“May I look at your birds?”
One of the boys had broken ranks from the nuns and stood peering inside the birdcage at the terrorized Dartford warblers.
“Not now, yeah?” whispered the owner of the birdcage.
In the same instant, her companion enthused, “Of course you can.”
“Are they sparrows?” asked the boy, suddenly accompanied by a second boy, then a third. Soon a semicircle of boys had formed around the birdcage.
“Keep back, if you please,” said the woman, trying towrench the birdcage away. “These Dartford warblers are a gift to Prince Adolphus and Princess Cynde. They make a terrible mess when agitated, and I cleaned the cage this morning.”
“We won’t agitate them, madam,” assured the first boy, stepping closer. The others followed.
“There’s no harm in letting them look,” the man scolded gently. To the boys he said, “Admirers of birds, are you, boys?”
Behind them, the charity woman had continued to grumble. “You’ll see. When the footman admits us,you will see. Guests are not shown in willy-nilly. This is a palace, after all.”
“And who asked you? That’s what I’d like to know,” said the old woman, distracted now from the birds.
“But would one of the birds sit on my finger?” asked the first boy. “If I stick it in?”
“He would bite it off,” assured the next boy.
The first boy ignored him and raised a pudgy finger to the cage, working it carefully between the bars. Above them, the owner of the birds quarreled with the charity crusader.
“Let me have a go,” demanded the second boy, and then a third. More fingers wiggled between the bars of the cage.
Looking back, Drew could identifythisas the moment when everything went terribly, irrevocably wrong.
The cage wobbled. Thrashing, hysterical warblers flapped about, landing beaks and miniscule talons against the invading of fingers. The boys startled and yelped, jerking back their hands.
The collective jostling caused the door of the cage to unhinge and swing open. Within seconds, a dozen Dartford warblers, flying hell-bent for Surrey, launched from the cage and swarmed the antechamber.
Pandemonium filled the tiny room in a literal swarm. Birds, boys, yelping dogs; feathers rained down.
The owners of the birdcage leapt into action, trying to recover the birds with windmilling hands and flapping apron.Nuns crouched beneath their coifs and reached blindly for orphans. The boys scattered, leaping and swiping for the birds, hooting in delight. The opera singer embarked on a rolling scale of breathy screams. The other waiting callers ducked, shrank away, or swatted at the birds.
“Everyone, please,” Drew heard herself call, “keep calm. If we are still and quiet, the birds will settle.”
Calmness, it was clear, was as far away as Surrey. As Drew watched in horror, the terrified birds careened to the ceiling, swooped low, and collided with walls. The impact of each collision stunned them into disoriented flapping. One boy managed to capture a bird, and it lay gasping for air in his palm. The military officer swatted at a low-flying warbler with his newspaper, sending the little bird spiraling through the air like a leaf.
Drew’s eyes swam with angry tears. The birds hadn’t asked to be caged, nor carted to a palace antechamber, nor terrorized. The room was too small for them to flee and too spare for them to hide.
“Stop,” Drew tried again. “If we simply remain calm, the birds will not be so panicked. They can be—”
No one listened. Drew gaped about the room, helpless and angry. Now even the slouching man was joining the fray. He shoved from the wall and stalked through the chaos to the double doors that led to the corridor.
“Why not,” he was asking under his breath, “just open the bloody door...” he reached for the knob, “...and release the bloody beasts—”
“No, wait!” Drew gasped, lunging.
Drew caught his large, gloved hand just as it pulled the doorknob.
He looked up, and suddenly she could see his eyes. A chilling, piercing blue, the focal point of an exceedingly handsome face.
He was not, she now saw, ninety years old.
Nor was he an undertaker. Unless he was the most perfectly formed undertaker in the history of dead people.
