The Choir Boats (31 page)

Deep down it sits now, his unfounded pack

In the dark and the vasty and briny-f sea.

Tom and the Minders sang this and other songs, which mingled
with those of the Yountish sailors and their wives, echoing back down
the strand to disturb the sleeping gulls. Jambres, the Cretched Man,
sat alone in the house with the flagpole, deep in his thoughts. Once
he looked up and out the window of the unlighted house, thinking
he knew the words to one of the songs he heard in the distance,
but then the song ended. He went back to his meditations, his coat
wrapped close around him, pulsing in the dark.

Several weeks passed in Sanctuary. Every day in the late afternoon,
the Minders had Tom to baggins. Sometimes a Yountish sailor or
two would join as well, overcoming their uncertainty about tea.
Their wives and children would accompany them from time to time,
bringing home-made breads and stewed vegetables, products of the
gardens they kept. Then Billy Sea-Hen and Tat’head and the other
Minders were “on their best” as Billy put it, bringing chairs to the
beach for the women, and offering solemn toasts to the Yountians.
Invariably the meal ended with a song as the stars came out, a
particularly rousing one if the moon rose early. Billy would chuckle
and say to Tom, “We don’t always know what we are saying to one
another, us and the Yountish, but we always understand each other
just the same.”

Every morning Tom and Jambres shooed away the gulls and had
breakfast together. Reaching for a fresh-caught sprat (the cove was
rich with fish, and the sailors were very good fishermen while on
shore), Tom said one day, “Billy and the other Minders believe in
you. They think you’ll lead them to salvation.”

“And won’t I?” said Jambres, arching one perfect eyebrow.

Tom said, “Your reputation with the Yountians in London
hardly accords with the faith the Minders put in you. You cannot
be surprised if I assemble some doubts. I harbour concerns for the
men’s well-being.”

“Concerns for their well-being?” Jambres interrupted. “Well
meant, I am sure, but what might you know of their well-being? You
cannot claim to know their situation. I know something of their
suffering.”

“But salvation . . .” said Tom.

“Anything is better than their lot in England,” the Cretched Man
said. “Their children, those that live at all, have chalk-blue teeth and
papery skin. I’ve seen children down on all fours in an alley, hungry
enough to eat mouldy bread and spoiled potatoes. Women fight like
rats for scraps cast off from rich men’s tables, and are hanged for
stealing a handkerchief worth one shilling. Or are transported to
Australia, which might be worse.”

“I cannot deny . . .” Tom started.

“But you must witness,” said Jambres. “Your magistrates in
England, your justices of the peace, nothing intenerates their
hardened hearts to pity. Like alchemists trying to cerate base metals
into gold, they use the prisons and the workhouses to mould and
press the poor. In England, the poor such as Billy and his colleagues
are worth less than the two sparrows sold for a farthing. They
deserve much better.”

Tom shook his head and said, “I do not dispute you. But Billy
speaks of a war. In Yount.”

“Salvation never comes without struggle,” said the Cretched Man.
“In Yount are forces that must be overcome before the covenant of
mercy can be fulfilled.”

“You speak again in riddles,” said Tom.

“Riddles, mysteries and, most of all, ironies,” said Jambres.
“Listen to me, Thomas. Yount is no monolith. Far from it. Like the
British and the French, the Yountians nourish enmities amongst
themselves. The Yountians known to you, the residents of the Piebald
Swan in London, represent the majority. But there is a minority that
holds very different beliefs. The two sides clashed over a century
ago in a great war. One side calls it the War of Affirmation and
calls their enemies Rejectarians. Your Salmius Nalmius and Nexius
Dexius — do not be surprised, of course, I know their names — are
on the side of the Affirmation. The other side — from a place called
Orn — calls it the War Against Errant Authority.”

“Who won the war?” asked Tom.

“Neither side,” said Jambres. “They exhausted themselves in
strife. They ruined their temple, defiled the
omphalos
, the centre of
their world.”

“What is that?”

“The place where we are to meet your uncle and get the key,” said
Jambres. “At the Sign of the Ear.”

“You speak of ironies, but I do not grasp them,” Tom said.

“Because I have not made myself clear,” said Jambres. “I would
lead my rogue’s crusade against Orn. The Ornish are slavers — they
remain wedded to slavery. Those of Farther Yount, Yount Major,
renounced slavery long ago: slavery and freedom were entwined in
the Great War.”

“Still, I don’t see . . .” Tom turned his hands palm up in confusion.

“I would side with Yount Major,” said Jambres. “I am an ally of
your Nexius Dexius and Salmius Nalmius, if only I could make them
see that, make them accept me as one.”

“How could that be? You oppose them even as we speak . . . here
I am!” Tom said.

The Cretched Man bowed his head for an instant. His coat shifted
as he said, “You will find this hard to credit, Thomas, but I am not
their enemy. So far from wishing them harm, I wish them an end to
their punishment. How could I not? My release depends on theirs.”

Tom said, “If you are not their enemy, but they see you as one,
what does that make you?”

Jambres smiled bitterly, “Ah, the gall in my own potion! I was
sent to Yount as part of my penance, to watch over the Yountians,
to guide them. Instead I have become their jailer. And what prisoner
does not despise his jailer?”

Tom nodded but less forcefully than he might have. He asked,
“What could the Yountians have done to deserve such a punishment?
Ripped from their home and condemned to exile?”

“Truly Thomas, I know not,” said the Cretched Man. “That
mystery is shielded from me, though I have tried to pierce its veils.
It is sufficient to say that I was appointed to the role of gatekeeper
and tutor. I have barely succeeded at the former task, and wholly
failed at the latter.”

Jambres fell silent. Moody wavelets rippled across his coat. The
gulls, sensing their chance, crowded in. Tom stood up. He tried one
final question: “What about Strix Tender Wurm?”

Jambres sat still as marble. His coat seemed to shrink upon him.
Slowly the Cretched Man turned one cockatrice eye at Tom and said,
“Of him, do not speak.”

More weeks went by on Sanctuary. The Minders hunted and
combed the beach, the sailors fished, the sailor’s wives and children
harvested beans, aubergines, and gourds from their gardens. Frost
appeared on the heathlands, and sea-ducks came into the cove to
escape the coming winter.

“Something has happened,” the Cretched Man said one morning
at breakfast. “Your Uncle Barnabas is delayed.”

Tom put down his teacup, spilling a little, and said, “They would
never be late if they could help it!”

“You are right, Thomas,” said the Cretched Man. “Something
untoward has occurred. I lost them some time ago. I have been
searching but I cannot find them. Come, I will show you.” He led
Tom into the house, up the stairs to a small locked room that was
right under the flagpole on the roof. The room held bookshelves
full of books, a table with many maps and, at the one window, a
telescope.

“No ordinary telescope,” said Jambres. “An ansible-scope, if you
will. Based on the same principles as the ansible but enabling far-sight. To do with sable-glass and refractored lenses and tuning for
coroscular forces, if such interests you. With this I can, with practice,
time, and discipline, scan the interstitial lands as well as peer back
to Earth and onwards to Yount.”

Tom put his head to the eyepiece. At first all he saw was the
Seek-by-Night
at anchor in the cove, but swiftly the scene shifted. He looked at
a deep-green valley with mist flowing along its ridges. Just as quickly
the scene shifted again and the colours changed. In rapid succession
he saw an eyrie filled with roseate eagles, then streaks of blues and
yellows in a roiling sky, and then a bottle-green film descended over
the view in the eyepiece. His eye hurt and he looked away.

The Cretched Man laughed. “It is no toy! An untrained eye will
only get random images, spewed forth by the xantrophicious waves
in the void.”

Tom was not easily deterred. He returned to the eyepiece. Images
flickered across the screen once more. Tom could not identify any of
them. He was about to give up when an image leaped into the frame
and stayed there.

“A dolphin!” said Tom. Its eye was very bright and it was frantically
waving its flippers.

“Not unusual,” said Jambres. “Dolphins are highly receptive to — ”

“Sally!” yelled Tom. He gripped the ansible-scope so hard it
shook. Sally had appeared, replacing the dolphin. Sally was asleep in
what looked like a ship’s cabin. Tom thought he saw Isaak’s golden
fur when the image abruptly disappeared. Just before Tom looked
up, he caught a blurred glimpse of a green lawn strewn with small
blue flowers. The Cretched Man had grabbed for the scope and was
looking through it. For five minutes or longer, he looked through the
scope, saying nothing. Tom’s head hurt badly, and he felt dizzy. He
sat down and waited. Jambres said he could not see Sally, and asked
Tom to describe what he had seen.

“Blue flowers in the grass?” said the Cretched Man. “Hmmm. You
may have seen . . . well, never mind. Remarkable, remarkable, on at
least two counts.”

“Where is she?” said Tom.

“Impossible to know from such a short vision,” said Jambres.
“I checked the coordinates you were using as soon as I took the
instrument over, but already they had been obscured. But the
sighting is good fortune regardless.”

“I thought you said it took years of training to use the
telescope?”

“Indeed,” said Jambres. “Altogether remarkable that you could
find what I could not, even if you could not fix her location. And
even more remarkable that you apparently entered into one of Sally’s
dreams, there at the end when you saw the flowers.”

Tom snorted. “I don’t believe in that sort of thing; that’s the kind
of nonsense Sally goes on about. . . .” He trailed off as he considered
what he
had
just seen, and all the oddities he had experienced since
leaving Mincing Lane.

“You are a remarkable family,” Jambres said, half to himself. “I
must credit the Learned Doctors with that much perspicacity: they
chose you well.”

“Chose?” said Tom.

“The operation with the key and selection of the Key-bearer and
finding those who wish themselves to go,” said the Cretched Man.
“Very delicate, with many, many unforeseen consequences. The
Learned Doctors have made many attempts through the years, only
two of which succeeded. This time — the third and final — they have,
as you English say, ‘a sporting chance.’”

Tom was only half-listening. He was thinking of Sally and the
rest of his family. He had taken to looking at himself in the mirror
and masking his lower-face with his hands so as to see Sally. Now he
had really seen her. He thought of her coming home from school and
her lectures on points of Latin history and German grammar that
only she cared about, and her missing meals so that the cook scolded
her, and how she loved to sit in the partners’ room when she thought
no one was looking. The Cretched Man’s next comment brought him
back to the present.

“They’ve been thinking about your family for a long time, which
means I have been too,” said Jambres. “Since your grandmother,
Belladonna born Brownlee in Edinburgh.”

Tom felt a shiver and cried, “That’s unnatural! Why,
I
know next
to nothing about my grandmother, so how could you . . . ?”

“Oh,” said Jambres. “Someone as sensitive to coroscular forces as
your grandmother, someone with her ability to feel far — oh no, such
people are exceedingly rare and hence awaken attention swiftly and
far beyond the walls of the world. In Edinburgh they used to say that
your grandmother had fairy blood in her and that she conversed
with the Sidhe-folk, which, in its way, was not beside the truth. Alas
for her, a Titania whose Oberon was too weak to defend her. Yet she
lived long enough to pass her gifts on to her offspring.”

Tom was astounded. To sit in a room somewhere outside the
world and hear from the lips of an eldritch stranger the story of
one’s grandmother . . . “
Quatsch
!” was all Tom could muster.

The Cretched Man laughed, not unkindly. “The strangest thing
is that the Learned Doctors . . . and I . . . may have missed the most
gifted in favour of your uncle.”

The truth of the Cretched Man’s speculation came two days later.
Tom and the Minders were having their late-afternoon baggins,
with more than the usual number of Yountians present. One of the
sailors was twanging on a mouth-harp and another one was playing
a fiddle as everyone clapped and stamped. The song was one the
Yountians had been teaching Tom and the Minders, so everyone
joined in on the chorus. “Mama-oyster says to baby-oyster to get
out of bed before the wicked gull comes and tears you away,” was
the refrain, as near as Tom could translate it into English. Just as
they came to the triple-clap that ended the refrain, they had an
unexpected guest, and they all fell silent.

The Cretched Man ran towards them. No one had ever seen him
run before. (“He always paces stately,” Billy once said, “because he
has what the French call ‘sanfwa,’” which was more literally true
than Billy realized.) As Jambres came to the fire, he bowed once to
the group, and then called for Tom.

As Jambres called, Tom half-fell. Billy stepped up instantly and
caught him. Tom sat on the beach, with Billy and the Cretched Man
beside him, and all the others in a ring around him. Jambres called
to Tom but Tom did not hear him. Tom began to hum, but it wasn’t
the Yountian song about oysters or the shanty about the Man in the
Moon or any other song they had sung around the baggins-fire. He
stopped for a second, as if listening for the theme, to insert himself
in an invisible choir, then began singing. Jambres looked at Tom
with wonder in his eyes. No one had ever seen such a look in his
eyes before. (“Like he’d felt the rapture,” was how Billy described
it later. “And that’s not just me gum-diddering.”) Then an even
more marvellous thing happened: Jambres began to sing as well,
matching his voice to that of Tom’s.