Deluded Your Sailors (21 page)

Kit smiled back.

So many teeth.

Runciman never saw that smile again.

15) LITTLE
HONOUR
C
ANNARD
'
S LEDGER
.

At Afterson's coffee shop in Bristol, in April of 1717, Runciman's wayward eye took in the world over my shoulder while his good orb stared me true. He said, ‘I consider us a company of monetary adventurers, Cannard. A company, not a society, for we are not so stuffy; monetary because of the economic interests pulling stops and strings; not merchants, for we are not merchants – though merchant you might have been had I not got to you first. Adventurers, sir, not soldiers, not mercenaries, but couriers, agents, risk-takers: men who get things done. Excellent coffee, is it not?' I said I found it second rate, that I had tasted better coffee in the gutters of London. Runciman replied, ‘Oh sir, witty yes, witty indeed: second rate, second best, Afterson's, Bristol second to London.' One of Runciman's eyes wandered off to the right, and I would swear now, in my mature hindsight, Runciman did stretch the socketed orbit to take in the entire room. He said, ‘Cannard, I'll give you this: I have tasted none finer in Bristol. Tell me of your father, that excellent businessman and fine companion.' I should have suffered no surprise at what Runciman knew. Unfolded and laid out end to end, his brains would make a great reckoning, for Runciman, one of those unhappy freaks of God, possessed such capacious talent and ability one could only pray he put them to good use. He could recite Homer's
Iliad
in English, memorizing Pope's translation as a new volume appeared each year:
in what ill-fated
hour sprung the first strife?
His purpose, truth and reason: being one of the controlling minds of England's intelligence networks, the names, assignments, maps and charts, talents and aliases of God knows how many men hidden and tucked within his memory. He will receive no credit by history for this, titled as a clerk to another civil servant, one not remotely connected with intelligence. Silent and profound, then, the loss of Phillip Runciman. When he sank deep into conversation, one eye wandered, and this defect compelled one to look at him harder. Those blue eyes could woo a man to any task, and if the eyes failed in courtship, the voice would elicit submission. How the weaker sex responded, I do not know, though I imagine seduction came easily. Other than his eyes and his monstrous wigs, affected to fool observers into thinking him a cockahoop dandy, Runciman stood unremarkable. Given the nature of his work, this more than sufficed.

I asked Runciman how long he had known my father. Runciman said, ‘All Bristol, well, all Bristol business knows Will Cannard – but you conjugate the man in the past tense?' I explained that my father had died a few months before, the doctor suspecting a stomach cancer. ‘Dreadful,' said Runciman. ‘His father died the same; knew you so? Eaten out. Then I did miss the funeral. Do forgive me, sir, for I had work in London. Take care to your own stomach. Eat food neither pickled nor brined, but do consume plenty of onion, an humble herb, much underrated. How does your brother?' When I replied my elder brother did well, Runciman protested, ‘Well? Is that all you have to say of your brother, sir, heir to Cannard and Son?' I added that my brother did ‘well enough' and hoped Runciman would change the subject.

He did. ‘When last I spoke to your father,' he said, ‘Cannard and Son supped on a tidy profit, particularly for a company of its size, the ships' co-owners and backers quite content. I expect your elder brother runs Cannard and Son exceedingly well, for I do hear much of him since arriving in Bristol. Indeed I heard commented just last night
Why is it we see Tom Cannard boozing and whoring
– forgive me the diction, sir, I but repeat what another man spoke –
yet never the younger?
Given your elder brother's wealth, am I to presume Cannard and Son does well enough? Sir, you flinch at my questions, my indelicate probes of a wound: I find pus. Would you soothe the soul of a troubled man who knew your father? By your silence I am to know I have offended you. I plead patience, sir. I often offended your father, but he became accustomed to me and such offences as I gave him would he flick off his sleeves like flakes of snuff. I am an offensive man. Your father thought very highly of you, do you know that?'

I spoke foolishly. ‘Then why did he send me away? To my mother's people in Wales and then of course to school. Do excuse me, sir: my schooling was a gift, and by its denigration I do my father dishonour. Is it the heat in here?'

‘He sent you to Cambridge eventually, where you prepared to take Holy Orders,' Runciman said, faint amusement in his voice. ‘To return to adventure, sir.'

From this digressive preface did Runciman's stray eye rejoin its fellow, disquieting me. Those eyes conducted no sign of emotion, only fierce intellect and reason. No, I do Runciman a disservice: his eyes betrayed a contained glee, a delight, not at coffee-house discourse with me, as I first supposed, but at spreading me open before him and plucking the juiciest and most useful bits. The memory of a tale told to me while I still wore leading bands and frocks, of the old pagans sacrificing boys, Abrahrams absent or delayed; Maypoles and bonfires, strange dances, old ways: I could see Runciman there, kicking and bending and not once slipping his wig nor his well-heeled shoes.

‘Adventure, Cannard, taking risks, getting things done. Your father took risks; his greatest risk now sits across me. His firstborn he did groom for the business, but Tom will shortly prefer, or perhaps need, his games of Ruff and Honours even to the denial of women. How is it a card game can suck a man dry? Now you, his second son, he sent to school with the keen desire to make him a better man than his father. No, you did not gall him with your disdain for Holy Orders, for are we not all botched divines? Not even your sullied romps with Jane Wilkes, a commoner track not trodden this county, dismayed him. No, sir. You hurt your father with your sulking, your shrugging off all he tried to give you as though it were worthless. No small sacrifice made he to send you to university.'

Here I did protest that the happiest time of my life was the summer I travelled with my father when he sailed as supercargo, and that I wished… but I could not complete this sentence.

‘You wished what?' asked Runciman. ‘To return to a handful of sennights now bleached pure by sunlight that shines only in your head? Spare me, sir. You got sick and cried for your mother.'

I drained the last of my coffee and placed the cup on the table before him, thereby causing a drop to fly into the air. It arced and then splattered across the tip of Runciman's nose. Returning to itself, the drop was about to fall onto the table when Runciman sniffed. I leaned forward so as to ensure none else in the coffee shop would hear, and I informed Runciman that my good mother had long lain underground, and that he had given me great offense, not so much by what he said but for the reasons he had said it.

‘Sit down, John,' he said, his voice loud and friendly enough to carry to the doorway, so that several men glanced about with interest. A hesitation on my part would cause them stare longer, raise eyebrows, take note of younger Cannard; and who be that, addressing him by his Christian name? I sat. ‘Now, I can see you'll brook no wasted time. I am myself part of a company of monetary adventurers, but there's more to it than that. Discretion, sir, is my greatest need. Recovery, sir, is yours.'

Recovery from what, I enquired, and Runciman smiled as though at an old joke. ‘Your brother, sir. According to my estimates, Cannard and Son might last the six months left to it or fail within three. After that come the long debts to merchants and co-owners and backers. Within a year, insolvency. Ruination. I will not stand idly by and see your father's toil melt away simply because one of his sons soaks up more liquor than air and the other lacks the will God gave a louse. Keep your seat, for you
will
hear me. Are you a prudent man of money? No. Employ you a prudent man of money? No. According to your records – you do have a fine hand for clerking, at least your education shows there – you have sold one ship already to cover losses and have plans to sell two more. That leaves you with the little sloop
Honour
, which is the talk of this shop at present: last night, your brother wagered the sloop. And lost.
Honour
, named for your mother? How did I see your records? I paid a young man to break into your offices, bring me your books and then return them an hour before first light. A company of monetary adventurers, sir: leasing spies is easy and cheap. A dockside brat could have accomplished the task. But I need not docksiders, sir: I need men of capacity. I need adventurers. And you, sir, need recovery.

I bade him good day in a jolly manner and, abuzz with coffee and allegations, returned to my offices in the late afternoon light. Aye, he might easily have invaded our offices, or employed a careless ruffian to do so. A few mornings before I had blamed my brother for the spilled ink.

Seasons changed, bills mounted, and I caught sight of Runciman twice more in the next year, always at Afterson's, where we each feigned ignorance of the other. He stood quietly at my brother's funeral, and he walked me back to Afterson's when the burial was done. I knew where Runciman wished me to go, and, being too worn to argue, I suffered myself to be led. His arm about my shoulders, so warm against the damp Avon fumes, he said, ‘A hard death for your brother, lung fever. Out all night in the rain, swooned against the office door.' I wept, not for my father, his death a blessing and release, and not for my brother, his drunkenness a comical damnation, but for myself, quite alone and ignorant of my best chance at succour.

‘Recovery, Runciman.' I now looked him in the eyes, pleased he kept the wanderer checked. ‘I ask you, sir, you as a friend of my father's: how might I work recovery?'

Inheriting Cannard and Son, I dealt mostly with captains and merchants. My offices neighboured those of Captain George Walters, that fine Bristolman then flush with coffee profit and once much interested in acquiring Cannard and Son. When I was a boy, Captain Walters would ruffle my hair as he spoke to my father in a blunt manner I much liked, but which my brother mocked. Father sometimes invited Captain Walters to dinner, and I remember best a dinner in 1709. Father permitted me to remain at table, and I was most pleased, for I counted Captain Walters the only one of Father's friends who did not assume that my brother nursed a love for the sea and a head for shipping and that I, the indulged schoolboy choked with Latin, did not. Captain Walters looked me in the eye as he did Father, and then they'd discuss business.

I woke with my face crumpled in the tablecloth. The racket of my own snoring shook me to see, through blurry candlelight, past dirty plates and heaped-up napkins, the linen, bones and forks now set like little buildings, that the Captain and my father had moved to Father's study, their voices lower now, more serious. Father had spoken of selling Cannard and Son. To Captain Walters, then? Spluttering about birthright and hairy arms, I made for the study over the unsteady floor to halt the proceedings right there. I stopped when I heard my father's voice turn sympathetic, like Mother's had when my brother or I shook out a fever. Then Captain Walters spoke again. ‘Cannard, I wouldn't wish it on a Sallee Rover. Not even on the snotty what first whacked me on the head. It burns, this thin flicker of hell, this reminder. Years ago, some dirty cunt, I should have gone up her arse, would have been cleaner.' Here the Captain hiccoughed a few times, damning the wine. My father murmured something Walters having years left to him yet.

‘But tis now, Cannard, me sight's going now. Cock and balls next, swoll up like beach rocks. You hire captains all the time, Cannard, but tis
my
ship. Mine. My money. My rotting pizzle. And there be naught I can do but wait for the darkness to overtake me.'

The truth, or the dream, overtakes me in daylight, the hauling on frozen ropes, sleet dripping down the line to coat my numb hands, sleet cutting my cheeks and squinting me blind, so vivid still after forty-one years. I am brought back to the worst moments of the wreck with no more warning than when I bring myself to my next breath, and even if shaken about the shoulders by Lacey or Aurelius Jackman, I would give no answer. Not until my dreaming self sights the fire rocks through the rain do I escape back to Port au Mal, to my true senses. The hatred, the fear and, above all, the tedium I have suffered here, particularly during Lacey's days, seem preferable, Gilead balm, to these paralyzing bad dreams.

As sayeth the one who ran: the waters compassed me about even to the soul; the depths closed me round about; the weeds wrapped about my head. I had but late changed from stocking and breeches to more sensible tarred trousers. Once, in the wardroom, I found four of the men intently studying the table: encouragement, abuse and cheers. Their bent heads touched. Two tapped biscuit, saved from a previous meal, and out fell weevils. The confused creatures undertook travels, sometimes away from and sometimes towards the finish line, which had been determined by the gnawers of biscuit. Winner decided, losers despised, cracked and dirty thumbs squat the weevils, and the men stood up to go on watch.