Watery Grave (4 page)

“He is not so well loved by the crew?”

“Lieutenant Hartsell is not so popular,” said Tom, leaving the impression that he could have said more.

“I see. Jeremy has told me that upon landing at Tower Wharf, the leave party was addressed by an officer of considerable rank.”

“That was Admiral Sir Robert Redmond, sir.”

“And he asked that any who know of this matter might step forward. None did, said Jeremy.”

“For the good reason, sir, that none of us knows anything of it —or so I believe. There were no rumors at the time of the captain’s death, no sly suspicions whispered. This came to us as if from the blue.”

Sir John said nothing, merely pushed his glass forward to be filled from the bottle of wine which stood nearest me. I obliged him. He sipped at the glass and waited, almost as if he hoped to hear more from Tom. Yet the young seaman apparently had nothing more to tell.

“It may interest you, Tom,” said the magistrate at long last, “to know that Sir Robert has written me regarding this matter, asking my opinion in it. Yet he was very parsimonious of details. I find, for instance, talking to you, that a charge of murder is involved here. He alluded simply to a troublesome matter aboard the H.M.S.
Adventure
that would likely result in a court-martial at which he must preside. He and I are old friends. We were shipmates on the Resolute. As I said, he has asked tor my help. What this will entail I cannot guess, yet as a friend I am bound to give it. Jeremy and I will see him tomorrow afternoon at Tower Hill.”

“We will, Sir John?” said I, quite amazed.

“Indeed we will,” said he.” I had neglected to mention it to you, I fear. But you are willing to come?”

“Certainly, sir —oh, most certainly.”

Not long afterward, whilst their talk continued I made to clear the table, knowing that if I did not attend to it soon, I should be unable to keep my promise to Lady Fielding. The little wine I had drunk had gone to my head, and while it had not made me drunk, it had made me powerful drowsy.

I shuffled the dishes out, as well as the near-consumed roast, leaving only the wineglasses before Tom and Sir John. As I made my last trip from the table, the young seaman was uncorking one of the bottles of claret held in reserve as he narrated the taking of a privateer along the dangerous coast of Coromandel. He told the tale with the same keen spirit he had shown in telling of the battle with the grabs.

Somehow I managed to do the washing up, or most of it, for I left some for the morning. And as I dragged past the dining room, I heard them talking still, Sir John joining his voice with Tom’s to question him on some matter of armament, or other such. These were stories Sir John was eager to hear. I had never known him to be so completely in the thrall of another as listener.

At this distance in time, near thirty years it is as I write this, it seems strange to consider that a matter which caused greater controversy and contention than any of Sir John Fielding’s inquiries should have begun thus, with domestic matters and family considerations — a dinner in celebration and welcome. But it is so that we can none of us tell when or how the great events in our lives will begin, nor if, once they have transpired, they will affect us for good or ill. There can be no doubt but that Sir John himself was deeply touched by the series of happenings that began that day so modestly. He spoke of them ever afterward with great bitterness. Yet in my view, if he lost something, he gained much, as well, for we must always count it a gain when we are given the chance to look upon our lives, take stock, and consider what of our past we should put aside.

I know not the time Tom Durham retired, yet when I woke next morning, I found him my bedmate. Having no need to waken him, I sHpped quietly from beneath the quih, dressed hurriedly, and silently left the room, leaving the door ajar behind me. In all probability I need not have been so careful, for my bed companion slept as sound as any man slept this side the grave.

Yet I continued quiet down the stairs, shoes in hand, making my way on tiptoe. Most days I was the first up and about. It was my regular duty to set the oven fire for Mrs. Gredge. Due to her sudden incapacity, which was confirmed by the sounds of labored breathing that issued from her room, I had decided that morning to cook breakfast for the household in her stead. Yet who should I find in command of the kitchen but Lady Fielding? She scurried about most efficient, doing all that needed be done in the cause of breakfast. From her progress, it seemed to me she must have been at work near an hour.

“Am I so tardy rising?” I asked, as I stood before her, rubbing my eyes.” What is the hour?”

“No, no,” said she, “nothing of the kind. I was early awake and thought to make myself useful, merely —as you did last night.”

“Ma’am?”

“The washing up, I mean.”

“Oh, well, that,” said I, with a shrug.” I do that always for Mrs. Gredge.”

“I, for one, was most grateful to find the job done. ‘ Then she clapped her hands in her manner of command: “But sit, Jeremy. Eat your porridge. Have a cup of tea. Then, if you will, you may take a tray to our ailing cook.”

So sit I did and ate my fill, as well. She Fed me bread and porridge, with a dollop of butter for each. And when she put a cup of tea before me, she poured another for herself and sat down at the table to watch me eat. It seemed a curious thing to do. Though it caused me some slight embarrassment, it clearly gave her pleasure.

“This porridge is ever so good,” said I, thinking to flatter her labors.

“Oh, come now, Jeremy. Porridge is but porridge. You may butter it and salt it, both of which I have done —but there is little more that can be done to lend it savor.” Yet then she added, relenting, “But I vow it is a pleasure to see you eat it with such relish. It was just so that my young Tom used to do not so long ago.” She sighed.” He is not my young Tom now.”

“Is he so much changed?”

She bobbed her head most decisively.” Indeed he is,” said she.” Not so much for the worse or better — simply altered so that I scarce know him. I believe that Jack understands him now better than I —and I, after all, am Tom’s mother. You, Jeremy!”

She gestured broadly at me — pointing.

What did she mean? What had I done? “Yes, ma’am?”

“You probably also understand him.”

“In vhat way?”

“Well, ” said she, “you must tell me. Can you understand why he is so eager to return to that … that vessel?”

“The H.M.S. Ai’entarer

“Call it what you like. Why does he wish to go back?”

“If I have it aright from what he said, ” I began, “it is not so much the ship that attracts him, nor those aboard, it is rather the life upon the sea that moves him so.”

“But ii’/py?”

“Well, ma’am, the physical rigors, the dangers, the chance to prove himself a man.”

“As a man!” She gave a most joyless laugh at that.” He is but a boy. I do not comprehend, nor have I ever, this pell-mell rush to manhood, this love of danger. It may be,” said she, musing upon the matter, “that Tom nor any other has much control upon it; that at some appointed hour in each boy there is an alarum that sends him off in pursuit of who knows what folly whose achievement marks manhood, be it martial, intellectual, or car — ” She broke off, as if just having come to a realization of some sort.” Jeremy?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I wonder would you do me a special service?”

“Gladly.”

“I have a great jumble of clothes that I have so far collected for the Magdalene Home. Perhaps you can help me load them in a hackney carriage. The ladies will unload them swift enough, I’m quite sure. I had intended to ask Tom to do this and accompany me so he would have some notion of what it is has involved me this past year. Yet why not let him sleep, eh? I take it he was deep in the arms of Morpheus when you left him?”

“Oh, indeed yes. He was like unto a dead man.”

“Very good,” said she.” Well then, after you have brought the tray to Mrs. Gredge, I should like you to go out to Bow Street and flag down a hackney carriage. Bring it round, and we shall load it up together. No need even to mention Magdalene to Tom.”

The Magdalene Home for Penitent Prostitutes had been the better part of a year a-birthing, midwifed into existence jointly by Sir John and Lady Fielding. Her idea it was, and his the energy and practical planning that brought it forth to substantial reality. Even I had made a modest contribution, for who but me had carried Sir John’s begging letters about town?

Thus was the plan circulated and thus was the money collected. If those first donors did not perhaps shower guineas down upon Sir John and Lady Katherine, they were at least sufficiently generous so that a sturdy house could be bought and rebuilt within as she would have it done, a small staff could be hired, and the doors thrown open at last. The truth was that many were curious what would be made of the place before they were willing to give freely for its support. Most, ladies as well as gentlemen, seemed to question the very existence of penitent prostitutes —thus, it was said, the place would go empty. On the same principle, the blades averred the opposite, declaring that the Magdalene Home would no doubt become London’s most crowded brothel.

Neither prediction, of course, proved out. Indeed there were, and still are, penitent prostitutes, for the Magdalene Home filled early and, though none of its residents stay for more than a year, remains lull to this day. It is not, as some call it to this day, a club for fallen women. Lady Fielding insisted there were those who, given the chance, would leave the life on the streets. If they had a trade, or other means of earning money, every effort would be made to place them in positions where they might earn their way; this was ever accomplished in a lew months time. If they had no trade, as most had not, then they were taught one and given a rough apprenticeship while resident at the Magdalene Home; there is, after all, little work done by women in this world that cannot be learned in a year.

It was hence to the Home, located in Westminster, that she would go on that morning. I brought the hacknej carriage round to Number 4 Bow Street. Then, with no help from the driver, I made to fill it with the great pile of dresses, skirts, and shifts I had hauled up from the cellar. There was bare enough space inside for Lady Fielding when at last she emerged, apologizing for her tardiness and showering me with praise for doing all without her assistance (which, in any case, I should have declined).

“I shall be gone a good part of the day,” said she.” I mean to inquire among the ladies in the Home for one to help out in the kitchen.”

“Mrs. Gredge may soon be able.”

“And again she may not.” She sighed.” Well, Jeremy, no need to tell Tom much about all this —simply that I shall return when I can do so. I’m sure you can keep him entertained.”

“I wiU do my best, of course.”

“And out of trouble.”

To that I made no promise but simply waved a goodbye as she mounted into the carriage, and the driver pulled away.

“You must tell me more of this place,” said Tom Durham.” A charitable home for young women, you say? Have I understood that aright?”

“I think I should not say more,” said I to him.

“Oh? And why not?”

“Because,” said I, “your mother wishes you to be kept ignorant of it.”

At that he let out a loud yelp of amusement, then continued walking in silence with me for a good long space.

It had been his notion, after all, that we go off on a ramble through Covent Garden. I did a bit of buying out of a list Lady Fielding had provided —vegetables for the stew she would make from what was left of the roast. But most of our time in the Garden had been spent wandering about in no particular pattern from one end of the grand piazza to the other. It contented him so.

As I had expected, his seaman’s duds caused quite a stir among the layabouts and lazy boys. They called after him; he smiled merely and waved a greeting. One stepped out before us and attempted to execute the steps of a hornpipe as a kind of jeering salute to Tom, who nimbly demonstrated in his turn how the dance was done proper. The women of the street, too, gave him note with calls, cries, snatches of song, and open invitations. To these he was quietly unresponsive. He did indeed cause quite a stir.

“Ah, Jeremy,” said he (following a warm solicitation by one of their number —black-haired and blue-eyed, she was), “I suppose what I should do is pick out the prettiest of the lot and get the awful deed done with. I’ve money enough for it. I’ve the appetite, God knows.”

Here was a disappointment. I had supposed Tom Durham to be well past me in carnal experience. I had hoped he might supply me with knowledge, even perhaps a bit of wisdom, in these difficult matters. Yet I was certainly sympathetic to his situation and attitude, so like my own they were.

Yet I gave him a matey reply to his complaint: “What is it prevents you then?”

“Lack of opportunity, I suppose.”

How could that be? Half the easy women in London seemed to have established themselves here in Covent Garden and the streets surrounding it.

“And the pox,” Tom added.” I may as well own up. I am frighted of the pox.”

“I share that same fear.” I confided it to him in little more than a whisper.

“Well, what do you do?” It was as if sixteen-year-old Tom were seeking advice from fourteen-year-old me.

His question was so direct that it left no room for equivocation or subterfuge. I had no choice but to fall back on the truth: “I’m afraid I abstain.”

“I’m afraid that’s what I have done, too. My messmates think me a freak. The ship’s surgeon insisted upon examining me. Hints were dropped from on high. And all this came as the result of my refusal to go with my mates on a sorrowful expedition to a Bombay brothel, from which three did, in fact, return poxy. Strange, don’t you think, that my mother means to keep me away from her home for young women and girls because she believes me to be like some ravening wolf who will prey upon her poor lambs?”

“Now there I believe you wrong her, ” said I.

“What then do you say?”

“They are not lambs, and well she knows it. Perhaps she fears they will prey upon you. You are, after all, her son. She wishes to keep you from harm —at all cost.”

“Well, with that last I agree,” said Tom, “at all cost, certainly.”

After much back-and-forth through the Garden, we had come to rest at the pillar, which then stood at the exact center of the piazza but now stands there no more. We leaned against its base as we conversed, and though impassioned by our frustration, we spoke in quiet tones. Indeed we spoke so quiet, our heads so close together, that there in the daylight, with the marketing crowd all about, we must have had the look of conspirators. For when Jimmie Bunkins spied us and approached, he hailed us thus:

“Here’s a rum sight for me peepers! Tom, the village hustler of yore, decked out natty in a sailor suit, selling me pal Jeremy into a life on the scamp!”

At that, Tom Durham let forth a guffaw, jumped down from the pillar base, and threw his arms open to Bunkins.

“Jimmie B.! The hornies ain’t got you yet? I figured you for a scholar on Duncan Campbell’s floating academy. Or worse. Your heaters kept you out of the clink, have they?”

I was doubly surprised: first, that the two were obviously well acquainted; second, that Tom should know Co vent Garden’s flash-talk so well, much less remember it, as he did, after an absence of near three years.

They embraced, as proper friends might. Tom, much the taller of the two, pulled poor Bunkins off his feet. There followed a bit of back pum-meling and hand shaking with shouts of “How beya?” “You’ve grown to man size, ” and so on.

Then Bunkins, the reformed thief, turned to me and again expressed his surprise at seeing Tom and me together. I explained, as best I could, our relation. Then Tom gave to me his history with the one he called Jimmie B.

“We were scamps together, ” said he.” My year in the Garden he was a proper chum. He taught me nap prigging, tick squeezing, and all the dark arts practiced in the precinct. Ain’t that so, Jimmie B.?”

‘Pon my life,” swore Bunkins, “and I never had no better student. Just listen how he learned the flash!” Bunkins stepped close and, with an eye toward Tom, spoke quietly to me: “In fact, had he stuck to napping, as I advised, he would not have gone bad with the Beak-runners.”

Then to Tom: “It was the Beak hisself saved you, was it?” (He referred, reader, to Sir John.)

“It was,” said Tom Durham.

“A rum cove,” said Bunkins.

“A rum cove,” Tom agreed.

“Where’s your mate Jonah? You two was shipped off together.”