“You hear him, like you hear me now?”
Still nothing.
“Why do you not answer?”
“Because I do not understand, nor recognize, the question.”
“Ah.”
The quartermaster stepped into the room, his long coat brushing the door frame as he entered.
“You did well today, Sharp. You followed your orders to the letter. And you heard it, didn’t you? Tonight, and the other night, on the beach?”
“Heard what?”
“Well, you know what I’m talking about. You heard what I heard. You all heard it.”
“I saw . . . I saw evil on that beach. An evil perpetrated by you.”
“Ah, indeed? I got you into this town. I made you rich. And, still, you heard something.”
“And what if I did?”
“Well, it is of some importance to me. That others can hear it. It means they are perhaps damned as well. I have heard that infernal humming before, you see. When I was damned.”
Sharp’s eyes widened at that, and his hands tightened on the sword.
“Damnation is important to you people, as I understand it. Your religion has always been something of a closed book to me. Of late, I admit to being sorely offended by it.”
“You are stating that I . . . am damned?”
“Sharp, would you really expect a benevolent creator to allow you into heaven after today?”
Sharp’s scarred, leathery cheeks grew wet. His eyes swam with a bitter knowledge.
“But who can tell, after all?” said the quartermaster. “Who knows what comes after this? If anything at all? I have to say, it seems unlikely to me that there is any hereafter, sweet or otherwise. But if there is, my dear old soldier, I fear it is not welcoming of vicious old murderers like ourselves, who crouch behind children to avoid being shot.”
The old Ironside pulled out his sword, and pointed it at the quartermaster.
“I am not damned, curse you.”
“Possibly none of us is, Sharp. But if any of us is, after today you most assuredly are.”
The Ironside ran at the quartermaster, and his sword cut through Billy’s stomach and rammed itself into the wall behind. Sharp heard an ahhhh whispered in his ear, and then felt something cold and hard against his throat, and there was a deep, familiar hum.
“Consider this a gift,” said the quartermaster as he cut the old soldier’s throat. “I’ll take your life for you. Your senseless book of rules permits no suicide. No reason to take chances with eternity. Is this not kinder than the consolations of preachers?”
The Ironside fell to the floor. After a moment, his sword clattered down beside him. A piece of eight was dropped on the floor and the quartermaster went back down the stairs, his gait no longer quite so certain.
BOOK 3
Sloane
In the sugar-islands Negroes are a very important object of attention. The following observations, therefore, are worthy to be remembered:
The Congo Negroes are comely and docile, but not hardy enough for the labour of the field, they should therefore be kept for household business, or taught the mechanic arts, and they will then turn to very good account.
The Pawpaws from the Gold Coast are the best for field labour, but no Negroe should be bought old; such are always sullen and unteachable, and frequently put an end to their own lives.
A Cormantee will never brook servitude, though young, but will either destroy himself, or murder his master.
All Negroes are subject to worms, and other disorders, arising from change of climate and food; they should, therefore, when first purchased, be blooded, and purged with vervain and sempre-vive; they should be allowed plenty of food easily digested, and treated with kindness, they will then take to labour by degrees, and perform their task with chearfulness.
“How to Maintain ‘Negroes’ on Plantations,
The Gentleman’s Magazine, October 1764
23 DECEMBER 1811
The funeral of the Williamsons is held at St. Paul’s Church, Shadwell. The venue is not auspicious. The old place is forgotten and increasingly ignored, and is no longer accustomed to any kind of public attention. The church authorities are already considering tearing it down, and it is almost dead even now. For years, bits of ceiling have been known to fall in on the congregation. The outside is blotchy and unkempt. Squat, plain and unregarded, it is the short ugly idiot cousin of the awesome St. George in the East, a few hundred yards down the Ratcliffe Highway. St. George’s is all Power and Glory. St. Paul’s is more Decay and Sheepishness.
These days, the church is only opened for baptisms and for burials, though why anyone should want their new child welcomed into God’s family inside the ratty confines of St. Paul’s is beyond the understanding of most of the local people.
Burials are a different matter, as this is a seagoing church, and seagoing folk like a good send-off. Dozens of captains and quartermasters and bo’suns and midshipmen lie under the ground around the sad old place, their rotting bones the dry echoes of lost limbs, ripped-out eyes, crushed lungs, and broken, blighted dreams. The little crooked churchyard is a history book of the maritime dead, an index of Britain’s global sprawl.
No one decided the Williamsons should be buried here, except perhaps old Williamson himself, pondering intimations of his own coming destruction. There seem to be no next of kin to take responsibility. With no one around to decide for them (only Kitty Stillwell, their distraught granddaughter, and she is not old enough nor, just now, sane enough to take on the responsibility), St. Paul’s it is.
The send-off is conducted under the haunted eyes of the Reverend Mr. Denis, the father of a hollowed-out congregation. His impassioned eulogy to the fine couple has been rather too overwhelming for his own weak spirits, and he has had to stop the service on a number of occasions to allow himself to recover. The people in the church are rather steadier in their emotions. A good number of the women are weeping, but quietly and with little public display, shoulders sobbing and faces held in handkerchiefs.
The reverend aside, calm mourning is the prescribed order of the day. This has been the stated wish of the magistrates of Shadwell (still burning with indignation over the meddling of John Harriott in their affairs), who have been uncharacteristically decisive and deliberate in ensuring that the Williamson funeral is carried off with the formality and consideration they feel it is due. They have arranged for their constables and officers to watch the service and, more to the point, to guard it. They have decided they want no repeat of the wailing scenes of dismay that accompanied the burial of the Marrs. Shadwell must be seen as an altogether more mannered place. A place of discretion, balance, and piety. Magistrate Story has led the planning of the operation and has made it clear in no uncertain terms to Reverend Mr. Denis and his skeleton church staff that no public displays of hysteria will be countenanced: such displays are simply impious. The reverend’s own grievous outpourings are in this context frankly undesirable. Capper and Markland, while ignoring Story’s more transcendent obsessions, are in full agreement that emotions must be held in check. Panic is raging around the streets of Shadwell, and a funeral such as this can conduct panic as effectively as any electrical experiment at the Royal Institution.
The Reverend Mr. Denis is now reaching the end of his heartfelt sermon, and there are audible tears in the congregation. The constables and watchmen remain stony-faced (some of the watchmen are in fact swaying slightly under the influence of alcohol, but even these are sufficiently well drilled to keep their mouths turned down and their brows furrowed). Denis leads the congregation in one more prayer, and then the pallbearers pick up the coffins of John and Elizabeth Williamson (Bridget Harrington has already been buried, at a small family occasion on the south coast). The congregation follows Denis out of the church into the damp air outside. Shadwell itself seems to have caught the subdued mood; all the shops and inns have closed out of respect, and quiet crowds hang around the gates to the churchyard, thei
r combined breath rising into the air and becoming one with the deep London fog, just as it had done when they’d watched the Marrs being taken away to rest. It is as if London itself is breathing. The funeral entourage tramps over the damp earth to the two open graves, which are squeezed in between dead sea captains and expired shopkeepers. The coffins are lowered, while Denis reads his prayers and women weep more deeply, their sobs dampened by the wet fog, as if they are coming from the far Surrey shore of the crowded, busy river, where the forests of masts make their own congregation even in the face of Shadwell’s mourning.
Among the local constables dotted throughout the crowd are Hewitt and Hope, a double-act of righteous heavy-handedness well known to the local people, several of whom have felt the fists of Hewitt upon their face while Hope pinned their arms behind them. Backhanded payments and violently extracted confessions are very much their stock-in-trade. As the ceremony begins to reach its conclusion a young man in a greatcoat, who stands at least a head taller than those around him, approaches Hewitt and Hope and starts talking to them quietly, toward the back of the large crowd around the open graves. A few people turn to look, scandalized by the lack of respect, but most of them turn hurriedly away when they see the two officers who are doing the talking. The tall young man is pointing to someone in the crowd around the graves and Hewitt-or-Hope is nodding vigorously while Hope-or-Hewitt follows his pointing finger to look at the subject of their conversation. After several minutes of muttered talk the tall young man limps away, leaving Hewitt and Hope to glare into the crowd as the ceremony comes to a close.
The mourners within the churchyard and around its perimeter begin to disperse, and Hewitt-and-Hope follow one particular man—a rather attractive, if somewhat dissolute-looking, young man with long hair and an easy manner—back along the Highway, down New Gravel Lane, through some winding streets and to the door of a boardinghouse called the Pear Tree. Here, the young man stops, turns and speaks to them, and looks startled as Hewitt-and-Hope, moving as one deadly organism, arrest him.
Thus John Williams is taken, and to his great surprise becomes the principal object of Shadwell’s spatchcock investigation.
Hewitt and Hope take Williams back to the Shadwell Police Office, barely a quarter-mile away from the boardinghouse. There he is interviewed immediately by the quiet, terrified, but periodically effective Capper. Having placed Williams in a room with Capper, Hewitt and Hope seek out a rat-faced man in decrepit breeches and coat who has been hanging around the offices. This is Your Correspondent from The Times, and he has been reporting on the case under a special arrangement with the Shadwell magistrates (it had been Markland who had considered, in his canny self-serving way, that a tame reporter willing to print what he is told might be just what he and his colleagues needed, given the absence of any real progress). The officers lead Your Correspondent to the small room where Capper and Williams are, and Hewitt-and-Hope whisper something into his ear as they lead him inside. Your Correspondent nods his understanding as the door closes.
The interview with Williams lasts two hours—at least four times as long as previous interviews in the case. At the end of it, Capper scurries away to discuss matters with Story and Markland. He finds them celebrating the success of their efforts to keep the Williamson funeral quiet (Markland is enjoying a sherry, Story does not drink but in any case is comfortably high on his own righteousness). Capper reports the particulars of his interview with John Williams. Markland pours himself another sherry to celebrate, and hands one to Capper as well. Story kneels and prays, something to which his fellow magistrates have become well used.
Your Correspondent, having observed the interview with Williams and having been given additional “background material” by Hewitt-and-Hope, disappears into the late-afternoon twilight to put a story together. After some backslapping and another sherry (and another prayer) the three Shadwell magistrates call in Hewitt-and-Hope, who then hoist up their trousers and paint on their official faces before retrieving Williams from the interview room and telling him he is to be remanded in Coldbath Fields Prison. He protests, violently, asking on what evidence this is being done. Hewitt-and-Hope look at each other, and shut the door to the room. A few minutes and a handful of dull thuds later the door reopens and Williams, his head bowed and his arms held, one each, by the two officers, is escorted out of the office.
The next day is Christmas Eve. The Times breaks its story with little fanfare, on page three.
MURDERS IN NEW GRAVEL LANE
etc.
SHADWELL POLICE OFFICE
Several persons were examined yesterday at Shadwell Police-office, charged on suspicion, but no positive proof could be brought home to any of them.
A seafaring man, named John Williams, underwent a very long and rigid interrogation. The circumstances of suspicion alleged against him were, that he had been frequently seen at the house of Williamson the publican, and that he had been more particularly seen there about seven o’clock on Thursday evening last; that on the same evening he did not go home to his lodgings until about twelve, when he desired a fellow-lodger, a foreign sailor, to put out his candle; that he was a short man, and had a lame leg; that he was an Irishman; and that previous to this melancholy transaction, he had little or no money; and that when he was taken into custody, he had a good deal of silver.
These suspicious circumstances having been proved against him, the Magistrates desired him to give an account of himself. He avowed that he had been at Mr. Williamson’s on Thursday evening, and at various other times. He had known Mr. and Mrs. W. a considerable time, and was very intimate there. On Thursday evening, when he was talking to Mrs. Williamson, she was very cheerful, and patted him on the cheek when she brought him some liquor. He was considered rather in the light of a friend than a mere customer of the house.
When he left their house he went to a surgeon’s, in Shadwell, for the purpose of getting advice for the cure of his leg, which had been a considerable number of years disabled in consequence of an old wound. From thence he went to a female chirurgeon in the same neighborhood, in hopes of getting his cure completed at a less expense than a surgeon’s charge. He then went farther west, and met some female acquaintance, and, after visiting several public-houses, he returned to his lodgings and went to bed.
The circumstance of his desiring his fellow-lodger to put out his candle, arose in consequence of his finding the man, who was a German, lying in bed with a candle in one hand, with a pipe in his mouth, and a book in the other. Seeing him in that situation, and apprehending that the house might be set on fire by his carelessness, he told him to put out his lights, and not expose the house to the danger of being burnt to the ground. He accounted for the possession of the money found upon him, as the produce of some wearing-apparel he left as pledges at a pawnbroker’s. He never made any mystery of his having been at Mr. Williamson’s on Thursday evening; and on the contrary, he told his landlady, and several other people, that he had been with poor Mrs. Williamson and her husband a very short time before they were murdered, and remarked how cheerful Mrs. Williamson was.
Under all the circumstances of the case, the prisoner was, however, remanded for further examination.
By Boxing Day, Williams will be the most famous man in London. By the day after that, he will be dead.
CHRISTMAS EVE 1687
I celebrated the eve of the birth of Our Lord at the table of the former Deputy Governor, the former Admiral of the Brethren, the former Lord High Almighty of Jamaica, Henry Morgan himself. I thought it extremely odd to be invited, but Morgan was not seeking to renew the acquaintance of his old quartermaster. He just wanted a final view of me before his end, and as it turned out there was another who wanted to look upon me.
Morgan had practically disappeared from public life in Jamaica by this time. Within recent memory he had been a fixture of the Port Royal taverns, ensconced with his few remaining friends in some private room or unlit corner, muttering bitterly about the new gover
nor and his own betrayal by the King, or celebrating his achievements, both as buccaneer and latterly as a fearsome scourge of the pirates. As Deputy Governor of Jamaica, he had become a vicious pursuer of his former Brethren, taking a positive delight in victimizing his former crews from his new position of official power.
But trips down to Port Royal were beyond him now. A new doctor, called Sloane, had appeared from London with the new governor, reportedly to attend to the governor’s wife, Lady Cavendish, who was said to be weak in the head. This Sloane was supposed to be one of the foremost medical minds in England, but he’d drawn a blank with Morgan. I’d heard stories of the admiral spending his days in a hammock like some resting whale, his stomach hanging over the side, empty bottles of sack and wine rolling on the floor.
Meanwhile, his plantation had fallen on hard times under its owner’s neglect. When I rode over there for the Christmas Eve dinner (and what a pretty ride it was—Jamaica is so like Oxfordshire at times one can forget it is on the other side of the world) a few blacks were trimming the trees and bushes on the drive up to the house, but I saw little sign of any economically productive activity. The mill was still, there were no field gangs out, and the cane had bent over on itself, unharvested and unloved.
It was a stark contrast to my own dear Woodperry, which continued to thrive under the careful stewardship of my attorney Isak Naar. Isak was my right hand, my eyes, and my ears. Our relationship was unusual for Jamaica. Plenty of Jews worked for Englishmen on the island, and many of them effectively ran plantations on behalf of their absentee owners, who grew fat and rich in the fleshpots of London, Bristol, and Liverpool. Isak did much the same for me, but I was not quite such an absentee. I was present, but largely invisible. My reputation preceded me, particularly among the blacks, and to keep the plantation doing what it needed to do—generate wealth—I had decided the best place for me was deep in the shadows. Potosí silver may have been the seed for everything that grew on Woodperry, but it was Isak who did the tending.
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