Theft of Life (32 page)

‘It is,’ he said.

The under-bidder took off his glasses and polished them, and Francis was treated to the sight of the dirt in his wig as the man bent. He looked as if he had walked the roads between here and Newcastle a dozen times, worn down his fat legs in the process and brought the mud of it home with him each time. ‘Heard Mrs Smith was leaving money to St Mary’s. She didn’t change the will then?’

‘What? Change her will?’

The man winked up myopically. His blue eyes were watery from the smoke of his neighbours’ clay pipes. ‘I go to that church – when I can get in and see anything for all the fancy bonnets in the front row. Well, I’m shamed to say it but I’d been up late and … the long and short of it is, I was there last Sunday and fell asleep before the service was done. By the time I woke up, everyone else was going, but Fischer and Mrs Smith were there in the shadows of the west aisle talking, and it looked like no pleasant conversation.’

‘Could you hear what was said, Winslow?’ Francis said, bowing closer to the man in spite of the filth of him.

‘No, no. Just to say it didn’t look comfortable. Then someone else came in and Mrs Smith went away looking troubled.’

Francis thanked him, then hurried out of the room to try and follow the successful bidder. He managed to weave through the crowd, but the man he sought was in the street before he could reach him.

‘Hold there!’ he called. ‘A word?’

The man turned towards him. ‘What do you want?’

‘I wish to know who you are.’

The stranger hardly looked at him. ‘You have been paid, boy. That is all you need to know.’ Francis had not been called ‘boy’ in that manner for some years. The word seemed to suck his will out of him for a moment – and in that moment the man was gone. The wound on Francis’s face began to throb again. Slowly, he went back to collect the money from the auctioneer.

E
USTACHE WAS DISAPPOINTED THAT
Mr Glass had not returned before William came to collect him. Once the footman had entered the shop and he had tidied away his pen and ink, he placed his report on the manuscript he had read last night carefully in the centre of his writing space. After a moment, he shifted the stacks of other manuscripts a little further away to make his report stand out more clearly. He then examined the manuscript itself. He did not want to leave it behind. Mr Glass had said that booksellers only occasionally caught fire, but he knew that sometimes they did. It had become precious to him, this manuscript, as he read and wrote out what he had thought. Even as he spent his day reading other novels, he had kept his hand on this one.

Mr Glass had given him permission to take it home and had told him to keep it safe, so he would take it with him. He put the bundle of papers into one of the leather folders Glass kept about the place, then tied the leather ties around it and tucked it under his arm. He climbed the back stairs to say goodnight to Joshua and Mr Ferguson, and was surprised to see they smiled at him; Cutter too winked at him as he left the shop. They must know who he was, must have read those stories about his mother and father, but it didn’t seem to colour how they treated him. The thought made Eustache nervous suddenly, as if he were exposed to cold air after being swaddled in the warmth and dark for a long while.

As the afternoon wore on and no word came from Molloy, Harriet found she had some use for the account books from Caveley, after all. She usually asked William for help when the numbers began to swim in front of her eyes, but this time she asked her son. It felt a little strange to find herself being patiently instructed by a boy of ten years, and she felt it that he was already better schooled in the mysteries of numbers than she. His tutor, who had recently left the household to take Holy Orders, had been an even better bargain than she had imagined. In the course of their calculations Stephen began to look serious, and after he asked a question which suggested he understood more than she had thought, Harriet felt she had to explain to him what they were about. He became very quiet. He loved William, and had always worshipped his father and his memory.

‘It is stealing, isn’t it, Mama?’ he said at last. ‘It’s stealing a person’s right to be a person, their life.’

She put out her arms and he clambered onto her lap as he had used to do when he was much younger. ‘I believe you are right, Stephen. I do not know what your father was thinking of. I can only suppose there were so many others who traded in human lives around him, it ceased to shock him as it does us.’

The boy leaned against her. ‘He would have seen it was wrong when we explained it to him. Sometimes people don’t know things until they are explained. But we shall pay William back, shan’t we?’

She kissed the top of his head and wished she could keep him with her like this for all days. ‘We can try.’

Still no news from Molloy. She thought of the thousand alleyways and doss-houses in London, the drinking dens and cellars with damp straw on the ground. The world had grown dark outside her window. No doubt the lights were burning in Portman Place, adding an extra burnish to that sweet splendour. Even if they could prove it was one of that community of planters and traders who had arranged a beating for Mr Trimnell to punish him for his repentance, would the papers even print the news? Even if it were proven, who was to say if the papers would print the news? Just because they had been so eager to fill their pages with the story on Monday did not mean they would be willing to say they had been entirely wrong about the threat posed by the ‘flood of Africans’. Would they speak of Trimnell’s wish to make amends, or would they shut their mouths and look away? She consulted her pocket-watch. There was still time, and she felt in great need of spiritual comfort.

Walter came to find Francis at the shop just as Francis was shutting up for the night. The engraver plodded in with a weary slump to his shoulders and no good news. Francis fetched a bottle and glasses from the back parlour and poured a drink for them both. The dogs had found nothing but rabbits all day, and Walter confessed that he and Scudder and Miller were all beginning to lose hope. ‘You got us all fired up, Francis,’ he said, leaning his arms on the counter and his chin on his arms. ‘But once you’ve gone out there and looked at all those fields and barns and tracks in front of you, seems like there’s a lot of room to hide a girl. In fact, you could hide a hundred girls out there.’ He stopped abruptly. ‘What happened to your face?’

Francis told him, ending with: ‘Perhaps Constable Miller can frighten something more out of the cabman.’ Walter looked hopeful again and was about to reply when the door handle rattled.

Francis looked up to see a white face surrounded by a shock of red hair peering in at the window. He was about to pull Walter back into the shadows in the hope they had not been seen when the face smiled broadly at him. He accepted his fate, went to the door and let the man in. He entered more hesitantly this time. Francis realised he had forgotten his name, but not the fact that he was writing an essay for the Cambridge Latin Prize.

‘Clarkson!’ The young man supplied, seeing his confusion, and shook hands with both of them. ‘I am sorry to disturb you so late, but I saw a light and hoped …

‘I am afraid I am still not much inclined to discuss my experience as a slave,’ Francis said at once.

‘No, no,’ Clarkson said hastily. ‘That is, should you ever feel able to, I would of course be eager, but no, I came to thank you for those verses you recommended, of Miss Phillis Wheatley.’

‘Mr Clarkson is writing an essay on slavery,’ Francis said over his shoulder to Walter and picked up his glass from the counter. ‘He is against it.’

‘More than ever,’ Clarkson said. ‘I wished also … I have been reading a great deal, sir, and it occurs to me that my manner when I came to speak to you … I offer you my sincere apologies.’

Francis was surprised into a smile. ‘Not at all, Mr Clarkson.’

‘Still, I am shocked by the way members of your race are described in the literature.’

Walter set his glass on the table again. ‘You’re shocked, are you? They have to justify the fact that they kill men like Francis by the boatload then work to death the ones that survive.’

Clarkson nodded. ‘Yes, that must be true, but their evidence—’

‘Evidence?’ Walter slung what was in his glass down his throat and refilled it. ‘They call Africans thieves and rebels, for not obeying them. What right do they have to touch the hair on another man’s head without his consent, let alone kidnap him from liberty and work him to death without trial or process?’ He drank again.

Clarkson’s expression became animated and he turned towards Walter with a light in his eyes. Francis had worked too long in the book trade not to recognise the signs of a man warming to a debate.

‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Gentlemen, please. Mr Clarkson, it was good of you to come, and I wish you every success with your work, but slavery is a topic I have no pleasure in hearing discussed.’

Clarkson blushed again, so furiously Francis thought his skin must burn. ‘Of course. I shall be on my way, but may I shake your hand, sir?’

He put out his hand to Francis – and Francis realised that the young man feared he might be refused. The shock was like cold water in his throat. He took Clarkson’s hand and shook it. ‘Good night, Mr Clarkson.’

The man sketched a little bow then retreated outside, back into the darkness.

Walter filled up Francis’s glass and Francis told him what Winslow, the under-bidder at the auction, had said about the argument at St Mary Woolnoth between Eliza and Dr Fischer.

‘Can’t have been the doctor who took the cab though,’ Walter concluded. ‘The stand is right near his church, so they’d all know him. They probably all go to hear him preach. He’s good. You should take a turn at printing up some of his sermons.’

‘No,’ Francis said, simply and finally. He told his friend of having seen Fischer at the Jamaica Coffee House and finding out he had been a surgeon on a number of slave voyages. ‘I remember the man who deemed me fit for purchase off the slave coast,’ he said, suddenly seeing it as he spoke. ‘His breath stank of rum, and we poor African souls meant no more to him than sheep. When they chained us in the hold I was glad for a moment that my brother had died before we reached the ships.’

Walter was half-hidden in the shadows now, his arms folded and leaning against the various volumes kept behind the counter. ‘I thought you didn’t remember anything about Africa.’

‘I lied,’ Francis said, and finished what was in his glass.

‘You should write a book, Francis. Tell the truth of it. Don’t just leave it to fellows like Clarkson and his ilk.’

Francis shook his head. ‘Why? Believe me, no one would want to read such horrors – and what good would it do me? I have some friends here, I am treated with a measure of respect by my neighbours. Why antagonise every white man in this city by railing against what cannot be changed?’

Walter rolled his shoulders. ‘Well, it’s your story and your neck, my friend. So I won’t try to persuade you. Just, I know you found the Smith family and they were kind to you and fed you pie, but it was English people who bought you and sold you, stole your brother and years of your life, whipped you and branded you – and now tell you to your face you’re not a whole human being.’

Francis clenched his jaw. ‘Do you have a point to make, Walter?’

‘I do. Stop being so damned polite about it. No man of sense would respect you any less.’

T
HE UPPER PARLOUR, LIKE
the rest of the Red Lion, had seen better days, but it was a fair-sized room and Willoughby had managed to gather a respectable congregation. Harriet slipped into the rear of the room and studied the backs of the heads in front of her. A mix of men and women; none in comfortable circumstances by the look of the worn collars of their coats, though there were a couple in slightly better cloth whom she took to be servants. Willoughby was speaking to them, not in the high rhetoric he had used on the Strand but quietly, in a conversational tone. He was speaking of honesty. Of those who were dishonest in their manners and how such hypocrisy hid their hearts from the light until they withered. He spoke of the powder and paint of women, of the silks worn by men of fashion with horsehair stuffed into their shoulders. Then he spoke of honesty in the heart, of how we must learn to understand the truth of our own characters, our own weaknesses so we can come to God, not pretending, not blaming anyone else, but with humility. Then, and only then, would we be worthy of God’s grace, and might receive it.

Harriet was moved and rather impressed by his sermon. She thought her own father would have been proud to preach it. Willoughby finished his homily and then invited his company to divide into small groups to discuss what they had heard among themselves. Two men and two women, each with a Bible in their hand and holding the pages open at the verses they might discuss, began to draw the others into groups.

It was then, as the men and women scraped their chairs across the floor that Harriet noticed Martha, Mrs Trimnell’s maid, among them. One of the women with a Bible was settling by her side, and as the others in the group found their places, Harriet could see her showing Martha the passage they were studying and reading it to her. As Harriet watched, Willoughby noticed her and joined her at the back of the room.

‘I have heard of how Mr Trimnell died,’ he said, shaking her hand, ‘and learned also that you are Mrs Westerman. Do you know yet who attacked him, madam?’

‘I am sorry to say, I do not,’ Harriet replied. ‘I came hoping to speak to any friends he might have had in your congregation. I see Mrs Trimnell’s maid is here.’

He nodded. ‘Yes. Martha is a good girl. I think she is afraid she offended you on Monday and you mean to make sure Mrs Trimnell casts her out. May I reassure her that is not the case?’

Harriet was surprised. ‘Please do, Mr Willoughby.’

He made her a slight bow and then went to fetch Martha from the group and brought her over, a hand on her arm.