The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [37]
Those books covered the walls of the Nell Gwynne. On crooked shelves and windowsills and, here and there, propping the short legs of a table or hiding behind a cushion or an empty pint glass, the books lay like sleeping domestic cats glorying in the dimness of the room and the heat of the fireplace. The small pubcum-home was full of unexpected, small discoveries reflecting Tom's eclectic and erratic interests. Lying on the bar counter, for example, Orphan found a heavy, illustrated volume of The Sedge Moths of Northern Vespuccia (Lepidoptera: Glyphipterigidae), With Woodcuts and Annotations By The Author, while on a half-hidden shelf behind the door he found a vellum-bound copy of The Floating Island, A Tragi-Comedy, written by the students of Christ Church in Oxford, dating from 1655 and notorious for being an early and venomous treatment of Les Lézards' journey to Britannia, set to music by Henry Lawes but never performed. By the sink he could leaf through the latest catalogue of Smedley's Hydropathic Company, advertising their brand new electrocution water tanks (Heal Any Disease!), and near the fireplace, precariously balanced, was a pile of technical tomes that included Ripper's Steam-Engine: Theory and Practice, Babbage's Some Thoughts on Simulacra, Moriarty's Treatise Upon the Binomial Theorem and Lady Ada Lovelace's Basic Programming Explained. Behind the bar, leaning against a label-less bottle of creamy liqueur, was a copy of poet William Ashbless's The Twelve Hours of the Night, and by the bedside he discovered Tom's latest reading material, The Chronic Argonauts, a debut novel by a young writer unknown to Orphan, by the name of Herbert Wells.
It was a treasure trove and a scrapyard, a library that was also a maze, with little sense of purpose or direction, in which one could become easily lost. Orphan loved it.
He was just leafing through a well-thumbed copy of Flashman's Dawns and Departures of a Soldier's Life when he heard voices outside, raised in song, and recognised Tom's bellowing, cheerful voice as he sang, "In taking a walk on a cold winter day, by hill side and valley I careless did stray, till I came to a cottage all rustic and wild, and heard a voice cry, I'm a poor drunkard's child!"
Feminine voices joined in, shouting the refrain. "I'm a poor drunkard's child!"
The voices came closer, and Orphan smiled as he listened to the old drinking song. "In this lonely place I in misery cry, there is no one to look to me, no one comes nigh. I am hungry and cold, and distracted and wild – kind heaven look down on a poor drunkard's child!"
"Poor drunkard's child!" Orphan murmured, and just then the door opened, and Tom Thumb, accompanied by Ariel and Belinda, came through.
"My father was drunken and wasted his store, which left us in misery our lot to deplore, his glass soon run out, he died frantic and wild, and now I must wander a poor drunkard's child!"
Tom Thumb stopped his singing, slung a bag full of groceries on the bar counter, and said, "How are you feeling, china?"
"A lot better," Orphan admitted, and the two friends smiled at each other. Belinda and Ariel came over to Orphan, fruity perfume following them in a summery cloud, and they fussed over him rather as if he were a kitten or a puppy before they pulled him to his feet and made him dance with them, each holding one of his hands.
"My mother so good, in the cold grave lies low, she left me all friendless in want and in woe, brokenhearted, in death, she looked heavenward and smiled, but still I am left here, a poor drunkard's child!"
Orphan spun and spun, grinning, caught in the dance and the song, and the two girls laughed and held him, like