The Choir Boats Read Free Page B

for their faces): she too longed to find a dazzling field upon
which to meet the cavalry charge of fate. More, she yearned for
high houses of thought that girls were not allowed to enter and she
dreamed of hills that could not be found on any map in the City of
London.
    The interlude ended as Tom knew it must, with Barnabas and
Sanford returning to the outer office. (Sanford’s full name was
Nehemiah Severin Sanford, but he never answered to anything
other than his last name, finding it uneconomical to use three words
when one would suffice.) Tom picked up his pen, sighed, did sums
in the margins of wastepaper fetched out of the cartonnier. Sally
had already gone upstairs. Magpies cried above the gables, horses
whinnied outside, an oyster-man hawked his wares in the street.
The clock seemed to tick even more slowly than usual.
    On her way to her room, Sally made a detour. She heard footsteps
on the back stairs, which was odd because she heard the maid — for
whose use the back stairs were primarily intended — gossiping in
the kitchen (“mardling,” the maid called it) with her aunt, the cook.
The footsteps must, therefore, belong to Barnabas and Sanford,
which was doubly odd because neither man regularly left the ground
floor during business hours. Sally dashed across the landing before
the two merchants reached the second floor from the opposite
direction. She dove into the library, and then scrambled under the
writing desk in the far corner. Sanford and her uncle walked into
the library. Hardly daring to breathe, Sally knelt under the desk and
listened (dismissing thoughts that it was not very ladylike to hide
under desks and eavesdrop).
    When the men were gone, she came out from under the desk
and searched the shelves for whatever book her uncle had deemed
so important or dangerous that he had hidden it. Sally knew the
library better than anyone else. For Barnabas and Sanford the
library was a tool of the trade, for Tom a duty, but for Sally it was a
field of pleasure, a storehouse, the contents of which she purloined
on nocturnal raids. Her schoolmates, the daughters of other men
of good standing, fancied romances and tales of gothic horror, but
Sally hungered for knowledge about political economy, history,
natural philosophy, just about any topic that a man (but, alas, not
a woman) might debate in Parliament or in the coffeehouses. Her
uncle worried about how she was to marry, since few men were
interested in an educated woman, but he indulged her. Sally located
the book in five minutes.
    Her room was a cubby right under the eaves, smelling of tea and
pepper because the rest of the attic was used to store trade goods.
By the gable-window, alone with her cat Isaak, Sally began to read Journies and Travells to Yount and the Realms Within . The yearning
in her heart responded, quickened as she turned the pages, began
to take shape and name. The book’s anonymous author, or authors,
seemed to be present, whispering in her ear. She missed lunch, then
almost missed dinner and barely ate when she did come to the table.
The cook was not the only one to notice Sally’s agitation. “Roasted
rabbit, Miss Sally,” urged the cook. “With mustard gravy just the way
you like it.” But Sally paid little heed to either coney or mustard.
    “Something is afoot in this house,” said the cook to her niece, the
maid. “Or I am a stag-turkey.” The cook and the maid were in the
kitchen as noon neared. They had just heard Sally enter the library,
followed closely by Barnabas and Sanford.
    The cook picked up her flairing knife in one hand and the rabbit to
be skinned in the other. Her words followed the rhythm of her knife.
    “I have been in this house a long time,” the cook said. “And I feel
something’s come unstilted.” She had been a long time at McDoon &
Associates. Originally from a village by the Norfolk Broads, near the
fishing port of Great Yarmouth, she had been called to London by
Sanford many years ago. Her