The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen (19 page)

“Ain't she beautiful!” said Tibbie, which was not the effect Curly had been after, but which was undeniably true.

Slater swaggered in and tossed a hatful of money onto the white bedspread. “Might buy couple of rail tickets,” he croaked, his voice all but gone. Blushing, he turned his back so as not to have to look at Loucien and Medora in their petticoats.

“What did you do, rob a bank?” asked Kookie. Cissy ran and hugged Slater, which was an experience new to him.

“I eased the conscience of a few sinners.”

“Well! And aren't you a saint and a gentleman, Elder!” said Loucien.

Tibbie Boden picked up the money and clutched it to her chest. “Now we can all go and rescue Mr. Cyril!”

“I fear it is not enough, miss. I strove, but fell short.” And Slater sat down on the dressing-table stool.

“You got red paint on your nice white coat, too,” said Tibbie scoldingly. “An' you got to be the Queen's chaplain tomorrow!”

But Queen Victoria would have to manage without a chaplain on her royal visit to Roper Junction. Evangelical begging in saloons might raise cash, but they are a very dangerous game. It was not paint on Elder's coat. It was blood.

Loucien finished bandaging Slater's shoulder—the touch of her hands against his bare skin embarrassed him almost to the point of fainting—and kissed the top of his hair. She kissed Elijah, too. “Back in no time, fellas,” she promised, and lowered her veil. Then the Queen's entourage descended the grand staircase of Golden Bend Mansion, Loucien leaning on the arm of her American Ambassador, a procession of tailcoats following on. A train of well-wishers chirruped down the stairs behind them.

The marble floor had been scrubbed and smelled faintly of disinfectant. Somewhere a generator was humming, fueling the pumps to the fountains. A carriage clock on a lacquered table showed its elegant spinning mechanism, intricate as a paddle steamer's engine. Just eight hours remained until Cyril Crew was due to hang.

Henry was already by the door. Despite nobody having slept all night, he had absented himself toward dawn and gone out riding: he smelled a little of horses. “You look majestic, madam,” he said.

“Why thank you, Prime Minister,” said Loucien in a perfectly splendid English accent. Henry sneezed with delight.

The servants had taken up a red carpet runner from an upstairs corridor and laid it down on the stone steps. The ostler had fetched up a big old eight-seater chaise. The galvanized bucket standing by the doorway, however, was not their doing. At the bottom of the bucket lay a silver dollar.

“Oh, that's mine,” said Chad Powers. “I've been working up this paying trick. You see, folks can throw in money, but when they go for . . .”

As the chaise door was opened, all three children tried to get in.

“You cain't go—you got the sweating fever!”

“Well,
you
cain't 'cause you gamble!”

“Shall we toss a coin?” suggested Miss Loucien. “If it's heads, none of you get to go. If it's tails, you all stay here, and if . . .” Loucien took a backward step and reached into the bucket for the silver dollar.

“NO! DON'T!”

The back seam in her dress tore as Loucien's body gave a kind of wrenching twist and she fell sideways. There was blood and liquid and a good costume ruined. There was chaos, too. Chad explained how he had electrified the bucket, so people could throw money in but couldn't pull it out. Then Everett Crew hit him. Then Tibbie began to shriek that Chad had killed Miss Loucien and wasn't it bad enough he'd demolished the grocery store without him killing Queen Victoria as well. Kookie tried to see if the bucket really was electrified and it was, and he said so in new words more exciting than Lithuanian. Then Loucien, lying on the ground, started coming out with the kind of noise that put Tibbie in the shade, moaning and screaming in earnest, and the magpie maids all took off and ran indoors and the gardener backed off into the shrubbery, and Everett picked Loucien up and carried her indoors, and the others restrained Chad Powers from banging his head against a marble column, and Miss March corralled Kookie and Tibs in an alcove and would not let them go until order had been restored.

Cissy, meanwhile, stood stock-still by the open door of the chaise. Henry reached out and took her hand, and there they stood, still as statues, while the splintering sunshine fell around them like wreckage.

Without a word, he escorted her indoors through the French doors and to the upper floor. He led her to a china-blue bedroom, and the door of a rosewood wardrobe. The dress he took out could almost have belonged to a child—gray shantung with a white crocheted collar. Cissy had seen it before—in the portrait of Elijah's dead wife.

“Is Miss Loucien going to die?” asked Cissy.

“The electric shock has sent her into travail,” said Henry, emptying mothballs out of the cuffs of the silvery gown. Somewhere in the house a clock chimed the hour. Cissy had no idea what “travail” meant except that it cropped up in the Bible a lot when people were not having a good time. “Whosoever goes in her place needs to leave right away,” said Henry. “The train ride takes five hours.”

“Best ask the Bright Lights, then,” she answered dully.

The others, straying downstairs again, bewildered and distressed, were confronted by Henry, the gray silk dress across his two arms like the corpse of a child. “Whoever goes in the lady's place,” the butler repeated, “we need to leave at once. Every minute is vital.”

“It cannot be me,” said Miss May March. She was not flapping, simply being realistic. “If my nerve failed, I would be a danger to Cyril and the rest of you.”

“I no thing Queen Vittoria she has the Spanish accent or the dress of
Gitana
,” said Medora, spreading her Gypsy skirts. “An' this little gray dress there . . . you can fit melon into skin of the grape? No.”

They waited for Curly to speak, but his thoughts were trapped in a bedroom upstairs. “Don't ask me. I'm only Box Office and Costumes,” he said, lifting his hands and letting them fall.

So Kookie took the thing in hand as only Kookie could. “Look now: Cissy's braver than Tibs. And she acts better. Tibs is prettier, but looks don't matter, on account of the veil. Need to stuff out the bust, 'cause Cissy's flat as a wall, but then she'll do. Won't you, Ciss? I'd do it myself, but I cain't run in a dress and I figure we may have to do some running if it all goes poodlywhop.”

“Habakkuk,” said Miss March, “kindly keep your uncouth opinions to yourse—”

Everett Crew appeared on the upper landing, white faced and haggard, and everyone fell silent waiting for him to say that the show was canceled, that tickets would be refunded, that no one was going to Roper Junction after all. They had never really believed in it anyway. Cyril was a dead man.

“Lou says . . . ,” he began. “Mrs. Shades Crew says that we must go now if we are to be of use to my brother. Time's wasting. Kookie, take this telegram to Blowville and send it for me. It is vital to our plan.” And he handed Kookie two dollars of Elder's money and a much-folded sheet of paper. “Cissy . . .”

“Yes, Mr. Crew?”

“The role of the Queen is yours, Cissy, if you'll take it. Five minutes, Henry, or we shall miss the train.” And he turned away.

As the rest of the household ran to all points of the compass, the butler took hold of Cissy's chin and turned it toward him. “Though I realize, miss, that you in no way resemble a marmot, can you find it in you to put on this costume and save the day?”

No ambition surged through Cissy, except to see Miss Loucien come downstairs and play the part herself. “But I do the plank with Max. A trouper can only do so much, you know?” She could still hear the fearful yelling going on upstairs.

“Yesterday I was a butler, Miss Cecelia. Today I seem to be Prime Minister of England,” said Henry. “Sometimes life has a way of asking us to take a step up.”

Chapter Seventeen
The Bright Lights, Last Ditch & Final Curtain Company

F
lushed from running, Kookie slapped down Crew's note on the desk and leaned on his knees to catch his breath. The telegrapher unfolded it, turned it over, put it down again. “What's that then, some kinda joke?”

There was nothing written on the paper.

It cost Kookie five precious minutes to realize the truth. Everett had deliberately sent him off on a wild goose chase—to stop him joining the trip to Roper Junction. Why? Surely Crew did not think he was a
child
who had to be kept safe! Hadn't Kookie walked the plank and fallen into an alligator-infested river night after night? Hadn't he saved everybody from the bandit Sugar Cain and pulled Cissy out onto the mud bar after the explosion? Rage and outrage used up another five minutes, before Kookie realized: if he ran fast enough, he might still just catch the train. He told himself the Bright Lights wouldn't dare set off without him—that they would make the train wait till he got there. But no, they wouldn't! Cyril Crew's life was lost if that train ran late!

So he started to run, and as he ran, the terrible certainty grew in his breast that he would miss the train, miss going to Roper Junction, miss even saying good-bye to Cissy and the rest. And then that the Bright Lights would be found out and arrested—and then that they would be strung up in a row alongside Mr. Cyril—Cissy and Everett and Henry and Benet and George and Miss May and Curly and . . . And then that the British would hear tell some American had hanged Queen Victoria and would declare war, and then everyone in Olive Town would be massacred by invading foreigners. . . .

(Disasters grow in the thinking.)

Kookie put on an extra burst of speed.

At the last moment Tibbie had cost them yet more minutes. She had kicked up a terrific rumpus. Light-headed from her medicine, she had demanded to come: “In case Cissy gets diphtheria and dies and I have to save the day 'stead of her!” They had had to wrestle her out of the chaise three times over, before Medora volunteered to stay behind and subdue her. Another few minutes lost.

So despite the best efforts of the horses, the Bright Lights could see the morning train ahead of them, already standing in Blowville Station.

“Use the whip! Use the whip!” begged Everett.

“Should we not get out and run?” Cissy pleaded, but already it was too late. With four furlongs to go, they heard the whistle and saw the train begin to move. They had missed it. Crew gave a roar of frustration and despair.

But Henry seemed strangely unperturbed. He coaxed the chaise gently down a narrow track toward the railway sidings. “You may have wondered,” he said, as they bumped over rail ties and gravel, “ours being a household of such seeming luxury, why I have not offered you financial help on behalf of Captain Bouverie. . . .”

“Oh, you have been kindness itself . . . ,” Miss March started to say.

“Since the Captain went missing, there has been nobody to sign checks or withdraw cash from the bank. Oh, his money is
there
in the bank—in quantities, indeed—but we his household cannot gain the use of it. For eighteen months we have been obliged to
live off the land
, as it were.”

“What, no wages? At all?” As bookkeeper for the Bright Lights, Curly had had to make do on little, but he could not imagine getting by on nothing.

“We have a roof over our heads. The kitchen-garden and the rabbit population have kept us fed. But no, no wages as such. Now and then, when absolutely necessary, we have resorted to swaps: vintage wine for a vet's visit, you know? A cut-glass vase for the doctor. The search for the Captain itself cost us ten acres of garden.”

“And if Elijah dies?” asked George. But Henry was not prepared to imagine any such thing. Besides, they had arrived alongside a pair of fancy railway carriages parked up in a siding. Ahead of them, a dapper little engine was building up steam. Henry had traded the French chandelier from the banquet hall for a loan of the Blacker family's private train.

“Like Mrs. Crew, I did not think Her Majesty, Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India, would happily share a train with cowboys, salesmen, sticky children, three nuns, and a parcel of chickens. I believed she might travel in more
style
.” When they tried to thank him, Henry simply murmured, “The Captain would expect no less of me.”

Into the “royal train”—“
Hurry, for God's sake! We have barely seven hours!”
—climbed Cissy and Everett Crew, George, two members of the quartet, Prime Minister Henry, Max the Plank, Curly, and Miss March. Boisenberry had to drive the chaise back to Golden Bend. Benet had to strip to the waist, mount the footplate, and fuel the boiler, since Henry's deal had not included a stoker. Chad Powers was back at the house: he had not dared to share a coach with Everett Crew.

On the carriage steps, Cissy took a last look, hoping to catch sight of Kookie running toward them. She could catch sight of hardly anything through the thick mist of her veil, and anyway Kookie would not know about these sidings or the hired train. Crew had made good and sure that neither Kookie nor Tibbie tagged along: bad enough to put
one
child in danger, without involving three.

Henry was eager to coach Cissy—as he had coached Loucien—to speak with an English accent. But behind her veil Cissy remained obstinately silent.

“You don't need to wear that all the way, Cecelia,” said her schoolteacher, plucking at the netting, but Cissy tucked it firmly in at her collar like a beekeeper about to open a hive. She was Queen Victoria now, and it was her duty to think herself into the role. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Miss Loucien was travailing painfully in that upstairs bedroom and would probably soon be dead. But that made it all the more important for Cissy to play her part, to behave like a queen, a frosty-faced, elderly, seen-it-all queen. Also, with her veil down, she was free to chew her lip till it bled.

Sweeting, Benet, and Oscar recounted everything useful they could remember of their trip to England: the dank weather, the ravens and peacocks, the horse guards growing horsetails out of the tops of their helmets; the castles, the sewers, the gaslit streets, the audiences who never joined in . . .

“Why in the world did you never
say
you had been there?” asked Miss March.

Benet ran the toe of a two-tone shoe over the pattern in the carriage floor. “We inclined to keep quiet ‘bout England, ma'am. Patriotic sensibilities run deep in some parts. They's some daughters of the American Revolution out there still fightin' the War o' Independence. Life can be wearisome 'nough without havin' folks think we royalists too, with Union Jacks for drawers.”

His words worried them. Might the people of Roper Junction be dyed-in-the-wool believers in republicanism? Exactly what reaction would they have to seeing Queen Victoria arrive in their town? Would they gawk and cheer, or would they jeer and throw eggs at the train? If Kookie had been there, the word “assassination” would certainly have gotten mentioned. Luckily Kookie was not aboard.

Kookie was, in fact, on his way to Roper Junction. In the whole of Oklahoma no one could put on a sprint like Kookie Warboys could when it was needed. Admittedly he had had to chase the morning train down the track and spend the first twelve miles clinging to an iron cleat on the back of the caboose, but having caught hold, he was far too pleased with himself to fall off and get killed. At the first signal stop, he managed to climb inside without being seen. He doubted two dollars was enough to buy a ticket.

Two, three, four times he walked through the train looking for the royal party. Nothing. No one. Five times he managed to avoid the guard checking tickets. For hours he hid out in the caboose under a pile of luggage. But every so often he convinced himself that the Bright Lights
must
be on the train, would be on the train, if he just looked hard enough, and foolishly he would creep out of hiding. Thwarted and afraid, he was cornered at last, between first class and the front of the train, the guard coming closer every second with his “Tickets, please! Tickets!” But as their eyes met, and the guard's eyes narrowed with suspicion, the train finally drew in to Roper Junction, and Kookie scrambled backward out of the carriage door.

His only luggage was a sackload of dread. Clearly the Bright Lights had missed the train. Now the whole royal-pardon plot would have to be abandoned. Kookie was the only one to have arrived, and unless he could mount a rescue himself, Mr. Cyril was going to hang. “What time's the hanging?” he asked a boy selling newspapers.

“This side sundown” came the delighted reply. “Ma says we can stay up late to watch!” Kookie squinted up at the sun. It had to be one o'clock.

Roper County Jail was constructed to the exact same layout as the jail in Salvation: ugly government-issue architecture. (Well, no one takes civic pride in building a snazzy jail.) In the alleyway alongside, even the sewage flies were the same. If only Cyril had, like Curly, been jailed for speaking Shakespeare instead of for shooting a lawman!

“Mr. Cyril? Hey! Mr. Cyril Crew!” called Kookie. “You there?”

A pair of hands snatched hold of the bars at the farthest window.

Stuffed, quilted, stiflingly hot, damp with sweat, terrified and lonely, Queen Victoria, little by little, grew littler and littler in her seat. Was this what it felt like to wait in the wings before going onstage? If so, the Bright Lights could keep it. She would be a shopgirl in Olive Town, count herself lucky, and give thanks a million times a day.

Henry did not need to see Cissy's face to know her misery and discomfort. The way she was sitting said it all. He reached into his pocket for a treat to cheer her—sugar lumps meant for the chaise horses. His fingers touched something else that had slipped his mind, and he drew out the telegram.

“Apologies, Mr. Crew . . . er . . . Mr. Ambassador. This was in the pocket when you returned me my tailcoat after the funeral.”

Bewildered at first by the yellow envelope, Everett studied it and recalled his visit to the post office. Seeing his brother's letter pinned to the wall had jolted the telegram clean out of mind. Emerging from his cocoon of worry, he saw Cissy coiled up like a hedgehog in her seat and was abashed. He was glad to have good news for her. “Look, Cissy,” he said. “A telegram from home. Just for you.”

The light was too poor in the carriage for Cissy to read it through her veil. Heart thumping, she sprang to the door, dropped the window, and leaned out into the sunlight, breathed deep, enjoyed the sharp breeze. Sheeny gray gloves made it hard to get the telegram out, and the wind plucked the empty envelope out of her hand—away, away. It fluttered the few stuck-down ticker-tape words as she unfolded the slip of buff paper.

COME HOME CISSY,
YOUR PAPA HAS GONE

She let go of the telegram, too. It slapped flat against the wall of the carriage, then peeled free and fluttered—away, away—like a dead bird caught in the gale.

“What's the word from back home?” asked Henry, as Cissy ducked her head back inside the carriage and sat down.

She pulled her knees up against her padded chest, hugged them to her with both skinny arms, rocked forward and back. But Miss March told her sharply to sit up straight, so she did, smoothing her silk dress, checking the fingers of her gloves for soot, sitting face front.

“Cissy?” said Crew. “Everything all right?”

Cissy nodded.

“So . . . what news?”

Her father was dead and her mother was crazy and there was nothing and no one to go home to. But Miss Loucien had once called her “the genuine, solid-gold, thespian article” and Mr. Cyril was relying on her. Cissy knew it was her duty not to be Cissy Hulbert right now, not to have a face, not to lift her veil, not to show the tears streaming down the sides of her nose and into her mouth. “Oh. Nothing. Just words,” she said.

“They'll be along on the next one! They'll be along on the next train, sure as Christmas!” Kookie vowed, when he had finished explaining to Cyril the plan, the preparations. “Cissy's just lost her nerve, maybe. Or they dropped the fare money down a drain. Or old Elijah died and they stayed behind to bury him!” He did not believe one word, and he could hear it in his voice, mewling and pleading, like when he didn't have a good excuse to offer at school. Within the dark cell, on the other side of the window, he could hear Cyril Crew slapping the wall now with both hands and moaning wordlessly.

“
Is
there another train today, boy? Does another train come through before sunset?”

“Sure! I 'spect. Maybe. Don't know. I don't know! Should I go find out? Or what say I set someplace alight? Create an aversion? Make 'em put off the . . . Make them put it off till tomorrow? Should I break up the gallows?”

Having given up all hope, having passed beyond despair, having steeled himself and readied his soul for death, Cyril had managed to achieve a certain peace. Now here was the Warboys boy jumping and yapping at his window, unsettling him worse than ever. What was more, the boy himself was descending into hysterical fear and needed rescuing.

“Just tell me about the good ship
Calliope
, boy. Tell me about your adventures. Tell me about my brother. Tell me everything. Tell me anything, for God's sweet . . . It'll pass the time.”

Kookie sat down in the alleyway under the window, and he tried; he did try. But the words would not come. At the mouth of the alleyway, people were passing to and fro who did not even know Queen Victoria was heading their way on a railway train. Or not. “Tell me what to do, Mr. Cyril! Should I pretend I'm King of America? I could try an' be King of America! Should I?”

Cyril Crew took a deep, shuddering breath and raked his hands through his thick white hair. Then he put a brightness into his voice as startling as a magnesium flare. “Run around, boy! Make news! Spread rumor!”