The Choir Boats (34 page)

The Lord-Chancellor said to the Arch-Bishop: “Is this the key in
truth?”

The Arch-Bishop examined the key, and said, “Yes. This is the key.”

The Queen said in English, “To go to our temple at the place of
the Ear and off-lock the door, with the key?”

“Yes,” said Barnabas without hesitation. “And to get my nephew
back.”

The Queen nodded. She leaned forward and for a moment was
just a person, a woman, not a ruler of millions with the fate of a
world in her hands.

Looking right into Barnabas’s eyes and speaking again in English,
she said, “Thank you. I know about your boy. I know about children
who get took and lost. We will help you get him back to you.”

“Thank you,” said Barnabas.

The Lord-Chancellor brought her arms together so her palms
met, and said, “We all thank you, we who represent the recognized
bodies of Yount Major. We have heard you and we will help you, since
doing so helps ourselves.”

“That’s that then,” said Barnabas, as the audience concluded.
“Let’s get ready to handle ’em!”

“One more thing,” said Sanford. “And not wanting to appear
too forward, but the letter — your first contact with us, Your
Excellency — spoke too of help we might find here to recover
Barnabas’s heart’s desire. How might that be achieved?”

“We will help as we can,” said the Lord-Chancellor (the Arch-Dean shifted in his seat). “Accept our word on that. Let us conclude
first and quickly the opening of the Door and the return to you of
your nephew. Then we will make good on our promise.”

As they bowed their goodbyes and walked out of the audience
room, Sally realized that the only person — besides Fraulein Reimer
— who had said nothing was the Rabbi of Palombeay.

His eyes were keen enough
, she thought.
He followed everything, at
least those bits in Yountish. I wonder what he is thinking.

Sanford thought,
Not at all what I would have expected in a Queen,
but then again this isn’t England. Very level-headed. I like her measure,
even if she is wearing trousers. Still, their game and ours are not completely
consonant — will bear watching, though I do trust Nexius and the others
from the Gallinule, most especially young Bammary.

Barnabas whistled and thought to himself,
So that’s an audience
with royalty. Seemed more like bartering on the Exchange. I don’t much
care for that Learned Doctor, brrrr, a chilly fish. Queen seems a lovely
woman, and she cared about Tom, that’s clear, though I cannot know
why she would beyond politeness. She’s a queen, after all, has millions of
subjects to think about, and Tom’s not even one of them.

Back in their own quarters, the McDoons heaped questions on
their shipmates.

“Trousers?” asked Barnabas.

Reglum smiled. “I should have thought to tell you, being one who
knows English ways so well. Yes, trousers. Here in Yount, we think
nothing of women in trousers. To speak plainly, your attitudes about
dress never cease to astonish us. Here women go in trousers because
women do whatever men do and more.”

Sanford and Barnabas were in clarifying stances.

“How so, sir?” said Sanford.

“As I said, women do all the same work, hold the same situations,
as men,” said Reglum. “Our Lord-Chancellor is a woman — you’ll
note that she too wore trousers.”

“Women as merchants, for instance?” said Barnabas.

“Of course,” said Noreous, amused.

“University professors?” said Barnabas, looking at Sally.

“Yes,” said Reglum, his smile widening. “Yes to any occupation
you can think of.”

“Soldiers?” asked Sanford, with a confident look.

“Yes,” said Nexius. “We all fight here, as necessary. Like Sally’s cat.”

Even Sally was taken aback at that news. Women as soldiers!
But then she looked at Fraulein Reimer and remembered the
fraulein pointing a pistol at the ruffians on the night of the
housebreaking.

“But,” she said. “There were no women on the
Gallinule
.”

Reglum’s smile faded.

“True,” he said. “But that is a recent event. The Queen decreed
that no women were to go forth on the tough ships any longer,
though they can still serve in the navy within Yount.”

“Why?”

“Because she lost her only daughter when one of our tough ships,
the
Merganser
, went missing with the princess serving onboard.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, it is sad,” said Reglum. “The Princess Zessifa was much
loved and would have made us a fine queen.”

“The
Merganser
disappeared near a place in the Between-Lands
that we call Lizard-Home,” said Nexius. “We sent out three search
ships but could not find our missing colleagues. Gone, off into the . . .
well, now you know where they were lost.”

Nexius pointed to Reglum. “Lieutenant Bammary made his first
trip on a tough ship as a member of one of the search parties. They
only took volunteers.”

Reglum said, “Thank you, Captain.” Then to the others: “Nexius
was my commanding officer on that ship.”

“The
Swift
,” said Nexius. “One of our last before we got the steam
engines. But, hunh, we were not ospreys to save a tern, as we say in
Yount.”

Sally thought of something. “Does the Queen have any sons?”

“Ah, Miss Sally,” said Reglum. “No, she does not. One son she had
who died of childhood pox, and then her daughter . . .”

“So Yount — at least Yount Major — has no heir,” said Sanford.

“Say rather the House of Hullitate has no heir,” said Reglum.
“Yount Major has an heir, a prince from the Presumptive House
among the Optimates, a family called Loositage.”

Nexius shifted, looked even more than usual like a badger with a
briar in his paw, but he said nothing.

“Our rules of inheritance are complicated,” said Reglum, choosing
his words carefully. “Just as yours are. Perhaps we should leave it at
that, since this question is not imminent in the way our rendezvous
at the Sign of the Ear is.”

But Nexius clearly wanted to continue the conversation just a
little longer. The briar in his paw had grown to an entire bramble.

“Tell them more, Reglum,” he said in the tone of a captain to a
lieutenant.

Reglum sighed and said, “The rules of inheritance are all nicely
codified but there is also, outside the rules, a . . . sentiment, I suppose
I could call it.”

“A prophecy from the Mother,” said Nexius.

“As some call it,” said Reglum with another one of the gestures
that the McDoons did not understand. “Not a canonical text, not
according to the Gremium for Guided Knowledge. The story was
first circulated by the Sibyl of Qua, who attracted a large following.
Then the story resurfaced independently, preached by the young
Matthias Laufer, the passionate Pietist boy who came years later.”

“What does the prophecy say?”

“That Yount’s eleventh dynasty since our New Reckoning, which
starts with the crowning of First-King Ussommeous Chabimate
almost two thousand years ago, will be a dynasty begun by two
individuals from Karket-soom.”

“I guess that the House of Hullitate is the tenth dynasty,” said
Sally.

“Precisely,” said Reglum. “The prophecy is one reason we put all
Karket-soomi under Crown protection. Everyone welcomes Karket-soomi as proof that we are not alone, as evidence of our eventual
freedom, but not everyone relishes the idea of Karket-soomi as
rulers in Yount.”

“So,” Nexius said. “Two schools of mind. Those who would
advertise our presence to Karket-soom, the better to advance the
fulfillment of the prophecy, those are called Proclaimers. The others,
who feel otherwise, we call Secretists.”

On the way back to their quarters, Barnabas said, “Buttons
and beeswax, Yountish history is every bit as complicated as our
own. Indeed, I think I might even prefer old what’s-his-name of
Halicarnassus with his that battle and this battle until one’s eyes
cross. Happy there is no examination on all this!”

“Even if there were, all that matters is Tom,” Sanford said.

Sally put up her hand before anyone else could speak. She took
out the ansible pendant from around her neck and held it up for all
to see. The pendant glowed a dull-red.

Sally felt her stomach tighten as they neared the Hills of the Temple,
held Isaak even more tightly in her lap. She knew from her dreams that
it was impossible to land a ship at the base of the promontory, that
the only approach to the Temple was by land over the encircling hills.
For two days they had travelled east and then southeast from Yount
Great-Port, on a broad road hugging the coast. At dawn the second
day, several companies of sharpshooters joined the members of the
Queen’s Household Guard already escorting them. Sally looked out of
the carriage window. All she saw jogging along on horses were swords
and pistols, and, when she craned her neck to look upwards, the faces
of soldiers. Several of these were women, just as Nexius had said.

First Tom, then we’ll see about heart’s desire
, thought Barnabas,
as the carriage bumped along.
How Rehana figures into this, I cannot
reckon. Rehana . . .

He thought of the Khodja garden in Bombay. The carriage jolted,
tossed everyone nearly to the ceiling, and brought Barnabas back to
the present.

“Hah! Time to get our revenge on the Cretched Man. Now we’ll
handle ’im, just like Lord Rodney against the French — straight at
’im, and no quarter!”

Must not let Barnabas do anything rash
, thought Sanford,
rearranging his hat.
Can’t let him charge the line lacking his flints.

Sanford looked to Sally. “I do not understand what has happened
to her. I’d call it witchly. It is surely unnatural. But whatever it is, she
is on the side of the righteous: she has cast off the works of darkness
and put on the armour of light, as the Book talks about.”

Fraulein Reimer said nothing but did her needlework despite the
jouncing of the carriage. She tried to hide the fact that the needle
had jabbed her several times, but Sally saw drops of blood on the
embroidery.
Like the Queen in the fairy tale
, Sally thought,
whose drops
of blood on a handkerchief foretold the doom of a missing child
.

Rattling behind the McDoon’s carriage were others, filled
with Learned Doctors and members of the Gremium for Guided
Knowledge, all wrapped in dark green overcoats. The Arch-Bishop —
who was thus the Arch-Dean of the Learned Doctors — was among
them. He seemed ill at ease around Sally, who returned the feeling.
She noticed that none of the Marine officers spoke more than was
necessary with the Arch-Dean or with any of the others in the other
carriages. She also noticed that the carriages had their own escort,
soldiers dressed not in the Marines’ dark blue but in deep-green
uniforms. Their brooches were silver with a green tree, not a leaping
dolphin.

“Sacerdotal
Guards,”
growled
Nexius
when
asked.
“Only
Optimates can join. Better equipped than we are.”

They stayed the second night in a small fort at a fork in the
road.

“How far to the Temple now?”

“One more day. There to the southeast you see already the first
Hills of the Temple.”

The next day was Sterrowday. With scores of soldiers riding along
side, some in dark blue, some in deep green, they left the last of the
farmed lands and rode into the hills. The sun was out but it was cold.
A few birds piped from thickets at the base of the hills but otherwise
they saw and heard nothing. The road, winding through the hills,
became narrower and rougher, until it was just barely wider than
the carriages.

“Interminable ride is breaking my back-parts,” Barnabas said.
“But, from the egg to the apples, we’ll soon be done! I cannot imagine
anyone, not even that wicked chap in the coat, standing up to the lot
of us!”

Sanford pulled his chin in as he said, “Old friend, you are
sometimes just a little bit too much like a sundial, seeing only the
sunny hours.”

“Really . . .” said Barnabas, looking affronted and amused at the
same time.

“Let us not count bearskins before the bear is shot,” said
Sanford.

And skinned
, added Sally to herself.

Late in the afternoon they passed out of the hills. Sally was glad
the soldiers rode alongside again so she could not see. She feared
the view though she could not say why. She heard the surf in the
distance.

“Halt,” said Nexius. “We camp here tonight.”

Sally looked and beheld what she had seen so many times in
her dreams. As the sun set, and dozens of campfires were kindled,
Sally looked over a bare stretch towards a distant sea. At the edge
of sight were five giant trees huddled around a white building. Sally
gasped: it is one thing to dream a thing, it is another to see it in the
waking world, and then to wonder which came first, the dream or
the waking experience. She seized her St. Morgaine medallion and
clenched her jaw.

“Every Yountian knows of this place,” said Reglum in a low
voice. “Only a few come here. Mostly just Sacerdotes, especially the
Learned Doctors and the members of the Gremium, and even they
do not come often or stay long. All the soldiers, men and women
alike, are anxious and uneasy. ’Tis our most holy ground . . . holiness
is hard to endure in such concentration.”

Sally did not answer but was glad for his company.

“Come back to the fire,” said Reglum. “It grows colder as we speak.
The wind off the ocean is chilling.”

“No moon,” she said, and pulled her hood up over her head.

The next morning, Mickleday, came cold and clear. Over the sound
of many hooves was the suffle of the wind, and over that, the boom
of surf. The carriages slowed. Sally watched as the soldiers hived off
to right and left, the green in one direction, the blue in the other.
The carriages stopped.