***
A Meeting Of Minds: Professors Holly and McEwan Keynote Speakers At Antediluvian Presentation. A report by Julian Polperro.
Red frowned, scrunched the newspaper in a piercing moment of paranoia. He vaguely recalled hearing about the lecture, but nothing more. Yet now, with everything he knew, all the shocking, seditious information he was privy to—that he’d included in the letters he’d posted—those names in the headline carried a heavy sense of foreboding.
Holly and McEwan! To the reading public, they were famous explorers, eminent scientists, eccentric celebrities never far from the gossip columns. Horace Holly had survived the deadly Ayesha, Queen of Kor, had trekked far and wide with Quatermain; he had helped solve the infamous Bairstow case, which had finally debunked Lady Law’s miraculous crime-solving legacy. Ralph McEwan’s iron mole had successfully burrowed deep into the earth’s crust and discovered a lost, subterranean realm with startling properties.
And then there was the name Polperro—Agnes Polperro, member of the Leviacrum Council—a woman whose frumpy, schoolmarm appearance belied the poise and claws of a hellcat. Truly one of the most dangerous figures in the empire.
But who knew how pivotal these characters really were? The parts they played beyond their newspaper headlines? Their positions on the chessboard of imminent war?
I know. God help me, I know too much.
Hopefully the letters would reach their destinations and persuade as he intended. If not, it would take more than advent candles and slow-burning Yule logs to ward off the shadow poised to envelop Britain.
“Red, darling, you were in Africa. What’s a tribal word for Christmas?” Angharad poked his ribs with her imitation candy cane the length of a parasol. It tickled.
“Excuse me?”
“Between the eight of us, we’ve served pretty much everywhere in the world at one time or another. We’ve been trying to remember all the foreign words for Christmas. So far we’ve got French, Noel; Danish, jul; Spanish, Navidad; and Russian, Rozhdestvo. Have the natives over there got one?”
“Um, I don’t recall the Ovambo word, if they even have one, but the Zulus call it ukhisimusi, I believe. Most Africans I’ve met are nonplussed by the importance we attach to Christmas, but they seem to like the stories.”
Joe DiStepano thrust his hipflask out, proposed another toast. “Here’s to being good sports, nonplussed or not.”
“Hear! Hear!”
Reggie Portillo, former bough nest lookout man aboard the Elpidia—a noted airship in the Second Crimean War—now emaciated almost to skin and bone by an incurable he’d picked up in the far east, was in rare voice as he belted out a chorus of Ode to a Nor’west Maidenhead:
True be her ways and true be her gaze through the winters that await her;
Steer firm, steer sweet, my maidenhead, from storm and nymph and satyr.
Hold firm, hold sweet, O maidenhead ’til nor’west o’er the equator,
Till England rises, true and green—aye, rich and true and green;
Nor’west, nor’west, my maiden Queen, till England rises, green.
Even sitting several feet away from the brick-making kiln when its core temperature approached white hot was not enough to escape a thorough toasting, so Red inched his wooden chair back to a more palatable distance. He removed his sock and massaged the sole of his foot. Bliss. He heard a metallic chirp, like the squeak of an unlubricated hinge, somewhere high in the scaffolding to his right. Too much weight on the joints perhaps.
Meanwhile, Joe helped Alain Desbrusleys, a deaf French defector from the 1854 cross-channel stand-off, retrieve jacket potatoes from the kiln’s rim. They smelled so delicious, and together with Angharad’s butter, tasted even better.
“So what do you all plan to do after Christmas is over?” Red swigged his gin, then poured a cup for Alain. The Frenchman flashed his toothless upper gum in a disconcerting smile.
“That’s right, you weren’t here last night.” Reggie stroked his days’ old stubble, which stood out like oil smears on his skeletal jaw line. “Proprietor came by, said he might’ve worked somethin’ out for us with management, said he’d be back tonight to fill us in.”
“Yeah, but he also said there’ve been enquiries—about our credentials,” Angharad said.
“What about them?” Red slowly sat up, set his mug of gin on the floor.
She shrugged. “Don’t rightly know. He just said they can’t offer us any kind of wages other than food and lodgings ’less all our credentials are up to snuff. Bloody cracked really, when you think about it. I mean what kind of portfolio do they think we tote around between our bum cheeks?”
“The way you cook, they might be better off looking there,” Reggie said.
She threw her spud skin at him. “And if you stood side-on, they’d hoist you up as a Jolly Rodger.”
“Tart.”
“Fart.”
“Bog Irish.”
“Bog ugly.”
“Fann—”
“And on a less exciting note,” Joe interrupted, to much groaning and a chorus of rude noises from the group—how dare he stop a game of one-up-the-other in mid-flow! “Red was asking some serious questions, and I think we should all think long and hard about our next opportunity. I don’t know about you, but I’ll wager this is as good as it’ll get for us in London—having this, I mean, this makeshift corps we’ve got going. We watch out for each other well enough, don’t we? We do all right? A lot better than if we were out on our own, that’s for sure. So what I want to say is, I’d be proud to have you all stick by me, and I’d be proud to stick by you, through whatever hardships may come our way. Here and now, right this moment, that’s what Christmas means to me.”
Red reckoned he could hear a pin drop. Apart from a few slurps of grog, the odd scattered crackle from the kiln, the emporium was eerily silent.
“Crikey, Joe. How many’ve you had?” Reggie drew snickers from the group, but perhaps more resentment, as Red sensed Joe’s outpouring was not only a real stretch for him, it represented the way everyone felt in the emporium this Christmas Eve. How many chances did flotsam have of finding its like in an icy sea? All things considered, their dining here together, warm, employed, and under the biggest Christmas tree in London, was something to cherish. To hold on to for as long as they could.
“O come, O come, Emanuel,” Angharad began, so off-key it practically ensured the Emanuel wouldn’t show this year, “and ransom captive Israel...”
One by one, they joined in with such gusto it sent a shiver down Red’s spine, and he soon found himself belting out the hymn in a trill, youthful voice he hadn’t used since his courtship days. Days he remembered now—a nerve-wracking blur of waltzes, choirs and serenades he’d bested to win the hand of a lady unequalled in his lifetime.
Would that you were with me now, darling. This next one is for you.
He segued into her favourite Christmas carol, God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen, and the others followed in hearty accord, with tremendous rhythm.