by Jason Vail
“Thank you, Mister Austin.”
“Your servant, Mister Crockett.”
Supper was boiled goose, French beans, potatoes and a fine butter sauce that went well with the fresh biscuits we used to sop it up, and for dessert an apple pie. It was one of the finest Christmas meals I can remember, made all the more convivial by copious amounts of whiskey. Even I broke my rule about drinking on ship.
Toward the end, Willie refilled his cup from the barrel by the gallery windows. He said to me, “There’s something you forgot, Paul.”
“What’s that?” I said, the last bite of pie in my mouth.
“We never sent a note to Mister Node advising him of our departure. In a few days time, he will be waiting for us to appear.”
Willie was right. Readying a ship for sea involves careful attention to many details large and small. This was one that I had neglected. “I feel sorry for him,” I said. “He shall have to wait in vain.”
“Perhaps not,” Willie said.
“What are you saying?” I had drunk enough by this time that my mind had slowed down.
“That we should keep our appointment. With Mister Crockett’s approval of course.”
Crockett looked up from his pie. “That means we have to return to London.”
“Well, the ship can’t do that, but nothing’s stopping me and the captain from riding up there,” Willie said.
Nothing, that is, but Crockett’s insistence that we leave without any further delay.
“It takes two days to ride to London,” he said, marshaling his arguments. “That’s four days, five probably, lost.”
“Which still gives us enough time to reach Texas by March — the end of February with good sailing.”
Austin perked up at this exchange and opened his mouth to contribute to it, but I stopped him with a raised palm. There was no sense in allowing him to reopen a wound that seemed to be healing.
“It’s two days’ ride for the ordinary horseman,” I said. “But the London to Brighton coaches make the distance in eight hours.” I remembered this from the coach schedules I’d seen posted at the inn, where coaches departed at seven in the morning with others arriving at four, seven and ten in the evening and even one after midnight.
“I don’t like coaches,” Crockett said. “I suppose we could ride it ourselves in a day. Hard on the horses, though. Hard on the backside too.”
“It won’t be your backside,” I said. “Unless you’d like to come.”
“I’ve already met Tarleton,” Crockett said.
“I doubt he’ll be there.”
“Whatever you say, I’m going,” Willie said with unexpected defiance, surprising us all. He added, “You will wait for me, though?”
“The ship will wait,” I said. I added for Crockett’s benefit, “We will do our best to be back by Thursday. Is that good enough for you?”
“If not, I’ll sail without you,” he said.
“It’s a long hard sail in a ship’s boat,” Willie said, “isn’t it, Mister Halevy?”
“It is, sir,” young Halevy said, swirling the whiskey in his cup and taking as manful a swallow of the entire contents as I have ever seen.
“I’ll not argue with a man who can drink whiskey like that,” Crockett said. “Just try not to get lost on the way. Austin there has a terrible sense of direction. There were a few times over the last three days when I thought we’d end up in France.”
Chapter 24
Brighton, England
December 1820
Austin looked sheepishly at me from across the table as supper was breaking up even though the keg of whiskey had hardly been depleted.
“Is there something wrong, Mister Austin?” I asked him.
“I am afraid there is a slight problem.”
“I would venture a guess that this is not a nautical problem.”
“Quite right, Captain. A financial one. You see, I’ve practically used up our letter of credit. We had to pay some terrific bribes to hasten the release of the firearms. And our wagons cost far more than they should have.”
“So you’re suggesting that you do not have the means to afford your special purchase?”
“I don’t. But I was hoping you might be willing to advance a small sum. We’ll repay you as soon as we return to New Orleans, of course.”
“How small a sum?”
“All of it.”
“That is not a small sum.” It was, in fact, quite large. Baron Tarleton was not willing to part with his war souvenir for anything less than the yearly income of several prosperous manors. I considered the problem. “Perhaps you would be willing to trade more shares of Wasp.”
“I can’t make such a commitment.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“I see.” His whole body sagged with dejection.
“Let him have the money, Paul,” Willie said sharply.
I was speechless for a moment. Willie had never taken that tone with me before. I’d heard him angry, I’d heard him displeased, but this was a command. Austin gaped at him as well.
“Willie,” I said, “this is for the best all round. Austin proposes to throw his money down a rat hole. Providence has interceded to protect him from folly.”
“I said, let him have the money. If he wants to throw it away, it’s not your place to prevent it.”
“Very well,” I said at last. “I suggest that you turn in. We’ve got to get an early start tomorrow.”
I had expected our party to consist of only me and Willie, but Austin and Crockett, abruptly changing his mind, insisted on coming too. My plan had been to take the Dart, a coach leaving for London at 9 a.m. from the King’s Arms Hotel on George Street arriving in London six hours later according to the advertisement in the Brighton Herald, but Crockett vehemently opposed this idea. He declared he had an aversion to coaches, and especially to coach drivers, who he asserted could not be trusted to deliver a body safely and in one piece to his destination, and if in one piece at least badly shaken up. I had no love of coaches myself, for they were cramped and disagreeable, but the prospect of five hours on horseback at a good clip did not appeal either. No sooner had Crockett voiced his opposition, than Willie seconded him. I appealed to Austin for a vote, but he went with this groundswell and cast his lot for renting horses. Like a French aristocrat, my impulse was to reject the results of democracy when it went against what I wanted to do, but the argument did not seem worth the effort in the end.
So, we did not get out of town until nearly eleven o’clock. Austin drew a wave and a perplexed expression from the customs man who recognized the Argentine ambassador as we trotted up Old Steine Street. Austin returned the wave with a jaunty smile.
“Do you know that fellow?” Crockett murmured to Austin as we drew away.
“We met yesterday,” Austin said. “Briefly.”
“You two seem mighty familiar for such a short acquaintance. You practicing running for office?”
“We have to win the war first,” Austin said.
“Right. I up and forgot about the war. How could I do that?”
Old Steine curved to northwestward and the houses dribbled out to nothing so that we were alone in the fields north of town. The road was called the Preston Road or the London Road, depending on who you talked to, for it led to both places, Preston being the less reknowned. After a mile or so, we passed through Preston, a collection of stone and clapboard houses strung out along the road, which began to rise gradually, flanked by hills on either side. We reached the turnpike gate north of the village, the first of many such that we would encounter. Most people resented having to pay the tolls, especially if they were on strictly local business, but the turnpike trusts which maintained the roads from the tolls collected had greatly improved the speed of travel. Since we were most interested in speed, we could not complain of the charges. A few haystacks that had not been taken in stood as sentinels on the hillsides, watching us pass by, and someone’s cow, which had got loose, wa
ndered across the road in front of us to graze at what little yellow grass had survived the recent snowfall.
We rode in cavalry fashion, with a quarter hour trotting then a quarter hour walking — not that I have much cavalry experience. But in the long torpid afternoons of tropical voyages, I had expended many hours reading army training manuals as a change of pace. For a sea-going man, I have always been fond of horses. Although all of us had made extended journeys on horseback, none had ever tried to achieve such haste. It soon became apparent that three of us were going to endure the trial with less discomfort that the fourth in our party. Willie and I had learned to ride in the English way, and we rose at the trot, a habit which makes that gait more comfortable than otherwise. Crockett and Austin, however, rode in the American fashion, sitting the trot. This is not too uncomfortable at a slow trot, but I had us moving quickly. Shortly Crockett was emulating us by rising in the stirrups. Austin, however, did not attempt to copy us, which surprised me, since he strived in all things to appear the gentleman. His discomfort at the pace was apparent, though he did not complain about it. A day’s ride for most people was fifteen or twenty miles, and that usually left one stiff and sore even though they never got above a walk. We had promised Crockett that we would make almost three times that distance.
Still, I told him, “If you want to get to London by nightfall, we must keep this up. I questioned the stable master just before we left and he told me it is fifty-one miles precisely from Brighton to Lambeth on the Thames.”
“I know how far it is,” he muttered.
“I should think you’d already be well familiar with it.”
“I have a better recollection than you,” he said, “having been over the route already.”
“Indeed you have. Just think about the jolly supper we will have by the Thames this evening. That will help to pass the time.”
“I can smell the sewage already,” Willie called from behind.
We rested at a little place called Horley about twenty-five miles into the journey in front of an inn whose sign identified it as the Checquers, where we watched with some admiration as the grooms changed a coach’s team of horses in less than a minute. About five miles further on, just beyond Merstham we halted for a call of nature at another crossroads in the midst of a bit of forest upon open rolling hills. It was especially close here, as the London road passed through a ravine, a narrow little valley with steep sides down which the crossing road descended. Austin wandered into the shrubs to relieve himself. Willie and Crockett disappeared into the bracken on the other side of the road, while I walked off the kinks in my back and legs. A rustling disturbed my meditations, and I turned to see Austin being rudely thrust into the road, where he stumbled in a rut. A heavy fellow with a new coat but soiled and patched trousers held Austin by the collar and pressed a pistol to his head. Austin was a slightly built man, and he writhed at this treatment, like a harpooned fish.
“Deliver yer valuables or I shoot yer friend,” the heavy fellow said.
“He’s not our friend,” Willie said, emerging from the bracken with a sandwich in his hand.
“He’s with you,” the robber said, confusing proximity with friendship, a natural mistake under the circumstances.
“You’re making a mistake,” I said.
The robber pointed the pistol at me. “I’ll shoot you instead, you ass. Now hand it over.”
“What makes you think I’ve anything to hand over?” I said, trying to brazen over the fact that a large part of my life savings which wasn’t invested in Wasp rested in my saddlebags.
The robber sniffed. “Fancy clothes, good horses. You have to be rich. Enough, anyway.”
“More than you, it’s true. Still? I don’t feel like sharing. We worked too hard for what we’ve got.” I slipped to the side, at the same time dropping to one knee and drawing the brace of pistols I had holstered under my coat against just such an inconvenience.
Willie drew his own pair. Austin, astutely perceiving the possibility of a shootout, dropped to the ground.
We and the robber stared at each other over leveled pistols. He had been so surprised that he neglected to fire. Apparently his usual victims did not put up much resistance.
“I hear someone coming,” I said, for the creaking of a carriage and the sound of voices were detectable faintly to the east and growing louder. “You’ve still got time to get away.”
The robber pointed his pistol toward the sky and uncocked the hammer. “I’m obliged to you, even though you’ve ruined me day,” he said. He glanced in the direction of the on-coming carriage, and ducked back into the shrubbery.
I returned my pistols to their holsters just before the carriage appeared at the top of the cut and began its descent toward us.
“You dropped your lunch,” I said to Willie as I offered Austin my hand.
He picked up the sandwich and dusted it off. “A little dirt’s good for the digestion.”
We arrived at the outskirts of London about half past three, having made the distance in six hours. I thought that a record until I read that fat King George himself had once covered the same distance in four-and-half. We wound our way through the streets to an inn of my acquaintance in Lambeth not far from Waterloo Bridge, one of the new ones that had been thrown across the river in the last ten years. It would provide us with good access to the Strand for our appointment in the morning.
London, Great Britain
December 1820
The inn had only one bed left for the four of us. The bed would barely hold three, let alone four and we flipped a coin for who got the floor. Crockett lost the toss. He spread out blankets and settled on them without a complaint, while the rest of us disputed who got the middle. On cold nights, the middle was often a coveted place, but this was a small bed, so it would be cramped. Willie ultimately had to give in after Austin threw back at him what Willie had said to the robber. “If you wish to prove yourself to be my friend,” Austin said, “you’ll take the middle.”
“But that will mean sleeping next to Paul,” Willie said. “He thrashes a lot.”
“If he thrashes too much, just push him out,” Austin said.
“There is that,” Willie said, climbing into bed as we settled beside him. “He talks in his sleep, too. Loudly.”
“I do not.”
“You do. Crockett says that he’s heard you all the way down in the ward room.”
“It’s true,” Crockett said. “I don’t mind the talking so much as the singing. Sounds like cats fighting.”
There was loud banging on the wall by our heads and a muffled voice called from the next room, “Will you shut the fuck up, for Christ’s sake!”
“Sorry!” Austin called back.
I blew out the candle and pulled the covers up to my chin. It was crowded in that bed, but at least it was soft and warm.
We presented ourselves for our appointment with Tarleton’s solicitor, Mister Node, precisely at ten o’clock, but got no farther than the lobby. Node sent out a clerk to inform us that the item had not yet arrived. It was expected by this evening and we should return the following day at one p.m.
I expected Crockett to speak out at this delay, but, after exchanging glances with Willie, he gave an odd, humorless smile and nodded. Willie, for his part, looked grim and yet relieved, a strange mixture of expressions that I should have puzzled over. Yet ever an idiot, I put no weight on any of this.
The four of us returned to our inn, where we had a leisurely lunch on uncushioned chairs that aggravated the sores from the ride. I should say that lunch for Willie, Austin and me was leisurely. Crockett rushed through his beef and potatoes, and disappeared in the direction of the stables. We did not see him until supper.
I lost the toss for the floor that night, and so I was in a foul mood the following morning from lack of restful sleep.
Again we saddled up for the short ride across the river to Node’s office on the Strand. This morning I didn’t bother asking why we did t
his instead of walking or hiring a cab. I’d already asked yesterday and Crockett had insisted, claiming pains in his back to the walk and lack of funds to the cab. We paid the innkeeper for our room and stabling and feed for the horses, and rode out of the yard.
We came to Church Street, where we glimpsed the imposing bulk of Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s London abode, behind the church and school on Lambeth Road. Up Hercules Row we shambled to Mount Street, which shortly changed its name to Bridge Road, where we could see the Houses of Parliament and the spires of the abbey behind them. Austin wanted to stop and gawk at Parliament again as he had the day before.
“Are you sure we don’t have time to go across and have a look?” he asked Crockett. “I would like to see Parliament in session.”
“No,” Crockett said with unusual sharpness, seeming more grim today than he had been yesterday. “Perhaps on the way back. How about that?”
“All right,” Austin said, nonplussed at Crockett’s tone, but satisfied at his answer.
“Parliament isn’t in session until January,” I told Austin. “You won’t find anyone there but clerks and pigeons. Fat clerks and fat pigeons. Fattest in London, as a matter of fact.”
“That’s too bad. I’ve always wondered what Parliament was like.”
“Just a pack of yappers,” I said. “No different than a town council, only there’s more of them.”
“That seems hard to believe.”
“Well, they are a bit more orderly. Most of the time.”
“Have you ever observed a debate?”
“No. What would be the point of that?”
“So how would you know what they’re like?”
“I’ve friends who’ve observed them. I read the papers. And I met a member once. What a sanctimonious, self-centered ass he was. All for the people, when he really was only for himself.”
“That hardly qualifies as sufficient information on which to base a judgment.”