The Voyage of Promise (18 page)

T
hat man, Mister Hathaway… He has gone,” Ena reported.

Even so, Grace was not ready to venture from her secure spot at the far corner of the upstairs room.

“You cannot hide up here forever,” Ena pointed out.

Grace knew as much. But she also knew Jasper Hathaway. If he was sufficiently recovered to go about the city searching for her, and if he had discovered enough concerning her whereabouts to locate the coffeehouse, how could she dare return to Mrs. Peete’s house? Why, he might be there right now waiting for her. Or even lurking about outside, for that matter!

“Do as you please,” Ena said with a shrug, and she started down the stairs.

The only candle in the room that had not entirely burned away glowed low in its candlestick. Soon the room would be completely dark. Ena was right, of course. Grace couldn’t stay in the upstairs room forever. With a sigh of resignation, she picked up the candlestick, lifted the hem of her dress, and followed Ena down the stairs.

As Ena had said, Jasper Hathaway was no longer in the coffeehouse. But Jesse was there, sitting alone at the same table in the far corner. When Grace left by the side door, Jesse got up and followed her out.

“Oh!” Grace exclaimed when he came up behind her. “You gave me such a start!”

“Do you mistake me for a flabby old white man with no teeth in his head?” Jesse asked with the trace of a grin. His voice had an interesting lilt to it, not like any other voice Grace had ever heard in either Africa or England. Nor was it like Ena’s manner of talk, or even Captain Ross’s. It was… well…
unique
.

“What did Mister Hathaway want with me?” Grace asked.

“He wanted
you
,” Jesse said. “If he could not have you, he wanted something that would lead him to you. But do not fear. His disruption so irritated the coffeehouse patrons that they closed their mouths tight and refused to part with one word of information.”

“Do you think Mister Hathaway knows where I am staying?”

Jesse shook his head. “If he did, he would have gone there and waited for you instead of tracking after you asking questions. It would be much easier on him, and less of a risk too.”

“My father is in London,” Grace said.

Jesse said nothing.

“My English father.”

Jesse walked in silence.

“He loved me, my father did, at one time. He brought me lovely dresses from London. And books too. He hired a tutor to—” Suddenly remembering Captain Ross’s admonition, Grace caught herself and said, “—to read to me. My father read to me, too, and showed me pictures from his books.”

Jesse said nothing.

“I would not let the others at Zulina fortress kill my father, despite all he had done,” Grace said.

The others had wanted to kill him. Oh, how they had wanted to. And they had good reason. Grace knew that even at the time. Why shouldn’t slaves hate the man responsible for destroying their lives and selling them to the slave ships? She knew it then, but now she truly understood it. When Joseph Winslow had been allowed to sail out of Zulina harbor, with no one but her to bid him farewell, he refused to even look at her. She remembered every minute of that day. Shaking his clenched fist to heaven, he had called out a curse on her and on everyone who mattered to her.

But things can change in five years. Everything can change. As Ikem had said years before, even people can change.

Grace stopped walking and placed her fingertips against Jesse’s arm. “My father is here in London,” she said. “Will you help me find him?”

“Why?”

Grace struggled for words. “Because he is my father,” she said. “Because he loved me once.”

“And because you want his help.”

“Yes,” Grace said. “That too. He owes me that.”

“What do you know of him?” Jesse asked.

“His name is Joseph Winslow—
Admiral
Joseph Winslow— and he longs for the feel of dice in his hands. He plays any betting game he can find. He loves the sea and sailing ships. If we can find a shipping place by the sea where men throw dice and make bets, that’s where my father will be.”

“I see,” said Jesse. “You want me to lead you to a place where you will have a good chance of being robbed and kidnapped.”

“What?” Grace exclaimed. “You are cruel to say such a thing!”

“You know nothing about London’s ruffians, do you?”

“Look at me!” Grace answered. “Do you really think anyone would consider it worth taking the trouble to rob me? And were I to be kidnapped, who would pay a ransom for me? It would be a foolish criminal indeed who would prey on the likes of me!”

For once, Jesse took a good look at Grace. Her face was lovely, but streaked with grime in the manner of a poor working woman. Her hair hung loose with only a small scarf tied around it. Her dress, soiled and stained, hung flat with neither petticoats nor under-shapers to round it out. Jesse knew a gallant response required that he energetically protest that Grace was indeed worth both robbing and kidnapping. But she was far too bright to be fooled with outright lies, however well intended. So, once again, he said nothing.

“Do you know of such a place?” Grace pressed.

“Gaming houses in London are many,” Jesse answered. “But a particularly likely one for a sailing man like my father?”

“I do know of one well concealed in an alley which is known to be a favorite sailor haunt. And it has never been raided—at least, not to my knowledge.”

“Yes!” said Grace. “They will surely know Joseph Winslow. Will you take me there? Tonight?”

“You have nothing on your person to rob, you say?” Jesse mocked. “No one with money to pay a ransom should you be kidnapped? Well, then, I do not suppose you have anyone willing to claim your body after you’ve been stabbed to death, either, do you?”

Grace gasped.

“I am not fool enough to venture out there at night,” Jesse said, “And I pray that you are not, either.”

“But I—”

“Do you not have a job to do?” Jesse asked.

“Yes, but not all day long. I finish when the church bells chime the noon hour.”

“Finish at the noon hour then,” said Jesse. “After that, walk down Waring Street toward the square.”

“But what about you?”

“I will find you.”

Grace thanked Jesse and turned her steps toward Mrs. Peete’s house. But Jesse called out, “Do not dress too fine, Grace. And you would do well to put away that purse you have pushed down the front of your dress.”

D
id you leave your purse at home?” Jesse demanded when Grace caught up to him.

After the noon church bells had rung, Grace had started down Waring Street just as Jesse told her to do. She stepped aside to let a pork vendor pass, and at that very moment Jesse had climbed up from a basement stairway up ahead. Without looking back at her or waiting, he headed straightaway along the road, then turned off toward a maze of lanes and alleyways.

“Yes… I did,” Grace answered, panting.

She almost hadn’t, however. Right away, she had tucked the purse into her baggage crate among the folds of her yellow dress. But then she had a change of heart. Why should she leave her purse behind simply because Jesse told her to? So she had taken it out and dropped it back into its familiar hiding place—down the front of her dress. Still, Jesse knew London, and she most certainly did not. So, in the end, she had hesitantly taken it back out and returned it to her case and its hiding place in the folds of her yellow dress. It was not that Grace didn’t trust Mrs. Peete—although at times her belongings
did seem to have a rummaged-through appearance. It was that those silver shillings were all she had to get her out of London and on her way to Cabeto. She felt so much better when she had them next to her heart.

“See that small lad hanging by the street post?” Jesse said to Grace. “No, don’t stare at him! Glance once, then look away.”

Grace saw him. A scraggly child dressed in a man’s coat, shabby and full of holes. He couldn’t have been more than eight years old.

“A poor beggar child,” Grace said. “If I had my purse, I would give him one of my shillings.”

“Give him one and he’d have them all,” Jesse said. “He’s a faker, he is, placed there to watch out for someone just like you.”

Grace glanced again. The boy’s sharp eyes were indeed fixed on her.

“His fine hand would dip down your dress and have your purse in his hidden pocket even whilst you kissed his cheek and prayed for angels to watch over him. Then he’d eel away down the maze of streets, and you would never see him or your purse again.”

“You don’t know that!” Grace said.

“I
do
know that. And I am telling it to you so you will have the good sense to refrain from walking these streets alone. I don’t know how it is in your village in Africa, but that’s how it is in London.”

Jesse stepped onto a muddy road and strode out into the slush. Grace hesitated only a moment, then she waded in after him.

With Jesse’s quick pace, it was just over an hour before Grace’s nose caught the smell of the Thames. But she despaired of ever being able to find the way by herself, not with the
labyrinth of hidden walkways that cut behind and between the city streets.

Before they actually reached the docks, Jesse cut over to a short alley. “Down there,” he said, motioning with a jerk of his head.

What Grace saw was a house with half the windows painted black and a sign above it that read
Rooms For Rent
.

“There?” she asked.

“There,” Jesse said.

“Will you come with me?”

“No,” he answered. “Do everything you need to do today. I won’t bring you back again.”

The door of the rooming house–gambling house flew open and two men dressed in the trousers and blouse of a sailor tumbled out. “And don’t ye come back agin ’til ye gots a pocketful o’ rhino. I ain’t runnin’ no charity ’ouse ’ere, is I?”

The two sailors picked themselves up, grumbling angrily.

With a confidence she didn’t feel, Grace stepped up to the two and said, “Could you tell me, was there an old man with red hair in there?”

“They’s plenty of old men in there,” snapped the taller of the two sailors. Grace couldn’t help noticing that his face was deeply pox-scarred, worse even than Mrs. Peete’s. “I wasn’t lookin’ fer the color of no one’s ’air. Ain’t no money in that.”

“Why ye wants to know?” the shorter one asked.

“I… I’m looking for my father,” Grace said.

The taller one turned to go. The shorter one shrugged and shook his head, then he too walked off.

“Wait!” Grace called after them. “If you can find my father for me, I will pay you.”

Both sailors stopped. Both turned to face her.

“ ’Ow much?” said the tall one, his eyes suddenly gleaming.

Grace shifted uneasily. “He calls himself ‘The Admiral.’ ”

“ ‘The Admiral,’ is it then?” the short one laughed. “ ’E be yer father?”

“You know him?” Grace asked. “Is he in the gambling house?”

“No,” said the short sailor. “ ’E be throwed out afore we came in. But ’e’ll be back. ’E always comes back.”

The tall sailor ran a grubby hand across his pox-scarred face. “Lessen the gin gits to ’im first,” he said.

“Where be yer money?” the tall sailor demanded of Grace.

“Where be my father?” Grace countered. “When I see him, you’ll have your shilling.”

When Grace told Jesse she had left her purse in her room, she was telling him the truth. What she failed to mention was that she did not leave all the shillings in the purse.

Grace looked back toward the corner where she had left Jesse. Vendors and street women, workmen and sailors she saw aplenty, but Jesse was not there. She shivered in the damp gloom that enveloped everything like a shroud.

Had Grace been able to see the sun, she would have been better able to judge how long she paced the courtyard. Each time the house door opened, she did her best to peer in, but it was so dark and smoky inside that she could not make out a thing. Several times she plucked up the courage to stop one person or another and ask about an old man with red hair— “Admiral, he calls himself,” she said—but she got little more answer than a frown and the shake of a head. More often she got an angry scowl.

A wind blew in, bringing a definite chill to the air. Grace moved across the courtyard to a bake shop and gazed in at the freshly baked loaves and buns. That’s when the tall sailor with the pox-scarred face strode up to the gambling house.

“Did you find him?” Grace asked as she ran to meet the tall sailor.

“That we did,” the sailor said. “If you wants to see ’im, show me yer shilling. Then I’ll show ye the way.”

Grace turned her back, then reached down the front of her dress and pulled out the single shilling. The tall sailor reached for it, but Grace clamped her hand tight.

“I don’t see my father yet,” she said. “When I see him, that’s when the shilling will be yours.”

The sailors led her to an open field and pointed to a man sitting alone on a tree stump. As soon as Grace saw him, she knew it was indeed her father. Not that proud, would-be English gentleman who called himself Admiral Joseph Winslow she had known as a child, but her father nevertheless. Grace handed the shilling to the tall sailor and turned her back on the two of them.

The field was not a pleasant place. It was filthy with trash and stank of old fish from the market next door. Joseph Winslow wore a nice suit of clothes, but his coat and breeches were rumpled and soiled. He tipped up his tankard of gin and drank long and hard.

“Father,” Grace said.

Joseph, his hair dirty and disheveled, his face blotchy and pale, lowered the tankard with a shaking hand.

“Leave me be,” he slurred.

“It has been five years, and I—”

“Who ye be, and why ye botherin’ me?” Joseph demanded.

Grace took a deep breath and struggled to gather her strength. “You know me, Father. I am Grace, your daughter.”

“I ain’t got no daughter,” Joseph said bitterly. He tipped the tankard to his lips and drank long.

“Father, I helped you when you needed me the most. I would not let the others kill you. I made it possible for you to come back home to England. Now I need your help, Father.
Please!
”

For the first time, Joseph looked over at Grace. He stared at her face, then he looked her up and down. “I used to have me a African for a wife, I did,” he said. “Might be I could use me a good woman again… maybe to keep me warm tonight.”

Grace jumped back. “Father! I am your daughter!”

“Ye be a liar!” Joseph yelled. He pulled himself up from the stump and, swaying unsteadily, he swung the tankard at her. “A liar is wot ye be!
I… ’as… no… daughter!
”

“I never should have asked you!” Grace wept. “I never should have allowed myself so foolish a hope!”

Joseph Winslow sank back down onto the stump. “It be too late,” he mumbled. “Too late fer ever’one o’ us.”