The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 by Daniel A. Rabuzzi Read Free Book Online

CONGREGATION
HAS JOINED WITH THEIR SISTERS AND BROTHERS AMONG
LADY HUNTINGDON’S CONNECTION
TO EMBRACE THE PREACHER KNOWN AS
BILLY SEA-HEN
INTO THEIR MIDST, ALL THIS WEEK AT THEIR MEETINGHOUSES AT RESPECTIVELY THE
MULBERRY
IN
WAPPING
, NEAR THE
FINCH-HOUSE MEWS
, AND THE
THREE CRANES
IN
SHOREDITCH
, HARD BY
HOXTON SQUARE
. ALL ARE WELCOME.
NO ADMISSION IS CHARGED.

Dear Family McDoon:
    We bring you greetings from the Cape and the Last Cozy House, sent this 14 th day of _____ aboard the East Indiaman
Lady Balcarras
.
    [... . . . .]
    We come now to the strangest news. Three Chinese persons are staying at the Cozy House, remarkable even for us. They are an emissary from the Emperor himself with two young wards (a girl and a young man). The emissary met Staunton and Barrow in ’95 on the MacCartney expedition.
    We cannot commit all we know about our Chinese guests to paper, for fear that Others might intercept this intelligence, but we want you to know that the Chinese know about Y. and seem to know something of the Project (at least the older gentlemen who leads them).
    We think they are somehow important to the success of the Project. The girl is the key. She is a singer. A Singer,
comprenez-vous
? Please hear us when we say that you should include this girl as part of the Project. Sally will understand this best of all.
    All of them enlighten and astonish us with their knowledge of mathematics and water-science and astronomy. They tell us that the Chinese have an encyclopedia beyond any our Diderot or Panckoucke have ever conceived, being 745 (!) volumes, called—as best we can write it in a European tongue—the “Goojin tooshoo zeechang.” They say it contains references to Y!
    The girl and her companions seem inclined to stay with us at the Cape for now, but we suggest they come to you in London in the next good sailing season, it being the kentering time now and so unsafe for the Indiamen on the London-bound voyage.
    Send us word soonest, while the winds favour the outbound voyage to the Cape from London.
    Until then, we are yours in amity,
—The Termuydens

[Excerpt of a letter, on the Shad Moon, from Matchett in London to Frew doing business for the firm in Paris]
    Barnabas McD. was in rare form last night at the coffeehouse, had the company in good humour with his tales of the Cape. Sanford his usual laconic self. Something fishy in this, but all in good time, I reckon, and then we will learn the truth from the McD’s or discover it for ourselves.
    Curious news: do you recall the affair of the cunning man in Marylebone, back during the Peace of Amiens in ’02 (the vicious Moriarty, how he pressed us)? More to the point, his confederates—the Leipzig firm of Coppelius, Prinn & Goethals the Widow? With peace again after Nap’s fall, it would appear that Coppelius et al. have returned to London. They have opened a comptoir at Austin Friars near Blakensides.
    I am more convinced than ever that this Prinn is a grand-nephew of the Ludwig P. who wrote De vermis mysteriis.
    In nuco: hasten our business in Paris to its end, and return as soon as you may. We have work to do here.
    As always, your . . .

On the Vigil of the Recrement,
    by the morning post,
    from Mrs. Sedgewick to the Miss Sarah:
    My dearest Sally,
    Words can barely express my pleasure at re-uniting with you since your return—seeing you these past weeks has raised my spirit beyond measure.
    Speaking with you has piqued my curiosity as well, since you tell such amusing and marvelous stories of your time abroad, and yet I sense that you hold much back. Why withhold details from one of your closest friends, one who can guide and support you?
    I have shared with you some of my premonitions and dreams, and I thank you for the courtesy you have paid in listening to me with sympathy—which is more than I ever get from Mr. Sedgewick, though I shouldn’t complain.
    Speaking of Mr. Sedgewick, and on a more convivial topic, I have persuaded His Old Badger-ness to