Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

Politically, both sides were striving to make capital out of the business; the Tories accused the Whigs and the Whigs accused the Tories. Edmund Burke put up £50 for information, the Merchant Venturers contributed £500, the King a further £1,000. As £1,550 represented more than most could earn in a lifetime, Bristol turned detective and soon winkled out a likely suspect-though, of course, nobody got the reward. A Scotchman known as Jack the Painter, he had lodged at various houses in the Pithay, a tumbledown street which crossed the Froom along St. James’s Backs; after the second attempt to burn down Alderman Barnes’s sugar house, he suddenly disappeared. Though no real evidence existed to link him physically to the fires, all of Bristol was convinced he was the arsonist. A hue and cry went up, fueled by London and provincial news gazettes clear across the country. From the Tyne to the Channel, no one wanted a fire maniac on the loose. The fugitive was apprehended in the act of robbing a nabob’s house in Liverpool, and upon the payment of £128 in expenses by the Corporation and the Merchant Venturers, he was extradited in chains to Bristol for interrogation. Where an unexpected obstacle reared its head: nobody could understand a word the Scotchman said apart from his name, James Aiten. So he was shipped to London on the theory that in such a vast metropolis there would be some who could understand the Scotch dialect. As indeed proved to be the case. James Aiten, alias Jack the Painter, confessed to all the Bristol fires-and to one in Portsmouth which had burned the Royal Navy rope house to the ground. This last crime was heinous in the extreme; ships could not function without miles upon miles of rope.

“What I fail to see,” said Dick Morgan to Jem Thistlethwaite, “is how Jack the Painter could have done both Bristol and Portsmouth. The rope house was set afire in December, when he was definitely living in the Pithay for all to see.”

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 dayslater 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 toMr. 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.