The Choir Boats by Daniel Rabuzzi

around her neck, opened it to
display the only picture anyone had of her mother.
    In the back-house Fraulein Reimer sat alone with her needlework,
remembering how she used to tell Tom and Sally the story of the
wren and the bear.
    “How is it called in English? Zaunkoenig ?” she would ask.
    “Wren,” Sally would reply.
    “ Ja , the wren. The wren was the king of all birds, but one day the
bear insulted him, so there was a war between the small creatures
that fly and all the animals. The animals were confident they would
win because they were so much bigger and stronger. But the wren
was too scharfsinnig , smart, for them. He sent hornets and wasps to
sting them and birds to peck out their eyes. In the end, the animals
gave up, and the birds and insects won.”
    The fraulein put down her needlepoint, picked up the pistol
beside her, and polished and checked its workings.
    Barnabas checked his pocket-watch again. Ten minutes to nine in
the evening. The night would be dark, only two days past the total
lack of the moon. He stood alone just outside St. Clare Minoresses
without
Aldgate,
staring
into
the
gloom.
The
church
was
a
ruin, burned in a fire fifteen years earlier, roofless, with empty
windows. Vines and creepers suckered to the walls, and a small
elm tree had taken root in the vestry. Rooks and crows were the
only visible guardians of the place. Barnabas would have laughed
if he could: this was a scene out of a romance. He half expected a
mad monk to shamble out of the ruins, seeking to carry him into
the catacombs.
    “Only this ain’t a novel,” he said.
    Five minutes to nine, darker, darker. Barnabas strode over rubble
and trash through the doorway. A paving stone was tipped up to
his left, leaning against a charred buttress. To his right, beyond the
young elm, was a pool of water and more heaps of broken stone.
    Nine o’clock by the church bells from the City and Whitechapel.
    “Well, come on then,” Barnabas shouted into the darkness.
“I’m here.”
    Barnabas thought he saw something move at what would be the
far end of the nave.
    “You’re good at hiding, and spying, and now kidnapping,” he said.
“What I want to know is, are you good at keeping your word?”
    Out of the darkness in front of him came a voice sinuous and
clear: “A word is a breath of air, a rush of wind over the tongue and
between the teeth, leaping to be free, rejecting restraints, slipping
strictures and straits. My dear sir, you cannot keep a word, unless it
is unspoken, in which case it is unborn and not yet a word at all.”
    Barnabas saw a figure in a dull red coat, flickering like embers.
    “Where’s my nephew?” said Barnabas.
    “My guest,” replied the voice. “Is right here.”
    The dark did not lessen so much as Barnabas could suddenly see
in the dark. Or so it seemed. The man in the coat stood on a mound
of debris, with Tom beside him.
    “Tom!” yelled Barnabas, lunging forward.
    “Terms, Mr. McDoon, terms,” said the smouldering man. “I offer
to return your lost one, but first you must agree to my terms. You
know what they are.”
    Barnabas pulled up short, breathing hard. The pistol under his
coat banged against his ribs.
    “I will come with you to Yount,” he said.
    “The key?” said the Cretched Man with the slightest sub-slide of
yearning.
    “Here it is,” said Barnabas, pulling it from his pocket.
    “You and the key together must come to Yount.”
    “Yes,” said Barnabas. “First you release Tom, and guarantee his
safe passage from this place.”
    “Of course. Walk forward. We will complete the exchange . . .
together . . . now.”
    Barnabas shifted his gaze to the Cretched Man, saw his face for
the first time. ( Marvellous , thought Barnabas. Like alabaster, like a
living . . . ) All three were within six paces, five paces, four paces. For
an instant Barnabas looked into blue eyes that shimmered green in
the grisaille wash of witch-vision.
    What happened next no one could ever reconstruct.