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

Author:Daniel A. Rabuzzi
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781927469170
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2012-09-15T06:00:00+00:00

As Sally drank tea with James, and as Barnabas and Sanford made their way back to Mincing Lane, Maggie was visiting Mr. Gandy in the debtor’s prison at Giltspur Street Compter.

He sat alone, unshaven and dishevelled, enveloped by and part of the baggy stench of the place. A fresh bruise adorned his left cheek.

“Oh hello, hello, Miss Maggie, so very, so very, very good to see you! Oh thank you, you are my only visitor this past sennight, so I am so very obliged. Do you know, I shall be out soon, or so my creditors say, if I may believe them, which I am forced to do, I have no choice, you see. How is Charicules? Singing as always, I hope. No birds in here, how I miss my little fellows, excepting the poor pigeons that find their way through the holes in the roof, can’t fly back out. The lads in here trap them, turn them into dinner.”

Maggie brought out a basket containing a small roast chicken, a loaf of bread (with whipped butter), and a roast onion, a gift from Cook. To bring it in, Maggie had bribed the jail guard using her own pin money. Gandy’s eyes went wide, his nostrils likewise. He inhaled the smell of the chicken and onion, and then let out a sigh crinkled with laughter and tears.

They talked of minor things, the latest sayings from the London streets, novelties of expression, curiosities and quiddities, while Mr. Gandy ate. He tried to be polite but could barely contain himself, sometimes putting a second and even third bite in his mouth before finishing his first. Maggie fully understood the needs of the stomach, and was—truth be told—impressed with his futile attempts at genteel behavior for her sake under such brutal conditions.

When Mr. Gandy finished, having eaten every scrap and ounce, he said, “Now, tell me Miss Maggie, more about those dreams of yours, the ones you began to tell me about on your last visit to my palace here, about the very pale man in his very red coat, he sounds so delicious and divine, the one who flickers, shimmers in your mind.”

Maggie and Mr. Gandy talked until evening began to come on. He looked stunted, attenuated, as the shadows lengthened, a dreamer caught in a very wrong dream. The other inmates made lewd comments about Maggie, and from some other room came a muffled moaning.

Just before she left, Maggie handed Mr. Gandy a small, thin empty bottle, with a cork, the sort of bottle apothecaries use for individual sales of powders and solutions. Maggie had gleaned it from a scrap pile on one of her roamings through Clerkenwell and Holborn (despite the improvement in her clothing, passers by did not see her as a lady or any other variety of respectable person; the one advantage in that being the freedom it allowed Maggie to move about on her own and explore some of the queerer parts of London). Maggie grinned as Mr. Gandy pulled the cork and shook the bottle up and down.

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