The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  Over on the white bed, Elijah Bouverie was sinking. The doctor had said so; said he should be granted peace for his passing.

  “Don’t ever grant me peace,” Loucien had said as the doctor’s pony and trap bowled away down the drive. “If I’m ever lying on the brink, don’t all creep off to a distance like I smell, will you, folks?”

  And somehow the Bright Lights and weeping staff had believed Loucien more than the doctor and stayed put. Right now, the quartet was by the bed, crooning songs Elijah might know. Sweeting was trying to spoon water and honey into the old man’s mouth without choking him. The various maids who had decided they were in love with various members of the quartet were dusting and polishing all the furniture in the bedroom so as to stay as close as possible. It was not the easiest place to plan a rescue.

  Cissy, meanwhile, sat cross-legged on the foot of the bed, reading Cyril’s fearful letter over and over, living through his adventures till the palms of her hands were wet with fright. Miss Loucien came and sat down beside her, tugging the letter out of her hands. Her palms, too, were wet, Cissy noticed.

  “I know what Cole Blacker woulda done,” said Cissy in anger. “He’da passed himself off as King of America. He’da bamboozled the whole of Roper County into giving him a golden stagecoach an’ free whiskey. And he’da granted pardons, right, left, and all ways!” She only said it to Miss Loucien, but the rest of the room fell oddly silent, and then she felt just plain embarrassed.

  “Heydaydie,” Loucien sighed, toying with Elijah’s bony old hand on the coverlet, plinking the fingers one by one. “I wonder,” she added, reading over the letter, looking at the portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the wall. And then: “Hashi kuchi hunkidory,” she said in half Choctaw, half Minneapolis, and kissed Cissy. She smelled of vanilla and French toast. “We can do it!” She swept over to her husband. “We can do it, sweetheart! It can be done! But we still need the danged train fare. In fact . . .” She looked around her at the strange family she had married into. “We really need the whole danged train.”

  Not the King of America. That would be plain unbelievable. Not Abraham Lincoln—not with him so famously dead. Not a man at all, in fact, because men are a shifty, untrustworthy bunch, most of them. (Loucien said it.) A woman, then! The Bright Lights must, within the day, produce the one woman in the world with enough influence to spring Cyril Crew from Roper County Jail! It had to be Queen Victoria herself!

  “Anyone know what the lady looks like? That would be a start.” Loucien Shades Crew turned sideways on to the mirror and gave a groan of regret for her lost figure. “Hope she’s on the portly side.”

  “Oh my goodness,” muttered Miss March, starting to panic. “Oh goodness me.”

  “Loucien Shades Crew, you are eight months pregnant!” her husband protested.

  When the English butler came to round up the maids, his opinion was asked. “In England I lived in Leytonstone,” said Henry. “There was little opportunity for the lady and me to become acquainted. Minnie—Leah—please go and help John fetch down the chandelier in the banquet hall. It is in need of cleaning.” The maids bobbed. Everyone else was a little taken aback—it seemed an odd time to be cleaning the lamps—but perhaps Henry wanted the house restored to perfection now that the Master was home.

  “I know what the Queen looks like,” said Cissy deliberately. “I know exactly what she looks like. We used to have her on our wall. Looks like a dumpling, sorta, but gray all over. Cheeks like a marmot. Royal marmot, I mean, not meanin’ to insult Your Majesty.” To Cissy, Loucien was already a queen.

  “Your hair’s red as maple, Lou,” Everett went on. “I am quite sure . . .”

  “How tall is she, then?” Kookie demanded sus-piciously of Cissy.

  “Oh my goodness. Oh goodness me.”

  “I don’ know!” Cissy retorted. “It was a head-and-shoulders picture! Her head came upta here on the wall . . . but that’s only ’cause there was a nail sticking out there to hang the picture on!”

  “Tell us ‘bout that bucket trick, will you, Chad?” said Kookie, still thinking of the train fare they did not possess.

  Then Sweeting said softly: “She’s small as a dime. Wide as she long. Chil’ size, that ain’t no lie.” It was hardly as if he had spoken; Sweeting never spoke louder than a fly buzzing at a windowpane.

  The Bright Lights stared at him.

  “T’ing is,” said Benet, explaining on Sweeting’s behalf, “back in eighty-one, we was on loan to Callander Haverley’s Minstrels when the man done bless th’English with a show tour. Layin on a smack of pseudo-Nigro culture. We sung twice in fronta the Queen.”

  The maids gasped. Tibbie Boden gasped. To think she had sailed the Numchuck River with FOUR people who had met a real queen! The room fluttered like an aviary full of owls—oooh! oh! oooh!

  “Oh my goodness. Oh goodness me.”

  “Gracious, gentlemen!” murmured Henry with unsuspected wryness. “You are very nearly royalty.”

  “Did she clap when you sung?” breathed Tibbie in awe.

  “She didn’ throw nothin’, leastways,” said Boisen-berry.

  Loucien Shades Crew was not put off by the fact that Queen Victoria was half her height, more than twice her age, and not known for her red hair. “Even Henry didn’t know her size ’n’ coloring, and he’s English,” she said with unruffled serenity. “Reckon Roper Junction won’t know any better than Leytonstone. Henry, you got one night to teach me to talk English. After that, if you care to, you can be President of England. You ever done any playacting?”

  “Prime Minister, ma’am. England does not have a president,” said Henry, starting to sneeze.

  “Everett, you’ll be my American Ambassador . . . and Curly my money man.”

  “Chancellor,” Henry interjected.

  “And you, Elder, you can be my pastor or shaman or whatever.”

  “Chaplain?” suggested Henry.

  Up till this point, Elder Slater had said nothing. Now he stood up, hat over his heart; his duster coat, laundered and overstarched, gleamed stiff and white as angel wings. “Mrs. Crew,” he said, aiming his eyes just over her head. “Mrs. Crew, I am a lifelong Methodist. My religion allows no monarchs. God alone rules over us. This great land stepped one pace closer to godliness when it cast off king and empire.” This was not Elder Slater in hellfire mode; he was visibly trembling. The room fell silent.

  “I know that, honey,” said Loucien, emptying her face of flippancy. “I may put on costume. Don’t mean to say I ain’t still a democratic American underneath.”

  Slater put his hat back on. ‘Very good. It needed saying. Now I have a thing to do. If I am not back by dawn, leave without me.” The draft, as he left, shed a strangely icy chill.

  “Talking of costume,” said Loucien at last, “I’ll need one. Thanks to this baby, I’m down to the one dress, and that’s sorta . . .”

  “Red,” said the room at large.

  “Oh my goodness. Oh goodness me!”

  “Hush up, May,” said Curly sternly, taking the schoolmistress by both wrists. “There comes a time, in getting ready for a play, when you have to step out on the ice and walk. Or the fear’ll make you heavy, and it just won’t hold.” She looked at him, breath pent up behind her lips, and a little popeyed. “Now you go see your mother in Des Moines, or you stay here and tend to Captain Bouverie, but either way, you have to start believing in us.”

  Miss May March looked around her at the Bright Lights Theater, Last Ditch & Final Curtain Company. She could tell from their faces that they were as one with Curly, getting ready to skate on the thin ice of an illusion, however deep the water below. “But you’re family!” she exclaimed. “I can’t let you all go to it without me!”

  Henry the butler circulated with glasses of rich, ruby-red wine—”Don’t you dare touch that glass, Habakkuk Warboys!”—then poured one for himself. “Gentlemen—ladies—may I make a toast I have not had cause to make for a great many years: God save the Queen
!”

  “And my brother,” said Everett under his breath.

  “And Elijah here,” murmured Sweeting.

  Henry wiped his eyes and raised his glass again. “Then I say, the Queen, Mr. Cyril Crew, and Captain Elijah Bouverie—God save them all!”

  Elder Slater cycled to Boats-a-Cummin and, as night fell, leaned his borrowed bicycle against the wall of the saloon. With the Blowville saloon closed in mourning, business here was brisk. Checking his gun, settling his hat squarely, he slammed open the doors. The exciting whiteness of his duster coat caught him off guard for a moment, reflected in the long mirror behind the bar.

  “Good evening, gentlemen. I mean to preach the word of the Lord here tonight, and the Lord would appreciate your attention.”

  A change from routine is always welcome: several drinkers turned toward him. The piano player closed his piano lid. At one gambling table, though, the players simply went on with their game, staking bets, shaking their dice. Slater drew out his gigantic pistol, cocked its hammer, and laid its barrel to the dealer’s temple. “I mean to preach the word of the Lord, and the Lord don’t appreciate interruptions.”

  The dealer squared up the pack and put his hands in his lap. The gaming tables froze and fell silent. The bartender turned his back and continued polishing glasses, but his eyes were on the mirror all the while, in case the sheriff needed a witness statement afterward.

  Slater started loud and worked his way up to frenzied, and the empty glasses trembled on the dish rack. When he had done with the preaching, he started on the collection. “Will you help me in my mission? Will you help me ransom the life of those shipwrecked by misfortune in the valley of the shadow of death? Give generous, or ask yourself: who will ransom you in your hour of need?” He moved between the tables, hat held out in one hand, in the other his pistol held at such a level that its barrel brushed their hat brims, disturbed their cigar smoke. This was not his usual audience, come voluntarily to be shouted at. He knew that at any minute someone too drunk, too mean, too irritated to put up with him might shoot him in the back. But he raged and he whispered and he cajoled, and the bartender kept watch in the bronzed mirror.

  When Slater left at last, like an avenging angel trailing dusty wings, the women clapped, the pianist played “’Tis the gift to be simple” honky-tonk style, the bartender put the safety catch back on the gun under the bar, and the dealer began dealing cards for blackjack. Only one bad-tempered ex-soldier strolled outside and fired off a couple of casual bullets at the pale figure cycling away into the distance.

  The Captain’s bedroom was taking on the appearance of an Arab souk, strewn with bric-a-brac, hung with clothes, and crammed with people. Even at midnight the Bright Lights were still awake and busy when Elder Slater finally made it back from his mission to Boats-a-Cummin. Medora was pinning her black photographic cloth (slightly sweat stained from its use as a funeral horse blanket) into the back of the cook’s dark dress, to make it fit around Loucien. Loucien’s fiery hair, meantime, had been compressed into a bun. Curly clamped it in place with the pawnshop tiara.

  “Ain’t she beautiful!” said Tibbie, which was not the effect Curly had been after, but which was undeniably true.

  Slater swaggered in and tossed a hatful of money onto the white bedspread. “Might buy couple of rail tickets,” he croaked, his voice all but gone. Blushing, he turned his back so as not to have to look at Loucien and Medora in their petticoats.

  “What did you do, rob a bank?” asked Kookie. Cissy ran and hugged Slater, which was an experience new to him.

  “I eased the conscience of a few sinners.”

  “Well! And aren’t you a saint and a gentleman, Elder!” said Loucien.

  Tibbie Boden picked up the money and clutched it to her chest. “Now we can all go and rescue Mr. Cyril!”

  “I fear it is not enough, miss. I strove, but fell short.” And Slater sat down on the dressing-table stool.

  “You got red paint on your nice white coat, too,” said Tibbie scoldingly. “An’ you got to be the Queen’s chaplain tomorrow!”

  But Queen Victoria would have to manage without a chaplain on her royal visit to Roper Junction. Evangelical begging in saloons might raise cash, but they are a very dangerous game. It was not paint on Elder’s coat. It was blood.

  Loucien finished bandaging Slater’s shoulder—the touch of her hands against his bare skin embarrassed him almost to the point of fainting—and kissed the top of his hair. She kissed Elijah, too. “Back in no time, fellas,” she promised, and lowered her veil. Then the Queen’s entourage descended the grand staircase of Golden Bend Mansion, Loucien leaning on the arm of her American Ambassador, a procession of tailcoats following on. A train of well-wishers chirruped down the stairs behind them.

  The marble floor had been scrubbed and smelled faintly of disinfectant. Somewhere a generator was humming, fueling the pumps to the fountains. A carriage clock on a lacquered table showed its elegant spinning mechanism, intricate as a paddle steamer’s engine. Just eight hours remained until Cyril Crew was due to hang.

  Henry was already by the door. Despite nobody having slept all night, he had absented himself toward dawn and gone out riding: he smelled a little of horses. “You look majestic, madam,” he said.

  “Why thank you, Prime Minister,” said Loucien in a perfectly splendid English accent. Henry sneezed with delight.

  The servants had taken up a red carpet runner from an upstairs corridor and laid it down on the stone steps. The ostler had fetched up a big old eight-seater chaise. The galvanized bucket standing by the doorway, however, was not their doing. At the bottom of the bucket lay a silver dollar.

  “Oh, that’s mine,” said Chad Powers. “I’ve been working up this paying trick. You see, folks can throw in money, but when they go for . . .”

  As the chaise door was opened, all three children tried to get in.

  “You cain’t go—you got the sweating fever!”

  “Well, you cain’t ’cause you gamble!”

  “Shall we toss a coin?” suggested Miss Loucien. “If it’s heads, none of you get to go. If it’s tails, you all stay here, and if . . .” Loucien took a backward step and reached into the bucket for the silver dollar.

  “NO! DON’T!”

  The back seam in her dress tore as Loucien’s body gave a kind of wrenching twist and she fell sideways. There was blood and liquid and a good costume ruined. There was chaos, too. Chad explained how he had electrified the bucket, so people could throw money in but couldn’t pull it out. Then Everett Crew hit him. Then Tibbie began to shriek that Chad had killed Miss Loucien and wasn’t it bad enough he’d demolished the grocery store without him killing Queen Victoria as well. Kookie tried to see if the bucket really was electrified and it was, and he said so in new words more exciting than Lithuanian. Then Loucien, lying on the ground, started coming out with the kind of noise that put Tibbie in the shade, moaning and screaming in earnest, and the magpie maids all took off and ran indoors and the gardener backed off into the shrubbery, and Everett picked Loucien up and carried her indoors, and the others restrained Chad Powers from banging his head against a marble column, and Miss March corralled Kookie and Tibs in an alcove and would not let them go until order had been restored.

  Cissy, meanwhile, stood stock-still by the open door of the chaise. Henry reached out and took her hand, and there they stood, still as statues, while the splintering sunshine fell around them like wreckage.

  Without a word, he escorted her indoors through the French doors and to the upper floor. He led her to a china-blue bedroom, and the door of a rosewood wardrobe. The dress he took out could almost have belonged to a child—gray shantung with a white crocheted collar. Cissy had seen it before—in the portrait of Elijah’s dead wife.

  “Is Miss Loucien going to die?” asked Cissy.

  “The electric shock has sent her into travail,” said Henry, emptying mothballs out of the cuffs of the silvery gown. Somewhere in the house a clock c
himed the hour. Cissy had no idea what “travail” meant except that it cropped up in the Bible a lot when people were not having a good time. “Whosoever goes in her place needs to leave right away,” said Henry. “The train ride takes five hours.”

  “Best ask the Bright Lights, then,” she answered dully.

  The others, straying downstairs again, bewildered and distressed, were confronted by Henry, the gray silk dress across his two arms like the corpse of a child. “Whoever goes in the lady’s place,” the butler repeated, “we need to leave at once. Every minute is vital.”

  “It cannot be me,” said Miss May March. She was not flapping, simply being realistic. “If my nerve failed, I would be a danger to Cyril and the rest of you.”

  “I no thing Queen Vittoria she has the Spanish accent or the dress of Gitana,” said Medora, spreading her Gypsy skirts. “An’ this little gray dress there . . . you can fit melon into skin of the grape? No.”

  They waited for Curly to speak, but his thoughts were trapped in a bedroom upstairs. “Don’t ask me. I’m only Box Office and Costumes,” he said, lifting his hands and letting them fall.

  So Kookie took the thing in hand as only Kookie could. “Look now: Cissy’s braver than Tibs. And she acts better. Tibs is prettier, but looks don’t matter, on account of the veil. Need to stuff out the bust, ’cause Cissy’s flat as a wall, but then she’ll do. Won’t you, Ciss? I’d do it myself, but I cain’t run in a dress and I figure we may have to do some running if it all goes poodlywhop.”

  “Habakkuk,” said Miss March, “kindly keep your uncouth opinions to yourse—”

  Everett Crew appeared on the upper landing, white faced and haggard, and everyone fell silent waiting for him to say that the show was canceled, that tickets would be refunded, that no one was going to Roper Junction after all. They had never really believed in it anyway. Cyril was a dead man.