The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen (18 page)

Chapter Sixteen
A Queen's Ransom

I
f I set off tonight, I can still maybe get there in time,” said Everett. “If I can borrow a horse . . .”

“Quicker to go by train in the morning, sir,” said Henry. “By my estimate, it is a five-hour journey to Roper Junction.”

“We must all go. And here's us, not a cent among us!” said Loucien, brushing her hair vigorously in front of the oval mirror.

“I only need my own train fare. One way would do!” Everett did not look like a man without a cent. On returning his borrowed funeral tailcoat to the butler, his own had been given back laundered, ironed, and mended. (The servants yearned to be helpful.) He was wild-eyed but immaculate.

“We'll put on a show!” said Curly. “All proceeds to go to rescuing Mr. Cyril.”

“Blowville's in mourning,” said Miss March. “We won't be allowed.”

“Banjos ken find they way home to the pawn shop,” offered Oskar.

“I've been working up this paying trick with a bucket . . . ,” said Chad Powers.

“I'll go see the Blackers tonight and pry money outa them,” said Loucien.

“We could always pull a Growow. My invalid mother in Des Moines found it deeply affecting, and I have no doubt it was profitable.” And Miss March went on to describe a scene from her childhood. “Two men set up a tent, claiming they have captured the most ferocious beast in the world. The public lines up to view the beast, paying a dollar a head. The Growow is said to be in the back of the tent behind a curtain, chained up (naturally) because it's so murderous. Then the gentleman behind the curtain begins rattling chains and hitting skillets together and screaming, ‘The Growow has gotten loose! Argh, save yourselves, save your children!' et cetera, and the crowd understandably runs off in all haste. Not staying to ask their money back.” She looked around her at a dozen shocked faces.

“Garibaldi biscuits!” exclaimed Kookie. “We gotta do that thing!”

“May!” said Curly. “We are actors, not flimflam artists!”

May March dabbed her lips with a handkerchief. “I myself was not taken in, of course, but as I say, my mother found it most stimulating. And the takings must have been good.” The room surged enthusiastically into life.

Everett shook his head and groaned. “No! No, no, no! You are good, resourceful people. But there's no time! A matter of hours! And this is
my
doing. I forgot Cyril didn't know the boat's name. I should have done more to find him. It's my fault! I'll go up there and vouch for him—switch places with him, I don't know. Whatever it takes.”

Over on the white bed, Elijah Bouverie was sinking. The doctor had said so; said he should be granted peace for his passing.

“Don't ever grant me peace,” Loucien had said as the doctor's pony and trap bowled away down the drive. “If I'm ever lying on the brink, don't all creep off to a distance like I smell, will you, folks?”

And somehow the Bright Lights and weeping staff had believed Loucien more than the doctor and stayed put. Right now, the quartet was by the bed, crooning songs Elijah might know. Sweeting was trying to spoon water and honey into the old man's mouth without choking him. The various maids who had decided they were in love with various members of the quartet were dusting and polishing all the furniture in the bedroom so as to stay as close as possible. It was not the easiest place to plan a rescue.

Cissy, meanwhile, sat cross-legged on the foot of the bed, reading Cyril's fearful letter over and over, living through his adventures till the palms of her hands were wet with fright. Miss Loucien came and sat down beside her, tugging the letter out of her hands. Her palms, too, were wet, Cissy noticed.

“I know what Cole Blacker woulda done,” said Cissy in anger. “He'da passed himself off as King of America. He'da bamboozled the whole of Roper County into giving him a golden stagecoach an' free whiskey. And he'da granted pardons, right, left, and all ways!” She only said it to Miss Loucien, but the rest of the room fell oddly silent, and then she felt just plain embarrassed.

“Heydaydie,” Loucien sighed, toying with Elijah's bony old hand on the coverlet, plinking the fingers one by one. “I wonder,” she added, reading over the letter, looking at the portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the wall. And then: “Hashi kuchi hunkidory,” she said in half Choctaw, half Minneapolis, and kissed Cissy. She smelled of vanilla and French toast. “We can do it!” She swept over to her husband. “We can do it, sweetheart! It can be done! But we still need the danged train fare. In fact . . .” She looked around her at the strange family she had married into. “We really need the whole danged train.”

Not the King of America. That would be plain unbelievable. Not Abraham Lincoln—not with him so famously dead. Not a man at all, in fact, because men are a shifty, untrustworthy bunch, most of them. (Loucien said it.) A woman, then! The Bright Lights must, within the day, produce the one woman in the world with enough influence to spring Cyril Crew from Roper County Jail! It had to be Queen Victoria herself!

“Anyone know what the lady looks like? That would be a start.” Loucien Shades Crew turned sideways on to the mirror and gave a groan of regret for her lost figure. “Hope she's on the portly side.”

“Oh my goodness,” muttered Miss March, starting to panic. “Oh goodness me.”

“Loucien Shades Crew, you are eight months pregnant!” her husband protested.

When the English butler came to round up the maids, his opinion was asked. “In England I lived in Leytonstone,” said Henry. “There was little opportunity for the lady and me to become acquainted. Minnie—Leah—please go and help John fetch down the chandelier in the banquet hall. It is in need of cleaning.” The maids bobbed. Everyone else was a little taken aback—it seemed an odd time to be cleaning the lamps—but perhaps Henry wanted the house restored to perfection now that the Master was home.

“I know what the Queen looks like,” said Cissy deliberately. “I know exactly what she looks like. We used to have her on our wall. Looks like a dumpling, sorta, but gray all over. Cheeks like a marmot. Royal marmot, I mean, not meanin' to insult Your Majesty.” To Cissy, Loucien was already a queen.

“Your hair's red as maple, Lou,” Everett went on. “I am quite sure . . .”

“How tall is she, then?” Kookie demanded sus-piciously of Cissy.

“Oh my goodness. Oh goodness me.”

“I don' know!” Cissy retorted. “It was a head-and-shoulders picture! Her head came upta here on the wall . . . but that's only 'cause there was a nail sticking out there to hang the picture on!”

“Tell us ‘bout that bucket trick, will you, Chad?” said Kookie, still thinking of the train fare they did not possess.

Then Sweeting said softly: “She's small as a dime. Wide as she long. Chil' size, that ain't no lie.” It was hardly as if he had spoken; Sweeting never spoke louder than a fly buzzing at a windowpane.

The Bright Lights stared at him.

“T'ing is,” said Benet, explaining on Sweeting's behalf, “back in eighty-one, we was on loan to Callander Haverley's Minstrels when the man done bless th'English with a show tour. Layin on a smack of pseudo-Nigro culture. We sung twice in fronta the Queen.”

The maids gasped. Tibbie Boden gasped. To think she had sailed the Numchuck River with FOUR people who had met a real queen! The room fluttered like an aviary full of owls—
oooh! oh! oooh!

“Oh my goodness. Oh goodness me.”

“Gracious, gentlemen!” murmured Henry with unsuspected wryness. “You are very nearly royalty.”

“Did she clap when you sung?” breathed Tibbie in awe.

“She didn' throw nothin', leastways,” said Boisen-berry.

Loucien Shades Crew was not put off by the fact that Queen Victoria was half her height, more than twice her age, and not known for her red hair. “Even
Henry
didn't know her size 'n' coloring, and he's English,” she said with unruffled serenity. “Reckon Roper Junction won't know any better than Leytonstone. Henry, you got one night to teach me to talk English. After that, if you care to, you can be President of England. You ever done any playacting?”

“Prime Minister, ma'am. England does not have a president,” said Henry, starting to sneeze.

“Everett, you'll be my American Ambassador . . . and Curly my money man.”

“Chancellor,” Henry interjected.

“And you, Elder, you can be my pastor or shaman or whatever.”

“Chaplain?” suggested Henry.

Up till this point, Elder Slater had said nothing. Now he stood up, hat over his heart; his duster coat, laundered and overstarched, gleamed stiff and white as angel wings. “Mrs. Crew,” he said, aiming his eyes just over her head. “Mrs. Crew, I am a lifelong Methodist. My religion allows no monarchs. God alone rules over us. This great land stepped one pace closer to godliness when it cast off king and empire.” This was not Elder Slater in hellfire mode; he was visibly trembling. The room fell silent.

“I know that, honey,” said Loucien, emptying her face of flippancy. “I may put on costume. Don't mean to say I ain't still a democratic American underneath.”

Slater put his hat back on. ‘Very good. It needed saying. Now I have a thing to do. If I am not back by dawn, leave without me.” The draft, as he left, shed a strangely icy chill.

“Talking of costume,” said Loucien at last, “I'll need one. Thanks to this baby, I'm down to the one dress, and that's sorta . . .”

“
Red
,” said the room at large.

“Oh my goodness. Oh goodness me!”

“Hush up, May,” said Curly sternly, taking the schoolmistress by both wrists. “There comes a time, in getting ready for a play, when you have to step out on the ice and walk. Or the fear'll make you heavy, and it
just won't hold
.” She looked at him, breath pent up behind her lips, and a little popeyed. “Now you go see your mother in Des Moines, or you stay here and tend to Captain Bouverie, but either way, you have to start believing in us.”

Miss May March looked around her at the Bright Lights Theater, Last Ditch & Final Curtain Company. She could tell from their faces that they were as one with Curly, getting ready to skate on the thin ice of an illusion, however deep the water below. “But you're family!” she exclaimed. “I can't let you all go to it without me!”

Henry the butler circulated with glasses of rich, ruby-red wine—”Don't you dare touch that glass, Habakkuk Warboys!”—then poured one for himself. “Gentlemen—ladies—may I make a toast I have not had cause to make for a great many years:
God save the Queen!”

“And my brother,” said Everett under his breath.

“And Elijah here,” murmured Sweeting.

Henry wiped his eyes and raised his glass again.
“Then I say, the Queen, Mr. Cyril Crew, and Captain Elijah Bouverie—God save them all!
”

Elder Slater cycled to Boats-a-Cummin and, as night fell, leaned his borrowed bicycle against the wall of the saloon. With the Blowville saloon closed in mourning, business here was brisk. Checking his gun, settling his hat squarely, he slammed open the doors. The exciting whiteness of his duster coat caught him off guard for a moment, reflected in the long mirror behind the bar.

“
Good evening, gentlemen. I mean to preach the word of the Lord here tonight, and the Lord would appreciate your attention
.”

A change from routine is always welcome: several drinkers turned toward him. The piano player closed his piano lid. At one gambling table, though, the players simply went on with their game, staking bets, shaking their dice. Slater drew out his gigantic pistol, cocked its hammer, and laid its barrel to the dealer's temple. “I mean to preach the word of the Lord, and the Lord
don't appreciate interruptions
.”

The dealer squared up the pack and put his hands in his lap. The gaming tables froze and fell silent. The bartender turned his back and continued polishing glasses, but his eyes were on the mirror all the while, in case the sheriff needed a witness statement afterward.

Slater started loud and worked his way up to frenzied, and the empty glasses trembled on the dish rack. When he had done with the preaching, he started on the collection. “Will you help me in my mission? Will you help me ransom the life of those shipwrecked by misfortune in the valley of the shadow of death? Give generous, or ask yourself: who will ransom you in your hour of need?” He moved between the tables, hat held out in one hand, in the other his pistol held at such a level that its barrel brushed their hat brims, disturbed their cigar smoke. This was not his usual audience, come voluntarily to be shouted at. He knew that at any minute someone too drunk, too mean, too irritated to put up with him might shoot him in the back. But he raged and he whispered and he cajoled, and the bartender kept watch in the bronzed mirror.

When Slater left at last, like an avenging angel trailing dusty wings, the women clapped, the pianist played “'Tis the gift to be simple” honky-tonk style, the bartender put the safety catch back on the gun under the bar, and the dealer began dealing cards for blackjack. Only one bad-tempered ex-soldier strolled outside and fired off a couple of casual bullets at the pale figure cycling away into the distance.

The Captain's bedroom was taking on the appearance of an Arab souk, strewn with bric-a-brac, hung with clothes, and crammed with people. Even at midnight the Bright Lights were still awake and busy when Elder Slater finally made it back from his mission to Boats-a-Cummin. Medora was pinning her black photographic cloth (slightly sweat stained from its use as a funeral horse blanket) into the back of the cook's dark dress, to make it fit around Loucien. Loucien's fiery hair, meantime, had been compressed into a bun. Curly clamped it in place with the pawnshop tiara.