Now We Shall Be Entirely Free Page 8

  He heard her speak his name and he turned away from the window. The candle rather hid her face than showed it. He wondered if she had been calling him for some time.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” she said.

  “I was thinking . . . how glad I am at your way of life here. How settled you are.”

  “I am,” she said. “I have much to give thanks for.”

  “Well, I am pleased for it,” he said.

  “John,” she said, “are you well enough for a sea journey? You could stay here a while. A week or two. Learn to tell the children from each other. And there will be other ships.”

  He made himself smile at her. “I have set my heart on the Jenny,” he said.

  She took a step deeper into the room. He saw her face now, balanced on the light. More their father’s face than their mother’s, though his memory of their mother’s face was, each year, a little less convincing.

  “I wonder,” she said, “if in all this soldiering you have sometimes forgotten our Comforter?”

  For a second or two he was perplexed, as if the comforter might be an item of gear, something worn under the shirt or laid across a saddle.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “If you would like to pray with William and me, the children are asleep. And Martha has gone to her bed. We would be quite undisturbed.”

  “I know you would like it,” he said.

  “You should not do it for me, John.”

  “But you would love me better if I learned to say my prayers again.”

  “No,” she said, “that would be a poor sort of love. But you might be happier. Or you would find again a quietness you may have lost. Prayer is balm for troubled hearts. I know this.”

  “You have had your own troubles,” he said.

  “I have had some.”

  “And you are uncomplaining.”

  “If I am it is because I do not have to bear them alone.”

  “You have William.”

  “Yes. William, of course. But I mean He that is greater than any mortal man.”

  “I know you do.”

  “Alone we can do nothing.”

  “Faith is a gift,” he said.

  “It is a gift we can choose, John. Our Saviour does not care how we come to Him, only that we do. We are His children. He wants only that we should lay our hand in His. And when we do He cares for us like a father.”

  Lacroix nodded. “One trick,” he said, “the Spanish irregulars liked to perform when they caught a Frenchman out on his own was to crucify him upside down on a barn door. Then they would build a little fire under his head.”

  She said nothing. He apologised. It was not even a thing he had seen. He had heard of it but not seen it. It might not even have been true.

  “You are going away to forget such things,” she said.

  “I am going away,” he answered. “That much I know.”

  “I can see the sense of it now, John. I can see it is what you need. I should have known better than to speak to you like this.”

  “Dear Lucy, if you will not speak to me openly I cannot think who will.”

  “A wife perhaps.”

  “A what?”

  “A wife.”

  “I somehow doubt,” he said, “there will be many marriageable young women on the Jenny.”

  She nodded, smiled at him, the smile resigned and grave. “I will put a lamp in our window,” she said. “The room we played in with the children. I will put a lamp there, and each night until you are back I will light it for you.”

  Though he would have preferred to sleep on for hours—had not arrived at sleep at all until three or four in the morning—he rose at six and breakfasted with Lucy and the twins. William was already at work and when Lacroix had finished his coffee he went up to see him.

  An office at the top of the house was convenient. Men calling on business could use a door from the alley that ran at the level of the upper storeys and so enter the office without disturbing Lucy and the children. William was at his desk, coatless, a pair of false sleeves tied by his elbows to guard against ruining a good shirt with ink. There was a map of the coast on the wall beside him, and next to it a lithographic portrait of John Wesley, preacher’s bands around his neck, one hand raised in a gesture of blessing or witness.

  “The Jenny will not leave early,” said William. “They are taking on their cargo this morning, though you should make yourself known to the master.”

  “Browne?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask what you have told him about me?” asked Lacroix.

  “Only that you are family, and that you wish to travel to Glasgow.”

  “You said perhaps I was on business.”

  “He did not ask. I did not say. He is not an intrusive man. Nor will he overcharge you. You can have confidence in him.”

  Lacroix was thanking him and might have tried to find out more about the Jenny, about Browne, the journey north, but there was a rap at the office door and a moment later a man came in, pulling aside the curtain that hung in front of the door. He had papers tied in ribbon under his arm. First caller of the day. Business to be done.

  In the hall downstairs he took his leave of his sister. She did not cry but he thought she would do when he had gone.

  “Find some beautiful songs,” she said. “Then come and play them to us.”

  “I will,” he said.

  “Do you have warm clothes with you? It is always cold at sea. Though of course you know that already.”

  He embraced her. The children gazed up at him like the envoys of another world. He touched their hair again. He wasn’t sure if they would let him kiss them. He thought it might be wiser not to try.

  Outside, descending the steps with his bags, he felt freer. Whatever was to become of him, whatever it was he would not be able to outpace, whatever form that took, he did not want it to happen in the presence of Lucy or the children. Better to be around strangers. Better, infinitely, to be around men. Men who did not know him, who would be—must be—indifferent to him. If he had to fall—and this was how he dimly imagined it, a sudden, passionate floundering through air—they would let him do so, they would not interfere . . .

  He asked directions from a boy carrying a cage of goldfinches. Fifteen minutes later he found the Jenny alongside a stone jetty, much larger ships tied fore and aft of her. She was, at a guess, no more than a quarter the size of the ship he had sailed in to Lisbon. Two masts, a high prow, her deck cluttered with ropes and gear and stores. Certainly you would not get much cavalry inside the Jenny.

  On the jetty beside her, a crane on small iron wheels was hoisting wooden crates, the ropes hauled by a pair of blinkered horses, sad-looking creatures, their ribs showing through dull hides. Overseeing the work, and giving out at frequent intervals the order “Careful there!”, was a broad-backed man in a short black jacket, his head bare, his hair, what was left of it, curled around his ears and the collar of his jacket, some strands dark still, most of it grey.

  Lacroix approached him and said he was looking for the master of the Jenny.

  “You have found him,” said the other, his attention on the hooking of a crate. When the hook was snug, the horses were walked until the rope tautened.

  “I am your passenger for Glasgow. I hope William Swann told you to expect me?”

  The man nodded. The crate was at rest between gravity and the strength of the horses. Then it began to rise.

  “What are you loading?”

  “Glass.”

  On the deck, the crew eased the crate towards them by means of a trailing rope. The horses stopped. They had the burden of what they couldn’t see. Then they were walked slowly backwards, and the crate descended into a nest of arms.

  “You have
dunnage?” asked the master, looking at Lacroix for the first time.

  “Just what I carry.”

  “What’s in there?” He pointed.

  “A violin. A fiddle.”

  “I don’t much care for music at sea,” said the master, though something in his face made it hard to know how serious he was.

  “We should agree on a price,” said Lacroix.

  “To Glasgow it is five.”

  “It is . . . ?”

  “Five.”

  “Pounds?”

  “Guineas. You have a servant with you?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have a cabin to yourself. You will eat with the crew. If you want liquor you must speak to the cook and pay him by the bottle. You will not give drink to any of the crew.”

  Lacroix nodded. He had caught most of this, not all. “You wish for the money now?”

  “It can come later.”

  “And when should I board?”

  “Wait over in the Star there. I’ll send for you when we’re ready.”

  “My luggage?”

  “Leave it where you are. We will bring it on when we have the leisure.”

  “It will be safe here?”

  “Why?” said the master. “Do you not trust sailors?”

  He crossed to the Star and looked in. Though it was no later than ten in the morning the place was full of trade. Men drinking with their shadows, men in a huddle. He did not want to go in and perhaps have to spend hours in the place. He would stroll while he was still free to do so, and he set off, walking away from the water and turning into a narrow street of gabled buildings, part of the city’s medieval guts. Through cellar windows he saw backs bent over benches, cutting, sewing. He saw through two windows—the whole body of a house—a garden where men were twisting rope. At the gates of a yard he saw three giants stripped to the waist, their skin blushed blue from some process they were resting from. They watched him as he passed. They looked like men made almost mad by what they did.

  He imagined the street would lead somewhere—a market square, a crossroads—but it wound on, blindly, and he was at the point of deciding he must turn back when he noticed, slung above the entrance of a shop some twenty yards ahead, a wooden blunderbuss big as a drummer boy. He went to the window and leaned close. The place looked shut, lifeless, but when he tried the door it opened with the singing of a small bell and he stepped inside.

  So little daylight found its way into the shop it took him a while to see how big it was, that it extended back beyond its own rear walls and seemed to burrow into the side of the hill, a sort of cave. Everywhere, there were guns. A rack of Baker rifles (with folding rear sights), a half-dozen Ferguson breech-loaders, a cabinet of assorted carbines—Elliots, Pagets. A second cabinet displayed volley guns of the type intended to clear a room with a single pull of the trigger but more likely to take off the shooter’s hand. He was admiring a box of long-barrelled sea-pistols with all their gear around them—powder-flask, flints, wads, patches and greasers—when the gunsmith appeared from the depths of the cave and hung his lantern from a hook over the counter. He was stout, cheerful as a butcher, immediately full of talk, of little courtesies. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbows, his forearms hairless and mottled with the scars of old burns.

  Lacroix explained what he had and what he wanted.

  “Private manufacture or military issue?”

  “Military.”

  “Tower stamp?”

  “Yes.”

  The gunsmith moved among his wares, dipped down to open a drawer and lifted out a sacking pouch of shot. He poured some into his hand. “Bristol-made,” he said. “Very exact. You won’t find better.”

  He offered one to Lacroix, who took it and turned its coolness between his fingers.

  “The dog’s particulars, sir, if you’ll allow it. And you’ll want some powder too?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you are content to wait, sir, I can make up some cartridges for you.”

  “I will do that myself,” said Lacroix. “I will have the time.”

  “Very proper,” said the gunsmith. “But they don’t all know how, sir. Some of the young gentlemen of the militia. You will know, of course. I shall place everything in a little parcel for you, then you shall do it all as you please.”

  He made himself busy. As he measured out the powder—a job done on scales by the window, no flickering candle nearby—he said, “Are you cavalry, sir?”

  After a pause, “Yes.”

  The gunsmith nodded, concentrating. “I can usually guess that right.”

  “How so?”

  “Many things. The weapons. Also the way a man stands and moves. Infantry officers are always trying to see over the top of something.” He laughed. It was perhaps an old joke of his. Presumably he had a different joke to tell to infantrymen.

  “On your way back, are you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Going back. You’ve been on leave, I think.”

  “Yes,” said Lacroix. “On my way back.”

  “Well,” said the gunsmith, tying off the parcel, “I wish you good fortune. I’m sure we all do. And with this”—he lifted the parcel with both hands—“they will not find you undefended. You have the means here to bring down a wall, let alone a man.”

  In the Star he found space for himself at one end of a table near a window that let him see the cross-trees of the Jenny. A woman came by and he ordered a glass of brandy and water. The man on the bench beside him was dressed in the striped costume of a Scaramouche. He had a drink in front of him but seemed to be sleeping. On the floor, under the bench, Lacroix found part of a newspaper. It was two weeks old and was, in places, damp from spilled beer, but he spread it out on the table and began to study it. Bristol news. The coming and going of ships: Swallow, Briton, Hero, Kate. The sale of goods, the sale of land. A patented method for fattening swine. Over the page (and beneath the strangely exact imprint of a hobnail boot sole) was the story of two women found dead in a room in Bedminster, victims of hunger. No one seemed sure of their names or how long they had lived in the room. Below this was a paragraph describing the stoning of an alderman’s house by a mob that had smashed the windows then sung “Millions be Free” and other revolutionary songs.

  The last page of the paper—or the last of what he had—offered news of the larger world. A report of the French entry into Vienna, and in the neighbouring column—the paper so sodden it was mostly illegible—a letter from a gentleman in Lisbon where they were awaiting the return of Wellesley. (Already we are wearing our summer costumes and broadest brims. Veterans of the last campaign can be seen strolling in the squares of the city with visages almost as pitchy as those of the inhabitants, whilst newcomers from England blink in the sunshine like so many owls . . . )

  The woman came by again. He ordered more brandy. He thought of Lisbon, its roofs and shadows, its beggars, its sudden glimpses of the sea. He remembered the onion loft he shared with Wood. How bored they were, how excited! In the cool of early morning they exercised the horses, winding up a hill out of the city, the clink-clink of a troop of cavalry moving at walking pace between silent houses. For the first time since his father’s death he had experienced a simple contentment, one with its roots in the body, in riding and eating and sleeping. Even in dancing, for they were invited several times into the better houses to dance in painted rooms, to dance sometimes on painted floors.

  And there was that girl, Lucia de something. Bad teeth, beautiful eyes. Clumsy attempts to communicate. Much laughter. Two dances to the guitar. He had bowed to her like a German when he left the party, said he hoped they would meet again. She might have said something similar. Everybody had a sweetheart then, a girl to mention in conversation. Even Lovall.

  When he looked up from the paper he saw the Scaramouche had been r
eplaced by a black man who wore on his head the model of a ship. He was looking at Lacroix—had, it seemed, been looking at him for some time—and the moment their eyes met the man began to speak, though in the din of the place, that low human roar, Lacroix could hear no more than one word in five. It did not seem to matter much. The man was telling a story, the story involved the ship, what had passed on the ship, what he, the storyteller, had suffered. He was a human theatre and this was his performance. His only one? Or did he have other hats, other stories?

  Lacroix bought him a drink and another for himself. “I admire your ship,” he said.

  The man held up a finger. He began to move his head so as to make the ship travel an imaginary sea, to make her roll and pitch on the swell. The others at the table heckled him, blew noisily at the little sails. The man was not distracted. He was used to it. He went on, dipping his head, tilting it, until Lacroix, staring at the ship, no longer saw the man’s head at all . . .