Now We Shall Be Entirely Free Page 14

  “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “I will give you something for the pain. Then you must go home and rest. One week in bed.”

  “Are you German?” he asked.

  “Polish,” she said. “You know Polish people?”

  He shook his head, blinked away the images.

  “I will make you something,” she said. “You have had laudanum before?”

  “Lord . . . ?”

  “Laudanum.” She went to the counter, ducked down behind it and stood again with a large stoppered jar of ruby liquor in her hands. “I use only Turkish opium,” she said. “Very pure.”

  He watched her decant some of the liquor into a bottle of ribbed glass about the size of his index finger.

  “And I add licorice root so it is not so bitter.” She corked the bottle. “Here you have enough for two weeks.” She brought it to him. He had found in the slit pocket of his coat one of the pound notes he had kept there so as not to have all his money in his boots. The gang had either not searched him or had not found the pocket. He was glad he had done something right. He held out the note to her.

  The druggist looked at it. “She said you had nothing.”

  “Not nothing,” he said.

  She went to look for change. She did not have enough change so made up another bottle of laudanum. “Now you have a month,” she said.

  Some of the change he gave to the woman to pay for his room. He thought she had preferred him when he was destitute. A man with a pound note was perhaps less interesting. She whistled to a boy, one of those who stood about in the street waiting for an errand. She gave him instructions. The boy looked at Lacroix, his face, his feet. “He will take you to where you can buy some boots,” said the woman.

  He thanked her. He did not want her to go. “You have been kind,” he said. She nodded to him; it was the conclusion of their business together and he watched her walk away, the hunch of her prizefighter’s shoulders under the net of the shawl. The boy tugged at his sleeve. “Yes,” said Lacroix. “Yes.”

  They walked until they came to a square, or not a square but a field with buildings on three sides, and on the open side the masts of shipping. There was a market in progress. Black cattle wandered around quite freely. There were horses, ponies, sheep. Among the animals, among and between the knots of men in deep discussion about the animals, there were stalls selling hats and blankets, tin kettles, knives with carved handles. Also food. He found himself in front of a stall (two planks over two trestles) that sold smoked fish. The fish were split, looked like leather and had a rich savoury reek to them. They were not big. He bought two, gave one to the boy and began immediately to eat the other, scraping with his teeth at the bones, eating the small bones, making his mouth bleed again, swallowing blood and fish and ash. A dozen yards from the fish stall was a whisky tent and he hurried into it. He was in pain; the pain had no novelty now; he wanted it to stop. Inside the tent the ground was churned. No one seemed to mind or notice his bare feet. They served the drink in cups of horn. He shook some drops from the druggist’s bottle into the whisky, red swirls uncoiling, dispersing. He drank it and went into the market again. The boy was waiting for him, his fish in his hand. He had not forgotten his errand. He guided Lacroix through a flock of sheep to a structure of canvas and boxes, the sketch of a shop. On top of the boxes were displays of footwear. They were all seconds, thirds, fifths. Farmer’s boots, soldier’s boots. Some looked as though they had no more than a week of walking left in them.

  He was not the only barefoot man among the customers. Another, older, winked at him as though to acknowledge a shared ambition. Lacroix blinked back. The drug was spreading through him like a venom. He was not entirely new to opium, had taken Dover’s Powders several times and thought Nell had given him something when he was first back at the house. But this was more complete. Turkish opium. It had its own throb. He stood stock-still, breathed the market in, breathed it out. If he clapped his hands he thought everyone would take to the air like flies from carrion.

  He tried on a pair of clogs. He tried on a pair of sheepskin boots he thought Caractacus might have worn. In the middle of the stall he had a vision of his own boots. They were standing, somewhat proudly displayed, on an upturned tea-chest. He reached out for them, touched the leather, the creases. They were his boots. The thieves had not even bothered to brush off the dust from the struggle. He sank an arm inside them but the money was gone. Of course it was gone.

  “These are mine,” he said, to anyone who cared to hear. He sat on the box, pulled on the right boot and was about to pull on the other when the stallholder arrived. After speaking at each other for a minute it became clear that the man wanted two pounds for the boots.

  “I paid twelve guineas for them in Bath,” said Lacroix.

  The stallholder seemed unsure what to do with this information. A surprising move in a familiar game. Another man came up. He was perhaps the stallholder’s brother, his twin. They conferred. “Two pounds,” said the second man. “Or yi can feck off.”

  Lacroix considered mentioning the new police but thought better of it. He was in no position to defend himself, would not survive a second thrashing. He did not even feel indignant. He could see their point of view. He found, deep in the slit pocket, another of the pound notes, added to it some of the apothecary’s silver. It was several shillings short of what they wanted but they stood out of his way. He walked. Walking was quite different with boots on. He had been walking in the earth, now he walked on it. He looked for the boy. He could not find him but found the fish seller again, bought four more of the smoked fish and put them in his pockets. He bought a bottle of whisky in the whisky tent, laid it next to the wrapped pistol in his bag, then set off towards the masts. Groups of animals were being driven in the same direction so that he was often walking in their midst.

  Like this he came to the shore where an open boat half the size of the Jenny was taking on some of the cattle. A figure in a collarless shirt was overseeing it all. Lacroix approached him and explained what he wanted. The man ignored him; no doubt he hoped he would go away. When he did not go away, when he repeated his request more boldly, more insistently, the man looked round at him, glanced at the fiddle case.

  “I can pay you a little,” said Lacroix. “Though I have had to buy back my own boots.”

  The man spoke to another on the deck of the boat. At first Lacroix imagined he was mishearing English, or mishearing Scots, then realised it was what he had heard the Highland soldiers singing on the march into Spain. Erse. Gaelic. He smiled at the man. Though the drug had not made the pain go away it had made him cease to care about it much.

  “I will try to learn your language,” he said. “And I have brought my own food.”

  The man tipped his head. It was not clear what had been agreed between them, if anything, but Lacroix followed the last tail, the last shitty backside down the planks, was not shouted at or ordered back, and so took his place among the gentle shoving of the creatures.

  8

  He had worked for hours—it was, among other things, a way of testing himself—and he had not gone down to lunch with Lucy. There was an apple on the desk, its flesh pared to a slender, discolouring core, and a last mouthful of cold tea in a dish decorated with a Chinaman lounging in his garden, birds, swallows perhaps, flitting in the air around him . . .

  Though it was not yet late the room was growing dark. On the wall, next to the chart of the coast—Bristol Channel to the North Passage—the lithographic face of John Wesley was being slowly buried in shadow. On a May evening he should not need to light a candle until after seven but this afternoon the weather had set in. Rain, the threat of rain, more rain. There had even been a growl of thunder that had made him look up and wonder if the children would be frightened. But he knew that Lucy would tell them a story to soothe them. And anyway, they were probably too big now to be frightened b
y thunder. If he did not attend to them for a week, if he did not speak with them, if his mind was elsewhere, he found they had changed. The old fears, the old appetites, replaced by new.

  He rubbed his temples, renewed his focus on the ledger in front of him. Neat columns. Figures written like scripture, like stitches in a sampler. What he had, what he might get, what was owed, what he owed to others. Also the names of ships, their tonnage, the names of their masters. And at the back of the book, in the secrecy of Byrom shorthand, a collection of intelligences, things seen on the wharfsides at Liverpool, Gothenburg, Memel, Dublin. Rumours about timber or flax or Swedish iron. Who knew his way around the White Sea.

  He turned to a fresh page, smoothed it and wrote, upper left, the number of the page and then, across the top, his own name, William Swann. He dipped his pen—then hesitated. In the middle air of the office, suspended there like a web or a picture drawn in rain, he seemed to see his wife’s back as he had seen it on the previous night when, standing in the doorway of the dressing room, he had watched her get free of her corset and drag her shift over her head. On the floor by her feet was a basin of water for her to wash herself with and she had sat on the bed and leaned down to it. She had thought herself alone and he had spied on her, his own wife, by the light of the two candles they had carried up from the floor below (a third candle left in glass by the window for her brother’s sake). And on the skin of her back—it had taken him a good half-minute to realise what it was—he noticed the marks her corset had left, a print of the lacing eyelets running like two columns of zeroes either side of her spine. He had not seen such marks before. In their marriage now—now and for a long while—he met his wife dressed or in darkness; he was not familiar with her nakedness, certainly not since the twins were born. The marks, a strange tattoo, had startled him. In truth they had troubled him, as though they were a sign he was supposed to read and understand, and he had felt the urge to go to her, to reach across the bed and erase them, perhaps with his mouth. Yet he did not. He could not have said why. It may have been the chasteness of her washing, the way she touched herself with the water. Or else it was worrying about that candle downstairs, burning unattended . . .

  He was lost in this, his vision (and how he longed to have a truly spiritual vision, something he might share with the minister), when he heard the scrape of the street door being opened and he looked over, angry at the intrusion, and troubled to have it come in the midst of what now felt like a species of idleness.

  The door was behind a curtain. The curtain rippled. He heard the door shut. And then a strange thing. He could not be certain of it but he thought he heard the bolt being pushed home.

  He stood behind his desk. “Who is it?”

  A man came round the curtain. He seemed to slide round it. A man in a long coat, the coat dark with rain.

  “Cats and dogs out there,” said the man, wiping the water from his face. He walked to the desk and stood facing William across its surface.

  “Are you come on business?” asked William. The anger of a moment ago had become something else, more guarded.

  “I’m looking for someone,” said the man. “Someone you know.”

  What was that accent? London? Something of the north country too. A crossing sweeper’s voice.

  “Lacroix,” said the man. “John Lacroix.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Henderson.”

  “Henderson?”

  “That’s right,” said Calley. “I’m Henderson.”

  “I do not think I have heard of you.”

  “You don’t need to have heard of me. What’s it matter if you’ve heard of me? You just need to have heard of Lacroix. Which you have. Because you’re married to his sister.”

  A pause.

  “Are you a friend of his?”

  “We were in the army together. We still are.”

  “You’re a soldier?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You served with him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “In Spain?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “It’s simply that I have not heard of you.”

  “You have now.”

  “And you have . . . a message for him? For John Lacroix?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, then. If you care to give it to me I will see he receives it.”

  “Obliging of you. But I need to give him the message myself.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s that kind of message.”

  “It is personal?”

  Calley nodded. He was looking round the room. He seemed to have lost interest in the conversation.

  “That is no obstacle,” said William. “If you write the message I have wax here you may seal it with. Or if you . . . prefer not to write it . . . ”

  “You’re getting in a muddle,” said Calley.

  “There is no muddle.”

  “I have to see him.”

  “Yes, but why? I don’t understand.”

  “No,” said Calley. “I don’t think you do.” He was fingering the Moor’s head on the desk, a paperweight in brass, a slave’s head in truth, the kind of trinket Bristol was full of.

  William watched him. As a boy he had once witnessed his father beat a man unconscious for some offence that was never made clear to him, never explained. It was down by the Horse Fair. His father knocked the man down then kicked him until he was still. For two months afterwards, William suffered a great many baffling symptoms—boils, nosebleeds—and when he recovered he began the habit, unbroken to this day, of thinking of his father with active disgust. And yet there was something else, a thing not admitted to, never admitted to—pride. He liked that look his father inspired, the way men took care not to vex him, not to hold his gaze too long. He should step around his desk now and show this jacksnape he had no fear of him. He would say something like, I will tell him you came here. I am sure he will know how to find you. Now I have matters to attend to, as no doubt have you. I bid you good day, Mr. Henderson. Or just Henderson? He would look at him, stare him down. He was comfortably the taller of the two, nor did he think there was much brawn under that coat. He waited, weighing the moment. The room was full of the sound of rain. No boots in the alley, no voices, nothing of the world.

  He sniffed, then stepped around the desk. The instant he came clear, Calley brought the brass head down on the spur of his left hip. Brought it down like a hammer. William dropped to his knees and Calley caught him, pressing a hand over his mouth, waiting for the first wave of pain to pass. Then he spoke into his eyes.

  “You want to know who I am? I’ll tell you who I am. I am the war. Yes? And today the war has come to you. It has come right into your house and struck you down. Now, it’s like I said. I have pressing business with Captain Lacroix and you will tell me where he is. I know who is downstairs. If you don’t give me what I want I will make you so as you are no use to her. Then I will go down and be snug with her and she will tell me what I want. She will. You know she will. Are you hearing me?”

  William nodded. Tears of pain, tears of outrage, were curling over the skin of his assailant’s fingers. Over the skin of a worthless, godless man. Then the hand was taken from his mouth. He dragged in a breath, not deep enough, dragged in another, and began to speak. He gave up everything—or gave up what there was. The ship, the destination, the date of sailing, the likely arrival. He offered to write it down. Anything to get him out of the house.

  “I don’t need things written,” said Calley. He asked about the master of the Jenny.

  “Browne,” said William.

  “Speak up.”

  “Browne.”

  “He has a house or he lives on his ship?”

  “A house. In Dumbarton. A town close
to Glasgow.”

  “Address?”

  “He comes to me. But the town is small. He will be known there.”

  “You’re expecting him back?”

  “Not for another month. Longer perhaps.”

  “And he’ll be in this Dumbarton until he sets off back here?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “Well this is all very tiresome,” said Calley. He bent down to help William stand, walked him round to his desk chair. He looked down at him. He still had the brass head. He turned it in his hands. Seconds passed. Softly, as if intended only for these two men in the privacy of the room, the cathedral bells rang the hour. “All right,” said Calley. “This is how it is. I am going to leave a man watching this house. Watching night and day. If I find you have spoken to anybody about my visit this man will come into the house and he will see to you. Then he will see to your wife. Then he will see to your children. Are you following me? I need to know you understand me.”

  “I understand,” said William. “No one will know you were here. I swear it.”

  “We have a special liberty, William Swann. The law has waved us through. We cannot be touched.”

  He placed the brass head on the desk, stepped backwards and opened his coat so William could see what he had there. Then he buttoned it again, took another stride back, paused by the curtain as if listening for any movement in the outer world, turned, slid behind the curtain, and was gone.

  For a long while William stared at the curtain, then he lowered his forehead on to the open page of the ledger. He was sweating; his sweat smudged the ink. When he raised his head there was a smear of it on his forehead, possibly an S. He cursed Lacroix under his breath. The adored brother. The idle brother. And no wonder he had looked as he did, a creature like Henderson running him to ground. But to have said nothing! To have given them no warning! Nothing!

  He shuddered. He had a killing rage in him, as though his father had woken in him at last, his father’s blood. But all too late.