Turning the Stones

by Debra Daley

  ‘Keep your wits about you,’ the lad advises, ‘in case these rogues try to tip us over.’

  But it is a dank morning with scraps of mist still clinging to the trees, and the outsiders sink down once more into their mufflers and coats. They lack the energy to sustain their cavils.

  ‘I am very much obliged to you, young man,’ I whisper. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Madden it is. Terry Madden.’ He offers a bow. ‘And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking, madame?’

  I bring out my thin lie. ‘Mrs … Mrs Ann Jones.’

  Madden eyes me sidelong and gives me a wink of amiable complicity. Is my lack of truthfulness so transparent? I turn to look out on the countryside. The mist is lifting, revealing wave-like hills and fields of undulating corn. My mind is full of Eliza. The amazement at seeing her. And the panic of seeing him. Instinctively my hand reaches into my petticoat and pats my pocket for reassurance. My escape money. I gaze down upon the blur of the coach wheels. They throw up pale chalk dust that settles on the wildflowers growing on the verge of the road. I urge the wheels to go faster.

  I think I may have misinterpreted the tone of Eliza’s appearance at the George. I thought that she seemed frightened and confused, but isn’t that what my imagination wished to see? She might have been, rather, determined to witness my capture. There is a reason for that but I cannot get at it exactly. It is like looking for something that has rolled underneath a bureau; I know the reason is there but I cannot reach it.

  *

  We have come upon a grasping clay road now, which sucks the life from the horses and defeats our pace. The slog has stretched out this stage and everyone is complaining that we will arrive late in Bristol, if we will get there at all. I am in an agony of impatience at the slowness of our progress. To distract myself I ask Madden how he came by his words of French. He tells me that he was put as a child under the command of a master who sailed him to France.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘A little village in Ireland, madame, which is not an easy sort of place.’

  ‘Where is your master now?’

  ‘Our crew put up at Bristol on this run, but we were laid up on the mud and the stranding hurt our boat. It’s a fine cutter that I belong to. The Seal she’s called. While we were in repair, it came to me that I might nip up to see London and be back quick as you like, since never did I lay eyes on the golden streets of that town.’

  ‘You must have been disappointed then.’

  Madden heaves an eloquent sigh.

  ‘Will not your master punish you for your absence?’

  ‘It is likely, hélas. That he will not sail without me is my great hope.’ Madden touches the nail hanging around his neck.

  ‘What is that charm you wear?’

  ‘It is a fierce sort of interrogator you are, my lady, if I may say so.’

  ‘My questions signify nothing. I am only trying to keep myself awake.’

  Madden tucks the talisman inside the placket of his shirt and says, ‘It is only a nail against the other crowd. It’s well known they will have nothing to do with iron.’

  ‘What crowd is that?’

  Madden’s brow buckles in a frown. ‘I will not name them, madame. They do not like to hear their names bandied about.’

  He aims his gaze at the surging downs. A river gleams in the distance beneath the dull shine of a white windmill, whose sails are slowly turning. We are under a determined whip on a noisy road. We shift our backsides, irritated by the effrontery of the stones that fly up from under the wheels as though determined to strike us.

  The shock of seeing Eliza – and him – has jolted my memory and loosened one of its shutters. The whole of the picture eludes my remembering, but now I have got a glimpse, through a dark glaze, of the death scene.

  Flaxen hair matted with blood. Violet coat soaked in blood. I feel sick. My hands fly to my mouth to stifle a cry. It hits me with sudden and terrific force: the identity of the victim in that chamber.

  Oh, dear God. The shock of it.

  My stomach turns over. It cannot be true. But it is.

  Johnny Waterland is dead.

  Eliza’s brother. There could be no greater catastrophe in her eyes. She adored him extremely and constantly. Now I understand why she appeared at Reading. She believes I killed him and she is on my trail. She has come to hunt me down.

  Madden is shaking my arm. ‘Do you hear? We must stay on the roof during the change, Mrs Jones, otherwise we shall lose our places.’ Seeing my stricken expression, he adds, ‘Do not disquiet yourself, madame, we will win the tussle up here. I am used to it. In my experience, seldom is there a day that there is not a fight in it.’

  Johnny Waterland. Dead.

  I can’t –

  I did not –

  The Port of Bristol

  April, 1766

  Something jogs me awake, an elbow grazing against my cheek. There is a tang of salt and fish in the air and I feel a stab of homesickness. I was dead to the world, dreaming of a sunfiltered chamber where I was far from trepidation. I have had this dream before. The distant beat of waves, sequins of light scattered on the sea … Nothing occurs or perhaps something has already taken place.

  Oh, God. I am awake. And something has taken place. Johnny Waterland is murdered and I had something to do with it.

  What happened?

  I feel disgraceful. A coward as well as a fugitive. Don’t I owe it to the Waterlands to confess that I was there … Only I cannot tell them how he came to his death because I do not know. At the same time, is there not something awfully selfserving about my forgetting? The convenience of it.

  Where am I?

  I peer groggily over the railing and find that the coach is shoving its way through heavy traffic. I turn to Madden to ask if we are at Bristol, but to my surprise there is a young woman sitting in his place. She has a pockmarked face and a baby tied to her chest. The coach leans into a narrow cobbled street and then pitches itself at an inn, whose sign shows a square-rigged ship rocking on the waves. I suppose Madden might have secured himself an inside seat while I was dozing. He is enterprising enough to manage such a thing.

  While my neighbour struggles with her howling infant and a bundle of belongings, I disembark with caution from the coach, for I have not paid for a single stage since Reading. I slip through the crowds milling in the yard to an out-of-the-way spot under the gallery and draw my scarf low over my head. The coach empties, the boot is unloaded and the horse-keeper takes the team off the pole and walks the tottery off-wheeler away. There is still no sign of Madden, and now his disappearance begins to confound me.

  I will not go back on my plan to flee England. Knowing that the dead man is Johnny Waterland does not alter the danger to me if I stay. I am pragmatic about that.

  I wish Madden would turn up. This waiting makes me anxious. He has offered to show me the way to a ship bound for France, or even America. He said that two guineas would easily pay for my passage –

  My heart falls from a great height.

  I clap my hands to the sides of my thighs, where I expect to confirm the presence of my pockets, although I think I already know in that split second that the one holding the moneybag is gone. Plunging my hand into the slit in my petticoat, I bring out only the pathetic strings, neatly cut by Madden, I have no doubt, while I slept. My eyes glaze with useless tears.

  Now I have not a farthing to my name and only the clothes I stand up in, and those are fast turning to rags.

  I hang my head in despair. A buckle, I notice, has vanished from one of my shoes and the discovery of this paltry deprivation on top of the critical loss of my funds enlarges my misery to the point where it overflows. Oblivious to the stares of passers-by, who must find my soiled, flittered and rat-tailed appearance a telling advertisement for the decline of my circumstances, I sob like a child.

  Do you know what is so very wearying about adversity? Well, I am sure you must know, and far better than I, but re
cent bitter experience has shown me that repeated misfortune not only undermines material resources, but acts even more insidiously as a drain to the soul. As I stand in the yard of the Ship Inn with my empty hands, I wonder: when all of the hopefulness has finally leaked from me, what will happen then? It is likely I will find myself alarmingly altered, transformed into a person who has become capable of remorseless actions. I see that possibility quite clearly. Would not one do anything – deceive, steal, even murder – to avoid slipping from the precarious perch of existence?

  I cannot bear this loss! But fear, that great predator, snarls at me from a corner of my mind and I am obliged to set off on the run again, stumbling away under the arch of the inn’s entrance.

  I am shaking with anger, too. I am angry in the extreme. I could kill Madden, I could, I could … You could what, Em? Stab him through his treacherous heart? Then a new fear bubbles up. Will Madden tell tales of me to others and thus lead them to me?

  There is a wharf here, in front of the inn, with many vessels at anchor. Their masts and rigging stick up like giant reeds from the slop of the water. The view to the east shows substantial houses built on an eminence, their windows winking in the flare of the setting sun. A small crowd stands about in the foreground with quantities of luggage. I take in this scene with a quick, harried glance, looking always all around me for the slightest sign of followers. Mingling among the passengers for cover, I gather that a sailing has been delayed. A packet-ship has been grounded downstream.

  A minuscule woman lost in the folds of an enormous capuchin moans, ‘We will not get away until tomorrow now,’ and a gentleman shaped like a bag pudding remarks in my general direction, ‘Take my advice. Never pay for your passage until the moment you set sail, because all sorts of obstacles may prevent your embarkation.’

  ‘Do you know,’ I ask without hope, ‘of a cutter hereabouts by the name of the Seal?’

  If I could discover Madden’s ship among the multitude of vessels in Bristol, I should challenge him for the return of my guineas or at least throw myself on the mercy of his master, who might – now I am plainly tumbling into fantasy – recompense me for the theft and offer me a passage to France.

  The becloaked woman examines my appearance and finds it wanting. Her companion shrugs. ‘The Seal? I’ve no knowledge of it at all.’

  The wind blows cold off the leaden water and the disgruntled would-be passengers shiver and pull their coverings closer. Disappointed, they begin to call for porters. I watch bleakly as they gradually disperse. I see no way out of my predicament. At my back looms a row of hard-faced warehouses, their steps occupied by squatting, ragged figures. Before me there lies a channel of water, like a line ruled under my story bringing it to a close. I comprehend now how the union of many small currents of feeling and thought under duress may cause a powerful perception – that there is no way out but death – to burst forth and overwhelm a person. I am thinking of Miss Broadbent, of course.

  *

  At last I shift myself, spurred by the possibility that my pursuers will arrive at Bristol on the next coach. As I trudge towards the landward end of the wharf, I sense a displacement of air nearby, accompanied by an awful thudding sound, and I glimpse a tall black entity bearing down on me. At a bellowed command of ‘Mind yourself, hussy!’ I cower, looking up fearfully from under my chaotic hair, and find that I am almost run down by a sedan chair. It rushes by, all thumping footfalls and squeaking leather walls, pumped by the engine of the chairmen’s rhythmic breathing, which comes in snorts like that of a horse. The chair shuffles to a halt in the shadow of one of the massive cargo winches that line the wharf and discharges a passenger. With one hand clamped on his hat and the other lugging a portmanteau, he hurries away. I steal closer to the chair. An animal odour emanates from it, arising, I suppose, from the glue that holds the conveyance together. The smell takes me back to the summer house at Sedge Court, where I undertook shellwork for Mrs Waterland. The glue I used there had been rendered from quills of rabbit skin and gave off the aroma of winter stew. That was the morning of the day that he stalked me and brought me down.

  I hear myself call out, ‘Hie, sir!’

  The chairman, a burly individual, with the typical slabby shoulders of his ilk and a balding dark yellow velvet coat, turns a broad, thick-featured face in my direction and regards me with indifference. My grubby appearance does not suggest a potential customer.

  ‘Sir …’ I edge still closer, ‘I should be obliged if you would take me to the berth of a cutter called the Seal.’

  The chairman turns his head from side to side like someone rueing the foolishness of a child, and says, ‘Only show me your shilling, madam, and the chair shall be yours.’

  I careen into an account of Terry Madden’s thieving. If I could only arrive at the cutter and reclaim my funds, I should be able to pay for the chair at that point. I add lamely, ‘I believe the culprit is Irish.’

  The chairman hoots, ‘An Irishman is he? Then ye’ve only a few thousand to choose from in Bristol town.’ He shouts over his shoulder at his partner, ‘Did you hear that, Kev? Lass here is hunting for an Irish lad who cut her purse. And she expects to find him, too.’

  Now it’s the hind chairman’s turn to chortle. ‘What’re the odds he’s already drunk up her coin in a tavern?’

  Their mirth nettles me and I shout, ‘Give me the name of a likely tavern and I will hound him down myself and be damned!’

  My outburst further piques their amusement. ‘You will be wanting the Breeze and Feather, I warrant.’ The front-man grins. ‘That’s a place kept by Irish people and attracts a lad with more money than sense.’

  The hind chairman calls, ‘We are going that way and you may trot behind.’ The chair is wheeled about and the men set off without further ado. I assume that they are trifling with me, but no alternative presents itself, and so I scurry to catch up to them.

  We rush through a tangle of streets and arrive in short order at the head of an oppressive thoroughfare, where houses with protruding gables lean over a row of shops and alehouses. The cluster of black chairs at the corner of the street reminds me of the crows that I saw on our way to Weever Hall last summer. It was a golden afternoon and we stopped to dine alfresco. I see Eliza dozing under a walnut tree with one arm draped across her face, unconcerned that her marriage prospects were dimming by the day.

  Oh, Eliza, do not think ill of me. I should like to believe that sympathy and loyalty do obtain as a result of a long connection, but I have been proved grievously mistaken about people’s characters. I wanted things – people – to be true that weren’t true. The thought of Mrs Waterland pricks my heart.

  Have you ever had the experience of being blasted by blandishments? It is elating to be the object of flatteries, but they level your defences and leave you exposed to devastation when betrayal strikes. I want to say more, I own a powerful desire to purge myself of this story, but I am afraid that dwelling on the past is likely to keep offences alive.

  Thank heavens, we have come to a stop. I must recover my breath, but the chairmen, having set down their conveyance among the others at the rank, are flexing their arms with little sign of exertion.

  One of them jerks his thumb at the street. ‘There’s your mark, down there on the right.’

  I set off diffidently, pressing against the walls of the buildings to avoid a couple of drunks. But the berserkers swerve into my path, making a what-have-we-here clutch at me. A roar sounds from the rank of chairs: ‘Another step nearer her, lads, and you’ll be in danger of a slap!’ The sots leave me alone then, and I cast a backward look at the chairmen with a pang of regret. I wish I were not passing out of the orbit of their protection – but onward I must go.

  The Breeze and Feather is a low, smoky tavern with patrons to match and a note of threat humming in the background. A ship’s wheel fastened to the chimney piece and rigging that droops from the dark beams bespeak a nautical theme, which is not entirely jaunty. There is a hint
of wrecks and drowned sailors in the rusted anchor, the crumbling cork life-preservers and the solitary oar fixed to a wall. At the pewter counter a sandy-complexioned publican in soiled shirtsleeves is filling mugs with a dipper from an anker whose fumes cause my eyes to water. Or perhaps the miasma produced by the patrons’ pipes is responsible. I dash the tears away with the heel of my hand. The atmosphere, however, remains misty and unreal.

  The publican flicks a dead-eyed glance at me and continues his laborious transfer of liquor from one container to another. There is a blurry chequerboard pattern inked on one of his forearms and a constellation of stars on the other. He offers no response to my salutation, but I launch into a tale, regardless, claiming to be a relation of a ship’s boy called Terry Madden, whom I describe in great detail. The publican hands mugs to a barmaid who bears them away. Without any acknowledgement of my presence, he turns to a customer and I am jostled out of place.

  I battle through the crush to a far reach of the room, where I must puzzle out my next move. No doubt I look ripe for some offensive by one of the voluptuaries of this tavern. Boozy laughter erupts from the drinkers huddled over their cups and a wench insists on singing to her swain while making the most of her bosom.

  The barmaid approaches and plonks a platter of crimson salt beef in front of a trio of balladeers. Turning away, she says to me out of the side of her mouth, ‘People will not talk to you here. They do not know you.’

  ‘I am looking for a ship’s boy called Terry Madden,’ I blurt. ‘He is about thirteen or fourteen years of age.’

  ‘You his mother?’

  ‘No. His sister.’

  She pulls in her chin with a curled lip to indicate that she does not believe me.

  ‘He is on a cutter called the Seal, but I do not know where it is berthed.’

  ‘The Seal?’ The barmaid’s eyes widen.

  ‘Do you know it?’