Hugh Kenrick (16 page)

One day, three of his fellow pupils decided that it was time he was humbled and made one of their own. They cornered him one day in the cobblestone yard behind the school. They were the sons of other barons. The oldest boy challenged Hugh to a duel.

“To the death?” inquired Hugh.

“No!” laughed the boy, glancing at his friends. “Only so far as to cause injury and require a surgeon’s ministrations.”

Hugh frowned. “If it’s not worth a fight to the death, sir, then it’s not worth a fight.” He paused. “What is your grievance with me?”

“We hear,” said one boy, “that you did not pay the Butcher his due respect.”

“It is said that you ruined the hands of the Marquis of Bilbury, at Eton.”

“You voice sentiments that are alien and unnatural.”

“And dangerous.”

“True on all accounts,” replied Hugh. “But injuring me will neither erase nor even balance those facts. What is your solution?”

There was no answer, except for a trio of smirks on his tormentors’ faces.

“You have heard those stories, sir,” said Hugh. “I must remind you that my skills have improved since then. If you wish to reduce this conflict to a test of physical prowess, a fight to the death is the only condition on which I will condescend to it.”

“You deserve punishment, sir, the tonic of a good drubbing,” said the oldest boy, who moved toward Hugh, his hand lazily reaching down for the pommel of his sword.

Hugh whipped out his own sword and in a blink cut a gash on his attacker’s left cheek. The boy jumped back with a cry. The other boys reached for their swords. Hugh’s blade flicked across the nose of one and ripped the sword hand of the other. “I told you—to the death!” cried Hugh. “Shall we pursue this?”

The three boys staggered away sobbing. “You are mad!” yelled the assailant with the injured hand. “Mad! Mad!”

“If you have disfigured me, your father shall pay!” shouted the boy with the injured nose.

“To the death!” answered Hugh. “Those are my only terms! Those or nothing! Spare me your society! Get you to a surgeon!”

And the three boys disappeared into the school. Hugh glanced at the tip of his sword. It glistened with blood. He found a rag on the ground nearby and wiped the tip clean. Twenty other pupils had gathered around to watch the fight that did not happen. They moved out of his way when he passed. There were no more attempts to initiate him, or to humble him. To make him bend.

*  *  *

East of London Bridge on the Thames were the Lawful Keys, or wharves, twenty of them, near which all merchantmen bringing goods into the country were obliged to anchor to have their cargoes unloaded by lighters and deposited on the wharves for inspection and distribution. Custom House sat conveniently in the middle of these keys, with its own wharf and stairs. This was the most congested part of the Thames on any given day; not infrequently, a thousand ships of all sail were anchored below the Bridge, each waiting its turn to be unshipped and “customed.” Until later in the century there were no other “lawful” keys; the twenty that Hugh became familiar with comprised a monopoly, protected by statute. The port duties, warehousing charges, and other miscellaneous expenses paid to the keys’ proprietors by ship captains and merchants were not regulated. Bribes in money or in kind were necessary to unload cargo into the warehouses, or onto barges that would take the goods upriver under the Bridge to stairs, private wharves, and landing places beyond.

Benjamin Worley, the senior of Worley and Sons, was a partner with the other owner of Lion Key, John Biddle, whose sister he had married. Lion Key sat west of the Billingsgate docks, in between Somerset and Botolph Keys. Worley acted as agent not only for the Earl and Baron of Danvers, but for other prominent men of means as well. By himself, he owned another warehouse behind Lion Key, on Thames Street. This was Number 66; warehouses were the first buildings in London to employ numbers. He was also a partner in two merchantmen with their captain-owners. One, the
Nimble,
traded along the coast of Europe and in the
Mediterranean; the other, the
Busy
, in North America and the Caribbean. Worley and his family lived in a modest mansion on Mincing Lane, complete with a staff of servants, a stable for his post-chaise and team of horses, and quarters for all his staff.

Worley, of course, got preference for his merchantmen when they came up the Thames, as did merchantmen belonging to captains and syndicates with whom he did the most business. His only extraordinary expense was to provide the customs man assigned to Lion Key a modest “subsidy” in order to clear his own and other vessels’ cargoes with the least amount of duty and with the best dispatch. Through Lion Key passed grain, resins, timber, whale oil, Lettish deerskins, and other imports from the Baltic; wines, olive oil, spices, medicinal herbs, silks, and edibles from the Levant and southern Europe; tea, fine woods, opium, china, and other exotic goods on consignment from the occasional East Indiaman; and tobacco, cotton, hemp, sugar, beaver pelts, and rum from North America and the Caribbean. These goods were carted directly to No. 66 Thames Street, to be collected and paid for by merchants who had contracted for it, or sold to bidders on site.

Here at the Keys were also unloaded holds of corn at the Great Bear wharf, to be bought and sold in the coffeehouses of the Corn Factors’ Exchange, most of it reloaded onto barges and taken upriver to the Queenhithe wharf. And at Billingsgate were unloaded holds of coal from Newcastle and Europe, bought and sold by dealers at the Coal Exchange nearby, and also barged upriver to private depots.

Here teams of Merchants Constables, a private police force paid by a combine of merchants, warfingers, and lightermen, patrolled the alleys, depots, and byways of the Keys and Custom House, watching for solo pilferers and gangs of thieves. Here customs officials with their ledger books and tax tomes haggled with ship captains and merchants over the value or legality of goods, some intent on guaranteeing the Crown its due income, others open to entering less than what was due for a negligible fee. Always in the background was the thunder of the drays, lorries, and barrel wagons, the tumultuous hustle, jostle, and shouts of porters, laborers, and lightermen. Now and then men would pause to watch a wall of London Bridge plummet into the river, for at this time the houses on it were being demolished so that its piers could be reinforced.

It was into this maelstrom of commerce that Hugh was taken by post-chaise every Friday and Saturday morning.

His first task was to follow a clerk through a section of Worley’s own warehouse to recount barrels of Havana snuff recently brought in on the Caribbean vessel, the
Busy
, and then to observe a pair of factotums measure out the snuff into teakwood casks for a Strand shopkeeper. “Sixteen barrels, and one hundred casks to a barrel,” explained the clerk. “Goodly, though, has supplied us with only fourteen hundred casks. He must remove the two extra barrels or pay rent on ’em here.”

The clerk paused to look at Hugh, expecting to see incomprehension, or boredom. Hugh, though, was studying him intently. The clerk said, “And we’re already chargin’ him half a penny to fill the damned things. And then, we can’t guarantee that the barrels won’t be tampered with.” The clerk smiled weakly; his charge seemed to understand everything. He turned to one of the factotums. “Mr. Peters, run along to Goodly’s and tell ’im he’s short, and he’d better send a wagon.” The factotum obeyed, rushing down the aisle out of sight. The clerk picked up the man’s wooden scoop and handed it to Hugh. “Pardon me, milord, but Mr. Worley said you told him you wanted to get your hands into it.”

To the clerk’s surprise, Hugh took the scoop, smiled at it, and walked to a snuff barrel and a pile of teakwood casks. He opened the lid of one and began to work. The remaining factotum sneezed into his, sending up a cloud of snuff. The clerk laughed, and so did Hugh. The clerk was unsure of Hugh’s status; he was the son of a real baron, the nephew of an earl, and his own employer was more or less beholden to that family. He did not understand the arrangement. Caution got the better of him, and he found a scoop and began measuring out casks himself.

By noontime, all the teakwood casks had been filled. The clerk and the two factotums regarded Hugh with amazement. He had measured out the greater number of casks, and stood with his hands on his hips, hatless, coatless, and swordless in the sweltering warehouse, sweat dripping from his forehead, beaming with pride. “What is next?” he inquired.

Later, the clerk gained admittance to Worley’s sanctum-like office. “He works!” he exclaimed to his employer. “He’s as filthy as a coalheaver, and he…enjoys it!”

This did not surprise Benjamin Worley. He had been warned by the boy’s father. But he had already believed it. He had been spying on the snuff-cask crew throughout the morning and early afternoon, in order to accustom his mind to the sight of a laboring aristocrat.

Still, Benjamin Worley struggled to understand his new “employee.”
He had been instructed by the boy’s father to drill him in the fundamental operations of his business. With that mandate, he allowed himself a certain degree of familiarity with the boy, and ordered him about without fear of reprimand. He subsequently put him to work at a tall desk with other clerks to enter numbers into the great account books, and after two weeks, Hugh had answers to questions that Worley did not have time to ask. Much to the merchant’s surprise—and much to his scandal—Hugh also showed a flair for physical work, and seemed to delight in exercising his body in the most degrading labor, moving easily with the pence-a-day laborers and porters, who could do nothing but move physical objects, unloading drays and wagons. He noted that the sight of crates and bales and ships at anchor on the Thames seemed to animate the boy’s face, and for a reason he could not fathom sensed a kinship with him. His own sons, Josiah and Lemuel, who also worked in the office, exuded more airs than did Hugh Kenrick.

When it was safe—for he did not know how much the boy knew about the sub rosa end of the business—he allowed Hugh to audit the clearance of cargo by the customs man when no extraordinary “fees” were expected. He instructed him in the art of double-entry bookkeeping, the fundamentals of drawbacks, and the mechanics of tariffs, excises, and customs. He took him on a tour of the Keys, introduced him to other merchants and wharfingers, and pointed out the specialty of each Key.

“Of course, milord, as it may have occurred to you, the Keys do not confine themselves to receiving merely. There, you see,” he said, gesturing with his cane to a Key that was piled high with crates and barrels, “there go nails, and hats, and shoes, and farm implements. Not to mention books and fine furniture, and tools of all types. Which ship is she? Ah, yes, the
Dolphin,
bound for Boston and New York. Owned by Captain St. John. Nothing dutiable on board her, of course. Except for wool. The colonials make much of their own, you see. Shouldn’t, but they do. Well, it does commerce good to neglect some law. But the
Dolphin
here, she’ll pick up a good wind at Sheerness, round the thumb at Margate, and skirt the coast past Ramsgate. Probably stop at Brighton, and Portsmouth, and Weymouth to take on more cargo—perhaps passengers and indentures—if there’s still room for them. Then she’ll stop at Falmouth to pick up mail for the colonies, and hope to join a convoy at Penzance. Damned convoys! We’re back to that again! ’Pon my word, milord, you can’t age five years peacefully these times without a damned war! Ah! Here’s the Angry Angel!” exclaimed Worley, looking up at the signboard of a coffeehouse. “Run by a
man who was once a priest, but he had an eye for well-turned ankles, and…well, why don’t we stop in and see if we can pick up some news?”

Worley wrote a report for Hugh’s father: “He takes pride in having performed the most menial tasks. My clerks and apprentices are flummoxed by his behavior. He is, however, excellent in the account books, but he also seems to take irregular pleasure in acquiring grime and calluses. He has no difficulty in grasping the mechanics of any aspect of this trade. The ship captains seem to like him, as he exhibits an inordinate interest in their vessels and trades. He walks and talks among them and tradesmen and such as an equal, neither humbly nor condescending. I would swear he was raised in America, but for my certainty that he has never been there…”

*  *  *

Hugh was indeed dumb to the city’s conventional temptations and distractions, insensible to the things others found interesting or amusing. One afternoon, he accompanied Worley, his sons, and some of the senior clerks to Billingsgate to witness and wager on an illegal boxing match between two of the fishwives. The two ugly women pummeled each other’s faces, using the coins clutched in their palms (there to prevent them from pulling each other’s hair) as cutting weapons. The crowd shouted profane encouragement to one or the other of the combatants. Worley and his sons joined in with practiced zeal. When the fight ended in a draw, Worley remarked to Hugh: “Disreputable market here, milord. Noted for its language, you see. Could pick up quite a vocabulary, if you’d a mind to—and a few skirts, too, if you don’t mind the smell.”

The experience left Hugh bored, indifferent, and with his first taste of a jadedness that had an odd gleam of dignity. His life was a jeweled vessel, and he meant to fill it with the best wine.

Hugh was unaware of the pang of solitude. The city was open to him. Ideas kept him company. He was too engrossed in the excitement of being alone. There is, in any great city, enough to occupy any mind that is vigorous enough to see it. “My city” was the unspoken premise that powered his actions and thoughts. Alone, he approached the city as a prospective conqueror.

He performed his chores at Worley’s with excruciating carefulness, growing confidence, and quiet delight. He felt a surge of pride for having performed them, menial though they might have been. With each task he
completed, his observers noted an odd combination of grimness and joy on his face, and could not fathom the incongruity, except to conclude that it was evidence of some form of madness. They could not know that with each completed task—when he finished an inventory, or balanced the double-entry account ledgers, or helped watermen unload their lighters of cargo unshipped from a merchantman riding at anchor below London Bridge—Hugh felt that he owned the city, that he had contributed to its life, and that he could stake a claim to its existence, that the city was then more rightfully his than those who commanded it, more than the dukes, more than the Lord Mayor, more than any guild. “Something has gone out into the world,” he would think, “something done right, something of value, and my hand was in it.”