Savage Magic (38 page)

So eastwards he goes, like a dog returning to its kennel. The Bow Street mounted patrolmen are all occupied with keeping the peace in the immediate vicinity of the office, or by the houses of the dead Sybarites. No matter. He gets a hackney carriage, and within an hour he is back in his own neighbourhood, under the eyes of familiar gaggles of boys.

He does not go into the house in Lower Gun Alley, but he does stand outside it for a moment, his bag over his shoulder, looking for signs of Abigail. Perhaps she has returned from the madhouse, as he has done. Perhaps her mind, now stilled and emptied of its visions, is even now turning itself to a book on natural philosophy or exploration or medical matters, while a meal cooks in the hearth. Perhaps she is waiting for him to return.

But there are no signs. The curtains over the windows are half-open and untidy, just as he had left them. Abigail would not have been able to leave them thus. She is not there. He cannot stand to go in.

He is barely noticed when he returns to the River Police Office, but then this is hardly unusual. He continues to be resented by most of the officers and attendants within; they remain unclear as to the precise role of this quiet man with his odd methods, and they resent the magistrate’s pugnacious protection of him.

It is troubling, then, that John Harriott is still absent from the office due to illness. Horton seeks news of him from his attendant, who confirms that Mr Harriott has spent some time at home and some time at the London Hospital in Whitechapel. He is now staying with friends in Essex, with his wife, in the hope that the country air will revive his spirits and his health. Horton raises an eyebrow at the use of the word ‘spirits’ – is Harriott also suffering under some mental disturbance? But the attendant will say no more. He disapproves of Horton as much as anyone.

Horton goes downstairs to consult the office records of shipping, which are collated from records supplied by the dock operators, the Port of London, Trinity House and, of course, Lloyd’s List. None of these records is, by itself, complete, so the River Police record seeks to combine them to draw a detailed picture of the comings and goings on the Thames. It is, supposes Horton, the Wapping equivalent of Bow Street’s famous register of receivers and thieves.

He starts at August 1814 and works his way backwards a few months, looking for ships arriving from New Holland and New South Wales. It has been a busy time, with many fleets of transports going to and from England to Bordeaux, to Gibraltar, to Lisbon and Oporto, with regiments and prisoners of war. The news from Lloyd’s List tells another, ongoing tale – of ships and privateers doing battle off the eastern seaboard of the United States, the conflict continuing even while Europe’s wars fall away now Bonaparte is safely imprisoned on Elba. Massive fleets still come and go to the West Indies, huddling together for protection in the face of American aggression. The remainder of the lists show the continuing tale of English commerce, hundreds of ships coming and going.

The lists serve to show how cut off New South Wales is from this world; a distant colony, fit only for criminals and the soldiers who watch them. He finds a perplexing array of ships coming, going, disappearing, reappearing – the lists seem to tell the story of the uncertainty of sea, a story he recognises from his own past. He flicks through records for the
Emu
, a transport full of women convicts captured by Americans and then abandoned on St Vincent for a year, the women eventually being returned to a prison hulk in Portsmouth harbour, and then another transport.

But it is the records for the
Indefatigable
that register his attention. She left for Van Diemen’s Land on 4 June 1812, accompanied by the
Minstrel
.She arrived, alone, at Hobart in October 1812 – the first convict ship to sail directly to that place. Digging further, Horton discovers that she sailed back to England from Port Jackson, via China and St Helena, arriving at Deal in April of this year. He finds a list of passengers, a random selection of names, including Mr and Mrs John Simpson, Mr Michael Michaels, George Mason and Lawrence Drennan, a Mrs Broad, and a Mr James Gardener, accompanied by his wife and child.

The ship is owned by James Atty and Co. of Whitby, whose London storehouse is right here in Wapping.

There is a faint smell of smoke in Red Lion Street, and for a moment Horton is arrested by this. The smell that had hung over Wapping on the morning he departed for Thorpe must have had its origin here, at the storehouse of James Atty and Co. A harassed and exhausted clerk is keeping a kind of guard over the place, but its contents are gone, replaced with a black void. It had been one of the hundreds of little warehouses that dot the alleys and squares of Wapping. Whatever had been stored here is gone.

The clerk shows Horton to a small door at the side of the blackened shell, and a flight of stairs takes him up to the administrative office. The smell of smoke is thick and disgusting inside the building, and Horton wonders how anyone can work in here. Another harassed clerk asks him his name and his business. When he explains, the clerk goes to fetch Mr MacDougall, the London agent for the firm.

MacDougall is true to his name; a large Scot with a red beard, like an actor playing the part of Highland Chieftain in a Drury Lane comedy. He shows Horton through to his little office, stating in a rich brogue how much he admires the work of the River Police, and how he has had the pleasure on several occasions to converse with the magistrate, Mr Harriott. When Horton asks him about the
Indefatigable
, he frowns.

‘What business do the River Police have with the
Indefatigable?
’ he says, his Celtic bonhomie suddenly absent.

‘Am I required to state my business in detail, Mr MacDougall? I would like to know what the cargo was, where it was stored, and what information you hold on any passengers who returned on it.’

‘We had a fire, last week.’

‘So I understand.’

‘The storehouse which was burned down contained the items which we had shipped back from New South Wales. They are all gone.’

‘Well, that is as may be. I only want to see the records.’

‘There are no records.’

Horton can see now that MacDougall is not irritated by his request; he is embarrassed by it.

‘Is that not unusual?’

‘It is unprecedented. We have spent much of this past week trying to establish where the records may have got to. Until they turn up, I can do nothing to help you.’

‘The records are normally stored at this office?’

‘They are. All our other records are complete and up to the current date. The only ones missing relate to the
Indefatigable
. I have never experienced such a failure of a clerical nature.’

‘How might you account for it?’

‘I cannot account for it. If I did not know better, I would say that one of the clerks had deliberately removed the records.’

‘You do not suspect them?’

‘I do not. I trust them as I would trust myself with these matters.’

Horton wonders how far to pursue this. The man is clearly flabbergasted by his firm’s failure in this matter. But the coincidence smacks of something bigger and unseen, a rock below the surface at the entrance to a harbour.

‘And what of the people who were on the ship?’

‘Well, I can help you with that matter. Those records were also destroyed, but another contractor was responsible for the passengers, and I was able to request copies of their own records.’

He calls out to a clerk, and a minute or so later the man appears holding a piece of paper. He hands it to MacDougall, with a formal deference, and the merchant hands it to Horton.

The letter lists the same passengers that Horton had seen in the records at the River Police Office, only this time with full addresses in England. Four of the names have addresses in London: two in Southwark, one in Spitalfields, and one in Ratcliffe.

Ratcliffe. Two syllables, hard on the mouth, rigid and ominous. The last time he was in Ratcliffe he was looking at the bodies of three dead men in an empty boarding house. The place is just downstream of Wapping. It takes him barely a quarter-hour to walk there.

RATCLIFFE

The Gardeners live on George Street, a raggedy little alley off the Commercial Road. The address from the shipping agent is for a boarding house, and Horton begins to tell their likely story as he ascends to their rooms: was Gardener a convict? Or did he travel there with his wife in order to make a living? Had he failed or succeeded? Why have they returned to London?

A tired, small woman opens the door on the first-floor landing when he knocks.

‘Mrs Gardener?’

She nods. From behind her, he hears the sound of children shouting at each other, of furniture being run into. The sound must be terrible for her – he projects it back into the days and weeks and months before this encounter, as something about it suggests an uninterrupted cacophony.

‘My name is Horton. I am a constable of the River Police Office in Wapping. I would like to speak to your husband, if I may.’

‘My husband is dead.’

She says it with no emphasis, no emotion. She might just as well have been describing the finish on the floor or the weather.

‘Ah. My apologies, madam.’

‘I thank you for that.’ Her face shows no thanks at all. ‘Why would a constable wish to talk to my husband?’

‘I wished to ask him about your voyage back from New South Wales. On board the
Indefatigable
.’

She raises an eyebrow – the first sign of animation in her exhausted face. She looks back into the room behind her, towards the noise, as if looking for a question to be answered. Then she looks back at him.

‘Come in, then. You can ask me.’

The children are bigger and older than he was expecting, two boys and a girl. They fall silent when he enters the room, become solemn, as if they were afraid of him. The girl stands behind the boys, as behind a wall. The room is devoid of furniture, but for an old armchair and a table by the window.

‘This is a constable,’ the woman says to them. ‘He wishes to talk of our sea voyage.’

‘Why?’ says the smaller boy, defiantly. The woman turns to Horton, as if to repeat the boy’s question.

‘I am investigating a matter which I think may have involved someone on the ship with you. A woman.’

‘The witch?’

The larger boy speaks this time, and the matter-of-fact way he says the words almost causes Horton to laugh out loud. An extraordinary thing to hear, moments after stepping into this little room. He looks at the boy’s mother. She says nothing, but a look of sour amusement has come into her face which he does not care for.

‘What makes you say there was a witch?’ he asks the boy.

‘The sailors said it. They wanted to leave her in China.’

‘Why did they think she was a witch?’

‘They said she had the master in her . . . what was the word, Emily? You remember it.’

The little girl, hiding her face, says simply ‘thrall’.

‘Yes, thrall. They said she had the master in her thrall. That she could make him do anything she wanted. They said that’s why he wouldn’t put her off. She had stuff in the hold, they said. Witch’s stuff.’

‘Did they say what this stuff was?’

‘Are you hunting for a witch, then?’

This from the woman, with a sneer of contempt.

‘Witches do not exist.’

‘They do, though.’

This from the little girl, quietly, into her brother’s back.

‘What was this woman’s name? The one the children speak of?’

‘She was called Broad.’

‘Did you speak to her?’

‘During a voyage of five months? Yes, I spoke to her. I spoke to everyone. What else was there to do?’

‘May I ask why you were on the ship?’

‘My husband took us out there, ten years ago. He said we would make our fortune. A farm, he said. Feeding the soldiers and convicts. Said it would transform our lives.’

‘It failed?’

‘Yes, constable. It failed. The soil was barren. The natives hated us. The soldiers were more corrupt than the convicts. We watched while the governor made his farm profitable with free labour and seed while we toiled in the face of floods and fighting. Then he attempted to take our leases from us. When the soldiers rebelled against him, things got even worse. I wanted to leave years ago. We came back here to start again, but then James died. I have sold all our goods.’

‘What will you do?’

‘The workhouse for these. For me? What does it matter? Perhaps the street.’

He wonders, now, how he could have found the sneer on her face unpleasant. The despair in the room is as thick as river fog. The children are so silent, having been so loud. Guilt, who stalks Horton like a persistent old friend, taps on his shoulder once again.

‘I will do what I can.’

‘And what can you do?’

‘Very little. Perhaps nothing.’

‘Well, then.’ She sits in a chair, and the three children look at her as if she were a marionette with invisible strings, interesting yet none of their concern. The smaller boy pokes the larger in the arm, and then without warning they are off again, running around the empty room. The woman speaks to him over the noise, as if it were an act of God or a freak of the weather, and none of her concern.