The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2

by Daniel A. Rabuzzi

  “No, all understood,” said Barnabas, slathering jam on a biscuit and already eying a second one. “Now, pigs and ponies, what’s all the hey-hulloo?”

  “Billy’s camp meeting has gone sideways,” said Winstanley. “Not at all clear what caused the disturbance but the Admiralty received word an hour ago that there’s a near riot out there, at Blackwall. Huge crowds, by the way, fifty or sixty thousand by some reckonings. Men, women, children, whole families.”

  “That’s what Mr. Bammary said,” added Mr. Fletcher. “At least according to the good sergeant here. ‘The Royal Artillery ordered from Woolwich Arsenal barracks to make with all haste to Blackwall Shipyard,’ that’s the message in a thimble. Using all available boats to cross the river. Isn’t that right, sergeant?”

  The Marine nodded.

  “Exactly,” said Winstanley. “Serious fights, with damage both to limb and property, all hard by the shipyards and the East India Docks. Officers at Naval Row sent the first messages already at sunset. More came in shortly thereafter from the guards at the Docks, and at the shipyards.”

  “But who is fighting whom?” said Sanford. “And why?”

  “Dimly known, hardly grasped,” said Winstanley. “Reports most unclear on all points. Some of Billy’s—shall we say spiritual—opponents appear to have taken issue with one or two of his dogmatical points. Some of them are just excitable young men, full of ale and gin, looking for a bang-up, always a risk in such gatherings. But there is more to it, if I understand Sir John’s mind. He thinks that there is some sort of concerted attack on the ship, using the incidental fighting as a cover. By a vicious cabal indifferent to the sermon or any wider theological speculation.”

  “Then we must go,” said Maggie. “Now.”

  Winstanley nodded, “Those are Sir John’s instructions, his requests even. Miss Collins, he very explicitly told me to tell you that those are not commands. He hopes you will see the need for you to go, regardless of anything he can say to you.”

  “I do, I do,” said Maggie, smiling despite the nature of the news. “By the ndichie, time is very short. We must be off now.”

  “I must go as well then,” said Sally. Barnabas asked her to stay at Mincing Lane; Sally refused and—under gentle but firm pressure from his niece—Barnabas aquiesced.

  “I have sent a detachment to Devereux Court, to make secure our Chinese guests,”said Winstanley. “Another half-dozen marines on their way here, and a guard for Mr. Bunce at his quarters too.”

  The Cook and her niece looked relieved.

  “Mr. Fletcher . . . ?” said the maid.

  “I must go to the shipyard,” he said to her, in his softest voice. “But, why, you know me—a slyer cove has never existed, I will slip by every dart the devil might toss at me, never you fear! Will be back in time for breakfast, my darling, so put the kettle on!”

  He kissed the maid on the cheek and left for one of the two carriages waiting outside, joined by the sergeant.

  Maggie and Sally each hugged Isaak, left the cat with the Cook and let Winstanley escort them to the second carriage. Sanford and Barnabas joined them.

  In the carriage, Winstanley said, “The constabulary is completely overwhelmed, and who can blame them? The magistrate has called on the Home Office for reinforcements. The artillery cadets from Woolwich are only the half of it. Be prepared to see more troops in our London streets.”

  True enough, in Commercial Road they passed a line of hussars on enormous horses, trotting towards Poplar and Blackwall.

  “Home Secretary is anxious enough already, sees Jacobins under every bed, especially after that business at Spa Fields, the attack on the Crown Prince, and the noises made by the likes of Hunt and Wedderburn,” said Winstanley. “Suspension of habeas corpus possible—just like in ’17, ‘prudent action to forestall seditious calamity,’ Home Secretary will claim. But don’t fret on that account—Admiralty has already asserted its rights, will not let any true harm come to Billy and his confederates.”

  As they approached Poplar, a thickening crowd began streaming past them away from Blackwall, back to London proper. Hanging out the carriage windows, the McDoons and Winstanley gathered scraps of garbled news, hasty sketches and incoherent reports. Some of those fleeing past the carriage implied that the world was coming to an end by dawn. It was impossible to tell whether the phantoms they described were real or products of impassioned imaginations over-stimulated by Billy’s words, the lighting, the music, the alcohol. Other pedestrians paused long enough to say they had not seen any fighting or much of anything else, but simply felt it wise to leave, given the rumours of violence. The overall impression was one of confusion.

  By the time they reached Poplar High Street, their carriage was blocked by walkers leaving the meeting fields farther east. They left the carriage by the Poplar chapel-of-ease at Hale Street, and continued east against the stream, until they reached Naval Row across from the southwest gate of the East India Docks. Winstanley recognized several marine officers there. Joined by these men, the McDoons and Winstanley pushed south through the mob, along the Blackwall Causeway towards Billy’s platform and the shipyard. An eerie silence now prevailed, as tired meeting-goers shuffled past, whispering, mumbling, shushing children—punctuated by one or two gun-shots and sporadic, indistinct shouts in the direction of the shipyard. The darkness was nearly complete, except for an orange-brown scumble of torchlight off towards the shipyard. Passing as quickly as they could the small houses of New Row (some with windows broken, all with gardens trampled) and St. Nicholas Church, then the Old Dock and the Ropewalk, the party finally reached the open gates of the Blackwall Shipyard. They could see the Indigo Pheasant beyond. Billy Sea-Hen stood at the gate with a knot of men, all of them holding pistols.

  “Billy!” said Barnabas. “What’s the news?”

  “Mr. Barnabas, sir,” said Billy, looking neither rattled nor alarmed, only fixed in his purpose. “Not good, to be sure, but far less bad than it might have been. Come, take a look.”

  They toured the shipyard. Smoke curled up from the mast-house and from the sailmaker’s sheds.

  “They came over the walls on the north and nor’east sides, from the direction of the East India Dock Road,” said Billy. “While most folks were busy over to the west and the sou’west of the yards, where we preached our words. Some few—of the creatures and half-folk, that is—slipped in at the tweenlight, and then the main crew of ’em rushed over around midnight. Over there.”

  The McDoons could see fallen bodies in the torchlight, strewn around the yard, clustered along the northern wall as Billy described.

  “They tried to set the tar and pitch stores alight, of course they did, the Moabites,” said Billy. “That would have been the end of things, by Saint Macrina, that would have burned the Pheasant and everything on it to a cinder, made a furnace like Hell itself and killed many, a great many. So that’s where the battle was hardest fought, to keep the Owl’s folk from getting to the tar-houses. The real honour of winning victory there goes to Mr. Bammary and his young artillery cadets. Over there he is.”

  Reglum turned at the sound of his name, caught sight of the McDoons, came rushing up. His hat was gone, his clothes covered in soot. He held a sword in one hand.

  Sally’s mind contained rivers that flowed several ways at once, thundering, clashing, spuming into the furthest recesses. She could not withstand the look in Reglum’s eyes. She looked away.

  “We only just arrived in the nick of time,” Reglum said. “Our good fortune, really: Woolwich is downstream from here; we had to pull hard to cross the river. Tide at least was with us, or else I fear we would have come too late.”

  “How many men lost, if I may ask, Mr. Bammary?” said Sanford.

  “Eight of ours, all good men,” said Reglum. “Very young, but very brave.”

  They went onboard the Indigo Pheasant. Here matters were far less bloody, but the damage far greater.

  “I believe you know Lieutenant T
hracemorton,” said Winstanley. “He works a special detail for the Admiralty, reports to Sir John if I am not mistaken. How stand things here, Lieutenant?”

  “The Others did not make it onto the ship itself with the exception of some few who clambered up onto the bow, got into the rigging on the foremast. My men vanquished them speedily. It felt—and please pardon what you may find hard to credit, or perhaps not—as if the ship was defending itself. The creatures could find little purchase on the ship, for all their ferocious attempts. The Indigo Pheasant, she just shrugged them off. Hard to explain, but you ask any of us, and we will tell you the same.”

  The McDoons and Billy had no problem believing that.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Thracemorton,” said Maggie. “The Indigo Pheasant has a proud, vivacious song in her. Her very walls are an incantation.”

  “I believe it, miss,” said Thracemorton. “But something did get through, or someone. Let me show you, aft and down below.”

  Several small but utterly crucial elements of the steam-engine and of the Fulginator were missing.

  “Oh, onye’ala! This is bad,” exclaimed Maggie. “The bascule is gone, and the abaxilic gear-box. Likewise the clairon and diapason that modulate the tones. And the cransal joint. Without these, the steam-engine cannot transfer sufficient pressure to the Fulginator to amplify the Song. Without these, the Pheasant cannot sulquivagate properly.”

  “Cannot find its way through the Interrugal Lands,” said Sally by way of explanation. “It will drift a-wandering without these parts of its machinery.”

  “We can, of course, have them re-made and re-fitted,” said Maggie. “But that will mean several more months delay, heaped onto the long delay we already suffer. We would most likely be unable to replace these parts before winter sets in.”

  “Which means missing yet another sailing season,” said Sanford.

  Maggie nodded.

  They surveyed the theft.

  “The Pheasant’s in-sung defenses would not suffer any of the Owl’s people to pass,” said Maggie.

  “No,” said Sally, an uneasy recognition blossoming within her.

  “The Pheasant would only allow someone into its most vital places whom it knows and trusts,” said Maggie.

  “Someone who, in turn, knows the inner workings of the Pheasant,” said Sally. “Intimately.”

  The small group standing in the Fulgination Room said no more but shared looks told each person that the others were thinking the same thing. The name of one person, and one person alone, had formed and crystallized in their minds.

  “Not you . . .” Sally thought.

  That person’s name never entered the accounts of the Battle, cursory as they were. The Home Office started an investigation but dropped it when the Peterloo Massacre a month later in Manchester superseded the Battle in the minds of the public. (The Admiralty Lord had a quiet word with the Home Secretary and with the Lord-Chancellor, just to be sure the affair was forgotten). The important inquiries were conducted by those much closer to the events.

  “Here then, Billy,” said the cook the following week, handing Billy a copy of Clarke’s Weekly Observer & Miscellany. “Did you really say what is reported here? Something about ‘a worm with great veiny wings and teeth like hot pokers,’ coming to eat up small children?”

  “Well, somewhat like that,” began Billy.

  “Well, by Saint Morgaine, I never,” interrupted the Cook. “No wonder you stirred up such a fuss, Billy Sea-Hen! You cannot go around scaring your parishioners, you know, with sermons like that!”

  “No, I mean . . .” said Billy. “You know it wasn’t me. It was that scoundrel Peasestraw at the start, and then the awl-rawny took advantage of the confusion to send in his monster-folk. I never meant any of that mess to happen, especially not the deaths of those brave lads. You know that. You know that, right?”

  The Cook put her ample arms around his neck, looked him square in the eye, and said, “Billy Sea-Hen, prince of Queenhithe, as I live and breathe! Of course, I know that, of course I do.”

  She kissed him on the lips. Billy blushed.

  “Wondrous day, an old dumbledore can still learn a new trick!” he said, and then returned the kiss.

  The one report that deeply interested Sir John was a very confidential memo prepared by Captain Shufflebottom on the remains of the creatures that had attacked the Indigo Pheasant. Most of the fallen Others had dissolved in the first dawn’s tweenlight, leaving little more than scattered teeth and bones, streaks, smears, and olivaceous sludge on the ground to attest to their having been present at all. Dr. Murray at Guy’s & St. Thomas’s Hospital examined the bones, declaring little about them to be human (“e.g., lacking diaphyseal trabeculae, possessing dual rather than singular linea aspera, tibia and fibula fused in several cases, a sacrum with three—not the requisite five—fused vertebrae”). More interesting still was the discovery of tunnels bored into the embankments all around the western flanks of the East India Docks and the northern aspects of the Blackwall Shipyard, tunnels containing digging and cutting tools made of alloys that no one at the time could identify, bits of parchment (covered with pnakotic script), glaucous bottles filled with dried herbs, nettles and the bones of small animals, and miniature lead coffins.

  (Shufflebottom’s report is marked “highly confidential” to the present day. An addendum was written in 1893, when the boring of the Blackwall Tunnel at the south side of the East India Dock Road, uncovered various, still-unnamed items that caused the tunnel-labourers to threaten strike. The Home Office called upon Sherlock Holmes to analyze what was found; his notes are allegedly affixed to the expanded report. A small section of the parchment unearthed is on view in an obscure corner of the British Museum, listed only as “Putatively attributed to the Pnakotic civilization, provenance unknown.”)

  Shufflebottom himself held his own counsel. No one had marked him in the hold of the Indigo Pheasant on the night of the Battle. He had tracked his quarry through the entire melee, right up until the assault on the tar-house. Forced to join that desperate affray, he had—so uncharacteristically—lost the one he followed.

  “Well, well, well,” he had thought while leaving the shipyard unobserved in the dawn’s first light. “Slipped by me this time. Only because I was detained elsewhere. Your very prime fortune. Not the next time. I know you have taken items of essential value, without which the Indigo Pheasant cannot fly. But fly she will, mark my words, or my name’s not Shufflebottom.”

  He smiled, and adjusted his smoked-glass spectacles. He was Captain Shufflebottom of the Corps Venatical. He knew where his quarry would go, sooner or later.

  “I have seen you with the Widow,” Shufflebottom said to himself. “Sooner or later, that’s who you will visit . . . or she will visit you . . . and then I will have you.”

  Even as Captain Shufflebottom spoke those words—at dawn on the Sunday morning after the Battle of Blackwall—James Kidlington was in a post-coach on the way out of London. He was wearing the smart grey herringbone suit, with the foulard sportily knotted. He held a large valise on his lap. He was heading to the coaching inn at Slough.

  “I am James Kidlington,” he thought. “I have the keys to paradise in my bag here. I have what they all want, and I will make them bargain for it. Bargain hard. The coin I demand will come with an influx of respect, while I collate all the sins and misdemeanours they have committed against me. I will show them all. Every one of them. Teach them they cannot command me as if I were their pet monkey. No, no, am much too clever for them. I diverted Thracemorton, I did. To the devil with the Admiralty. I wish I could see the look on Sir John’s face when he hears this news, oh truly I do.”

  London’s western suburbs rolled by.

  “The Widow thinks she owns me—‘get the items we agreed to, and come straight away back to me, my darling boy, and I will reward you richly.’ Yes, indeed you will, dearest widow. I know you for what you are. Richly indeed!”

  The coach rolled
past Gunnersbury and Kew on its way to Slough.

  “Slough,” thought James. “Oh Sally. I will call for you here. I cannot live much longer this way. Could your love for me still loiter in your heart? I will call for you.”

  The coach passed Hounslow. James patted the valise, could feel the outlines of the items he had gathered off the Indigo Pheasant, as well as a pair of pistols.

  “We can negotiate with these toys,” he thought. “What will your family care, if they must ransom these back to help you regain your true happiness? I will beg your forgiveness, as you will beg mine—we can start anew. I promise.”

  The coach arrived at Slough, to change horses for the journey on to Bath. James descended from the coach and entered the inn. With almost the very last of his pocket money, he rented a room for a week.

  “Here, boy,” he said to the ostler’s lad. “Do you see to it that this letter I give you is posted back directly to London. To this address, on Mincing Lane, do you hear?”

  James smiled, clutching the valise with its precious cargo.

  “I will show you Sally. I will show them all,” he thought.

  Interlude: Vestigia

  [From the preamble of A Modest Treatise on the Art of Fulgination, by Dorentius Bunce,B.A. Cam., with Notes by Margaret Collins, original draft held in the Admiralty archives, c. 1820]

  Though Fulgination is assuredly based upon the most highly defined and sophisticated terms of mathematics and natural mechanics, it is ultimately expressed through the language of music, so that it is truly more an aesthetic endeavour than an abstracted action of logic and rational philosophy. Its finest practitioners understand that the success of their Fulgination depends in the last instance on their ability to conjure forth a sentiment, a sensation of the Sublime, that will cause the dissimilar points of the compass and the unlike elements of the human heart to coalesce into a Unity that delivers the Fulginator and his or her vessel and its contents (along with his or her companions on the journey) to the desired and calculated destination. Fulgination proceeds from general principles, building thereafter upon a wide range of minute experimentations, aleatory probes and bold tatonnement. Put another way, we can also say it is a kind of mapping of empathetic impulses, allowing us to re-order and re-create the Space and Time originally laid down by the Divine, enabling a faithful translation or even re-translation of the World, or a part thereof. The ablest Fulginators will agree that the art uses rhythm and harmony to unite the Outer Corpus and the Inner Essence of a thing, thereby capturing the two-in-one in song, which song is then re-sung in a new space, leaving only empty silence behind.