Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“I cannot let him go!” she cried.

“You must. If you do not, Peg, then it is not your child who occupies your thoughts. It is you yourself.”

“I know, I know, I know!” she wept through her fingers, rocking. “But how can I stop? He is all I have-all I will ever have!”

“You have me.”

For a moment she did not answer. “Yes,” she said eventually, “I have you. But it is not the same, Richard, it is not the same. If anything were to happen to William Henry, I would die.”

Most of the light had gone; a grey little ray seeped through one of the cracks in the partition and rested like a cobweb on Richard Morgan’s face as he sat looking down on his wife. No, it is not the same, he thought. It is not the same.

Colston’s Schoolfor Boys had enabled many of the sons of the better class of Bristol’s poor to become lettered. It was by no means the only such; every religious denomination except the Roman Catholics had charity schools, particularly the Church of England. Only two of them had distinctive uniforms for their charity pupils, however. Colston’s boys wore blue coats, the Red Maids wore red dresses. Both Church of England, though the Red Maids were not so lucky; they were taught to read but not to write, and most of their time was taken up with embroidering silk waistcoats and coats for the gentry, work for which their mistresses were paid but they were not. Literacy and numeracy were better spread among Bristol’s males than in any other English city, including London. Elsewhere they tended to be the mark of the wealthy.

Colston’s 100 charity boys were boarders, of course, a fate which had befallen Richard; due to school and apprenticeship, he had seen his parents only on Sundays and during vacations between the ages of seven and nineteen. Imagine Peg coping with that! Luckily Colston’s provided another mode of education; for a fat fee, the child of a prosperous man could attend between seven in the morning and two in the afternoon from Mondays to Saturdays as a day pupil. With generous holidays, of course; no schoolmaster wished more punishment upon himself than the Church of England and the late Mr. Colston’s will prescribed.

To William Henry, trotting along beside his grandfather (Mag had thrown a temper tantrum which had effectively prevented Peg’s coming too) on that first morning, more than a gate to school and learning was being thrown open; this was the first day of a whole new life, and he was dying of curiosity. Perhaps had he been let go with Richard to see what gun-smithing was like it might not have gripped him so urgently, but the prison walls his mother had erected around him remained unbreached, and he was very tired of them. A more passionate and impulsive child would have railed at them with evident frustration, but William Henry was as patient and as self-controlled as his father. His watchword was “wait.” And now, at last, the waiting was over.

Colston’s School for Boys looked no different from two dozen other piles which rejoiced in titles like school or poorhouse or hospital or workhouse; grimy and not very well kept up, the glass in its windows never cleaned, its plaster shabby and its timbers crooked. Damp pervaded it from foundations to Tudor chimneys, the interior had never been designed for instruction, and the smell of the Froom mere yards away was nauseating for any save a native Bristolian nose.

It had a gate and a yard and what seemed like a thousand boys, perhaps half of them wearing the famous blue coat. Like the other paying day pupils, William Henry was not required to wear it; some of the day pupils were the sons of aldermen or Merchant Venturers who had no wish to besmirch their offspring with the taint of charity.

A tall, spindling man in the black suit and starched white stock of a clergyman approached Dick and William Henry, smiling to reveal discolored, rotting teeth: a rum drinker.

“Reverend Prichard,” said Dick, bowing.

“Mister Morgan.” The dark eyes turned to William Henry and widened. “This is Richard’s son?”

“Yes, this is William Henry.”

“Then come, William Henry.” And the Reverend Prichard set off across the yard without a backward glance.

William Henry followed, also without a backward glance; he was too busy digesting the chaos a boys’ schoolyard was before discipline cracked down.

“It is fortunate for you,” said the day pupil master, “that your birthday should coincide with the commencement of your schooling, Master William Henry Morgan. You will start learning with A for apple and the two-times table. I see ye have your slate, good.”

“Yes, sir,” said William Henry, whose manners were excellent.

That was the last collected thing he was to say unbidden until dinner time in the refectory, nor were his thought processes in much better order. It was so confusing! There were so many rules, none of which seemed to make any sense. Standing. Sitting. Kneeling. Praying. Parroting words. How to answer a query, how not to answer a query. Who did what to whom. Whereabouts this was, versus that.

His lessons took place in a vast room inhabited by the junior 100 of Colston’s pupils; several masters drifted from one group to another, or hectored one group without regard for the welfare of other groups. It was therefore of great advantage to William Henry Morgan that his grandfather, not busy enough in these hard times, had taught him to count, to know his ABC, and even to do a few simple sums. Otherwise he might have been overwhelmed.

Though the Reverend Prichard hovered, he did not take lessons. That duty for William Henry’s group rested with a Mr. Simpson, and it soon became apparent that Mr. Simpson had pronounced likes and dislikes when it came to his charges. Since he was willowy, sallow-skinned and looked to be in constant danger of vomiting, it was not surprising that he disliked the boys who snuffled with sickening gusto, or picked their noses, or displayed the sticky brown fingers which betrayed that they used them to wipe their dirty bottoms.

It was no torment for William Henry to do as he was told and-sit still!-don’t fidget!-don’t kick the bench!-don’t pick your nose!-don’t snuffle!-and don’t talk! Therefore Mr. Simpson appeared not to notice him beyond asking him his name and informing him that since there were already two Morgans at Colston’s, he would be known as “Morgan Tertius.” Another boy, asked the same question and giving a similar kind of reply, was foolish enough to protest that he did not want to be known as “Carter Minor.” Which earned him four vicious lashes with the cane, one for not saying “sir,” one for being presumptuous, and two for good luck.

The cane was a frightful instrument, one William Henry had no experience of whatsoever. In fact, he had lived for seven years without so much as being smacked. Therefore, he vowed, he would give no master at Colston’s any excuse for caning him. For by the time that eleven o’clock came and the entire school sat upon benches down either side of long tables in the refectory, William Henry had worked out who got the cane. The talkers, the nose pickers, the fidgeters, the snufflers, the dullards, the cheeky, and a small number of boys who could not seem to help getting up to mischief.

He did not care much for either of his closest companions in both classroom and refectory, but did like the look of the boy who sat next-but-one from him; cheerful, yet not quite perky enough to have gotten the cane. William Henry glanced at him and essayed a smile which caused one of the masters at the Head’s table to draw in a breath and stiffen.

The moment he received the smile, the boy somehow ejected the obstacle between them, who fell on the floor with a clatter and was hauled away by one ear to the Head’s table on a dais at the front of the enormous, echoing room.