Morgan's Run Page 27

  There were knacks and tricks, his team discovered from sheer experience. The bucket was prone to lift off the bottom and had to be kept down with a pole put in exactly the right place, which was the top of the iron ring, only three inches wide. A matter of sense and feel in water owning no visibility thanks to churning mud. Four men worked the davit and rope, one man the winch, and one man the pole keeping the bucket down. The brute force was almost all on the davit, though the pole man had to be as strong as he was skillful. Mr. Partridge having done and said nothing, Richard was left to sort out the team. Jimmy Price on the winch, which required the least brawn. Bill, Will and Neddy on the davit, Taffy on the rope, and himself on the pole.

  Slowly, slowly, slowly their speed increased, as did the amount of ballast in the bucket. When they achieved their twenty buckets in a six-hour day a week after they had started, a genial Mr. Partridge broke out six big tankards of small beer, a pat of butter and six one-pound loaves of fresh, yeasty bread.

  “I knew ye were good when I set eyes on ye. Leave men to find their own way, I always says. I get a bonus of five pounds for every load of ballast I deliver to the Warren—ye rub my back and I will rub yours. Give me more than twenty buckets a day and I will give ye lunch—a quart of small beer and a pound of good bread each. Ye’re all thinner than ye were a week ago, cannot have that. I have a reputation to look after.” He stroked the side of his nose reflectively. “Mind, could not buy ye lunch every day.”

  “We might be able to contribute funds,” said Richard. “As a Bristol man, I know the smell of that tobacco—Ricketts. Must be very expensive in Woolwich—even in London, I daresay. It may be possible for me to have some of Ricketts’s best sent to you, Mr. Partridge, if ye can give me an address. I fear that were it to go to Ceres, Mr. Sykes would have it.”

  “Well, well!” Mr. Partridge looked tickled. “Find me just one shilling every day, and I will provide lunch. And send the tobacco to me at the Ducks and Drakes tavern in Plumstead.”

  At first Ike Rogers and his team did not fare happily, but after a few conferences with Richard and his men they quickened their dredging and came to the same kind of arrangement with their dredgeman, a Kentishman from Gravesend.

  The worst feature of the work was its filthiness. From hair of head to soles of feet, they were plastered in blackish, stinking mud; it coated the chain as it ran waist-high along the platform, it dripped from the bucket, it splashed everywhere as the bucket was emptied. By the end of that first week the brand-new barge looked the twin of any of the older rigs.

  When Richard realized that once a day two of them would have to descend into the ballast compartment to shovel the gluey mud and its grisly inclusions away from the mound under the bucket, he made a decision.

  “Has anybody a sore foot? A cut, a scratch, a blister?”

  “Aye, me,” said Taffy. “Corn looking nasty, Da.”

  “Then tonight after we wash I will give ye some of my salve, but it means that ye cannot dig until the foot is better. I am not going into that slime in my shoes. In fact, as soon as it gets a little warmer, I will ask Mr. Partridge”—avidly listening—“if we may put our shoes on his deck and work in bare feet. In the meantime, we do our turns on the shovels in bare feet.”

  At least they could wash, and did so every evening the moment they were let into the Ceres orlop; for the non-Bristolians the sight of what the Thames dredge brought up was horrifying enough for them to be eager to emulate Richard—strip off, soap and wash at the pump, muddy chains, fetters and all. And they had a nice arrangement with William Stanley from Seend, who had Mikey wash their clothes during the day. Wash them all, thanks to Mr. Duncan Campbell the canny Scotch contractor.

  For that worthy had issued new clothing—he did this about once a year—to the denizens of his academies four days after the men from Gloucester had arrived: two pairs of coarse, heavy linen trowsers, two checkered linen shirts of the same weight, and one unlined linen jacket. The trowsers, the Gloucester men discovered to their delight, might feel like hacksaws along their seams, but they came down past their ankles, though on Richard and Ike they were shorter. Ike’s height had shrunk several inches, but due to their newness in Ceres, no one save his Gloucester companions had noticed, and mum was the word when he switched to shoes.

  Wearing trowsers, the men of ordinary height did not have to pad their fetter cuffs, and did not need to wear stockings to keep out the cold Thames winds. Richard, a dab hand with a sewing needle thanks to Lizzie Lock, obtained enough cloth off the ends of Jimmy’s trowsers to add to his own, while Ike paid Stanley a mug of gin for his offcuts and had Richard sew them on. What a wonderful invention trowsers were! Theirs were rust-colored, hard-wearing, eminently washable and differently constructed from breeches, which came only to the knees. Whereas breeches opened at the waist on a broad flap held by buttons along the waistband, trowsers opened up the front seam with buttons in a vertical row from a man’s genitals to his waist. A great deal easier to take a piss in too.

  * * *

  Mr. James Thistlethwaite arrived on the second Sunday after they were admitted to Ceres. He appeared in the doorway warmly shaking Mr. Sykes’s hand, stepped across the threshold and stared at the crimson prison in disbelief.

  “Jem! Jem!”

  They embraced unashamedly, then held each other off to look. Close enough to ten years had gone by since last they met, and those ten years had wrought many changes in both men.

  To Richard, Mr. Thistlethwaite looked mighty prosperous. His wine red suit was of the finest cloth, his buttons mohair, his head bewigged, his hat trimmed with gold braid, his fob gold, his watch gold, his black top boots absolutely gleaming. The paunch was noble, the face fuller and therefore less lined than it used to be, though the grog blossoms on his bulbous nose had flowered to an empurpled perfection. Beneath the shock, the look in his watery, bloodshot blue eyes was full of love.

  To Mr. Thistlethwaite, Richard was like two men moving within each other, one surfacing briefly, the other taking his place for an equally short span of moments. The old Richard and the new, inextricably intertwined. Christ, he was handsome! How had he managed that? The stubble of hair seemed actually to have turned blacker than its old very dark brown, and his skin, weathered though it was, had the same flawless look ivory did. He was shaven and very clean, and the Sunday shirt open on his chest showed the ridges and columns of fatless muscle. Did he not feel the cold? This blood-red chamber was freezing, yet he wore no coat and seemed comfortable. His shoes and stockings were clean—oh, the fetters! Chains on patient, peaceful Richard Morgan. That did not bear thinking of. In his grey-blue Morgan eyes lay most of the change; they had used to be a little dreamy, a little smiling in a serious way, and always very gentle of expression. Now they were more directly focused on whatever he looked at, did not dream, did not smile, and were definitely not gentle of expression.

  “Richard, how much you have grown! I had expected all kinds of changes, but not that.” Mr. Thistlethwaite pinched the bridge of his nose and blinked.

  “William Stanley from Seend, this is Mr. James Thistlethwaite,” Richard said to a wizened, tiny little man who hovered. “Now give us some elbow room. Everybody leave us in peace, hear? I will do the introductions later. Privacy,” he said to Jem, “is the scarcest commodity aboard Ceres, but it can be obtained. Sit down, do!”

  “Ye’re the head man!” Jem said in wonder.

  “No, I am not. I refuse to be. It is just that occasionally I have to be a trifle forceful—but we all do that when provoked. The head man is a notion full of sound and fury, and I am no more a talker now than I was in Bristol. Nor do I want to lead any man other than myself. Needs must, Jem, is all. They are sometimes like sheep, and I would not have them go to the slaughter. Save for Will Connelly, another Bristolian from Colston’s under a good Head, they have little skill in using their wits. And the true difference between Will Connelly and me can best be summed up as Cousin James-the-druggist. Had I not kn
own him and had he not been so good to me, the Richard Morgan ye see now would not exist. I would be like those poor Liverpudlian Irish down there, a fish out of water.” He smiled brilliantly, leaned forward to take Mr. Thistlethwaite’s hand. “Now tell me all about yourself. Ye look exceeding grand.”

  “I can afford to look exceeding grand, Richard.”

  “Did ye marry money like any true Bristolian?”

  “Nay. Though I do make my money from women. Ye’re looking at a man who—under a nom de plume, naturally—writes novels for the delectation of ladies. To read novels is the latest female passion—comes of all this teaching them to read but not letting them do anything, y’see. Between bookshops, episodes published serially in magazines and the lending libraries, I do amazing better than ever I did out of lampooning. The counties are stuffed with genteel reading females in every vicarage, parsonage, manor and hotel, so my audience is as big as Britain, for ladies in Scotland and Ireland read also. Not only that, but I am read in America too.” He grimaced. “I do not, however, drink Cave’s rum anymore. In fact, I have eschewed rum entirely. I now drink only the best French brandy.”

  “And are ye married these days?”

  “Nay again. I have two mistresses, both of whom are married to other, lesser men. And that is enough about me. I want to hear about you, Richard.”

  Richard shrugged. “There is little to tell, Jem. I spent three months in the Bristol Newgate, exactly a year in Gloucester Gaol, and am now two weeks into however long I shall be aboard Ceres. In Bristol I sat and read books. In Gloucester I lumped stones. On Ceres I dredge the Thames bottom, which is a nothing to one weaned on Bristol mud at low tide. Though all of us find it hard when we bring up the corpse of a baby.”

  They passed then to the important consideration of money and how to safeguard hoards of gold coins.

  “Sykes will be no trouble,” said Jem. “I slipped him a guinea and he rolled over to present me with his belly like any other cur. Be of good cheer. I will come to an arrangement with Mr. Sykes to buy ye whatever ye need by way of food or drink. That goes for your friends too. Ye look as trim as a sloop, but ye’re thin.”

  Richard shook his head. “No to the food, Jem, and small beer only. There are almost a hundred men in here, give or take the few who die regularly. Each man watches hawkish to see how much the pursers dish out to every other man. All we need to do is preserve our existing money and perhaps beg more from you if it becomes necessary. We have been lucky enough to encounter an ambitious dredgeman and the Thames is full of bum boats. So we eat well at midday on our dredge for tuppence a man, everything from salt fish to fresh vegetables and fruit. Ike Rogers and his youngsters are succeeding in taming their dredgeman too.”

  “It is hard to credit,” said Jem slowly, “but ye’re full of purpose and almost enjoying this. ’Tis the responsibility.”

  “ ’Tis belief in God sustains me. I still have faith, Jem. For a convict, I have had remarkable good luck. A woman called Lizzie Lock in Gloucester, who kept my belongings safe and taught me how to ply a needle. She turned cartwheels over the hat, by the way, and I cannot thank ye enough. We miss the women, for reasons I explained to ye in one of my letters, as I remember. I have kept my health and sharpened my wits. And here in this assemblage of womanless brutes, we have managed to carve a niche for ourselves, thanks to an avaricious jockey and an ambitious dredgeman who combines Methodism with rum, tobacco and laziness. Queer bedfellows, but I have known queerer.”

  His dripstone was standing on the table near him, and, it seemed absently, he put his hand out to stroke it. A curious hush and murmur arose among those in the crimson chamber, intrigued enough at the advent of a visitor to watch in hang-dog envy. But the reaction of all those men to Richard’s idle gesture was a mystery Mr. Thistlethwaite’s sensitive nose itched to explore.

  “Provided he has a little money, avarice is a convict’s best friend,” Richard went on, putting his hand back on top of its fellow. “Here, men come far cheaper than thirty pieces of silver. ’Tis folk like the Northumbrians and Liverpudlians I feel sorriest for. They have not a penny between them. So they mostly die of disease or pure hopelessness. Some of them it seems God has a purpose for—they survive. And the Londoners upstairs are astonishing hardy, with all the cunning of starving rats. They live by different rules, I think—perhaps gigantic cities are entire countries in themselves, with their own way of looking at life. Not our way, but I discount a lot of what I hear on the Ceres orlop about the Londoners. The Ceres orlop contains the rest of England. Our gaolers are venal and deviant into the bargain. And then ye must stir the likes of William Stanley from Seend into the mixing bowl. He milks the way this place functions better than a dairymaid her pet cow. And we all of us from Hanks and Sykes through the rum coves, snitches, hicks, cullies and boozers to the dying wretches on that platform over there walk a rope across a pit of fire. One inch too far either way, and we fall.” He drew a breath, surprised at his own eloquence. “Though no one in his right mind could call what we play a game, it does share some things in common with a game. There is plenty of wit involved, but also some luck, and it seems God has given me luck.”

  It was during this speech that Mr. Thistlethwaite suddenly understood much about Richard Morgan that had always teased and tormented him. Richard had spent his life in Bristol as a raft, pushed and pulled at the direction, sometimes the whim, of others. Despite his griefs and disasters, he had remained that passive raft. Even William Henry’s disappearance had not provided him with a rudder. What Ceely Trevillian had done for him was to pitch him into an ocean wherein a raft would founder. An ocean wherein Richard perceived his brethren as incapable of floating, and therefore took them upon his own shoulders. Prison had given him a star to steer by, and his own will had swelled sails he did not even know he possessed. Because he was a man who had to have someone to love more than he loved himself, he had undertaken the task of saving his own people, those he had brought with him from Gloucester Gaol into alien and storm-tossed seas.

  After the introductions had been performed, the fourteen convicts (William Stanley from Seend and Mikey Dennison had to be included) settled to hear what Mr. James Thistlethwaite could tell them about what might happen to them.

  “Originally,” said the purveyor of reading delights for most of Britain’s literate women, “those on board Ceres were destined for a place called Lemaine, which, as I understand, is an island in the midst of a great African river about the size of the island of Manhattan in New York. Where undoubtedly all of ye would have died of some pestilence within a year. ’Tis Edmund Burke ye have to thank for striking Lemaine and all Africa from the list of places thought possible transportation destinations.

  “Aided and abetted by Lord Beauchamp, last March and April Burke launched an attack on Mr. Pitt’s schemes to rid England of its felons. Better, cried Burke, to hang the lot of ye than ship ye off to some place where death would be a great deal slower and a sight more painful. After the inevitable parliamentary committee of enquiry, Mr. Pitt was forced to abandon Africa, probably forever. Hence attention turned to the suggestion of Mr. James Matra—that Botany Bay in New South Wales might be a good place. Lord Beauchamp had made a huge fuss over the fact that Lemaine Island was outside the limits of English territory in an area the French, the Spanish and the Portuguese all frequent for slaving. This Botany Bay, on the other hand, though it certainly lies outside the limits of English territory, is also not anybody else’s territory. So why not kill two birds with the same stone? The raven—a far bigger, nastier feathered specimen—is the likes of you, costing England vast sums with little or no return. The quail—a demure and most toothsome little sweeting—is the possibility that, after a few years of outlay, Botany Bay will turn a fat profit for England.”

  Richard got out a book and tried to show the group whereabouts Botany Bay was on one of Captain Cook’s maps, but the only faces to display any kind of comprehension belonged to the literate men.

&n
bsp; Mr. Thistlethwaite tried. “How far is it from London to, say, Oxford?” he asked.

  “A long way,” offered Willy Wilton.

  “Fifty miles or thereabouts,” said Ike Rogers.

  “Then Botany Bay is two hundred times farther from London than Oxford is. If it takes a week for a wagon to journey from London to Oxford, then it would take two hundred weeks for the same wagon to make the journey from Oxford to Botany Bay.”

  “But wagons cannot travel on water,” Billy Earl objected.

  “No,” said Mr. Thistlethwaite patiently, “but ships can, and much faster than wagons. Four times as fast at least. That means a ship will take a year to go from London to Botany Bay.”

  “That is excessive,” said Richard, frowning. “Ye should know that from Bristol days, Jem. In a good wind a ship can sail near two hundred miles in a single day. Allowing for time spent in ports of call as well as periods of standing and tacking, the time might be as few as six months.”

  “Ye’re splitting hairs, Richard. Be it a mere sixmonth or a whole twelve-month, Botany Bay is not only on the far side of the globe, but on its underside as well. And I have had enough. I am off.” Suddenly sapped, Mr. Thistlethwaite rose to his feet.

  As well that they are the infinitely patient Richard’s burden! Were they mine, he thought, banging loudly on the door to be let out, I would side with Edmund Burke and hang the lot of them. I can see neither rhyme nor reason in this Botany Bay experiment. It smacks of utter desperation.