Morgan’s Run (34 page)

“We are from Gloucestershire,” said Richard as he pulled up his underdrawers and breeches. “It is a poor part of England.”

And I have got your measure. Shame and money. God rot you.

“Take ’em below, Mr. Sykes,” said the gigger dubber, and went off into the warren of shacks a disappointed man.

As of
this January 28, 1786, Ceres held 213 convicts; the twelve from Gloucester were admitted as numbers 201 to 213, Richard at 203. The only gaoler, however, who used their numbers was Mr. Herbert Hanks of Plumstead Road, near the Warren, Woolwich.

Someone in his wisdom—probably to placate the felons of the London Newgate, who loathed associating with hicks—had separated the London Newgaters from the hicks by putting them on different decks. The London Newgaters occupied the lower deck and the hicks occupied the orlop deck. Or perhaps this wisdom stemmed from the perpetual war which went on between the London felons and all the non-Londoners on Censor and Justitia, wherein everybody was so hopelessly intermingled that not even Mr. Duncan Campbell could unravel the tangle. With Dunkirk in Plymouth he was to go further than with Ceres, segmenting the ship to create seven convict compartments according to a system of classification he had concocted himself.

The divisions between Englishmen were very deep. Those who used the London Newgate flash lingo spoke what sounded like an alien tongue, though many could—if pushed to it, and in a bizarre accent—speak a more general kind of English. The problem was that by far the greater number of them refused to as a matter of principle, preferring their flash exclusivity. Those from the lands of the north as far south as Yorkshire and Lancashire could more or less comprehend each other’s speech, but, no matter how literate, could not make head or tail of anyone who hailed from farther south. Complicated by the fact that Liverpudlians spoke something known as Scouse, another foreign language. The Midlanders could communicate fairly well with those from the West Country and both these groups could understand convicts from Sussex, the Channel parts of Kent, Surrey and Hampshire. But those from the Thames part of Kent spoke something akin to flash lingo, and the same had to be said of those from the parts of Essex closest to London. As for those from north Essex, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk and Lincoln—quite different again. So polyglot was this assemblage of Englishmen, indeed, that Censor owned two convicts from Birmingham who could not understand each other; one had lived in the village of Smethwick, the other in the village of Four Oaks, and neither had been a mile from home until caught in the judicial net.

The result was that people clumped. If one group of six could understand another group of six, they mingled to some degree. When dialects or accents became insuperable, the twain never met. The Gloucester men therefore entered a divided camp, united only in a universal hatred of the London Newgaters one deck up, who were said to get the lion’s share of everything from grub to cheaper gin because they and the gaolers could understand each other and were allied in depriving the non-Londoners of their rightful share.

This last assumption might well have been true of the gin, as the London Newgaters were in their own bailiwick and likely to have more sources of money, but it certainly was not true of the grub.

That jolly little prancing person Mr. Duncan Campbell became exceedingly thrifty about things he had to pay for out of the £26 per convict per year he obtained from His Majesty’s Government, and grub was an item he had to pay for. Ten shillings per week per man: on the Thames hulks that January his gross income was £360 per week, and there were things a canny contractor could do to keep the gross and the net figures closer together. Such as growing his own vegetables and brewing his own small beer. The more obvious ploys of falsifying his convict numbers or letting scurvy run riot were, alas, out of the question. Too many nosy officials. He bought his bread and his beef from the garrison at the Tower of London—ox heads and shins only, hard bread only—and at first he had not been fussy about their condition. Then along came Mr. John Howard; bread and beef had to improve somewhat. Notwithstanding these irksome constrictions and a staff of 100 assorted persons, Mr. Campbell managed to make a profit of £150 a week from his Thames hulks. He also had a hulk in Plymouth—Dunkirk—and two in Portsmouth—Fortunee and The Firm. His total profit from all his enterprises was around £300 a week; he was also engaged in some delicate dickering for the tender to supply the bruited expedition to Botany Bay.

The ’tween
decks on the Ceres orlop were six feet, which meant that Richard cleared the ceiling of moldering planks by half an inch and Ike Rogers could not fully straighten. The beams which ran from side to side were a foot lower than this, however, and were spaced six feet apart. Thus turning the act of walking into a parody of a monkish parade, heads bent in a reverence every double pace.

For a Bristol man the smell was bearable, as the wind moaned around the iron grilles and swept through the chilly, red-painted chamber extending from a bulkhead athwart the foremast to the entrance bulkhead in the stern. All told, it was about 40 feet wide and 100 feet in length. Along either outer wall—the hull—were wooden platforms at about the height of a table, and such they seemed to be, for men were sitting at them on benches. The conundrum was that they also seemed to function as beds, for in some places men were lying on them, apparently resting or else gripped by fever. The platform width of six feet also suggested that they were beds. Another table-like platform six feet wide ran down the middle. Perhaps 80 men inhabited this garish crimson chamber, and upon the entry of twelve new inmates all conversation stilled and most heads turned to look.

“Where from?” asked a man sitting at the middle table near the entrance.

“Gloucester Gaol, all twelve of us,” said Will Connelly.

The man rose to his feet, revealing himself as short enough to pass beneath the beams, though he had more the physique of a jockey than a midget, and had the face of a man who had spent most of his life around horses—creased, leathery, faintly equine. He might have been any age between forty and sixty.

“How de do,” he said more than asked, advancing to meet them and holding out a diminutive paw. “William Stanley from Seend. That is near Devizes in Somerset, but I was convicted in Wiltshire.”

“We most of us know of Seend,” said Connelly with a grin, then performed introductions. He put his box down with a sigh. “And what happens now, William Stanley from Seend?”

“Ye move in. That would be Sykes did the bum fuck. A real Miss Molly. ’Tis his way of getting to know the convicts from the inside, ye might say. No money, eh? Or did he find it?”

“We have no money,” said Connelly, sitting on the bench. He winced. “After Mr. Sykes, this is hard. What does happen now?”

“This end is Midlands, West Country, Channel, Wolds and Wealds,” said Stanley, producing an unlit pipe and sucking on it when he was not using it to point in some direction. “Center is the boys from Derby, Cheshire, Stafford, Lincoln and Salop. Far end—bows—is Durham, Yorkshire, Northumbria and Lancashire. Liverpudlians have that end of this middle table. They have a few Irish, all but one Liverpudlian. Got four blackamoors, but they are upstairs with the Londoners. Sorry, Taffy, no Welsh.” He eyed their boxes and bags. “If ye’ve valuables, ye’ll lose ’em. Unless,” he added, tone loaded with meaning, “we can plain deal.”

“Oh, I think that will be possible,” said Connelly affably. “I take it we eat off what we sleep on?”

“Aye. Put your tackle right here at this middle table, it has plenty of room for twelve this end. Mats ye sleep on are rolled up under it, and that is where ye’ll stow your tackle too. One mangy blanket each two men.” He giggled. “We are in the Yankey business of bundling here, not too private if ye’re of a mind to toss off. But we all got to toss off—bum fucking ain’t popular with the troops after a taste of Mr. Sykes. Upstairs they get women in on Sundays—call ’em their aunties, sisters or cousins. Don’t happen here because we are all too far from home and them as has got money prefer to spend it on Hanks’s sixpenny gins. Robber!”

“How can ye help us hang on to our things, William?” asked Bill Whiting, suffering two kinds of pain: one from the escort’s bludgeon, the other from Mr. Sykes’s hand and fingers.

“I do not work, ye see. They tried me in the vegetable patch, but I got eight brown fingers and two brown thumbs—even the turnips curled up their toes. So they gave me up as too old, too stunted and too hard to keep the darbies on.” He lifted one tiny foot and surreptitiously wriggled it in his fetter until the iron band sat across his instep. “Ye might say I am the caretaker of this establishment. I run a mop around it, swill out the night buckets, roll up the mats, fold up the blankets and keep the mad Irish at bay. Though our Irish, being Liverpudlians, are not too bad. But there are two on Justitia can only speak Erse—got snabbled the day they hopped off the boat from Dublin. No wonder they run mad. ’Tis hard this side of the Irish sea, and they are soft folk. Gulled in a twinkle, drunk on a dram.” He chuckled, sighed. “Ah, ’tis good to see some new West Country blood! Mikey! Here, Mikey!”

A young man slouched up, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with the faintly furtive air West Country men recognized as belonging to a Cornish smuggler. “Nay, not Cornwall,” he said, reading their minds. “Dorset. Poole. Seaman in the customs division. Name, Dennison.”

“Mikey helps me look after the place—cannot do it on my own. He-me are surplus, never manage to hook up in a six. Mikey has fits—real corkers! Goes black in the face, bites his tongue. Frightens the shit out of Miss Molly Sykes.” Stanley eyed the newcomers shrewdly. “Ye’re already two lots of six, ain’t ye?”

“Aye, and that fellow who says not a word is our leader,” said Connelly, pointing to Richard. “Just will not own up to it. Bill Whiting and I have to do all the talking while he sits back, listens, and then makes the decisions. Very peaceful, very clever. I ain’t known him all that long, but if Sykes had done that before I met Richard, I would have gone at him—and for what? A sore head as well as a sore arse. And a flogging, eh?”

“A bludgeoning, Will. Mr. Campbell do not hold with the cat, says it keeps too many men off work.” William Stanley from Seend half-shut his eyes. “ ’Tis you I come to terms with, Richard—what was the surname?”

“Morgan.”

“Welsh.”

“Bristol born and bred for generations. Connelly has an Irish name, but he is a Bristolian too. Surnames do not mean much.”

“Why,” asked Ike Rogers suddenly, having spent most of this exchange gazing about, “is this place painted red?”

“ ’Twas the orlop on a second-rater,” said Mikey Dennison, the smuggler from Poole. “The thirty-two pounders lived in here and so did the surgeon’s hospital. Paint the place red and the blood ain’t visible. Sight of blood puts the gunners off terrible.”

William Stanley from Seend pulled a huge turnip watch from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. “Grub up in an hour,” he said. “Harry the fucken purser will dole out your trenchers and mugs. Today being Friday, ’tis burgoo. No meat, apart from what’s in the bread and cheese. Hear the racket overhead?” He poked his pipe at the ceiling. “They are grubbing in London now. We get whatever is left. There be more of them than us.”

“What would happen if Mr. Hanks decided to put some Londoners in here?” asked Richard, curiosity stirred.

Little William Stanley chuckled. “He’d not dare do that! If the Irish did not cut their throats in the darkmans—that is their flash lingo for night—the North Country would. Who loves London and Londoners? Tax the whole of England drier than a bog trotter at a Methodist meeting, then spend all of it in London and Portsmouth, London being where the Parliament, the Army and the East India Company are, and Portsmouth where the Navy is.”

“Burgoo. If I remember my Mr. Sykes correctly, that means we drink aqua Thames,” said Richard, getting up with a dazzling smile. “My friends with dripstones, I think we should conduct a little ceremony. Since ye accused me of being the leader, Will, follow my lead.” He put his box on the table, unlocked it with the key he kept around his neck, and pulled a large rag out of it. Once it was draped across his cropped head he began to hum musically; Mr. Handel would have recognized the tune, but nobody on the Ceres orlop did. Bill Whiting forgot his injuries to don a rag, then Will, Neddy, Taffy, and Jimmy followed suit, though they left the music to Richard. Out came Richard’s dripstone; the hum became a long, rising and falling aaaah. He passed his hands across it, bent to touch his brow to it, then scooped it up and stalked to the pump, his five acolytes behind him in emulation. Taffy had picked up the melody and sang a high counter to Richard’s baritone, notes rather than words. By now only those in the throes of fever were not watching, transfixed; William Stanley’s eyes goggled.

Luckily the pump produced a series of trickles rather than gushes; they fell into a copper kettle somone had punched a few holes in. Mr. Campbell’s filtration system did serve to confine an occasional horrible lump or tiddler fish, but was incapable of anything else. From there the water dribbled into the scuttles, and so escaped bilgeward.