Morgan’s Run Page 3

  “No, Father, not Bill. Not Will. Not Willy, not Billy, not even William. His name is William Henry, and so he will be known by everybody,” said Richard so firmly that the debate ended.

  Truth to tell, this decision gratified the whole clan. Someone known to everybody as William Henry was bound to be a great man.

  Richard gave voice to this verdict when he displayed his new son to Mr. James Thistlethwaite, who snorted.

  “Aye, like Lord Clare,” he said. “Started out a schoolmaster, married three fat and ugly old widows of enormous fortune, was—er—lucky enough to be shriven of them in quick succession, became a Member of Parliament for Bristol, and so met the Prince of Wales. Plain Robert Nugent. Rrrrrrrrrolling in the soft, which he proceeded to lend liberally to Georgy-Porgy Pudden ’n’ Pie, our bloated Heir. No interest and no repayment of the principal until even the King could not ignore the debt. So plain Robert Nugent was apotheosized into Viscount Clare, and now has a Bristol street named after him. He will end an earl, as my London informants tell me that his soft is still going princeward at a great rate. You have to admit, my dear Richard, that the schoolmaster did well for himself.”

  “Indeed he did,” said Richard, not at all offended. “Though I would rather,” he said after a pause, “that William Henry earned his peerage by becoming First Lord of the Admiralty. Generals are always noblemen because army officers have to buy their promotions, but admirals can scramble up with prize-money and the like.”

  “Spoken like a true Bristolian! Ships are never far from any Bristolian’s thoughts. Though, Richard, ye have no experience of them beyond looking.” Mr. Thistlethwaite sipped his rum and waited with keen anticipation for the warm glow to commence inside him.

  “Looking,” said Richard, his cheek against William Henry’s, “is quite close enough to ships for me.”

  “D’ye never yearn for foreign parts? Not even London?”

  “Nay. I was born in Bristol and I will die in Bristol. Bath and Bedminster are quite as far as I ever wish to go.” He held William Henry out and looked his son in the eye; for such a young babe, the gaze was astonishingly steady. “Eh, William Henry? Perhaps you will end in being the family’s traveler.”

  Idle speculation. As far as Richard was concerned, simply having William Henry was enough.

  The anxiety, however, was omnipresent, in Peg as well as Richard. Both of them fussed over the slightest deviation from William Henry’s habitual path—were his stools a little too runny?—was his brow too warm?—ought he not to be more forward for his age? None of this mattered a great deal during the first six months of William Henry’s life, but his grandparents fretted over what was going to happen as he grew into noticing, crawling, talking—and thinking! That doting pair were going to ruin the child! They listened avidly to anything Cousin James-the-druggist had to say on subjects few Bristolians—or other sorts of English people—worried their heads about. Like the state of the drains, the putridity of the Froom and Avon, the noxious vapors which hung over the city as ominously in winter as in summer. A remark about the Broad Street privy vault had Peg on her knees inside the closet beneath the stairs with rags and bucket, brush and oil of tar, scrubbing at the ancient stone seat and the floor, whitewashing ruthlessly. While Richard went down to the Council House and made such a nuisance of himself to various Corporation slugs that the honey-sledges actually arrived en masse to empty the privy vault, rinse it several times, and then tip the result of all this activity into the Froom at the Key Head right next door to the fish markets.

  When William Henry passed the six-months mark and began to change into a person, his grandparents discovered that he was the kind of child who cannot be ruined. Such was the sweetness of his nature and the humility of his tiny soul that he accepted all the attention gratefully, yet never complained if it were not given. He cried because he had a pain or some tavern fool had frightened him, though of Mr. Thistlethwaite (by far the most terrifying denizen of the Cooper’s Arms) he was not in the least afraid no matter how loudly he roared. His character inclined to thoughtful silences; though he would smile readily, he would not laugh, and never looked either sad or ill-tempered.

  “I declare that he has the temperament of a monastery friar,” said Mr. Thistlethwaite. “Ye may have bred up a Carthlick yet.”

  Five days ago a whisper had surfaced at the Cooper’s Arms: a few cases of the smallpox had appeared, but too widely dispersed to think of containment by quarantine, every city’s first—and last—desperate hope.

  Peg’s eyes started from her head. “Oh, Richard, not again!”

  “We will have William Henry inoculated” was Richard’s answer. After which he sent a message to Cousin James-the-druggist.

  Who looked aghast when told what was required of him. “Jesus, Richard, no! Inoculation is for older folk! I have never heard of it for a babe barely out of his clouts! It would kill him! Far better to do one of two things—send him away to the farm, or keep him here in as much isolation as ye can. And pray, whichever course ye choose.”

  “Inoculation, Cousin James. It must be inoculation.”

  “Richard, I will not do it!” Cousin James-the-druggist turned to Dick, listening grimly. “Dick, say something! Do something! I beseech you!”

  For once Richard’s father stood by him. “Jim, neither course would work. To get William Henry out of Bristol—no, hear me out!—to get William Henry out of Bristol would mean hiring a hackney, and who can tell what manner of person last sat in it? Or who might be on the ferry at Rownham Meads? And how can we isolate anybody in a tavern? This ain’t St. James’s on a Sunday, lively though that can be. All manner of folk come through my door. No, Jim, it must be inoculation.”

  “Be it on your own heads, then!” cried Cousin James-the-druggist as he stumbled off, wringing his hands, to enquire of a doctor friend whereabouts he might find a victim of the smallpox who had reached rupture-of-the-pustules stage. Not so difficult a task; people were coming down with the disease everywhere. Mostly under the age of fifteen.

  “Pray for me,” Cousin James-the-druggist said to his doctor friend as he laid his ordinary darning needle down across a running sore on the twelve-year-old girl’s face and turned it over and over to coat it with pus. Oh, poor soul! It had been such a pretty face, but it never would be again. “Pray for me,” he said as he rose to his feet and put the sopping needle on a bed of lint in a small tin case. “Pray that I am not about to do murder.”

  He hastened immediately to the Cooper’s Arms, not a very long walk. And there, the partly naked William Henry on his knee, he took the darning needle from its case, placed its point against—against—oh, where ought he to do this murder? And such a public one, between the regulars sitting in their usual places, Mr. Thistlethwaite making a show of casually sucking his teeth, and the Morgans looming in a ring around him as if to prevent his fleeing should he take a notion to do so. Suddenly it was done; he pinched the flesh of William Henry’s arm just below the left shoulder, pushed the big needle in, then drew it out an inch away by its point.

  William Henry did not flinch, did not cry. He turned his large and extraordinary eyes upon Cousin James’s sweating face and looked a question—why did you do that to me? It hurt!

  Oh why, why did I? I have never seen such eyes in a head! Not animal’s eyes, but not human either. This is a strange child.

  So he kissed William Henry all over his face, wiped away his own tears, put the needle back in its tin to burn the whole thing later in his hottest furnace, and handed William Henry to Richard.

  “There, it is done. Now I am going to pray. Not for William Henry’s soul—what babe needs fear for stains on that? To pray for my own soul, that I have not done murder. Have you some vinegar and oil of tar? I would wash my hands.”

  Mag produced a small jug of vinegar, a bottle of oil of tar, a pewter dish and a clean clout.

  “Nothing will happen for three or four days,” he said as he rubbed away, “but then, if it takes, he
will develop a fever. If it has taken to the proper degree, the fever will not be malign. And at some time the inoculation itself will fester, produce a pustule, and burst. All going well, ’twill be the only one. But I cannot say for sure, and I do not thank ye for this business.”

  “You are the best man in Bristol, Cousin James!” cried Mr. Thistlethwaite jovially.

  Cousin James-the-druggist paused in the doorway. “I am not your cousin, Jem Thistlethwaite—ye have no relations! Not even a mother,” he said in freezing tones, pushed his wig back onto his head properly, and vanished.

  Mine Host shook with laughter. “That is telling ye, Jem!”

  “Aye,” grinned Jem, unabashed. “Do not worry,” he said to Richard, “God would not dare offend Cousin James.”

  Having walked for much longer than he had prayed, Richard arrived back at the Cooper’s Arms just in time to give a hand with supper. Barley broth made on beef shins tonight, with plump, bacony dumplings simmering in it, as well as the usual fare of bread, butter, cheese, cake and liquid refreshments.

  The panic had died down and Broad Street was back to normal except that John/Samuel Adams and John Hancock still swung from the signpost of the American Coffee House. They would probably, Richard reflected, remain there until time and weather blew their stuffing all over the place and naught was left save limp rags.

  Nodding to his father as he passed, Richard scrambled upstairs to the back half of the room at their top, which Dick had partitioned off in the customary way—a few planks from floor to near the ceiling, not snugly tenoned and joined like the wales of ships, but rather held together by an occasional strut and therefore full of cracks, some wide enough to put an eye to.

  Richard and Peg’s back room held an excellent double bed with thick linen curtains drawn about it from rails connecting its four tall posts, several chests for clothing, a cupboard for shoes and boots, a mirror on one wall for Peg to prink in front of, a dozen hooks on the same wall, and William Henry’s gimbaled cot. There were no fifteen-shillings-a-yard wallpapers, no damask hangings, no carpets on the oak floor so old it had gone black two centuries ago, but it was quite as good a room as any one would see in any house of similar standing, namely of the middling classes.

  Peg was by the cot, swinging it gently back and forth.

  “How is he, my love?”

  She looked up, smiling contentedly. “It has taken. He has a fever, but it is not burning him up. Cousin James-the-druggist came while you were walking, and seemed very relieved. He thinks William Henry will recover without developing the full pox.”

  Because his left upper arm was sore, Richard assumed, William Henry lay sleeping on his right side with the offending limb drawn comfortably across his chest. Where the needle had passed through the flesh a great red welt was growing; his palm almost touching it, Richard could feel the heat in the thing.

  “It is early!” he exclaimed.

  “Cousin James says it often is after inoculation.”

  Knees shaking from the sheer relief of learning that his son had survived his ordeal, Richard went to a hook on the wall and plucked his stout canvas apron from it. “I must help father. Thank God, thank God!” He was still thanking God as he bounded down the stairs, it having slipped his mind that until he saw William Henry’s pustule developing, he had quite given up on God.

  For places like the Cooper’s Arms the relaxed atmosphere of long summer evenings brought benefits in its wake; the tavern’s regular clientele were respectable people who earned a better than subsistence living—tradesmen and artisans in the main, and accompanied by their wives and children. Between threepence and fourpence a head bought them plenty of palatable food and a big pitcher of small beer, and for those who preferred full beer, rum or gin or Bristol milk (a sherry much favored by the women), another sixpence would see them merry enough to tumble into bed and sleep the moment they got home, safe from footpads and the press gangs because that extended gloaming kept darkness at bay.

  So Richard descended into a social club still golden-lit as much from the westering sun outside as from the oil lamps fixed to the exposed beams of walls and ceiling, black against the brilliant pallor of whitewashed plaster. The only portable lamp burned at Mine Host’s place behind his counter, at the far end of it from Ginger, the tavern’s most famous attraction.

  Ginger was a large wooden cat Richard had carved after reading of the renowned Old Tom in London—a distinct improvement on the original, he prided himself. It stood diagonally across the boards with its nether regions closest to the drinkers, an orange-striped cat with jaws open in a wide smile and tail at a jaunty angle. When a customer wanted a measure of rum, he put a threepenny coin into its mouth and rested it upon the flexible tongue, which flopped down with an audible click. Then he held his mug beneath the two realistic testicles at its rear and pulled the tail; the cat promptly pissed exactly half a pint of rum.

  Naturally the older children present were its greatest users; many a dad and mum were wheedled into drinking more than they ought for the sheer pleasure of putting a coin into Ginger’s mouth, pulling his tail, and watching him piss a stream of rum. If Richard had done no more for the Cooper’s Arms than that, he had vindicated his father’s generosity in taking him into the business.

  As Richard crossed the sawdust-strewn floor with wooden bowls full of steaming broth distributed precariously up both arms, he exchanged conversation with everybody, his face lighting up as he told them of William Henry’s optimistic prognosis.

  Mr. Thistlethwaite was not there. He came at eleven in the morning and stayed until five, sitting at “his” table under the window, which bore an inkwell and several quills (but he could buy his own paper, said Dick Morgan tersely), composing his lampoons. These were printed up by Sendall’s bookshop in Wine Street and sold there, though Mr. Thistlethwaite also had outlets on a few stalls in Pie Powder Court and Horse Fair, far enough from Sendall’s not to affect its market. They sold extremely well, for Mr. Thistlethwaite owned a rare ripeness of epithet and was apt into the bargain. His targets were usually Corporation officials from the Mayor through the Commander of Customs to the Sheriff, or religious entities addicted to pluralism, or those who presided over the courts. Though quite why he had it in for Henry Burgum the pewterer was a mystery—oh, Burgum was a dyed-in-the-wool villain, but what precisely had he done to Mr. James Thistlethwaite?

  And so the supper hour wore down amid a general feeling of repletion and well-being, until promptly at eight o’clock by the old timepiece on the wall next to the slate, Dick Morgan rapped: “Settle up accounts, gentlemen!” After which, his tin cash box satisfyingly heavy, he shepherded the last toddler out the door and bolted it securely. The cash box went upstairs with him and was deposited beneath his own bed with a string tied from its handle to his big toe. Bristol had more than its share of thieves, some of them most artful. In the morning he transferred the mass of coins to a canvas bag and took it to the Bristol Bank in Small Street, a concern headed by, among others, a Harford, an Ames and a Deane. Though no matter which one of Bristol’s three banks a man patronized, it would be Quakers looking after his money.

  William Henry was sleeping soundly on his right side; Richard lifted the cot closer to the bed, took off his apron, his voluminous white cotton shirt, his linen breeches, his shoes and thick white cotton stockings, and his flannel underdrawers. Then he donned the linen nightshirt Peg had draped across his pillow, untied the ribbon confining his long locks and fitted a nightcap securely over them. All this done, he slipped into bed with a sigh.

  Two very different snores emanated through the gaps in the partition between this room and the front one where Dick and Mag slept, but not like the dead. Snores were the epitome of life. Dick produced a resonant rumble, whereas Mag wheezed and whistled. Smiling to himself, Richard rolled onto his side and found Peg, who snuggled up to him despite the warmth of the night and began to kiss his cheek. Very carefully Richard pleated up his nightshirt and hers, then fitt
ed himself against her and cupped a hand around one high, firm breast.

  “Oh, Peg, I do love you!” he whispered. “No man was ever gifted with a better wife.”

  “Nor woman with a better husband, Richard.”

  In complete agreement, they kissed down to the velvet of their tongues while she nudged her mound against his growing member and purred her pleasure.

  “Perhaps,” he mumbled afterward, his eyes unwilling to stay open, “we have made a brother or sister for William Henry.” He had barely uttered the words before he was asleep.

  Though as tired as he, Peg yanked at his nightshirt until it shielded his body from the bottom sheet, then adjusted her own with a dab of its tail to blot the moisture from her crotch. Oh, she thought, I wish Dad and Mum did not snore! Richard does not, and nor, he tells me, do I. Still, snores mean that they sleep and do not hear us. And thank you, dearest Lord, for being kind to my little boy. I know that he is so good You must want him to adorn Heaven, but he adorns this earth too, and he should have his chance. Yet why, dearest Lord, do I feel that I will have no other children?

  For she did feel this, and it was a torment. Three years she had waited to fall the first time, then another three years before she fell the second time. Not that she had carried either child poorly, or been unduly sick, or suffered cramps and spasms. Just that somewhere inside her soul she sensed a womb leached of its fertility. The fault did not lie with Richard. Did she so much as look sideways at him with an invitation, he would have her, and never failed (save when a child was ill) to have her when they went to bed. Such a kind and considerate lover! Such a kind and considerate man. His own appetites and pleasures were less important to him than those of the folk who mattered to him. Especially hers and William Henry’s. And Mary’s. A tear fell into the down pillow and more followed, faster and faster. Why do our children have to go before us? It is not fair, it is not just. I am twoscore and five, Richard is twoscore and seven. Yet we have lost our firstborn, and I miss her so! Oh, how much I miss her!