Smuggler's Moon sjf-8

by Bruce Alexander

  Potter, an unpleasant-looking little fellow no older than I, was a stable boy from Sir Simon’s household staff. I had seen him about during those few days that we had stayed at the manor house but had formed no high opinion of his character or his intelligence. He had, Sir John later told me, come forward with what he described as ”something you want to know,” but had made it clear that it would only be made available if he were promised, quid pro quo, something in return. The deal was made in private. Thus, Sir John’s appearance was greeted by him with some alarm: he could only be bringing Potter bad news. When at last he came forward to the bars, he looked at the two of us with great suspicion in his eyes.

  “What you doin’ here?” he whispered to Sir John. ”What you want from me?”

  “Only your attention. You recall the recommendation I made in your behalf?”

  “‘Course I do. We made a deal.”

  “Well, I’ve come to tell you that my recommendation may be rejected. It’s unfortunate, but you deserve to know.”

  “That an’t fair,” said Potter, forgetting to whisper, ”not by half, it an’t. You said they always do what you tell them to.”

  Sir John sighed. ”I said they’ve always accepted my recommendation in the past. That is true. This is the first time in seventeen years there has been some doubt. But if you choose to, you may still …” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “Forget that! They’ll get naught from me. The deal is off. I’ll take what everyone else gets.”

  Having said that, he turned and pushed his way through the little crowd that had gathered round him. Two or three turned, frowning suspiciously, and watched him go.

  “Let us be out of here, Jeremy,” said Sir John, and fast as we could go with only one pair of eyes between us, we left Newgate behind.

  Returning to Number 4 Bow Street, Sir John gave a perfunctory greeting to Mr. Fuller and Mr. Baker, for it was that time when day turns into night, and the Bow Street Runners report one by one to go off upon their separate assignments. It was also that time, or near it, when supper was served in the kitchen above.

  We ascended the stairs and stepped into the kitchen. I believe that Sir John and I were both surprised to find Lady Fielding had returned, and even more surprised to find all three women (Lady Kate, Clarissa, and Molly) in the kitchen together-and not a word being said. I know not your experience, reader, but in mine, three women in a room together over a period of time nearly always find something to talk about. Yet into the kitchen we came, and there we did see Lady Kate in the middle of the room, her arms folded before her, a frown upon her forehead, and her lips pursed; Molly was bent over the stove, pulling from it five sizzling mutton chops; and Clarissa between them, looking unhappily from one to the other.

  Lady Fielding was the first to rouse. ”Jack! You’re back!”

  “Indeed I am,” said he. ”And I trust your mother is well, safely through her spell?”

  “Oh yes,” said she. Then, sotto voce into his ear: ”Who is this woman?”

  Then he, just as quiet: ”She is our new cook.”

  ”But-”

  He interrupted: ”Come upstairs, and we shall discuss the matter between us.”

  And so they went, he leading the way and she following. The door to their bedroom closed behind them. The three of us then breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief.

  “I was afraid something like this would happen,” said Molly.

  “Well, I tried to explain all to her,” said Clarissa.

  “I know, I know,” said Molly. ”That was when I went off to Covent Garden to buy for dinner. I skipped right out, thinking it best if you and the lady had a bit of time together so that you might make things clear.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” said I, waving my hand dismissively (in a gesture I had copied from Sir John), ”all will be made right. You’ll see.”

  “Well, what would you think,” said Molly, ”if you found a strange woman in your kitchen?”

  “From what she said, it wasn’t so much that,” said Clarissa, ”as not being consulted, not having any say in the matter.”

  “I can understand that,” said I.

  “So can I,” said Clarissa.

  “Oh dear,” said Molly.

  Voices were raised behind the door to their room above. Clarissa set the table rather hurriedly, and Molly put out the food. I waited-but not for long. It seemed but a moment or two until they returned. Happily, Lady Fielding went straight to Molly and offered her hand.

  “Please forgive me for my failure to welcome you,” said she. ”It was simply surprise which made me forget momentarily to tell you that we are very happy to have you in our household.” With that, she looked round and smiled modestly. ”Well then, shall we eat?”

  We four took our usual places at the kitchen table, leaving Annie’s old chair to Molly Sarton, who seemed to be waiting for the rest of us to begin. Lady Fielding cut into the mutton chop and took a bite. Her face brightened immediately.

  “This is really quite wonderful,” said she. ”How did you manage?”

  With that, Clarissa and I exchanged relieved glances. A crisis, it seemed, had been averted-or at least delayed.

  Quite early the next morning, when I was the only one up and about, Mr. Baker came up the stairs and informed me that a message had come from Newgate for Sir John. He asked me to summon him. Answering my knock, Sir John appeared in his nightshirt, and not bothering to dress further, went down directly to Mr. Baker and received the news that Edward Potter had been murdered during the night, his throat cut, his body cold and rigid when it was discovered during the early morning. All those in the big holding cell naturally proclaimed their innocence and insisted they had neither seen nor heard anything of a suspicious nature during the night. Having listened carefully to Mr. Baker, Sir John thanked him and sent him on his way. Then did he turn to me with a most woeful look upon his face.

  “You know what this means, Jeremy, do you not?”

  “That there will be no murder trial-is that not so?”

  “Exactly so.” He sighed. ”Potter might have been put upon the witness stand and badgered into telling what he had seen in spite of his intentions to keep silent. But now, with no witness at all …”

  “There would be no point in bringing Sir Simon to trial for murder.”

  “My certainty of his guilt counts for nothing. Well, I shall have a letter for you to take down as soon as I am dressed.”

  “A letter to whom?” I asked.

  “To the Lord Chief Justice.”

  ”Surely not your letter of resignation?” I was for a moment truly alarmed.

  “No, that would serve no good purpose. I shall simply inform him of this event and make a few comments upon it.”

  Yet the letter, as dictated by him and taken down by me, was a good deal more than what he described. I should like to have had a copy of that letter so that I might present it here verbatim, for it was a good example of how Sir John’s mind worked. He began by informing Lord Mansfield of Potter’s death and assuring him that there could be no doubt that he had been murdered, since his throat had been cut. Why had he been murdered? The most likely reason, Sir John suggested, was that Sir Simon had ordered it, sent word down from his private cell that Potter, poor specimen that he was, nevertheless constituted a danger to him as a witness to the crime he most certainly had committed. If Lord Mansfield believed that because Sir Simon and the smuggler crew were in separate cells, some distance apart, such communication would be impossible, then he had no practical notion of just how corrupt was the guard force there in Newgate Gaol. A proper bribe would bring a prisoner anything he desired. Notes delivered within the prison were the least of it; a guard might well oblige with murder, if murder were required and if the sum paid were sufficient.

  Of course, said Sir John in the letter to the Lord Chief Justice, there could be no question now of trying Sir Simon on the charge of murder. Without a witness to the act, all that could be held against
him were Sir John’s suspicions and his theory of the crime. But (I recall these concluding lines so well that I believe I may put them within quotation marks): ”I would remind the Lord Chief Justice that in addition to the charge of homicide, Sir Simon Grenville was also bound over for trial on the lesser charge of smuggling. He will not, I hope, be forgiven this simply because his father was lucky enough to be your friend.”

  Though put more eloquently than I have done here, this was what I remember of the letter to Lord Mansfield-direct, forceful, and challenging. By the time he had read to the end of it, the Lord Chief Justice may well have wished that he had instead received that letter of resignation with which Sir John had threatened him.

  The letter was delivered by me into the hands of Lord Mansfield’s butler. With that, he seemed actually to be disappointed that we were not to have our usual disagreement over whether or not I was to be admitted into the great man’s presence that he might scrawl an answer in the margin of the letter.

  “No need for that,” said I to him, ”though it might be best if he were to be given the letter before he leaves for the day.”

  Having said that, I danced down the stairs and set off along Bloomsbury Square to continue on my way. I had a number of other errands to run. Though they were of no real consequence, they took up the rest of the morning. As a result, I did not return to Number 4 Bow Street until after the noon hour. At such time, of course, on nearly any day of the week, Sir John Fielding holds his magistrate’s court. For more than a week, however, he had been absent. This day’s session was the first he had held in quite some time, and when word went out that he was back, a great crowd turned out to greet him. It was composed of friends and relations of the prisoners and disputants before the court, as well as those who came from the district round Covent Garden. Now, those who live and work thereabouts are not all of them greengrocers. For a district of modest size, it has more than its fair share of pickpockets, sneak thieves, burglars, prostitutes, procurers, drunks, et cetera, and so a good many of these turn out at noon each day to attend Sir John’s session of his magistrate’s court. Add a few of the aged and infirm, those too poor to afford any other form of entertainment, and you have a sense of the sort of people who might be in attendance on any given day of the week.

  There were so many present on that day that when I entered, it seemed I might not find a place to seat myself. But far to the front I saw space enough for me upon a bench just opposite the prisoners’ section. There was nothing more that I could see, and so I blustered down to it, claimed it, and sat myself down.

  I looked over at the three prisoners. I meant only to glance, but one of them held my eye. He was an ordinary-appearing fellow, a little stronger than most from the look of his chest and shoulders, but not the sort that one would otherwise notice. I had seen him before, had I not? Ah well, probably in or about Covent Garden. I saw so many in my daily rounds. Then he looked my way and obviously recognized me. His eyes brightened, and he smiled at me. It was clear that he was glad to find me present. Yes, I had seen him before-and more than that, we had conversed. I was in some sense acquainted with the man.

  Sir John had been conferring in whispers with Mr. Marsden, his clerk. But then he turned toward the court and bellowed out: ”Call the next case, if you will, Mr. Marsden.”

  “Henry Curtin, come forth!”

  The man who looked so familiar-he who had smiled at me-then rose and took a place before the magistrate. He glanced back at me, as if looking for assurance. Why should he seek such from me?

  Yet of a sudden I knew the answer to that. Henry Curtin was the coachman in whose care I had entrusted Lady Katherine Fielding. I had tipped him a shilling-a goodly amount-but thinking that somehow insufficient, I had gone on to ask his name and to hint broadly to him that I would pass it on to Sir John, and if ever Mr. Curtin came before the magistrate of the Bow Street Court, then he would receive special consideration. A sense of horror swept over me. I had been trapped by my foolish desire to seem important. It was necessary for me to fight to keep my place on the bench, for I felt a nearly overwhelming desire to bolt from the courtroom.

  “What is the charge against this man, Mr. Marsden?”

  “Public drunkenness.”

  “What have you to say for yourself, sir?” asked Sir John.

  “Well …” The prisoner cleared his throat. ”My name is Henry Curtin …” There he paused.

  “I understand who you are. Get on with your story, man.”

  “Uh, yes, yes sir. Well, Henry Curtin is my name, and I work as a coachman on the run to York and back, and I come by a bit of money just yesterday.”

  “Let me stop you there and ask you how you came by this ‘bit of money’?”

  “It was won on a wager, sir.”

  “What sort of wager?”

  “‘Twas a contest of fisticuffing. ‘Twas held in a field just north of Clerkenwell. I bet on the black fella and Charlie Tobin bet on the white one.”

  “Hmmm,” Sir John mused, ”and I assume the black pugilist was the winner?”

  “Weren’t he though!”

  “Very well, you came away from the contest five shillings richer.”

  “That’s right, and I then and there decided I would take that money and drink my way home on it.”

  “Drink your way home? What a novel idea.”

  “Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “I did not say it was a good idea. I simply said it was a novel one. Now get on with it.”

  “Yes sir. What I was going to do was drink a drink of something-gin or rum or brandy-every place I took a notion from Clerkenwell to home.”

  “And where is home?”

  ”Just round the corner in Tavistock Street. I made it as far as Drury Lane, then I fear I ran out.”

  “Ran out of money?”

  “No, ran out of sense, just completely lost out, like I’d been hit hard by the black fella.”

  Sir John turned to Mr. Marsden and asked if there were any comments by the constable who made the arrest. ”Who was that, by the bye?”

  “It was Constable Langford,” said Mr. Marsden. ”He said he found this man, Curtin, asleep in the gutter.”

  “Did Mr. Curtin resist arrest? Give him any trouble at all?”

  “No sir, not according to the arrest report. Just keeping him upright was the hardest part.”

  “All right, thank you, Mr. Marsden.” Sir John turned back to the prisoner and addressed him directly: ”Henry Curtin, I know who you are. I am aware that you expect special treatment in my court and-”

  “Oh, no sir,” Curtin said, interrupting, ”I wouldn’t dare to-”

  “Don’t interrupt! I do the interrupting hereabouts. Now, as I understand it, what was said to you was something less than a promise of leniency, yet it was enough to allow you to suppose you would receive easy treatment from me. I am not bound by what was said. In fact, I should like to burden you with the severest penalty that the law allows just to teach the individual involved to make no more promises in my name.”

  At that, Curtin threw at me a look expressing great misery.

  “But it would not be fair to you to make you suffer in order to teach another a lesson.” Sir John paused at that point, then asked, ”Tell me, Mr. Curtin, have you money enough to pay a fine?”

  “No sir,” said he. ”All I got is a little at home to eat on till next I get paid. The five shillings was drunk up or stolen from me whilst I lay in the gutter.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t see you starve whilst waiting to be paid, nor would I wish to see you lose your job as coachman because you were serving a term in jail. But let us fix a fine of five shillings, for that is the sum you foolishly threw away on drink. Let it be payable to the Bow Street Court when next you are paid. You may work out the date, et cetera, with Mr. Marsden here. But I warn you, you must pay the fine, or we shall come after you, and next time I shall not be so accommodating. Are we done, then, Mr. Marsden?”

  “We are
, sir.”

  “Then the Bow Street Court is adjourned until noon tomorrow.” Sir John beat upon the table with his gavel, then laid it aside and made a hasty exit through the door behind him, which led directly to his chambers.

  Because Mr. Curtin had been charged to settle matters with Mr. Marsden, I was able to evade him. I managed to slip out through the door which led back to the strong room and, by a longer route, to Sir John’s chambers; it was to him I went, as one to receive just punishment.

  “Is that you, Jeremy?”

  He had barely settled in his chair and taken up the bottle of beer from the desk when I entered.

  “It is sir,” said I, properly humble.

  “I take it you were present during Mr. Curtin’s appearance?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Well, shut the door and seat yourself. Let us talk about this.”

  I did as he said, and once I was settled, he resumed.

  “Jeremy, we who have to do with the law must keep a firm hand upon ourselves. Now, we discussed your slip with Henry Curtin. You know you did wrong, so there is no need to repeat what was said. I’m confident you will not repeat that error. But I have had reason during the last day or two to question myself. As a personal favor to me, John Bilbo sailed in with his crew and saved us there on Goodwin Sands. We could not have won the day without him, his sloop, and his cannon. Then yesterday, he asked, as a personal favor to him, if I might put Lady Grenville in his charge that she might not be forced to languish in Newgate Gaol awaiting her trial-or her rescue by the French ambassador. I allowed it. I pray God that I am not given reason to regret granting that favor.

  “And you saw the Lord Chief Justice himself bend law and legal practice for personal reasons. He denied my recommendation for leniency to that fellow Potter simply because Sir Simon’s father had been his friend. The judge who had condemned hundreds to death could not bear thus to condemn a murderer whom he had held as a baby.