Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

This last assumption might well have been true of the gin, as the London Newgaters were in their own bailiwick and likely to have more sources of money, but it certainly was not true of the grub.

That jolly little prancing person Mr. Duncan Campbell became exceedingly thrifty about things he had to pay for out of the £26 per convict per year he obtained from His Majesty’s Government, and grub was an item he had to pay for. Ten shillings per week per man: on the Thames hulks that January his gross income was £360 per week, and there were things a canny contractor could do to keep the gross and the net figures closer together. Such as growing his own vegetables and brewing his own small beer. The more obvious ploys of falsifying his convict numbers or letting scurvy run riot were, alas, out of the question. Too many nosy officials. He bought his bread and his beef from the garrison at the Tower of London-ox heads and shins only, hard bread only-and at first he had not been fussy about their condition. Then along came Mr. John Howard; bread and beef had to improve somewhat. Notwithstanding these irksome constrictions and a staff of 100 assorted persons, Mr. Campbell managed to make a profit of £150 a week from his Thames hulks. He also had a hulk in Plymouth-Dunkirk-and two in Portsmouth-Fortunee and The Firm. His total profit from all his enterprises was around £300 a week; he was also engaged in some delicate dickering for the tender to supply the bruited expedition to Botany Bay.

The ’tweendecks on the Ceres orlop were six feet, which meant that Richard cleared the ceiling of moldering planks by half an inch and Ike Rogers could not fully straighten. The beams which ran from side to side were a foot lower than this, however, and were spaced six feet apart. Thus turning the act of walking into a parody of a monkish parade, heads bent in a reverence every double pace.

For a Bristol man the smell was bearable, as the wind moaned around the iron grilles and swept through the chilly, red-painted chamber extending from a bulkhead athwart the foremast to the entrance bulkhead in the stern. All told, it was about 40 feet wide and 100 feet in length. Along either outer wall-the hull-were wooden platforms at about the height of a table, and such they seemed to be, for men were sitting at them on benches. The conundrum was that they also seemed to function as beds, for in some places men were lying on them, apparently resting or else gripped by fever. The platform width of six feet also suggested that they were beds. Another table-like platform six feet wide ran down the middle. Perhaps 80 men inhabited this garish crimson chamber, and upon the entry of twelve new inmates all conversation stilled and most heads turned to look.

“Where from?” asked a man sitting at the middle table near the entrance.

“Gloucester Gaol, all twelve of us,” said Will Connelly.

The man rose to his feet, revealing himself as short enough to pass beneath the beams, though he had more the physique of a jockey than a midget, and had the face of a man who had spent most of his life around horses-creased, leathery, faintly equine. He might have been any age between forty and sixty.

“How de do,” he said more than asked, advancing to meet them and holding out a diminutive paw. “William Stanley from Seend. That is near Devizes in Somerset, but I was convicted in Wiltshire.”

“We most of us know of Seend,” said Connelly with a grin, then performed introductions. He put his box down with a sigh. “And what happens now, William Stanley from Seend?”

“Ye move in. That would be Sykes did the bum fuck. A real Miss Molly. ’Tis his way of getting to know the convicts from the inside, ye might say. No money, eh? Or did he find it?”

“We have no money,” said Connelly, sitting on the bench. He winced. “After Mr. Sykes, this is hard. What does happen now?”

“This end is Midlands, West Country, Channel, Wolds and Wealds,” said Stanley, producing an unlit pipe and sucking on it when he was not using it to point in some direction. “Center is the boys from Derby, Cheshire, Stafford, Lincoln and Salop. Far end-bows-is Durham, Yorkshire, Northumbria and Lancashire. Liverpudlians have that end of this middle table. They have a few Irish, all but one Liverpudlian. Got four blackamoors, but they are upstairs with the Londoners. Sorry, Taffy, no Welsh.” He eyed their boxes and bags. “If ye’ve valuables, ye’ll lose ’em. Unless,” he added, tone loaded with meaning, “we can plain deal.”

“Oh, I think that will be possible,” said Connelly affably. “I take it we eat off what we sleep on?”

“Aye. Put your tackle right here at this middle table, it has plenty of room for twelve this end. Mats ye sleep on are rolled up under it, and that is where ye’ll stow your tackle too. One mangy blanket each two men.” He giggled. “We are in the Yankey business of bundling here, not too private if ye’re of a mind to toss off. But we all got to toss off-bum fucking ain’t popular with the troops after a taste of Mr. Sykes. Upstairs they get women in on Sundays-call ’em their aunties, sisters or cousins. Don’t happen here because we are all too far from home and them as has got money prefer to spend it on Hanks’s sixpenny gins. Robber!”

“How can ye help us hang on to our things, William?” asked Bill Whiting, suffering two kinds of pain: one from the escort’s bludgeon, the other from Mr. Sykes’s hand and fingers.

“I do not work, ye see. They tried me in the vegetable patch, but I got eight brown fingers and two brown thumbs-even the turnips curled up their toes. So they gave me up as too old, too stunted and too hard to keep the darbies on.” He lifted one tiny foot and surreptitiously wriggled it in his fetter until the iron band sat across his instep. “Ye might say I am the caretaker of this establishment. I run a mop around it, swill out the night buckets, roll up the mats, fold up the blankets and keep the mad Irish at bay. Though our Irish, being Liverpudlians, are not too bad. But there are two on Justitia can only speak Erse-got snabbled the day they hopped off the boat from Dublin. No wonder they run mad. ’Tis hard this side of the Irish sea, and they are soft folk. Gulled in a twinkle, drunk on a dram.” He chuckled, sighed. “Ah, ’tis good to see some new West Country blood! Mikey! Here, Mikey!”

A young man slouched up, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with the faintly furtive air West Country men recognized as belonging to a Cornish smuggler. “Nay, not Cornwall,” he said, reading their minds. “Dorset. Poole. Seaman in the customs division. Name, Dennison.”

“Mikey helps me look after the place-cannot do it on my own. He-me are surplus, never manage to hook up in a six. Mikey has fits-real corkers! Goes black in the face, bites his tongue. Frightens the shit out of Miss Molly Sykes.” Stanley eyed the newcomers shrewdly. “Ye’re already two lots of six, ain’t ye?”

“Aye, and that fellow who says not a word is our leader,” said Connelly, pointing to Richard. “Just will not own up to it. Bill Whiting and I have to do all the talking while he sits back, listens, and then makes the decisions. Very peaceful, very clever. I ain’t known him all that long, but if Sykes had done that before I met Richard, I would have gone at him-and for what? A sore head as well as a sore arse. And a flogging, eh?”

“A bludgeoning, Will. Mr. Campbell do not hold with the cat, says it keeps too many men off work.” William Stanley from Seend half-shut his eyes. “ ’Tis you I come to terms with, Richard-what was the surname?”

“Morgan.”

“Welsh.”

“Bristol born and bred for generations. Connelly has an Irish name, but he is a Bristolian too. Surnames do not mean much.”