A Spectacle of Corruption (8 page)

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 cock 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 piss in it.”

I thought to offer him a worthy response, but I held my tongue, wishing 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 arses, 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 glasses. 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 shipment 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 shipmen 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 hell before usurping with the likes of your rubbish. The men in your gang are nothing but cutpurses and mollies and buggerantos.’ 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 acuminate 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 canvass 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 ship to unload, I don’t care nothing for him
or
his whore mother’s arse.”

“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 bum 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 glass 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 furnishings, 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.

And then there was poor Walter Yate, sprawled upon the floor, propped on his back like an overturned turtle. One man held down his arms, while another lifted a chair over his head and prepared to lower it and crush the poor victim’s skull. Three more stood by cheering, dividing their time between punching at the air in support for their brothers and glancing to the door in anticipation of the even greater acts of destruction that surely now took place outside.

It was true that these matters of what porter received which job were nothing to me, and it was even more true that a part of myself believed Yate deserved to have his head pushed in for speaking so favorably of Griffin Melbury, but I could nevertheless not stand by to murder. I ran forward and knocked aside the man who held Yate down and pulled the quarry out of the way in time so that the chair hit the floor, where it burst into pieces.

Seeing me come to their victim’s aid, the porters scattered. I quickly pulled Yate to his feet. Though dazed and a bit scratched, he appeared to have escaped serious harm. “Thank you,” he said, as he ushered me toward the door. “I thought to find no such friends here among Greenbill’s boys.”

“I’m not one of Greenbill’s boys. And though I did not think to find you here, I would speak with you regardless. You’re of little use to me with your head crushed.” I pushed over a table near the door to provide us with some small shelter from the half dozen or so men who remained inside. Other than the two who had attempted to murder Yate, the remainder were exploring the wonders of a tavern without a tavernkeeper. That is to say, they were taking their fill of the bucket of gin and shoving their pockets full of knives and small dishes. In the next few minutes, they would be either asleep or more belligerent than ever.

The other two men eyed us as we crouched behind the overturned table. They eyed the men with the gin. They attempted to make up their minds.

“My name is Weaver,” I said hastily to Yate. “I am in the employ of a priest called Ufford, who has hired me to find out the author of some threatening notes. He thinks you might know something of this—that it may be linked to your troubles with Dogmill.”

“Dogmill should go to the devil, and Ufford too. I wish I’d never involved myself in this business. It’s nothing but plots and secrets and schemes. But it’s the porters who pay the price.”

I thought to ask what plots and secrets and schemes he meant, but I observed that violence had defeated drink. Four men who had taken their fill of gin now rushed toward us like angry bulls.

Yate saw at once that it was time to take our leave. As he pushed open the door to the tavern, I knew that more talk would have to wait, for there was no refuge to be found outside. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds of men in the street, fighting with one another and with strangers, pulling down doors and women. One man had obtained a lantern and threw it at a building across the street. It fortunately fell short of its mark and broke safely upon the stone steps, setting on fire nothing more important than a fellow rioter.

We were not a foot from the tavern before two men descended once more on Walter Yate, and it would have been a strange thing to rescue him from one death and leave him for another, so I stepped in and took a swing at one of the assailants. My fist landed hard against the side of his head, and I took some pleasure in seeing him fall, but then there were two more who joined my first assailant, and I now found myself blocking and punching just to keep the blows from my face.

At one instant I looked up and saw a brick, clutched hard by white fingers, swinging toward my head. I don’t know that I would have evaded this blow—certainly fatal—if Yate had not raised his arm, at the risk of exposing himself to violence from a man he fought, and caused my assailant to drop his brick. I took this brute down with a single jab to his face and grunted my thanks to Yate, on whom I began to look now quite favorably. Though he spoke glowingly of Miriam’s husband—as grave an offense as I could imagine—he and I were now bound in the brotherhood of combat.

I still had the skills of a trained pugilist, though the leg injury that had ended my fighting days began to ache as I pranced about, defending myself and looking for an exit through which Yate and I might escape. But no exit was to be found. Someone would present himself to me with his fists and I would fend him off or fell him or sidestep him, only to find a new conflict. Yate, for his part, fought well, but like me could only keep his attackers away long enough to fend off more blows.

Occupied as I was in protecting my own life, I could see that the riot had taken a strangely political cast. Groups of porters were now chanting
No Jacobites! No Tories! No Papists!
—all being led by Yate’s rival, Greenbill Billy. Riots were apt to take on convenient tones of protest, particularly in election times, but I was nevertheless curious that this should have happened so quickly.