The Kingdom on the Waves Page 6

  The British Army and Navy sang a rousing song called “Heart of Oak”; the rebels had writ one to counter it called “The Liberty Song.” Both songs blustered of freedom; but both were sung to the same tune.

  And we, to avoid offense, played the tune without words.

  Thus, amidst uncertainties and temptations, arrived the autumn with its rains. One day, a packet-ship arriving from Nova Scotia with meat, thus alleviating the city’s starvation, I purchased a salted ham-hock with Sally, and, by her side, stripped it for cooking. A small portion of the meat I took above-stairs for Dr. Trefusis, who, notwithstanding his frequent repetition of tags regarding vacancy and doom, improved tremendously.

  He consumed the ham with considerable stomach, and, while licking his fingers, declared, “We devour meat, so that meat we may remain . . . though we hope to keep the spirit stuffed like herbs in the midst of it, for without that, the dish is simply flesh.” He waited.

  “Sir,” said I, “final words are futile. You are not close to death.”

  “Unless you were to bludgeon me with the thigh-bone,” he invited, smiling sweetly and batting his eyes.

  I rose and took his plate, little entertained with jests on matters of such gravity.

  “Augustus,” said he, “what is happening in the world outside these walls?”

  “We are better supplied with meat,” I said.

  “So I see.”

  “The Navy captured a rebel ship off the coast of New Haven, filled with sheep and beeves.”

  “Bravo.”

  “We have received supplies from Nova Scotia.” I considered. “The officers are discussing where to erect the winter quarters for the soldiers.”

  “I see.”

  “Mrs. Platt has begun her third revolution of plates around the house, stacked one atop the other.”

  “Excellent,” said Dr. Trefusis. “Anything further?”

  “We are playing a suite by a sapper-composer.”

  He regarded me quizzically. “By ‘sapper,’ you mean of the siege-engineer species?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who tunnels under walls?”

  “Yes, sir,” said I. “He is of the Corps of Engineers. He is applauded for his ingenuity.”

  “As well he might be.”

  “I wish one could compose in darkness,” said I. “And play music without others observing.”

  “Ah, yes. Fancy the effect upon his melodies, laboring with his muse there so much closer both to Hell and the ruddy forge of Vulcan.”

  “He must have a strong acquaintance with earth.”

  Dr. Trefusis looked at me with more seriousness, now. “What was it like,” he asked, “when you dug ditches for the rebels?”

  I did not meet his eye. “One might write a Symphony on the Four Strata,” I said.

  “I forget that you had a hand in constructing the fortifications on Bunker Hill.”

  I looked at my hands, which had grown harder over the summer. “It was difficult work,” I answered. “I was not accustomed to the tools.”

  “We did not always serve thee well in your training,” said Dr. Trefusis.

  “You little anticipated I would be packing dirt in redoubts to combat His Majesty’s Army.”

  “That was not our intention,” said Dr. Trefusis.

  And of a sudden, “What was?” I asked. “What did you wish to make of me?”

  “Octavian,” said he, stumbling and using my name, “we . . . we did not know. We would, I suppose, eventually have taken you to France. To present you at court there.”

  “Why France, sir?”

  “The English would have showed admiration for us of the College; but the French would have shown adoration for you. Women would have built their hair into Negro Violinist coifs. They would have written indecencies to you upon their fans. There would have been theories advanced as to what your excellences told young philosophers about the nobility of man.”

  I nodded. I knew not why, but even these meditations on my strengths filled me with sensations of exhaustion and discomfort.

  I gazed upon my hands; upon the knuckles, and upon the palms.

  “What,” I asked Dr. Trefusis, “is color?”

  “Epicurus maintains that everything we see, we see because a fine film of atomies is constantly shed by all matter, a sort of mist of particles which strikes the eye.”

  “So color, sir, is a shedding of the skin.”

  “I suppose, my boy, one might phrase it thus.”

  “Color is the loss of person. Dispersed into the air.”

  Dr. Trefusis smiled.

  I said, “And in order for us to be seen, we must constantly be losing some part of our being.”

  “Indeed. We are ever diminishing,” assented Dr. Trefusis. “Like a garment fretted by the moth.”

  “And in order for us to see, we must constantly be assaulted by what others shed.”

  “As surely, saith Descartes, as if we were struck in the face.”

  This I considered. “If one,” I ventured, “were underground, in complete darkness . . . If one were a celebrated sapper-composer who had tunneled down deep into the bedrock, there to compose descriptive symphonies on the four strata . . . Would such a sapper-composer, engulfed in darkness, still be diminished?”

  “You cannot stop the superficies of objects from evaporation,” he said. “Light or dark, the particles still fly off the surfaces of things.”

  “And yet,” said I, “beneath the surface of the earth, the sapper-composer would not constantly be exhausted by the particles striking the eye. The eye would have rest. No longer would the face receive blows.”

  Dr. Trefusis took my arm and turned me to face him. “Octavian,” he said, his look full of sobriety, “I hope thou shalt never retreat beneath the ground. The sun is thy inheritance. The sky is thy birthright. Stay here, my boy, and with the conversation of mankind, rejoice in the light.”

  I could not but give thanks for the trill of emotion in his voice, which spake so sincerely of his regard and affection. Said I, “More last words?”

  “No. First words.” He held forth his arm. “Help me rise,” he said. “I shall walk across the room.”

  “Are you feeling well, sir?” said I.

  “In a world, Octavian, where composers tunnel beneath us and men kill men for sheep, too much transpires too quickly for one to lie long abed.”

  He smiled; and I suppose I smiled too.

  I helped him rise. He was not firm on his legs, not having walked for several weeks. “I wish to make my way down the stairs,” said he.

  “That is inadvisable, sir,” I answered.

  “Augustus — support me, and I shall walk.”

  It was a difficult but triumphant descent. His mass hung upon my arm, for he supported but little of his own weight.

  Mrs. Platt waited for us down in the foyer. “Dr. Trefusis,” she said, “I am delighted to see you are mending.”

  “I am come down to see your third strata,” he said, tottering and wincing. “We were speaking of geology.”

  “My strata?” said she.

  “Your noble experiment in sedimentary cuisine,” he said. “Fancy to yourself how invaluable the record might be someday of your past meals, as you dig your way down through a stack, with each ridge of dried gravy or leaf of salad speaking to your heart and your innermost parts of former days.”

  “I am sure,” she said, “I do not like your mockery. Nor your speaking of the gut to a lady.”

  But she did not seem displeased by his recovery, and clapped when he reached the bottom step, and led him into the parlor, there to rest and take tea.

  So Dr. Trefusis descended out of the obscurity of death through talk of the underworld, and rejoined the conversation of man.

  The fever departed, and Dr. Trefusis now in health, he walked abroad, dressed in his stolen habiliment, swinging a cane like a beau of the first fashion.

  “Yes, my boy,” said he, “it is time I sought out pow
erful friends to better our poor lot. I am off to break bread with officers and impress upon them my age and sagacity. The company had best be elevated, mighty, and wreathed in the incense of Mars. Anything less than a lieutenant-colonel at the table and I shall not drink a sip of their tea. Never a bite shall I swallow, i’faith. I’ll keep my cake under my tongue until I’m fair out the door, like a witch absconding with the Host, and if they complain, I’ll spout out the mess on their pteryges.”

  I inquired if it was his pleasure I should attend him; but he said, “Certainly not. It is time your frail tutor contributed aught to our maintenance. I go out to publish forth word of your excellence, to hunt out engagements for you — suppers and dance lessons, assemblies, what have you. And to ensure that I am known as a resolute Tory.”

  I was surprised by this attestation, and I asked, “Sir, are you such?”

  “Augustus,” said he, digging between the cobbles with his cane, “there may come a time when those city gates fall, and houses burn, and the infantry flee in their battalions. When such a day arrives, I wish us to be aboard a ship; as otherwise, we may be sure of hanging. I go to procure friends who might, in that terrible hour, offer us passage.”

  My looks were perhaps expressive of anxiety; for gazing upon me, Dr. Trefusis said in tones mollifying and gentle, “You must consider it, my boy. This peculiar life we have these many weeks been leading is a dream: thy concerts and thy generous profits. A fancy. Thou art still a slave, and I am yet a poisoner.”

  “I wish,” said I, uncertain, “our state here would not change.”

  “In a siege,” said Dr. Trefusis, “time’s passage is itself an event, and one of the keenest weapons of assault. You appear discountenanced.”

  “If we leave, when shall I be allowed again to play in an orchestra?”

  “Perhaps in London.” He placed his hand upon my wrist. “My boy, I would also liefer that we could remain here, but Fate oft . . .” He scratched at the flags with his cane, said, “But no matter. I am off to assure our fortune.” Then he bowed to me, and took his leave.

  I did not wish to think on leaving our present circumstances; I would they continued thus forever. But I knew, too, that the enemy waited without the gate, and shots were fired, and we subsisted here only by constant vigilance and show of arms; which bravado might at any moment give way, finally, to blows and the full fury of battle.

  With delight, our orchestra played our first concert after the restitution of meat.

  There is no sensation so sweet as the gratification of applause when one has hazarded embarrassment and humiliation before a crowd; no thrill so physical in its application nor so keen in its extension of the senses. Rare is it that the intellect and the dexterity, the activities of the mind and the strategies of the nerves — the body and the soul — are put to so supreme a challenge all at once; and having triumphed in that arena, with response immediate to one’s exertions, one feels almost like a machine elevated to the status of a god. And how much more superior still the transports, when one is surrounded by a community of brethren who share in the success, whose efforts and collaboration brought about this triumph of mechanism and spirit, this apotheosis of the animal.

  For the concert, we played symphonies by Monsieur Gossec, Herr Beck, and Dr. Boyce, as well as airs by Mr. Arne sung by an officer’s mistress, all calculated to gratify the hearers with an impression of the rationality and graciousness of the human animal all too lacking in the months since the flight from Concord and the savagery of Bunker Hill.

  The seats were full of officers in full dress and citizens of the city so stirred by the circumstances of the performance and the vivacity of execution that they often hooted and clapped to demand we play movements a second time through; some twenty of these loud gallants being friends of the musical sapper who had composed the harpsichord concerto, which giddy claque whistled and stomped vigorously, not ceasing until Mr. Turner stood and shouted that he begged of the fine gentlemen that they would, as a demonstration of their benevolence, cork their bungs so we might have some Stamitz. He promised that we would soon have a satire acted upon the rebels, writ by the notorious wit Major-General Burgoyne, with curtain-tunes and airs by this same excellent sapper to please the crowd. At this, there was an outburst of gaiety from all the assembled; and I was sensible that the delight of the evening enlivened my spirits as well as all of those seated around me. I could find no cause for anything but rejoicing.

  The concert was soon concluded; alert and with the whole frame illuminated in success, I replaced my violin in its case and assisted in the removal of chairs against the wall; when a voice called my name — not Augustus, but Octavian.

  I turned, startled, fearful of whom I might see.

  There stood no stern academician — but my former music-master — Mr. 13-04, as I had most familiarly known him — who rushed forward and seized my hands, throwing my perceptions into confusion; so I scarce was sensible of what he meant when he said, “Octavian — I am so sorry . . .”

  I stammered and could not speak, and it was some moments before he established that he had heard of my mother’s passing from one of the Gitneys’ servants, who had returned to the city in one of the periods of laxity in the siege to claim some furniture and clothing. Mr. 13-04 condoled with me on the death, so he said, of that blessed being, so accomplished in her conversation, so graceful in her carriage, and so charming in her person — once again, it taking me moments to recognize that he spake still of my mother — whom I saw before me as last she appeared, her skin brittle with sores, her tongue inanimate, her animal spirits in constant irritation from the depredations of the pox. I did not know whether I could bear to speak to one who would advert to her.

  Mr. 13-04 had a thousand questions upon my well-being and the well-being of those of the College of Lucidity. I did not fully disclose my situation, but did say that Dr. Trefusis was in the city, too, and recovering from a long fever. This intelligence of Dr. Trefusis’s presence and health filled Mr. 13-04 with delight, he harboring the warmest of regards for my tutor.

  “Octavian —”

  “Augustus, sir,” said I.

  He looked at me askance; then continued, “You must come to my apartments. I have in my possession something which, I trust, you will find interesting.”

  I inquired politely as to what it might be.

  “Music,” said he, “which I transcribed from the songs of your mother’s country.”

  I was startled at this revelation. Though of course, I had known since childhood, as I have said, that in my infancy, she had assented to perform songs for his transcription —

  But that they still existed — that I might play, myself, the music she recalled from her childhood —

  The thought made me run almost frantic with suspense.

  I heard her saying to me, in the candlelit darkness of my bedchamber, “‘By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept. . . . On the willows there, we hung up our harps. . . . How can we sing the songs of the Lord in a foreign land?’”

  She laid her hand upon me.

  “Mr. 13-04,” I said, “I cannot disguise my anxiousness to see these melodies. It is in the highest degree —”

  “Come with me,” said he, plucking me by the coat. “Since I heard of her death, I have spent weeks staring at them.”

  I finished my work for Mr. Turner with all the speed I could, aiding in the extinguishing of candles and the stowing of chairs. When I had completed my tasks, Mr. 13-04 and I set out for his rooms.

  He lived some ways away, in the shambles of Mount Whoredom on the northwestern side of the city, an address somewhat inauspicious, it being a quarter of the city where one did not lightly walk alone at night; but I would have faced footpads and banditti with alacrity, armed only with my fists, to see the proffered documents; and so I repaired with him, though the dusk had long since fallen.

  We went by way of Cambridge Street, and passed even the Novanglian College of Lucidity; pausing, bot
h, for a moment to regard it, where we had spent so many hours of my childhood together. Now ’twas lit with torches, and sentries stood outside the front doors, jealously protecting the officers who slept within.

  As we walked onwards, Mr. 13-04 interrogated me about the denizens of the College and how they had fared in the few years since last he had been a visitor. His hostility to Mr. Sharpe, whose hatred of music still stung him, could not but put me more at my ease; though we should attempt generosity to all, even those who wrong us, recalling the Creator’s hand in their construction, I could not bring myself to do other than despise this man who had so soured the headwaters of all that sweetened our household.

  As we walked up the steep streets of Mount Whoredom, the crabbed houses hanging over the street, their walls uneven, the dirt of the road thick with rubbish, I recounted in as few words as I could my mother’s final days and my escape.

  His rooms were at the top of a boarding-house near an expansive puddle, which we skirted without entire success. We ascended the stairs, my pulse quickening with anticipation, and he unlocked his door.

  He entered almost on tiptoe, suggesting to me that someone else was in the set of chambers, and, within, lit a tallow candle which shed but a very feeble light. It appeared that he had two rooms, a sitting-room and another, the door to which was closed; he slept on a pallet, clearly, in the sitting-room, next to his spinet.

  He lifted the candle to the wall, and there I saw that he had tacked sheets of music all over the plaster, high and low, affixing other pages with paste. They were written in his hand — the which I recognized from our lessons — and, without close examination, I saw that they were the songs in question, notes scribbled hastily as my mother had sung, words written in some language unknown both to him and to me.

  “Octavian,” he whispered, clutching my shoulder, his eyes heavy with impendant tears, “I have wished for so long to show these to you.” I could barely see the papers’ brown scrawl, so precious as it was, in the faint light.