The Choir Boats

by Rabuzzi, Daniel

  Sally thought about the fraulein’s sister, Frau Rehnstock, and Frau Rehnstock’s granddaughter, Amalia — “Malchen” — with her sweet singing voice, her bright eyes, and her curiosity about the pictures of Frau Luna and the enclosed garden.

  “Little Malchen is the fifth then,” said Sally. “Two more . . .”

  Jambres splayed his fingers in front of his face, and said, “There is someone in London who may be the mightiest singer of all, stronger even than you, Sarah.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I do not know for sure, and I do not know who she might be exactly, but for several years now I have felt her presence there. Yes, a female and young — at least in this turn of the wheel. She may be the sukenna-tareef, as they term it here.”

  “You’ve known this for several years at least and have not acted upon it?”

  “To act too openly would have drawn the attention of the Wurm. Besides, you credit me with more power than I possess. She is out there, a young woman in London’s warrens, showing extraordinary capacity, but her precise whereabouts either she shields from me or some other potency draws a veil. In any case I have not been able to locate her. My only comfort is that I think she is veiled also from the Wurm and his kin.”

  “I have seen her!” said Sally. “A young African woman wearing the sailor’s coat and neckerchief, singing and waiting in a courtyard.”

  “Your description intrigues. Seven singers for turning to the people a pure language. ‘But who shall lead them? From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia and Cush, the daughter of the dispersed . . .’”

  Sally said, “If you are right about little Malchen, and if we can find the mysterious black woman in London, we would still be only six singers.”

  “Perhaps the seventh will reveal himself or herself only once the others are marshalled,” said the Cretched Man.

  From outside came the sound of crowds. The Chamber of Optimates had concluded their questioning of the Queen, and the first broadsheets of the event were being distributed and read.

  “I must leave soon,” said Jambres.

  “One last question for today,” said Sally, looking out the window at the crowds below. “Why does the Mother sleep? She has sung to me but I think that music was only echoes of melodies rising like bubbles from her dreams.”

  “I do not know, Sarah. I try to reach the Mother, but she hears me not or hears and ignores. A greater mystery is here, one not taught in the fanes or ecclesiastical schools. Where is Sophia (that is Wisdom), where is Ennoia, where is the Shekhinah? Hidden, sleeping deep. I do not know how she shall be wakened unless perhaps the seven of you can do so.”

  When Sally looked away from the window, Jambres was gone. Isaak sniffed and pawed in a corner. Sally walked to the corner, picked up Isaak and returned to the chair by the window.

  Shutting the window against the voices below, Sally hugged Isaak, and said, “I am not the sukenna-tareef. I never wanted that. I do not fear the ending, but I do fear being unable to meet the task. Maybe the African girl is. But how will we find her?”

  That night the sounds of battle far off came to Yount Great-Port on the southeasterly winds. The battle fleets had engaged. All night came the rumble of cannon over the waves. From the rooftops and the Signal Tower and the towers of the churches and the Fort, onlookers saw flashes on the horizon. Every soldier stood ready at his or her post throughout the city. Everyone wanted news and, unchecked by trustworthy facts, rumour rushed in to sate the need and breed a thousand fears. Reglum came to Sally, Tom, and Afsana, joined later by Noreous. They had no more news than anyone else but raised the spirits of the McDoons. When Nexius stopped by to join them for supper, he was pleased to find everyone in a determined mood.

  “Good,” he said. “The children of horghoids are upon us. It will be white-of-the-eyes time soon.”

  First light brought the first news, as well as the first smell of burning from across the water. The horizon was hidden by a great pall of smoke. The distant booms and thuds of cannon continued uninterrupted. One of the steam frigates came into the harbour, laden with wounded.

  “The Ornish fleet is more numerous than we had known,” said the frigate’s captain. “All ships on both sides are engaged now. We withstand them well but their greater numbers may begin to tell. The Courser has been sunk, but we saved many. The Matchless likewise, though we saved fewer. More I cannot say.”

  Fresh sailors and Marines filed onboard the frigate, which also took on munitions. As the frigate pulled away from the quay, the crowd cheered, but their cheers were tinged with fear.

  The morning passed slowly. Twice more a steam frigate shuttled to and from the harbour, offloading wounded, carrying out replacements. The line held, but the Ornish attacked without pause. In the streets few spoke except in low mutters. Karket-soomi stayed indoors if possible.

  Dorentius came early in the day and spent several hours listening to an idea that Sally had, something that made him almost forget the battle. He hurried to the Analytical Bureau and returned with books, charts, and reams of notational paper. Dorentius and Sally spent the afternoon deriving, graphing, and calculating. Tom peered in, upon returning from the firing range, and said that he’d rather lose a hundred times at glunipi than do whatever it was they were doing. Afsana, overhearing this as she caught up to Tom, said that he already had lost a hundred times at glunipi. Everyone laughed but the laughter was stretched over anxiety, and was not repeated. Dorentius and Sally continued their work until well past midnight, ignoring the growing sounds of battle, their empty stomachs, and the dimness of the gaslights.

  The Chamber of Optimates called the Queen and her government to another emergency session that afternoon. Nexius agreed to have the McDoons along, telling them to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. Messengers and journalists ran in and out of the meeting with the latest news. Everyone kept an ear to the open windows and whatever tale the wind might yield. Queen Zinnamoussea found herself losing support in the Chamber. The Loositage faction saw its chance. Fear drove many of the lesser houses. Though no one spoke openly of the inheritance rules, of the ending of the heirless Hullitate dynasty and the rise of the presumptive heir in the form of Loositage, the rules were as much a backdrop to discussion as the distant booming of cannon.

  Nexius said to the McDoons, “Now we come to it at last: the Loositages will reveal themselves. By the twelving of the bell, hold your shot or fire the shell!”

  Even as he spoke, a junior member of the Loositage clan rose to address the assembly. He called for a vote of no-confidence in the Queen’s conduct of the war, and he sought the comment of the Arch-Bishop. The assembly roared, some to acclaim, some to reject.

  Slowly the Arch-Bishop, Ugunonno Loositage, rose, dressed in a dark green chasuble, holding a black staff. The hall went quiet. He spoke as one forced to speak by great need, as if reluctant to speak at all.

  “Colleagues and fellow patriots, in the name of the Five Trees and the Mother, I accuse no one but merely pose questions,” he said. “Why does her Majesty dally so with the Karket-soomi? Is she perchance considering ending the secretist policy and bringing in Karket-soomi ‘aid’ that will turn Yount into a colony? Why the infatuation with Karket-soom anyway — after all, the Karket-soomi allow slavery in many guises in many places; even their leading nations embrace the horror.”

  “Hear, hear!” “Huzzah” “Never reveal ourselves!” rippled around the room.

  “Why does our Queen refuse us use of the Verniculous Blast, which the Learned Doctors are confident we can control? If not now, then when? This is Farther Yount’s time of extreme need.”

  He put forth questions as innocuous, even abstract queries, as if he were lecturing new matriculants at the University. He asked one more question, in a casual way he had practised a thousand times alone in his chambers: “Are the rumours true, I wonder, that the Queen has been meeting with the Cretched Man?”

  The hall erupted. The Arch-Bishop smiled blandly to
the Queen and sat down.

  The Queen said little in her own defence but focussed instead on the battle that raged just within earshot. She did not address the Arch-Bishop’s concerns.

  “I wonder in my turn,” she said, “that we sit here debating, under the very mouths of the enemy’s cannons. Talk without action only aids our foe. You can vote your lack of confidence if you wish — over your consciences I hold no sway — but I am going down to the harbour to speak with the soldiers as they leave, the wounded as they arrive, and the bereaved as they weep.”

  The hall erupted again. As the Queen departed, the vote was cast. By two votes, the Queen’s faction defeated the motion.

  As they slipped out into the early evening, Nexius said to the McDoons, “The Queen carries the floor for one more day. One more day only as it may turn out. Be wary, my friends. Sometimes the enemy at your door emboldens an enemy in your own dwelling.”

  The second night of the battle passed slowly. The smell of burning pervaded the city. The eastern sky lit up with constant flashes, nearer than they had been the night before. The rumble slowly became a roar. Steam frigates came constantly to the harbour.

  “More shot, more shot, we run low!” they cried. “The Saker is burning, with great loss of life. Captain Bil-e-Maido on the Accipiter has been killed.”

  The crowds at the harbour took in the wounded, ferried supplies out to the ships; everyone worked together. The Queen and her ministers worked alongside raw recruits and aged grandmothers. Those who cried at the loss of a loved one or the sight of a gaping wound did so quietly. Tom and Afsana helped a company of Marines, working with Noreous and Reglum. Sanford and Barnabas worked with Nexius.

  Dorentius remained with Sally; her room was now carpeted with notational paper as they calculated the precession of Aldebaran in various skies and the azimuth of Adhara in others. As they worked, the sound of battle approaching gradually rose but they did not heed it. Isaak sat in the windowsill, listening to the hiss of the gaslights inside and the rumble of war outside.

  The Ornish broke through the line at mid-morning the next day. The steam frigates were the first to return to the harbour.

  “Calamity!” said their captains. “Their rate of fire outstrips ours, even if we are more accurate. They overcame our flanks. Captain Nerricessia on the flagship holds the centre but she is now encircled.”

  By early afternoon the news was worse yet. The Ornish had destroyed the flagship and disabled many of Yount Major’s central squadron. The tattered wings of Yount Major’s fleet retreated to Yount Great-Port, with steam frigates screening the withdrawal. By evening the remains of the fleet were anchored just outside the breakwater, ranged now as the city’s first line of batteries. Only a dozen ships were still afloat, and many of those had been grievously hurt. The setting sun reflected off the many sails of the approaching Ornish warships, now visible to the naked eye. The first of their shots, the opening of the bombardment, crashed into Yount Great-Port shortly after nine o’clock, killing a six-year-old girl and her grandmother as they sat behind shuttered windows. By morning those two casualties were only the first of many. Fires broke out across the city.

  By dawn the Ornish fleet was ranged in an arc at the mouth of the harbour, beyond the breakwater, not quite a mile from the city. Between Yount Major’s remaining ships and the Ornish fleet was a space of some four hundred yards, a track of open water between a shark and its prey. The Ornish ships, with broadside to the city, rode gently on the swell, their rows of cannon rising up and down to mesmerize their enemies, like a thousand eyes glaring at Yount Great-Port’s last line of defence. The winds continued to blow from the southeast, pushing the smoke of the city’s fires back into the streets and squares, so that the harbour air was relatively clear, the Ornish ships easily seen even by those on shore. Ornish musketeers were in the rigging. Ornish cannoneers were seen on every deck.

  “Why don’t we fire back?” said Tom to Nexius, looking through a telescope as they stood with a Marine gun crew on the Palace roof.

  “We will, lad, we will. They are just outside the range of accuracy of our shore guns, and we will not waste ordnance until we must. They can bombard us because they have no need of accuracy; anywhere they shoot is a target. And they no longer fear our shipboard guns.”

  From the Ornish ships came a sound. All the Ornish were shouting as one, over and over, the war cry the Ornish had shouted since the founding of the Coerceries: “Oooooom-ta-heee, oooooom-ta-heee, ooooom-ta-heeee!” The bellowing grew, carried by the wind, echoing off the city. Then on every ship they brought out the wreaths of carnations they had stripped from captured and disabled Yount Major vessels and they burned them so Yount Great-Port could see it. They cast the burning carnations on the water.

  “For the Lanner!” jeered the Ornish.

  Still the Yount Major guns held their fire, and then a remarkable thing happened. From the sea to the southwest, beyond both the city and the Ornish fleet, came a ship sailing at great speed. It rounded the hill upon which the Signal Tower stood and sped into the channel between the two fleets, the no-man’s-land under the guns of all. The ship did not belong to either side and both sides looked on bewildered. Sharp built, cracking on almost as fast as if she were steam-driven, the ship darted like a dolphin down the deadly track. As it did so, a great pennant unfurled from the topmast: a white banner with a red-rimmed orb dripping blood.

  Tom yelled, “The Seek-by-Night! Behold, the Cretched Man returns!” His words were passed from the Marine gun crew on the Palace roof to those below and within minutes they leaped through the city as quickly as the Seek-by-Night sailed between Yount Great-Port and the Ornish fleet. Neither side fired. All were astonished and afraid.

  Midway down the track, right in front of the Ornish flagship, the Seek-by-Night tacked hard, in a manoeuvre that would have capsized almost any other ship. Now the Seek-by-Night tacked into the wind, sailing at the Ornish flagship head-on. As it did so, a great wreath of blood-red carnations was hung on the stern so all those in Yount Great-Port could see and a second wreath was hung on the bowsprit, so the Ornish could see. From the Seek-by-Night’s crew came a shout that sounded as large as that of the Ornish war cry, a shout they repeated and repeated as they charged the Ornish flagship, a shout that the wind carried to the crews of Yount Great-Port’s ragged battleships: “For the Lanner! For the Lanner! For the Lanner!” The Yount Great-Port crews took up the chant. Quickly the chant spread to the soldiers at the shore batteries. The cry carried the Seek-by-Night into the Ornish line, straight at the flagship and its startled crew.

  So the King of the Wrens attacked the bear. The Seek-by-Night carried eighteen cannon, four- and eight-pounders, on a single deck, with a crew of ninety-six. The Ornish flagship carried one hundred cannon, each a thirty-two pounder, on three decks, with a crew of nearly nine hundred. The shadow of the flagship engulfed the Seek-by-Night long before the little brig came close; the Ornish man-of-war towered far above the vessel from Sanctuary. Thousands of telescopes were trained on the narrowing strip of water between the two ships. From the Ornish flagship and its companions on each side came a smattering of rifle-fire but nothing else.

  “The Ornish cannon are set steeply inclined to bombard the city,” cried Tom. “They cannot fire at the Seek-by-Night. The Ornish are frantic now! Ha ha! Look, they are levering their cannon downwards, but no, too late!”

  Timed to perfection, the Seek-by-Night flew under the flagship’s guns and, just before it would have crashed into the flagship’s stern, the Seek-by-Night tacked again to run parallel. Ornish musketeers poured fire into the Seek-by-Night but still the ship with the bloody-moon pennant flew forward. The Seek-by-Night’s cannon were tiny but very mobile in comparison to those on the flagship. The gunners from Sanctuary had pivoted all nine cannon on the side facing the flagship, so that they targeted the same spot. Crack! All nine fired as one, hitting the flagship at the waterline.

  The Seek-by-Night sailed around the flagsh
ip’s bow, between the flagship and the neighbouring Ornish warship, out beyond the Ornish line, and swiftly looped, running hard to slip back around the flagship’s bow and make a second pass. The Seek-by-Night turned as tightly as any ship ever has, but even so its radius took it into the firing zone on the flagship’s far side. Again the opponents raced: the flagship crews to manoeuvre their cannon into position and fire, the Seek-by-Night’s crew to whisper under the cannon-wall one more time.

  Too late! With a roar the first of the flagship’s great cannon fired, then a second, a third, more. Cannonballs chopped and whistled, several smashing into the little ship from Sanctuary. The Cretched Man urged them on. Billy Sea-Hen stood just behind the bowsprit and calmly aimed, fired, and reloaded his rifle as if he were hunting conies on the heath in Sanctuary. Tat’head and the other Minders led cannon crews, preparing for the one chance they would have to fire. The Seek-by-Night passed into relative safety again. Cannonballs shrilled overhead. Musketballs whizzed and pinged all around them, hitting more than one member of the crew.

  The Seek-by-Night whirled around the flagship’s bow again, so close to the flagship and the next warship that the faces of the Ornish were seen in great detail. The Seek-by-Night began its second pass. There was the hole in the flagship, drinking in water with every dip of the tide.

  “Steady on,” yelled Tat’head, then “Fire!” Crack! All nine cannon on the starboard side fired as one, and all hit the same mark, widening the hole at the flagship’s waterline.

  The Ornish flagship took on water, listed, but in doing so its cannons were lowered. To make the Yount Major line, the Seek-by-Night would pass through the full weight of the flagship’s broadside. The Seek-by-Night swerved and started its run from the Ornish line of battle.

  The Cretched Man’s ship was perhaps one hundred and fifty yards beyond the line when the bear, stung, brought down his heavy paw at the retreating wren. The flagship and its nearest neighbours were lost in smoke as they thundered. The Seek-by-Night was lost in sheets of water. When Tom and others could see it again, the damage was immediately visible: the stern was gouged, presumably the rudder destroyed, the mizzen-mast gone, and most of the sails on the two remaining masts shredded. The Seek-by-Night continued to move forward but slowly and at an angle, doing little more than drift. For the gunners on the Ornish line the wing-clipped ship from Sanctuary was an easy target. Within one minute the Ornish would reload and fire again. The next broadside, some sixty-four hundred pounds of iron from four ships, might sink the Seek-by-Night.