The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 (36 page)

Sir John actually looked wistful.

“Ah, so you know about the conventions of tuning,” said Maggie, preempting any possibility of further reminiscence, and honing down to her point.

Sir John murmured a nonplussed “yes.”

“Tuning, or rather deliberate cross-tuning, is the route to success for the
Indigo Pheasant
,” said Maggie. “The mathematics is clear on this, beyond all doubt. Translated into musical terms, we must alter the pitch on the Fulginator. What the Italians call
scordatura
, tuning so that one surprises not just the listener but the notes themselves! We will augment the sixth chord, ‘the Italian sixth.’ Will capture the comman of Archytas, worry the line,
chi di
, will dance a passacaglia along a septimal harmony based on the prime numbers.”

“I don’t really see . . .” began Sir John.

Maggie waved him aside, saying, “We will sing a song not just powerful but intelligent, alive, one that bends the scales and the chroma, that is not just a key to unlock a door but a compass to find a new door—a door without keys or locks at all.”

Sir John began to understand.

“An utterly new form of harmony, of intonation and temperament,” said Maggie, transported by her own vision. “The Great Song, the New Song: . . . that is the purpose of the
Indigo Pheasant
and our mission, Sir John, not the politics of which you speak, not the policies you would prefer.”

As he sat in his carriage on the Strand heading back to the Admiralty, Sir John thought, “She makes me uneasy, this woman. Black woman. Unheard of! And yet, and yet: her mind is a radiant wonder that I do not think anyone can contain. She is the baby griffin singing within its ivory shell—the notes have breached the egg, the cracks are become fissures.”

He mulled Maggie’s words, her entire disposition, her character. It disturbed him to think that Maggie had done the same about his words and presumably his own character.

“Unstoppably presumptuous. She will sing forth a new world,” he thought, as the Admiralty Building hove into view. “On her own terms. Impossible, but she will—I suspect that she will. A sublime horror.”

He stepped into his office, shut the door, and looked at the map of the world on the wall.

“Be that as it may,” he thought, with finality. “The Empire must have Yount, one way or the other. Miss Collins can help us there, whether she will or no.”

Propelled by anger at the way Sir John had treated her, but exhilarated by the knowledge that she alone could ensure the success of the
Indigo Pheasant
’s voyage, Maggie strode that night out onto the xanthrophicius roads.

Some time later, she fell through the eyepiece of the ansible-telescope in a funny little house in a place called Sanctuary. She lay stunned and exhausted on the floor.

The Cretched Man stooped over Maggie, cradled her carefully in his cold arms.

“At last,” he said. “I thought you might never come.”

When Maggie woke up, she talked for hours with Jambres. She met Tom and Afsana, sang a little song with Malchen. She spoke with Nexius Dexius and Queen Zinnamoussea.

“We are almost ready to sail,” she told them. “A Fulginator to lever a world, on a ship that can sail unmolested through the worst storms. Or so I believe.”

She felt drained.

“The cost of coming here was very high,” Maggie said. “The Owl has gated this place against outsiders, the road was stark and ragged,
ebe Uzuzu nete egwu
, ‘where dust dances to the drums.’”

Afsana hugged Maggie, and said, “God be with you, sister.”

Maggie slipped back out through the ansible-telescope and hurtled towards Earth.

As she tumbled and swam through the Interrugal Lands, she thought, “So that is Jambres, the Cretched Man.”

She wondered that, by the time she left, his alabaster skin had become faintly translucent. Visible below the surface, hidden as if by glacial ice, brushed briefly free of snow, was pale brown.

James Kidlington—dressed in a crisp, grey herringbone suit, with a sulfur-yellow foulard (the latest fashion)—sat in Hatchards’ bookshop, drinking tea and reading a copy of D’Israeli’s
Curiosities of Literature
(the third volume, published two years prior) while he awaited the arrival of his lover. He might appear to all the world like a man engrossed only in his own leisure, concerned with nothing more than the savouring of his tea, the enjoyment of D’Israeli’s witty disquisition, and the anticipation of sweet, idle conversation with his mistress.

Nothing could be more distant from his reality. His internal conversation ran in totally different avenues from his outward projection.

“Sally, Sally, . . . you felt yourself barbarously used when I confronted you about your wicked deed . . . but
you
it was who insulted
my
heart and savaged
my
pride! . . . cruel and monstrous, you called me, but what course did your actions leave me other than to sever our relationship completely, supremely and immediately? . . . You would have perjured yourself, told me a story about miscarriage or never told me at all that you carried my child. . . . Disgusting to know that the Owl—
the Owl
!—it was who bequeathed this confidence upon me, and not you, whom I love— . . . whom I loved— . . . and who I thought loved me.”

An especially perspicacious observer might have noticed that Kidlington’s hand shook just a little, and that he had been reading the same page for almost half an hour.

“You gave me no choice,
belle dame sans pitié
! You stung and goaded me to this pass. Do you think me unanguished, hurtless in my sleep? (Sleep, hah, what is that?) No, your betrayal was beautifully sized to wound me to the blade-bone. You wailed at me, eyes like liquid rubies with all your tears, but I guess your recovery is speedy and complete: your divinity and majesty always comes reinstated, fair gorgon, mistress of your grand house. In any case, I do not see you subjecting yourself to the obloquy you deserve, or issuing any form of apology, private or otherwise.”

A young woman entered the room. James looked up from his book, but it was not she for whom he waited.

“The pain is all the greater for the nectareous times we had before. Such unspeakable pleasure. Did you feel that too, Sally—or was it even then a play-acting, a sham, merely a way to injure your family? Was I but a means to those cursed patents?”

The server offered Kidlington more tea.

“Oh, Sally, how it grieves me to consider you a mere swindler, a common thimble-rigger. Can you truly reproach me for this conception? Rest at ease then to know that I will study to preserve our time together as a happy time—even at the risk of rendering thus more galling the fetters I cannot sunder.”

James let his tea get cold.

“Bloody patents, . . . bloody ship: . . . I hope it sinks. No, no, James, you don’t mean that—the ship is nearly all the hope you have left. Bloody Crown thinks it can just steal a man’s property, does it? Not so quick, you chowsers. I know what the Crown’s ownership means, felt it on my backside in Australia. Poor Sedgewick! Quite beside himself, poor chap. I told him it was just a bigger beast devouring a smaller beast, taking our skin with a load of learned, latinate words. Good old Sedgewick then, with his back-talk of ‘rights in fee simple’ and ‘
ne cede malis
,’ and the law working ‘
per saltum
.’ Fight on, courageous fool! I know they will never let us win, but—if we can scissor off a toe here, a finger there—then I say, ‘why not?’ They’ve left me with little enough, nothing really, but I still have my
cheval d’orgueil
. Hope Sedgewick can withstand the stagnant rigors of Chancery. Brittle he was when I saw him last, pale and brittle as a St. Katherine’s cake. He’d broken his pounce-box, had grey cuttlefish-bone powder all over his waistcoat; he didn’t even notice until his wife came in and had to clean him up. Crumpled, that’s what I would call him, crumpled and all dried up.”

James sipped his tea, not noticing that it had gone cold.

“Ha ha, the devils at Admiralty unhappy—
very
unhappy—with me! Good, may they choke on their own scorched tongues. No more use to them now that I am no longer with Sally.
Persona non grata
at the McDoons, so expelled like sour thokes by His Majesty’s dogfish. I thought Sir John was going to throttle me himself. Have no doubt he has instructed the loyal Lieutenant Thracemorton to do just that, given even a half-possible pretext. Well, mop and mow, boys, mop and mow. Thracemorton, I know you shadow me still.”

James shrugged.

“Cut me off with ruffian blasts and arrowy lightnings, very dramatic show in that hidden Whitehall office. ‘Not one shilling more, by Juno!’ Missed their truest calling, could have been the main attraction at the Lyceum or Sadler’s Wells. So where was poor James to go then, hey? Kicked out of his fine lodgings in the City, he could only find a mean little room in Whitechapel . . . with that horrid monkey Smallweed for my landlord, ghastly invalid with his demanding, yellow teeth . . . ’so we meet again, hope you are properly grateful for my generosity here,’ said Smallweed . . . a room whose main accoutrement is a broken clock (no doubt stolen) sitting on a mantlepiece riddled with wood-lice . . . over a fireplace that allows no fire . . .”

James etched patterns with the teaspoon into the fine linen tablecloth.

“Fortune has a queasy-making sense of humour, she does, and loves to bestow rough caresses on the undeserving James. But she will reward me in the end—she owes me. Sent me an angel on brasiliated wings, not five days after the rupture with Sally. A fine woman, a merchant’s widow, rich, seemed to know precisely where to find me and exactly how to ease my suffering. Let me borrow money right off, enough to re-pay Smallweed for his advance on the rent, though not quite so much as to allow me to move. Says she will arrange for me to move to rooms on twice-gilded Audley Street, near Grosvenor Square, to be near her, if I can just grant her a boon or two. ‘Of course,’ says the ever-helpful James.”

James fidgeted with his foulard, caught himself.

“She’s not ashamed to be seen with me. Here, at Hatchards. At the cocoa rooms in Piccadilly, on the Great Piazza in Covent Garden. Her kindness is a minister to her depth of feeling, her winning sedulities coax from me a passion I scarce can gainsay. Bought me this suit, didn’t she? (No, James, she lets you borrow it, but being a dress lodger is better than having no suit at all, and you have worn far worse, haven’t you?). She smells like jasmine and cassia, holds me in a gentle glamour, washing away all my sins and errors.”

James pushed the book aside, checking the clock.

“She is on my side. ‘We’ve been wronged by the same people, you and I,’ she says. ‘Let us help each other regain what is rightfully ours?’ She’s Aristotle and Tully all rolled into one with that logic, impeccable and irrestible. Just an errand or two, says she, and our future together is assured. Ah . . .”

A woman entered the room, stopped just beyond the doorway so that all could admire her and bestowed upon James a smile that was the envy of all other males in the room. She was magnificent, turned out in a crimson-collared, dark-green dress of immaculate tailoring, with her lustrous, raven-black hair perfectly coiffed under her black-trimmed kingfisher-green bonnet. She wore a silver brooch at her neck.

James stood, held her chair, kissed her hand.

“Oh, a most glorious afternoon to my merry widow,” he said. “Mrs. Goethals.”