The Masters of Bow Street (6 page)

‘Good night.’ James Marshall strode briskly to the door leading to the back stairs which led to their two rooms. He started up them quickly but confidently enough, but slowed down as he drew near the door which his mother might open at any moment. He did not know why he was afraid, for his mother would at most remonstrate with him. Had his father been alive he could have expected a beating for being out so late; he had often been frightened of returning late without a good excuse.

Yet he felt differently now - worse.

He did not know, although later the years told him, that on this day when Jackson’s execution could not fail to awaken painful memories of the shooting, already six months past because Jackson had used every device to postpone his trial and to buy false witnesses, he should have been with his mother. He simply knew that there was disquiet within him; new sensations which were not simply fear.

Ruth Marshall heard her son’s voice in the yard, and the querulous tone of the guard, but she did not get out of her chair. A glow of red embers which filled the fireplace and cookstove provided the only warmth in these two rooms. The younger children were already in the smaller room, asleep, one at each end of a bed built from the wall; her bed was beneath it, much wider: her bed and Richard’s. With Richard and the quilts there had been no cold nights, but now she was often cold. An iron pot was warm on the black iron stove, filled with meat soup which James liked; bread stood on the table with some cold vegetables and a piece of dried-looking cheese.

It was such a supper as she had often shared with both Richard and James on nights when they had been home in time to eat and talk before going to bed. In a strange way she missed their discussions more than any other single thing except her loving with Richard.

How father and son had talked!

How proud Richard had been of the boy! Even though he had never said so in James’s presence, for fear of making him swelled-headed. For from a very early age - earlier than that of Beth today, with her childish prattle and her giggles and her easy tears - James had used words as if taught their significance in the womb. A prodigy, Richard had called him.

‘We’ve brought forth a scholar, Ruth,’ he would say. ‘A boy with a man’s mind already.’

Richard had had access to many books through his friend the Reverend Sebastian Smith. He borrowed and read them, then allowed his son to read them before discussing with the boy the author’s meaning, the significance of the phrases and the philosophies. The more complex facts he would explain with extreme care, and his son always remembered. As the boy grew older, his interest in the rest of the world, in trade, in the figures quoted in the Annual Register, developed. There were two coffee houses in which he was permitted to sit for hours over a single mug of coffee, reading newspapers, absorbing the events of London especially, reading about crime and criminals, about his father’s work and about that of John Furnival and Bow Street. Afterward he would talk over what he had read with his father, forever seeking explanations and information.

Sitting and listening, Ruth had absorbed a great deal of knowledge, just as, at James’s age, she had from her own father. But she could not expound, as Richard had; and today as always she found it difficult to talk with her son except on homely matters.

She knew that he still read a great deal.

She could only guess how much he missed the talks with his father.

She heard her son hesitate outside the door, but still she did not move.

Slowly the door opened and he came in.

There was nothing furtive about the way James entered; there had never been anything furtive about him. She did not understand his expression but was aware of something different about him; perhaps it was due to the candlelight, but whatever the cause, he seemed older, older and very tired. He closed the door as cold night air swept up the narrow staircase and stood looking at her for a while, as if he were seeing something different in her, too. Quite without warning he crossed to her and went down on his knees, leaning against them and looking up into her face. She opened her mouth but no words came. Her right hand moved and touched and then soothed his forehead. He could feel the roughness at the end of her forefinger where she pushed the head of the needle; too often she sewed without a thimble.

It was like looking down on her husband, but this mood of nostalgia did not hurt. ‘What made you so late?’ she inquired at last.

‘I could not rest.’

‘You feel warm although ‘tis cold outside. Have you been walking far?’

‘Very far,’ he replied. ‘But that is not new to me.’

‘No,’ she said, echoing his words, ‘that is not new to you. Where have you been?’

He did not reply immediately.’

He was ten years old, yet in some ways a man. He was ten years old yet felt a great burden of responsibility for his mother and his sisters, and he felt shame because he had left them alone all day, one of the few days when he was free because the merchant for whom he worked knew that it was useless to open his shop on a Tyburn hanging day. It was the poor people’s holiday, and no one worked except those who must.

‘James,’ she said, ‘you must tell me where you have been.’

It was still some time before he answered, but there was no defiance in him, so she let him be, not trying to hurry him. Suddenly he buried his face in his hands and sobbed, so hard that she could feel the shaking throughout her body. Now both of her hands covered his head with a light touch which she hoped, prayed, was reassuring. He did not cry loudly and there was no fear that he would wake the others.

When at last he quieted and drew back, she asked, ‘Have you eaten this day, my son?’

He shook his head, his voice too hoarse for words.

‘
Go
and wash,’ she told him, ‘and then come to the table.’

He moved away, watching her, but she did not linger. She was young to be his mother, not yet twenty-seven; her body had natural sprightliness and she moved without effort. He went to a corner where there was a wooden slab with a bowl standing in a hole cut into it, a tall jug, and some soap so coarse it scraped the skin. He used very little of the precious water, emptied the waste into a pail, and rinsed in only an inch or two in the bottom of the bowl. He dried himself on a patched linen towel and, feeling refreshed, went to the table. Two pewter bowls of soup steamed at either end. He sat down and his mother sat opposite, head bowed and palms placed together in prayer. Half a minute passed before she said, ‘Thank God from whom all blessings flow, all food and sustenance comes, all health and all courage.’

‘Amen,’ breathed James Marshall and, when he was sure that she had finished saying grace, he began to eat; only when he started did he realise how ravenous he was! But his mother did not offer him more soup; that was for tomorrow. He had a crust of bread and some cheese from a wooden trencher, for all their china had been sold, and washed these down with water; then he pushed the roughhewn wooden chair back, feeling much better.

‘Can you tell me now?’ his mother asked.

‘I can and will but I do not know if it will please you.’

She looked at him for a long time and, unbidden, what little he knew of her history passed through his mind. She was the daughter of a dissenting minister who, somewhere in Berkshire, had gathered supporters and had built a small chapel until, persecuted by more orthodox Christians, he had become a wandering preacher, visiting inns and, on the fringe of London, alehouses and even brothels to carry his message. Richard Marshall had once saved him from a gang of ruffians in an alehouse and had taken him home. That was when she and Richard had first met.

James realised, as what he knew of these things drifted through his mind, that his mother was about to speak so he did not try to find the words he needed. Slowly she went to where a basket stood on a narrow side table. She fumbled in the bottom of the basket and brought out a folded paper with black printing.

He caught his breath as she unfolded it and held it out for him to see.

‘Is this where you have been?’ she asked.

The face of Frederick Jackson, drawn true to life, stared out of the page, and across the top were the words:

Confessions and Last Utterances on This Earth of the Famous Frederick Jackson - Hero

James stopped reading halfway down the page of the injustice done to Frederick Jackson by his persecutor, John Furnival. There was so much more in the same malicious vein, no insult not heaped on the head of the man who had provided evidence at the trial of a man he had been trying to bring down for twenty years.

The boy said, ‘They are lies - all lies!’

‘The only truth is that Mr. Furnival sent him to his death and he was hanged this afternoon.’

‘He was a murderer, a thief, a devil in human form.’

‘This is what Mr. Furnival is to some people,’ his mother replied.

‘You
don’t believe that!’

‘No, I don’t believe it,’ Ruth assured him. ‘I believe him to be as good a man as your father, except in one way, and most of these statements are lies. But many will believe them, my son.’ Almost in the same breath she asked, ‘Why did you go to Tyburn today?’

‘It was not possible for me to keep away.’

‘Had you planned to go?’

‘Yes, Mother. I was set on it.’

‘Why?’ she asked, puzzled and frowning.
‘Why?’

‘If there is an answer it is that the ghost of my father drew me there,’ he said huskily. ‘I wanted to see for myself what he had often told me happened. And it did. Mother, did you know that he came near to worshipping Mr. Furnival?’

She nodded mutely.

‘And that was because he believed in all that Mr. Furnival believed in, and hated what Mr. Furnival hates. The evil system of thief-takers, who live by catching men, often innocent men, and having them hanged - like the seventeen I saw today!’ His voice grew louder, fiercer. ‘Except for the men Mr. Furnival pays, and a few paid by others who abominate the system, there is no honest thief-taker, scarce an honest magistrate, for each wants his share of the government’s blood money. Mr. Furnival believes the laws aid the criminals. They leave the safety of the wards and the parishes in the hands of these grasping justices. They allow two or three sheriffs to represent the King - and to make a profit out of crimes as best they can, by charging prisoners for favours, and by selling the body and the clothing of the men they have just hanged. And that is not all,’ tumbled on James, so fiercely that his mother gave up trying to interrupt him. He finally broke off as if hearing something of significance, and then cried: ‘Hark!’

In the stillness that followed, a frail voice sounded: ‘Eleven o’clock and all’s well. Eleven o’clock and all’s well!’

‘There
is our sole protection against criminals, save for any we pay for ourselves. The Charlies!’ He sneered the word. ‘Men of the watch hired by the wards to patrol the streets to keep them safe. Those useless hour bawlers who will croak “all’s well” if a house is on fire or a girl is being raped or a man robbed in front of their eyes! They are nothing but bumbling old fools who doze in their boxes or in the watch-houses and keep themselves out of trouble.
That
is how the peace of London is kept.
That
is why crime is always increasing and justice has no meaning. And that is what my father pledged himself to fight - and what Mr. Furnival is fighting with all his strength.’

At last, exhausted, he stopped.

Looking up at his mother, it came to his mind that he had not seen her smile or heard her laugh since his father’s death. He realised also that except for the younger children these rooms had been rooms of mourning for half a year, yet before then they had been filled with laughter and song. He had never come home to find his mother crying or vexed and he had known so few other families - then - that he had not realised what a remarkable thing that happiness was. He had never come home to an empty table, to curses, to punishment unless it was merited. In this past half year his mother had become a different person, and so had he.

But his answer was not the full explanation of why he had gone to see his father’s murderer hang. He had not even known that murderer, had not known for certain until he had climbed these stairs and hesitated - not for fear of having hurt her, but for fear that hope would not be realised. For he had gone to Tyburn to see the end of the man who had brought such heaviness upon him and his mother and he had thought that with the murderer dead the weight would be eased.

But there was no easing of his heart or, he knew, of hers. He drew a deep breath and spoke so quickly that it was difficult for her to follow the words.

‘I thought it would exorcise the devil of hate from us, that’s why I went. I thought when life departed from him—’

‘No,’ she choked, ‘no, my son,
don’t
tell me that.’

‘If ‘tis not the devil, then who is it?’ he cried. ‘Why is this like a house of death?’

As he saw the tears well up in her eyes, he knew how he had hurt her but became aware of something else, of a secret to share with her: he knew deep within him that she had suffered the same fears; that since his father had gone it had been as if they were possessed of the devil.

But why, why, why? What wrong, what evil had they done?

‘James, my son,’ she said in husky whisper, ‘it is very late and you must be at the merchant’s by six o’clock. You will be hard to wake. In the morning you will have forgotten all such talk of the devil. Why, you should be ashamed and so should I! Your father laughed at all mention of the devil and declared that God would not allow him to exist.’

She laughed. Then for the first time in so many months they both laughed; together.

But when he was on the straw mattress in a corner of this room and his mother had gone to her bed, he saw those thrashing legs and he heard the voice of the Reverend Sebastian Smith asking God’s mercy for the man who had killed his father.