The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 (38 page)

The many thousands shouted back their approbation.

“Selah!” said Billy, and the many thousands quieted. Over the tidal rush of the nearby Thames, Billy half-sang the words of the angel Uriel to Noah:

“Now hast thou Noah

Heard the whisperings of baleful Beezlebub,

Crowned in his writhen shadow,

His tongue a smoldering arrow.

As you measure your vessel,

Span its keel and masts,

A glistering ship, many cabin’d,

You might yet construct.

So, son of Eve, Enoch’s offspring,

What chuse thou?—:

Earth’s blandishments, seeming safe, or

The long-road of brine, a storm-wrought way?”

The makeshift congregation on its eucharistic parade-ground responded:

“The sea, the sea, we take to the briny roads!”

Later, when those present tried to disentangle what Blake called “a delicious frenzy” and the Cook “a most perfect hattled scrimble-scramble,” the McDoons agreed that this was the juncture at which the mood began to change. Adherents of the rival preacher, Mr. Peasestraw, being numerous in the acre nearest the houses on Naval Row off the Poplar High Street, and seeming to coordinate their actions, started heckling Billy. Billy’s (far more numerous) supporters attempted to silence the Peasestraw faction. Scuffles broke out. As dusk seeped into darkness, and a thousand lamps and torches were lighted, and Billy’s sermon reached its climax, the contest became more intense. Pitched battles with clubs and knives erupted in corners of the fields, still on the fringes of the main body of the crowd but ominous, like the forerunners of a slowly but inexorably unmoating thundercloud.

In the flickering play of torchlight and shadow, under the sway of fervid rhetoric and themselves praying for the opening of the visionary’s way, crowd members began to sense the presence of the very force that Billy had warned them about. Above their heads in the molasses air, some saw in glints the slow swirling of sliverous beings, others the jagged, jinxy flight of slick, scaly cherubim.

“Goddess save us,” some in the crowd cried. “Saint Macrina protect us.”

Panicky sounds welled up in their throats.

Some thought they saw man-shaped figures with blurry faces on the edges of lamplight, coarse bonelets wandering in the lanes leading off the Blackwall Causeway and in the ropemaker’s fields by the Shipyard.

Many in the crowd instinctively sought shelter closest to Billy and the speakers’ platform, closest to the sacred ship. Billy looked out at the waves of his followers pressing ever closer against the hoardings of the dais. He smelled the tang of passion and inchoate fear. He knew the meeting was turning out of his—or anyone’s—control. He could no longer be heard above the mounting roar of the crowd. People pushed and jostled the platform. In the crazy torchlight, Billy thought for a moment that he saw James Kidlington move past the dais, towards the walls of the shipyard.

At the nape of midnight, someone slammed with the dolphin knocker on the door of the house in Mincing Lane, and called urgently for Barnabas and Sanford.

“Wheat and whiskey! Winstanley?” said a sleepy Barnabas. “At this wicked hour?”

“I’m afraid so, and no time to lose,” said Winstanley. “Sir John sent me himself, with dispatch—the
Indigo Pheasant
is under attack!”

“No, oh no!” said Barnabas, electrically awake. “Come on, we can handle ’em!”

Barnabas—dressed only in his satin night-gown (a pale grey with vermillion florettes; very stylish, if now rather worn)—ran straight past Winstanley and into the street, waving an invisible cutlass and brandishing an imaginary pistol.

Sanford collected Barnabas, sent him upstairs to get properly dressed.

As Winstanley waited in the partners’ room, someone else clacked away on the door with the dolphin knocker.

“
Quatsch
,” yelled Barnabas down the stairs. “Who is it now?”

The Cook let in Mr. Fletcher, accompanied by a scarlet-jacketed marine.

“A thousand apologies, my lords,” said Mr. Fletcher. “But, chip chap chunter, Mr. Bammary sent this good sergeant to me, with a vital message for you.”

Sally and Maggie followed Barnabas into the partners’ room. The Cook’s niece brushed sleep from her eyes, followed Mr. Fletcher’s every move as she bustled with coats and hats in the hallway.

“Billy Sea-Hen,” started Winstanley.

“Billy what?” said the Cook, putting down a plate of shop-bought wheat biscuits and a jar of ginger jam (the best she could provide on such unusually short notice, but no one was going into battle on an empty stomach if she could help it). “Oh, my pardon, I . . . its just . . .”

“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 Thracemorton,” 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.”