“Easily, my lord – a deep flesh wound, one that did not touch any vital part but left heavy scarring that makes it painful for him to keep a straight back – there is no essential lesion, I am informed.”
“Good. Both men will be employed by Roberts Iron Founders – say fifty a year and their keep. Anything more that you pay them will be your affair, of course. For yourself, sir, in the first instance I have it in mind to pay you a salary of one thousand. Mr Mason in St Helens will discuss your rates of commission and share in the profit resulting from your endeavours. Travel, your keep, all appropriate expenses will be borne by the firm.”
“That is open-handed indeed, my lord!”
Tom smiled wearily, gave the major a brief lecture on his firm belief that high wages created high profits – the more one paid, the greater one’s employees returned. It was a central principle of his working life that he should be the highest payer in any area where his enterprises operated.
“Good money makes good men, Major Wolverstone! If you earn one hundred thousand pounds in the next ten years – and that is not impossible – then I will make five or ten times as much from the opportunities you have created. Neither of us will complain in that case, I trust!”
Wolverstone agreed that he would be more than content, said, however, that he had no experience to offer in exchange, was uncertain that he would be successful.
“You are a man of resolve, Major – force of mind is more important than knowledge in business matters. One may always hire the services of those who know things – what is vital is that you can do things. I believe that a soldier who has distinguished himself in the field has all of the ability I require, sir! In any case, after you have spent a few months at Roberts you will possess a substantial degree of knowledge as well. I would wish you to go to St Helens for the next three months, sir, then to spend some time at the Welsh works, then, of course, to your parents for a long leave before you go to India – you would be away for several years, possibly a full decade, so you should spend such time as you can at home, sir.”
Book Three: A Poor Man
at the Gate Series
Chapter Five
Francis Wolverstone – a civilian now, no longer ‘Major’ in his own mind – sat in his post-chaise behind four horses, paid for by Roberts Iron Founders. His batman, now his man, Hubbard, facing him and Connors, once his troop-sergeant, now groom and personal retainer, at his side but as far away as he could be, pressed against the door. Connors retained his military habits, ingrained over thirty years - touching an officer, however casually, could be made a capital offence if there was a sufficiency of malice.
They were heading north, to their new existence, away from the simple certainties of the regiment and into a complex, uncharted land inhabited by civilians and with every day a new maze of decisions. They even had to make their own choice of when to get up – no trumpet call to order them out of bed – and then select clothing for the day according to what they were going to do and where. Food as well, breakfast to be ordered, or chosen from a buffet, dinner to be taken from a menu, no longer would they simply eat what was slapped in front of them. This world was frighteningly alien and they wondered how mere civilians survived so easily in it.
They had left Kettering early on the previous morning, a dry day, so they had reached Stafford before darkness made further travel impossible. Good turnpikes and strong horses had made twelve miles an hour easily attainable, speed beyond the imagining of previous generations.
“Mr Joseph Andrews told me of his expectation that steam coaches on rails will soon cross the land, Connors, travelling at perhaps twice this pace – hard to believe, is it not?”
“Yes, sir. With respect, sir, I will leave it to others to travel inside them, horseback will do me! They told me that the young gentleman is very clever, knows much already, so I expect he will be right, sir. I talked a bit with Mr Fraser, his tutor, sir, because he wanted to know about the battles and army life, never having talked with a horse-soldier before – he is one who needs to know everything, sir, can’t bear to think there’s summat he’s never heard of. He said Mr Joseph was just about the cleverest lad he’d ever met.”
Connors sat silent for a few moments, nerving himself to ask a question.
“Beg pardon, sir, but what exactly are we goin’ to be doin’ this next few years?”
“Learn a bit about iron and steel, and coal mines, and iron mining, and about how to talk to geologists, that first.” Wolverstone saw the blank expression, and explained. “Geologists are engineers who know about rocks and things like that, Connors. They can look at the lie of the land and tell you whether an outcropping of coal or iron is showing a mine that can be worked for years or whether it’s just a few tons that wouldn’t last for a couple of months. I’d look a right Charlie if I bought a thousand acres of land and found there was only coal underneath one of them!”
“Yes, sir, that makes sense, sir. Then we go out to India, sir, to find iron and coal for Roberts, and buy it up at a good price, and you take a cut of the profits, sir?”
“We all will take a share in the profits, Connors. By the time we come back home, in ten years or so, you should have enough in your pocket to buy a cottage and a few acres and live very comfortably indeed. The meanwhile, you carry pistols and carbine and a blade and look after the horses and watch our backs among the foreigners – you will earn your money, I think.”
Connors was relieved – he could do that, he was not being carried along as a form of charity as he had half feared.
“Yes, sir – I expects I can remember some of the native bat, sir. I did my seven out there, the year after I joined, that was, we sailed, nearly thirty years back. I was about thirteen, I reckons, but I was shavin’ and that made me old enough to take me shillin’! Good place for a soldier, the old Shiny.”
“You learned to speak the Indian language, Connors?”
“Not as such, sir, being as there’s a dozen different ones; just a few words to get by with wherever we was posted. Just the normal ones, you know, sir – ‘your sister, how much?’ and ‘the bottle, how much?’. Didn’t need much more – didn’t ‘ave anything else to say to ‘em.”
Wolverstone had heard much the same said by officers in Spain – foreigners were different, when all was said and done.
They followed the turnpike through Cheshire, agricultural and rich land and showing almost no trace of the new industry except where they passed by the busy canals. The salt mines were a little off their route and they were unaware of them. Then they came into the south of Lancashire in the late afternoon, seeing a dark, low cloudbank in front of them and sniffing a faint sulphurous taint to the air.
“Overnight here in Warrington, I think, Connors – better to reach St Helens in the morning, that will give them time to get us to wherever we will be staying for the next few months. Never a good idea to turn up last thing and it will take the better part of two more hours to get there. Looks black and smelly here, doesn’t it.”
“Stinks, sir.”
The posting inn was full, but could find rooms for a gentleman from Roberts and would have good horses waiting in the morning. Wolverstone was ushered into a private parlour, his own table laid and his tastes consulted, a glass of sherry placed in his hand. When he went up to his bed-chamber he found a very pretty maid turning down the covers for him – somehow, he was not entirely certain of the process involved, he discovered her naked beside him as he pulled the blankets up. Civilian life did have its compensations, he mused, leaving reluctantly in the morning.
The Masons made him welcome and ensconced him in a set of rooms they had hired in St Helens. There was a line of a dozen books prominently shelved in his sitting-room, a number of pamphlets as well, all relating to iron and steam.
“Major Wolverstone – would you prefer to retain your title or do you wish to become a ‘Mr’, sir?”
“I am gazetted as retaining the rank, Mr Mason, and so may lawfully be ad
dressed by it all of my life, but I am not at all sure what is for the best. What do you think?”
“The army is not well-loved in these parts, sir. There have been riots and outbreaks of machine-breaking in the cotton mills, weaving especially, and the soldiers have been brought in more than once and women and children onlookers have been trampled underfoot, men shot and sabred for no more than not running fast enough. Better not to be a soldier around here, sir! When you go out to India, of course, it will be very different, from all I have heard – there you will be very well advised to use all of the titles you can lay your hands on, sir!”
Wolverstone murmured his thanks for the advice.
“Now, sir, to business! What I intend, from the instructions my lord has sent me, is to bring you into the works to see what is happening and how it is done and then to explain the costs to you. That I expect to take a full month from tomorrow. After that, a few days in the quarry, watching the processes involved and getting the feel of it, and then to a set of coke ovens, there to learn coal. It’s not just black rock, you know, sir, there are different sorts and qualities, some better suited for coke, some to burn in steam engines, some just for the household fire – very important to tell the one from the other, sir. You will need to inspect a number of pits and when the drier weather comes in spring you will go out riding with our geologist-surveyor here and in Wales and he will show you the points to look for when searching out coal mines. A busy few months, sir, enough to make me wish I was a younger man. I think I would like to be in your shoes, sir – it will be an exciting life!”
Wolverstone thanked him and then ventured out to get a look at the town. A few respectable shops around a small market square, the old town, brick and stone alike blackening from the smoke in the air, the stores surprisingly well-stocked, obviously catering to a well-heeled trade, a wine-merchant showing a very wide range of the better clarets and port. Away from the town centre, but surprisingly close, the sense of prosperity disappeared, the streets becoming unpaved, narrow, dirty and crowded in by terraces of mean red-brick labourers’ houses. He retraced his steps after less than a hundred yards – his clothing making him stand out uncomfortably, the stares from the children and women unmistakably hostile and telling him that he had strayed into a foreign country, one where he was unwelcome. It took an hour to discover that there was an island of at most twenty acres of gentility in the centre of the town, a single wide road passing through, leading to the western suburb where the respectable dwelt; the rest was alien, given over to the kennels of the poor and not for his sort to venture into.
George Mason had nothing to say about the town, that was how it was, how it always had been. He paid the highest wages in the whole area, what his people did with them, how they lived, was their business, not his. Frederick Mason, at the New Works, was a little more forthcoming – he was single, Wolverstone discovered, and busied himself in the chapel, taking an active part in its soup kitchen which dispensed charity to the unemployed of the town, and preached virtue to them while they were eating, captive at their benches, but even he was content merely to exhort the unfortunate to bestir themselves. Their salvation lay in their own hands, could not be imposed upon them by outside agency, he said.
“They must work and save and better themselves, and if they cannot find the inner strength to pull themselves out of the mire, then I fear they must stay in it. God has given them their task, it is His will that they must save themselves and it would be impious in me to do more than show them the road – they must set their own feet upon it.”
Wolverstone had the soldier’s instinctive attitude to religion well-ingrained in him. The Bible was a very good thing, but had little place on the field of battle, he thought, and these new ‘slums’ seemed to him to be a battleground indeed. He kept his peace, simply watched, deciding that this new wealth was in many ways a very good thing, but far too few had a part of it.
His distaste was strengthened from the first evening in the town. The pantry was well-stocked, his batman had reported, but the wine-cellar, no more than a pawky little cupboard, was empty, not a drop in the place other than ginger beer, and he had walked out to the wine-merchants to rectify the unfortunate state of affairs. He was not a heavy drinker but mess life had accustomed him to a couple of glasses with his meals and one or two more through the evening. He had a very bare furlong to walk and was accosted five times on his way out and another four on his return. He estimated that there were no fewer than thirty prostitutes in the shopping area, two at least mere children, nine or ten year olds, wholly flat; five boys loitered out of the direct light.
Enquiry of the Masons disclosed that ‘the town was full of them’, always had been, it was part of life, nothing to be done about it except steer clear, most of them were diseased, they had heard. Connors disapprovingly repeated the advice – there were three houses for the respectable, he said, producing their cards which had been given him within minutes of his identity as a gentleman’s personal servant being established.
“A couple of guineas a week will set up your own peculiar, sir. You can find a very good sort of girl, I am told, to move in with us for a few months, clean and well-behaved, from any of the respectable houses.”
He could have bought a dog in much the same way, with no more fuss.
The Post Office packet, Martha James, sailed into Bristol in mid-December, thirty-one days out of Halifax. Robert Andrews leant on the rail, next to Judy, both thankful to see land, looking forward to stepping on shore. The whole journey from New York had taken less than six weeks, very fast indeed, especially in mid-winter – a coastal schooner hired to take them to Canada and then boarding the packet on sailing day, the weekly timetable adhered to irrespective of weather or enemy. The packet was a very small brigantine – two or three tons of mails needed no great carrying space – and had been driven hard, the deck more nearly resembling the sloping roof of a house than a civilised floor, and there had been very little to do for four and a half weeks, other than eat their way through the hampers of food sent aboard for them, drink the eight dozens of wine racked in the little cupboard and lounge in bed. It was an existence not without compensations, but it palled after a while.
The master, Jared James, a rare expert of his trade, his name known throughout the whole of the Atlantic, lounged beside them, hands in pockets, this, his fiftieth winter crossing, the merest routine. He smiled expectantly.
“Berthed before noon, sir, four days under the five weeks, sir!”
Robert handed over forty guineas – ten for each day saved on the passage – with his best thanks, commented that he would never make a sailor, he simply did not enjoy the sea.
“You are Lord Andrews’ son, are you not, sir? I do not imagine that you will ever need to become a sailor, though I remember that your esteemed father made his beginning in the trade. I was a foremast hand on my own dad’s packet on the Jamaica run, back in the first American War, the Revolution, when he brought a string of prizes into Antigua, including a Frog ship of war what had thought to take him, and that was the making of him, it would seem. A most remarkably profitable capture, it would appear, sir. One of our leading men of affairs now, I am told, and quite right too! Those who take the risks should receive the rewards, sir. I have never been one of those who decry the navy for its prize-money, nor a private man-of-war neither!”
Robert made a mental addition to the little list of topics to be brought up in private converse with his father – he was going to enjoy himself, he believed – though he wondered, thinking on it, why Captain James should have given the peculiar emphasis he had to his comment about risks and profits.
Overnight in Bristol, enjoying dry land under their feet, and then post chaise in the morning, breaking the journey in the town of Reading. It was possible to make the trip to London in a single day, but it was a long, bumpy, tedious business, better far to take a bed for one night, if possible, and they had no great urgency.
“Have you ever been
in England before, Judy?”
“A week in Liverpool, at the docks, when I was a little girl. I can hardly remember it, except for being hungry, but I was hungry all the time then, stayed that way until I was old enough to have something to sell.”
There was no answer to that.
They put up at the Clarendon – naturally, Robert was not really aware that there was another hotel in London. He went to Michael’s office, unaccompanied, next morning.
“Ah, Mr Robert! Your father told me you were expected this month or next. What can I do for you this morning, sir?”
“A house, Mr Michael, fully staffed, purchased and put into the ownership of Judith Winters. Located sensibly for access to the City and West, at your earliest convenience, if you please.”
“Will rental, a lease, be acceptable, Mr Robert?”
“Temporarily, an expedient while a house is being refurbished perhaps. Otherwise, no, sir.”
“Purchase will take some weeks, Mr Robert. To find a house and then make a conveyance cannot be achieved overnight, while a rental for three months can be negotiated within two days. I could find a house and staff it for you by Thursday?”
“Excellent, sir – please do so. We are located at the Clarendon, of course. Can you collect us on Thursday?”
Michael could and would – the Andrews were respectable, as was the Clarendon, and he had a very strong suspicion that Judith Winters, whoever she might be, was not – he would get her out of public view just as quickly as he could.
Robert left for Kettering at the end of a week, promising to be back when he could. Judith smiled and kissed him goodbye. She was realist enough to know that she must come second to business and to everything else of importance in his life. She was also well aware that she had landed on her feet and would do nothing to jeopardise her security – she would live like a nun when he was away, there would be no occasion for him to doubt her fidelity. She took stock of her new house, ventured out into town the next day, discovered a lending library which she could patronise for as little as a shilling a week and a bookshop where she could buy a copy of the Dixionary. She could read fairly well already, promised herself that within the year she would be at home with all of the books she had always wanted to dip into, and no men to be a nuisance – an ideal existence.
Born To Privilege (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 3) Page 13