The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 (42 page)

We even have a pencil-and-crayon sketch of the
Indigo Pheasant
itself, by none other than J.M.W. Turner, made as he stood at one of his favourite places, on the Marlborough Terraces at Woolwich. Well preserved at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, the drawing clearly shows the indigo-tinted fore topmast staysail, the jib and the flying jib, that is, the three sails rigged between the foremast and the bow, the three giant triangles that lead the ship forward. If one looks very closely, one can discern what must be the “eyes” of the ship, the
qingbao
porcelain plates that Mei-Hua gave as figureheads.

Mei-Hua, on tip-toes, peered down at the
qingbao
pheasant on the right-hand side of the bow (the “starboard” side, as she had learned to say in her now nearly perfect English). She was elated, seeing the pheasant’s glazed eye pointed towards the morning sun. Attached in rows behind the porcelain plate, like scintilla from a racing star, reflecting the sun, were amulets and talismans given by Billy Sea-Hen’s adherents; the three mighty masts were also emblazoned with similar tokens, in their hundreds. Also reflecting the sun was a great round gilt-edged clock with a white porcelain face, which Maggie had had attached to the mainmast—a timepiece made by the specialists in Clerkenwell, a timepiece directly connected to the Great Fulginator below decks by corded silver wires, a clock to tell time in timeless places. Mei-Hua hugged herself, wanted to run and hug her brother and even the severe old Tang Guozhi: the voyage, the
real
voyage, had at last begun! Still and always the daughter of a state official in a provincial capital city of the Celestial Empire, Mei-Hua managed to compose herself, but not before she squeezed Maggie’s hand.

Maggie stood beside Mei-Hua at the bow of the
Indigo Pheasant
as the ship passed close by Woolwich on the south bank. Maggie admired the three indigo-coloured sails, so distinctive from the regular white sheets unfurled everywhere else on the ship. Colouring the three foremost sails indigo had been her idea, one she had insisted on even when its significant additional cost caused indigestion among the accountants at the Admiralty.

“No other ship in the world has such sails,” they’d said. “It’s unheard of!”

Moreover, Maggie had refused to allow use of the indigo dyes from South Carolina or from the Bengal, despite their low prices, since in each case the plant was grown and processed by unfree labour.

“Not one item on the
Indigo Pheasant
will be produced by enslaved people,” she said with a finality that brooked no rebuttal. She made sure that the dye used for the ship’s sales came via the Parsee merchant and Yount-friend Sitterjee, and had its ultimate source in free labour on farms in Gujarat.

“Your scruples as a result have doubled an already unconscionably high cost!” the E.I.C. accountants had wailed. “Most extraordinary and unheard of!”

“My point succinctly,” she’d replied, without so much as raising an eyebrow. “The
Indigo Pheasant
is unlike any other ship that has ever been built.”

Maggie looked back along the deck towards the stern. The nominal captain, ship’s mates, and petty officers, supplied by the E.I.C., clustered near the wheelhouse. Sir Barrow had himself instructed the captain on the nature of the trip, and made it clear that—while the captain and his officers might have command in all things considered traditionally nautical—Maggie was the final authority on all other exigencies and eventualities requiring executive decision-making.

Standing a little off to the side of the E.I.C. men, all on his own and saying little to anyone but watching everyone through his smoked-glass spectacles, was the tall figure of Captain Shufflebottom. Sir John had named Shufflebottom as the Admiralty’s primary representative onboard the ship, a supercargo to whom sharp powers had been delegated.

Billy Sea-Hen stood amidships, with many of the men and women he had chosen, his pilgrim-warriors, known as “the sons and daughters of Asaph.” They numbered one hundred and twenty-eight, replicating the number of musicians who had returned to the Holy Land from the Babylonian Captivity, the musicians who were descendants of Asaph. (The quarrel with the rival preacher Peasestraw had revolved in part over the accuracy of this number, which is so stated in the Book of Esdras, whereas the Book of Nehemiah gives the number of the post-exilic returnees as one hundred and forty-eight; the Admiralty, caring little for such exegetical niceties but very much about budget and commissary constraints, had only granted space on the
Indigo Pheasant
for one hundred and twenty-eight). Each of the sons and daughters of Asaph wore an armband made of left-over material from the indigo-tinted foresails.

In addition, and despite the warmth of a September sun, Billy wore a long, blue woolen scarf—knitted by the Cook and a gift from her the evening before.

“I know it isn’t much, my Billy of Queenhithe—I have a beetle’s fingers when it comes to knitting,” Cook had said, fighting back tears in the kitchen in the house on Mincing Lane.

“No, no, say not such things, I’ll not hear them,” Billy had said, likewise struggling to keep from crying.

“Now, you listen well, Billy Sea-Hen. You go wherever it is you and the McDoons are going. You find and fight the awl-rawney until he is good and dead, and then you come straight back, d’you hear? Straight back home. Letting no harm or damage come to you and any of the others, d’you hear?”

“Why,” Billy had said, with a slow smile while he clutched the blue knit muffler to his chest. “Might as well try to drown an eel than kill me. This old dumbledore will fly his way back to London, to you. I swear on the immarcessible crown of glory itself, I will.”

Reglum Bammary stood further back on the deck of the
Indigo Pheasant
, leading a platoon of Woolwich gunners. Like them, he wore a scarlet jacket faced with slate-grey. In his breast pocket he had a worn copy of Akenside’s
Pleasures of the Imagination
, and in a large waist pocket he carried a sketchbook and pencil to capture the likenesses for the
Index of Goettical Creatures
of whatever curiosities the voyagers might encounter on their passage through the Interrugal Lands.

Standing close by Maggie at the bow were—beside Mei-Hua—the rest of the McDoons, as well as Shaozu and Tang Guozhi. Sally, a pale shade, held Isaak. A cage by her feet contained Charicules. Dorentius Bunce leaned on his crutch, his face turned to the cant of the sails and the tilt of the jib-boom, as if trying to read sine and secant on the wind itself. Barnabas, in a vest he described as “like the green-shaded wines we receive from Portugal,” was gesticulating to the sailors in the rigging. Sanford, in perfectly pressed black, the few hairs on his head whipped by the wind, scanned the banks of the Thames, already on alert for threats.

As they came to the mouth of the Thames at sunset, just past the spire of Saint Mary Hoo and the clock tower at Sheerness, the ship’s shadow lengthening on the swift waters in front of it, Sanford raised his voice in song. Momentarily startled, the McDoons and others nearest the bow could not at first catch his melody (singing not being among Sanford’s many talents). Then, one by one, they knew it: “The Seafarer,” the ancient hymn that had come down through the Exeter Book and, as translated into modern English by Sir Thomas More, become a standard in the Great Hymnal.

Maggie, who had sung it countless times while at Saint Macrina’s Charity School, joined in. She did not fully comprehend Sanford but—at that moment, if not already much earlier—she knew she loved him.

“Now my soul warps out of my breast,

My spirit mindful roams transformed,

Amidst the flood of the sea,

Amidst the realms of the whale.”

One by one all but the Chinese joined in (and even they hummed the tune, as best they could ascertain it), from the bow to the stern, from the marines and gunners in the holds to the sailors at the ropes and sails:

“Through all the quarters of the world,

Hungry as the raven, desiring more,

Flying alone, restless,

Shouting on high,

Hurries the heart unhesitant

Onto the whale-roads

Ever over the waves of the sea.”

They sang it several times into the dusk, an exultant challenge. Billy and his congregation peppered the verses with “amens” and “selahs.” Charicules added his own version of the same, in trills that ran up the masts and along the rigging. They lighted lanterns on the masts and on the bowsprit and along the stern, as night fell, so that the ship was a melody of light, a blazing canticle heard by shepherds minding their flocks in the salt-marshes and by innkeepers in the towns along the estuary.

And as they sang for their final time that evening, just before the last ray of the setting sun fled, the verse ending “Onto the whale-roads, Ever over the waves of the sea,” three porpoises leaped out of the water just off the starboard bow. Gleaming in the mingled lamplight, the porpoises splashed and played, to the glad cries of the singers.

Porpoises never left them from that point, not while the
Indigo Pheasant
conducted its sea-trials in the Downs off Kent in the English Channel, not while the ship continued to the Azores, and not while it sailed thence to Cape Town. Even Sally’s spirits brightened as she watched the porpoises, mile after mile, pacing the ship on its journey.

At the Cape, they took on provisions, made minor repairs to the
Indigo Pheasant
and otherwise refreshed themselves in preparation for their travels into the interstitial places. The McDoons, with the Chinese delegation, spent much time at the Last Cozy House, where the Termuydens were, as always, exuberantly attentive and gracious hosts. They offered their condolences about James and carefully avoided any further conversation about him. They took special care to give Isaak the food they remembered she liked, and they laughed to see Isaak playing again with their dog Jantje in the garden. The Termuydens took unique joy in seeing Mei-Hua and Shaozu once more. Over steaming cups of well-steeped tea and trays of ever-replenished cakes (to Barnabas’s endless delight), the company shared the latest intelligences. They talked of Sir John Barrow, and of Lord Amherst’s embassy; they talked with Billy about the sermons he preached; they listened as Mei-Hua explained what the Chinese meant by
kaozheng
, which she translated as “research based on evidence,” and by the
shu li jung yun
, or “collected essentials on numbers and their principles.” The Termuydens were most interested in learning all about Maggie, and listening to Maggie’s thoughts about the upcoming journey.

On a midsummer morning at the Cape, the McDoons and the Chinese took their leave of the Termuydens. Maggie placed a thick packet of letters in the Mejouffrouw’s hands, for posting back to London, the last correspondence the Cook and others would receive from the voyagers for a while. The Termuydens gave to each of their visitors small gifts, tokens to help on the next circuit of errantry.

“For you, Mijnheer Barnabas, I have something
very particularly
special, to sustain you if other stores and provisions run low,” said the Mejouffrouw with a merry sparkle in her eye. “Or, as I suspect, even if you face no such shortage, . . . which I of course hope you do not!”

She handed Barnabas a large box, wrapped in a red ribbon.

“Gingerbread cookies,” she said.

Sally had to prevent her uncle from opening the box then and there.

Two days out they prepared themselves for the first fulgination into the Interrugal Lands. Reglum and Dorentius—as the only two Yountians aboard—stood with the ship’s captain, flanked by the McDoons, Billy Sea-Hen and Captain Shufflebottom, at the bow of the ship. They addressed the assembled ship’s company: the officers, mates and crew, the Marines and Artillery Corpsmen, the sons and daughters of Asaph, and—standing at the front, flush by the starboard gunwale—the Chinese trio. Fulmars and petrels circled the ship, dabbing the waves. Several albatrosses soared further up. A pod of whales had surfaced that morning, joining the ever-present porpoises.

Reglum and Dorentius asked for the silver-plated moon to be hoisted onto the spar, and then led the entire body in the Song of the Lamp-Moon, which Reglum had translated into English. As the last echoes of “Our Moon will light our way home!” rolled over the waves, the ship’s captain stood forth and led a spirited rendition of “Rule, Britannia!” Everyone sang with exceptional gusto the refrain: “Britons never will be slaves!”

Sanford noted that the Chinese (who had certainly heard “Rule, Britannia!” on innumerable occasions, formal and otherwise, during their long stay in London, and well understood its patriotic vigour) looked discomfited. The ship’s captain beckoned Tang Guozhi, Shaozu and Mei-Hua to join the lead party. Tang Guozhi made a short, very diplomatic speech about amity among nations and the Emperor’s delight at his friendship with King George, and so on. Then Mei-Hua, who had practised long for just such an opportunity as this, sang her own translation of the great Tang Dynasty poet Gao Shi’s work, “The Ruined Terrace,” concluding with:

“In silence deep, complete,

I face autumnal wastelands,

Empty.

The wind, sad, alone

Blows one thousand miles.”

Rulers in great capitals such as Peking and London (and Yount Great-Port) can decree whatever policies and strategies as might seem best to promote the aims of the nation,
raison d’état
. But such grand schemes and purposes held little reality for the thousand souls who found themselves alone together on a sliver of wood surrounded by the vast wide pitches of the great southern ocean—and who knew they faced even greater depths of uncertainty on the voyage to Yount. Mei-Hua’s voice stirred every heart on the
Indigo Pheasant
.

Maggie hugged Mei-Hua demonstratively and said loudly so all could hear, “The
Indigo Pheasant
is our common home, our
only
home, as we cross into danger. But the ship will protect us, if we protect one another. We shall raise up our voices from the sea, as the Goddess gives us songs in the narrowest night-watch. ‘We shall compass you about with songs of deliverance.’ Does not the psalmist say so, Billy Sea-Hen?”