The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 (14 page)

“Or where afar, the ship-lights faintly shine

Like wandering fairy fires, that oft on land

Mislead the pilgrim; such the dubious ray

That wavering reason lends, in life’s

Long darkling way.”

—Charlotte Smith
, “Sonnet” (1798)

“The sleep of Reason produces monsters.”

—Francisco de Goya
(1799)

“We were surrounded by an empty sky without wind or birds in flight, a forest of bare trees without sound or motion;—the only noise at all was the crunch of frozen grass under our feet. Ellenore said: ‘Everything is becalmed; Nature herself bows in resignation to the season. Our hearts must learn to be so resigned as well.’ She . . . fell to her knees and held her bowed head in her hands. I heard her whisper a prayer . . .”

—Benjamin Constant
,
Adolphe
(1816;
translated from the French by William Copperthwaite, 1818)

S
ummer passed in 1816, the “year without a summer,” inordinately cold, cloudy, and wet.

Barnabas—the weather chafing his lungs—replenished his supply of Bateman’s pectoral drops and other pharmaceutical necessaries. Throat wrapped in a scarf, he puttered in his garden, but the chill and endless rain quashed all hopes of getting the smilax to take.

“
Quatsch
,” he said with a cough on countless occasions. The only plant that appeared undaunted by the weather was the hardy little bixwort, the blue flower of repentance.

Maggie moved into the house on Mincing Lane, taking Tom’s old room. At first she had trouble sleeping because the bed was so soft and the space so quiet. “I have a room of my own,” she thought. “Mama, you should see this: my very own door!”

Sally did not sleep well either, partly because Maggie had moved in and partly because the temptation of James continued to haunt her even as she spent her days in the company of Reglum. “So the African girl found me before I could find her—and is believed to be our cousin—and is sleeping now under our very roof, in Tom’s room!” she said to Isaak.

Tom—and Afsana—were on Sanford’s mind as well. He proposed staging a play—a revival of an Oldmixon piece perhaps, or a novelty like the recent translation of
The Stranger
by Kotzebue, maybe even Buskirk again—something to remind them of their kin and friends in Yount, but no one had the heart for it (despite the ceaseless rain keeping everyone indoors most of the time) so the idea died a quiet death.

Reglum and Dorentius were frequent visitors to Mincing Lane but often noted how distant and even strained the atmosphere felt.

“Homecoming is often sweeter in the anticipation than in the actuality,” said Reglum.

“Perhaps it is just this infernal weather that is preying on everyone’s temper,” said Dorentius, who ached from the cold even in the emptiness where his amputated leg used to be.

James found ways to encounter Sally and the other McDoons: twice when Sally had tea with Mrs. Sedgewick at the house on Archer Street by Pineapple Court (somehow Maggie was never invited to these appointments), once “by chance” at Lackington’s book emporium on Finsbury Circus, once also “by coincidence” outside the theatre at Covent Garden. No one ever noticed the figure who watched over him, on the street in the distance, . . . much less the figure who watched over the watcher.

As summer waned, Barnabas—accompanied by Mr. Fletcher—travelled to Edinburgh to seek funds for
The Indigo Pheasant
. Sally left the same week—escorted by Mr. Harris—for Cornwall and Devon, to investigate and secure for the building of the
Indigo Pheasant
’s Fulginator a mass of china clay of a quality unobtainable from the few London merchants who even stocked the mineral.

“Well, their being away lowers our grocery bill, and that’s no bad thing, I suppose,” said the Cook to her niece on the day Sally left. “But makes this house much too quiet for my taste, especially with the Miss Maggie still not at rights here, poor thing, how lonely she must be, I need to take her more tea, I do. Of course, is worth markin’ that Isaak is staying with Miss Maggie while our little smee smee is in the West Country—that cat is company for three, she is, so I doubt Maggie will be entirely lonesome. I don’t think Sally much likes that, if I am very honest in my opinion, but there is no helpin’ it since Mr. Harris was clear that the post coach is no place for a cat—though I wonder at that, since Isaak travelled all the way to India with the master, or to Africa, wherever it was, some place close to where the sun rises, we do get such funny answers about that when we ask, so we don’t ask anymore. Niece, quit your dranting about, help me here, I cannot find the flour. Oh, now, on the subject of dranting and drunning about: what will the polite Mr. Bammary do without Sally here—or you, niece, without the gallant Mr. Fletcher? Quit your blushin’ and hand me that spoon, and where is an onion when you need one? Oh by St. Morgaine I swear trying to set order upon this kitchen is like making clothes for fishes. Anyway, at least Mr. Sanford has not gone off all a-fike, though he is not at home himself most days alike, nor evenings neither, with all the business affairs he is attending to, and looking none too pleased for his effort, if my eye does not deceive me. No, in fact, I do conject both he and the tidy little Miss Maggie need some cheer, so let’s make ’em a blanche-bread pudding with rum and raisins, to sweeten up their tea-time!” Sally and Mr. Harris took the post coach west, stopping for two days at Slough (Sally claimed that she felt too ill from the weather and the jouncing coach to leave immediately), before moving on to Reading and Swindon, and then swerving southwest on the turnpike into Somerset. Mr. Harris’s brother met them with a chaise at the market town of Shepton Mallet, and drove them the few miles west to Mr. Harris’s home village, St. Unys-by-Croscombe.

“How strange to see someone you know only from his life in the city, suddenly transformed back to his native self,” thought Sally. “I wish Cook could see Mr. Harris now!”

They spent three days with Mr. Harris’s brother. The early fall weather was very crisp and the dew was heavy every morning but it did not rain. Relatives and friends visited by the dozens; Mr. Harris had not been home in a long time, and was treated as a prince returning to his patrimony. Sally marvelled at the Somerset accents, rich enough to eat, she thought (“like one of the puddings Cook makes”), almost as hard to understand as Yountish. One day, they all went on an excursion to Wells to show Sally the famous cathedral. Everyone drank cider and ate cheese, with a great deal of bacon—though talk turned often enough to the terrible weather and what that boded for a poor harvest.

Sally was sad to leave Mr. Harris’s warm, boisterous relations—but happy to know that they would stop by again on their way back to London in a fortnight’s time or so. On they travelled, on roads that got smaller and less maintained, until they arrived at St. Austell in Cornwall, where the accent was yet more difficult for Sally to understand. St. Austell was the centre of Great Britain’s china clay excavations; Sally and Mr. Harris spent over a week visiting the pits in the neighbouring hills, at Hensbarrow Moor, Merracuddle Hill, Wheal Martyn. Sally “clarified” and negotiated her way to several excellent contracts, and received samples sufficient to fill the large trunk that Mr. Harris had brought with them.

“That’s the lot of it, Miss Sally,” said Mr. Harris. “All stowed as you directed.”

“Thank you, Mr. Harris,” replied Sally. “None of that rusty-coloured stuff, none with the pinkish hue that is inferior in quality. No, Mr. Harris, what we have gotten—at a fair price, I might add—is the very purest material, and some of it with the rarest tint of all, the bluish that I showed you.”

“You are your uncle’s niece, that’s for sure, Miss.”

Settling into the post coach at St. Austell to begin the journey back to London, Sally and Mr. Harris were joined in the compartment by a lively person named Mrs. Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton was a mine-owner’s widow of means from Truro, on her way to London to visit relatives, whose personal post-chaise was under repair thus requiring her to take the public stagecoach. She was one of those people who, though thrown together with others on the road at random, quickly becomes everyone’s boon companion, by virtue of her infectious good humour and her interest in the well-being of her fellow travellers. She had jet-black hair framing smooth skin, full lips, and a pair of eyes the colour of jade. She dressed smartly in shades of hazel, deep green, gun-metal. Her smile was cloudless, her courtesy invincible as she conjured conversation from even the grumpiest of their travelling companions.

“You spin light from even the dullest of days, Mrs. Hamilton,” said Sally on their shared journey’s third day. “I hardly feel the ruts and the rattlings and the chill of the air. Liskeard is past, and also Plymouth, now Exeter. Honiton approaches. I am sorry that we will be stopping at Shepton Mallet thereafter and that our way will part there with yours.”

“Miss Sally, genial spirit, you are too kind,” said Mrs. Hamilton. “May I suggest that we dine together this evening at the Honiton inn, to celebrate our fresh acquaintanceship and wish each other well? Shall we say seven o’clock?”

Sally readily agreed, and awaited Mrs. Hamilton in the inn’s dining room at the appointed time. When the clock struck a quarter past the hour, and Mrs. Hamilton was still not present, Sally went upstairs to inquire at Mrs. Hamilton’s room. Passing her own room on the way, Sally heard from within a muffled thump. Sally stopped, paused, heard the thumping again, reached for her key to open the door to her room, found the door already unlocked, pushed it open and walked inside.

“Oh my dear, most unfortunate,” said Mrs. Hamilton, with her smile as unmarred as always. She stood at the far end of the room, looking down at the large trunk that contained the china clay samples. Holding the handles at either end of the trunk were two small men, homunculi no more than three feet tall, naked, hairless, and entirely bottle-green. They were wrestling the heavy trunk, “walking” it forward, towards the door.

“Mr. Harris! MR. HARRIS!” called Sally. Mr. Harris had the room next door.

“Really, my dear, that is another mistake,” said Mrs. Hamilton. She waggled her sleeves, out of which came a pair of staves or wands, perhaps fifteen or sixteen inches long apiece and each topped with a hand the colour of verdigris.

“My conjure-hands,” said the woman dressed in green, gripping the wands.

Mr. Harris rushed through the door and stopped in full puzzlement.

“Boys, kill him,” said Mrs. Hamilton, as calmly as if she were ordering tea in Bath or at Ranelagh Gardens.

The two tiny men put down the chest and swarmed Mr. Harris like grasshoppers or like tumblers at the fair. One jumped on the shoulders of the other and then launched himself at Mr. Harris’s throat. The other punched Mr. Harris in the groin.

Mr. Harris roared, kicking the one attacker aside, and whirling in an attempt to dislodge the other. He looked like a bear beset by mastiffs. The remaining bottle-green man swung wildly about but held a titanic grip around Mr. Harris’s throat.

Sally erupted into song, without plan or conscious decision. Her song gave birth to a pair of fiery blue falcons, chased with carmine, which flew from her mouth towards the attacking homunculi. Mrs. Hamilton waved the conjure-hands, chanted forth a series of slowly spinning green circles that advanced on Sally.

The blue falcons disengaged with the attacking men and battled instead with the green circles. Mr. Harris fought furiously but began to stumble, lacking air. The second man rejoined the fray, leaping to punch Mr. Harris in the chest. The grip on Mr. Harris’s throat was intractable; he could not breathe.

The falcons destroyed the circles. Sally sang the falcons back to help Mr. Harris. The falcons drove the two green men away, strafing their eyes, ripping off hunks of their flesh—flesh that disappeared with a jade flash when it hit the floor. The two little men ran back to Mrs. Hamilton, who hiked her skirts; they scampered under her dress, which she then dropped back to cover them.

But it was too late for Mr. Harris. He lay on the floor, windpipe crushed, writhing feebly, then not moving at all.

Mrs. Hamilton, still smiling, said, “We must needs postpone our dinner.”

She clapped her conjure-hands three times and disappeared in a wet-sounding, green explosion that shredded the blue falcons and threw Sally with great force into the wall.

She struggled to stand up. Blood trickled from a gash in her scalp and from her injured mouth. The hostelry was in an uproar. The Justice of the Peace arrived but no one—least of all Sally—could give proper account of how Mr. Harris had come to be strangled, Sally assaulted, Sally’s room ransacked, and Mrs. Hamilton absconded with. Murder was a seldom occurrence in Honiton. Suspicion swiftly fell on the green-eyed woman whose whereabouts were unknown and who had disappeared without paying for her room—especially when swift inquiries revealed that no such person, rich widow or otherwise, existed in Truro. Representatives of Praed’s Bank in Bath vouched meanwhile for Sally and the McDoons.

Three days later, with his body carefully preserved in ice and sawdust, Mr. Harris returned home for the last time to St. Unys-by-Croscombe.

Sanford and Reglum came themselves to the village for the wake, and to escort Sally home.

When they returned to Mincing Lane, Sally spent much time sharing tears with Cook. Cook baked a small apple tart, laced with cider and topped with cheddar, in honour of Mr. Harris, and ate it with Sally and the maid one evening, in the kitchen by candlelight.

“A very good man was he,” Cook said, unable to say more.