The Secret River (7 page)

When day came there was no sign of Rob and he could not wait for him, so he had to hire a man called Barnes from the wharf, with hardly enough wit to know how to pick up the other end of a beam and lower it into the lighter. As he chivvied him, he grew angry with Rob, and with himself for thinking such a halfwit could remember his own name, let alone to meet him at the promised hour.

Mr Lucas came on board late in the morning to point and shout. By the time he got there, the bulk of the wood was already loaded onto the lighter, but Thornhill had not seen any Brazil timber, only deal, and was starting to think Nugent had been misinformed. He shouted up to Lucas,
We are just about full up, Mr
Lucas, I take it there ain’t no more to be got?
Lucas gave him a look, and held up his marking-hammer with a funny kind of smile.
Just a
little more in the cabin
, he called down.
Six pieces of Brazil that I will put
my mark on
.

Thornhill could feel an airiness in his body. It was the feeling he always had, no matter how many times he took the step outside of the law: a lightheaded mix of fear and need. But he made his face a rock so it showed nothing.

Lucas stood watching from above while Thornhill and Barnes loaded the Brazil timber, four long planks and two shorter pieces. The lighter was already so full there was nowhere to put the Brazil other than on top of the rest. Even in its rough-dressed state, he could see how fine a timber it was, a rich red colour with a close-figured grain. As they put the shorter pieces in, Thornhill saw the marks Lucas had made on each piece: a little square hammered deep into each end.

For a moment he thought better of his plan. It was hardly an idea, just a trickle of cold water down the back of his collar.
He
knows, do not do this
. His heart beat loose enough to shake his chest.

He knew what this feeling was called: it was fear. But fear was not enough to stop anyone lifting objects from their owners. It was just part of a lighterman’s life, like his wet feet. The problem was simple: fear did not pay the rent.

Lucas stood on the deck of the
Rose Mary
with his big hands on his big hips, watching each piece of timber onto the lighter.
I do
not like that timber being uppermost, Thornhill
, he called down.
It is worth
fifty pounds
. Thornhill stood in the lighter looking up at him.
Would
you have us unload
, he said,
and lie it in the hold under the rest?
Lucas looked at him for a moment.
No
, he said.
But make sure no harm comes
to it, man
. Thornhill squinted up into the brightness, where Lucas looked down at him.
Very good, Mr Lucas
, he called obligingly.
You
can count on me
.

By three o’clock in the afternoon the lighter was loaded, but the tide was running out strongly so it was a matter of waiting. Thornhill had some food and sat on the load watching darkness fall. Around eleven o’clock he heard the change in the river’s voice that meant slack water had arrived, the tide about to turn. He let go the lighter from the side of the ship and felt the flood tide carrying it upstream. He had only to guide with an oar.

He shot through the middle pier of London Bridge and tended over towards the Middlesex bank. He could see nothing except a faint texture that showed him where the river was. By his speed under the bridge he judged the moment when he would come to Three Cranes Wharf, and swung the vessel around to where the shore must be, working her up into the tide until he was alongside the dock. The tide was running against the wooden dockside, but it was still too low to unload.

He could hear his skiff jerking on its painter at the end of the wharf where he had tied it up the day before. It was waiting to receive the Brazil wood. But until he set his hand to the timber, he was still an innocent man.

The watchman was in his little outhouse at the end of the
wharf. Thornhill could see the tiny gleam of yellow light from the doorway. He would be tucked up tight in there with a drop of something to keep him warm.

Thornhill called softly as the lighter came alongside the wharf,
Rob, Rob are you there?
No one answered. He decided he must do it all himself, and was getting ready to leave the oars and spring forward to cast a line around the bollard, when there was Rob’s voice in the darkness.
Will, here I am
, he whispered hoarsely.
Give us
a cast on shore, man, for God’s sake
, Thornhill called. He hurled the line up and by a miracle Rob got hold of it and fastened it, so the lighter rode the current quietly.

Thornhill climbed onto the wharf.
Damn your eyes, Rob
, he hissed.
Why ain’t you come down to lend a hand with the lighter?
He could see it was his brother, but could not make him out and was spared the hangdog look on his silly face.
I come as soon as I could, Will
, he whined.
As God is my witness
. Trying not to shout in his exasperation Thornhill said,
Forget God, man, get yourself down and hand us up the stern
sheet and be quick about it
.

He had just made the stern sheet fast to the bollard when he heard a sound beyond the lighter: a splash, the hollow wooden knocking of an oar against its pin. It crossed his mind, nothing more substantial than the shadow of a bird’s wing out of the corner of his eye, that something was not right. He peered and strained into the rustling darkness but saw only its tantalising shifts and textures.

They had to unload the Brazil wood into the skiff almost by feel. They moved the timbers down as quietly as they could, scraping them over the gunwale of the lighter, feeling the skiff twist under the weight. He could sense Rob take the weight, then the hollow noise as he eased each piece down. The small sounds seemed thunderous.

They had moved the fourth piece when suddenly at the end of the lighter there was a commotion, a clattering and thumping,
several pairs of feet in several pairs of boots, running along the lighter to where Thornhill and Rob stood holding the flitch of timber.
Thornhill!
Lucas’s voice shouted.
Thornhill, you rogue!
In that moment all the dread he had been feeling rose up to swallow him. He should have listened! Should have listened to that cool little voice that had said,
This time they will get you
.

Lucas had something in his hand. Thornhill saw a glitter of metal and knew it to be the short hanger Mr Lucas carried with him everywhere. He heard it slice the air near him, the sound of the blade through the air filling him with panic. He retreated onto the skiff, stumbling on the timber, a helpless blind man.
For God’s
sake do not!
he heard himself call out, feeling his flesh cringe from the blade, but Lucas was shouting,
Come here you blackguard
, and Thornhill felt a hand clutching at his sleeve.

He jerked up his arm and freed it, felt hands fumbling at his collar, and stumbled along the skiff with Lucas following him, but he heard Lucas trip on the oars and crash full-length. He heard the grunt as the wind was knocked out of him, imagined that big striped belly squashed like a bladder. He got to the skiff, Rob already in it—slow, but quick enough when it came to saving his own skin—and undid the rope. As he pushed away from the lighter and began to row, he heard one of the pieces of timber slide off the gunwale into the water, sending the little boat rocking so they near capsized.

He was gasping with the fright of it, but also with a convulsion of the stomach that he recognised as having some relationship to laughing.

Rob seemed more aggrieved at the loss of his coat than the nearness of his escape, earnestly telling Thornhill,
My coat were
there, my good thick coat!
And—each time remembering as if for the first time—
my wiper, how will I blow the snot, Will?
Then his phlegmy laugh came from out of the stern, his voice jumping.
My wiper
,
Will, think of that, Mr Lucas got my wiper for his very own
.

Rob’s brain was a peculiar one, with pockets of sense in it like plums in a pudding.

He thought they were clean away, but there was Lucas’s voice, roaring from the lighter,
Yates! Get them, man!
Turning around, Thornhill saw something moving on the shimmering blackness of the water: another skiff closing on them. He dug his oars in, so deep, so sudden, to turn the boat, that Rob was sent sprawling sideways.

As he had for the Doggett’s race, Thornhill shrank his being down to nothing but his arms, his shoulders, his feet straining against the board. He rowed so hard he could feel his backside lifting off the thwart, and he thought he had left the skiff behind. A quick glance over his shoulder let him see the square bulk of the cathedral, and he made for Crawshay’s Wharf just along from it, had got the oars shipped and was about to make fast when out of the splashing blackness another boat was upon him, and a big person scrambling from it into his own, making it rock and tilt, and there was Yates panting,
I have got you, I will shoot you if you
attempt to escape
. Even in this moment, Thornhill wanted to laugh and say,
Coming the high horse sits odd with you, Yates
.

Rob let out a yell, the boat lurched, and there was an almighty splash. His brother had gone over the stern and no more was heard from him.

Thornhill could see the bulk of Yates, smell the pipe he always had about him. Yates was not a bad man, had been a lighterman himself. Over the years, plenty of things had stuck to his fingers.
For God’s sake have mercy, Mr Yates
, Thornhill pleaded.
You
know the consequence!
He saw the bulk hesitate and he tried again.
You known me ten years, Yates, would you have me swing?

And while Yates stood, not advancing on him, saying nothing, Thornhill made a lunge aft, athwart of the boat, and sprang over the side. The tide was but half in, so the water was up to no more than his thighs, and there was Yates’s skiff bobbing alongside. It
was the work of an instant to feel his way to the knot, slip it free, and pull himself into the boat. As Thornhill pulled hard away there was no sound from Yates.

Yates might have been a merciful man, but Lucas was not. A man who knew himself destined to be Lord Mayor of London was not one to turn a blind eye to a work of thievery. There was a reward advertised, not for Rob whose body was found washed up at Mason’s Stairs, but for himself, William Thornhill. Who was going to resist ten pounds?

So they came and found him where he was hiding out up the river at Acre Wharf, next to the flour mill.

~

In Newgate the people were packed tight in stone cells with hardly enough room on the dirty pallets to stretch out at night. The walls were blocks of fine-hewn stone, not a chink anywhere, of such a size they needed no mortar. Their mass alone was enough to lock them into place, and lock the people in behind them.

Sal had given up the room in Butler’s Buildings and had joined Lizzie and Mary sewing shrouds. They all came to see him in the cell, pretending good cheer. Sal had brought Willie, holding fast to his little hand. He was four: old enough to be frightened at what he saw in Newgate, but young enough to be damaged by it. Thornhill loved to feel the child in his arms, against his chest, but told Sal not to bring him again, there was prison fever about.

They had brought such food as they could spare: a piece of bread and some splinters of dried herring. They watched while he took it. He could see the hunger in their eyes, and did his best to eat, to please them, but he could not seem to, his throat already closed up.

He tried not to think of their happy days. In Newgate that soft hopeful part of him was hardening over, becoming lifeless
like stone or shell. It was a kind of mercy.

Sal took charge. She had worked it out. The thing that a man needed in Newgate, more than a loaf of bread and a blanket, was a story. There must always be a story, she insisted, no matter how red-handed a man was caught. And a man had to believe it himself, so that when he came to tell it, it felt like God’s sworn truth.

He saw that she had gone to the heart of the matter. He had heard a boy in the yard saying over and over to himself, and to anyone who came near:
It is all a lie, it is all for the reward
. The boy tried it in different ways, with different emphasis, a child with broken front teeth who seemed little older than Willie.
It is all a
damned lie, it is all for the damned reward
. He was like those actors Thornhill had rowed across the river. When the moment came, in the white glare of the limelight, the line would be there, having replaced all other thoughts by nothing more than repetition.

The story had to take on such conviction that bit by bit the fact of the event—in the boy’s case, some business of stealing a piece of bacon from a shop—was replaced by another one, the way an oyster might grow over a rock. Then it became nothing so crude as a lie. A person could tell the new one, in all its vivid reality, with the wide eyes of someone who was speaking the truth.

A man had come up to you and given you the coat. You had found the piece of carpet on the road. A man had said he would give you a penny if you took the box to Gosport Street. As God was your witness, you were innocent.

Sal had already worked it out for him. He had made the lighter fast, but owing to the lowness of the tide he had left it, planning to come back at high water to unload. He had trusted the watchman further up the wharf to keep an eye on the timber, but while he was away some person unknown must have come up on the river side, without the watchman hearing, and removed it.

It was a sound story, with no gaps or leaks. He loved her for her wit in seeing it so clear, and giving it the words that made it
the truth.
You will get out of this, Will
, she whispered, embracing him as she left.
They ain’t going to get you, not if I got anything to do with it
.

Her love and her strength gave him heart, were a kind of wealth, he saw, that others did not have. When his wife and sisters had gone, he stood straighter, walked taller, looked the turnkeys in the eye.
I made the lighter fast, meaning to come back to her later
.