Smuggler's Moon Page 5

  “I’d no idea what he meant. Finally, with him dropping hints and me trying hard to understand, it come to me that it all had to do with smuggling, that a ship was coming in from France loaded with items of the sort that would be very popular with those in London who had money enough to pay for them. Men would be needed to unload the cargo from the longboats and pack them onto horses and into wagons. It was the offer of a job.

  “My newfound employer, whose name was Dick Dickens, told me to be there at the inn at closing time and we’d be right on the hour and the minute to meet the lugger. Well, I was there right enough and went down with Dickens and a whole gang of men to the beach. It was all work once we got there. Once the boats started to ply back and forth from the ship to the shore, it was just a matter of getting them unloaded and the goods transferred to the wagons. We worked fast, for Dick Dickens or one or two others who were in charge were always about telling us to pick up the pace, that it would soon be morning. As it proved out, we was well paid, as promised, but that didn’t mean we didn’t work for it. Strangest thing was, it didn’t seem like we was breaking the law at all—just working hard.

  “By dawn the last wagon was gone, and the ship out there off the beach had weighed anchor and was sailing away on the tide. That was when we was paid off. I could scarce believe it when Dick Dickens counted out ten shillings into my hand. He told me I’d earned it, and that I was a good worker, and he wanted to know would I be able to work next time a lugger came across. I told him I would, and we worked out a way he could let me know when I’d be needed. So from then on I was working down on the beach one or two nights a week.

  “So for certain sure this wasn’t the sort of winter I’d expected. The way it had been I was happy just having a place to sleep and something to eat each day, but now of a sudden, I was making more money than ever I had in my life. Well, of course I went a bit daft. Instead of the silver locket and chain, I gave the Griggs girl one of gold for Christmas. Naturally, her ma and pa must have wondered where I got the money to pay for it, but they said nothing. And I bought myself a new suit of clothes, though where I supposed I would wear those new duds, I have no idea.

  “And through all this, the work on the beach continued. The luggers made the run from France whenever the weather permitted. As it improved, the ships would be coming over often—or so I supposed. I saw, looking ahead to the coming of spring, that I would soon have to make a decision. Was I to continue in the owling trade, or was I to return to my life as a farmhand? How could I, after all, leave the Griggses after they had kept me all winter long? Well, I was saved from that choice by what seemed to me at the time a dreadful circumstance, but was surely a blessing in disguise. I was caught in a raid on the beach carried out by the excisemen together with the Deal constables. Just why I, or Dick Dickens, or any of them, thought this sort of thing on the beach could go on without getting the notice of the excisemen and the magistrate I’ll never know. Or maybe Dickens and those shadowy men behind him thought their bribes had purchased a free hand to operate indefinitely. Or maybe, as Dickens told me on a jail visit, it was all just a misunderstanding. Anyway, this raid looked specially bad, for an exciseman was shot and killed by one of the wagon drivers, an evil old ne’er-do-well named Rufus Tucker. When I heard the sound of that shot, I took off running—and went right into the arms of a constable. Others were better than I was at getting away. In fact, most were, but because a man had been killed, there could be no question of getting off with a fine and jail time. The five of us who went before the magistrate—Rufus Tucker was one—could all have been sent on to Old Bailey, judged guilty, and hanged on the next hanging day. But as it happened, only one was executed, and that was Tucker. The remaining four, not one of us over twenty-five, were given the opportunity to enlist in the Army, and given the chance, we took the King’s shilling. The year was 1758, you see, and replacements were needed for those lost in the American colonies in the war against the French. Well, you see the result: Here I am, a veteran of campaigns in the Ohio Valley and Canada, alive and healthy, though missing an arm. Yet that—as you, Sir John, and you, Jeremy, well know—was lost later in the Grub Street campaign.”

  Sir John, who had been squirming a bit during the last sentence or two of Mr. Perkins’s tale, banged upon the ceiling of the coach with his stick, signaling thus to the driver for a stop.

  “A good story, well told,” said Sir John to the constable. ”But I fear I must interrupt now and make for the bushes. Pray God this will be the last such stop on this journey.”

  The coach came at last to a complete halt. He jumped down to the road below, and I followed with the latest issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine in hand.

  “Do you see a likely place, Jeremy?”

  “Over this way, sir,” said I, taking him by the arm. (Only in emergencies did he permit this.) I led him off the road to a copse of trees with sufficient undergrowth to provide a blind.

  “Paper?”

  I put the magazine in his hand.

  “You may leave me now, Jeremy. I shall call you when I need you.”

  And so leave him I did. There was no arguing with him at such times as these. Insofar as he was able, he maintained his privacy in spite of his blindness.

  Returning to the coach, I found Clarissa and Mr. Perkins had taken this opportunity to loosen the knots in their limbs. As I approached, I saw that their attention was wholly taken by something down the road and just out of my sight. The driver and coachman seemed also to be staring off into the near distance. Once I reached them, I saw that the object of their interest was a kind of large cage suspended over the road from the strongest limb of a stout old oak tree. Inside that cage was a skeleton which, as if in some grotesque All-Hallow’s-Eve masquerade, was dressed in a tattered, dusty, and faded suit of clothes. I had heard of such before, though never before had I seen one.

  “They call it a gibbet,” said Mr. Perkins, thus informing Clarissa. ” ‘Twas thought a terrible disgrace amongst condemned men to know their bodies would be put on display in such a way.”

  “As indeed it should have been,” said the coachman. ”Dead or no, who would want the corbies peckin’ out his eyes or pullin’ off his nose?”

  “Gibbets used to be common as flies on a carcass,” said the driver. ”Seemed there was one decorating every cross-road from one end of England to another. Don’t see them so much anymore.”

  Clarissa, quite unruffled by the gruesome sight, stared thoughtfully at the gibbet and its contents. ”Who do you suppose it was?” She asked it most indifferently, as if she were merely wondering aloud.

  Yet Mr. Perkins took her idle query most seriously. ”Why, I don’t know,” said he, pondering, rubbing his chin. But then did his eyes come alight of a sudden. ”Or perhaps I do,” said he to her. Then did he call up to the driver of the coach: ”How far are we from Deal?”

  “Not far at all,” said the driver. ”I should not doubt we will see it take shape when the road next climbs a hill.”

  “In that case, I would give a good wager that yonder hangs all that is left of Rufus Tucker.”

  “The one you were talking about? The one who killed the exciseman?” I had not seen Clarissa so animated since her first meeting with Samuel Johnson.

  “The very same, miss, for I know very well that there was no such body on display before I left here. And I now remember running into a lad from Deal whilst I was in Aldershot waiting transfer to another regiment. He told me old Rufus’s body had been shipped back to Deal for display purposes. The idea was that he was to hang there to warn all against shooting excisemen.”

  “Imagine!” sighed Clarissa. ”That could be Rufus Tucker.”

  “JEREMY!”

  That was Sir John’s bellow from across the road. Quite unmistakable it was, though not near so fierce as I may make it seem, writ so in capital letters. It was loud enough, nevertheless, to suggest to me that he might be in distress. Adding to that, he was not where I had left him. I looked u
neasily about but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Jeremy!”

  Another bellow, somewhat more impatient, rose from a spot a bit behind me. I hastened to the place and found Sir John lying disheveled and somewhat disappointed with himself at the dusty bottom of the deep ditch which ran along that side of the road.

  “Is that you, Jeremy?”

  “It is, Sir John. Are you hurt?”

  “No, no, though my pride is a bit bruised. I fear I must ask you for a hand up.”

  That I gladly offered him. I tugged hard, and up he came. Yet though on his feet, he still required help in scrambling up the crumbling wall of the ditch to the road. I pushed—though that did no good at all. But then, as I bent low from the road level to grasp one of Sir John’s hands, I found a helper beside me—none other than Mr. Perkins. The constable gave his only hand to the magistrate, and we two hauled him up.

  “Who is that helping poor Jeremy? Is it you, Constable Perkins?”

  “It is, Sir John.”

  “Ah well, I should have called earlier for Jeremy to lead me back but I heard your voices, and I thought I could simply walk to the sound of them. But I misstepped, lost my balance, and fell to the bottom of that … what would you call it? A ditch?”

  “It was a ditch, yes sir.”

  “Sometimes I fear that I attempt too much. Perhaps I should accept the limitations my blindness has put upon me.”

  “Ah, do not say that, sir. If you was to give in to your fate, there’s a certain one-armed constable might be forced to give in to his.”

  Sir John chuckled. ”Well, I would not wish to encourage that—no, certainly not.”

  Sir John had accepted my help in seeing him back to the coach. Yet without notice, he stopped of a sudden and said to me, ”Jeremy, I have something to discuss with Mr.

  Perkins. Would you then go to the coach and tell all that we shall be with them in just a few moments’ time?”

  Having no choice in the matter, I agreed, though I saw little need for such secrecy. Ultimately, their conversation lasted many more moments than a few and became at one point quite heated before it was done. When at last they returned to the coach, Sir John called up to the driver and asked that he stop when the town of Deal came into view. Only then did he ascend to the coach’s interior, bang upon the ceiling, and set us into motion once again.

  “Jeremy,” said he, ”you serve as treasurer on this expedition. Give Mr. Perkins a few pounds. How much would you be needing, constable?”

  “Oh, a pound or two. Two pounds should be more than enough.”

  “Then give him three.”

  I counted out the amount and handed it over.

  “Mr. Perkins will be going out alone to do some listening for us. It will be to you that he reports if indeed he has anything to report. Where might you two best meet?”

  “There is an inn on High Street, name of the Good King George,” said Mr. Perkins. ”Suppose we get together there about noon each day and have us an ale, and I’ll tell you what I know. How does that strike you?”

  “Why, I’m thirsty already.”

  “Enough of that, you two. We’ll—”

  Sir John, interrupted by the sudden halt of the coach, gave a firm nod. ”God bless you, sir,” said he to the constable. ”And remember well what I told you.”

  “Goodbye, all.” And so saying, Mr. Perkins threw open the door and jumped from the coach. I pulled the door shut behind him, took his wave through the window and returned it.

  The magistrate said nothing during the rest of the trip. That left it to me to puzzle out what he had discussed with Mr. Perkins there in the road. It seemed likely that Sir John had asked him to serve as his spy. After all, Mr. Perkins was, if not well known in Deal, at least remembered. He had known his way round the owling trade and been forcibly enlisted into the Army. The last any of the townsmen had seen of him, he was no doubt being led away in chains by the recruiting sergeant and his party. Those who did recall him would quite naturally assume that he had lost his arm in military service. They would be willing to answer any of the questions he might put to them. He would be perfect in such a role.

  Yet having formed that notion, I dismissed it immediately. There was something in it which rang false for both men, yet I could not determine what it was for either. Ah well, perhaps Perkins would be more forthcoming than Sir John when I met him next midday.

  But for now, here was Deal before me. As I stared out the window at the shops along Broad Street and at those we passed by, I realized how much more prosperous-looking was the picture before me than would have been a tableau from any comparable section of London. The people were better dressed; they walked with a more confident step. The shop windows were filled with goods of a quality that only the grandest shops in lower St. James Street might carry. The smuggling trade may have been illegal, but it had certainly brought good times to Deal.

  Looking away from the coach window for a moment, I happened to catch Clarissa’s eye. She was obviously most impressed by what she saw all round us. Her eyes were wide with excitement.

  “Why, Deal is near as grand as Bath!” said she. ”Had you ever imagined it so?”

  I admitted I had not. But then, as we came to the bottom of Broad Street, the driver turned the team right. And there, through the window, off to our left, was a great body of water.

  ”Oh, there it is,” said Clarissa,”—the sea, the ocean, the English Channel.”

  “And there beyond it,” said I, ”is France. Can you see it?”

  She studied the horizon carefully. ”I … I don’t know. I think I can. How far is it?”

  Before I could respond, Sir John spoke up: ‘Thirty-five miles, give or take a mile or two.”

  “So close?” Clarissa exclaimed. ”Why, we’re nearer to France than we are to London.”

  “Indeed we are,” said he.

  The driver reined the horses to a halt. I heard him call out, asking another for directions to the residence of Sir Simon Grenville. The response I heard not quite so clearly, but in a moment more we were off. We drove up a street, and in less than a mile the street became a road, and so on until we were back into the country. Ever upward we went by easy degrees, so that when at last we turned off the road and into a driveway, we must have been a few hundred feet above the town and the sea. We were so long on the way that I began to suppose that we had taken some secondary road that led still farther upward. But not so, for the team of four slowed at the driver’s direction. I heard the brake applied. We came to a halt just at the door of a manor house, which had been added onto so often and grandly that it had reached the proportions of a small castle.

  And yet it had no grand entrance, no portico with which to impress the visiting aristocracy and nobility; perhaps hereabouts Sir Simon was the only one of his class in residence; perhaps then Deal was his fiefdom.

  As these thoughts did thus flash through my brain, a man emerged to meet us and, leaving the door symbolically open behind him, to bid us welcome. Among the landed in the country, a great host of house servants seems to be considered something of an embarrassment. They keep, rather, a number of retainers who are capable of duplicating the work of the rest. The man who came out to greet us was one of these and should not be thought of as a butler. No, indeed, he was no butler, for he lacked the degree of coldness any proper London butler would surely have had. He was simply a Kent fellow of middle years, big and strong—a proper countryman—and he had come out to assure us that we were expected but most of all that we were welcome.

  He managed to convey that just by stepping out upon the little porch that was raised a step or two above the ground. He chuckled to himself as he bowed and approached the door of the coach and threw it open.

  “Here, miss, give me your hand, and I’ll help you down.”

  Clarissa took advantage of the offer and stepped down very lightly indeed. Sir John was next: he did not attempt to jump, as was his wont, but accepted the proffered hand with
good grace and hopped down quite nimbly. Only I, who was last of all, displayed a certain clumsiness in exiting the coach; my heel caught in the step, and had the jolly retainer not been there to catch me, I should have tumbled face-first into the dust of the driveway.

  “Hi, watch it there, my lad. I’d not want to present you to the master with a broken head. Steady as she goes, eh?”

  He pulled himself to his full height, put a hand atop his protruding belly, as if to hide it from sight, then spoke forth in the manner of one who had memorized a piece in order to have it down precisely.

  “My master, Simon Grenville, Baronet, was unavoidably called away this day. He deeply regrets not being present to welcome you himself, but he assures you that his household staff will do all that they can to make you comfortable in your rooms until dinner, at which time he will join you.”

  “And the horses? Our driver and coachman?” asked Sir John.

  ”If they will but drive round the house to the stable, sir, the staff there will do all that needs be done for the horses. The driver and coachman will be taken care of by us in the house, you may be sure.”

  “And one last question: How may we call you?”

  “Will Fowler, sir, and my family has been in service to the Grenvilles for three generations. Now, if you will step this way, please?”

  And so it was settled. We were assured that there would be time for a nap before dinner, and that we would be knocked up in time to dress.

  “I am grateful for that,” said Sir John to me once we were alone in the room we shared. ”I had briefly entertained the notion of visiting the magistrate. Yet when a man is as bone-weary as I from travel, all he can do is seek rest.”

  After we woke and dressed, we were ushered in to the large formal dining room where we found a tall and rather handsome man awaiting us, obviously our host, Sir Simon Grenville. I saw no sign of a hostess—a Lady Grenville—and I wondered at that, but Sir Simon made no immediate explanation, and I thought perhaps there was no Lady Grenville. We took our places, with Sir John at his right, of course, and the longest meal of my life began. There was course after course. Plates of various foods appeared and vanished before me, apparently of their own power—I always seemed to be looking the other way when the server whisked one plate away and put another in its place. And with each course there was a new bottle of wine of a different color and a different flavor put before us. That all this was done according to some intricate plan, and not simply as a demonstration of great abundance, I learned as Sir Simon himself explained his situation to us.