Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“Ye’re the head man!” Jem said in wonder.

“No, I am not. I refuse to be. It is just that occasionally I have to be a trifle forceful-but we all do that when provoked. The head man is a notion full of sound and fury, and I am no more a talker now than I was in Bristol. Nor do I want to lead any man other than myself. Needs must, Jem, is all. They are sometimes like sheep, and I would not have them go to the slaughter. Save for Will Connelly, another Bristolian from Colston’s under a good Head, they have little skill in using their wits. And the true difference between Will Connelly and me can best be summed up as Cousin James-the-druggist. Had I not known him and had he not been so good to me, the Richard Morgan ye see now would not exist. I would be like those poor Liverpudlian Irish down there, a fish out of water.” He smiled brilliantly, leaned forward to take Mr. Thistlethwaite’s hand. “Now tell me all about yourself. Ye look exceeding grand.”

“I can afford to look exceeding grand, Richard.”

“Did ye marry money like any true Bristolian?”

“Nay. Though I do make my money from women. Ye’re looking at a man who-under a nom de plume, naturally-writes novels for the delectation of ladies. To read novels is the latest female passion-comes of all this teaching them to read but not letting them do anything, y’see. Between bookshops, episodes published serially in magazines and the lending libraries, I do amazing better than ever I did out of lampooning. The counties are stuffed with genteel reading females in every vicarage, parsonage, manor and hotel, so my audience is as big as Britain, for ladies in Scotland and Ireland read also. Not only that, but I am read in America too.” He grimaced. “I do not, however, drink Cave’s rum anymore. In fact, I have eschewed rum entirely. I now drink only the best French brandy.”

“And are ye married these days?”

“Nay again. I have two mistresses, both of whom are married to other, lesser men. And that is enough about me. I want to hear about you, Richard.”

Richard shrugged. “There is little to tell, Jem. I spent three months in the Bristol Newgate, exactly a year in Gloucester Gaol, and am now two weeks into however long I shall be aboard Ceres. In Bristol I sat and read books. In Gloucester I lumped stones. On Ceres I dredge the Thames bottom, which is a nothing to one weaned on Bristol mud at low tide. Though all of us find it hard when we bring up the corpse of a baby.”

They passed then to the important consideration of money and how to safeguard hoards of gold coins.

“Sykes will be no trouble,” said Jem. “I slipped him a guinea and he rolled over to present me with his belly like any other cur. Be of good cheer. I will come to an arrangement with Mr. Sykes to buy ye whatever ye need by way of food or drink. That goes for your friends too. Ye look as trim as a sloop, but ye’re thin.”

Richard shook his head. “No to the food, Jem, and small beer only. There are almost a hundred men in here, give or take the few who die regularly. Each man watches hawkish to see how much the pursers dish out to every other man. All we need to do is preserve our existing money and perhaps beg more from you if it becomes necessary. We have been lucky enough to encounter an ambitious dredgeman and the Thames is full of bum boats. So we eat well at midday on our dredge for tuppence a man, everything from salt fish to fresh vegetables and fruit. Ike Rogers and his youngsters are succeeding in taming their dredgeman too.”

“It is hard to credit,” said Jem slowly, “but ye’re full of purpose and almost enjoying this. ’Tis the responsibility.”

“ ’Tis belief in God sustains me. I still have faith, Jem. For a convict, I have had remarkable good luck. A woman called Lizzie Lock in Gloucester, who kept my belongings safe and taught me how to ply a needle. She turned cartwheels over the hat, by the way, and I cannot thank ye enough. We miss the women, for reasons I explained to ye in one of my letters, as I remember. I have kept my health and sharpened my wits. And here in this assemblage of womanless brutes, we have managed to carve a niche for ourselves, thanks to an avaricious jockey and an ambitious dredgeman who combines Methodism with rum, tobacco and laziness. Queer bedfellows, but I have known queerer.”

His dripstone was standing on the table near him, and, it seemed absently, he put his hand out to stroke it. A curious hush and murmur arose among those in the crimson chamber, intrigued enough at the advent of a visitor to watch in hang-dog envy. But the reaction of all those men to Richard’s idle gesture was a mystery Mr. Thistlethwaite’s sensitive nose itched to explore.

“Provided he has a little money, avarice is a convict’s best friend,” Richard went on, putting his hand back on top of its fellow. “Here, men come far cheaper than thirty pieces of silver. ’Tis folk like the Northumbrians and Liverpudlians I feel sorriest for. They have not a penny between them. So they mostly die of disease or pure hopelessness. Some of them it seems God has a purpose for-they survive. And the Londoners upstairs are astonishing hardy, with all the cunning of starving rats. They live by different rules, I think-perhaps gigantic cities are entire countries in themselves, with their own way of looking at life. Not our way, but I discount a lot of what I hear on the Ceres orlop about the Londoners. The Ceres orlop contains the rest of England. Our gaolers are venal and deviant into the bargain. And then ye must stir the likes of William Stanley from Seend into the mixing bowl. He milks the way this place functions better than a dairymaid her pet cow. And we all of us from Hanks and Sykes through the rum coves, snitches, hicks, cullies and boozers to the dying wretches on that platform over there walk a rope across a pit of fire. One inch too far either way, and we fall.” He drew a breath, surprised at his own eloquence. “Though no one in his right mind could call what we play a game, it does share some things in common with a game. There is plenty of wit involved, but also some luck, and it seems God has given me luck.”

It was during this speech that Mr. Thistlethwaite suddenly understood much about Richard Morgan that had always teased and tormented him. Richard had spent his life in Bristol as a raft, pushed and pulled at the direction, sometimes the whim, of others. Despite his griefs and disasters, he had remained that passive raft. Even William Henry’s disappearance had not provided him with a rudder. What Ceely Trevillian had done for him was to pitch him into an ocean wherein a raft would founder. An ocean wherein Richard perceived his brethren as incapable of floating, and therefore took them upon his own shoulders. Prison had given him a star to steer by, and his own will had swelled sails he did not even know he possessed. Because he was a man who had to have someone to love more than he loved himself, he had undertaken the task of saving his own people, those he had brought with him from Gloucester Gaol into alien and storm-tossed seas.

After theintroductions had been performed, the fourteen convicts (William Stanley from Seend and Mikey Dennison had to be included) settled to hear what Mr. James Thistlethwaite could tell them about what might happen to them.

“Originally,” said the purveyor of reading delights for most of Britain’s literate women, “those on board Ceres were destined for a place called Lemaine, which, as I understand, is an island in the midst of a great African river about the size of the island of Manhattan in New York. Where undoubtedly all of ye would have died of some pestilence within a year. ’Tis Edmund Burke ye have to thank for striking Lemaine and all Africa from the list of places thought possible transportation destinations.