Except he was caught doing a job, bloody-handed, then he would be safe, and in a couple of years, three at most, he would be able to put a thousand pounds together. Perhaps he would be able to take a short holiday in a few months, just long enough to get down to Burton and see Patey - and pay a visit to my bloody lord while he was at it.
John Quillerson found that he was enjoying his venture into politics. He liked the American way of doing things, of paying cash on the nail and getting very specifically defined services in return. The British habit, as far as he was aware, was to offer cash and influence in return for a general willingness to please, nothing so vulgarly bourgeois as a transaction, and it might take twenty years for the bread one cast on the waters to return properly buttered. In the States one expected, and generally got, results within a very few weeks.
He had spoken with local judges and newspaper owners throughout the northern states and had developed an innocuous opening that had allowed him to assess the proclivities of those he was dealing with, in the cases where a little blackmail had not been available.
Not a mention of slavery initially, merely a general discussion of the relative place in government of Washington and the States, a consideration of which should have greatest power in internal questions. It was obvious that Foreign Affairs must be conducted by the Federal Administration for the benefit of all, and free trade throughout the whole Union was to be preserved – no sane businessman wanted customs posts at the state borders. Further than that, however, there was room for disagreement – different states had different ways of doing things, and often cultural traditions that were not wholly identical.
“Look at the atmospheres of Boston and New York, for example – very different cities! While, as for New Orleans, the dissimilarities are greater still. One of our strengths as a nation, sir, is our great diversity of peoples, each with their own ways, each with much to give to the country as a whole, and each with a right to live in their own fashion, keeping to their own folk-ways.”
Slavery as a folk-way seemed rather a lot to swallow, but many of his auditors were only too pleased to take his bait and soon after that, his money.
In many of the smaller towns the income from advertising was very thin and quite commonly seasonal – suppliers of farm goods wanted to reach their customers around harvest-time when they had money in their pockets. Fifty dollars a month in an editor’s pocket often meant the difference between publishing and going bust and guaranteed a flow of sympathetic editorials and news items.
“Eleven guineas a month, almost exactly, Mr Star! They are not expensive.”
Henry had taken over the accounts for the both northern and southern operations, visited New York at six-monthly intervals, glad to have the excuse, no doubt. John Quillerson had met his wife and thought he was paying a high price for his riches.
“Best to book it at twelve, Mr Quillerson, so as to cover any odd variations in the rate.”
It would put at least two hundred dollars a month into John’s pocket. He agreed that it made sense.
Henry was perfectly satisfied; he had young Quillerson hooked now, he would be unable to make a fuss about anything untoward that he came across. He noted fifteen guineas per head in the accounts that would be sent to London. Another six hundred would be quite handy and one should never turn an opportunity down, it might not come again.
“Your ventures out in the backwoods, Mr Quillerson. Are they progressing well?”
“Satisfactorily, Mr Star. Not more than that, they have no prospects of becoming huge money-makers, yet, even so, over thirty or forty years I have no doubt they will make me well-off and with a respectable patrimony to bequeath.”
Over time many of the frontier villages would grow into respectable towns, their stores expanding with them. For a man looking far into the future they were a very good business.
“In fact, Mr Star, I have it in mind to branch out a little. The purchase of furs and hides may well prove even more profitable and I have arranged to finance two parties of trappers who intend to venture further west than has been their wont in past years. We have discussed the possibility of setting up what they refer to as a rendezvous, a permanent base at the end of a track or by a river landing where trappers can bring their furs in spring for the attention of buyers, thus not needing to travel one or two hundreds of miles to the east. I am told that many of the frontiersmen would use the summer to scout out the land and discover rich trapping areas for the winter or possibly hunt the buffalo or other leather-bearing animals.”
That sounded better to Henry – a higher, faster return – he much preferred to get rich quick.
“I presume your buyers would also be sellers, Mr Quillerson. Powder and ball, flour and salt spring to mind.”
“Certainly, sir. A barrel or two of whisky might not come amiss, I should expect, and tobacco will always be in great demand.”
“I may well be able to put you onto a supplier of ardent spirits, Mr Quillerson. I have a partner in the distilling trade in New York.”
They were increasingly pleased with each other as the days went by – they seemed each to have a nose for a profit and relatively few scruples about the processes of money-making.
On their second meeting John Quillerson gave Henry his list of new clients, another dozen of small-town newspapermen, commenting that they would probably be the last, he had travelled through most of the northern states and saw no point in going south. Seven of the names were fictitious, the cash staying in Quillerson’s hands, transferred from one pocket to another, as it were. Henry suspected him, because he would have done the same and had achieved much more down in Louisiana, but he certainly had no wish to initiate a formal accounting.
Judge Chard had delivered as well. He had claimed his expenses, getting through the better part of ten thousand dollars in various forms of hospitality, so he told them.
“You would be amazed, young gentlemen! Utterly overwhelmed, was I to tell you of the moral turpitude of some of our better-known divines. From pulpit to house of assignation in one easy stride, and sometimes making quite outlandish demands of those unfortunate young females who dwell in such places. Depravity that would shock a Turk, sirs, the Barbary Coast nothing to some of the appetites displayed! Or so the young women reported to me, that is, I myself knowing nothing of all that they did, for not accompanying them, as you will appreciate.”
Neither young man sniggered, or not in his presence, at least, though they did ask him the location of the more adventurous houses.
John Quillerson still retained elements of the upbringing of service which he had so resented. He worried that he might not have performed the job to his employer’s satisfaction.
“Will our work be sufficient, Mr Star, to meet the needs of our principals? We have done a little to change the nature of public opinion, I believe, but will it suffice to hold the Abolitionists at bay?”
Henry neither knew nor cared. He had performed the precise function he had been paid for and had taken his profit – more than that was not his concern; it was all safely buried, out of sight. His only worry was that the shipping with which he was publicly associated should be a success – a failure would reflect badly on him.
Henry was learning that prominence in the world of business, particularly the very small world of the South, had the drawback that he was absolutely required to achieve all of his aims in full. If he delivered a new project to his own profit and the general good of all, then he was only doing what was expected of him, that was what the great men did; if, on the other hand, he was ever to fail, at anything at all, then he would instantly lose all of his hard won status – not a comet, merely a shooting star! He had already heard those very words from a local wit speculating which he would become; he had had to laugh, as well.
The yard had built and launched a long, wide and shallow timber hull and equipped it with a stern paddle-wheel, exactly to the specifications sent from Liverpool, and the great bulk of cast and wrought
iron that was to be the steam engine had been delivered at wharfside just as Henry had come north.
The intention had been to install the engine while simultaneously building the main deck and statehouses around the steam space. Completion of the engine was expected to occur just a week or two before the vessel was handed over by the yard, not that they had any buyer to hand it over to.
They had been unable to find a shipping line willing to take the first steamer, though several had suggested they would be happy to purchase the second, or, better still, the third. They had decided to run her themselves until they had demonstrated her reliability and steam gained acceptance.
A lot of people had read of steam and thought it sounded a very good idea, and said so repeatedly. None could be found to venture their money just yet.
No coal deposits had been located close to the Big River, which was a surprise, they had assumed that coal was to be found almost everywhere, much as seemed to be the case in England. The steamers would have to be wood-fuelled as the costs of transporting great tonnages of coal over a thousand or so miles down the Atlantic Coast were far too high. That meant gangs of men had had to be employed to fell and cut up hundreds of tons of timber and store the cords dry at landings along the course of the River.
They had rapidly found that men had to be employed. A first gang of slaves had been taken up river and put to work in the forest land, out of direct supervision for much of the working day in the nature of things and equipped with felling axes. More than half ran in the first week and one overseer had discovered that it was unwise to threaten to whip a slave equipped with a fourteen-pound single-bit axe. Henry had been mildly irritated by the whole affair, especially when he had had to listen politely to the fulminations of his Southern partners, all of whom regarded the runaways as both ungrateful and ill-mannered, churlish even, for rejecting their care and future employment.
It seemed, Henry discovered, that the black men had, at considerable cost, been rescued from the savagery of the Dark Continent and supplied with food, clothing and the blessings of the Word of God, all out of the goodness of their bond-masters’ hearts. In return they had been asked for no more than a modicum of labour, and their response had been to reject this bounty and take themselves back to the wilds, or to the North, which was much the same thing.
“Can one comprehend such wickedness, Mr Star?”
Henry could not, had gravely agreed that it showed a depravity of the soul, a natural inferiority, there could be no other explanation.
For the meanwhile he organised gangs of wage-labourers to do the work instead. He noted that none of the paid hands chose to run away but suspected this was no more than coincidence – it could not, after all, be publicly ascribed to any particular motive.
Henry arrived in New Orleans mid-way through a sweaty morning. He had a choice – to go straight home and no doubt be enveloped in the arms of his loving wife, or to follow the stern course of duty and visit the yard over on the Algiers side first.
Duty triumphed.
The river boat towered as high as a three story building, outstripping the great bulk of the dwellings of New Orleans. It was painted white, gleaming in the hot sun, with a pair of tall, black smoke stacks, thin as stovepipes by comparison to the deckhouse, just trickling smoke that would very soon dirty everything.
That was what happened when the directing intelligence went away, even for a couple of months.
Simple common sense, Henry thought, would dictate a dark paint, blue or green perhaps, not white that would have to be renewed every couple of months if it was not to be shabby. But the precedent had been established – by now it would be the case that the superstructure of every steamboat must be shiny white, that was the natural way of things, unchangeable.
It looked impressive. He wondered if it would actually move, it seemed huge and the stern wheel by comparison frail, spindly, too fragile to replace the thousands of square feet of sail one would expect of so large a vessel.
He compared the actuality to the drawings he had pored over.
Round bows, a low foredeck, flat and uncluttered to provide a storage space for bales of cotton, the bulk of their trade, he expected. Railings round the sides with posts every few feet to tie canvas awnings across against rain, the canvas itself in neat rolls, ‘lashed and stowed’, the navy called it.
Nearly two thirds of the deck was covered by the staterooms, built in a square around the steam hold, the walking beams of the engine extending high in the middle.
The wheel and river pilot’s place of command up high to give a view out over the shallow waters – navigation would always be a tricky task on the River. They had installed speaking tubes down to the engine room so that orders could be shouted down and might quite often be heard. There would be a pair of fast-running boys as well.
Henry knew that there were twelve double cabins and a dining saloon in the upper two decks, a galley down below, crew’s mess behind it, out of sight.
There was another, much smaller storage area on the stern deck. Not for cotton, the paddlewheel would probably splash. They could keep slaves there if they ever transported them.
Henry had been seen, foremen and yard manager converging on him, properly respectful, ready to show him everything, exactly as it should be.
“When do you expect to take her out for a first voyage, Mr Royle?”
The yard manager removed the paper-wrapped Spanish cigarillo from his mouth, peered at its end as he answered. He had never yet managed to look Henry in the face, an irritating mannerism but probably not intended to be offensive.
Henry could be tolerant while he did his job. Royle had traces of a Lancashire accent and Henry had wondered at first whether he feared to be recognised, but he could see little reason why he should worry. He did not care, too much – though, if the man had a criminal past it would be useful to know - to have a handle on him.
“Tomorrow, Mr Star. Wooding this afternoon, test t’ boiler under full pressure in the morning, track down leaks in the steam pipes and then just take her out and potter a mile or two up river and back again, getting the feel of ‘er, seein’ ‘ow she steers. Strip down anything that ain’t quite right on Wednesday, then come Thursday try her out for speed, see what she’ll do.”
Henry was puzzled; Royle seemed sure there would be leaks in the steam pipes. That should not be, surely.
“New ship, new engines, new fitters, Mr Star. Might be every man’s done a perfect job, or good enough at least. Might be a mistake or two ‘as been made. I ain’t one for sayin’ I’m perfect, Mr Star, or expectin’ it of any bugger else. Last bloke I ever did hear of to say that was Jesus Christ, and look what ‘appened to ‘im!”
Henry laughed, he would remember that line, it appealed to his sense of humour, but it was an unwise thing to say in a religious country such as America appeared to be.
“A little less of the blasphemy, Mr Royle!”
“Sorry, sir.”
Royle was quite unruffled, judging Henry to have given the rebuke for form’s sake.
“Can I join you on Thursday?”
“No, sir, I had rather you did not. If she’s goin’ to blow then it’ll be in the first full speed trial, I reckons. I shall ‘ave a couple of small boats up in the bows but I would rather not have passengers to watch out for if anything does go amiss. Best you should watch, sir. Next week, if all goes well, then by all means, sir.”
Henry retired to the yard office, sat down for an hour with the accounts, paying particular attention to those paid to local contractors, all of whom were paying him a skim of between ten and twenty per centum on their inflated bills. He was in effect stealing from himself, he knew; as part-owner of the yard it was his own profit share that was being reduced. If the enterprise failed, though, then he would see no profits, and those he had legitimately made might be clawed back to cover their losses – the cash he had stolen would never be touched, was wholly safe. If the yard prospered, of course, he would st
ill take his cut of the dividend – it seemed to him that he must win whatever happened.
He went from the yard to his bank, checked on the payments actually made into his Number Two account, discovered all to be well. It was handy to have a name as a bad man who carried and would use his own pistol. He was well-known for having killed at least one man down on the docks, though very few of those who spread the rumour knew who or where or when exactly, and it was universally agreed that the wise man did not cheat Mr Star, certainly not twice.
Home to Grace, pasting a smile to his face. He did not like her, and was sure he never would, but he needed her still and there was no sense to showing his distaste. While she loved him and was happy in her life, she was a burden, but tolerable. If he rejected her, embittered her, then she would become an absolute menace and would make his life hell. It required no more than smiles and a few lies and that was little enough, surely. Thinking on the matter, he did not have a dog, but if he had he would never kick it, it was not in him, he thought, to do that.
Book Six: A Poor Man
at the Gate Series
Chapter Six
“Three pounds, three and fourpence an acre, Matthew, the price risen by two shillings in the last year. Good sheepwalk, mind you, little in the way of exposed rock faces, mostly grassland, some gorse, of course, but a few pounds spent on stripping out the rough and seeding it will turn it into the best in Lancashire.”
Thomas Star sat back, glass of port in hand, admiring the play of the light through the deep crimson liquid.
Illusions Of Change (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 6) Page 14