An Approach. Diplomacy from the Shadows [Attn. Engellex]

[Anonymous]

“Well sir.” An Engellexic man in a trenchcoat stood next to a senior diplomat from the First Republic waiting in a queue for a quick breakfast sandwich. The man paid no attention to him, as it was not exactly a usual way to address a man. Noticing how the man did not wish to speak with him he decided to act a bit more cloak and dagger. “I believe you dropped this.” He handed the senior diplomat a letter and walked away. The senior diplomat unsure what to do with the unmarked letter opened it.

<< Sir,

Today there is a dialogue on the Long Sea that has no input from the Engellexic world. This meeting is a plot to create a Gallo-Germanian hegemony over the Long Sea region and enforce their vision of how trade, military transit, and other aspects of the region must be engaged in. I represent a stakeholder concerned with this region and believe that this initiative bypasses the prior Engellexic appeal to multilateral cooperation. Engellexic norms on transit through the seas ought to be respected, and it is my job to ensure that we cooperate on this topic.

You may meet with my handlers in the Great Engell Tea Shoppe in Hammersmith tomorrow if this topic interests you.

Mr. X>>

 

[Great Engellex]

Elmus William Black lounged in the middle of a not particularly long sofa and was content to read aloud from Liberty, a Hammersmith publication. To his right he had neatly relinquished his black overcoat, fedora hat and cane; to his left, a glinting red apple balanced proudly on a white cotton napkin. But for two vacant chesterfield armchairs, there remained no more room.

The Great Engell Tea Shoppe was different, a bombilating exchange of pounds for butter or pounds of butter if you fancied. Lady Arabella Rowbottom presided over the establishment with a matron-like caricature, as though a fiefdom personal to her - it was; Rowbottom was no lady however, and the Great Engell Tea Shoppe was no tea shop. The bouncing lunacy of the treasured cherubs of the St. Mungo School of Mixed (dear ones), small patrons of regular attendance and peculiarity whose dashing blazers and grey shorts endeared many a number of virgin tourist to part with a sundae of butterscotch and a penny fifty, absolutely undiscovered to the artful act of their spirited dodge out that door with a toot toot, for the tourist loot loot.

The St. Mungo School of Mixed is a concern of fiction, not of a value too biblical, for there is no such school in the metropolis of Hammersmith, or indeed the entire Thaumantic. What is a saint anyhow? Lady Rowbottom will gladly promise to its existence. It absolutely does, I promise you. Look here this blazer - Saint Mungo's that is. Proper school, upstanding repute. You'll shake the poor lad to tears if you carry on. Better buy him a butterscotch now, ain't you? Else he be reduced to tears at your funny accusations. You're a sweet love, all water under a bridge it is. Where you from anyhow my love? Exotic, very nice that is. You best be on your way, more to see, much to do. Bye love.

The pinched gold, silver and everything else did twinkle with the melodious metallic clang and affectionate gleam of the last sunshine. Her roving weighing eyes was bereft of any honest sentiment for the boys and girls, and, having slid across the counter a brown box of respectable leftovers abandoned on that day by the tourists, told the lot of them where they could go. Without failure, and always under the dim light of lamp at closing.

One o'clock, remarked Elmus William Black, apparently finding the time through the old window with the sun-strained eyes of his young man.

The early afternoon bathed this front corner of the Great Engell in a warming pool of light; bright on his brown wingtips and dull on the black double-breasted three-piece. He continued to read, the words, murmurous and subtly inflected with Elephant and Castle vitality.

He held his acquaintance in an era of silence by lifted hand and pointed finger, permitting them to pick a chair and be comfortable, and he to complete his article.

It fooled me, he concluded with a fluttered precision of his hands to close and fold his newspaper down. Looks very good, large parties for the Lord Protector all right.

Anyhow, suppose we better understand each other on this here letter.

 

[Anonymous]

The location was an odd selection, but it was a location. A selection that clearly was made at the top for reasoning unknown to her. She walked up to the front door and opened it. Wearing a cherry red dress with a dark blue peacoat open breasted to let the unexpected heat from the sun not warmer her up too much, the wind from the warmth of the building swayed her dress slightly. She held the door open for the man that walked in with her. The man himself in a beige trenchcoat with a beige fedora. The woman went to speak with Lady Rowbottom. While the man made his presence known seated near the astute and stylish Mr. Black positioned on the sofa.

“Anyhow, suppose we better understand each other on this here letter,” said Mr. Black. The man who had slipped off his trenchcoat to reveal a navy colored three piece suit, draped his jacket over the back of the chair and put his hat on the table. The man spoke with a strange almost made up sounding Engellish accent. It was posh-like, but certainly not native. “I am most afraid that I am not sure what letter it is that you speak of. Of course, I’ve just come to visit you, my friend. Perhaps talk some politics and get a feeling for how you think our business should be going in the next months with all this tragic conflict spreading about the seas. But do finish what you are reading. It is so rude of me to intrude so suddenly when a man wishes to read the papers.” The man straightened his tie as Mr. Black completed his article.

His partner had returned with some butterscotch and placed them on the table. She picked up the fedora and brushed it off. “Now I do hope you are not being too cloak and dagger Harry,” she remarked taking off her coat and also draping over the back of her chair. Bringing two people to this meeting was a powerplay of sorts. To outnumber the opposition rather than to make them feel equitable. The purpose of which was really not something nefarious, but something strategic in hopes that they could achieve something groundbreaking, and do so in a manner that was covert. Harry nodded towards the woman, “absolutely my dear Matilda. I would not wish make our proposal of a business partnership so difficult to comprehend.” Matilda smirked and shook her head. She took a sip of the butterscotch. Her face not very impressed with the level of sweetness. Not that it was not sweet nor fatty enough, in fact it was too much so. She wished they had been assigned to visit a cafe with coffee instead.

 

[Great Engellex]

Now look here.. Harry, he said without enthusiasm. Suppose you misunderstood?

Always an interesting place, filled with interesting people who live interesting lives. Cannot be said interesting things concern me, suppose they do you? Elmus Black explained, then suggested coolly.

How are you Matilda? He smiled reassuringly, with a radiating quality of brilliant white. You don't like it? He followed with immediate insistence. The butterscotch is unimportant.

 

[Anonymous]

Matilda nodded, “Yes, of course sir. The butterscotch is perhaps a bit too rich for my palette. I’m much obliged for your manners though. I’m quite right thank you. Don’t mind Harry, he’s never going to play with his friends nicely. Harry, be a sweetie and fetch me a water will you?” Harry shrugged and sighed. “Yes, dearest. You are my flower and my sunshine.” Harry exhaled as he got up and walked to meet Lady Rowbottom.

Matilda shook her head and smiled at Mr. Black. “Don’t mind poor Harry, he will not even tell his dearest what he really wants and when he really wants it. A lad will fall frustrated if they cannot speak their mind, much less get to the point.” Harry by this point in time came back with three mugs full of water. “I brought you one sir, in the event you may also be parched—” Matilda interrupted him, “Now that we’re all together let me get to the point.” She took a sip of water from one of the mugs to help wash away the richness of the butterscotch. She did not care to waste much time, and hoped that the meeting would determine here and now if she needed to get up and walk away, returning to her capital with bad news. She would not test Mr. Black’s patience, as Harry seemed to hope to take the man out to five course dinner enjoy his company over a game of cards. Not the business anyone hoped to achieve here.

Matilda giving Harry a bit of glance before she began, “As you fully know, we are merely representatives of a greater plot. It is my intention to forward to you a proposal that tests the waters of greater cooperation between a nation that is not Gallo-Germanian, and of course concerned with the events of the Long Sea. Trade is deeply concerned with this region, and the events that have come to pass there With much despair we did not engage in your collaborative works, but of course share concerns and of course the spirit. If I could be so inclined, our idea of the seas and what they mean to our people is shared. With the most recent events from home, I have been told the clock wishes to turn, counter clockwise so to speak. We wish to engage in a secretive alliance to maintain the high seas free for commerce and of course the common defense.” Her own words gave her some goosebumps. She, not Harry, had the executive right to agree to an alliance. Harry was there to play a numbers game, and play a character role that she was not if her approach was not working.

 

[Great Engellex]

Elmus Black scrutinised the two for some minutes, until an earlier point necessitated a firm comment. A ghastly error, he said. The views of the Republic on that subject are - as you say - well known and, suppose I set aside my own personal view, there is inclined questioning of that wisdom that would see here this Republic pander to the shrill of frightened nations.

It has become more clear in Parlement that the cost of policing the Long Sea would be an unacceptably inappropriate occupation of the one-hundred-and-five billion pounds spent on the Republic Navy per annum, a great many times more than the cocksucking nations of that region would see fit and capable to support our shared efforts with. The degree to which the absented effort, of the government you represent, may or may not have undermined the consideration of the Republic's diplomatic energies may have been presented to you as more concerning than incompetent leadership. The Republic Navy does not have the experience to draw conclusions on our diplomacy.

But I need to stop you. I am concerned for the taxes and the payer, the sanctioned robbery of the free citizen, and our friends.

The Republic's sense of paternity would be offended at the intimacy of this agreement, Matilda, but you would find within it an advocate for a wider alliance with our friends in Westernesse.

Can we do something about that? Or would you call it off?

 

[Anonymous]

Matilda knew what Mr. Black meant. She also noted the speech to which Mr. Black fully understood the angle from which she came. Was the appearance of cover even worth continuing to play? Perhaps so, it would be awkward to leave character mid-fight. The position espoused was something that the she came to expect to some degree. The First Republic never was one to engage in just binding and intimate relationships. Surely not with those that did not carry the same blood. She was however skeptical to the broader and wider relationship. The wider friends of Westernesse were more difficult to understand than just the First Republic alone.

Matilda feared that this point of contention would be rubicon. To cross it would mean just as much as to abstain. Perhaps Mr. Black knew. She has been silent for what felt an eternity. She studied the butterscotch before her, the little floating bubbles of surface tension refusing to pop. This venture would not pop either, “Mr. Black, I’m quite aware of the costs, both to the purse of your free people, but also to the region itself. That cost is something that weighs more than the weight of gold, and casts itself in steel. Whether it should sink or float would only be the question of our ambitions and our belief. I cannot say that I disapprove of a great family for this region, but I cannot speak for neither for your progeny nor the greater concerns of my employer.

“What I can say with confidence is that I would not call our proposed relationship off. The position of who I represent can be likened to a woman marrying into the family of a widower of which children already exist. How rude of me discount their opinions and existence. Yet with my position now known, how is it that you feel Mr. Black? Will you still take this girl to the ball?”