The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2

by Daniel A. Rabuzzi

  More directly, the Return sparked a global political crisis in the 1820s, one that reshaped the world into the channels we know today. As is well known, Great Britain claimed Yount as a protectorate, based initially on its role in financing and equipping the Indigo Pheasant and then also on its key role in supporting Farther Yount in the civil war against the Ornish. When Farther Yount defeated the Ornish and Queen Zinnamoussea named Afsana and Tom her heirs and successors, Great Britain then augmented its imperial claims with the argument that Tom was a British citizen. As is also well known, China contested Great Britain’s claim, and the Indian Ocean became the scene of several tense stand-offs between the British and Chinese navies. The fact that the Chinese possessed a blue-water navy by the late 1820s, and one able to resist British assertions, is clearly traceable to the Return: Tang Guozhi made sure that China swiftly adopted Yountian technology and persuaded the Celestial Emperor to overturn the centuries-old ban on long-distance Chinese maritime activity.

  In the end, the friendship between Mei-Hua and the McDoons helped defuse tension, at least enough to keep Great Britain and China from outright war. Mei-Hua became one of the most famous women in nineteenth-century China, exerting significant influence over foreign policy. She never forgot her time in London and on the Indigo Pheasant. She remembered always the kindness the McDoons had shown her—the Chinese New Year at Mincing Lane glowed undimmed in her memory until the day she died. She remembered that the McDoons, the Sons & Daughters of Asaph, and even British soldiers, had stood as allies and co-combatants with her and her brother (and grim old Tang Guozhi!) in a titanic struggle against otherworldly powers. Above all, she cherished the love with which Maggie had embraced her—she would always be Maggie’s “little sister eagle.”

  Equally important was the active influence of the lawyer Winstanley, who became one of the great reform politicians of the age, serving in Grey’s Whig government and drafting elements of the First Reform Act of 1832. Winstanley (strongly supported by his wife) rallied the opposition to British claims in the Indian Ocean and eventually led the anti-imperialist faction in Parliament. Winstanley remembered well and fondly Mei-Hua and her brother, and recalled Tang Guozhi’s asperity with respect.

  Most scholars, both Western and Eastern, point to Mei-Hua as a chief—if informal—architect of the Anglo-Chinese Trade Treaty of 1840 (the so-called “Canton Concord”) that resolved the major issues between the two nations and granted the Chinese trade concessions throughout the Indian Ocean. Winstanley helped draft the terms of the treaty, and he co-sponsored its introduction into the House of Commons. The Canton Concord was the model for the later agreements that ultimately, right after World War I, saw China gain with British support commercial enclaves as far away as Heligoland off Germany and at Naples in Italy.

  Other factors were also influential in the confrontations over Yount in the 1820s and 1830s. Tom and Afsana did not accept British suzerainty, nor did they wish to be dependent on a resurgent China. They forged an alliance instead with the Tamil princes in the Carnatic, who were convinced that Yount represented the lost, once-submerged Tamil kingdom of Kumari Kandam. As a Gujarati, Afsana also received aid from that Indian realm as well as from neighbouring principalities (Kutch, Sind, Baluchistan). The Bengalese Indigo Rebellion of 1826, inspired by the ethos and exploits embodied in the Indigo Pheasant, was the decisive event galvanizing the entire Indian sub-continent. Under Afsana and Tom, its armed forces, led by Nexius Dexius, Farther Yount (together with the reformed Ornish islands) assisted the Bengalese, almost leading them into war with Great Britain.

  Here, at least, the story has something of a fairy tale ending: the dynasty Afsana and Tom started is, of course, still on the throne in Farther Yount. Farther Yount became a constitutional monarchy in 1908, the same year the British left their last possessions in India, and is one of the Seven Nations of India created in 1920. In a very nice touch, the Empress herself appointed one of Mei-Hua’s great-grandchildren to the Chinese delegation that witnessed the signing of the joint constitution at the famed Seven Nations Conference in Calcutta.

  The Indigo Pheasant also inspired the slave revolts on the indigo plantations of South Carolina and Georgia that helped cause the American Civil War. “Not one iota for indigo,” the rallying cry of President C.F. Adams when Confederate troops besieged Washington DC in 1851, is among the most widely known political slogans in the world. Holcroft’s Union troops targeted the indigo plantations on the March to the Sea in 1854; when the North finally prevailed over the South, not one indigo plantation remained of any consequence anywhere in the Confederacy.

  These sanguinary conflicts were decades in the future when Barnabas, Sanford, Sally, and Maggie returned on a morning to the house with blue trim and the dolphin door knocker on Mincing Lane. Billy Sea-Hen was with them, and also the most unlikely house-guest of all: Jambres, his own skin still reveling in the taste of the wind and the feel of the sun.

  “Welcome home,” said Cook for the tenth time, tears in her eyes. “Oh, we have missed you, from the beet singling season to the fall of the small moon. Come here, you most particular, Billy Sea-Hen of Queenhithe!”

  She crushed Billy to her bosom.

  Later, in the partners’ room, Cook and her niece (and Mr. Fletcher) asked for a hundred explanations and received a hundred responses.

  “And that brainy Mr. Bunce, him so courageous with his one leg missing?” asked Cook.

  “In fine form, very fine form, when we saw him last,” said Barnabas, enjoying a glass of Cahors. “Has remained at home, hasn’t he? With dear Tom and Afsana, and Nexius Dexius, the lot of ’em, in Yount.”

  Cook looked troubled, glanced at Sally before asking, “With Captain Bammary, as well then?”

  Barnabas paused, also shot a glance at Sally (whose face betrayed no emotion) before replying, “That’s correct, Captain Bammary has chosen to return to Yount too, and why not? That was part of the point, wasn’t it? To find Yount, reunite everyone there?”

  Sanford made a low noise like a mule, deep in his throat. The images in the pictures on the wall—the drowning souls spilling out of the wreckage of foundering East Indiamen—seemed to move of their own accord, though presumably that could only have been a trick of the candlelight.

  Isaak jumped out of Sally’s lap and strode to Cook.

  “Well, by Saint Morgaine, you seem no the worse for wear!” laughed Cook, leaning over to pet the cat.

  “Where is the beautiful bird?” ventured the Cook’s niece. She had so loved Charicules’s singing.

  “Another migrant to Yount,” said Barnabas. So attached had Charicules and Malchen become that the saulary elected to stay in Yount, where it was considered a national treasure. Malchen became Yount’s First Ornithologist, establishing the Grand Aviary at the university. In one of their first acts as King and Queen, Tom and Afsana named the saulary as the national bird of Farther Yount—who has not seen the saulary featured prominently on Yountish currency and stamps?

  Some semblance of normalcy resumed at the house on Mincing Lane, but no more than a semblance and nothing resembling life before the Return. Matchett & Frew, quick to capitalize on trading opportunities with Yount and staunch backers of forays into the Interrugal Lands, were frequent visitors. The Gardiners of Gracechurch Street also dined often with the McDoons, and sometimes the Darcys when Elizabeth was in town and could persuade her husband to go out to visit. The Darcys escorted Sally on her occasional visits to the Babbages, the Somervilles and other houses. Winstanley dined with the McDoons every other Wednesday evening, often bringing his wife so that the talk at table expanded to include many more topics than Winstanley on his own might have explored. Mr. Gandy frequented the house on Mincing Lane, his eccentric wit never failing to enliven a gathering; he included many Yountish examples in his magisterial Art, Philosophy and Science of Architecture (published in 1835).

  The Sedgewicks and the McDoons never fully reconciled. Seeking to assert his claims on the I
ndigo Pheasant patents, the lawyer Sedgewick pursued various fruitless suits in Chancery and in the High Admiralty Court, eventually appearing before the Queen’s Bench. Thus the ghost of James Kidlington stalked the lives of those he affected so forcefully while he lived.

  Mrs. Sedgewick never visited the house on Mincing Lane so long as Maggie resided there, but she did host Sally for tea and meet Sally at other venues.

  Sally declined Tom and Afsana’s several invitations to join them in Yount, but lived out a life of increasing seclusion in London, surrounded and protected by Barnabas, Sanford, Isaak, Cook, and Billy Sea-Hen. Ironically, while she appeared less and less often outside the house on Mincing Lane, Sally became ever more famous as her central role in the Return became known. Babbage, Somerville, and other leading scientific lights of the era recommended Sally for honours and appointments. For the most part she declined these, shunning public attention, preoccupying herself with her translations of the Yountian classics. In so doing, she—again, ironically—kept herself in public view, not least when she helped start the Saint Macrina’s Library of Yountish Literature, with their distinctive indigo-coloured covers (which influenced Harvard to start the Loeb Classical Library decades later).

  Sally corresponded regularly with the Termuydens. When the Termuydens died, and the Last Cozy House was shut, its contents to be dispersed in accordance with their will, the correspondence with Sally filled several very fat folios—which were returned to Sally and later came down to her heirs.

  Once a year Sally visited James’s grave in the small yard by St. Helen’s Bishopsgate.

  Among the few outsiders whom Sally habitually sought out was Lieutenant Thracemorton. Sally coveted every scrap of memory the lieutenant had about James, every observation and analysis of James’s mentality, scruples, manner, and behaviour. Graciously at first, but with growing depth of feeling, the Lieutenant shared his remembrances and—surprising himself—gradually became a confidante. He and his wife (and eventually their children) were among the very few regular callers on Sally in her declining years.

  Isaak died at age twenty-five. Cook found her stretched out in the kitchen, claws extended, as if she had expired while hunting. They buried Isaak in the backyard, the small mound of her grave marked by a carved wooden stele, surrounded by a bed of blue bixwort.

  No other cat ever lived at the McDoon house.

  Cook married Billy Sea-Hen, and the two of them moved into the back-house at Mincing Lane. While Billy travelled to Yount several times and founded—in Queenhithe—the Society of Asaph (which continues its global social justice campaign to the present day), Cook continued to care for the McDoons.

  “Too old to have children,” said Cook, whose name was Elizabeth Adelsina Grove. “But the little smee needs lookin’ after, and Mr. Barnabas too (though he won’t admit it). And Mr. Sanford likewise, though he is even less able to admit it. You have your big flock to minister to, dearest Billy, and I have my own little congelation.”

  Her niece the maid—Anna Emerentia Grove—finally married Mr. Fletcher. They set up house in a proper street near All Hallows-by-the-Tower, just a few blocks over from Mincing Lane, and were often to be seen visiting at the McDoons. Their daughter, Alice Elizabeth Fletcher, married an ambitious costermonger named Allen, who—through hard work and clever deals struck with Fortnum & Mason and other leading purveyors of specialty foods—amassed a tidy fortune. The oldest daughter of that union was none other than Richenda Mary-Elizabeth Allen, one of the first graduates of Somerville College at Oxford, who helped pioneer the “new biology” based on her discoveries in the Interrugal Lands. Their second daughter was Mary “Zinnamouse” Allen, the eminent historian of the Return, who married the American classicist Edward C. Townsend, joining him on the faculty of Columbia University in New York City.

  Elizabeth Adelsina and her Billy, and Anna Emerentia and her Mr. Fletcher, were pall-bearers at Sanford’s funeral.

  “Oh Quatsch,” cried Barnabas on that day, leaning heavily on Sally. “What ever shall I do without my oldest friend?”

  Less than a year later, Barnabas died. They buried him in his favourite calicosh vest. The Yountish embassy in London reported to Sally that Tom and Afsana did not eat but only drank water for five days upon hearing the news of Barnabas’s death, and that they declared an official day of mourning in Yount. Through his tears, Tom wondered if the inscription on his uncle’s tombstone included “beans and bacon” or the like. (It does not, as you can attest for yourself by visiting the site at Saint Macrina’s Infra).

  Sally left the house on Mincing Lane even less often thereafter.

  Not many years later, Cook found Sally dead in the attic room, slumped over a sheaf of notes on the Yountish poet Lemmisessurea the Younger. After the funeral (Sally rests next to her uncle, one over from Sanford), after the Yountish representatives had returned to the embassy and the newspaper-men had gone to Fleet Street to write up their stories, Cook sat with Billy in the kitchen.

  “Little smee flown home for good this time,” she said, and then she sobbed.

  Cook was startled and even dismayed when Winstanley unsealed the will and informed her that Sally had named her sole heir.

  “Oh, fallabarty,” said Cook. “What will I do with all this money, and the house, and the garden and all?”

  The McDoons having recouped much of their depleted and endangered fortune as a result of very favourable terms of trade with Yount after its Return, Cook and Billy were able to invest large sums in the Society of Asaph and other charitable, humanitarian organizations in London and in Yount Great-Port. They lived in the house on Mincing Lane until the end of their days, caring for it as keepers of a sacred museum, a fane of light and longing in an uncertain world—many seekers and wonderers made what became a pilgrimage, wanting to hear what Billy had to tell them about Yount and the struggle with the Owl and the immarcessible crown of glory, and to hear from Cook all about the McDoons both before and after the Return. Cook took pains to preserve Sally’s papers exactly as Sally had left them.

  The house on Mincing Lane passed to the Fletchers and then to the Allens in due course. The Allen sisters made the first exhaustive studies of Sally’s papers, which today are archived in the special collections at Columbia University.

  Most readers will know that the house itself was destroyed in the Blitz, on the very same night that bombs gutted the Indigo Pheasant, which had been dry-docked for visitation at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Much has been made of the simultaneous destruction, many claiming that the Owl guided the Luftwaffe on that night—and who is to say that Strix did not?

  The Allen family salvaged the dolphin door-knocker from the ruin of the house and had it installed on the front door of their London pied-a-terre, a terrace house on Elvaston Place in South Kensington. That house has passed into other ownership, but a small National Trust plaque remarks upon the door-knocker (still there) for those who care to read it.

  Of course, the house and all the rest of the McDoon equity were Sally’s to bequeath because Tom and Afsana had long since renounced all claim as heirs, given their status as rulers of Yount.

  And because, just over a year after the Indigo Pheasant sailed back to London, Maggie had disappeared . . .

  . . . disappeared, taking Jambres with her, from London as wholly as if she had never existed there at all, without any clue or evidence for anyone to track her.

  She gave no forewarning and left no explanation beyond a short note placed by the sandalwood box in the partners’ room. The note read:

  Dear cousins:

  Bear this parting with love and understanding, I ask you. I am compelled; my journey moves me forward, with Jambres as my consort and with the blessing of the Goddess. The Return of Yount is only one more step in the never-ending battle we wage with the Owl—I know this now in my bone and heart. Where I go, not even the Indigo Pheasant can carry me. Farewell, and cup the flame of my love within you forever, as I will bear your love wit
h me. Such a song we made!

  P.S. For Sanford. I thank you for helping me see the truth of what Saint Anthony wrote: ‘spiritual geometry measures dimensions not as quantities but as virtues within the divine.’

  P.P.S. For Sally. If I could, I would ask you and Isaak to come with us, but you are needed more in your present time and place. Be well—we women are the strength of the world.

  Putting down the letter and pushing aside his ink bottle, quill, blotting paper, and quizzing glass, Barnabas said, “Well, buttons and beeswax. What do we make of this?”

  Into and around the ticking of the clock on the mantlepiece, Sanford said, “I think, my friends, that Maggie . . . and Jambres . . . are gone for good, and quite clean out of our time altogether.”

  Sanford, as usual, had perceived the heart of the matter completely.

  Interlude: Farrigine

  [From Charles Burney, History of Music, vol. 5, 1803; Maggie read this at the Sedgewicks, who gave it to her as parting gift when she moved to the McDoons; her copy is heavily annotated in her hand]

  The mind’s operation, when influenced by the emotions piqued through music, is a river of conflicting eddies channelled into one harmonious flow. The system of temperament, whether equal or well, whether founded upon the Pythagorean comma or some other arranging concept, impresses upon us the learning of the affects, such that we—though creatures infinitely small in the thoughts of Heaven—may nevertheless ascend with tentative and trembling souls some distance on the circles that lead to Grace and the Divine. In this regard, some of the more novel approaches taken by the Italians and the Austrians in recent centuries might—with some adaptations to suit the British sensibility—be usefully employed on our shores. I will speak here firstly of the alternative or cross-tuning known in Milan and other Italian centres as ‘scordatura,’ with reference also to the delightful though today under-utilized viola d’amore and the passacaglias of mystery described by H.I.F. Biber of Salzburg in his Harmonia Artificioso.