‘Not necessarily, sir. Apparently she escaped from the Lucy Ann as it was passing the Isle of Pines and made her own way to where the Wanderer was moored at the Bay of Crabs. It could be she’s a prisoner and she doesn’t even know it. Want me to pick the locks on your clinkers, sir?’
‘What would be the point?’
‘Moltata’s chained up in the hold with eleven of his people. We could set them free in a brace of shakes. There’s only eleven men left in Quested’s crew, including the cook, who we might just be able to rely on to stay neutral at the very least. As for the convicts, well – Cusack’s sick in bed…’
‘I know. I saw him last night.’
‘I think they slipped him something so he wouldn’t see the captives being brought on board yesterday. So I don’t think we need to worry about him. Then there’s Foxy – Solly Lissak, I mean. He ain’t a violent man, sir. If there’s a scrap, he’ll have sense enough to keep well out of it.’
‘Yes, I noticed you seemed pretty thick with him when you came on board last night.’ Even with one eye closed by massive bruising, the lieutenant did not miss much. ‘I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what your relationship with him is, would you?’
‘Some other time, maybe, sir. So do the sums: the way I see it, at worst it comes to fourteen of us – the natives they kidnapped from Tanna are all big, strong lads; I think we can depend on them in a scrap – against sixteen of them.’
‘Mental arithmetic isn’t my forte, Molineaux. If we can discount the cook and Mr Lissak, perhaps you’d be so good as to explain how you make it sixteen rather than fourteen?’
‘I’m counting Gog and Magog as two each.’
Killigrew thought about it. ‘Better make it three each,’ he decided.
‘Oh-kay, eighteen of them. Fourteen of us against eighteen of them: I’m game if you are, sir.’
‘Isn’t there something you’re forgetting?’
‘Sir?’ Molineaux thought for a moment, and nodded. ‘Even if we do overpower the others, there’s no way we can sail this tub to Thorpetown without their help.’
‘And why bother, when that must be where Quested’s taking us anyhow?’
Molineaux grinned. ‘Right to where the Tisiphone’s waiting for him!’
Killigrew returned his grin, but his smile was quickly replaced by a frown. ‘That can’t be it, Molineaux. We’re missing something here.’
‘Sir?’
‘If Thorpe told Quested we were at Port Resolution, surely he would also have mentioned that the Tisiphone would be at Thorpetown for the next couple of weeks.’
The seaman swore. ‘I didn’t think of that, sir.’
‘I don’t know, Molineaux. There’s something about this whole business that doesn’t make sense. Either Thorpe and Quested are being very, very clever or very, very stupid. The way they’ve handled things so far would seem to indicate the former. You’d better leave me here for now: as long as one of us is loose, we’ve got a chance. Have a nose around, see if you can learn anything more. If we’re bound for Thorpetown, we won’t get there until some time tomorrow morning. We can decide what we’re going to do then. In the meantime, you’d better get back on deck before you become noticeable by your absence.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Molineaux straightened and stepped out of the lazaretto.
To find Utumate waiting for him with Gog and Magog. ‘Utumate know not trust you.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Molineaux. ‘I was just… er…’
‘Hit him,’ ordered Utumate.
Magog hit him.
* * *
‘Proper botched things up, ain’t I, sir?’ Molineaux remarked ruefully, studying his irons. With his picks, he could have sprung the padlocks in seconds; but Lissak had made sure he did not have his picks. Like Killigrew, Molineaux too now sported one eye that was half-closed with swelling.
‘If it’s any consolation, we both did.’ Killigrew had made himself as comfortable as his irons and the hard deck would allow. As a further precaution, Quested had had them both brought up from the lazaretto and was keeping them in irons in the lee waist, where he and his men could keep an eye on them while they worked the sails.
The incorrigibles had finished holystoning the deck – there was still a ghost of a bloodstain where Macy had died, but no amount of holystoning was going to get that out – and Lissak was free to do as he pleased, until the end of the forenoon watch. He stood over the two prisoners and regarded Molineaux with a mixture of disappointment and contempt.
‘Eleven years, Wes,’ he said bitterly.
‘I’m sorry, Foxy. I wanted to break you out of that prison hulk in Gallions’ Reach before you got lagged, but with the peelers after me—’
‘I ain’t talking about the eleven years I spent in the colonies, Wes. I’m talking about the eleven years you were my apprentice. I looked after you, I taught you everything I knew… I raised you like you was my own son! And this is how you repay me. You betrayed your own kind!’
‘They ain’t my kind, Foxy. Not any more.’
‘And who is, now?’ Lissak pointed at Killigrew. ‘Gentry coves like him? Coves what makes you eat filth and crams you into a cramped fo’c’sle while he swells it up in the wardroom with his gentry vittles and flunkeys to pander to his ev’ry whim; and then expects you to risk your neck for queen and country, while they keep their heads down? All for one pound and fourteen shillings a month?’
Molineaux shrugged. ‘There’s worse ways of making a living than being a seaman, Foxy. The money may not pay as well as prigging; but it’s regular, I get respect from coves, and I get to see a damned sight more of the world than I would’ve done if I’d stayed in the Holy Land.’
‘You used to get respect from coves when you was a prig.’
‘Respectable folk, I mean.’
‘Prime flats,’ snorted Lissak.
‘Folks like my family. I may not see them as often as I used to, but at least now they’re pleased to see me, instead of ashamed.’
‘The Wes Henson I used to know would never have said a thing like that.’
‘Yur, well… coves change, Foxy.’
‘Not you, Wes. Once a prig, always a prig.’ Molineaux looked inclined to protest, but Lissak continued, cutting him off. ‘Family! You of all people should know better than to talk to me about family. Wasn’t I your family, after your guv’nor left you and your family to starve? Wasn’t it me that taught you how to put bread on your mother’s table?’
‘My mum wouldn’t touch a penny of the money we made together, Foxy. You know that. She said it was dirty money. How do you think that made me feel? My own mum, ashamed of me?’
‘And what about loyalty?’
‘Loyalty? The kind of loyalty we got from Sammy the Swell, you mean? Jesus, Foxy! Didn’t that business with the bosh teach you anything? Eleven years a lag in the colonies, I’d’ve thought even you could have worked it out by now.’
‘I accepted my sentence. Didn’t I always teach you: if you can’t do the lag, don’t take the swag? And didn’t I also teach you never to trust anyone?’
‘The only reason you could never trust anyone was because you never chose the kind of pals you could trust. Well, I had enough of that, Foxy. I had time to do some thinking when I was cook’s mate on board the Powerful. If not being able to trust anyone is the price you pay for being the toast of the swell mob, I’d rather be a poor but honest seaman. Because that way when I’m hard up in a clinch, at least I’ve got shipmates I can trust to see me through.’
Lissak gave one of his high-pitched, hooting chuckles. ‘Hark at you, Mr Virtuous! Having pals you can trust has done you a lot of good, ain’t it?’ He turned abruptly on his heel and walked away to join the other convicts on the forecastle.
‘Incorrigible,’ said Killigrew.
‘Stow it, sir,’ Molineaux replied angrily. ‘You ain’t got no right to judge him. What do you know about him? You know what he was lagged for?’
&n
bsp; ‘Grand larceny, according to his file. Something about goods valued at five hundred guineas, I seem to recall.’
‘It was a bosh,’ said Molineaux.
‘Pardon?’
‘A bosh – you know, a fiddle? Sammy the Swell put us up to it. He was the arch-rogue of the Mayfair Crew, until he got cramped at Newgate a couple of years ago. He told us where the bosh could be found and how to get it; Foxy and me done the job; and Sam had a buyer for the bosh.’
‘Sounds to me as though this fellow Sammy the Swell had the lighter end of the bargain.’
‘Yur, well, it ain’t easy to fence a bosh when it’s listed in the Hue and Cry as prigged. This was a specialist job. We used to do a lot of stuff like that: paintings, rare books, statues even. There’s no point stealing stuff like that unless you’ve got a buyer lined up. But a bosh – that was a new one to me. Still, Sam was offering us a hundred shiners for stealing it. And it was one of the clushest jobs I’ve ever done: coves was coming and going from that theatre all the time, Foxy and me just dressed ourselves as workmen, walked right in as if we had every right to be in there, and walked out again with the bosh. Money for old rope. Easiest fifty shiners I ever made.’
‘Except that you never saw a penny of it.’
Molineaux shook his head. ‘Foxy warned me, but I got greedy. I was green and cocky. Thought I could handle Sammy the Swell and the Mayfair Crew, didn’t I? For a hundred shiners, I thought it was worth the risk. So I talked Foxy round. Sammy double-crossed us, Foxy got nabbed and I made my lucky by the skin of my teeth. So if anything, should have been me that got lagged, not Foxy.’
‘One hundred guineas is not half of five hundred, Molineaux.’
The seaman grinned ruefully. ‘Yur, I know that now. First I heard about it was when I read about it in the papers; they were full of it. I mean, I know they always bump these things up for the insurance, but five hundred shiners? For a bosh? Even I was amazed. Turns out it was a Grande Amati.’
‘A what?’
‘A Grande Amati. Made by Niccolò Amati – the cove that taught Stradivarius how to make boshes. Apparently they’re worth a lot of blunt.’
‘How did you get involved with a fellow like Solomon Lissak, anyhow?’
Molineaux shrugged. ‘How does anyone get dragged into the swell mob? Things were difficult after my guv’nor walked out. There were four of us – Luther, Calvin, me and Mary, and our mum – with only a job as a laundress to put food on the table.’
‘Luther, Calvin, Wesley,’ mused Killigrew. ‘Your mother: religious, is she?’
Molineaux grinned. ‘Does a fish swim? She tried to bring us up to be good, God-fearing Christian children.’
‘Where did she go wrong with you?’
‘I’ll come to that. After my guv’nor walked out, we all had to go out to work. Luther got a job as a pot-boy, Calvin as a flunkey in a grand house in Mayfair, and I became a mudlark, scavenging on the mud flats of the Thames at low tide, looking for copper nails, lumps of coal, anything of value. You’d be amazed what you can turn up – it all adds up. Anyway, one night Mary catches sick. Mum goes to see the apothecary; she can’t afford to pay for no medicines, but he’s a kindly old soul so he gives her advice for free. Tells her to keep the baby warm. Warm! That was a right cold winter, that was – I’ll never forget it. We couldn’t keep ourselves warm, let alone the baby. The next day I’m out mudlarking with the other lads and I hear some of ’em chaffing about how they’re going to go shake a barge for coal that night. That sounded like just the job, so I asked if I could go with them. Oh, I had to put up with the usual chaffing – about how my skin will make me difficult to spot against the coal in the dark – but they agreed.
‘What we didn’t know was there was a charley on the barge we picked. One minute we’re stuffing the coals in our sacks, the next he’s shouting and waving his rattle. The others all jumped overboard and swam for it, but I couldn’t swim, so the charley nabs me and hands me over to the river police. They puts me in the clink with all these grown-up criminals, reckoning it will scare me out of prigging again.’
‘It didn’t, of course.’
Molineaux shook his head. ‘That’s where I met Foxy – Solomon Lissak. He’d been cracking a peter on one of John Company’s ships in the Pool, got stopped by the river peelers on his way home. Of course, he’d already passed the swag on to a pal by then, so he gammoned lushy to lull their suspicions and they put him in the clink to sober up. We gets to talking, the next thing I know he’s offering me a job. I declined politely; he told me if I changed my mind, I could find him at the Rat’s Castle – that’s a flash crib in the Holy Land where the swell mob go. Our mum always told us to stay away from that gaff, said they were bad people that went there, and that crime didn’t pay. But I used to look at the prigs, pimps and frows that used to come and go from there, and it didn’t look like crime wasn’t paying for them. Oh, I ’spect a gentry-cove like you could spot ’em as coming from the lower orders straight off, but to us they looked right conish. Heroes round the Holy Land, they were, like Robin Hood. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor.’
‘Meaning themselves.’
‘There’s a precious lot of poor folk in the Holy Land.’ Molineaux grinned. ‘You’ve got to start somewhere, ain’t you? Anyhow, when I got out of the clink the next morning, I went back to our drum and found out that Mary had died during the night, and me mum gave me a right bashing. Later I grannied that she’d only been worried about me, but at the time I was resentful, you know? I’d only gone prigging to get some coal to keep Mary warm; ’tweren’t my fault she’d died during the night.’
‘So you went straight to the Rat’s Castle?’
Molineaux nodded. ‘Foxy introduced me to his pals in the swell mob, gave me a drain of diddle and a smoke of a cigar. I threw up after, but I felt grown up at the time. Foxy and his mates made me feel at home; which was more than I’d ever done at home.’
‘Just like Fagin in Oliver Twist.’
‘Yur. I’ve heard folks say Mr Dickens based Fagin on Foxy, but if he did then he didn’t know Foxy very well. I read that Oliver Twist, by the way, and it’s a load of old hogwash. I mean, Bill Sikes is s’posed to be a dab cracksman, right? Well, let me tell you that no self-respecting cracksman would take a greenhorn like Oliver to crack a crib, not without knowing whether or not he could trust him.’
‘I’ll tell Mr Dickens you said that.’
‘You know Charlie Dickens?’
‘We’ve met a couple of times, at Baroness Burdett-Coutts’ charity balls. Just between the two of us, he’s a bit of a pompous ass, but his heart’s in the right place. So, Mr Lissak took you in and taught you all the tricks of his trade?’
‘Not just thieving, sir. He taught me how to read and write, how to play the guitar, how to romance the ladies. You prob’ly think he was taking advantage of my greenness, getting me to help him crack cribs; but that ain’t the way he saw it, and it ain’t the way I saw it, either. It still ain’t. He was teaching me a trade – a lucrative trade – and that’s more’n anyone else was prepared to do. Foxy was more of a father to me than my own guv’nor ever was.
‘Foxy and me, we was cracking coves: I’d climb in through a skylight and let him in the back door, he’d crack the peter if there was one. We always planned ahead, got the servants to talk – got them drunk if they was coves, or bedded them if they was dolly-mops – tell us what there was worth prigging, where it was kept, and if there were any nights when the family were going out for the evening and the servants would be given the night off. That way there was never any rough stuff – no one got hurt.’
‘Except for the people whose hard-earned property you stole.’
‘Hard-earned my eye!’ sneered Molineaux. ‘Most of the flats whose cribs we cracked was stockbrokers who’d made their pot in commercial speculation, without doing a hard day’s work in their lives. No one ever got rich from honest graft: either they were born rich, or cheated it out of o
ther folks. The paupers’ graveyards are full of flats who worked hard all their lives.’
‘And you had the right to judge them for it? To decide that they had too much money, and some of it should be yours?’
‘As much right as any man. Get fly, sir. We make judgements every day of our lives. It’s up to our consciences whether they’re good judgements or wrong ’uns.’
‘Did it ever occur to you to get an honest job?’
‘That’s easy for you to say, sir. With your blunted admiral of a grandfather and a big crib in Falmouth. You’ve never wanted for anything in your life.’
‘For your information, I’ve made my own way in life. I haven’t asked my grandfather for a penny since I was thirteen. The only money I have is what I earn on a lieutenant’s paltry pay.’
‘What’s that? A hundred and eighty a year? Paltry by your standards, maybe, but there’s no shortage of coves in London who dream of earning a fraction of that. And still you left creditors and bill-brokers crowding the dockside when the Tisiphone sailed from Portsmouth. But when you’re a gentry cove, they call you a bankrupt and let you go. The rest of us are called debtors and thrown into the stone jug until we can stump up… and when we get charged for the privilege of being in the clink, that ain’t likely to happen now, is it? Most of us are judged against from the day we’re born into this world; but we try to make the best of it anyhow. So don’t talk to me about judging my fellow man: he’s quick enough to judge me. If you want me to repent the sinful ways of my youth, sir, you can forget about it…’ He trailed off and looked up.
Following his glance, Killigrew saw Ned Wyatt standing over them.
Chapter 20
Martyrs’ Island
‘And how are you this morning, Dick Champion?’ sneered Wyatt. ‘The man who was going to hunt me down and arrest me. What were you going to do when you caught me, Lieutenant?’
Killigrew and the Incorrigibles Page 35