The Hidden Man (32 page)

‘You are interested in the Guinea Trade, you say. Then you are speaking to a product of it.'

‘Would you oblige us by telling your story?'

‘My story is a long one.'

‘Nevertheless. Where are you from?'

‘Barbados. I was purchased as a houseboy by a clergyman when I was a young lad, having just made the Middle Passage. I was eager to learn and he easily taught me English and how to read scripture. He was a good man, or at least not a cruel one, but as soon as I became a man myself I ran away from him to freedom.'

‘In Liverpool?'

‘Of course. No black man can be free in the West Indies. Here I have found work for myself as a schoolmaster for my people, which they sorely need.'

‘Will you tell us about the Trade and about how it starts in Africa?'

‘There are many lies told about this by white men. I will tell you the truth. The Trade has made our home country evil and violent. War is ceaseless. Armies go about burning villages and taking the innocent people into slavery to sell them for gunpowder and rum at the coast. They march them in long lines chained together, which they call coffles. The slaves eat next to nothing, but their lot does not improve when they reach there. They are haggled over as they struggle to survive or die. The white men's ships sail away loaded with them, our people lying wedged together day after day in the dark. We hated the coffle men but feared the white men. We believed we were being taken across the ocean to be eaten.

‘Down below during the Middle Passage there was sickness and misery – endless, hopeless misery. Those that died were thrown to the sharks. Our captors knew we would all die without some fresh air, so we were brought up onto the deck each day and made to dance. Those that would not dance were whipped. The sailors thought it all very diverting.

‘When we got near to where we were going they would try to do something about us, to make us look better. They shaved our heads and rubbed our skins with grease. A good price was all they cared about.'

‘Are there rebellions against this inhumanity?' I asked.

‘Yes, of course, there are uprisings. Always useless, always ending in many deaths.'

‘What happens to the slaves when they reach the Indies?'

‘Almost all get sold to work on the plantations. The masters tell them that now their troubles are over so long as they work. And they do work, because if not they are whipped and maybe killed. They work every day while it is light. Only when it is dark do they rest. But the masters are always frightened that the slaves will rise up. It is their greatest fear. They prevent this by breaking their spirit. The women, they rape. The men, they simply terrify. The punishment for any black man caught stealing or doing what he shouldn't is terrible. They cut his tongue out, his balls off. If you have never seen a person whipped slowly to death, or hung up in a public cage and starved, you cannot know the slave's life. Living on the plantation, every day is the same. There is no hope, no future, only the same endless now.'

‘You were fortunate in your Christian master, that you escaped being sent to the plantation.'

‘He did not buy me to save me from slavery; he bought me because he wanted a houseboy. I ran away because, by then, I had grown and was a man, and he was ready to sell me again as a strong and healthy worker. Had I not got away I would be cutting cane now – if I happened to be still alive.'

*   *   *

We stayed with Elijah Quick for some hours, listening intently to what he had to say, questioning him on certain particulars, and finding him intelligent and eloquent. By the end we were much better informed.

‘It's an evil Trade, Titus,' said Fidelis, when we had said goodnight to Quick and were making our way back to the Inn. ‘And it is conducted by evil men. Why is there no outcry?'

‘Because people are making money.'

‘Tainted money. And why doesn't the Christian religion stand against it?'

I told him of some remarks I had read in Montaigne, that people are more likely to use Christianity to justify their hatreds and cruelties than to endorse their love and moderation.

‘So far from rooting out evil, he argues, our religion has become a way of screening, nourishing and inciting evil. I am a little inclined to agree with that idea.'

‘It is cynical, though,' said my friend, ‘and very contrary and odd. That author of yours will find no friend for his views in either Rome or Geneva.'

‘I am sure he wouldn't be perturbed about that.'

And so – as conversation will – our talk strayed from the subject of slavery. But what I had learned that day I have never forgotten. The Guinea Trade continues, and even increases, yet I loathe it and would like to see those who do it stand at the bar of human justice, if there ever happened to be such a thing.

 

Chapter Twenty-five

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Old Fowler welcomed us at his shop with a gap-toothed smile.

‘The boy's safely out at his meeting,' he told us. ‘Very pious he is. Keeps talking about the end time and the rapture of the saints and I don't know what.'

I judged him to be an educated old man for, among the volumes and tracts on his shelf, there were other books on subjects too broad to interest a religious enthusiast such as the son. I handed across the shoe.

‘Yesterday I showed you this. Can you tell me a little bit more about it? When it was made, for instance.'

He took it to the light and squinted inside. Then he turned it over and inspected the sole, the stitching.

‘It shows a few years of wear. I reckon it was made about five years ago, and some repairs have been made. It might be less if the fellow wore it every day without stint.'

‘What sort of a man would wear this shoe?'

‘It is not a cheap shoe. He was not a labourer. Let's say it was someone from the middling sort. The fashion of it is what we call in this shop Number 14. Now we always kept and still keep a record of every shoe we make with the number, date, size, price, and name of customer – all the details we might need later.'

‘So you can give us the name of the person that wore this shoe?'

‘I can tell you the names of men who have ordered such shoes to be made here. But shoes can be sold or given away. Many people wear a shoe that was made for the foot of another.'

‘How do you record each shoe?'

He opened a cupboard and a pungent smell wafted out. The lower half was full of rolls of finished hide but the top shelf contained six foolscap-sized ledgers. He took one out and opened it.

‘The first column as you see is the date, followed by the shoe's number – the Number 14s beginning with those digits, like here … and here! D'you see? Then we have the shoe's size and the price received and the signature of the customer to say that he has received the goods.'

‘Can we find this shoe amongst all these listed?'

‘Every shoe has its own individual number. Let's see, it should be inked under the tongue – it will be of six digits beginning with one and four.

Fidelis had picked the shoe from his hands and was peeling back the tongue.

‘I can't see anything,' he said. ‘No, what's this?'

He showed the back of the tongue to Fowler.

‘Yes, 1455 something-something,' the shoemaker read. ‘The last two numbers are rubbed away. But those numbers tell us where to look. All we have to do is find the entry in the book. As we don't know the date, we will have to work within estimates.'

He turned the pages of the ledger until he found the one he wanted to show us.

‘Let us start three years back. These are some of the last shoes Thomas made before he went sadly to Childwall in January three year ago.'

He fetched a straight-edge and laid it under the top line of records to make it easier to read.

‘I'll write down all the possible shoes for the last six months in which Mr Truss was still shoemaking,' I said. ‘May I have writing materials, Mr Fowler?'

These were brought and Fowler ran his finger down the column in which the shoe-numbers were recorded.

‘Here is the first!' he said. ‘Date 4 September 1739, shoe number 145542, price eight shillings and signed by — I can't read it. What's the name? Lewis Mottram, I think. What's the next one? Here. 15 October 1738, shoe number 145561, signed Jos. Garritty. Oh and another within a week. 19 October, 145564, signed by Martin Carman. Then three weeks later shoe number 145576 signed Chas. Cheeseby. Are you getting this down, Sir?'

He licked his finger and turned the page.

‘And there's one more in November, number 145579 signed for by Geo: Galliford. And finally, how many in December? Three it looks like. Number 145585 signed T. Barlow, 145590 signed Ben Philps and 145598 dated 29 December signed Henry Scott.'

I reviewed my list of names: Mottram, Garritty, Carman, Cheeseby, Galliford, Barlow, Philps and Scott. I read them out loud. Fidelis, I noticed, listened with his eyes closed.

‘No help for us there,' was all he said.

*   *   *

After a week in which the days had been largely fine and warm our ride back to Preston was wet. So, as riding companionably in the rain is almost impossible, each of us went along with our own thoughts and it wasn't until we stopped for refreshment at Ormskirk, before we had covered twenty miles, that we were able to compare those thoughts.

‘We may not have connected Zadok Moon with that shoe,' I said, ‘but the evidence against him is still strong, because he was at the inn.'

We were sitting with a jug of hot punch between us. Fidelis took a pull from his glass.

‘A clean-shaven, not a bearded man was at the inn, Titus. It is hard to prove that was Moon.'

‘It is not difficult to find a barber. The murderer of Jackson wanted to prevent any more revelations, did he not? The testimony given at the inquest was bad for Zadok Moon and could have been even worse.'

‘Quite so. We didn't find out what it was that he had done by way of fraud. We can only surmise.'

‘So he took part in the murder to prevent any further details being made known.'

Fidelis raised a hand high above his head and snapped his fingers.

‘That is the crux, Titus. We still don't know what it was about Zadok Moon that Jackson either already knew, or was still trying to find out. Nor do we know who helped Moon kill him. Was it, perhaps, Moreton Canavan?'

‘Only Jackson could tell us, surely.'

Fidelis laughed.

‘The same can be said of every murdered man, that he could tell who killed him.'

‘We would surely learn something from the letter Jackson wrote from the Lamb and Flag. I have asked Furzey to try to get it. And perhaps his companion could speak for him, if only she
would
speak.'

Fidelis now sat upright, struck by an idea.

‘Think of this. With her, we have a not dissimilar problem of communication as we have had with Adam Thorn. So what if we can solve it in the same way?'

‘I don't follow you.'

‘Difficult matters are easier to hear than to say. But of all words the easiest to say are Yes and No. So let her hear the case stated and let her simply affirm or deny, nod or shake.'

‘That's clever, and it might work,' I agreed. ‘But it must be someone the girl trusts who puts the questions to her.'

‘If there's anybody in Preston to do it, it might be your Elizabeth,' said Fidelis. ‘Did you not say she took the girl soup when she was incarcerated in the House of Correction?'

‘That is a good idea, but I have a better one – our friend Elijah Quick! He is intelligent, agreeable and best of all his skin is black.'

Luke slapped the table.

‘Yes, Titus! And I am sure he will agree. Shall I go back to Liverpool and put it to him?'

*   *   *

I arrived in Preston wet through and chilled to the bone. With hot water ready, Elizabeth banished Matty from the kitchen, poured the water with a handful of pine needles into the bathing tub, and made me sit in it until I was warm through. As I sat there I told her of our adventures in Liverpool, including an account of the Guinea Trade of which I only spared her the very worst details.

Later, as we sat over our supper, the puppy was heard barking in the hall. I went out to him as the door-knocker sounded, and I opened to find Amity Thorn, her face pale and pinched, standing alone at the door.

‘Doctor Fidelis was kind enough to say I could apply to him anytime if I was in trouble, and that I am. I can't find him at his lodging, though I left word. Is he with you, Sir? Little Peggy his niece that's been working at Cadley Place is watching the children.'

‘What is the trouble, Amity?'

‘It's Adam. I haven't been able to rouse him this last five hours. And now he's stopped breathing.'

*   *   *

The rain had cleared away and it was by no means yet dark as we rode out to Peel Hall Lane Cottage, having left word at the Lorrises' for Fidelis to follow hard upon us when he returned. Amity sat up behind me on the horse's rump, her arms strongly enclosing my waist and her breathing, mixed with a few sobs, falling on my neck. We jogged along like this for fifteen minutes until we arrived at her house.

Outwardly the place was quiet and still. The first thing I saw was the empty bath chair beside the door.

‘He was in it when he had his turn,' Amity told me. ‘Then me and Peg dragged him out and into his bed.'

‘That must have been difficult.'

‘Not really, Mr Cragg. He's that scrawny now, he's as light as my nose.'

From within came the reedy wail of a sleepy infant, and we found Peg with the baby in her arms, walking around in front of the range and rocking it with what – to my inexperienced eye – seemed an unnaturally vigorous motion. The other two children were asleep on their straw mattress while, beside the fire, a man sat at ease, smoking a stubby pipe. It took me a moment to recognize John Barton, dressed in his best.