Devil Water (2 page)

Charles slapped his horse’s rump and turning the startled mare spurred her to a gallop. Back over the bridge they clattered, up the castle hill and past Dilston village, along the muddy road which led northward to the Tyne. As they entered a gloomy wood the mare snorted and shied.

“Saint Mary! You jade, what ails you!” Charles cried angrily, for he almost lost his seat. Then he saw. From the stout limb of a beech tree there hung a gibbet -- an iron cage slowly turning in the wind. In the cage was the chained and bloated corpse of a naked man. The tongue lolled from a black mouth hole, the cut rope still dangled from the livid neck down the matted black curls on the chest. The stench, which the trembling mare had first caught, made Charles retch.

It was the corpse of the thief for whom the kitchen wench was wailing. As the custom was, he had been hanged here where he had been caught.

Charles swallowed and made the sign of the cross. He had seen no dead man before. The chained thing that hung there in the iron gibbet frightened and shamed him. It had been only a lad by the look of the twisted body. And to end like this -- inhuman, evil, hanging with no shred of decent covering while the ravens tore off gobbets of flesh and the bones rotted and crumbled throughout the years.

A peculiar feeling came over Charles as he tried to look away and could not, and he thought of the kitchen wench. He did not recognize the sensation as pity, but he muttered, “I’ll make them cut it down. She can bury it properly.”

In voicing this resolve he lost it, knowing what Sir Marmaduke and the steward would say. These were wild lawless parts up near the Border. Thievery must be punished at once. The thing in the gibbet hung there as a deterrent. And the lad -- not a Catholic of course -- had been damned anyway. To brood over the disgusting sight had in it something of the mollycoddle, the chickenhearted.

Charles shook himself, and backing the mare up the road guided her through the woods far around the gibbet.

When he reached the bridge over the Tyne he paused. He had meant to cross to Corbridge, an ancient market town first settled by the Romans. It offered modest entertainment, which Charles had managed to sample during his month at Dilston. The “Angel” served good arrack punch, and the barmaid was not averse to a bit of cuddling behind the taproom door.

Today the Angel did not appeal. Charles decided to ride into Newcastle by the south bank of the Tyne, which he had never explored. As he cantered along the riverbank his mood lightened. Action and new sights were ever a cure for megrims. He did not slacken pace for the village of Riding Mill, where two giggling girls jumped off the road to safety as he galloped by. Charles heard one of them cry out, “I’ fakins, ‘tis young Radcliffe o’ Dilston! Oh, but he seems a canny-looking lad!”

Charles tossed his head and gave the girls a grin over his shoulder. Up here “canny” was a compliment, already he had learned that.

Charles had no interest in his appearance. His straight fair hair was clubbed back with a greasy black ribbon, his blue plush coat had once been fashionable, but he had outgrown it; his broad shoulders strained the seams, his young bony wrists protruded. The reddened hands were slender, long-fingered, and according to Cousin Maud proclaimed his Stuart blood, as did the thin nose set between large heavy-lidded gray eyes. His grandfather, Charles the Second, had been a swarthy Stuart; Charles was a fair Stuart, but the resemblance was unmistakable, they said. Always, however, managing to ignore the other side, about which Charles had once dared to twit Sir Marmaduke. “Yes, sir, to be sure I’m proud of royal blood -- but what of my grandmother? Tell me of her, a play actress was she not, like Nell Gwynn?”

This had irritated his cousins, who assured him sharply that there was no resemblance between Nell Gwynn and Moll Davis, that the
latter
came of noble stock. “Albeit from the wrong side of the blanket, too!” Charles had brashly murmured, and incurred a beating from Sir Marmaduke, and the command to hold his tongue about matters of which he knew nothing.

But Charles did know about his ancestry. A gossipy London nurse had seen to that long ago. The Radcliffes were of ancient North Country lineage and they had always kept to the old faith, despite the tribulations they sometimes suffered for it. The Radcliffes had also been shrewd and acquisitive. Fortunate too, since each generation had found a Roman Catholic heiress to marry, one who brought yet more manors and castles into the family. The Radcliffes had been knighted and made baronets, but they were neither noble nor of the great London world until Charles’s other grandfather, Sir Francis Radcliffe, turned out to be the shrewdest, most acquisitive, and by far the luckiest of them all. He had profited by the brief return of Catholicism to England under James the Second, and angled successfully both for marriage to a Stuart and a peerage. The Stuart marriage was that of his son Edward to Lady Mary Tudor, youngest of the many children by many mistresses Charles the Second recognized. Lady Mary was the daughter of Moll Davis, whose sweet singing and graceful dancing at the Duke’s Playhouse had one evening caught the King’s ever-roving and desirous eye. Moll’s mother had been a milkmaid, but her father was Lord Berkshire, and both Nell Gwynn and Lady Castlemaine had been furious at this unexpected rival. Nell had even managed to lace little Moll’s chocolate with jalap one night when the new favorite was to receive the King in the smart London house he had given her. Whether it was the resulting embarrassment for Moll -- caused by this powerful purgative -- which cooled the King’s ardor, or whether it was the lovely Louise de Keroualle’s charms, nobody knew. At any rate, Moll Davis soon fell from favor, though the King ennobled their-daughter, little Mary Tudor, casually bestowing on her the most exalted royal surname of them all. Thus by his son’s marriage to this child -- who was thirteen in 1687 -- Sir Francis Radcliffe achieved connection with royalty and the peerage for which he yearned. King James created Sir Francis the Earl of Derwentwater in March of the following year, just before the revolution which deposed the Catholic king and enthroned William and Mary.

Charles Radcliffe had always found the Moll Davis tale entertaining but remote. He had known none of his grandparents. His mother, the second Countess of Derwentwater, who had been that little Mary Tudor --
she
was another matter. For her Charles felt the baffled bitterness of the deserted child. He had not seen his mother since he was six, on the day she abandoned them all -- James, Francis, Charles himself, and the baby Mary. Charles remembered the pungent scent of his mother’s curls as she kissed him coldly on the forehead, saying “Farewell, child. Render obedience to your father, though I no longer intend to.”

Charles had not then understood these words. He did not quite now. They might have referred to her Protestantism and the Radcliffes’ Papacy, or far more likely to her infatuation with another man. She had married twice since her husband’s death and gone to live abroad. I wonder if
she’s
dead, Charles thought. The Constables never spoke of her, but then there were many uncomfortable topics which they never mentioned.

And much good my Stuart blood does me, thought Charles, stuck as I am either on a Yorkshire moor or in this dingy hole. The mare had now carried him along the Tyne into the coal country. The green riverbank was stippled with black piles, scaffoldings, and great yawning pits. The acrid smell of coal dust and smoke thickened the air. Soon, at the edge of Gateshead, the road was lined with mean little miners’ hovels, roofed with turf. Suddenly Charles was blocked by a Galloway pony and cart full of coals which cut straight across his path. The cart came from the Bensham colliery a mile away and was bound for the Tyne. The wagon wheels ran on an oaken track the like of which Charles had never seen. A ragged ten-year-old urchin at the pony’s head was softly whistling a plaintive tune while he tugged at the reluctant pony. Charles knew nothing of coal mining but these signs of activity caught his interest. He turned the mare and followed the cart as it trundled along the track until they reached the river where there was a wharf, called a staith. The sultry sun burnished the leaden waters of the Tyne. On the opposite bank in Newcastle, chimneys, roofs, Guild Hall, and the great quay all floated in a smoky haze.

Charles rode onto the staith and watched while the cart was dumped into a waiting keelboat. “Oof,” he said, backing hastily from the choking cloud of coal dust.

The small boy at the pony’s head chuckled rudely at the stranger’s discomfiture. Charles was annoyed and, frowning, examined the boy attentively. He was a skinny child with coarse dark hair and alert hazel eyes in a sooty, square Northumbrian face. There was a cockiness about him and total lack of the deference Charles was accustomed to from the lower classes. The boy’s nose was bleeding slightly.

“Been fighting, I see,” Charles said, shrugging.

“Wuns!” said the boy wiping the blood off with the back of his hand. “Dost call it a fight wen the pit-overman bangs out wi’ a clout?”

“What for?” said Charles. He didn’t quite like the boy, and yet he felt strong curiosity about him.

“Fur that I slipped wile dumping a chaldron i’ the cart, that’s wot.”

“Oh,” said Charles. “Aren’t you very young for dumping coals?”

“Leuk man!” said the boy with an impudent grin. “Ye ask a lot o’ questions, an’ I’ll fend off the rest. M’name’s Rob Wilson, I’m ten I guess. I been warking the pits one way or t’other five year, me big brother’s doon there i’ the keelboat, the overman’s waiting at Bensham pithead, an’ if I divven’t gan back there soon I’ll get another punch, d’ye twig?”

Charles nodded reluctantly, amused by what was essentially an expert snubbing. He watched the sturdy independent set of Rob’s shoulders as the boy backed the pony up the staith and trudged away towards the pithead for another load. As he trudged Rob began to whistle again -- the plaintive minor tune, which even Charles recognized as being both musical and unchildlike.

An odd little knave, Charles thought, and the air being now clear of coal dust he rode down the staith and peered into the keelboat, which was squat and broad. It had oars, one small furled sail, and a tiny cabin. The rest of the boat contained two keelmen busily spreading the dumped coals.

The keelmen each had red rags around their foreheads to keep sweat from their eyes, their grimy hair was plastered down save for a lovelock at each temple. The locks were twisted up in paper like horns. Except for short tight breeches, the men were naked to the waist. And they were black, a glistening black compounded of sweat and coal dust. Near as black as a Negro slave Charles had seen long ago in London. Charles stared and began to laugh.

The larger of the keelmen, a great brawny young man, jerked up his head. His eyes flashed blue between the sooty lids. “Gan awa’!” he cried to Charles. “Wha’s thou think to be, a-nickering an’ gawking at us!”

Charles’s life had provided few comical sights, and he continued to chuckle at this one, nor did he quite understand the keelman’s speech. The young keelman jumped from his boat to the staith, and advanced with his chin out. “Hast niver seen a keelman afore? Art wanting a brawl? Get off that nag, ye toad, and I’ll show thee how much there’s to laugh at in a keelman’s fists!”

Charles controlled his mirth. “No offense,” he said pleasantly. “But you do look like a couple of horned beetles heaving away in that coal.”

The keelman had been but semiserious, though touchy and eager to fight as were all keelmen. His scowl continued as he listened to Charles’s comment, but the fierce blue eyes grew puzzled. “Gentry, begock!” he said. “An’a Southron by the sound o’him!” He turned to his workmate, who was resting on his shovel and watching the two on the staith. “What sayst thou, Neddy? Shall we learn him not to call us ‘beadles’?”

“Hoot, Dick,” answered Ned from the keelboat, “ ‘tis only a lad. Leave be! Here’s the next load a-coming an’ this one not spread. If Black Will cotch us, he’ll make ould Creeper dock our pay.”

“Then we’ll go on steek again!” said Dick. “We niver got the pawky shilling we axed for last time. They needna think they can starve us out. The keelmen’ll mutiny ‘til justice is done. We’re not afeard o’ pit-owners, nor hostmen, nor yet shipmasters neither!”

Despite these brave words, Dick clambered down to the boat and picked up his shovel. Charles, who had been listening intently, hastily pulled the mare back as another cartload of coal guided by a different boy came down the track onto the staith and was dumped. The black cloud subsided, and Charles approached the boat. “D’you mean you’d really strike against your masters?” he asked with reproof.

Dick hunched his back and did not answer, but Ned, who was more easygoing, said, “Aye, young sir, when they squat i’ their mansions glutting meat an’ swilling fancy wine, yet cry ‘Poor mouth, poor mouth’ whilst we crack our bones to load their coals for Lun-non town an’ some pay nights get naught at all.”

Charles considered this without belief. Servants and laborers always got paid, or at least they got their board and lodging, and they certainly should not be allowed to mutiny for any reason. “Who’s Black Will and old Creeper?” he asked curiously, whereupon Dick whirled round and shouted, “For the matter o’ that, who art
thou?
A spy mebbe -- with all thy nosy questions!”

“I’m not a spy. I’m a Radcliffe of Dilston. I’ve only been up here a month and I don’t know a thing about your stupid coal pits.”

Dick elevated his brows until they touched the red rag. He elaborately laid down his shovel and executed a deep mocking bow across the coals. “A
Radcliffe!”
he said to Ned. “D’ye hear that? Not mere gentry, Neddy, marra -- but a lord. We s’ld be honored by his lordship’s questions.”

“I’m not a lord,” said Charles stiffly. “My brother is. The Earl of Derwentwater. He’ll soon be home from France.”

Dick gave Charles a long sardonic look. “ ‘Umble as we be, we still knaw that,” he said. “Iverybody Tyneside knaws that, an’ quite a few wonders how it’ll be when his lordship gets hyem. Him being Papist and kin to that prince o’er the water.”