The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  “Lou says . . . ,” he began. “Mrs. Shades Crew says that we must go now if we are to be of use to my brother. Time’s wasting. Kookie, take this telegram to Blowville and send it for me. It is vital to our plan.” And he handed Kookie two dollars of Elder’s money and a much-folded sheet of paper. “Cissy . . .”

  “Yes, Mr. Crew?”

  “The role of the Queen is yours, Cissy, if you’ll take it. Five minutes, Henry, or we shall miss the train.” And he turned away.

  As the rest of the household ran to all points of the compass, the butler took hold of Cissy’s chin and turned it toward him. “Though I realize, miss, that you in no way resemble a marmot, can you find it in you to put on this costume and save the day?”

  No ambition surged through Cissy, except to see Miss Loucien come downstairs and play the part herself. “But I do the plank with Max. A trouper can only do so much, you know?” She could still hear the fearful yelling going on upstairs.

  “Yesterday I was a butler, Miss Cecelia. Today I seem to be Prime Minister of England,” said Henry. “Sometimes life has a way of asking us to take a step up.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Bright Lights, Last Ditch & Final Curtain Company

  Flushed from running, Kookie slapped down Crew’s note on the desk and leaned on his knees to catch his breath. The telegrapher unfolded it, turned it over, put it down again. “What’s that then, some kinda joke?”

  There was nothing written on the paper.

  It cost Kookie five precious minutes to realize the truth. Everett had deliberately sent him off on a wild goose chase—to stop him joining the trip to Roper Junction. Why? Surely Crew did not think he was a child who had to be kept safe! Hadn’t Kookie walked the plank and fallen into an alligator-infested river night after night? Hadn’t he saved everybody from the bandit Sugar Cain and pulled Cissy out onto the mud bar after the explosion? Rage and outrage used up another five minutes, before Kookie realized: if he ran fast enough, he might still just catch the train. He told himself the Bright Lights wouldn’t dare set off without him—that they would make the train wait till he got there. But no, they wouldn’t! Cyril Crew’s life was lost if that train ran late!

  So he started to run, and as he ran, the terrible certainty grew in his breast that he would miss the train, miss going to Roper Junction, miss even saying good-bye to Cissy and the rest. And then that the Bright Lights would be found out and arrested—and then that they would be strung up in a row alongside Mr. Cyril—Cissy and Everett and Henry and Benet and George and Miss May and Curly and . . . And then that the British would hear tell some American had hanged Queen Victoria and would declare war, and then everyone in Olive Town would be massacred by invading foreigners. . . .

  (Disasters grow in the thinking.)

  Kookie put on an extra burst of speed.

  At the last moment Tibbie had cost them yet more minutes. She had kicked up a terrific rumpus. Light-headed from her medicine, she had demanded to come: “In case Cissy gets diphtheria and dies and I have to save the day ’stead of her!” They had had to wrestle her out of the chaise three times over, before Medora volunteered to stay behind and subdue her. Another few minutes lost.

  So despite the best efforts of the horses, the Bright Lights could see the morning train ahead of them, already standing in Blowville Station.

  “Use the whip! Use the whip!” begged Everett.

  “Should we not get out and run?” Cissy pleaded, but already it was too late. With four furlongs to go, they heard the whistle and saw the train begin to move. They had missed it. Crew gave a roar of frustration and despair.

  But Henry seemed strangely unperturbed. He coaxed the chaise gently down a narrow track toward the railway sidings. “You may have wondered,” he said, as they bumped over rail ties and gravel, “ours being a household of such seeming luxury, why I have not offered you financial help on behalf of Captain Bouverie. . . .”

  “Oh, you have been kindness itself . . . ,” Miss March started to say.

  “Since the Captain went missing, there has been nobody to sign checks or withdraw cash from the bank. Oh, his money is there in the bank—in quantities, indeed—but we his household cannot gain the use of it. For eighteen months we have been obliged to live off the land, as it were.”

  “What, no wages? At all?” As bookkeeper for the Bright Lights, Curly had had to make do on little, but he could not imagine getting by on nothing.

  “We have a roof over our heads. The kitchen-garden and the rabbit population have kept us fed. But no, no wages as such. Now and then, when absolutely necessary, we have resorted to swaps: vintage wine for a vet’s visit, you know? A cut-glass vase for the doctor. The search for the Captain itself cost us ten acres of garden.”

  “And if Elijah dies?” asked George. But Henry was not prepared to imagine any such thing. Besides, they had arrived alongside a pair of fancy railway carriages parked up in a siding. Ahead of them, a dapper little engine was building up steam. Henry had traded the French chandelier from the banquet hall for a loan of the Blacker family’s private train.

  “Like Mrs. Crew, I did not think Her Majesty, Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India, would happily share a train with cowboys, salesmen, sticky children, three nuns, and a parcel of chickens. I believed she might travel in more style.” When they tried to thank him, Henry simply murmured, “The Captain would expect no less of me.”

  Into the “royal train”—“Hurry, for God’s sake! We have barely seven hours!”—climbed Cissy and Everett Crew, George, two members of the quartet, Prime Minister Henry, Max the Plank, Curly, and Miss March. Boisenberry had to drive the chaise back to Golden Bend. Benet had to strip to the waist, mount the footplate, and fuel the boiler, since Henry’s deal had not included a stoker. Chad Powers was back at the house: he had not dared to share a coach with Everett Crew.

  On the carriage steps, Cissy took a last look, hoping to catch sight of Kookie running toward them. She could catch sight of hardly anything through the thick mist of her veil, and anyway Kookie would not know about these sidings or the hired train. Crew had made good and sure that neither Kookie nor Tibbie tagged along: bad enough to put one child in danger, without involving three.

  Henry was eager to coach Cissy—as he had coached Loucien—to speak with an English accent. But behind her veil Cissy remained obstinately silent.

  “You don’t need to wear that all the way, Cecelia,” said her schoolteacher, plucking at the netting, but Cissy tucked it firmly in at her collar like a beekeeper about to open a hive. She was Queen Victoria now, and it was her duty to think herself into the role. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Miss Loucien was travailing painfully in that upstairs bedroom and would probably soon be dead. But that made it all the more important for Cissy to play her part, to behave like a queen, a frosty-faced, elderly, seen-it-all queen. Also, with her veil down, she was free to chew her lip till it bled.

  Sweeting, Benet, and Oscar recounted everything useful they could remember of their trip to England: the dank weather, the ravens and peacocks, the horse guards growing horsetails out of the tops of their helmets; the castles, the sewers, the gaslit streets, the audiences who never joined in . . .

  “Why in the world did you never say you had been there?” asked Miss March.

  Benet ran the toe of a two-tone shoe over the pattern in the carriage floor. “We inclined to keep quiet ‘bout England, ma’am. Patriotic sensibilities run deep in some parts. They’s some daughters of the American Revolution out there still fightin’ the War o’ Independence. Life can be wearisome ’nough without havin’ folks think we royalists too, with Union Jacks for drawers.”

  His words worried them. Might the people of Roper Junction be dyed-in-the-wool believers in republicanism? Exactly what reaction would they have to seeing Queen Victoria arrive in their town? Would they gawk and cheer, or would they jeer and throw eggs at the train? If Kookie had been there, the word “assassination” would ce
rtainly have gotten mentioned. Luckily Kookie was not aboard.

  Kookie was, in fact, on his way to Roper Junction. In the whole of Oklahoma no one could put on a sprint like Kookie Warboys could when it was needed. Admittedly he had had to chase the morning train down the track and spend the first twelve miles clinging to an iron cleat on the back of the caboose, but having caught hold, he was far too pleased with himself to fall off and get killed. At the first signal stop, he managed to climb inside without being seen. He doubted two dollars was enough to buy a ticket.

  Two, three, four times he walked through the train looking for the royal party. Nothing. No one. Five times he managed to avoid the guard checking tickets. For hours he hid out in the caboose under a pile of luggage. But every so often he convinced himself that the Bright Lights must be on the train, would be on the train, if he just looked hard enough, and foolishly he would creep out of hiding. Thwarted and afraid, he was cornered at last, between first class and the front of the train, the guard coming closer every second with his “Tickets, please! Tickets!” But as their eyes met, and the guard’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, the train finally drew in to Roper Junction, and Kookie scrambled backward out of the carriage door.

  His only luggage was a sackload of dread. Clearly the Bright Lights had missed the train. Now the whole royal-pardon plot would have to be abandoned. Kookie was the only one to have arrived, and unless he could mount a rescue himself, Mr. Cyril was going to hang. “What time’s the hanging?” he asked a boy selling newspapers.

  “This side sundown” came the delighted reply. “Ma says we can stay up late to watch!” Kookie squinted up at the sun. It had to be one o’clock.

  Roper County Jail was constructed to the exact same layout as the jail in Salvation: ugly government-issue architecture. (Well, no one takes civic pride in building a snazzy jail.) In the alleyway alongside, even the sewage flies were the same. If only Cyril had, like Curly, been jailed for speaking Shakespeare instead of for shooting a lawman!

  “Mr. Cyril? Hey! Mr. Cyril Crew!” called Kookie. “You there?”

  A pair of hands snatched hold of the bars at the farthest window.

  Stuffed, quilted, stiflingly hot, damp with sweat, terrified and lonely, Queen Victoria, little by little, grew littler and littler in her seat. Was this what it felt like to wait in the wings before going onstage? If so, the Bright Lights could keep it. She would be a shopgirl in Olive Town, count herself lucky, and give thanks a million times a day.

  Henry did not need to see Cissy’s face to know her misery and discomfort. The way she was sitting said it all. He reached into his pocket for a treat to cheer her—sugar lumps meant for the chaise horses. His fingers touched something else that had slipped his mind, and he drew out the telegram.

  “Apologies, Mr. Crew . . . er . . . Mr. Ambassador. This was in the pocket when you returned me my tailcoat after the funeral.”

  Bewildered at first by the yellow envelope, Everett studied it and recalled his visit to the post office. Seeing his brother’s letter pinned to the wall had jolted the telegram clean out of mind. Emerging from his cocoon of worry, he saw Cissy coiled up like a hedgehog in her seat and was abashed. He was glad to have good news for her. “Look, Cissy,” he said. “A telegram from home. Just for you.”

  The light was too poor in the carriage for Cissy to read it through her veil. Heart thumping, she sprang to the door, dropped the window, and leaned out into the sunlight, breathed deep, enjoyed the sharp breeze. Sheeny gray gloves made it hard to get the telegram out, and the wind plucked the empty envelope out of her hand—away, away. It fluttered the few stuck-down ticker-tape words as she unfolded the slip of buff paper.

  COME HOME CISSY,

  YOUR PAPA HAS GONE

  She let go of the telegram, too. It slapped flat against the wall of the carriage, then peeled free and fluttered—away, away—like a dead bird caught in the gale.

  “What’s the word from back home?” asked Henry, as Cissy ducked her head back inside the carriage and sat down.

  She pulled her knees up against her padded chest, hugged them to her with both skinny arms, rocked forward and back. But Miss March told her sharply to sit up straight, so she did, smoothing her silk dress, checking the fingers of her gloves for soot, sitting face front.

  “Cissy?” said Crew. “Everything all right?”

  Cissy nodded.

  “So . . . what news?”

  Her father was dead and her mother was crazy and there was nothing and no one to go home to. But Miss Loucien had once called her “the genuine, solid-gold, thespian article” and Mr. Cyril was relying on her. Cissy knew it was her duty not to be Cissy Hulbert right now, not to have a face, not to lift her veil, not to show the tears streaming down the sides of her nose and into her mouth. “Oh. Nothing. Just words,” she said.

  “They’ll be along on the next one! They’ll be along on the next train, sure as Christmas!” Kookie vowed, when he had finished explaining to Cyril the plan, the preparations. “Cissy’s just lost her nerve, maybe. Or they dropped the fare money down a drain. Or old Elijah died and they stayed behind to bury him!” He did not believe one word, and he could hear it in his voice, mewling and pleading, like when he didn’t have a good excuse to offer at school. Within the dark cell, on the other side of the window, he could hear Cyril Crew slapping the wall now with both hands and moaning wordlessly.

  “Is there another train today, boy? Does another train come through before sunset?”

  “Sure! I ’spect. Maybe. Don’t know. I don’t know! Should I go find out? Or what say I set someplace alight? Create an aversion? Make ’em put off the . . . Make them put it off till tomorrow? Should I break up the gallows?”

  Having given up all hope, having passed beyond despair, having steeled himself and readied his soul for death, Cyril had managed to achieve a certain peace. Now here was the Warboys boy jumping and yapping at his window, unsettling him worse than ever. What was more, the boy himself was descending into hysterical fear and needed rescuing.

  “Just tell me about the good ship Calliope, boy. Tell me about your adventures. Tell me about my brother. Tell me everything. Tell me anything, for God’s sweet . . . It’ll pass the time.”

  Kookie sat down in the alleyway under the window, and he tried; he did try. But the words would not come. At the mouth of the alleyway, people were passing to and fro who did not even know Queen Victoria was heading their way on a railway train. Or not. “Tell me what to do, Mr. Cyril! Should I pretend I’m King of America? I could try an’ be King of America! Should I?”

  Cyril Crew took a deep, shuddering breath and raked his hands through his thick white hair. Then he put a brightness into his voice as startling as a magnesium flare. “Run around, boy! Make news! Spread rumor!”

  “Rumor?”

  “Publicity! Terribly important before any show! Spread the word something big is about to happen—biggest day in the history of Roper Junction! People see, dear boy, what they have been primed to see. How else do you think the illusion of theater works? By the time my brother arrives, we want the whole town to be buzzing—isn’t that right, my boy?”

  When Kookie had gone, given his vital mission to perform, Cyril Crew sank to hands and knees on the cell floor, exhausted. He had no confidence whatsoever that a second train would be stopping in Roper Junction that day. Not in time . . . But now at least the boy had something to keep him occupied, and Cyril could be alone to gather up the grated shreds of his courage.

  Kookie beamed at passers-by in the street and asked if they had heard the news. He called in at the saloon. He stopped by the school yard. Cyril had given him a job, and he hauled that job around town as doggedly as a husky pulling a sled. The more people he told, the more he believed it himself: a train would be stopping later that day at Roper Junction, and aboard it would be someone who would make everything good.

  But the telegram was his masterstroke. Everett Crew had given him two dollars that morning to send a teleg
ram. So that is precisely what he did. He had grown up in a telegraph office: he knew the places were hotbeds of gossip.

  TELEGRAM TO CHARLIE NOBODDI,

  C/O OLIVE TOWN TELEGRAPHIC OFFICE, OKLAHOMA

  WORD IS QUEEN VICTORIAS TRAIN

  STOPPING HERE TODAY — STOP — BET

  YOU WISH YOU WAS HERE — STOP —

  YOUR PAL

  KOOKIE

  After Kookie had left the shop, the telegrapher could not help mentioning to his wife the contents of the message he had just tapped out. His wife could not resist running next door shrieking, “The Queen’s comin’! The Queen! The Queen! And look at the state of my hair!” The people next door could not resist stepping down to the grocery store to see if the grocer had heard any such thing and to ask if it was true. The grocer said that some kid had mentioned some such nonsense—he had not thought much of it, but if the telegrapher knew better . . . After that, nobody knew where they had heard it first, but everybody in town knew that Queen Victoria was vacationing in Missouri and would be calling by in a train.

  In faraway Oklahoma, Pickard Warboys tore off the ticker-tape message and read it. His heart, too, rattled like a telegraphic machine. What in the name of goodness was Kookie up to? There was no one by the name of Noboddi in Olive Town. Pickard firmly believed there was no one anywhere called Noboddi. The atlas on his desk fell open automatically now at the page showing the Numchuck River. His finger traced the river’s course but could not find the town where his son must now be standing. So what was Kookie doing there? Was it true, Pickard wondered? Would the Queen of England truly be passing today through Roper Junction, Missouri? No: if Kookie and a bunch of actors were involved, it was a piece of invention, for sure. Promoting a play, maybe. Or fooling some grandissimo into bankrolling the company. Hence the invented Noboddi. If Kookie had needed help, he would have made himself plainer. “Don’t do anything stupid, son,” murmured Pickard. He dared not tell his wife: either she would get as worried as he, or she would want a new hat and a rail ticket to go and scour Missouri for a glimpse of Queen Victoria.