The Mortality of Queens

16 - Astir in the Coffeehouse

Stanton

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Umbra of note

Hannah Lightfoot and her human ally King George III

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The gaggle outside Pickadills Coffeehouse was several bodies deep. They thronged all around the curve of the main window, causing an obstruction to Jermyn Street. Stanton had to force his way through to Pickadills' entrance.

He had learnt of his wife's whereabouts from Midden. On hearing the maid's answer, he asked again more volubly, 'She is where?'

He had dashed inside and re-emerged from his home a short moment later sporting new neckwear and headed to the coffeehouse.

Outside it, ladies in wide frocks and small hats, gentlemen and waifs and strays, high-born and low, moved reluctantly aside as Stanton entered their heave. Umbra gawped and grumbled into nearby ears. Stanton was a subscriber to the Pickadills Coffeehouse at twenty-eight shillings a year and visited it often for its enlightened selection of London papers and journals, with two more from Edinburgh, plus Hunts Weekly Examiner.

Pickadills' heavy door opened with its customary complaint and he stepped into the lamp-lit interior, noting the unusually low-pitched hum. Older gentlemen edged the room in conventional, somewhat crusty, attire. They stared out from beneath long wigs, tricorn hats and knitted brows, behind slender pipes and affronted expressions.

There was none of the prevailing rowdy debate on war and battles – either in our world or the other – nor any bellicose arguments over the Rights of Man as set out by Tom Paine, defended by Mary Wollstonecraft and nourished by events in France. Instead, the gentlemen shifted uneasily behind wide-open journals, decked with headlines on the abolishment of the French monarchy. Papers notwithstanding, most gazes slid, instead, onto the central table in the room.

It was there that Stanton strode, to be greeted by his wife with warmth and Lady Rochester with a complicit smile. A coffee pot sat on the bare table between them and several stained shallow white cups testified to the time they had already spent there. Neither Capu or Twoshrews had joined them in the excursion.

'What is that vulgarity about your neck, Sebastian?' Isabella turned to Lady R. 'It was not there when he left me this morning, madam, I assure you.'

Stanton fingered the hurriedly tied cravat, 'It is... of no importance.'

'There is mention of us in Lloyds Evening Post, Sebastian,' Isabella, pointed to a newspaper in Lady R's lap. 'It is in relation to the death of Countess Alnwick and the fact that there now exist ten vacancies for elevation to The Five Hundred. Lady R thinks we may make The Book's next edition and recommends that we should politic a little to add energy to our cause.'

'I politic more than enough already, Isabella.'

His wife turned to Lady Rochester and said, 'You see, I told you I would be in trouble for venturing here. Now I am "Isabella" for my trespass on space reserved for gentlemen. It is a scolding.'

'Not for my sake, Isabella,' said Stanton, pulling a seat up close so he could speak softly, 'but these gentlemen pay a high sum each year to sit quietly in this coffeehouse to study their papers. Your appearance here, so admirably and formidably gowned, is causing a commotion.'

'On the contrary, Sebastian, there was noise aplenty before we entered, a clamour of argument. Since we have sat here to make a quiet study of the papers, everything has been much hushed.'