Theft of Life (20 page)

‘Yes, Mr Glass.’ Eustache was still staring at the page in front of him. Francis stood, weary to his bones and not knowing if he had helped or not. ‘Thank you.’ The boy said it so quietly he could hardly hear him. A need for Eliza ran through his body so intense and complete that he was surprised he did not fall to the ground. She would have known what to say to the boy, what kindness could cure.

T
HE RED LION TAVERN
showed signs that it had been a prosperous place in times gone by: the taproom was wide and high, but the city workshops had crowded in around it and the filth on the windows was so thick one would have thought it close to dusk. The landlord himself was also filmed in grime. He had the features of a drinker, and eyes set so far back in his head, he looked like a skull tightly wrapped and meanly padded. He gave the impression they were taking him from important business, though his only customers seemed to be half-a-dozen souls sunk into the places where the shadows were deepest. He admitted that he rented the upper parlour to a Mr Willoughby for his prayer meetings twice a week, but he could not, or would not, give them any indication of where that gentleman might be found at any other time.

Harriet was preparing to ask the shadow patrons when a young woman bustled in with a basket over her arm. The atmosphere of the room lightened immediately, as if she had brought the spring in with her.

Harriet asked the girl as she passed them if she knew where Willoughby lived. She nodded at once. ‘Little Sheep Lane, madam. I remember it because I thought it funny. Shepherd and his flock, if you understand me.’ Harriet smiled. ‘You won’t find him at home when it’s light’, the maid went on. ‘Best look for him along The Strand.’

‘Is there any place in particular he frequents?’ Crowther asked. ‘And can you describe him? I do not know the gentleman by sight.’

The girl laughed and with such lightness and good humour Harriet thought she could not have been in London long. ‘Oh, you’ll have no trouble finding him, sir. He’ll be out there in the street preaching. Poor lamb! Most people only stop if they’ve something to throw at him for his trouble. State his coat is in sometimes when he comes in for his meetings would make you weep. As for his looks, well, he’s as thin as you, sir, and dressed in black, so I’d look for an image of your younger self with a religious turn and there he’ll be. Now if you’ll forgive me, I put a soup on before I went out, and if I don’t go and stir it quick, it’ll stick.’

She turned to go, but Harriet put her hand on the girl’s sleeve. ‘Miss, did you ever see a gentleman called Trimnell at Mr Willoughby’s meetings?’

‘Lord, Mr Trimnell never misses a one. He’s a little strange, ma’am. Said he wanted to save our souls, but he always looks to me as if he’d rather eat ’em.’ Some of the listening shadows laughed. ‘But it was Mr Trimnell paid for the room, ma’am. He came in with Mr Willoughby a month ago and paid up front, all the way through to Christmas.’

Harriet released her and she disappeared into the warren of dark and smoke-filled rooms.

Crowther handed Mrs Westerman down from the carriage opposite Somerset House. The air was already cleaner than around St Paul’s and there were more strolling macaronis and bored ladies of fashion moving along the streets here, but it was still a mixed and busy crowd. The self-conscious elegance of the town and the thrusting merchants of the city met here and mingled like hot water and cold.

The girl had been quite right: Mr Willoughby was not difficult to find. He stood on the corner of Catherine Street upon an upturned apple crate, his Bible in one hand, the other raised to the Heavens and his head thrown back. He had managed to gather a rather motley collection of listeners: a pair of women, arm-in-arm and giggling, and two men, labourers by the look of their clothes, who were watching the girls as much as the preacher. Others passed with a casual or contemptuous glance.

‘Come to the Lord your saviour!’ he called to them. ‘There is room in His heart and in Heaven for every one of you, whatever your sins. How will you account before God? Have you been charitable? Have you been kind? The great and the poor, the mighty and the weak will burn together without the love of Jesus to save them!’

A gentleman in a tight-fitting coat glanced over his shoulder at the preacher as he passed Harriet and Crowther. ‘Mixed company, how perfectly foul.’ The man walking alongside him tittered.

‘Save yourself from the flames! The everlasting torment of Hell!’

Harriet sighed. ‘How long do you think this might go on for, Crowther? The man seems to have plenty of breath.’

‘Even Methodists must exhaust themselves eventually,’ Crowther said and continued to watch the preacher and the people that passed by, all caught in their own dramas and business. It was as if the character from every play in London, from the low farces of servants and shopkeepers and the comedies of the drawing room to the poetical works of the Classical Age, had all been thrown out of the theatres and into the street. He observed them with a professional eye, picking out specimens in the crowd. The young woman with her skirts hitched around her ankles, a swaying walk and showing the first hints of disease under her rouge; the man in good broadcloth with the blood vessels under his eyes bursting with brandy, his walk stiff and painful – gout probably; the child, pale and coughing with the last stages of lung disease.

He glanced at Mrs Westerman and the fine lines developing around her eyes, and wondered if Mr Palmer were married. The preacher was still exhorting the crowd at full voice but then a middle-aged man emerged from the shop behind where he had set up his pulpit among the refuse. Purple with anger, he kicked the crate under the preacher’s feet so hard that he stumbled off it and onto the pavement.

‘Enough! That’s it! You’re bloody ruining me, you crow!’ He grabbed handfuls of the preacher’s coat in his hands and brought him close to his face. ‘Christ, I’d rather have a bagpiper on the street than you. Get out of it!’

The preacher’s arms hung by his side. ‘I will preach the word of God, brother. Listen to me or face the flames of Hell! I will not be moved.’

The shopkeeper slapped the preacher hard across the face. He flinched from the blow but made no move to defend himself. Harriet released Crowther’s arm. He bowed to her and crossed the street.

‘Come on then, you bugger! Where’s your God-given strength now?’ The shopkeeper slapped the preacher’s face again, hard enough for the sound to crack the air. The preacher’s arm spasmed and his black Bible dropped to the ground. London paused and turned to enjoy the entertainment. The preacher looked at the man who held him for a moment, then slowly turned his face, showing the other cheek. The crowd, for though they would not gather in numbers to hear preaching, a fight was another thing, called out in delight and there was a smattering of applause. Harriet could hear the suede gloves of a lily-white macaroni standing next to her clapping together.

‘Fine then! If that’s what you want, it’s what you’ll get!’ The man lifted his hand once more to deliver the back blow but found himself interrupted by the firm pressure of Crowther’s cane on his shoulder. He turned, not relinquishing his grasp on the collar of the priest. ‘What?’

‘I’ll watch a fair fight as happily as any man,’ Crowther said. ‘But if the man will not fight back, it is not fair. Let him go.’

The crowd hooted with enthusiasm. A priest getting beaten and now a gentleman – and all for free.

‘Very well,’ the man said, shoving the priest away from him. ‘You want the blow, you take it.’ He swung rather wildly. Crowther rocked backwards and as the man’s fist sailed by him, he bent slightly and swept his cane sharply against the back of the man’s knees. His opponent stumbled and fell flat on his face in the filth of the street. The crowd roared; Harriet’s neighbour laughed and applauded again. Crowther placed one foot on the man’s lower back, holding him down.

‘Stay there a moment, there’s a good fellow.’ He pressed a little harder with the edge of his black heel against the man’s kidney to reinforce the point. The man stopped wriggling. The crowd had been cheated. It had been shaping up well, but now, just as they were getting comfortable, it seemed to be over with. London shifted its packages, looked at its pocket-watch, and began to drift away.

Crowther released the shopkeeper and bent down to pick up the preacher’s Bible, knocking the muck off it with his handkerchief. Then he offered his hand to his fallen foe, whose rage had been knocked out of him, along with his breath. He looked sulky, but more sheepish than angry now. ‘Next time, just hire the pipe-player,’ Crowther said and left him.

Harriet had gathered the preacher up, taking his arm and leading him away from the corner. He looked back over his shoulder. ‘They’ll take my crate!’

‘You will find another,’ Harriet replied, then when they were at a sufficient distance, waited for Crowther to join them. He did so, and Harriet watched his thin face for any sign of pleasure or self-congratulation. She saw none. He could find cause for pride and vanity in many things but not, it seemed, in knocking a tradesman over into the filth. He handed the Bible to Mr Willoughby, who accepted it with a bobbing bow and a troubled expression. The slap had put some angry red into his cheek, but he was otherwise a pale fellow and seemed smaller now he was not up on a crate and in the full flight of speech.

He turned the Bible in his hands. ‘I should thank you, and I do with all my heart, for picking up my Bible, but you should never strike another man, sir. No matter what the provocation. God Himself told us it is a sin to answer violence with violence.’ There was a sweetness in his voice when he spoke of God. The skin on his bruising face seemed to glow, as when a girl mentions her sweetheart’s name.

Crowther raised one eyebrow and was opening his mouth to speak, but Harriet intervened before the conversation could become theological. ‘Mr Willoughby, we would have some speech with you. It touches upon Mr Trimnell.’

The passion left his face and was replaced with warm concern. ‘Oh, has he sent you to speak to me? I had worries for his health on Friday and hoped he might take the air and help me distribute notices for my prayer meetings. People will not take them from me, but when he stares at them, they take them like lambs. I sent a note to his lodgings.’ He produced from his pocket a bundle of the handbills matching the one that had led them to him in the first instance.

Harriet put his hand on Willoughby’s arm. ‘I am sorry to tell you of it, but Mr Trimnell is dead.’

The man’s face fell and the bills were returned to his pocket. ‘He is? I had not heard. No, I had not. I am sorry to lose a friend, but thanks be to God, he is with Jesus now. I hoped God might spare him a little while longer. I shall pray for him. Thank you for bringing me word.’

‘He was attacked, and died as a result, Mr Willoughby.’

‘Oh!’ The preacher looked down at the Bible in his hands. ‘Oh, poor Mr Trimnell. Oh, that is very bad, I thought perhaps a recurrence of his sickness. He was become so thin. Some robbery, I suppose. The luxury of these late times has dragged many a poor soul into sin. We are none of us free from the guilt of it.’

His distress seemed genuine and Harriet pitied him too much in that moment to tell him the exact circumstances of Trimnell’s death. He would find out soon enough.

‘Mr Willoughby, did you see Mr Trimnell then on Friday evening?’

He folded his arms, holding his Bible across his chest. ‘Oh yes, I saw him almost every day, and he would never fail to come to one of our regular meetings. It was after midnight when he left me.’

No visit to the Jamaica Coffee House then, Harriet thought, and Trimnell would have to pass by the Cathedral on his way home. She had a sudden vision of a man, or men waiting in the darkness by the Cathedral, their whip and ropes at the ready. ‘Are we right in believing it was you who brought Mr Trimnell to the Lord?’

Willoughby said solemnly, ‘It is Jesus Himself who calls, madam, and He alone, but I was there to guide him as best I could. I was preaching in the city and he happened to pass by in the days that followed his return from Jamaica. I could see that God had called him, and after that day we had many conversations. Poor man. He was much tormented by his past. What he told me of his life on those islands …’

‘When did he repent of his part in the slave trade, Dr Willoughby?’ Harriet asked. ‘Was it on hearing you preach?’

The man blushed like a schoolgirl. ‘No, no. He began to think on his sins during his illness in Jamaica and told me he spent his time on board ship reading a Bible he had borrowed from the ship’s captain. When he arrived here, he went at once to speak to a priest he knew, but did not find the assistance he craved. Then, while walking the streets in a great confusion of mind, he heard me speak.’ He looked at the ground in front of him as if he expected them to join him in a moment of prayer. ‘He was distraught at what he had done, the sufferings he had inflicted on his African brothers and sisters.’ Willoughby looked a little grey. ‘He had worked as a trader of slaves on the coast before inheriting his estate.’ To Harriet it seemed that the sounds of the street had dulled. She thought of the sunken face she had seen, whatever expression it had, hidden by death. She thought of the creeping dawn finding his body staked out in the churchyard and found at last a small tremor of pity for Trimnell.

‘You are no friend of slavery then, sir?’ Crowther asked.

Willoughby shook his head violently. ‘A man can be under no necessity of degrading himself into a wolf, as Mr Wesley said himself. It is an evil. An absolute evil.’

‘And Mr Trimnell was persuaded of this?’

‘Absolutely. He was sick with horror at his past sins and determined to do penance. He was terrified at facing Judgement before he had done all he could to appease God’s anger.’ There was a tremor of doubt in his face and Harriet saw it.

‘Asking God’s forgiveness was not enough?’

A sedan chair was being carried past them at a great pace. They had to step close to the window of a goldsmith’s shop to avoid being knocked aside. Harriet had the flash of a female face inside the chair. An impression of powder, silk, ostrich plumes.