Morgan’s Run Page 5

  Mr. Thistlethwaite shrugged. “He is a scapegoat, Dick, no more. It is necessary that England rest easy, and what better way to ensure that than to have a culprit? A Scotchman is ideal. I do not know about the Portsmouth fire, but the Bristol ones were set by the Tories, I would stake my life on it.”

  “So you think there will be more fires?”

  “Nay! The ruse has succeeded. American money has fled, Bristol is washed clean of it. The Tories can recline comfortably upon their laurels and let poor Jack the Painter bear the blame.”

  Bear the blame he did. James Aiten, alias Jack the Painter, was tried at the Hampshire Assizes for the Royal Navy rope house fire, and convicted. After which he was conveyed to Portsmouth, where a special gallows had been built for the well-attended occasion. The drop was a full 67 feet, which meant that when Jack the Painter was kicked off a stool and launched into eternity, coming to the end of his tether chopped off his head neater than an axe could have. The head was then displayed on the Portsmouth battlements for all to see, and England rested easy.

  Jack the Painter had assured his interrogators that he alone was responsible for all the fires.

  “Not,” said Cousin James-the-druggist, “that I am satisfied by such an assurance. However, Easter has come and gone and there have been no more fires, so—who knoweth, as a Quaker might ask? All I know is that God spared me.”

  Two days later Senhor Tomas Habitas the gunsmith walked into the Cooper’s Arms.

  “Sir!” cried Richard, greeting him with a smile and a very warm handshake. “Sit down, sit down! A glass of Bristol milk?”

  “Thank you, Richard.”

  The tavern was empty apart from Mr. Thistlethwaite; prosperity was declining rapidly. So this unexpected visitor found himself the center of attention, a fact which seemed to please him.

  A Portuguese Jew who had emigrated thirty years ago, Senhor Tomas Habitas was small, slender, olive-skinned and dark-eyed, with a long face, big nose and full mouth. About him hung a faint aura of aloofness, something he shared in common with the Quakers; a knowledge, perhaps, that he was too different ever to fit into the ordinary Bristol mold. The city had been good to him, as indeed it was to all Jews, who, unlike the papists, were permitted to worship God in their own fashion, had their burying ground in Jacob Street and two synagogues across the Avon in Temple parish; Jewishness was less of an impediment to social and economic success by far than Roman Catholicism. Mostly due to the fact that there were no Jewish (or Quaker) pretenders to His Britannic yet Germanic Majesty’s throne. Bonnie Prince Charlie and 1745 were still fresh in every mind, and Ireland not very distant.

  “What brings you so far from home, sir?” asked Dick Morgan, presenting the guest with a large glass (made by the Jewish firm of Jacobs) of deep amber, very sweet sherry.

  The narrow black eyes darted about the empty room, returning to Richard rather than to Dick. “Business is bad,” he said in a surprisingly deep voice, only lightly accented.

  “Aye, sir,” said Richard, sitting down opposite the visitor.

  “I am very sorry to see it.” Senhor Habitas paused. “I may be able to help.” He put his long, sensitive hands upon the table, and folded them. “We have this war with the American colonies to thank, I know. However, the war has brought increased business to some. And to me, very much so. Richard, I need you. Will you come back to work?”

  While Richard was still opening his mouth to answer, Dick butted in. “On what terms, Senhor Habitas?” he asked, a little truculently. He knew his Richard—too soft to insist upon terms before he said yes.

  The enigmatic eyes in the smooth face did not change. “On good terms, Mister Morgan,” he said. “Four shillings a musket.”

  “Done!” said Dick instantly.

  Only Mr. Thistlethwaite was looking at Richard, and in some pity. Did he never have a chance to decide his own destiny? The blue-grey eyes in Richard Morgan’s handsome face held neither anger nor dissatisfaction. Christ, he was patient! Patient with his father, with his wife, his mother, the patrons, Cousin James-the-druggist—the list really had no end. It seemed the only person for whom Richard would go to war was William Henry, and then it was a quiet business, steadfast rather than choleric. What does lie within you, Richard Morgan? Do you know yourself? If Dick were my father, I’d give him a bunch of fives that knocked him to the floor. Whereas you bear with his megrims and his fits and starts, his criticisms, even his too thinly veiled contempt for you. What is your philosophy? Where do you find your strength? Strength you have, I know it. But it is allied to—resignation? No, not quite that. You are a mystery to me, yet I like you better than any other man I know. And I fear for you. Why? Because I have a feeling that so much patience and forebearance will tempt God to try you.

  * * *

  Oblivious to Mr. Thistlethwaite’s concern for him, Richard returned to the Habitas workshop and settled to make Brown Bess for the soldiers fighting in the American war.

  A gunsmith made a gun, but not its component parts. These came from various places: the steel barrel, forged into a tube by a hammer, from Birmingham, as did the steel parts of the flintlock; the walnut stock from any one of a dozen localities throughout England; and the brass or copper fittings from around Bristol.

  “You will be pleased to know,” said Habitas when Richard reported on his first day, “that we have been commissioned to make the Short Land musket—a little lighter and easier to handle.”

  At 42 inches, it was 4 inches shorter than the old Long Land still employed at the time of the Seven Years’ War, and a distinct improvement as far as an infantryman was concerned. Though its fire was quite as accurate, it weighed a half-pound lighter and was less unwieldy.

  When Richard sat down at his bench on a high stool, everything he needed was distributed about him. The polished stocks with their long, half-moon barrel supports were turned in one piece, and stood in a frame to his left. To his right were the tanged barrels, each with pierced tenons on its under side. In receptacles on the bench were the various parts of the flintlock itself—springs, cocks, sears, frizzens, triggers, tumblers, screws, flints—and the brass bands, tubes, flanges and supports which bound the gun together. Between all these receptacles he spread out his tools, which were his own property and carried to and fro each day inside a hefty mahogany box bearing his name on a brass plate. There were dozens of files and screwdrivers; pincers, metal snips, tweezers, small hammers, a drill brace and assorted bits; and a collection of woodworking tools. Having been properly taught, he made his own emery papers out of canvas, sprinkling the abrasive black particles onto a base of very strong fish-glue, and used the same technique to fashion different sizes of emery sticks, some pointed, some rounded, some blunt and stubby. Filing parts down was at least fifty per cent of gunsmithing art, and so expert was Richard that his sawyer brother, William, would let no one else sharpen the teeth of his saws when it came time to set them anew.

  What Richard had not realized until he picked up the first barrel to polish off the rust and then brown it with butter of antimony was how much he had missed practicing his craft. Six years! A long time. Yet his hands were sure, his mind enchanted at the prospect of assembling the pieces of a puzzle designed to kill men. A gunsmith’s reasoning processes, however, did not progress far enough to come to this ultimate conclusion; a gunsmith simply loved what he did and thought not at all about its destructive outcome.

  The largest part of the work concerned the flintlock itself. The stock had to be carved delicately to fit it, then each spring and moving component had to be filed, adjusted, filed, adjusted, filed, adjusted, until finally mechanical harmony was achieved and it came time to put the flint in. Those in Norfolk and Suffolk who knapped the flints were craftsmen too, chipping away until the blocky chunk was faceted at its business end to precise specifications. Richard’s job was to line up the angle at which the flint struck the frizzen, a leafy-looking, inch-wide, L-shaped piece of steel whose base covered the powder pan. As the
cock snapped forward and the flint struck, they forced the frizzen up and off the powder pan, at the same moment producing a shower of sparks. When the flint was properly positioned in the jaws of the cock, this shower of sparks was great enough to set off the powder in the pan; it flashed through a small touch hole into the breech of the barrel, and here in turn ignited the powder packed beneath the missile. In the case of Brown Bess, the missile was a lead ball .753 inches in diameter.

  There was nothing Richard did not know about Brown Bess. He knew that she was useless at any range exceeding 100 yards, and of best use when the range was 40 yards or less. Which meant that opposing sides were very close before Brown Bess was fired, and that a good soldier would get in two shots at most before either engaging with bayonets or retreating. He knew that it was a very rare battle in which a man fired his Brown Bess more than ten times. He knew that her powder charge was a mere 70 grains—less than a fifth of an ounce—and he understood every aspect of gunpowder manufacture, for as a part of his apprenticeship he had spent time in the gunpowder works at Tower Harratz on the Avon in Temple Meads. He knew that there was a strong likelihood that only one in four of the Brown Besses he made would ever be fired in combat. He knew that her caliber was close enough (the ball was two sizes smaller than the smooth interior of the barrel) to French, Portuguese and Spanish caliber to enable cartridges from those three countries to be fired from her. And he knew that if one of her balls did strike a human target, the chances of survival were slim. If a man were chest- or gut-shot, his insides were a butchered shambles; if he were limb-shot, his bones were so fragmented that amputation was the only treatment.

  It took him two hours to craft his first Brown Bess, but after that the rhythm came back, and by the end of the day he was making one musket an hour. For him, fabulous money at four shillings a gun, but for Senhor Habitas, far more. After deducting the costs of parts and Richard’s labor, Senhor Habitas made a profit of ten shillings a gun. There were cheaper gunsmithies, but a Habitas product fired. In the hands of a trained fusilier, no hang fires and no flashes in the pan. Senhor Habitas also made sure that he was present to watch his gunsmiths test fire the guns they made.

  “I am not,” he said to Richard as they strolled through to the proving butt while there was still light enough to see, “putting on any apprentices. Just qualified gunsmiths, and preferably those I have schooled myself.” He looked suddenly very serious. “It will end, my beloved Richard, do not think otherwise. I give this war another three or four years, and I cannot see the French emerging from it in any state to fight us yet again. So we have work aplenty now, but it will cease, and I will have to let you go a second time. One reason why I am willing to pay you four shillings a gun. For I have never seen work as good as yours, and you are quick.”

  Richard did not reply, which was so much his habit that Tomas Habitas had not expected a reply. Richard was a listener. He took in what was said to him with illuminating intelligence, yet would make no comment for the sake of talking. Information went aboard and straight into the cargo holds of his mind, there to stay until events required that he unload it. Perhaps, thought Habitas, that is why, even apart from his work, I am so fond of him. He is a truly peaceful man who minds his own business.

  The ten Brown Besses that Richard had made were standing in a rack, fetched there by the ten-year-old lad whom Habitas employed as a menial. Richard picked up the first one, removed the ramrod from its pipes beneath the part of the stock supporting the barrel, and reached into a bin for a cartridge. The ball and powder lay inside a little bag of paper; Richard produced a mouthful of spit, sank his teeth hard into the base of the paper to rupture and moisten it, tipped the powder into the barrel, screwed up the paper and jammed it after the powder, then pushed the ball in. A deft thrust with the ramrod and the lot was snug in the breech at the bottom of the barrel. As he swung the musket up to his shoulder he rapped it smartly over the firing pan to clear powder out of the touch hole, and pulled the trigger. The cock, chunk of flint in its jaws, came down and struck the frizzen. Sparks, explosion and a huge puff of smoke seemed to happen all at once; a bottle forty yards away on a shelf in the range wall disintegrated.

  “You have not lost your touch,” purred Senhor Habitas while the lad, barefoot, swept up the glass with a broom and put another dull brown, Bristol-made bottle up.

  “Say that after I have fired all ten,” said Richard, grinning.

  Nine behaved perfectly. The tenth needed a little more filing of the frizzen spring—not a major task, as it lay on the outside of the lock mechanism.

  When Richard walked into the Cooper’s Arms he snatched William Henry from his high chair and held him tight, curbing his impulse to squeeze and hug until the child could scarcely breathe. William Henry, William Henry, how much I love you! Like life, like air, like the sun, like God in His Heaven! Then, leaning his cheek against his son’s curls, his eyes closed, he felt a fine convulsive trembling right through the little body. It was as invisible as a cat’s purr; he found it only by way of his fingertips. A vibrating anguish. Anguish? Why that word? His eyes snapped open, he held William Henry out at arm’s length and looked into his face. Secret, shut away.

  “He did not seem to miss ye at all,” said Dick comfortably.

  “He ate every scrap on his plate,” said Mag proudly.

  “He was as happy as a lark in my company,” said Peg with a sly flash of triumph.

  His knees began to buckle; Richard sank into a chair near the counter and cuddled his son close again. The fine tremor had gone. Oh, William Henry, what are you thinking? Did you decide that Dadda was never coming back? Until today Dadda has never been away from you for more than an hour or two, and did anybody remember to tell you that Dadda would be home at twilight? No, nobody did. Including me. And you did not cry, or refuse to eat, or display concern. But you thought I was never coming back. That I would not be here for you. “I will always be here for you,” he whispered against William Henry’s ear. “Always and always.”

  “How did it go?” asked Peg, who could still, after eighteen months of watching Richard with William Henry, find herself amazed at her husband’s—weakness?—softness? It is not healthy, she thought. He needs our child to feed something in himself, something I have no idea of. Well, I love William Henry every bit as much as he does! And now is my chance to have my son for me.

  “It went well,” said Richard, answering her question, then looked at Dick, his gaze a little remote. “I have earned two pounds today, Father. A pound for you and a pound for me.”

  “No,” said Dick gruffly. “Ten shillings for me, thirty for you. That much will see me through even when the day brings no custom at all. Pay me two shillings more for your family’s board, and bank the other twenty-eight shillings for yourself. He means to pay ye every Saturday, I hope? None of this by-the-month business, or when he is paid for the goods?”

  “Every Saturday, Father.”

  That night when Richard turned to find Peg and carefully roll up her nightgown, she slapped his hands away nastily.

  “No, Richard!” she whispered fiercely. “William Henry is not asleep yet, and he is old enough to understand!”

  He lay in the darkness listening to the rumbles and wheezes from the front room, weary to the bone from an unaccustomed kind of labor, yet wide awake. Today had been the beginning of many new things. A job at work he loved, separation from a child he loved, separation from a wife he loved, the realization that he could hurt people he loved all unknowing. It should be so simple. Nothing drove him save love—he had to work to support his family, to make sure they did not want. Yet Peg had slapped his hands away for the first time since they had married, and William Henry had trembled a cat’s purr.

  What can I do? How can I find a solution? Today I have unwittingly opened up a chasm, though for the best of reasons. I have never asked for much nor expected much. Just the presence of my family. In that is happiness. I belong to them, and they belong to me. Or so I
thought. Does a chasm always open up when things change? How deep is it? How wide?

  “Senhor Habitas,” he said as dawn broke on his second day of work, “how many muskets do ye expect me to make in a day?”

  Not a blink; Tomas Habitas rarely blinked. “Why, Richard?”

  “I do not want to stay from dawn to dusk, sir. It is not as it was in the old days. My family have need of me too.”

  “That I understand,” said Senhor Habitas gently. “The dilemma is insoluble. One works to make money to ensure the comfort and well-being of one’s family, yet one’s family needs more than money, and a man cannot be in two places at the same instant of time. I am paying you per musket, Richard. That means as many or as few as ye care to make.” He shrugged, an alien gesture. “Yes, I would like fifteen or twenty in a day, but I am prepared to take one. It is your choice.”

  “Ten in a day, sir?”

  “Ten is perfectly satisfactory.”

  So Richard walked home to the Cooper’s Arms in mid afternoon, his ten muskets completed and successfully tested. Senhor Habitas was pleased; he would see enough of William Henry and Peg as well as bank enough to make that house on Clifton Hill a reality. His son was walking; soon the allurements of Broad Street would beckon through the open tavern door and William Henry would go adventuring. Better by far that his footsteps led him along paths perfumed with flowers than paths redolent with the stench of the Froom at low tide.

  But it was neither Peg nor William Henry who reached him first when he walked in; Mr. James Thistlethwaite leaped up from “his” table to envelop Richard in a massive hug.

  “Let me go, Jem! Those pistols will go off!”

  “Richard, Richard! I thought I’d not see ye again!”

  “Not see me again? Why? Had I worked from dawn to dusk—and as you see, I am not—you would still have seen me in winter,” said Richard, detaching himself and holding out his arms to William Henry, who toddled into them. Then Peg came, smiling an apology with her eyes, to kiss him full upon the lips. Thus when Richard sat down at Jem Thistlethwaite’s table he felt as if his world had glued itself back together again; the chasm was not there.