of you, Sally. Sally?”

  It was a long while before any of them could speak again. Kidlington regained enough composure to continue. “I will face any danger for you. When word of this trial gets out, and it will, the Chief and his men will want me dead. The penal colony is full of their people. I know what I face.” He paused, perhaps just a little bit, even under these circumstances, for effect. “Especially since I have read bits of your journal, dear Sally. . . .”

  Whose secrets were bigger? Sally said, “Don’t speak of it . . . James.” His name came out blurred.

  “Sally, I must,” said Kidlington, even the shade of bravado gone, wanting desperately to salvage what he could. “I know your Cretched Man. He’s my enemy too. The Chief, oh damnation!” Kidlington slammed his fist on the table.

  Trembling, Kidlington said, “I only read a little, Sally, and only from sweetest interest. I know how wrong that was, but I only read a bit, and I understood little of what you write about . . . a key, a book, a letter, a voyage to a place called Yount.”

  Hearing Kidlington say “Yount” was like a gale in their ears. He knew, he really knew! Sally had so longed for this moment, but not like this. She sobbed. The jailer stumped by again outside the door. He ignored the sobbing, which was a fixture of meetings in that room.

  “Yount,” said Kidlington. “A struggle against the Cretched Man. I read that much. It has consumed me since I read it. I hear a sound, nay, a music in me. Yount. I want to go with you. I want to join you.” At last he broke down completely, could say no more. His ship was leaving the Cape soon, but it would not be going to Yount.

  The jailer had enough of the muffled sobs, thinking it was about time these fancy people understood the nature of real justice and did not overstay their welcome.
He rapped on the door to announce the end of Barnabas and Sally’s interview with James Kidlington. Sally and Barnabas rose slowly.

  “Here, James!” cried Sally. She took out her locket and thrust it across the table at him. He put up his hands to refuse it, but she lunged forward until their faces were inches apart.

  “Take it,” she said. “I would have given it to you a hundred times. I would give it to you a thousand times if that would free you!”

  She turned and fled. Just beyond the doorway, she half-turned and saw James Kidlington at the table, mutely holding the locket. She paused for one footstep, capturing every feature of that face in her memory before the door was closed behind her.

  The trial over, nothing could further delay the journey to Yount. McDoon & Associates, hardly able to slip off unnoticed after the publicity of the trial, made ready to leave. They spread the word that they were sailing up the African coast to the Persian Gulf, the better to acquaint themselves with trading opportunities at Zanzibar, Socotra, Aden, and Muscat. They would give power of attorney to the Termuydens to represent their business while they were gone.

  “She has arrived,” said Cornelius. “The Gallinule is just outside Table Bay, anchored at fourteen fathoms over a mile to the southwest of Robbens Island. That way she avoids even the most inquisitive eyes. We are sending out supplies by boat to them: fresh water, food — salted goat’s meat especially for you, Mr. Sanford — medicines, the like. Even some cases of books — that is especially welcome, we are told. She will leave straightaway once you are onboard.”

  Dinner at the Gezelligheid on the eve of their departure was a subdued affair. After the meal, as everyone lit candles to retire to bed, the Mejuffrouw came to Sally and Barnabas. Even in the half-light, her eyes shone.