“To be sure. He’ll get back his share. Oliver, it is the way of the world.”
“I don’t wish to think so, sir.”
“You are young!” he exclaimed.
I said no more. Instead, I pondered how these men were all connected: Mr. Bartholomew, Mr. Sandys, Captain Hawkes, Mr. Wild, and . . . me.
Had I—who until recently had lived a moral life of little worry—had I a truly become a criminal?
I had to admit, it seemed so.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
In Which I First See London.
Our journey to London took three days. Early on, Captain Hawkes purchased a horse for me—an old piebald mare—good enough to have me mount, which—I admit—pleased me. He also made me promise I would not ride off. I intended to keep my word, since London was the place I wished to go and being horsed made my journey only easier. Besides, since I did not know how to ride, I could not steal away from the captain, the much superior horseman. In any case, he spent much time in instructing me as we went along.
As we covered the miles, Captain Hawkes entertained me with many a tale about his life and adventures. He came—he said—from a well-turned family, his father being a country parson. He was given what he called a “liberal education” so as to make him a gentleman with high hopes for marrying well, and living on an estate in the country. Then his father passed away, and his estate proved to be far less than promised.
“Was I to become a drudge?” the captain asked me. “A laboring man? An apprentice in a shop?”
His voice was so full of scorn his answer was obviously no. I had learned that when adults ask that kind of question of the young, they do not want your answer, but merely ask so they might give you their own response.
“I knew how to use a pistol,” he went on. “I knew politeness. I was excellent with horses. I could talk with gentlemen. And,” he added, “I had brains. If that is not the perfect description of a highwayman, I know not otherwise.
“I live well in London; the best society. What is virtuous society?” he said with a laugh. “A community, in which, when a bill is paid, you don’t ask from where the money comes.”
Then he told me of his adventures as a highwayman, which had much to do with sword fights, men he had slain, clever tricks he had played, and, yes, the many thefts he had managed to bring off.
All quite dreadful, but engaging.
Since the young are rarely offered friendship from an adult, I was flattered by his companionship. As he talked, and the hours passed, I stopped thinking of him as a lawless highwayman, but accepted him as an adventurous fellow full of engaging stories. I listened with interest, and without disapproval.
Was this his wicked design?
He asked little about me, and in any case, I was careful not to say much. I did tell him about my father and my deceased mother, but not a word about my sister, Charity. When he asked me why Father had gone to London, I simply said, which was true enough, it was some business of which I knew little, but that—here I did lie—he had asked me to join him.
“Are you,” asked the captain, “going to warn him about Mr. Bartholomew’s charges against him?”
“Do you think I should?” I asked, pretending innocence.
“It might be wise. Bartholomew is a spiteful fellow who thinks overmuch of himself.”
I could agree with that.
Along the way we stopped at inns, where the captain fed me well. I offered to pay from my small stock of shillings—still in my pocket—but he insisted upon covering the charge.
“If you are to have any pleasure in London, you’ll need every penny you have.”
No doubt that was why when alone I studied my coins with care, coming to know them individually—as friends—such as the one that had a scratch upon its silver face.
During evening meals the captain pushed me aside and played cards or backgammon with any who chose to play. He generally did well but unlike Father, he was not always a winner. Moreover, he paid his debts on demand. All in all, he was in such good cheer everyone liked him. His primary mask was his engaging smile. As for what he intended for me in London I did not ask. My intent was that once there I would slip away.
After a number of days we approached London.
It was my sister who had told me that the population of Melcombe was about four thousand. Father had said the number of people residing in London was five hundred thousand.
Both were right.
I shall never forget my first view of the city. We had ridden along the road, up some hill, and when we reached its summit, I looked out over the entire city of London. It was colossal. The stars in Heaven numbered fewer than the quantity of buildings I saw. These buildings were punctuated by the spires of many churches, the biggest—as I would learn—being the great dome of St. Paul’s.
At that distance a dull gray cloud hovered over the city. Even from afar, I could smell it, strong and foul, a stench not unlike an old washing cloth that had been used to clean a mess, and then allowed to rot.
Though London seemed to be a congealed mass of things hard to distinguish one from the other, as we entered the city proper, that solid bulk fell asunder into uncountable and incomprehensible bits.
To begin, the sheer number of people astonished me: crowds of crowds. I could not have imagined that the whole world contained as many people as did London. Yet here they were, pressed together like limitless seeds in a colossal bin.
People old and young, men, women, children, all walking, running, riding, selling, being carried, standing about, or staggering. Beggars—mostly women—prodigious in number and begging everywhere. Upon the streets people asleep, or dead, sniffed by rats or dogs.
Individuals dressed in every fashion imaginable, a chaos of color, a rainbow gone mad, hues I could not begin to name.
The great majority of folk appeared poor, but many were clearly wealthy. People wrapped in rags as well as those sumptuously dressed in what seemed to be silks and furs. Yet all these different levels of people mingled.
The richer sort, men and women, wore wigs, trailing what appeared to be clouds of powder. The poorer had no wigs. But as I would learn, head lice were everywhere.
There were buildings upon buildings, pushed together, crushed together, squeezed together, many leaning over the streets, so close to one another one might leap from roof to roof. As we passed down one street I saw a building collapse in a cloud of debris, people fleeing, people watching, a few cheering, but apparently not that extraordinary as it was to me.
Mazes of narrow streets bent and twisted now this direction, now that, filled to their boundaries with garbage, filth fairly flowing down center gutters. Mud and dust everywhere. Within the city, the smell I had noted from afar was much intensified—dung, offal, rotting food, dead animals, rats, cats and dogs. It was truly sickening to me, who had lived my life by the fresh and open sea.
Countless wagons, carts, carriages, and sedan chairs. Teams of horses, herds of cattle, packs of dogs, a great swirling menagerie of baying, yowling, and barking creatures.
Unending numbers of shops with their classifying signs thrust over streets. Every seventh building seemingly a drinking place, for coffee, beer, or gin. Vast numbers of people staggering, in varied degrees of intoxication.
And the noise! A constant drumming of jabber, buzzes, chatter, shouts, and screams, as if the half million people living there were forever talking at one and the same time. Midst them, musicians making music along with the cries of endless vendors. Church bells trying to sing over the din.
I had to wonder if any listened, could listen.
“Monstrous,” my father had called London and yes, to my eyes it was a monster with multiple heads, hands, and legs.
If all this seems no more than a list, I confess I experienced it that way, for what I witnessed was an unboundedness of things, which I noted with little comprehension.
In all this hurly-burly the captain was calm, and as far as I could tell, undaunted by what so o
verwhelmed me. Where I was instantly, totally disordered, seeing no pattern to anything, he seemed to know exactly where he was going as we made our way through the throngs.
I kept turning this way and that, my mind desperately trying to name objects, as if to fasten them to my thoughts, so as to understand things, guess things, struggling to make sense of it all! It was baffling, frightening, enthralling all at once.
And then, in the midst of all these things and all these people, I thought I saw Father.
CHAPTER FORTY
A Brief Chapter Which Tells You How I Came to Fully Understand My Predicament.
I do not know if it is true for you, but for me, to see something I do know in the midst of the confusion of what I don’t know is a shock. I blink to see what I think I’ve seen—sure I have seen it—only to have it vanish the next moment. It’s rather like the foam frothing upon a rolling wave. Surely it is there, but in moments it disappears, submerged in the greater sea. So I had to wonder if I truly had seen my father.
Allowing myself to think I had seen him, I cried out, “Father!” But for all the noise, voices, and murmurs cascading about, I might as well have been shouting into my hat.
No doubt, too, there were many fathers near where I was horsed. Indeed, two men actually looked about, but they were nobody I knew.
Had I seen him? I surely wished to. But then, I’ve come to believe that nothing brings on seeing a thing as wanting to see it.
Not that I could constrain myself. “Captain!” I cried. “It’s my father!”
He turned in his saddle. “Where?”
“There!” I returned, pointing in the general direction I thought I’d seen him go. The next moment I leaped off my horse and tried to drive my way through the crowds. It was like forcing myself through a pile of loose bricks. People pushed back from all directions, buffeting me so that I made but little progress. Keep in mind that my height—not great—prevented me from seeing much of where I was going.
A strong hand came down upon my shoulder. I whirled about. It was the captain. “Show me and I’ll fetch him.”
It was a simple, reasonable request, but impossible to do. All the unexpected events that happened to me from the time I discovered Father had gone from Melcombe to this moment, when I thought I had seen him, gathered in my chest like a ball of hot lead. It was hard to breathe.
Had I seen him? In truth, I think not.
Had I wanted to see him? I did.
The weight of my loneliness—missing my sister, my father, and my home in Melcombe—fell upon me. I had been swept away, buffeted, stolen, captured, and kidnapped—call it what you will—by a slew of scoundrels, and twisted into a thief.
The captain was looking down at me with sympathy, even kindness, but as I looked up at him I had but one emotion: I hated him.
I must get free! I told myself. Somewhere in this monstrous city is my sister. She will protect me, save me. I must find her!
Not wishing to acknowledge my folly, I merely said, “He’s gone,” and felt defeated.
“You’ll gain a better view from the horses,” he said. He led me back to them, picked me up bodily, and set me on the saddle. He, too, mounted.
“Look about. Do you see him?”
Gazing over the hordes of people I saw no hint of Father.
“He’s . . . gone,” I managed to say. “I don’t know where.” Then, with distress, I admitted, “I’m not even sure it was him.”
The captain stood high in his saddle and looked about as if he might spy him out, but of course he had no idea what he looked like.
I suddenly wanted to tell the captain everything that had happened, my father’s disappearance for reasons I did not know, my desire to find him and even more, my sister, Charity. I held back, fearful of telling him too much, not wishing to be any more entangled with him than I already was. Though for the most part he acted kindly, I reminded myself he was a highwayman, that he had kidnapped me for some purpose of his own.
Ashamed of my confused emotions and thoughts, I dried my face and sat there looking round at the crowds of people. It was of no use. If I had seen my father, he had gone. I knew not where. But all in all, I gave myself this flutter of hope: Father was in this vast city, somewhere. More vitally, so was my sister.
Captain Hawkes bestowed a sympathetic smile and patted my arm. “Let’s believe it was him,” he said. “That way we have every reason to think we can find him. Now, stay close.”
I followed mutely, but then my horse was still tethered to his, so I had little choice. As I gazed upon the multitude of people I had eyes only for what I did not see, my sister.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
In Which I Discover a Loss, but Perhaps a Gain.
The captain led me to his home. At first sight I was taken aback by its size and apparent wealth, but the captain assured me he lived only in a top-floor garret.
We got off our horses and removed the captain’s heavy saddle bags, which were full of money and that gold snuffbox. Then we turned to the house.
The house itself was red brick, four stories high, including top garrets with many windows, or rather places for windows, for the government counted windows so as to calculate a building tax. As a result, some windows were covered over, and sat upon the face of the building like sleeping eyes.
Behind an iron fence, we stepped up a few stone steps to the front door, next to which, on the ground, was a bar of iron. The captain explained the bar was meant for scraping London mud from the soles of boots. London had much in excess but perhaps mud was what it manufactured most.
The door opened and a boy stepped out. “Put these horses in the stable,” the captain said to him, giving him a small coin. To me, he said, “Come along.”
The small coin was my introduction to a fundamental London fact: One paid for everything, even courtesy.
Inside the building was a flight of stairs that went up and around floor by floor until it reached the top. As we progressed, the captain informed me who lived in each area. “They think of me as a charming young gentleman of independent means.”
For my part I was disliking him more and more.
When we reached the highest level, he unlocked two stout locks that kept a door closed. “My London home,” he announced as we stepped inside.
It was far less splendid than all his talk of wealth and success had led me to believe. The one room had an empty fireplace on the left-side wall, with an artistic print fastened over the mantel. On the right wall, a freestanding closet. Three chairs, a small table (on which stood a bottle of ink, quills, and paper). Where the roof slanted sharply down, a bed built into the wall. Such was the furniture. Over the bed was a small window plus a narrow shelf that held three leather-bound books. I recall a small cupboard attached to a wall. The floor was bare. There was no more.
He pointed to one of the chairs and said, “You may sit there.”
As I did, he set his bags of money on the table, poured out the coins, and began to stack them on the table. “In business,” he said to me over his shoulder, “accounting is the thing. If you don’t know what money you have, you might as well have nothing.”
I sat still, my mind in a whirl about thinking I’d seen Father, trying to plan how I might escape and search for him. I had some money. To reassure myself I put my hand in my pocket. That crumpled letter from my father was there. As for the coins, they were not there.
“My money is gone!” I cried out.
“Where had you put it?”
“My trouser pocket.”
“The worst place,” he admonished. “When you went into the crowd,” he said, “a shoulder sham must have taken it.” He showed no surprise but merely stated this as an ordinary occurrence.
“What’s . . . a shoulder sham?” I asked.
“A pickpocket. These knuckle wipes, as some call them, are everywhere. Highly skilled, too. Boys and girls, for the most part. Rather like you,” he added with a smile.
“I felt nothing,?
?? I protested.
“I’ll need to teach you some security, how to notice when you’re being plucked.”
With those casual words he turned back to his accounting.
For me it was yet another catastrophe. Now I had no money by which to gain my independence. I stood beside Hawkes watching him count and stack his coins. This is when I suddenly observed that shilling with a scratch across its face: my shilling.
It was none other than the captain who had picked my pocket! And he had done it so he might increase my dependency.
Even so, I felt powerless to say or do anything.
Instead, I wandered around the room, as if I were in a cage. At one point I paused to look at the print that was over the fireplace. It depicted a handsome young man, dressed in high fashion. Next to him an old, ugly woman. They were holding hands. She was smiling. He looked grim. A minister stood before them. Beneath the print were the words:
Married for Money!!!
I supposed it was meant to be humorous. The faces of the man and woman were highly animated.
I looked at the words again, “Married for Money.” As I did I felt a sudden prickle in my brain. I yanked my father’s letter from my pocket and looked at what was written:
Charity XX XXXXX XX be mXXXXXd!!
Only then did I finally grasp what the smeared letters meant: Charity was planning to be married! Or had already done so.
My shock was great, but at least it enabled me to understand why Father had dashed to London so suddenly. Charity married! It would be the last thing he would have allowed her to do.
As I was trying to make sense of my discovery, the captain said, “There. Everything tabulated.” He sanded the wet ink so it would not smudge—the way my father’s letter had smudged. Then he held his paper up to the light and read over what he had written. “Now we have to bring this information to the man who will decide what to do with it. And the quantity of money I received must be reported to Mr. Wild. At the King’s Head Inn.”
Mr. Wild! The man so many had spoken about with awe and dread. The name jolted me from my thoughts about Charity and Father. “Must I see him?”