The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 (12 page)

“Yes,” thought Maggie. “But I wonder how many of those books have someone looking like me showing up in the parlour for tea. All the sugar in
this
bowl is white.”

Maggie spooned sugar into her tea and helped herself to more milk.

Mrs. Sedgewick gave a little half-gasp. Everyone turned towards her.

“My tarictic dove,” said Mr. Sedgewick. “Whatever is the matter?”

Mrs. Sedgewick dabbed at her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief and said, “Oh, nothing, it’s just that I am so overcome with sentiment at this miraculous event, tears being the sword of the Angel King, and, you Maggie, suddenly revealed as a McDoon, it is all too much. . . .”

“Ah, my mentor,” thought Maggie. “
Ndo
, the pigeon in the shade. . . . No, more the
nnekwu ocha
, the white hen. You quote Blake now (misquote actually, dear mistress) and send me his sunflower poem as a condolence on the death of my mother, yet can you stoop—madam—to the labour he prophesizes? You fancy yourself a Daughter of Beulah, but do you understand—mistress—what Blake means when he speaks of rebuilding Jerusalem? Do you hear, as he does, ‘the cry of the Poor Man, his Cloud over London in volume terrific low bended in anger?’ Do you know what the Wine-Press of Los represents and the Human Harvest? ‘Bring me my bow of burning Gold, my Arrows of Desire’—like the Huntress in the print on the wall over there!—I think I shall like this house very well.”

Several minutes passed before Mrs. Sedgewick’s tears subsided. One member of the company, at least, could not wait for Mrs. Sedgewick to compose herself; Isaak jumped down from Sally’s lap, marched over to Maggie and began nudging Maggie’s left leg.

“That’s Isaak,” said Sally. “Come to inspect you, I’m afraid. She’s the real owner of the house.”

Isaak sniffed at Maggie’s shoes. Isaak hopped up on an arm of the chair and looked at Maggie’s face.

“Here is a hunter, fearless like a leopard, small-sized
nanwulu
,” thought Maggie. “
Her
I will call cousin, if she will admit the connection.”

“I apologize, Miss Collins,” said Sally. “Isaak knows no boundaries, and my scolding her does no good at all.”

“And here is . . . what?” thought Maggie. “The white girl who sings, with her cat. Breathing in front of me as I saw her so often during my mind’s voyages. A hunter who is herself hunted. Came back—from where exactly?—looking for me, only I found her first. Doesn’t look like she has slept in a week, eyes sunk into the mask of a face. I need her voice, together we can sing down the Owl and drive the ship, selah, but I fear to depend too much on her. Strong but brittle, I deem her. And I wonder if she will follow my instruction.”

Isaak jumped down and went back to Sally, her tail a golden frond above the table top, sailing past the tea service, the pastries, the sandalwood box.

“So,” said Barnabas. “We’d like to invite you, Maggie—may I call you that? If we are to be family, then hardly seems right to keep saying ‘Miss Collins’ but we can do whatever you like, and please call me ‘Uncle’ because if you call me ‘Mr. McDoon’ I shall feel as if I am at the Exchange and not in my very own home, and now, beans and bacon, where was I?”

“Inviting Maggie to come live with us,” said Sanford.

“Precisely,” said Barnabas. “Thank you Sanford, that’s where I was heading. What say you Maggie? Would you come to us here at Mincing Lane?”

Maggie put her teacup down. Before she could respond to Barnabas, she was diverted by the pattern on the teapot: a blue pheasant advancing through a lacework of blue branches, twigs, leaves, on a gleaming white field.

“I know this,” Maggie thought, suddenly drawn into the picture. “A quail . . . no, that is not quite right. It’s—Mama, what is the word you used? The
ogazi
! The game-fowl, the . . . pheasant, that’s the word in English. A blue
okuku
. Steps lightly, sees with a sharp eye.”

“Maggie?” said Barnabas.

“The
ogazi
,” Maggie continued to muse, not hearing Barnabas, “Traveller between worlds, very hard to capture.”

“Miss Collins, Maggie?” said Sanford.

“The pattern the pheasant bestrides,” said Maggie to herself. “The tractix, the evolute of the catenary, the harmony of the
nsibidi
. Where I will pilot-sing the choral-boat!”

Maggie looked up from the porcelain.

“A thousand apologies,” she said, shaking her head slightly as if she had just stepped from moonlight into a bright dawn. “I too am overcome from sentiment at this moment.”

The McDoons and the Sedgewicks regarded Maggie with anticipation, uncertainty, suspicion, hope, and a dozen other emotions besides. Only Isaak seemed confirmed in full acceptance.

“Oh Mama, these are our—your and my—relatives, our kin,” thought Maggie. “You were right! Your mother
was
a white woman. That woman is one of our
ndichie
, one of the ancestors—and she was green eyes from Scotland, this man’s aunt!”

All eyes were on Maggie. All sounds faded away.

“Here is part of the choir for the
abu oma
, our great psalm of healing, our
abu mmeli
of victory,” Maggie thought.

Maggie nodded her head.

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you . . . Uncle.”

“Hurrah,” said Barnabas, jumping up, his vest a mesh of Tiepolo pink and Wedgewood cream. He rounded the table and embraced a startled Maggie.

“Welcome home,” said Barnabas. “May the Old McDoon know of this and repent!”

Sanford smiled a fleeting cutlass-smile. Maggie noticed that over Barnabas’s shoulder; she smiled a similar smile back.

“Praise to
Chineke
,” she whispered. “God’s will be done.”

[An extract from
Thetford’s Monthly Mirror, Reflecting Men and Manners
, vol. XXXI, nr. 10]

A correspondent from Islington reports the following:

Last Thursday sennight a most remarkable, large and vivacious meeting—third in a series—took place in the Spa Fields near Finsbury and Clerkenwell, led by an itinerant preacher of no established denomination but mixing the words of many together in a palette of his own devising, who goes by the extraordinary and uncouth name of Billy Sea-Hen.

This Sea-Hen is, to judge by his accent and local knowledge, a Londoner by birth, though he has not been seen here until very recently, whereupon suddenly he is to be heard from and about on nearly every side. (Where might he have been until his recent eruption into our scope of vision?) He speaks of salvation and redemption in the usual ways but, by adding many unique flourishes and making a multitude of obscure references, he has caused a great stir. Indeed, it is fair to say, as Virgil has it in the Eclogues, he has put ‘the whole countryside in a state of turmoil.’

Most notable are the crowds he draws to himself. The Spa Fields meeting was said on good authority to be upwards of three thousand souls. The week before, he spoke to at least as many on the lawns of Dame Annis le Clare in Old Street, and to perhaps only a few hundreds less the week before that, at Black Mary Well on the Farringdon Road. Prevalent in the gathering are a great many of the meanest poor, including many Irish and not a few sons and daughters of Africa (it is startling to see how many of these latter have made their way to Albion’s fair shores!). Here are to be found labourers in our breweries, brickyards and barge-shoots, dockers, porters, draymen, carters, coal-heavers, and—among the girls and women whose numbers are not inconsiderable at the Sea-Hen meetings—maids and other servants of the lesser sort. All are esurient for the meal he provides, and clamour for more as soon as he is done.

Most alarming are their actions upon hearing Sea-Hen speak of righteous causes. The crowd, as it disperses back to the warrens and rookeries of greater London, has been seen to make rude gestures and to loudly interrupt the pastimes of gentlemen and ladies taking tea at Bagnigge Wells and similar locales in the more fashionable parts of the city. Sea-Hen must bear responsibility—in the same manner as the Wedderburns and Spences of the world—for any crimes against property and persons that he may incite amongst his auditors.

[Letter from Sanford in London to Barnabas in Edinburgh]

Dear B.:

I hope your efforts to raise funds in Edinburgh have been more fruitful than mine at home.

Sad to report that the Project remains under-subscribed.

Praeds and Rogers are in, but only for small capital, which is—to speak most candidly—a disappointment given our firm’s long relationship with each of those houses.

Matchett & Frew have invested to the full limit of their capacity, for which we must be grateful. The Gardiners likewise.

A firm new to my acquaintance—Coppelius, Prinn & Goethals (Widow)—has shown interest. They are originally from Leipzig and have established an office here now that regular commerce between Great Britain and the Continent has resumed. They appear quite solid and respectable, but of course I will investigate further. Matchett & Frew have suggested that something may not be quite as it seems about Coppelius, Prinn & Goethals (Widow), but could not give more detail.

The Landemanns are—as expected—in close correspondence with our mutual friends in the Northern and Baltic trades. By my next writing I may have news to share from Hamburg, Luebeck, Gothenburg, Danzig, Koeningsburg, and Riga.

Most devastating though is the total lack of funds coming from the larger City houses. Barings and the other acceptance houses won’t have anything to do with our Project, to the extent of neither Sedgewick nor I gaining so much as a conversation with them. (!)

The pending loan to the Kingdom of Prussia preoccupies many of our other friends—it is for the sum of no less than five million Pounds Sterling, which surely must reduce the stock potentially available to us. I had never seriously entertained hopes that the Rothschilds would back us, but it is frustrating to see the Prussia business absorbing all the focus of Isaac Solly & Son and of Haldimand.

I also thought that the East India Company’s investment would signify and attract Reid, Irving and Hurst, Robinson, yet so far we make no headway with those firms.

Another blow this morning: though they wish us well and will speak kindly on our behalf, Thomas Wilson & Co. is too busy with its new Brazil business to enter ours.

I am beginning to feel apprehensive and look forward to putting our minds together immediately upon your return. McDoon & Co. is now completely invested in the Project, our credit fully extended.

Since we cannot disclose the ultimate nature of the venture, we have had to offer a guarantee of 12% profit as a sort of blind trust—Sedgewick has arranged the legalities and confirms (we must be completely secure in this legal structure) that we are fulfilling our fiduciary responsibilities in this manner. How we are—as a business matter—to make good on that guarantee depends greatly on the outcome of your inquiries in Edinburgh and that of the Landesmanns among our northern connections.

In the meantime, our cash outlays as we embark on the Project are not small. The shipyard has agreed to extend us some credit, but not nearly enough to avoid sizeable payments to the mechanics and machinists, not to speak of the architects and draftsmen.

Not wanting to alarm you, but only to be sure you are in full possession of the relevant facts, I wish you Godspeed old friend.

—S

P.S. Something seems to work against us in this matter, more than just the normal vagaries of the market. I hear many reasons and excuses, e.g., the financial panics in the United States distract some, and the strife between the Greeks and Turks affect others, but there is more to it than that. We are not welcomed in places where formerly we were given freedom at least to propose our ventures; we receive odd and even stony glances from others, among whom we once numbered as friends. I will save more for your return, but think that our designs are being countered by those who sought to thwart us on our recent prolonged journey. More I will not put to paper.

[Letter from Mr. Sedgewick to Sir John Barrow, Second Secretary of the Admiralty, hand-delivered by Lt. Thracemorton, on the feast day of The Lady Gilthoniel, the Prayer-Incarnate]

Sir,

I beg leave to redouble my concerns for the nature and outcome of the matters to which you have entrusted me—my causes for alarm are well beyond my (and quite possibly any one man’s) control, as I believe you shall see from what I recount below.

Kidlington has done what you asked and re-attached himself to the McDoons, most particularly to the girl, in whom he clearly has a romantic interest (I assume my lord was aware of this when formulating your plan at the outset?). Not to tell you your business, but it is my considered opinion that an amatory thread in this tapestry may mar the whole pattern.

I do not know what Kidlington has reported to you, for he speaks nothing to me about whatever he is charged to discover. I will, of course, relay to you all that I might learn from him.

However, I do know—and I understand the excellent Lt. Thracemorton knows—that Kidlington has been approached again by those others of whom we earlier spoke, namely, his old creditors, though they no longer have any legal claim upon him. Or it may be that Kidlington has approached them, which would be more suspect still.
Fallaces sunt rerum species
, in the words of Seneca.