Fever Crumb Part 17

Fever paddled for what felt like a long way, and saw nothing but a circle of water about ten feet across with the coracle in the middle. The children sat in the damp bottom of the coracle and watched her trustingly. Fern said, "Will Daddy come back?"

"No, Fern," she explained gently. "He is dead."

"Has he gone to the Sunless Country?"

"There is no such place," said Fever firmly, because she did not believe in telling lies, not even white ones, not even to little girls. "Dead people are dead; they do not live on, and they do not come back, except in our memories."

"I want to go home," said Ruan.

"I'm afraid that is not possible," Fever told him. Fern hugged Noodle Poodle tightly and started to cry. It occurred to Fever that she had no idea how to cope with these two children. But then her father had had no idea how to cope with the baby he found in the basket, and he had managed all right....

Soon after that, the sun appeared, like a flat white hole poked in the mist. There were trees ahead, reed beds, the ruins of a mill. Beyond it, a high embankment. It was not the landfall that Fever had expected. In the mist she had turned west instead of north. But at least she knew where she was. On top of that embankment was the Great South Road, up which the land hoys came from Chunnel and Brighton and the south-coast ports.

She brought the boat ash.o.r.e there, helped the children out, and together they scrambled up the steep bank. On the top was a wide roadway made of packed, crushed chalk. The mist was thinning steadily; you could see it blowing across the road like smoke, and Fever and the children cast shadows now on the gray-white ground. On either side of the embankment, stretches of water gleamed like battered metal. From the north there came a sound of engines.

Out of the mist, moving slow and steady, a lone land barge appeared. The brightening sunlight struck little brilliant highlights from the spikes and stars of its decorated upperworks, and lit up all the colors of its painted bodywork. It jingled with bells and jangled with good luck charms, and statues of at least two dozen G.o.ds gazed out from a niche above the driver's cabin to ward off collisions. Above them, in gilded script, were the words Persimmon's Ambulatory Lyceum.

Fever remembered faintly the play that she had stopped to watch at Summertown, and how the traveling theatre had seemed to her to sum up all the unreason of the unreasonable world. But it felt like immense good luck that had brought it down the Great South Road at that precise moment, so, telling Fern and Ruan to wait on the verge, she stepped out in front of it and raised both arms.

Shrill horns sounded. The driver inside his cabin waved frantically until Fever stepped aside. The barge slowed, but it did not stop. "Can't stop, dear!" shouted a woman leaning over a handrail on the upper deck, "if you knew the trouble we'd had to get our old engines started, you'd never make us stop! But if it's pa.s.sage to the coast that you're after, climb aboard!"

Fever wasn't sure that that was what she was after. She just wanted a little distance between herself and London, a time and s.p.a.ce to think. But there was no time to consider possibilities, with the gaudy barge growling past her at a steady five or six miles per hour. She ran to the verge and picked up Fern, calling for Ruan to follow. A man came out onto the open platform at the barge's stern where the plays were performed and reached out to help them all aboard.

He was a big man, tall and portly and broad-shouldered. He had side whiskers and a rosy, sunburned face, and religious trinkets hung in tangles round his neck and were st.i.tched into all the seams of his silk coat. He bowed low and smiled a wide, warm smile and announced, "Ambrose Persimmon, Tragedian, and Manager of this humble company. How may we help you, my dear?"

Fever remembered seeing Master Persimmon dressed in cardboard armor and a woolen beard only two days before. She looked warily at him, and then past him at the faces of his company, who stared out at her from various portholes and windows and open hatchways. Wondering if she had made the right choice she said, "You are bound for the south ports?"

"The south ports and then onward," boomed Persimmon, in a voice used to speaking over the cheers and jeers of a rowdy audience as well as the din of barge engines. "First to Chunnel, then east to Hamsterdam, and after that Frankland or the Plains or...who knows? Where'er the Muses lead us! All the way to the Middle Sea, perhaps! I'll take you where you like, my friends. Though I, ah, take it you've coin to pay your pa.s.sage with?"

Fever shook her head. She had forgotten that things had to be paid for, in the world outside the Order. She hadn't a penny to her name, and she didn't think the children had, either.

"Well, never mind!" said Persimmon. "You can work your pa.s.sage. These children will melt the hearts of any crowd -- I can just see them in Babes in the Mall or The Poor Orphans of Dunster -- I think we still have the backdrops for that in the hold. And what of yourself, miss? Have you never tried your hand at acting? You've a winning face, and with the right wig ..."

Fever shook her head. She knew that she could no more act than fly. But she thought sideways past the problem and said, "I can help you with your engines."

"What's that? Speak up! Project!"

"I can help with the engines!" shouted Fever. "I was trained by the Order of Engineers."

" So that's what happened to your hair!" Persimmon laughed. "One hardly liked to ask...."

Fever touched her fuzzy scalp, and tried out a smile. "I'm planning to grow it," she called. She had been planning nothing of the sort, but saying it made it true. She would not have a lot of hair, she decided, just enough to hide her ears, and keep her neck warm at the back. She held Fern tight and followed the actor up a tiny, twisting stairway to the open upper deck. Ruan came after them, dragging his bundle. Two actresses who had been rehearsing up there set down their playscripts and came at once to fuss over the children. "May I present my dear wife and greatest helper," said Master Persimmon reverently, indicating the older of the two, the same handsome lady who had called down to Fever before she came aboard. "Mistress Persimmon's Diana is still spoken of in tones of awe and grat.i.tude by all those who appreciate great acting."

"Master Persimmon is too kind," replied his wife, blus.h.i.+ng as she heaved bales and baskets about and wrestled out some folding chairs for the newcomers to sit on. The younger woman, helping her, shot Fever a frank and friendly smile, as if to say, You'll be all right with us.

"There has been trouble in London," Master Persimmon confided in a whisper that was still loud enough to cut clearly through the engine racket. He took Fever's arm and guided her gently forward to a clear s.p.a.ce near the bows. "A new man in charge. Big plans, they say. A New Era dawns. It could be good for business. But I'd rather be well away till things are settled down."

"Me too," said Fever. She would go to Chunnel, she thought. She could write to Dr. Crumb from there, and after that...

Well, after that, who could say? She had only just found out who she was. She had no idea what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.

"And what are we to call you, dear?" Mistress Persimmon asked.

Fever set Fern down beside her brother. The wind tousled the children's hair and the silver lagoons slid by on either side of the road and she stood holding the handrail and looking out into the misty, sunlit land ahead. And as loudly as she could, she said the one thing about herself that she was certain of: "My name is Fever Crumb."

The end.