Chapter 37
There were a number of problems with gossip.
Or so Matty was coming to think. He had a list now, tucked on a sheet in the back of his journal.
He was still adding two or three items a day.
Now, he added the points that it was impossible to know whether someone’s attitude had to do with the gossip or not.
He’d been in this meeting for two hours this morning.
It was not as well-run as he’d prefer. In this particular case, it meant there were several points where people began whispering to their nearby neighbours about whatever topic amused them while Greaves, who was running it, clarified specific points with his particular favourites.
Granted, few people were really superb at handling a large meeting.
This one had twenty people in it. That size made it far too easy for people to break off into smaller chats.
A larger meeting needed force of personality, a deep understanding of the actual goals, and enough embedded goodwill that people didn’t make the entire process difficult.
Greaves had none of those. He was relying solely on rank.
It made Matty want to bring the question to supper with Orion, actually.
He’d been impressed already by how Orion did not necessarily understand individual motivations for what people were doing, but he saw the patterns they made clearly.
Especially when it came to anything that involved a focused strategy.
Matty thought whatever was going on today was not focused, rather just the ambient small-mindedness some people persisted in continuing.
Matty himself was seated next to Mirabel Wright.
Lucy Harlow, the department secretary was up by Greaves as the note-taker.
The rest of the people here came from across the relevant departments with an interest in licensing.
Greaves, to his credit, had been interested in the proposal Matty and Claudio had begun working on.
This was an initial gathering to see what pieces might be better aligned.
Matty felt all of them needed review. But of course half the people there had their own ideas.
And Matty himself did not have enough rank to press the conversation forward.
Also, several of them were clearly terrified of what a streamlined approach might do to their rank, status, and power to be petty bureaucrats to those they disliked.
The trick here was that no one— including Matty— was entirely sure how much gossip was actually happening right now.
Claudio’s mother had apparently said absolutely nothing to him about it, not even when they had their usual supper on Sunday.
The various sources at people’s disposal hadn’t heard much.
And those were wide-ranging enough that someone probably would have seen a glimmer.
There had been no blind items in the Trellech Moon or the gossip papers, not yet, at least, but this point in the summer was one of the regular lulls for gossip reporting.
As Matty leaned over to pass a paper to the person on the other side of Mirabel, there was a little snort from his left. “Figures.”
“Pardon?” The thing about having spent five years at Nuremberg was that he could be coldly polite in five languages.
“That you’d be so yielding.” Right. Gossip it was, then.
Along with the fact that people had the oddest ideas about class, status, and what men did in private with other men.
Matty turned back to tilt his head at Frank Wheelwright, in his sixties and known for being both rigid and petty.
He kept impeccable records. That was a point in his favour.
But he did it in a way that made everyone else around him want to go down the other staircase to avoid him.
“Again, pardon? I didn’t realise handing along relevant notes was— what was it, yielding?” He carefully pitched his voice to be clear enough to this end of the table, but angled himself so it shouldn’t carry to the other end and Greaves.
“There’s gossip going around about you. The sort of thing any decent man would want to prove wrong, first thing.” Wheelwright leaned back, as if he’d scored a point.
“Is there? Are you the sort of man who puts any weight on gossip, Wheelwright?” Matty could play this game. Granted, it helped that he’d talked it out at Thursday’s supper, what strategies to try first.
“You know what’s being said, though?” Wheelwright pressed the point.
This was a tactical problem because admitting he knew was one option, and playing dumb was another.
Matty shrugged slightly. “People say all sorts of things. Many of them are entirely true. A few of them slander.” Then he twitched one shoulder.
“I have seen no one venture anything in public that might be termed libel recently. Have you?” There, that was a good way to thread that needle.
It certainly set Wheelwright back for a moment. “Man needs to protect his reputation. Especially you, you’ve not been back long.”
“Six months,” Matty said amiably. “And a few days, but that’s neither here nor there.
Certainly long enough for people to have my measure, and it’s not as if I were new to the Ministry.
I apprenticed here. Plenty of people have whatever view they have of me, long before whatever nonsense is going around. ”
“Is it nonsense? You don’t seem bothered by people thinking you’re a pansy.” So, that class of slurs, then. It was at least one of the less explicit ones. He could feel Mirabel, next to him, shift as if she were considering interrupting.
“People will be people, that’s what I’ve found.
And learned in the war. Some good, some bad, some kind, some nasty.
” Matty shrugged. “Do you have an actual objection, or are you just bored?” He pitched his voice just a little more clearly.
“Pretty sure there’s several projects could use a hand, if you have spare time.
Mirabel, weren’t you saying you were looking for someone to reconcile the inventory lists?
Has to be someone who knows what they’re doing, of course. ”
She came in over his shoulder, though he was expecting it and didn’t flinch. “I do. Mind, whoever does it has to be up to your standard.” That took it further than he’d have expected, but Matty acknowledged it with a slight nod.
Wheelwright put up his hands. “Just trying to give a friendly warning. Before someone does something less friendly.” Threats, then.
Which was, in fact, something of a concern, except for the fact that anyone who tried that on Claudio would find themselves on the losing side in short order.
Matty had been deemed sufficiently competent to be going on with once he’d been provided with a couple of protective talismans to prevent someone getting the element of surprise.
It did remind him to write a note before Greaves called the meeting back to order.
“Who are you writing to? Him?” Wheelwright didn’t want to let it alone.
Matty shrugged. “My duelling trainer. Magni Torham’s been kind enough to offer some time to get me back in fighting trim.
Not something I could do in the courts in Germany, of course.
And I am the sort of man who feels better for being sure of what my body’s up for.
Mens sana in corpore sano and all that.” Wheelwright’s Latin was clearly not up to it.
Matty added amiably. “Healthy mind in a healthy body. They do go together. Anyway, an extra session this week or next would be a fine thing.”
Having it get out that he was in active training absolutely wouldn’t hurt.
Even if the reason he was doing so was at least ninety per cent about wanting to keep up with Claudio in bed and give him a bit of fun in the duelling salle.
Eventually. The latter was a lofty ambition, but it was good to have a few of those.
At that point, Greaves got everyone back in order with a loud “Ahem” from the other end of the table.
The rest of the meeting went predictably, though Matty was able to make several practical suggestions that got a reasonable amount of agreement.
By which he meant that about a third of the table agreed and a third wasn’t bothering to argue.
Enough people agreed it was worth someone else doing for Matty to take it on.
As the meeting broke up, Matty took a minute to get his notes together. Harlow paused, on her way by. “Cup of tea?”
“Pardon?” Same word as before, but now he was honestly puzzled.
“Wheelwright’s a bully. I’ve an idea what he was saying— hobby of reading lips, though I always miss half of it. But the way his face was. Tea?”
Matty could feel the aftermath starting to hit. He closed his eyes for a moment. “Up in the office, if you wouldn’t mind putting the kettle on up there?”
“Glad to.” They walked up together, not saying much, but having someone with him made it easier to seem like everything was normal. At the door to the little kitchen space that had a sink and the kettle, he paused in the door. “How obvious was it to everyone else?”
“The way people were reacting, you handled yourself well. And Mirabel doesn’t mind. She cares about your work. She thinks that’s grand. She’s been pushing for you to get a promotion. Just as much now as a couple of weeks ago. Maybe more.”
“Huh.” Matty nodded. “Need to sit down for a bit.”
She nodded at him. He went to sink down into his desk chair and write a quick note to Claudio, telling him to pass on whatever he felt necessary to anyone else.
And yes, Matty would be appropriately cautious.
Harlow came back in seven minutes— long enough for the kettle to boil and the tea to steep.
“Here you go. There was a bit of mint, I remember you like that, in with the tea. Oh, and Hestlebloom’s still got plenty to do. ”
That was good news. The young man had settled in comfortably, at least. His mother was now fairly far up in the Ministry on the diplomatic side, and Hestlebloom turned out to be diligent.
They’d set him up in a tiny office with a lot of records, and he was working through them steadily and competently, with thoughtful questions.
“Ta.” He looked up to find her considering him. “Let me know if I can help you out sometime?”
“You have been considerate.” Harlow tapped a finger on her arm.
“A lot of the men are rather awful about secretaries. Assuming things. That I’m stupid, because I don’t have their job, or because I’m a woman, or both.
Even in Albion, I know it’s worse other places.
My sister was in the ATS, somewhere big, half of them were nasty there. ”
“The sort of ‘don’t worry your pretty little head, let the men deal with it’ nonsense?” Matty asked, cupping his hands around the mug. “Is it telling, then, that I wasn’t awful?”
“Oh, not everyone is. But I’d rather have whatever you are than the awful. Don’t care about the rest of it. That’s your personal life, not your professional one. And they are different, even if you’re the same person.”
Matty looked down at the cup, then back up at her. “I like to think integrity matters, consistency between the two. But yes, I aim for that in how I treat people, what I think is important.”
She hesitated, then said, “Would you show me that indexing charm you were using a couple of weeks ago? It looks like it works much better than the one I know.”
“Learned it from Claudio,” Matty said, but now he could feel himself smiling. “If you don’t mind the source.”
“Not if he knows things like that.” It was, apparently, a very practical consideration. “Is it difficult, though?”
Matty waved a hand. “The theory behind it is pretty dense. Actually doing it isn’t that hard.
Thinking about a schema for the index is important, but I can work through that with you.
” He considered. “Find an hour in my diary for us to get started when you’re ready?
Probably an hour to start, talk through how it works, and then another two or three hours over the following weeks to get into the details, piece by piece.
I might be a lousy teacher. I’ve never done much of it. ”
“You don’t make me feel stupid. I’m glad to try it. If I hate it, I’ll say so?” She was brave about it, at least.
“That works.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m good for most of the next month, but I am taking August fourteenth off. Maybe the morning of the fifteenth, too. Don’t know yet.”
Her eyebrows went up, but she nodded. “I’ll make sure we don’t have anything scheduled then that’s new that needs you. Enjoy your tea, yeah?”
Then she left him alone, in a pleasant quiet that felt warm rather than sharp-edged and jagged. He added a note to his comments to Claudio about it and focused on his tea.