A Spectacle Of Corruption Part 4

At that moment we pa.s.sed an alleyway hidden in shadows. I turned toward it and grabbed Littleton, pus.h.i.+ng him two or three feet inside. As he stumbled, I took from my pocket a pistol and held it to him, not two inches from his face. "I am paid for what I do because, if called to do so, I will not hesitate to discharge my lead into Greenbill's body. I may have to strangle him or crush his feet or hold his hand in a fire. Will you do those things, Mr. Littleton?"

To my surprise, he appeared neither frightened nor horrified, only slightly bewildered. "I must say, Weaver, you know how to make yourself understood. I'll take my odd s.h.i.+lling and be happy that I am asked to set no one ablaze."

I returned my pistol to my pocket, and we resumed our walk. Littleton, in an instant, appeared to have entirely forgotten the whole exchange. He was like a dog who, a quarter hour after receiving a beating from its master, lies contentedly at the same man's feet.

"Ufford brung all this on himself, if you want my opinion," he said to me. "Him with his politics and suchlike."

I felt myself grow tense. "How do his politics come into play?"

"You don't think he's taken a sudden interest in the poor for no reason, do you? With the election nigh upon us, he's doing what he can for the Tories."

Here was a new twist. I had thought this was but a matter of a wellborn priest pecking his beak into matters none of his concern. If Ufford's troubles related to the election, however, I understood that things might be more complicated than I had at first realized.

"Tell me how these porters connect with the election," I said. I knew little enough of these things, only that the Whigs were the party of new wealth, men without t.i.tles or history, men who did not want the Church or the crown to rule over them. The Tories were the party of old families and the traditionalists, those who wanted to see the Church restored to its former strength, who wanted to see the power of the crown strengthened and Parliament weakened. The Tories claimed to want to destroy the corruption of the new wealth, but many believed they only wanted the new wealth to disappear so their money could be returned to the old families. I was apt to confuse the parties until my friend Elias explained to me, with his cynical wit, that the Whigs were worms and the Tories were tyrants.

It nevertheless always surprised me how strong was the support for the Tories among the poor and disaffected. The Whigs might offer the laboring man the better dream for improvement. The Whigs had fought to remove restrictions to advancement by altering the oaths of loyalty men must swear to hold government or munic.i.p.al positions. Now any Protestant, not just a Church of England man, could hold such offices. They weakened the power of the Church and Church courts so that religious men could no longer hold back those merchants who grew too big for their breeches-or their parish. But the Tories remained a bulwark of tradition to stand against the tide of change. They promoted the idea of a simpler and more benevolent time when men of power protected those of little wealth. They winked at old beliefs like magic and witchcraft and the power of the king's touch to cure scrofula. The Whigs might make a man feel as though he could be more than he was, but the Tories made him feel pleased to be an Englishman.

From the look on Littleton's face, I wasn't sure he understood as much as that. "Well, if I'm to be honest, I don't quite know of Ufford's interests," he told me. "You would think that porters are porters and tobacco men are but tobacco men, but Ufford seems to think it's all political. I heard him say that he wants to see the Tories win Westminster and he'll face the devil himself before he sees a Whig returned. You know how it is with these Church men. The Tories promise them that they'll put them back in power, give them the right to tell us when to p.i.s.s and when to s.h.i.+t. There's nothing quite so near to a priest's heart than the Tory cause."

I spat into the street. One of the Tories who stood to win Westminster was Griffin Melbury, Miriam's husband. I little troubled myself about the details of politics, and not living within the boundaries of Westminster, I cared less for that election, but I understood one thing with certainty: I wished Melbury nothing but failure. Why had Miriam married him? Why had she abandoned her nation-and me-for this man who would force her to change her religion? If Ufford's effort to aid the laborers would get Melbury elected, I would prefer to see Ufford hounded and the porters pauperized.

I still winced when I thought of Miriam married to that man. I had never met him or even set eyes upon him, but nonetheless I had a clear image of Melbury in my mind: tall, handsomely proportioned, fine in the face, strong in the calf. He would be charming and easy in the English way. This much I did know of him: He came from an old Tory family of landed wealth, his father and uncles had always sat in Parliament, and he had two brothers in the priesthood. He had served before in a pocket borough, and because he was well connected with certain bishops in the Church of England whose power was strong in Westminster, he had been encouraged to run for a seat in that borough-perhaps the most important in the nation.

Melbury would have to be charming. He had succeeded in convincing Miriam to convert to the Church. She had been married very young to my Uncle Miguel's son, a dour lad who died at sea having hardly known his wife. I had come to be familiar with her during my efforts to discover the facts of my father's death, and in truth I believed that she felt the same love for me that I did for her. But despite what the novelists will tell us, we live in a world more inclined to pragmatic action than romantical ideals. We might sit about with neat little volumes and imagine the blissful love in a cottage, but such ideas are but phantasms. We cannot live them. Instead, we must eat and dress and comport ourselves with companions of our liking. And it is always preferable to live without fear of creditors.

Knowing all of these things to be true, I had nevertheless asked Miriam to marry me, but she had contended that our lives were not compatible. I understood that she had been right, but that did not stop me from asking her again. I stopped after three times, believing that more effort on my part would have only appeared foolish in her eyes and humiliating in mine.

Nevertheless, Miriam and I were ever used to be in each other's company. I had discontinued my requests for her hand, but my desire remained, unarticulated but palpable. She knew it-she could not but know it-and she sought my company all the same. Late one afternoon she had come to my uncle's house for the observance of Havdalah, the close of the Sabbath. I felt there was something more than usual in her attentiveness to me that evening, and by the light of the braided candle, with my head full of sweet scent of the spice box, I felt the heat of her gaze upon my face.

Miriam looked to me astonis.h.i.+ng in her blue gown and matching hat, from which spilled ample dark ringlets. She was a finely proportioned woman and striking in her face, with her Iberian complexion and emerald eyes, but I should have been a fool if it were her looks alone that had rendered me her devotee, for London teemed with countless pretty and accessible women. No, I admired Miriam for her quick wit and lively humor and for her spirit. She had been treated shabbily by fate: married off as a young girl to an introverted boy she hardly knew and I daresay bore no love. Though he was gone within months of their wedding, she had remained the subject of my uncle's management, and benevolent as it was, she had longed for her freedom.

Through no error of her own, Miriam had found herself at the center of the South Sea Company stock mayhem to which I'd connected my father's death. She, however, fared much better than he, and the Company had paid her handsomely for her silence. That payment, in turn, secured her independence, though for a while she maintained a strong loyalty to her deceased husband's parents.

As we sat together that night, the room slowly emptied around us. My aunt, the guests, and finally my uncle too, who knew well what he was about and wanted to see me married to Miriam nearly as much as I did. He left us alone as though there were nothing unusual in his doing so. Miriam might have objected. She might have excused herself in confusion, but she did not. She remained. She called for more wine.

We had begun the evening on chairs at opposite ends of the room, but we had somehow come together on the same sofa. I say somehow, but I lie, for each incremental move closer to her represented the deepest strategy on my part. I would rise to get something and sit myself one position closer. I would drop a b.u.t.ton, leave my seat to pick it up, and sit nearer to her. With each step I measured her reaction, and each time I saw no disapproval.

And it went so until we kissed. I had taken far too much to drink that night, but I recall well how it started. We sat together, only inches apart, and she spoke of some book she had been reading and how it interested her, and I half listened as the wine and my desire rang heavily in my ears. At last, when I could endure no more of it, I reached out with my hand and placed it to her cheek.

She did not pull away from it but rather moved closer, nuzzling me as though she were a cat, and so I leaned in and kissed her.

It lasted but an instant before she rose and pushed herself backward. "What are you doing?" she asked, in the loudest whisper she could muster.

I chose to remain seated, that she might see her alarm was not universally felt. "I was kissing you."

"You mustn't. You know that. Why must I tell you that again?"

"Miriam," I said, "you all but put your request in writing."

She opened her mouth to sting me with some cruel retort but stopped herself, remaining motionless for what seemed an interminable amount of time. I listened to the sound of my own breath and the sound of rolling carriages outside the window as though they were the most interesting things in the world.

"You are right," she said in a whisper, now so soft I could not even be sure she had said what I thought. "You are right, and I am sorry. . . . I must go," she added abruptly and moved toward the door.

I darted out of my seat and grabbed her arm. Not hard, you understand, but I would not have her going. Not now. Not yet.

"Why are you running? You don't want to run, so why do you?"

She shook her head while looking down. It was clear she would not stay, so I let go of her.

"I run," she said at last, "because I don't want to run." She took a breath. "Benjamin, when was the last time someone tried to kill you?"

I had not expected this question, and I nearly laughed. "Only two weeks ago," I said, for a thief I had been tracking had turned on me with a knife. Had I not been alert, I should have been hardly cut-or worse.

"There are so many things I want for myself that you would give me," she told me. "I know you would not treat me as a thing, an object, an upper servant. I know what kind of a man you are, Benjamin. But you hurt and you kill and you are at risk of being hurt and killed."

She stopped but I had nothing to say in my defense, and we sat in silence for some long minutes.

"I can't live that kind of life," she said at last. "I can't live with a husband who might at any moment be murdered or hanged or transported. You want to marry me? To have children? A wife must have her husband. Children need a father, Benjamin. I cannot live so."

I could offer her no argument to make her believe she should.

Three weeks later, she sent me a note asking me to call on her at her home off Anne's Court. She had never sent such a communication to me before, and for a brief while I flattered myself that she intended to tell me by means of ladylike hints that she had changed her mind-that she had given the matter due consideration and had dismissed her earlier prejudices. Yet while I indulged my imagination, I never truly believed that she would tell me what I most wanted to hear.

Neither could I have antic.i.p.ated that she would give me the intelligence I most dreaded. When her girl led me into her parlor, I saw her standing nervously, leafing through a volume whose name, I suspected, she would be unable to tell me if I put her to the question. She set the book down and smiled at me in the forced way of a surgeon preparing a painful operation. Her green eyes were more deeply sunk than I had recollected.

"A gla.s.s of wine?" she asked, knowing well I would take it. All illusions were now washed away by her anxious expression, and I took the wine from her shaking hand, eager to fortify myself.

"I have not yet informed your uncle," she said to me, once we were both seated, "as I wished to tell you first. I could not endure to think you would hear it from another."

I say now that I had no idea in my mind what she was about to say, yet I must have known, for I recall gripping the arms of the chair and half rising, before lowering myself once more.

"I am to be married," she announced. Her lips were parted, a pantomime's portrait of dread. Then, recollecting herself, she applied another forced smile. When I think of her married, I continue to think of her with that counterfeit grin.

I said nothing for some eternal minutes. I stared ahead and wondered. I wondered whom she had found to be more worthy than I. I thought of all the time we had spent together-as friends, of course-and the simple joy I had taken in her nearness, in the tingle of pleasure of being in her company. I thought of the thrill of possibility, as though every moment with her represented the chance that it might be the one that would change her mind. All that was now dashed.

"I wish you joy," I said at last. I kept my tone even and neutral, thinking it was the most dignified thing I could do-and the cruelest.

"I fear there may be some unpleasantness with your uncle," she said, her words coming out very quickly, as though she had rehea.r.s.ed them. "You see, the man I am marrying is English, and his family has long been of the High Church disposition. For the sake of our ease, I have chosen to join the Church."

I took a sip of my wine and drank too fast. I felt myself growing slightly giddy. "You are converting?"

"Yes," she said.

I cannot say what she expected of me-that I might rail and lecture and rant, might demand to know what she knew of this man, and would use my thieftaking skills to learn all I could of him. I opened my mouth to speak, but I made only a humiliating, gurgling noise. I cleared my throat and began again. "Why?" I said quietly.

"How can you ask me that?"

"How? How can I not? Do you believe as he believes? Is his faith yours?"

"You have known me too long to think I would make this decision because of belief or faith. Had I wished to become a Christian out of devotion to Christian doctrine, I should have done so long before now."

"Then why do you convert?" I asked. My tone had grown louder and more violent than I had intended.

Miriam closed her eyes for a moment. "It is about happiness," she said.

Oh, how I would have rejoiced to have destroyed her argument, but what counter could I offer? What could I say of her happiness-the happiness provided by a man of whom I knew nothing? I should have left then, I know, but as I was about to torture myself for half a year, there was no good reason not to start at that moment.

"Do you love him?" I asked.

She looked away. "How can you ask me that? Why must you disquiet us both with these questions?"

"Because I must know. Do you love him?"

She still did not look at me. "Yes," she whispered, turning away.

I wanted to believe that she lied to me, but I could not do it. I could not say-I could never say-if my failure of belief came from her words or my heart. I knew only that there was nothing more for us to discuss. She had fired the fatal shot, the one that ends the battle, and there was nothing to do now but collect the dead.

I stood, drained my gla.s.s, and set it down. "I wish you joy," I said once more, and departed.

Only later did I learn the man's name: Griffin Melbury. They married some two weeks after our conversation in a private ceremony I was not asked to attend. I had not seen Miriam since. Upon hearing the news, my uncle rent his clothes. My aunt later whispered to me that her name must never again be spoken aloud to either of them. The world would be remade as though Miriam had never lived. Or such had been the plan.

A flawed plan, for I had begun to find that in this election season I could not go two steps without hearing of her husband, and I could not hear of the man without wis.h.i.+ng for the chance to squeeze his throat until he hung limp in my hands.

The Goose and Wheel was larger than I antic.i.p.ated, a long room with dozens of tables and a bar at the back. And it was full. Here were laborers of every species-Englishmen of course but also black Africans, swarthy East Indians, and lascars such as I pretended to be. The air reeked of gin and ale and boiled meat, of cheap tobacco and p.i.s.s, and the noise was a raucous din of shouting, singing, and drunken laughter. I had wondered why Littleton was so willing to enter a tavern where he knew he would be unwelcome, but I saw that the risk he ran was minimal. The Goose and Wheel expended no more money on tallow than was absolutely necessary for the most basic functions of the business, and its proprietors kept it in a state of dusky gloom. With windows far outnumbered by pipes, the room was dark and smoky, and I could hardly see ten feet ahead of my face. The far end of the room, where men sat smoking, looked like a sky full of stars filtered through a thin veil of clouds.

Littleton let me know that a pint of gin was just the thing to blunt the edge of his anxiety. I thought it better he keep his wits about him, but I was not there to mother him, so I bought him the poison he desired-though to do so required stepping over the unconscious bodies of a few fellows who had taken too much. When I ordered a small beer for myself the tapman nearly laughed at me, as though no one had ever before asked him for so weak a brew. The best he could offer me was c.o.c.k ale, that noxious soup of ale and fowl.

He slid me a pot of the drink and glared at me. "If it's too strong for your likes, blackbird, you can p.i.s.s in it."

I thought to offer him a worthy response, but I held my tongue, wis.h.i.+ng to remain inoffensive until I had conducted my business. Instead, I thanked him for his love and walked over to Littleton, who had pulled his hat down around his eyes for better anonymity.

"What else do you know about the political dimensions of this matter?" I asked him, as I handed him his pint. "No one spoke of politics and parties before, and I fear this might greatly complicate matters."

He shrugged. "As for that, I cannot say. I don't have the vote, and this party or that candidate don't mean much to my nugget. I'll go to the processions in the hopes of getting some bread or drink, and maybe a pretty girl will kiss me if she thinks I've got the franchise, but Tory or Whig, it don't signify. Both of them think they know best how to put the poor in their place. Neither know their own a.r.s.es, if you ask me. We got other things to worry about."

"Such as."

"Such as it's February, and there ain't much loading to do. Nothing but coal barges this time of year, and no hope of anything more until spring. We are used to get paid better than most porters, and that's supposed to help us get through the lean months, but with the gangs at each other's throats, fighting for what little work there is, we're hardly making more than if we was lugging apples around for the grocers. And our work is more dangerous, too. Just last week a fellow I know got flattened to his death when a barrel of coal fell on him. Crushed his legs entire, it did. He died two days later and hardly stopped screaming the whole time."

"And how does Ufford hope to make things better?"

"That I don't rightly know. I heard his sermons, I but I don't understand them all proper, like. He says there was a time when the rich looked after the poor, and the poor worked hard but they made their living and were happy. He says these Whigs don't care nothing for the way things used to be, only for their money at the end of the day, and that they'll work the poor to death rather than give a good wage."

"So he wishes you to believe that Tories shall be kindly taskmasters because they are better used to lording it, while Whigs are poor taskmasters because they are new to their power?"

"That sounds about it."

"Is it true?"

Littleton shrugged. "Dennis Dogmill's a Whig, they say, and most of the work we do is for him. I can tell you that if every one of his men died after unloading he wouldn't give a fig if there were others to take their place next time. Does he have a black heart because he's a Whig or does he have a black heart because that's what he's got? I'm inclined to think his politics don't make much difference."

Littleton pulled down his hat even lower, a clear sign he wanted less talk and more gin. I therefore amused myself by looking about the tavern for the better part of an hour when a disturbance began near the back. Someone struck up a few candles while a figure stood upon a barrel. He was of middle height and wide of body, perhaps forty years of age, with a narrow face and wide-set eyes that gave him an appearance of surprise or perhaps confusion. He stomped his foot only a few times, and the din of the room began to wane.

Littleton roused himself from his gin stupor. "There he is. That's Billy."

The man on the barrel held up a tankard. "A drink," he called, "to Dingy Danny Roberts, dead last week from a barrel of coal that expostulated down upon his personhood. He was one of Yate's boys"-murmurs of disdain arose from the crowd, so Greenbill raised his voice-"he might have been one of Yate's boys, but he was a porter all the same, and we have somewhat in common with those boys, whatever imperative sort of fiend they might follow. A drink, then. May he be the last to go that way."

It does not take much encouragement for a roomful of porters to tip their gla.s.ses. After a moment of rumblings, I know not whether of agreement or discord, Greenbill began again.

"I called this here meeting of our gang because there's something you should know, boys. Shall I tell you what it is? There's a s.h.i.+pment of coal coming next week, and it's Yate and his boys that want to take it away from you."

Much grumbling and shouting here, so Greenbill had to take a moment to pause.

"See, there's this scoundrel called Dennis Dogmill, a tobacco man you might have heard named"-he waited for the laughter and hissing to die down-"and he had this idea to make the porters fight against one another. It worked so good that all the s.h.i.+pmen now do the same thing. 'Which one of you has the lowest price?' they all want to know. So I went to Yate and I said to him it would be best to work together. Let's not be different gangs. Let's be one gang to navigate and together raise up the wages of the porters. And Yate said-and I quote him now, boys-Yate said, 'I'd burn in h.e.l.l before usurping with the likes of your rubbish. The men in your gang are nothing but cutpurses and mollies and b.u.g.g.e.rantos.' That's what he said, boys, and it was all I could do to keep from murdering him where he stood for speaking ill of the likes of you."

"That is a filthy lie, Billy, and you know it."

Halfway between where we sat and Billy stood, a man rose and stood on his table. He was in his early thirties but still youthful in his smooth face. He wore his natural hair, which was dark and cut with a short tail, and he was small of stature though clearly strong.

"Look at this, boys!" Greenbill exclaimed. "It's Walter Yate. He's gone mad to ac.u.minate here. Either that or he's grown so fond of lies, he'll speak them where he can, regardless of who listens."

Littleton's mouth dropped open and he righted his posture. He reached up with one hand and pulled his hat back. "What's he up to?" he whispered, more to himself than to me. "He's like to get himself killed."

"Sit down!" a man shouted at Yate. "You've no business here."

"And Greenbill Billy's got no business telling these falsehoods to you," Yate said. "I'm not your enemy. It's Dennis Dogmill and the likes of him, who want to set us one against the other. We all have to eat, so we work for near nothing since that's better than nothing itself. Save your curses for Dogmill and his Whig friends, who want to work you to your deaths and then forget you ever lived. Instead of agitating against one another, we ought to do what we can to see Mr. Melbury gets his seat in Parliament. He'll do what he can to help us. He'll protect our traditional rights."

I felt my muscles tighten. Here was Melbury again, and I wanted him nowhere near me.

"What, did Melbury pay you to canva.s.s here?" Greenbill asked. "None of us have the franchise, which you might know if you were one of our number, instead of thinking to lord it over us. Griffin Melbury. Unless he's got a s.h.i.+p to unload, I don't care nothing for him or or his wh.o.r.e mother's a.r.s.e." his wh.o.r.e mother's a.r.s.e."

"You ought to care for him," Yate said. "He would help put Dogmill down and put food in your children's mouths."

"I'll put b.u.m fodder in your mouth if you don't shut it," someone shouted at Yate.

"Your words smell prettier than a fen's cunny," another voice barked. "I'd reckon the pope himself sent you to tell us these lies."

And then someone threw a pint of gin at him. Yate stepped gracefully to one side, and the gla.s.s struck Greenbill in the chest.

Oh, the outrage! How dare he avoid a missile and allow it to muddy their beloved leader? There was an instant of silence, of stillness. And then someone grabbed Yate and pulled him off the table and he disappeared beneath a heaving sea of punches. I heard, over the shouting, the dull thud of fist on flesh. Some gathered around and kicked at their brethren who were closer to the victim. Some merely punched at the air in a troubling pantomime of the hidden violence. But these pleasures were limited, and while a few porters stayed to try to take their shot at Yate, others seemed to forget in an instant there was any cause to rally around but mayhem itself. These fanned out through the tavern, looking for aught to break or steal, or they dashed for the door that they might pursue a wider field of destruction.

And then I felt a hard pull on my arm. It was Littleton. "Time to go," he said. "Find your own way as best you can," he proposed, as he disappeared into the crowd.

I should well have taken his advice, but in the chaos of the moment my mind thought not so clearly. The tavern had mostly emptied out, but there were still a number of men who tore at the furnis.h.i.+ngs, the walls, the barrels of ale, and buckets of gin. The room was full of thuds and grunts and the clatter of pewter on stone. Broken oil lamps lay shattered on the floor where watered-down drink had mercifully doused their flames.