Stanton
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Umbra of note
Twoshrews and his human ally Isabella Stanton
Capu and his human ally Lady Rochester
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Stanton stared.
The woman's full skirted dress-come-gown was the most handsome he had come upon. It was a midnight-purple, which Cook would name aubergine – after the fashionable Spanish vegetable – and extensively embroidered with crimson. It had ruched and puffed three-quarter length sleeves and a generous hood that had been thrown back.
Stanton's knowledge of garments extended only to 'it being very fine,' but his gaze snagged on the tumble of red-black hair flowing in impossible waves into and out of the open hood of her gown, before coiling and surging down the woman's plumbline-straight back beyond her waist. Each convoluted curl ended with such body and vigour that he imagined it capable of disarming a Stepney footpad.
The lady spun at his interruption and the sight of Stanton gawping before her like a trout new-landed at Teddington seemed to surprise and then delight her. She stepped towards him, her hand rising graciously to his unready lips and her steely grey eyes meandering over him.
'Ah you must be the new minister that Pitt was so anxious to seat on his council. Did he not invent a new ministry just for you, Master Stanton, so noteworthy is your advice?'
'My ministry is somewhat new, madam...?' he paused expectantly.
'I had not thought to have to introduce myself to you, sir.'
'No, I know I know you, but all names, and even words, have fled my mind.' He found himself uncertain how to breathe – a be-tailed tadpole emerged too soon from the pond it knew as its entire world, unequipped for this new element it now floundered in. Stanton was unglued by the infinite horizons and unknowable threats arrayed before him.
'Ah, of course,' he tapped his nose, 'you mean that our meeting is utterly clandestine and no word of it can ever emerge.'
Stanton was subconsciously aware that a door had opened somewhere but quite incapable of imagining what might exist beyond it or what being could have entered.
'Even from your wife, sir...'
Stanton was unsure whether this was a question. He chuckled, 'Especially from Lady Stanton, I should say.'
'I'm intrigued of course,' her laugh swirled with a whisper of wickedness, 'but you are already undone.'
'I am?'
'Lady Rochester.' She said it with a flourish of exoticism that entirely beguiled him.
'Of course, Lady Rochester. I had not expected you to be a woman.'
'No really!' her laugh ended abruptly, and she added with a note of utter seriousness. 'What manner of creature do you suspect me of being?'
There was something of a precocious teenage girl about her, coquettishly flirting to discover the boundaries of her power over men, yet threaded with the assurance of an experienced paramour who knew she could unpick any man and reshape him. You have cards in your hand, Minister Stanton, her eyes suggested, and, if you but pick the right one, you might play me. Dare you lay a queen?
She slipped into the space between them. So close that he observed the first flaw in her glamour, her eyebrows were jaggedly wild; so close that he felt he must either retreat a pace for propriety's sake or plunge forward risking all.
'I mean, of course I knew you were a lady, a woman, never was any more so...' Stanton had beached upon his own words. He was gabbling himself into unknown depths of social faux pas. He pressed his lips again to her hand desperate to stop his wayward tongue.
A touch upon his other arm moored him back into the morning room, preserving him from the mesmerising maelstrom of swirling red-black hair.
'None more so, indeed,' came Isabella's rescuing voice from behind him, where an agog Goldry still held the door. 'Forgive my husband, Lady R, he is not used to having such female beauty about him.'
Lady Rochester took a half-pace back and studied Stanton. No, naturally, of course he isn't, her expression seemed to imply before she retreated into a smile, 'Nonsense, Isabella, for he has you.'
Stanton wished he could start this encounter afresh but attempted to explain himself, 'We received the note late last night that you would attend me here and, I am ashamed to say, I expected some military phantom to appear at my door.' He showed her to a chair. 'I am intrigued to learn what dangerous mission you must have that requires such a burden of secrecy.'
Lady Rochester quieted her frock into the indicated chair, flowed herself in after it and shook her head. 'Now, Sir, you have quite captivated me. What can you know of my mission here? Can there be more secrets still for us to share?'
'Sebastian,' Isabella took full hold of her husband's arm, bolstering him against the powerful current of his guest's intoxicating proximity. 'Lady R is not your mysterious guest. She has come today to visit me.'
'Ah, oh, yes, of course,' relief swamped Stanton's embarrassment.
'Now I confess, I wish I were your secretive guest,' said Lady Rochester. 'Indeed, I am confounded to find that there exists in all England anyone more mysterious and bewitching than I. There is certainly no-one plus dangereux.'
'It was Lady R's party I was at last night, Sebastian. She is a long-time friend to me and is also our neighbour – with her stepson, Lord Strathearn – across the square, remember?' This last with a nudge of steel that set Stanton nodding.
'Quite so. It is upon the untimely demise of Countess Alnwick I wish to touch.' Lady Rochester clasped her hands together, 'It leaves another vacancy in next year's edition of The Book of 500. I feel you are both sure to be on the list of names who might replace her.'
'There must be worthier candidates than I, surely,' Stanton said.
'Not at all, my dear,' said Isabella, 'I can think of none finer; none, who stand likely to do our country better service. If I am privileged enough to be invited, I will directly stand aside for you.' She set down her Umbra, Twoshrews, atop of a sofa of the design made popular by the Earl of Chesterfield.
'You shall do no such thing, Izzy. Your father would ne'er forgive me.'
'I will champion both your causes,' Lady Rochester said, 'and you are to give of it your best. Your former acquaintance Viscount Exeter will be on the list, Isabella, and we can't have that haughty noble entered into the pages of The Book, before you, can we? Either of you would be far more worthy and many times more cordial. The youngest English Minister since Pitt, and the charming progressive daughter of Lord Lisle. And Twoshrews would be the giddiest Umbra among its pages. Who could be better?'
Twoshrews executed a sweeping bow on Isabella's shoulder and said something that made Isabella's expression crease in surprise.
There was a knock upon the door and Goldry put his head around it, coughed awkwardly and said that the Minister had another visitor. 'A Mr er...' – Goldry was uncertain – 'Lambswink? Penny has admitted him to the scullery, sir, where he awaits you.'
'The scullery?' Isabella rounded on the servant.
'Penny assures me that was his demand, m'lady,' said Goldry. 'He quite insisted upon it.'
'That is my cue to depart your morning room, I fancy,' said Lady Rochester. 'I must leave you to the intriguing Mr Lampwick. Come Capu!'
Her Umbra, who Stanton had been too preoccupied to notice, was sitting on a small table behind the door, amusing himself with a bowl of almonds and hazelnuts. He took a couple of small steps and launched himself fully five feet from the table and onto the shoulder of Lady Rochester, flattening the material on landing. A fawn skull face peered from beneath a close-fitting hood that formed part of a suit and gown fashioned in the same material and style as his mistress. Overlarge hairy hands emerged from the sleeves. Some sort of goblin, Stanton supposed. Capu was both more lithe yet more heavy than any Umbra he had previously seen.
Stanton bowed low and, when he arose, her Ladyship had gone from the room and he heard her chatting to Isabella in the hall about an up-and-coming artist they had met the previous night, a certain Mr Tenebris.
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'The French are plotting, Stanton.'
'That's hardly news, Mr...er... Lambswink, is it?'
Stanton had stood aside to let Midden flee through the scullery door, Keeper Claw clinging to her skirts. Four polished glasses remained as glinting evidence to the maid's discomfort at being alone with the visitor, who had his back to the door.
'You have the advantage of me, sir. We have not been properly introduced,' Stanton stepped inside.
'Nor will we be, Minister.' The man spun around, returned a fifth glass to the table and spread his hands in mock apology. 'I have given your servants the name of Larkwing and that will, I am sure, suffice. You will have seen from the ministry memorandum we sent, that secrecy is paramount. I hope your Umbra...'
'It is too early an hour for my Umbra and she takes little interest in our affairs.'
'Hmm, I wonder...'
'This is all very irregular, Larkwing; not at all the way I do business.'
The wiry man was boldly attired, every inch in black, a dark cropped redingote with snug leather breeches extravagantly buttoned and tied at the knee with generous bows. The wear of his long boots was disguised by their sheen of polish. Neat sideburns prospered alongside thick dark eyebrows at odds with his short-cropped greying hair. Stanton struggled to put an age to him, but he looked every buffed button a ministry man.
'I see.' The visitor put his head to one side, one finger to his chin and contemplated Stanton before whipping the air theatrically. 'If you want regular, my dear Stanton, then I fear we have appointed the wrong man to the task.' He reached for his hat and gloves.
'Stay,' said Stanton. 'State your business, sir. How can I be of service to the Ministry of Retaliation?'
'Let me ponder. Have you considered why we now have a Minister of Umbra Affairs when we never had any such before?' The fellow perched beside his hat on the edge of a rough chopping table.
'I know full well why. The Greynhym offensive mu –'
'Because we no longer trust them,' Larkwing spoke over him. 'My own agency impressed on Pitt the need for action regarding Umbra. The First Lord agreed but unfortunately determined that the possibility of an Umbra agent working with the French was such a threat, it must needs answer to the Parliament. So, here you are, Stanton. That is why you exist; such is your genesis.'
'Working with the French? An Umbra? That is not possible – it must surely contradict the terms of the Queen's Treaty.'
'Ah yes, the Treaty. Have you ever read it?'
'Of course not, it was written in Hedge, a lang–'
There was a scuffling outside. Stanton imagined that Midden was dusting or polishing the sheen off some ornaments there, but Larkwing motioned for Stanton to keep speaking and crept to the parlour door.
'... a language that has been neither spoken or written to any great degree for nearly four hundred years.' Stanton rumbled on as best he could. 'Although, I believe that Hedge documents are cultivated rather than writ.'
Larkwing snatched at the scullery door, yanking it open to reveal an empty corridor and an open kitchen door. Stanton imagined he heard a giggle somewhere in the house. Having stared about, Larkwing returned to the table, picked up his hat and gloves and said: 'Perhaps you would honour me with a turn about the square, Minister.'
Marksfayre was not busy. Two carriages trundled between the fine houses there and the weather was brisker than either.
Stanton buttoned the coat Goldry had thrust at him upon leaving. As they entered a gate in the railings around the small park at the square's centre, a raggedy urchin of nine or ten detached himself from a bush under the nearest horse chestnut and ran to Larkwing's side.
'Visitors?' the Ministry of Retaliation agent asked the urchin.
'Just you, mister, and Lady R. She's still in t'ouse.' He stretched out a hand as grubby as his accent.
The boy received a penny. 'Keep watching,' he was ordered.
They walked on towards the square's centre. 'Urchins provide commendable intelligence,' said Larkwing. 'A penny buys you their loyalty and the more beggarly they look, the more invisible they are to gentry. As a source, they are second only to correspondence; for everyone writes, Stanton. They commit their innermost secrets to diaries, to letters; to twice-removed aunts, to confidants, to children, to lost paramours; to the penny-post boys, who let us pillage their content and then return them to their envelopes, seals remade.'
'Waifs and penny-post boys – to these we entrust the preservation of England? I must look again at your Ministry's budgets,' said Stanton. 'To the matter at hand: all talk is of war but surely the new French Republic is too busy with internal frictions to concern itself with us.'
'True, but these events were set in motion at the end of Louis's war in '83. With the Revolution now secured, our support of Brunswick's Prussians at Valmy means the new government in France has declared us their enemy. They no longer intend invasion, but plan to conquer us from within. They aim to inspire rebellion from across The Channel.'
'Naturally, this is spoken of in Government. What has it to do with Umbra?'
'We understand that in the late 1780s the French recruited an Umbra and persuaded him, or, more likely, her, to bring Britannia to its knees.' Larkwing spoke and walked swiftly.
'This is too fantastical, Larkwing. I've yet to meet a Frenchman who believes Umbra even exist, excepting the Marquis de Mont Ferret, and he has more English mutton in him than côtelettes d'agneau.'
'The Marquis, yes, he is of interest to us. If ever a man sailed under a false flag. Stanton, what do you imagine an Umbra working against us might achieve?'
'Well, there are two areas in which the Umbra could do damage...' Stanton considered further, '...untold damage. If they let the Greynhym escape their borders, we lack any means to push them back let alone corral them again.'
'Catastrophe.' Larkwing swung one riding boot at a conker. It bounced away along the path, scattering a bustling dole of doves. 'Plague, a return of all Englishmen to the tyranny of pestilence.'
'Quite.' Stanton could scarcely imagine the carnage. 'And, with revolution in mind, an Umbra could lay waste to Britain's gentry. By killing off the Umbra of those in power, they could un-man all our institutions: state, army, church, land-owners.'
'They would have to be able to identify our Umbra, match them to our most influential people...' Larkwing goaded Stanton to the answer.
'The Book of 500 would be the perfect resource,' Stanton's tinder had caught. 'And Countess Alnwick was taken last night. The means of her taking: the murder of the Borderer, Charon.'
'Alnwick?' Larkwing's march paused, ' another one.'
'Yes, although that was the work of the Greynhym, we believe.'
'The Greynhym, yes, but might they have had help?'
'Well,' said Stanton, 'I confess, I have been wondering why was Charon there alone? What could have induced him to remove his famed armour? Do Greynhym have the guile to set such a trap?'
'Or was the Borderer lured onto their spear-points by an Umbra – an Umbra working for the French?'
'Surely,' Stanton aimed a foot at a still intact chestnut case, but missed, 'the Queen's Treaty allows for no such acts against us. The Umbra take the alliance even more seriously than we do.'
'The Countess makes it ten of The 500 dead in as many months,' Larkwing stepped in front of Stanton, halting them both, and took him by the sleeve. 'In the army, we have lost sixteen significant officers to events in the Other Realm in the same period. That is more than lost in good honest warfare. Many ministries are newly shorn of key functionaries and administrators. Slowly, but surely, our great and good are being struck down by events in the Other Realm. I suggest, Mr Stanton, that the Hedge your Treaty is writ in has already been put to the torch.'
'Why did Pitt not warn me of this when he placed me in post?'
'Two reasons suggest themselves. He, like you, is not wholly convinced, quite adamant that the Treaty binds the Umbra. Secondly, we swore him to secrecy. This matter is too important for mere Parliament. You may be unseated from your rotten borough by a goodly bribe at the next by-election, Stanton. Pitt could be voted down by a rash of Whigs. Also, Pitt has insisted this is not spoken about in Parliament or cabinet. Word would get out, and then...' He spread his hands, their width representing the repercussions of such an outcome.
'So, what is it we must do to discover if this threat is real?'
'You need do nothing, Stanton. You are merely for show. We, on the other hand, are busy. We are focussed on The 500, and those around them, this radical Umbra must be well-connected. We have suspicions about several of them and I have men – well urchins – set to follow their human companions. Mont Ferrer is one such. Today, I undertook only to brief you. Leave all skullduggery to the experts.'
Stanton spun around and began striding back to his house. 'You have briefed me well, sir. I thankee for it,' he shouted over his shoulder.
'Wait. Where do you go?' Larkwing ran a few steps after him.
'To my ministry. I have work to do; real work, at last.'
'Hold, Minister,' Larkwing trotted up to Stanton. 'This is still most secret. What do you propose?'
'I am the man charged with Umbra dealings, and I will not allow this rumour to stand and not investigate it fully. Everyone believes the Greynhym murdered Charon, but if an Umbra was part of their plot, an Umbra whose purpose is to destroy Britain...'
'Perhaps we have underestimated you, Stanton. We thought you adept at looking busy and earnest, sufficiently bustling to have married well. If you are to be our ally in this, and would help us identify this Frenchie traitor, then we must work together.'
'How so?'
'You can move in circles I cannot. As Minister you can legitimately ask questions I would not get answered. Find out all ye can about this other-worldly brood your ministry was named for, but promise me you will guard our secret knowledge and certainly not speak about it to your Umbra.'
'Have no fears on that score.'
'We will talk again when you know more about what you are dealing with.' Larkwing pulled a chequered yellow and scarlet cravat from his pocket. 'If you want us to meet, wear this. My urchins will see it.'
Stanton turned it over with distaste, 'Half of London will see it, I fear; my wife among them.'
'Trust me. There will be still greater trials ahead, Stanton. I wish you good morrow.'