The Masters of Bow Street (31 page)

‘The builders dug into a cesspit this afternoon and did not cover it; those two must have fallen in. Please God each was a Morgan and may the stink stay with them all their lives!’ he said bitterly.

One of the youths who had fallen into the open pit was Gabriel Morgan, the other the son of the owner of one of the big houses in Covent Garden, by name Jacob Rackham. They first washed the dirt off with a hose in the stables and then stood naked while the other youths poured buckets of water over them until the odour was all but gone. Their clothes were ruined but they were old, worn only on nights when the group went out for their ‘fun’.

Gabriel Morgan shivered as he wrapped a cloak about him, and he said in a flat, deadly sounding voice, ‘If I ever find out who that man was tonight, I will cut his throat.’

Rackham growled, ‘I’d draw him first to enjoy his screaming, then hang and quarter him. And I’d expect everyone here to help.’ He glared around at the others and demanded of them one by one:

‘Do you swear, Saul?’

‘I swear.’

‘Do you swear, David?’

‘Upon my soul, I swear!’

‘And you, Charles?’ the youth demanded. ‘And you, Gabriel?’

Solemnly each man swore that if they ever learned the name of the man who had robbed them of their entertainment and who had sent them running wildly to safety and the cesspit, he would help first to draw him while he was alive, then hang and quarter him.

Leaving the near-deserted streets behind him, James Marshall turned out of Bow Yard and came soon to the northern end of Bow Street. Here, at least, there had been no major changes since his last visit. One man stood outside the courthouse doorway, and two horses were tethered to wooden posts, while several sedan chairs were placed nearby. At any other time James would have gone inside but he was virtually certain that except for Winfrith he would know none of the men who now served Henry Fielding.

Suddenly his thoughts switched back to the gang, copying tricks their predecessors had been infamous for thirty and more years before. James could picture the girl, running, trapped, upturned. He could see her vividly when he had straightened her clothes, and on the instant he pictured not her pretty tear-stained face, but Mary’s.

Such a thing must never happen to Mary - and yet
no one
was safe, Tom had said.
No one.

When he reached the top of the Strand a roaring sound penetrated the clouds of dread and confusion and anger in his mind and heart. For the second time that day the traffic in this great thoroughfare was piled up, and parish constables were calling out: ‘Go by Long Acre or Holborn, there is no path this way.’

The one or two small carriages and a few horsemen who tried to go on were swamped by the mass of people on foot pressing towards the scene of the trouble. Suddenly James saw flames leaping out of the higher floors of a building. As he stared, aghast, two women jumped down onto the milling crowd below, mouths open in screams he could not hear.

People were shouting. A riderless horse was screaming, rearing up on its hind legs and thrashing at the crush of people thronging, around it. As the flames leaped higher and the roof caught fire in a fierce and sudden blaze, James was knocked against a heavy sign which read:

HEWSON’S

dressmakers to the royal household

His mother had once worked here. The sign was so heavy that he hauled himself up by the wrought ironwork which fastened it to the wall. In a few moments he was astride the top of the sign and had a perfect view of the astounding spectacle ahead. One glance was enough to show him that a dozen sailors stood in a half-circle about the burning brothel known as Charlie Wylie’s while screaming women came rushing out of the brothel carrying chairs and feather beds and cooking pots. The flames now blew across the street, and clearly there was a danger of a conflagration starting there. James saw a line of men carrying leather buckets already beginning to toss water onto the walls of the tavern next door, but no one seemed concerned with the brothel itself. There was no sign of fire carts, either, which, with their hand pumps, could have worked much more quickly than men with water-filled buckets.

A hanging sign came crashing down while the crowd turned into a seething, screaming mob.

Gradually, above the din was heard the tramp of marching feet and a bugle sounded. James waited for a moment until the space beneath him was clear, then lowered himself and dropped to the cobbles. Slipping into a narrow lane, he soon reached the river, a splendid spectacle with the reflections of flares and lamps in the water. At the corners and at all gateways, guards and watchmen were posted; this part of London at least was kept comparatively free from crime, for it was well lighted and well guarded.

In a narrow street which led to Charing Cross, behind the Royal Stables, were three- and four-storey buildings, many of which were let to young men on their own in London. Timothy had such a flat, whose windows overlooked the river to the tree-clad south bank and beyond to St. Paul’s and the City. James was sharing this flat with Timothy until he made up his mind what to do, but the flat was now empty. He unlocked the door and was careful to lock it again from the inside before lowering himself into a chair by the window. Stretching his legs straight in front of him, he loosened his collar, Mary Smith, Tom Harris, the tear-stained face of the girl vividly in his mind.

He was dozing when Timothy came in, tired but excited. Had James seen the fire in the Strand and did he know what had happened? Five sailors from a four-master tied up at Greenwich had visited the brothel and had been robbed while disporting themselves. They had demanded the return of all their goods and had threatened to pull the place down unless everything was given back. Charlie Wylie, used to the braggadocio of drunken sailors, had sent them off empty-handed, not dreaming they would return with dozens of their mates, hell-set to wreck the brothel.

‘And they tell me Saunders Welch persuaded the officer on duty at Tilt Yard to send troops in time to help save the whole district from being burned to the ground. What do you know of this Saunders Welch, Jamey?’

‘That he is a friend of the Fieldings and a man of like calibre.’

‘So fully approved by James Marshall!’ Timothy stifled a yawn. ‘Did you do all you wanted to?’

‘Not quite,’ James said. ‘But I hope to finish tomorrow and go to St. Giles the following day.’

Once in bed, he tossed and turned, unable to get to sleep, haunted by his experiences of the evening and troubled, also, by the behaviour of the crowd. There would have been a vast area of destruction but for the troops. But why hadn’t one of the Fieldings sent for them and not left the responsibility to a high constable?

As a result of his restlessness, he slept late, and when he woke, Timothy had gone. James went out, depressed and worried, had a breakfast of sausages, chops and coffee at a coffee house in the Strand and read in a late edition of
The London Advertiser that
the Fieldings had been out of town the previous night.

Outside, he saw crowds gathering, and they looked in an ugly mood. Two men whom he passed were talking.

‘Any time they use the troops against the citizenry, I’m against it,’ said one.

‘There’s talk that those sailors will be back tonight, in hundreds,’ said the other.

As James drew nearer Bow Street, the crowds were even thicker, and to his astonishment they were outside the Bow Street court, yelling, brandishing clubs and iron bars. Some were chanting words which gradually became distinguishable.

‘Release them!’

‘Let the prisoners free!’

‘Release the prisoners!’

‘If they won’t, we’ll break down the doors and get them,’ a man near James growled.

Suddenly James heard the thud of marching feet; obviously this time Henry Fielding had called out the troops. As the crowd began to divide for twenty or more soldiers, some of Fielding’s men appeared at the door of the house, a prisoner manacled to each man. The crowd began to hurl bricks and stones, but the troops impassively formed an impenetrable guard as the manacled men were marched off.

‘Fielding’s committed them to Newgate,’ a man said angrily. ‘There’ll be trouble after this, you may be sure.’

The next moment James heard a volley of shots, and one of Fielding’s men on horseback came tearing around the corner and cried, ‘There are four thousand sailors on the march from Tower Hill. They say they’ll set fire to all of London if their men aren’t released.’

‘And there are a thousand men on the way to stop them.’ We had word of the gathering at Tower Hill,’ another added.

James would not have been surprised to hear the tumult of battle, but now all the streets were lined at intervals with troops, and very slowly the crowd began to break up in an uneasy peace. The disturbances of the morning made it impossible for him to see David Winfrith, for everything at the court was badly delayed. He walked back towards the end of the Strand and realised for the first time that Wylie’s brothel and the Gock Tavern were razed to the ground.

‘Wylie will have to find somewhere else for his girls to take their men tonight, and the old Cock won’t be serving ale for many a month, if ever,’ Timothy remarked late that evening, when they were getting ready for bed. ‘What time will you leave for St. Giles?’ he added.

‘Any time before noon will be early enough,’ replied James. ‘I am told there is a coach leaving Hyde Park at every hour on the stroke, heading for Birmingham as well as Oxford and other places in the middle provinces and the north, and each will stop at St. Giles village.’ After a moment he asked lightly, ‘Did you do all you hoped to do?’

‘That’s a sly one,’ declared Timothy, laughing. ‘Will it be answer enough if I tell you that I am exhausted?’

James joined in the laughter but his was edged with anxiety. In one way he would have liked to talk to Timothy but he did not think the slightest good would come of telling him how he felt about Mary, so he said nothing, and it wasn’t long before each was in his own small room, undressed and ready for bed. Again it was some time before James went to sleep, and for at least an hour he struggled with his thoughts and fears and listened to Timothy’s rhythmic snoring.

The longer James lay awake the more vivid Mary’s face became.

When James left the rooms next morning, he carried his bag by sedan chair to the coach departure place at Hyde Park, had the baggage roll well marked with his name and destination, then set out for the Chapter Coffee House. The morning promised a fine day, and so he walked a northerly route until he reached St. James’s Park. Some families were already in the park, children playing on the lake with small boats as their mothers watched. From St. James’s he took another sedan chair, one of whose bearers was a Negro who ran between the front shafts. James paid the Negro sixpence before stepping towards the narrow oak door of the Chapter Coffee House.

This, he knew, was a meeting place of at least three worlds. Men of letters, were they humble journalists or writers of renown such as Dr. Johnson, went there to talk with friends who shared their love of literature, of writing, and of the sound of their own voices. Book publishers and printers also attended, together with bankers and merchants from the area north of St. Paul’s and a sprinkling of clerics from the cathedral or from churches within easy reach.

James was momentarily afraid that the coffee house would not be open, for it lacked five minutes of ten o’clock, but the door yielded to his hand and he stepped into a room so brightly lit from panels of glass in the ceiling that there was no need of lamps. On the walls were some front pages of various newspapers as well as some Hogarth sketches and caricatures of prominent men of letters, politicians and members of the Royal household. Racks of churchwardens, all marked with tiny labels, hung around the walls beneath the pictures, and some were suspended by leather thongs from the wooden beams across the ceiling. That morning no more than a dozen men were present and James did not see Winfrith. He was hovering between waiting hopefully and giving up when Winfrith, emerging from a door marked closet in a corner, approached a nearby table and sat with a thin-faced man with close-trimmed jet-black hair and beard. Winfrith glanced at James and then suddenly spun around to stare at him. In that moment the likeness between this man in his early thirties and James’s memory of Silas Moffat was startling, the clear, pale, blue-grey eyes, with their innocent expression, the most similar of all.

‘It
is
James Marshall!’ Winfrith exclaimed, and sprung to his feet, both arms extended. In spite of his angular thinness the grip of his hand was firm. ‘Jamey, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you! Did you come by chance or to seek me out?’

‘To seek you out,’ James replied. ‘I tried yesterday but you were busy. Two nights ago
I
encountered Tom Harris, who assured me you would be the one to tell me what is happening at Bow Street.’

‘Better even than Henry Fielding,’ declared the close-bearded man at the table. ‘Are you John Furnival’s stepson?’

‘Yes.’

‘I never met John Furnival but everyone who knew him tells me that is a great loss,’ the other replied. ‘I am—’

‘James, I would like you to meet one of Bow Street’s most worthy friends,’ Winfrith interrupted. ‘A man who serves us and what we are trying to do better than any other - Mr. Benedict Sly, of
The Daily Clarion.
What I forget, he can tell you. That is, if you have no objection to his presence.’

‘If the discussion is confidential I will at once excuse myself,’ declared Benedict Sly. There was a glint of humour in his eyes.

‘Although I confess I would prefer to be present.’

‘For my part, sir, you are very welcome,’ James assured him as he settled down to coffee. Some brandy snaps were placed before him on a porcelain dish which was marked Morgan’s Teas and Coffees - the best in the world.

Nine other establishments in London.