The Hidden Man

by Robin Blake

  ‘We must dine at Pinchbeck’s,’ said Fidelis, ‘as you have not seen it yet. And we may run into Canavan there.’

  ‘But first Truss’s shop. It’s on the way.’

  Dale Street was a long street with a string of fine and various shops stretching north from the Town Hall. We enquired at three shoemakers before we found the one that had been Thomas Truss’s, now trading under the name of Theophilus Fowler, and Son.

  It was the son James Fowler, a man in his middle years, to whom we spoke first. I asked if he could provide some information about his father’s predecessor in the shop.

  ‘Dad!’ he shouted. ‘You’re needed out here.’

  A bent white-haired old man appeared from the rear, which was apparently the workshop. He was wearing an apron, and had obviously been interrupted in his work.

  ‘Yes, son. What is it?’

  ‘These gentlemen are asking about Truss.’

  Old Fowler’s face lit up.

  ‘The finest craftsman of upper-stitching, and the finest friend you are ever likely to meet was Thomas Truss,’ he said. ‘I had the honour of being his partner in business for his last five years.’

  ‘And you took over when he retired?’

  ‘I did that – me and the boy here.’

  ‘Where did he go? Is he still in Liverpool.’

  Old Fowler’s bright expression faded visibly.

  ‘How I wish he were. No, he’s in Childwall, six feet under.’

  ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘This time last year, he left us.’

  I looked in disappointment at Fidelis. His lips shaped the words ‘the shoe’, so I took it out and showed it.

  ‘I am very sorry to hear that. But I wonder if you can help us in his stead. Can you tell us anything about this shoe, please? I believe it to have been made by Thomas Truss.’

  ‘Oh yes, this is his work, see? “T.T.” stamped on the inside. We use “T.F.”. Where did you get this?’

  ‘I am the Coroner of Preston. It is evidence in an inquest and I am interested in knowing more about it.’

  ‘Well, you have come to the right man,’ Fowler said. ‘I could talk all day about my friend Tommy Truss’s shoe work.’

  ‘I hope you won’t dad,’ said James sharply. ‘We have Lord Saunders’s order to complete by tonight, remember?’

  The old man blinked, scowled and ducked his head in irritation.

  ‘Oh, yes, so we do. So we do.’

  ‘Then I suggest you get back to work at once.’ James’s voice was brisk. ‘Or his young lordship’s man will have nothing to take away when he gets here and his young lordship will have nothing to put on his shapely feet at the Assembly tonight.’

  Old Fowler smiled bleakly at his visitors and shrugged, then shuffled meekly back towards his workshop.

  ‘I wonder if we might continue the discussion in the morning, then?’ Fidelis said.

  ‘Tomorrow is the Sabbath,’ said James.

  ‘Let me say,’ I put in, ‘that though this is a legal enquiry, it is not business as such. There is no money in it. So perhaps a conversation on the matter is permissible on the Sabbath.’

  ‘A shoe is a worldly object, Sir,’ replied James stiffly. ‘It is one to be bought and sold, and therefore a most doubtful subject for the Sabbath. I am a preacher. Folk might hear of this and say it is unseemly in me.’

  ‘It is not you, but your father we wish to speak to.’ I lowered my voice. ‘And surely he will take pleasure in talking about his late friend. Can you deny him that?’

  James Fowler hesitated, then he said,

  ‘Call here at ten. I shall be at the Meeting, but my father’ll be here.’

  * * *

  We walked into a roar of voices at Pinchbeck’s ten minutes later, it being full of boastful Saturday trade talk. Having cast his eye around the room, Fidelis immediately went up to a man sitting at a table with a cup of chocolate beside him, as well as pen and ink, abacus, and a low pile of papers that were covered in figures. His lips were moving incessantly as he summed the columns of numbers, flicking the abacus beads along their rails with extraordinary rapidity.

  ‘Hello my friend,’ said Fidelis. ‘Do you remember me?’

  The question was ignored but there must have been something about the accountant that gave my friend patience, because he took no offence at all. As the relentless counting continued, Fidelis persisted.

  ‘I do not see my acquaintance, Mr Moreton Canavan, here today,’ he observed. ‘You will remember my asking you to point him out to me in this room on Monday last.’

  The eyes and index finger shifted relentlessly down the figures, the other finger was busy on the abacus. The man’s concentration was such that I could not believe he had even heard Fidelis’s words.

  ‘Has he been here at all in the last few days? Have you seen him?’

  The reckoner reached the bottom of the column, and wrote a total down, then cleared the abacus beads back to their starting positions.

  ‘It’s Mr Canavan that I’m asking about,’ prompted Fidelis. ‘Moreton Canavan.’

  The man closed his eyes, took a sip of his chocolate and said wearily, without looking up at Fidelis,

  ‘Canavan has not been here recently. I have been here every day. I believe I last saw him on Tuesday.’

  He placed his finger at the top of the column that he had to sum next.

  ‘Thank you Sir,’ said Fidelis warmly, and took me off to find a table.

  While we ate he pointed out Pinchbeck to me. He then indicated the table where Moon had been sitting when they had met, and the door through which Moon had disappeared having taken possession of my letter. I was struck by the unusual dispatch with which Fidelis cleared his plate of chops. As soon as he had done so he summoned the serving man to bring the reckoning.

  ‘We’ll find nothing more here,’ he said, ‘and there’s someone I want you to meet. We need to know more about the Guinea Trade before we can fully understand this tangled affair. So come on.’

  He led me out to the street and directly down to the dock. As soon as we got there he strode towards an ancient seafarer sitting in a bollard.

  ‘May we fill your pipe for you, Sir, and stand you a tot of rum?’

  The greybeard didn’t mind if we did. He rose to his feet with sudden sprightliness and led the way to the tavern of his choice. This was very different from Pinchbeck’s. Here the roar was not that of prices and profits, but of drink and women and the hardships of the seafaring life.

  With a bottle standing on the table between us, Fidelis asked the old man if he remembered their last meeting, and in particular the mention of the ship The Fortunate Isle. He did.

  ‘And you thought her poorly fitted out, I think.’

  ‘Yes, she didn’t look the shape from dockside. She wasn’t Liverpool registered, and I’d not seen her before. I might’ve bin wrong. I didn’t see all of the loading and fitting she had. But if what I saw of her is all she was, then she wasn’t good enough for Guinea or the Spanish Main. What I saw of her crew an’ all. Skinny old men and skinny boys is all they were, good for goatherds maybe, but not sailing a ship in blue water. I seen that before, and when they set sail for slaves and do it on the cheap it don’t come off. Not nine times out of ten, it don’t. They end slaughtered, by sickness or swords, it don’t matter.’

  ‘And her captain?’

  ‘I saw him, I s’pose. Didn’t know him to speak to him.’

  ‘They say he is Edward Doubleday. Have you heard the name?’

  ‘No. Never heard it.’

  His answers were not getting us very far. It was no good being told the ship was not fit, unless we knew what she wasn’t fit for.

  ‘Tell us more about the Trade,’ I said. ‘I mean the Guinea Trade. How does it work?’

  He turned to me and said nothing but his mouth gaped in a toothless grimace. After this hesitation, he looked away and spoke in a gruff emphatic way.

  ‘Painful it is for me to spea
k about it, Sir, very painful, for I lost an arm and two brothers in that dangerous business. Dangerous to do and in this town dangerous to speak of, too, if you understand my meaning.’

  ‘I’m afraid I do not.’

  ‘I won’t elaborate, Sir, if you’ll excuse me. The Baltic, now. I’ll tell you about that with pleasure.’

  ‘We are concerned only with Guinea and the West Indies. Where should we go to find out what we want to know?’

  The sailor half closed his eyes and spoke almost in a whisper.

  ‘All right, Sir. Come along with me. I know a place not far where folk’ll tell you – and tell you better’n I can.’

  When we had drunk up, he took us through a maze of streets where the houses had cellars under them, which were entered from the street by sets of stone steps. We arrived at one such stairwell and heard the sound of some sort of celebration in progress. Raucous noises came from the place – whoops and shouts of laughter. Our guide wouldn’t go down with us.

  ‘Not a resort for me, kind Sirs. You may be all right. Go down. They will tell you the truth of the Trade, if anyone will.’

  Many dark bodies filled the cellar, and someone was pounding a drum, using no stick but just his palms and fingers. A young woman had just begun to dance, shaking her body in a way that was both utterly abandoned and beautiful. I had never seen a dance in any way like it. Finally, as if bringing herself to a pitch of ecstasy, she gave out a wild shriek, and fell to the floor. Fidelis went to her side, knelt and cradled her head as she looked vacantly up into his eyes.

  I suddenly knew that we were in danger. All around us dark faces pressed closer, eyes flashing. They were murmuring angrily about what Fidelis was doing. A woman shouted at him to leave her be. A fellow with a ring in his ear touched Fidelis on the shoulder in warning. Just then a burly man pushed through the bystanders and picked the dancer from the ground as easily as you might pick up a house cat.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said curtly to Fidelis. ‘Bring your friend. Unless you want to be eaten alive.’

  He laughed most heartily when he saw our faces, then led us out of the cellar, up the stair and into the afternoon light. The woman was still lying insensibly in his arms.

  ‘My name is Elijah Quick, Sirs, and what I said down there was a figure of speech. Come with me and we shall taste some ale together.’

  He jerked his head in the direction of an alehouse across the street, and set off ahead of us still carrying his burden lightly. I looked at Fidelis, who nodded his head and we followed our new acquaintance. Soon we had settled ourselves around a table, with the woman’s body now popped up across Elijah Quick’s knee, with her head lolling against his shoulder.

  ‘May I look at her?’ asked Fidelis. ‘I am a doctor.’

  ‘No need. It’s only the gin. She has a deadly taste for it.’

  Fidelis leaned across and raised the girl’s eyelids with his thumb, then placed his fingers against the underside of her wrist. This satisfied him, and he sat back in his chair.

  ‘I am curious: what brought two gentlemen like yourselves into that cellar?’ said Quick.

  He spoke accurate, educated English. I explained that we were gathering intelligence about the Guinea Trade and had been directed there. Quick’s merriment immediately drained away. He said,

  ‘You are interested in the Guinea Trade, you say. Then you are speaking to a product of it.’

  ‘Would you oblige us by telling your story?’

  ‘My story is a long one.’

  ‘Nevertheless. Where are you from?’

  ‘Barbados. I was purchased as a houseboy by a clergyman when I was a young lad, having just made the Middle Passage. I was eager to learn and he easily taught me English and how to read scripture. He was a good man, or at least not a cruel one, but as soon as I became a man myself I ran away from him to freedom.’

  ‘In Liverpool?’

  ‘Of course. No black man can be free in the West Indies. Here I have found work for myself as a schoolmaster for my people, which they sorely need.’

  ‘Will you tell us about the Trade and about how it starts in Africa?’

  ‘There are many lies told about this by white men. I will tell you the truth. The Trade has made our home country evil and violent. War is ceaseless. Armies go about burning villages and taking the innocent people into slavery to sell them for gunpowder and rum at the coast. They march them in long lines chained together, which they call coffles. The slaves eat next to nothing, but their lot does not improve when they reach there. They are haggled over as they struggle to survive or die. The white men’s ships sail away loaded with them, our people lying wedged together day after day in the dark. We hated the coffle men but feared the white men. We believed we were being taken across the ocean to be eaten.

  ‘Down below during the Middle Passage there was sickness and misery – endless, hopeless misery. Those that died were thrown to the sharks. Our captors knew we would all die without some fresh air, so we were brought up onto the deck each day and made to dance. Those that would not dance were whipped. The sailors thought it all very diverting.

  ‘When we got near to where we were going they would try to do something about us, to make us look better. They shaved our heads and rubbed our skins with grease. A good price was all they cared about.’

  ‘Are there rebellions against this inhumanity?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, of course, there are uprisings. Always useless, always ending in many deaths.’

  ‘What happens to the slaves when they reach the Indies?’

  ‘Almost all get sold to work on the plantations. The masters tell them that now their troubles are over so long as they work. And they do work, because if not they are whipped and maybe killed. They work every day while it is light. Only when it is dark do they rest. But the masters are always frightened that the slaves will rise up. It is their greatest fear. They prevent this by breaking their spirit. The women, they rape. The men, they simply terrify. The punishment for any black man caught stealing or doing what he shouldn’t is terrible. They cut his tongue out, his balls off. If you have never seen a person whipped slowly to death, or hung up in a public cage and starved, you cannot know the slave’s life. Living on the plantation, every day is the same. There is no hope, no future, only the same endless now.’

  ‘You were fortunate in your Christian master, that you escaped being sent to the plantation.’

  ‘He did not buy me to save me from slavery; he bought me because he wanted a houseboy. I ran away because, by then, I had grown and was a man, and he was ready to sell me again as a strong and healthy worker. Had I not got away I would be cutting cane now – if I happened to be still alive.’

  * * *

  We stayed with Elijah Quick for some hours, listening intently to what he had to say, questioning him on certain particulars, and finding him intelligent and eloquent. By the end we were much better informed.

  ‘It’s an evil Trade, Titus,’ said Fidelis, when we had said goodnight to Quick and were making our way back to the Inn. ‘And it is conducted by evil men. Why is there no outcry?’

  ‘Because people are making money.’

  ‘Tainted money. And why doesn’t the Christian religion stand against it?’

  I told him of some remarks I had read in Montaigne, that people are more likely to use Christianity to justify their hatreds and cruelties than to endorse their love and moderation.

  ‘So far from rooting out evil, he argues, our religion has become a way of screening, nourishing and inciting evil. I am a little inclined to agree with that idea.’

  ‘It is cynical, though,’ said my friend, ‘and very contrary and odd. That author of yours will find no friend for his views in either Rome or Geneva.’

  ‘I am sure he wouldn’t be perturbed about that.’

  And so – as conversation will – our talk strayed from the subject of slavery. But what I had learned that day I have never forgotten. The Guinea Trade continues, and even increases
, yet I loathe it and would like to see those who do it stand at the bar of human justice, if there ever happened to be such a thing.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  THE NEXT MORNING, Old Fowler welcomed us at his shop with a gap-toothed smile.

  ‘The boy’s safely out at his meeting,’ he told us. ‘Very pious he is. Keeps talking about the end time and the rapture of the saints and I don’t know what.’

  I judged him to be an educated old man for, among the volumes and tracts on his shelf, there were other books on subjects too broad to interest a religious enthusiast such as the son. I handed across the shoe.

  ‘Yesterday I showed you this. Can you tell me a little bit more about it? When it was made, for instance.’

  He took it to the light and squinted inside. Then he turned it over and inspected the sole, the stitching.

  ‘It shows a few years of wear. I reckon it was made about five years ago, and some repairs have been made. It might be less if the fellow wore it every day without stint.’

  ‘What sort of a man would wear this shoe?’

  ‘It is not a cheap shoe. He was not a labourer. Let’s say it was someone from the middling sort. The fashion of it is what we call in this shop Number 14. Now we always kept and still keep a record of every shoe we make with the number, date, size, price, and name of customer – all the details we might need later.’

  ‘So you can give us the name of the person that wore this shoe?’

  ‘I can tell you the names of men who have ordered such shoes to be made here. But shoes can be sold or given away. Many people wear a shoe that was made for the foot of another.’

  ‘How do you record each shoe?’

  He opened a cupboard and a pungent smell wafted out. The lower half was full of rolls of finished hide but the top shelf contained six foolscap-sized ledgers. He took one out and opened it.

  ‘The first column as you see is the date, followed by the shoe’s number – the Number 14s beginning with those digits, like here … and here! D’you see? Then we have the shoe’s size and the price received and the signature of the customer to say that he has received the goods.’