by S. I. Martin
William saw the mob gaining on them as they covered the last fifteen yards to the barracks: a bellowing, red-faced army, all party-eyes and makeshift weapons. The four black men collapsed inside the courtyard just as a volley of glassware, half-bricks, table legs and a dead cat came flying over the battlements. One of the rioters, too eager in the chase, had actually made it into the barracks on their heels. Seven different blades ran through him before he had time to regret his folly.
As if in afterthought, William’s saviours drew their sabres and retreated with him and a number of their company to the safety of stone walls. They carried him up crumbling sandstone stairs. He had enough presence of mind to notice the heavy dampness permeating the interior. And was it his pulse-shocked fibres or a battering ram that he heard?
Red-coated black men, soldiers of the king, were placing him on a soft, downy mattress. He exhaled a thankful whine as nameless thoughts, cosy and tranquil as feathers landing in fresh sawdust, enveloped him.
It wasn’t so much a house as a shed.
‘This?’ asked Buckram. ‘This is where you live?’
‘The dwelling place of the Most-High.’
Almost a lean-to, Pastor Neville’s home was a windowless wood-slatted structure held together in places by shipwrights’ nails and tar. The hut, lacquered with chevrons of green slime, abutted a stable in St Giles’s churchyard. An ever-present smell of hops and malt from the nearby Meux’s Brewery blanketed the entire neighbourhood.
Buckram sighed slowly as Neville wrestled a bent key in a rusty lock. They had both slept in worse places.
Neville lit a dim, smoky lamp and weak light bled over a bed of rotting sacks. Used cooking utensils and countless open books lay face down in the mess like prone and hungry lovers. The walls were cold and sappy and moisture dripped in gluey crawls to a broken flagstone floor. But Buckram’s only thought was of the hours of uninterrupted sleep awaiting him.
Neville left the shack, returning moments later with a half-bale of fresh straw.
‘This is my bed now?’
‘Aye, sir, fashion it as you please.’
Buckram hefted the bale under his arm and started to shred it, spreading handfuls of hay across his sleeping area. He added another layer, shaking out the clumps this time, in order to keep the whole soft. He padded the remaining straw high around the walls to ward off draughts and to lessen the chance of injury should he thrash about in his sleep. Only when he’d finished did he realize that he’d instinctively made a night bed for a horse.
‘Stay away from George,’ said Neville, ‘and keep out of the Charioteer.’
‘Those men are my old friends, Neville. It was good to be with them tonight.’
‘They are friends to no one. Least of all to you. They have done this to you. They made you like this.’ He framed his hands at the sides of Buckram’s stiff, dirty clothes.
Buckram nodded glumly. Friends or not the regulars at the Charioteer were the only people he knew who could make things happen for him.
It was alright for Neville, he could read and write. He had his verger’s post to keep him in food and lodging, but Buckram had lived as a beggar. He knew full well the horror of those days; when you have to compete and sometimes fight with the legions of native poor (crossing themselves whenever you cross their path), and your gaze never leaving the ground for fear of meeting another’s bewilderment, or missing the scraps that will feed you for another day; looking more bedraggled, lost and ethereal, as one by one you give up your dreams and stumble on through shame-filled lives; not knowing who you are, where you come from, forgetting you ever knew otherwise, slouching past one another in the street without acknowledgement because it could have been anyone or nobody; and how it feels never to know security, not even anonymity, in a city of eight hundred thousand souls. He would never live like that again. He promised himself he would kill himself first.
‘That man is the very devil. He could have saved you in your hour of need. Instead he let you suffer floggings and a gaoling in his place. You endured prison for that rogue and still, not one day free, you seek his company and applause. Verily, as the dog returneth to his vomit, so shall the fool to his folly. A pox on him!’
It was true, Georgie George had betrayed him. And all because of a chicken and a dog.
Buckram positioned himself tenderly on his bed. He listened to the patter of rain on the roof and enviously studied Neville reading in the corner beneath the swaying light until he could watch no more.
In his sleep he dreamed of Africa, an Africa he’d never known. The scene was a forest clearing – everywhere was hot and damp, with rotting vegetation just like Virginia in August. Smoke rose from chimneys, grass huts had windows and all the people dressed in the same cloth, the slave material: buckram. Roasting, fatty meats turned on spits. The whole village sang, call and response, with the rhythms knocking out in the background.
Warm breezes gathered under his outstretched arms and carried him, spiralling slowly into the sky.
‘But you cannot fly, you who have never known Africa,’ a dream voice informed him.
‘I know that,’ he replied.
Beneath him, the village shrank, suddenly becoming a blur in a forest on the bank of a river protected by plains from the shadow of the sea.
He was caught in cold wild air above the clouds, rising, hauled up above the curving earth.
‘Let me dream! Just for one time, let me dream!’
And dreaming again, he remembered.
He was running through Carolina nights and breaking into storehouses. Rebel militiamen were everywhere and some place ahead was Cornwallis’s army, massed and encroaching, with weapons he could use. He lay low till he was met by Loyalist scouts.
He was interrogated before being recruited and given a small pistol. A week later he was digging latrines and graves outside a gaol-pen in a hailstorm. Three other black men worked with him, their red armbands slipping as they chipped through the rock. They worked like that for a whole winter: Buckram, Neville, William and the fourth, forgotten man who was found one day, frozen to death in a praying position.
When thousands of white Loyalists deserted back to their homesteads for harvest time, the ex-slaves were ordered to fight. And they followed the armies through weeks of hunger, days of plenty; meat, ale, cornmeal and sometimes girls abandoned in those vast, empty plantations where he might have slaved.
Then it was summer, bringing more death and more hunger. Graveyard duty under a burning sun. Shallow graves only. And for some corpses just a covering of logs, tree bark and rocks to protect them from vultures, wild boars and wolves. It was a season of stomach cramps, for they ate what they could: green ears of August corn boiled with the thinnest strips of lean beef and green peaches. They ate everything except the horses.
Buckram loved the horses, especially the sturdy black Morgan he was finally allowed to ride. Time spent with horses was time away from death and disease. It was the nearest he’d come to free time.
And all the while, throughout the war and throughout the dream, Neville and his Bible readings; doleful psalms and grim monodies promising deliverance.
Suddenly Neville’s voice was gone, to be replaced by the African drumming and lamentations from Ivy Street. And now he was back in the early campaign, just after they’d taken Camden, Carolina. He was carrying his sword-pistol and William beside him was holding a bayonet. As usual, after a battle, they were moving leisurely through a section of outhouses, on a whim, just the two of them; pillaging and looking for stray rebels to kill. And as usual, they found them; unarmed white men whom they’d hack to death simply for the pleasure of ignoring their cries for mercy.
And they did cry, and cry. Louder and louder.
They are all around him now, calling him out of slumber. He sits up sharply. He listens.
The roosters of St Giles’s High Street have curdled his sleep, and the nightmare slips away. He wakes once again, just another man without a woman, his dream alre
ady forgotten.
London, 30 May 1786
‘Well, how d’you feel now?’
William lay on the mattress, propped up by three of the largest, softest pillows he had ever seen. Like the dressings on his wounds, they were spotlessly clean and scented with lavender. The bandages felt tight and good around his ribs and he felt absolutely no pain whatsoever. They gave him a bowl of wheat boiled in milk and spiced with nutmeg and a copy of the Public Advertiser. On the other side of the small, tidy mess a black guardsman was frying Epping sausages and mushrooms. A tabby cat stretched out in a pool of morning sunlight and watched a heavy can of hot China tea being brought in.
These were regular troops but they were not real soldiers, not fighting men. They were buglers, fife-tootlers, drummers and triangle-ticklers; ornamental warriors and musical mascots. He’d seen black men like this before, pampered regimental pets who paraded in turbans. They wouldn’t have lasted an hour in the ranks of the Royal Ethiopians. But they lived well and that was the important thing.
‘So, you’re a musician, then?’ The sausage-fryer was holding William’s flageolet.
Since last night he’d decided to stop calling himself an actor. He’d been on stage only once, and then as an understudy at Drury Lane Theatre for Behn’s Oroonoko. His other performance was as King of the Moors in the Lord Mayor’s pageant two years before. His friends still mocked him for it; he had dressed in a pink and green slashed tunic with an aquamarine sash, a high-plumed turban, baggy Turkish trousers and bejewelled Turkish slippers. In his right hand he carried a gold-painted sword which he used to fend off the swatting lion on his left. It was time to stop acting, he decided, high time to play himself.
‘I’m a gambler,’ he admitted. ‘And I live above the Coopers’ Arms, the cockpit in Rose Street.’
The soldiers gathered round him with new interest. They were all young men, none older than twenty. Uniformly smooth-faced and innocent-looking, they chattered incessantly in an African tongue, and it took William some moments before he realized that they were triplets.
They chatted for a while about cockpits, comparing the merits of the Royal in Birdcage Walk against the New Red Lion in Clerkenwell. Of course, they’d never heard of his pit. Black people rarely went there.
He felt himself relaxing, the steady gentle pressure of full sunlight through clean glass pressing him back into the pillows. One of the triplets shook him by the shoulders. ‘Come, brother. You can’t stay here. We have to go to work.’
They were all now fully dressed in braided jackets and white waistcoats. Scarlet pantaloons were worn with yellow Hessian boots, tasselled with black silk. And there on their heads sat the inevitable plumed turbans. William smiled to himself and got up to change into his soiled clothes.
‘It’s Vauxhall again,’ muttered the tea-bearer as he arranged, then re-arranged, his sash. ‘The Pleasure Gardens. Them Assembly Room types pay for a company of Guards to go down every week to escort them. Safe out, safe back. You ever been there?’
William shook his head.
‘Don’t go. Crowd down there’s unholy. They don’t pay us for this,’ he pointed to his cornet, ‘they pay us for this.’ He peeled back the top of his right boot to reveal the hilt of a small dirk.
‘How much do they pay you, these types?’ asked William.
‘The colonel gets twenty-five pounds for our hire, the sergeant fifteen pounds, the musketeers ten, and we get eight pounds, ten shillings.’
‘Each?’
‘Each.’
William was dumbstruck. That was a phenomenal amount of money for an honest day’s work.
‘All this money … what do you do with it? Why do you still live here? … I mean where do … how … I mean … WHAT do you do with it?’
They giggled softly and exchanged a few phrases in their own language. ‘You want to know what we do with our money? Come and find out. The last Friday of every month we have a party, a rout. A private affair at the Bull Inn, Covent Garden. No whites. Only five shillings. And we make the music there.’
‘I’ll be there.’ He was already wondering which appointments he’d have to cancel. It was a lot of money for a night out but that had never worried him in the past.
He marched out of the mess behind the guardsmen and true to the custom of this new land of theirs, where names had no meaning, he introduced himself only when they parted.
He thanked Newton, Charles and Hercules.
Outside the barracks the last few looters were still prowling the ransacked streets of St James.
William needed a good, strong drink of porter, but his purse had been stolen. He avoided the built-up areas of the Court End and headed towards St James’s Park, where he knew he could find Georgie George.
The King of the Beggars was sitting on his usual bench by the canal. Behind him the walls of Buckingham House fringed the tops of the lilac trees and well-dressed young ladies and their gentlemen sauntered, spring rabid, in the first truly fine weather of the year. Georgie waved to nurses and children promenading on the grassy banks. Beside him was a small pewter pail.
‘Hail, Willie!’
‘Hail, Georgie!’
‘What brings you onto the streets at this hour?’
‘I’ve had a wild night, George. A wild night.’
Georgie scrutinized his friend’s bruised face and mud-spattered clothes.
‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ he nodded, tapping an ivory-topped cane and fingering a gold watch chain, neither of which he’d had the day before.
Georgie inclined his head towards William and whispered, almost conspiratorially, ‘Buckram’s back.’
‘He’s alive?’
‘Yes. Walked into the Charioteer last night. He’s been in the Bridewell. Didn’t have a very good time of it. At all. He asked after your health.’
‘He spoke to you?!?’ William had noticed a strange smile creeping over Georgie’s face as he spoke. This was typical of him. He had been the first to greet Buckram on his release from gaol even though – and all St Giles and Covent Garden knew it would never be proved – he was almost certainly involved with his incarceration in the first place. William had heard the rumours and accusations, but he was no different from anyone else: in times of trouble people went to Georgie – and in times of plenty, Georgie came to you.
‘He’s staying with friend Neville for the time being. I don’t think he’s very well.’ Georgie touched his forehead three times. ‘Does that to a man, sometimes, gaol.’
‘That takes more than gaol, Georgie, and we both know it.’
They sat in silence for a moment or two, watching some swans attacking the park wardens who had come to feed them. In the pail at Georgie’s side, under a scrap of muslin, dead pigeons and dead squirrels, red and grey, lay heaped.
‘I have to see Buckram. Where is he now?’
‘You’ll most likely find him up by Lisson Grove, at the Stingo with all the other sadblacks, signing for their sixpence.’ Georgie kissed his teeth and spat.
‘But we’ve all begged, my friend. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You are king of all the beggars, black and white, you should know this.’
‘William,’ Georgie turned on the bench and looked him straight in the eye for the first time ever. ‘William, I do not beg. I have never begged. Have you ever seen me cap in hand? Have you ever known me to ask a stranger for money? A landlord for shelter? A woman for quimmy?’
William thought about this, and was still thinking about it when a party of well-heeled folk ambled by and wished Georgie a good morning. They tipped their hats and each, individually, placed a coin in his pail. As they passed, Georgie shouted something incomprehensible at their backs and they burst into laughter. Turning back to William his face re-set, instantly, to that mask of cold disdain which comes too easily to people with bland faces.
‘You’ll be needing money if you are going out of town.’ From nowhere he had produced a pound note. ‘Here. Pay me back later.’
&n
bsp; William accepted the money and like the rest of London town tipped his hat to Georgie George.
Walking away, he heard the beggar king shout, ‘Give my regards to friend Buckie when you see him!’
William gave him a laugh he didn’t know he had; a laugh he didn’t want to hear again.
Somewhere along Oxford Street, heading towards Tyburn, Buckram found himself behind a group of about twenty black men. Most were wearing rags, a few were on crutches and one man was being hauled along on a clumsy A-frame stretcher. They carried quarterstaffs and walked six abreast along the wide pavement. They were obviously on their way to Lisson Grove so he ran and caught up with them. They accepted his company without comment.
Their skins were cracked and greying and they moved soundlessly through the morning shoppers.
They passed fantastic window displays of multi-coloured crystal flasks, decorative firearms and chinaware. Even the fruit and vegetables looked outlandish here; waxed and polished apples and pears, pyramids of pineapples, oranges, figs and grapes. Startled pedestrians stepped around them, for once cowed and frightened by such a large foreign presence. The only insults came from windows above street level. A few rotten eggs and the contents of a chamber pot or two were hurled in their direction: otherwise they were left in peace.
Buckram was sure he recognized some of these men from his previous beggary; one of them pointed and gestured noncommittally to him. In response Buckram shrugged in his general direction. In contrast to the rest of them, the man was well-built, hearty and he really looked as if he was having a good time. His clothes were more battered than tattered and had clearly been of good quality not so long ago. He came across to Buckram with a bemused expression.
‘You don’t remember me?’
Buckram shook his head.
‘Julius,’ the man continued, ‘Julius Bambara. I know you from Ratcliffe, I’m sure of it. You used to live there in Angel Court, off Blue Gate Fields with that Bible man, the quiet one, Neville. It’s Buckram, isn’t it? Knew I’d seen you before.’