The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 (4 page)

“Mr. Kidlington, have you ever heard of a place called Yount?” said Harrow. “Ah, you have, we see the truth in your eyes, so do not deny it. No coyness in here, no need to pretend ignorance, we are His Majesty’s most special branch, the Admiralty’s bureau of inquiry and subtle response.”

“The Crown’s
agentes in rebus
,” said Needle. “The House Venatical, his Majesty’s most devoted hunters.”

“The Office of the Caviards, the Arm of Redaction,” said Harrow.

“In short: we seek, we find, we solve . . . if necessary, we erase,” said Needle.

“Which brings us back to you and your case, and what that has to do with Yount,” said Harrow. “We aim for panopticality, Mr. Kidlington, and this is what we saw: a promising young man, with a medical bent, who got himself imbricated with the worst sorts of people here in London, and who then further entangled himself with a highly respectable merchant and especially said merchant’s niece, until you yourself could not differentiate where your loyalties lay, not until the whole wretched mess collapsed about your ears. Am I on the slot so far?”

Kidlington gave the barest of nods.

“Why would this sordid petty affair trouble His Majesty’s Government?” said Needle. “Because we caught wind of Yount being somehow a thread in it. Ah yes, Yount . . . a whisper, a rumour, tales told by rummy old sailors in harbourside taverns, stories that also appear in learned texts, all the way back to Plato.”

“Great Britain has an interest in discovering the truth about Yount,” said Harrow. “
Raison d’état
, old chap, the needs of state: colonies, commerce, the expanding imperium, all the more so now that Napoleon is vanquished and our glorious nation has a window of opportunity through which to thrust.”

Needle said, “A jailor at the Cape, on Robbens Island, passed along to the magistrate an odd tidbit (for money, of course; we do not assume all His Majesty’s subjects are as selfless as those who serve the Admiralty). He revealed this—inadvertently, as we specialize in gleanings, half-truths and keyhole observations—to one of our men. In any event, the jailor overheard one day, from within one of the cells, a most queer sort of confession. By a young Englishman accused of larceny and unbecoming conduct towards a young lady . . . whose name was Sarah . . . Sally to you, yes? . . . I hardly need spell this out, do I?”

Kidlington shook his head once. “Not you, James Kidlington,” rose through the walls of his mind’s defenses; he used all his will not to slump in his seat—he would not give the Admiralty that satisfaction.

“Do not rebuke yourself too much, Kidlington,” said Harrow. “We have long had certain individuals at the Cape under surveillance as it relates to Yount. Meaning those eccentric Dutch personalities, the Termuydens. Ah, that brings back memories for you, doesn’t it?”

The clock ticked in the lull.

`… . . .

… . . .

… . . .

… . . .

“Oh yes, the Termuydens,” said Needle. “Our propinquity goes back a long way. Why, the Second Secretary himself, Sir John Barrow, was their guest on many occasions in the nineties. Quite a file we have on the Termuydens, a long prolix archive.”

“Do you wonder what happened to your Sally, to the McDoons, after your unfortunate detention?” said Harrow.

“So do we,” said Needle. “We have pieced together bits of their story. A strange story, not to be believed . . . but we believe it.”

“And now the McDoons have returned to London,” said Harrow. “Ah, ah . . . you did not know this? But how could you? How does this revelation find you?”

… . . .

… . . .

… . . .

… . . .

“As we thought it would,” continued Harrow. “Which is why we come now to the pith of the matter.”

“We will have you reunited with the McDoons,” said Needle. “Return of the lover wronged, of the resurrected hero. You
will
be a hero, won’t you Kidlington? Such a turn—it is ludicrous, is it not? So sublimely ridiculous that only Jonson or Shakespeare—or His Majesty’s most secret instrumentality—could concoct its like.”

“We will house you in modest but respectable accommoda-tions, just off Fenchurch, not far from Mincing Lane,” said Harrow. “We remand you to the oversight of a lawyer we know, a Mr. Sedgewick. Talks in circles, does Mr. Sedgewick, but do not be fooled: he thinks in very straight lines, and the shorter the better. He has done Admiralty work for years, and is the essence of discretion.”

Kidlington roused himself and said, “What am I to do? “

Harrow and Needle laughed.

“Nothing you have not done before and with agility! You will be a spy, of course,” said Harrow. “Contrive to re-attach yourself to the McDoons, most particularly to the Miss Sally. Learn all you can covertly about their whereabouts once they sailed from the Cape. We find no record of them reaching Bombay or anywhere on the Malabar, nor the Bengal, nor Madras or any lesser port on the Coromandel. No trace of them exists in the Water Indies or on the Manilhase Islands or on any coast of China.”

“They appear to have sailed, as the Bard puts it, to the equinoctial of Queubus, the torridity lying somewhere beyond three o’clock in the morning,” said Needle.

“In an eggshell: we believe they sailed to Yount,” said Harrow. “We want every sliver, every shard, of information you can procure for us about that.”

Kidlington shrugged, his laughter laced with rue and hellebore, “Seeing as I have no other choice . . .”

“We knew you were a man of reason,” said Harrow.

“Yount,” said Kidlington. “Yount would seem a grail for others as well.”

The two spectres of the Admiralty scythed Kidlington with their gaze, eyebrows raised.

“What I mean to say,” said Kidlington, “is that the Admiralty is not alone in its investigation, even here in London, I think.”

“Perspicacious, you are,” said Needle.

“We know those others to whom you refer,” said Harrow. “In fact, we extinguished your debts to them, as part of our arrangement. Would not do to have our chief informant found floating in the Thames, missing his eyes and tongue, would it?”

“Nevertheless, be wary still of those others,” said Needle. “We eye them and they eye us, like a tiger and a leopard do, who encounter each other over a kill each claims.”

“How shall I report?” said Kidlington. “What do I even call you?”

“Call us?” said Harrow. “We do not exist! We are the greyest of
éminence grise
—a grey that turns to white and then becomes transparent.”

“If you must, think of us as Ithuriel and Zephon,” said Needle.

“Sent by the archangel to discover Satan’s whereabouts in the Garden,” said Harrow. “With winged speed, leaving no nook unsearched, and all that. Protecting Adam and Eve.”

“So, to you Kidlington, we are Mr. I. and Mr. Z.,” said Needle.

Kidlington bowed his head slowly and just two inches.

“As for reporting . . .” said Harrow, picking up and ringing a small bell.

Almost immediately, a man opened a door on the far side of the room and entered.

“This is Lieutenant Thracemorton,” said Harrow. “He will be your handler. He is not of the smiling persuasion, so do not attempt japes, jests or jokes in his presence.”

“He served with the famous Captain Sharpe in Spain,” said Needle. “Salamanca in ’12, I believe. He also assisted Maturin in Brest and other parts of France. You won’t find better.”

Lieutenant Thracemorton inclined his head but said nothing.

“Well, go on Kidlington,” said Harrow. “Tick-tock, tick-tock.”

Kidlington made to leave with the lieutenant. As the pair reached the door, the needle (was that Mr. I or Mr. Z.?) said, “Remember, Kidlington. We own you and we do not exist—you are the property of ghosts!
You
do not exist! Should you breathe a word of this to anyone. . . .”

… . . .

… . . .

“. . . besides, even if you did, and we know you won’t, who would believe you?” said Harrow. “They’d clap you in Bedlam as soon as Michaelmas.”

Kidlington turned on his heel and, escorted by the unsmiling lieutenant, left the hidden room by an unmarked door in Admiralty House.

The harrow turned to the needle.

“What do you think of our newly sprung gamecock?”

“Useful. Highly intelligent. Motivated.”

“Agreed. But also headstrong, cunning, untrustworthy.”

“Agreed. In short: he’s a poet, Childe Harold, a damned romantic.”

The harrow rang the bell again. Another man entered the room.

“Captain Shufflebottom,” said the harrow.

“Your humblest servant, m’lords,” said Captain Shufflebottom, peering through grey-lensed spectacles.

“You will shadow those two,” said the needle. “Unobserved, undetected even by our own lieutenant.”

“At all costs, protect our asset,” said the harrow. “He is not to leave our care, ever. Report only and directly to us, unless we are not accessible, in which case you may debrief with our confidential secretary, Mr. Tarleton.”

“Keep Kidlington alive, using all your guile and all your strength,” said the needle. “But, if conditions warrant it, if you cannot obtain our instructions prior, then you are hereby licensed to kill.”

“I understand, m’lords,” said Mr. Shufflebottom. “Off now to do your bidding, m’lords.”

The door closed behind him. The clock on the mantlepiece ticked and tocked.

Then the harrow said to the needle, “We have waited a long time for this moment.”

“Agreed. A profoundly long time.”

“Lord Melville will be pleased. Sir John even more so.”

“The French are well out of the game, at least for now. The Dutch and Danes likewise. No more interference from the Casa in Seville either. The Moghuls we have also sent to the sidelines.”

“The Turks still dabble, and the Persians, but they are toothless old lions, content to gnaw bones under the shade tree.”

“The Chinese, on the other hand . . .”

“The Chinese, . . . yes, but that’s why we sent Lord Amherst on his embassy to Peking, so recently set sail . . .”

“And the . . . others . . . the strangers . . .”

“Still, this round goes to us today, I should think.”

“Agreed. So long as our Mr. Kidlington is as we think he is.”

“Oh, he will prove to be, you mark my words, Mr. I.”

“We shall see, Mr. Z.”

“Impossible,” said Mr. Sedgewick. “
Affenspiele
. A mandrill’s conspiracy.”

He said this to his wife, ignoring Maggie who sat in front of them on the other side of the table. On the table, between Maggie and the Sedgewicks, sprawled the source of the lawyer’s scornful disbelief: Maggie’s latest model, three feet tall, a construction of wires and gears, the Tower of Babel in miniature.

Neither Mrs. Sedgewick nor Maggie responded right away. The ticking of the clock under the trumeau mirror pricked the silence. Outside, along Archer Street by Pineapple Court, and from elsewhere in the City, came the shouts of the water-seller and the scissor-grinder, of a huckster selling chapbooks (“read ’ere the mir’cles of Saints Florian an’ Evaristus!”), of a carter berating a neighing horse. As always, threading their voices throughout the human cries of London, rooks cawed, magpies chacked and daws charked.

Mrs. Sedgewick stole a glance at Maggie while replying to her husband. She said, “You go too far, sir, with your accusations . . .”

He cut her off, his belly jouncing in agitation.

“Madam, do not presume . . .” he said. “What am I supposed to think, when confronted with this improbable monstrosity?”

Maggie choked back tears. “Mother guide me,” she thought. “
Chi di.
This man, this so-very-white man, so learned, so self-respecting, so very high on his very tall horse, is so very wrong. I hate him.”

Mr. Sedgewick was still belabouring Mrs. Sedgewick. “This is all
your
fault, you know, my dear. You encourage her in these whims and wigmaleeries. Or rather, you indulge and coddle her, as if she were your prize spaniel. But you raise up her hopes unjustly. You delude yourself and—worse—allow this girl to delude herself.”

Mrs. Sedgewick, eyes glistening, made to speak, but Mr. Sedgewick slashed forward.

“No one can believe this child of Africa has made such a thing,” he said. “Its sophistication, its refinement, . . . no, ’tis not possible from such a mind as hers.”

Maggie made to speak, but Mr. Sedgewick brooked no interruption.

“
Corchorus inter olea
,” he said. “A weed among the herbs, that’s what she is, and that’s all she is.”

“May this weed speak, master?” said Maggie, half-rising from her chair.

Mr. Sedgewick finally looked at Maggie, shifting the sesquipedality of his mind and belly in his chair.

“It seems I cannot stop you,” he said.

“Whatever you believe you know, master, I
did
make this thing,” Maggie said.

Mr. Sedgewick examined the model, fascinated despite himself. His gaze lingered on the intricate array of pipes and the series of cantilevered struts.

“I may begrudge you, oh cleverest of servants, the fact that you assembled the pieces,” he said. “Nicely done, I admit, yet ’tis only insect architecture. Who instructed you? Whose was the mind that conceived this machine? Who imagined the design?”