A Place Called Freedom (1995)

15

BRANDY EASED THE PAIN OF MACK’S WOUNDS THAT evening, but on the following morning he woke up in agony. He hurt in every part of his body that he could identify, from his sore toes—injured by kicking Rees Preece so hard—to the top of his skull, where he had a headache that felt as if it would never go away. The face in the shard of mirror he used for shaving was all cuts and bruises, and too tender to be touched, let alone shaved.

All the same, his spirits were high. Lizzie Hallim never failed to stimulate him. Her irrepressible boldness made all things seem possible. Whatever would she do next? When he had recognized her, sitting on the edge of the bed, he had suffered a barely controllable urge to take her in his arms. He had resisted the temptation by reminding himself that such a move would be the end of their peculiar friendship. It was one thing for her to break the rules, she was a lady. She might play rough-and-tumble with a puppy dog, but if once it bit her she would put it out in the yard.

She had told him she was going to marry Jay Jamisson, and he had bitten his tongue instead of telling her she was a damn fool. It was none of his business and he did not want to offend her.

Dermot’s wife, Bridget, made a breakfast of salt porridge and Mack ate it with the children. Bridget was a woman of about thirty who had once been beautiful but now just looked tired. When the food was all gone Mack and Dermot went out to look for work. “Bring home some money,” Bridget called as they left.

It was not a lucky day. They toured the food markets of London, offering themselves as porters for the baskets of wet fish, barrels of wine, and bloody sides of beef the hungry city needed every day; but there were too many men and not enough work. At midday they gave up and walked to the West End to try the coffeehouses. By the end of the afternoon they were as weary as if they had worked all day, but they had nothing to show for it.

As they turned into the Strand a small figure shot out of an alley, like a bolting rabbit, and crashed into Dermot. It was a girl of about thirteen, ragged and thin and scared. Dermot made a noise like a punctured bladder. The child squealed in fright, stumbled, and regained her balance.

After her came a brawny young man in expensive but disheveled clothes. He came within an inch of grabbing her as she bounced off Dermot, but she ducked and dodged and ran on. Then she slipped and fell, and he was on her.

She screamed in terror. The man was mad with rage. He picked up the slight body and punched the side of her head, knocking her down again, then he kicked her puny chest with his booted foot.

Mack had become hardened to the violence on the streets of London. Men, women and children fought constantly, punching and scratching one another, their battles usually fueled by the cheap gin that was sold at every corner shop. But he had never seen a strong man beat a small child so mercilessly. It looked as if he might kill her. Mack was still in pain from his encounter with the Welsh Mountain, and the last thing he wanted was another fight, but he could not stand still and watch this. As the man was about to kick her again Mack grabbed him roughly and jerked him back.

He turned around. He was several inches taller than Mack. He put his hand in the center of Mack’s chest and shoved him powerfully away. Mack staggered backward. The man turned again to the child. She was scrambling to her feet. He hit her a mighty slap to her face that sent her flying.

Mack saw red. He grabbed the man by the collar and the seat of the breeches and lifted him bodily off the ground. The man roared with surprise and anger, and began to writhe violently, but Mack held him and lifted him up over his head.

Dermot stared in surprise at the ease with which Mack held him up. “You’re a strong boy, Mack, by gob,” he said.

“Get your filthy hands off me!” the man shouted.

Mack set him on the ground but kept hold of one wrist. “Just leave the child alone.”

Dermot helped the girl stand up and held her gently but firmly.

“She’s a damned thief!” said the man aggressively; then he noticed Mack’s ravaged face and decided not to make a fight of it.

“Is that all?” Mack said. “By the way you were kicking her I thought she’d murdered the king.”

“What business of yours is it what she’s done?” The man was calming down and catching his breath.

Mack let him go. “Whatever it was, I think you’ve punished her enough.”

The man looked at him. “You’re obviously just off the boat,” he said. “You’re a strong lad but, even so, you won’t last long in London if you put your trust in the likes of her.” With that he walked off.

The girl said: “Thanks, Jock—you saved my life.”

People knew Mack was Scottish as soon as he spoke. He had not realized that he had an accent until he came to London. In Heugh everyone spoke the same: even the Jamissons had a softened version of the Scots dialect. Here it was like a badge.

Mack looked at the girl. She had dark hair roughly cropped and a pretty face already swelling with bruises from the beating. Her body was that of a child but there was a knowing, adult look in her eyes. She gazed warily at him, evidently wondering what he wanted from her. He said: “Are you all right?”

“I hurt,” she said, holding her side. “I wish you’d killed that Christforsaken John.”

“What did you do to him?”

“I tried to rob him while he was fucking Cora, but he cottoned to it.”

Mack nodded. He had heard that prostitutes sometimes had accomplices who robbed their clients. “Would you like something to drink?”

“I’d kiss the pope’s arse for a glass of gin.”

Mack had never heard such talk from anyone, let alone a little girl. He did not know whether to be shocked or amused.

On the other side of the road was the Bear, the tavern where Mack had knocked down the Bermondsey Bruiser and won a pound from a dwarf. They crossed the street and went in. Mack bought three mugs of beer and they stood in a corner to drink them.

The girl tossed most of hers down in a few gulps and said: “You’re a good man, Jock.”

“My name is Mack,” he said. “This is Dermot.”

“I’m Peggy. They call me Quick Peg.”

“On account of the way you drink, I suppose.”

She grinned. “In this city, if you don’t drink quick someone will steal your liquor. Where are you from, Jock?”

“A village called Heugh, about fifty miles from Edinburgh.”

“Where’s Edinburgh?”

“Scotland.”

“How far away is that, then?”

“It took me a week on a ship, down the coast.” It had been a long week. Mack was unnerved by the sea. After fifteen years working down a pit the endless ocean made him dizzy. But he had been obliged to climb the masts to tie ropes in all weathers. He would never be a sailor. “I believe the stagecoach takes thirteen days,” he added.

“Why did you leave?”

“To be free. I ran away. In Scotland, coal miners are slaves.”

“You mean like the blacks in Jamaicky?”

“You seem to know more about Jamaicky than Scotland.”

She resented the implied criticism. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Scotland is nearer, that’s all.”

“I knew that.” She was lying, Mack could tell. She was only a little girl, despite her bravado, and she touched his heart

A woman’s voice said breathlessly: “Peg, are you all right?”

Mack looked up to see a young woman wearing a dress the color of an orange.

Peg said: “Hello, Cora. I was rescued by a handsome prince. Meet Scotch Jock McKnock.”

Cora smiled at Mack and said: “Thank you for helping Peg. I hope you didn’t get those bruises in the process.”

Mack shook his head. “That was another brute.”

“Let me buy you a drink of gin.”

Mack was about to refuse—he preferred beer—but Dermot said: “Very kind, we thank you.”

Mack watched her as she went to the bar. She was about twenty years old, with an angelic face and a mass of flaming red hair. It was shocking to think someone so young and pretty was a whore. He said to Peg: “So she shagged that fellow who chased you, did she?”

“She doesn’t usually have to go all the way with a man,” Peg said knowiedgeabry. “She generally leaves him in some alley with his dick up and his breeches down.”

“While you run off with his purse,” Dermot said.

“Me? Get off. I’m a lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte.”

Cora sat beside Mack. She wore a heavy, spicy perfume that had sandalwood and cinnamon in it “What are you doing in London, Jock?”

He stared at her. She was very attractive. “Looking for work.”

“Find any?”

“Not much.”

She shook her head. “It’s been a whore of a winter, cold as the grave, and the price of bread is shocking. There’s too many men like you.”

Peg put in: “That was what made my father turn to thieving, two years ago, only he didn’t have the knack.”

Mack reluctantly tore his gaze away from Cora and looked at Peg. “What happened to him?”

“He danced with the sheriff’s collar on.”

“What?”

Dermot explained. “It means he was hanged.”

Mack said: “Oh, dear, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me, you Scotch git, it makes me sick.”

Peg was a real hard case. “All right, all right, I won’t,” Mack said mildly.

Cora said: “If you want work, I know someone who’s looking for coal heavers, to unload the coal ships. The work is so heavy that only young men can do it, and they prefer out-of-towners who aren’t so quick to complain.”

“I’ll do anything,” Mack said, thinking of Esther.

“The coal heaving gangs are all run by tavern keepers down in Wapping. I know one of them, Sidney Lennox at the Sun.”

“Is he a good man?”

Cora and Peg laughed. Cora said: “He’s a lying, cheating, miserable-faced, evil-smelling festering drunken pig, but they’re all the same, so what can you do?”

“Will you take us to the Sun?”

“Be it on your own head,” said Cora.

A warm fog of sweat and coal dust filled the airless hold of the wooden ship. Mack stood on a mountain of coal, wielding a broad-bladed shovel, scooping up lumps of coal, working with a steady rhythm. The work was brutally hard; his arms ached and he was bathed in perspiration; but he felt good. He was young and strong, he was earning good money, and he was no one’s slave.

He was one of a gang of sixteen coal heavers, bent over their shovels, grunting and swearing and making jokes. Most of the others were muscular young Irish farm boys: the work was too hard for stunted city-born men. Dermot was thirty and he was the oldest on the gang.

It seemed he could not escape from coal. But it made the world turn. As Mack worked he thought about where this coal was going: all the London drawing rooms it would heat, all the thousands of kitchen fires, all the bakery ovens and breweries it would fuel. The city had an appetite for coal that was never satisfied.

It was Saturday afternoon, and the gang had almost emptied this ship, the Black Swan from Newcastle. Mack enjoyed calculating how much he would be paid tonight. This was the second ship they had unloaded this week, and the gang got sixteen pence, a penny per man, for every score, or twenty sacks of coal. A strong man with a big shovel could move a sackful in two minutes. He reckoned each man had earned six pounds gross.

However, there were deductions. Sidney Lennox, the middleman or “undertaker,” sent vast quantities of beer and gin on board for the men. They had to drink a lot to replace the gallons of fluid they lost by sweating, but Lennox gave them more than was necessary and most of the men drank it, gin too. Consequently there was generally at least one accident before the end of the day. And the liquor had to be paid for. So Mack was not sure how much he would receive when he lined up for his wages at the Sun tavern tonight However, even if half of the money was lost in deductions—an estimate surely too high—the remainder would still be double what a coal miner would earn for a six-day week.

And at that rate he could send for Esther in a few weeks. Then he and his twin would be free of slavery. His heart leaped at the prospect.

He had written to Esther as soon as he had settled at Dermot’s place, and she had replied. His escape was the talk of the glen, she said. Some of the young hewers were trying to get up a petition to the English Parliament protesting against slavery in the mines. And Annie had married Jimmy Lee. Mack felt a pang of regret about Annie. He would never again roll in the heather with her. But Jimmy Lee was a good man. Perhaps the petition would be the beginning of a change; perhaps the children of Jimmy and Annie would be free.

The last of the coal was shoveled into sacks and stacked on a barge, to be rowed to the shore and stored in a coal yard. Mack stretched his aching back and shouldered his shovel. Up on deck the cold air hit him like a blast, and he put on his shirt and the fur cloak Lizzie Hallim had given him. The coal heavers rode to shore with the last of the sacks, then walked to the Sun to get their wages.

The Sun was a rough place used by seamen and stevedores. Its earth floor was muddy, the benches and tables were battered and stained, and the smoky fire gave little heat. The landlord, Sidney Lennox, was a gambler, and there was always a game of some kind going on: cards, dice, or a complicated contest with a marked board and counters. The only good thing about the place was Black Mary, the African cook, who used shellfish and cheap cuts of meat to make spicy, hearty stews the customers loved.

Mack and Dermot were the first to arrive. They found Peg sitting in the bar with her legs crossed underneath her, smoking Virginia tobacco in a clay pipe. She lived at the Sun, sleeping on the floor in a corner of the bar. Lennox was a receiver as well as an undertaker, and Peg sold him the things she stole. When she saw Mack she spat into the fire and said cheerfully: “What ho, Jock—rescued any more maidens?”

“Not today.” He grinned.

Black Mary put her smiling face around the kitchen door. “Oxtail soup, boys?” She had a Low Countries accent: people said she had once been the slave of a Dutch sea captain.

“No more than a couple of barrelfuls for me, please,” Mack replied.

She smiled. “Hungry, eh? Been working hard?”

“Just taking a little exercise to give us an appetite,” said Dermot.

Mack had no money to pay for his supper, but Lennox gave all the coal heavers credit against their earnings. After tonight, Mack resolved, he would pay cash on the nail for everything: he did not want to get into debt.

He sat beside Peg. “How’s business?” he said facetiously.

She took his question seriously. “Me and Cora tumbled a rich old gent this afternoon so we’re having the evening off.”

Mack found it odd to be friends with a thief. He knew what drove her to it: she had no alternative but starvation. All the same something in him, some residue of his mother’s attitudes, made him disapprove.

Peg was small and frail, with a bony frame and pretty blue eyes, but she had the callous air of a hardened criminal, and that was how people treated her. Mack suspected that her tough exterior was protective coloring: below the surface there was probably just a frightened little girl who had no one in the world to take care of her.

Black Mary brought him soup with oysters floating in it, a slab of bread and a tankard of dark beer, and he fell on it like a wolf.

The other coal heavers drifted in. There was no sign of Lennox, which was unusual: he was normally playing cards or dice with his customers. Mack wished he would hurry up. Mack was impatient to find out how much money he had made this week. He guessed Lennox was keeping the men waiting for their wages so they would spend more at the bar.

Cora came in after an hour or so. She looked as striking as ever, in a mustard-colored outfit with black trimmings. All the men greeted her, but to Mack’s surprise she came and sat with him. “I hear you had a profitable afternoon,” he said.

“Easy money,” she said. “A man old enough to know better.”

“You’d better tell me how you do it, so I don’t fall victim to someone like you.”

She gave him a flirtatious look. “You’ll never have to pay girls, Mack, I can promise you that”

“Tell me anyway—I’m curious.”

“The simplest way is to pick up a wealthy drunk, get him amorous, take him down a dark alley then run off with his money.”

“Is that what you did today?”

“No, this was better. We found an empty house and bribed the caretaker. I played the role of a bored housewife—Peg was my maid. We took him to the house, pretending I lived there. I got his clothes off and got him into bed, then Peg came rushing in to say my husband was back unexpectedly.”

Peg laughed. “Poor old geezer, you should have seen his face, he was terrified. He hid in the wardrobe!”

“And we left, with his wallet, his watch and all his clothes.”

“He’s probably still in that wardrobe!” said Peg, and they both went off into gales of laughter.

The coal heavers’ wives began to appear, many of them with babies in their arms and children clinging to their skirts. Some had the spirit and beauty of youth, but others looked weary and underfed, the beaten wives of violent and drunken men. Mack guessed they were all here in the hope of getting hold of some of the wages before all the money was drunk, gambled or stolen by whores. Bridget Riley came in with her five children and sat with Dermot and Mack.

Lennox finally showed up at midnight.

He carried a leather sack full of coins and a pair of pistols, presumably to protect him from robbery. The coal heavers, most of whom were drunk by this time, cheered him like a conquering hero when he came in, and Mack felt a momentary contempt toward his workmates: why did they show gratitude for what was no more than their due?

Lennox was a surly man of about thirty, wearing knee boots and a flannel waistcoat with no shirt. He was fit and muscular from carrying heavy kegs of beer and spirits. There was a cruel twist to his mouth. He had a distinctive odor, a sweet smell like rotting fruit. Mack noticed Peg flinch involuntarily as he went by: she was scared of the man.

Lennox pulled a table into a corner and put the sack down and the pistols next to it. The men and women crowded around, pushing and shoving, as if afraid Lennox would run out of cash before their turn came. Mack hung back: it was beneath his dignity to scramble for the wages he had earned.

He heard the harsh voice of Lennox raised over the hubbub. “Each man has earned a pound and eleven pence this week, before bar bills.”

Mack was not sure he had heard right. They had unloaded two ships, some fifteen hundred score, or thirty thousand sacks of coal, giving each man a gross income of about six pounds. How could it have been reduced to little more than a pound each?

There was a groan of disappointment from the men, but none of them questioned the figure. As Lennox began to count out individual payments, Mack said: “Just a minute. How do you work that out?”

Lennox looked up with an angry scowl. “You’ve unloaded one thousand four hundred and forty-five score, which gives each man six pounds and fivepence gross. Deduct fifteen shillings a day for drink—”

“What?” Mack interrupted. “Fifteen shillings a day?” That was three-quarters of their earnings!

Dermot Riley muttered his agreement. “Damned robbery, it is.” He did not say it very loudly, but there were murmurs of agreement from some of the other men and women.

“My commission is sixteen pence per man per ship,” Lennox went on. “There’s another sixteen pence for the captain’s tip, six pence per day for rent of a shovel—”

“Rent of a shovel?” Mack exploded.

“You’re new here and you don’t know the rules, McAsh,” Lennox grated. “Why don’t you shut your damned mouth and let me get on with it, or no one will get paid.”

Mack was outraged, but reason told him Lennox had not invented this system tonight: it was obviously well established, and the men must have accepted it. Peg tugged at his sleeve and said in a low voice: “Don’t cause trouble, Jock—Lennox will make it worse for you somehow.”

Mack shrugged and kept quiet. However, his protest had struck a chord among the others, and Dermot Riley now raised his voice. “I didn’t drink fifteen shillings’ worth of liquor a day,” he said.

His wife added: “For sure he didn’t.”

“Nor did I,” said another man. “Who could? A man would burst with all that beer!”

Lennox replied angrily. “That’s how much I sent on board for you—do you think I can keep a tally of what every man drinks every day?”

Mack said: “If not, you’re the only innkeeper in London who can’t!” The men laughed.

Lennox was infuriated by Mack’s mockery and the laughter of the men. With a thunderous look he said: “The system is, you pay for fifteen shillings’ worth of liquor, whether you drink it or not.”

Mack stepped up to the table. “Well, I have a system too,” he said. “I don’t pay for liquor that I haven’t asked for and haven’t drunk. You may not have kept count but I have, and I can tell you exactly what I owe you.”

“So can I,” said another man. He was Charlie Smith, an English-born Negro with a flat Newcastle accent. “I’ve drunk eighty-three tankards of the small beer you sell in here for fourpence a pint. That’s twenty-seven shillings and eightpence for the entire week, not fifteen shillings a day.”

Lennox said: “You’re lucky to be paid at all, you black villain, you ought to be a slave in chains.”

Charlie’s face darkened. “I’m an Englishman and a Christian, and I’m a better man than you because I’m honest,” he said with controlled fury.

Dermot Riley said: “I can tell you exactly how much I’ve drunk, too.”

Lennox was getting irate. “If you don’t watch yourselves you’ll get nothing at all, any of you,” he said.

It crossed Mack’s mind that he ought to cool things down. He tried to think of something conciliatory to say. Then he caught sight of Bridget Riley and her hungry children, and indignation got the better of him. He said to Lennox: “You’ll not leave that table until you’ve paid what you owe.”

Lennox’s eyes fell to his pistols.

With a swift movement Mack swept the guns to the floor. “You’ll not escape by shooting me either, you damn thief,” he said angrily.

Lennox looked like a cornered mastiff. Mack wondered if he had gone too far: perhaps he should have left room for a face-saving compromise. But it was too late now. Lennox had to back down. He had made the coal heavers drunk and they would kill him unless he paid them.

He sat back on his chair, narrowed his eyes, gave Mack a look of pure hatred and said: “You’ll suffer for this, McAsh, I swear by God you will.”

Mack said mildly: “Come on, Lennox, the men are only asking you to pay them what they’re due.”

Lennox was not mollified, but he gave in. Scowling darkly, he began to count out money. He paid Charlie Smith first, then Dermot Riley, then Mack, taking their word for the amount of liquor they had consumed.

Mack stepped away from the table full of elation. He had three pounds and nine shillings in his hand: if he put half of it aside for Esther he would still be flush.

Other coal heavers made guesses at how much they had drunk, but Lennox did not argue, except in the case of Sam Potter, a huge fat boy from Cork, who claimed he had drunk only thirty quarts, causing uproarious laughter from the others: he eventually settled for three times that.

An air of jubilation spread among the men and their women as they pocketed their earnings. Several came up to Mack and slapped him on the back, and Bridget Riley kissed him. He realized he had done something remarkable, but he feared that the drama was not yet ended. Lennox had given in too easily.

As the last man was being paid, Mack picked up Lennox’s guns from the floor. He blew the flintlocks clear of powder, so that they would not fire, then placed them on the table.

Lennox took his disarmed pistols and the nearly empty money bag and stood up. The room went quiet. He went to the door that led to his private rooms. Everyone watched him intently, as if they were afraid he might yet find a way to take the money back. He turned at the door. “Go home, all of you,” he said malevolently. “And don’t come back on Monday. There’ll be no work for you. You’re all dismissed.”

Mack lay awake most of the night, worrying. Some of the coal heavers said Lennox would have forgotten all about it by Monday morning, but Mack doubted that. Lennox did not seem the type of man to swallow defeat; and he could easily get another sixteen strong young men to form his gang.

It was Mack’s fault. The coal heavers were like oxen, strong and stupid and easily led: they would not have rebelled against Lennox if Mack had not encouraged them. Now, he felt, it was up to him to set matters right.

He got up early on Sunday morning and went into the other room. Dermot and his wife lay on a mattress and the five children slept together in the opposite corner. Mack shook Dermot awake. “We’ve got to find work for our gang before tomorrow,” Mack said.

Dermot got up. Bridget mumbled from the bed: “Wear something respectable, now, if you want to impress an undertaker.” Dermot put on an old red waistcoat, and he loaned Mack the blue silk neckcloth he had bought for his wedding. They called for Charlie Smith on the way. Charlie had been a coal heaver for five years and he knew everyone. He put on his best blue coat and they went together to Wapping.

The muddy streets of the waterfront neighborhood were almost deserted. The bells of London’s hundreds of churches called the devout to their prayers, but most of the sailors and stevedores and warehousemen were enjoying their day of rest, and they stayed at home. The brown river Thames lapped lazily at the deserted wharves, and rats sauntered boldly along the foreshore.

All the coal heaving undertakers were tavern keepers. The three men went first to the Frying Pan, a few yards from the Sun. They found the landlord boiling a ham in the yard. The smell made Mack’s mouth water. “What ho, Harry,” Charlie addressed him cheerfully.

He gave them a sour look. “What do you boys want, if it’s not beer?”

“Work,” Charlie replied. “Have you got a ship to uncoal tomorrow?”

“Yes, and a gang to do it, thanks all the same.”

They left. Dermot said: “What was the matter with him? He looked at us like lepers.”

“Too much gin last night,” Charlie speculated.

Mack feared it might have been something more sinister, but he kept his thoughts to himself for the moment. “Let’s go into the King’s Head,” he said.

Several coal heavers were drinking beer at the bar and greeted Charlie by name. “Are you busy, my lads?” Charlie said. “We’re looking for a ship.”

The landlord overheard. “You men been working for Sidney Lennox at the Sun?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t need us next week,” Charlie replied.

“Nor do I,” said the landlord.

As they went out Charlie said: “We’ll try Buck Delaney at the Swan. He runs two or three gangs at a time.”

The Swan was a busy tavern with stables, a coffee room, a coal yard and several bars. They found the Irish landlord in his private room overlooking the courtyard. Delaney had been a coal heaver himself in his youth, though now he wore a wig and a lace cravat to take his breakfast of coffee and cold beef. “Let me give you a tip, me boys,” he said. “Every undertaker in London has heard what happened at the Sun last night. There’s not one will employ you, Sidney Lennox has made sure of that.”

Mack’s heart sank. He had been afraid of something like this.

“If I were you,” Delaney went on, “I’d take ship and get out of town for a year or two. When you come back it will all be forgotten.”

Dermot said angrily: “Are the coal heavers always to be robbed by you undertakers, then?”

If Delaney was offended he did not show it. “Look around you, me boy,” he said mildly, indicating with a vague wave the silver coffee service, the carpeted room, and the bustling business that paid for it all. “I didn’t get this by being fair to people.”

Mack said: “What’s to stop us going to the captains ourselves, and undertaking to unload ships?”

“Everything,” said Delaney. “Now and again there comes along a coal heaver like you, McAsh, with a bit more gumption than the rest, and he wants to run his own gang, and cut out the undertaker and do away with liquor payments and all, and all. But there’s too many people making too much money out of the present arrangement.” He shook his head. “You’re not the first to protest against the system, McAsh, and you won’t be the last.”

Mack was disgusted by Delaney’s cynicism, but he felt the man was telling the truth. He could not think of anything else to say or do. Feeling defeated, he went to the door, and Dermot and Charlie followed.

“Take my advice, McAsh,” Delaney said. “Be like me. Get yourself a little tavern and sell liquor to coal heavers. Stop trying to help them and start helping yourself. You could do well. You’ve got it in you, I can tell.”

“Be like you?” Mack said. “You’ve made yourself rich by cheating your fellow men. By Christ, I wouldn’t be like you for a kingdom.”

As he went out he was gratified to see Delaney’s face darken in anger at last.

But his satisfaction lasted no longer than it took to close the door. He had won an argument and lost everything else. If only he had swallowed his pride and accepted the undertakers’ system, he would at least have work to do tomorrow morning. Now he had nothing—and he had put fifteen other men, and their families, in the same hopeless position. The prospect of bringing Esther to London was farther away than ever. He had handled everything wrong. He was a damn fool.

The three men sat in one of the bars and ordered beer and bread for their breakfast. Mack reflected that he had been arrogant to look down on the coal heavers for accepting their lot dumbly. In his mind he had called them oxen, but he was the ox.

He thought of Caspar Gordonson, the radical lawyer who had started all this by telling Mack his legal rights. If I could get hold of Gordonson, Mack thought, I’d let him know what legal rights are worth.

The law was useful only to those who had the power to enforce it, it seemed. Coal miners and coal heavers had no advocate at court. They were fools to talk of their rights. The smart people ignored right and wrong and took care of themselves, like Cora and Peg and Buck Delaney.

He picked up his tankard then froze with it halfway to his mouth. Caspar Gordonson lived in London, of course. Mack could get hold of him. He could let him know what legal rights were worth—but perhaps he could do better than that. Perhaps Gordonson would be the coal heavers’ advocate. He was a lawyer, and he wrote constantly about English liberty: he ought to help.

It was worth a try.

The fatal letter Mack received from Caspar Gordonson had come from an address in Fleet Street. The Fleet was a filthy stream running into the Thames at the foot of the hill upon which St. Paul’s Cathedral stood. Gordonson lived in a three-story brick row house next to a large tavern.

“He must be a bachelor,” said Dermot

“How do you know?” Charlie Smith asked.

“Dirty windows, doorstep not polished—there’s no lady in this house.”

A manservant let them in, showing no surprise when they asked for Mr. Gordonson. As they entered, two well-dressed men were leaving, continuing as they went a heated discussion that involved William Pitt, the Lord Privy Seal, and Viscount Weymouth, a secretary of State. They did not pause in their argument but one nodded to Mack with absentminded politeness, which surprised him greatìy, since gentlemen normally ignored low-class people.

Mack had imagined a lawyer’s house to be a place of dusty documents and whispered secrets, in which the loudest noise was the slow scratching of pens. Gordonson’s home was more like a printer’s shop. Pamphlets and journals in string-tied bundles were stacked in the hall, the air smelled of cut paper and printing ink, and the sound of machinery from below stairs suggested that a press was being operated in the basement.

The servant stepped into a room off the hall. Mack wondered if he was wasting his time. People who wrote clever articles in journals probably did not dirty their hands by getting involved with workingmen. Gordonson’s interest in liberty might be strictly theoretical. But Mack had to try everything. He had led his coal heaving gang into rebellion, and now they were all without work: he had to do something.

A loud and shrill voice came from within. “McAsh? Never heard of him! Who is he? You don’t know? Then ask! Never mind—”

A moment later a balding man with no wig appeared in the doorway and peered at the three coal heavers through spectacles. “I don’t think I know any of you,” he said. “What do you want with me?”

It was a discouraging introduction, but Mack was not easily disheartened, and he said spiritedly: “You gave me some very bad advice recently but, despite that, I’ve come back for more.”

There was a pause, and Mack thought he had given offense; then Gordonson laughed heartily. In a friendly voice he said: “Who are you, anyway?”

“Malachi McAsh, known as Mack. I was a coal miner at Heugh, near Edinburgh, until you wrote and told me I was a free man.”

Understanding lit up Gordonson’s expression. “You’re the liberty-loving miner! Shake hands, man.”

Mack introduced Dermot and Charlie.

“Come in, all of you. Have a glass of wine?”

They followed him into an untidy room furnished with a writing table and walls of bookcases. More publications were piled on the floor, and printers’ proofs were scattered across the table. A fat old dog lay on a stained rug in front of the fire. There was a ripe smell that must have come from the rug or the dog, or both. Mack lifted an open law book from a chair and sat down. “I won’t take any wine, thank you,” he said. He wanted his wits about him.

“A cup of coffee, perhaps? Wine sends you to sleep but coffee wakes you up.” Without waiting for a reply he said to the servant: “Coffee for everyone.” He turned back to Mack. “Now, McAsh, why was my advice to you so wrong?”

Mack told him the story of how he had left Heugh. Dermot and Charlie listened intently: they had never heard this. Gordonson lit a pipe and blew clouds of tobacco smoke, shaking his head in disgust from time to time. The coffee came as Mack was finishing.

“I know the Jamissons of old—they’re greedy, heartless, brutal people,” Gordonson said with feeling. “What did you do when you got to London?”

“I became a coal heaver.” Mack related what had happened in the Sun tavern last night.

Gordonson said: “The liquor payments to coal heavers are a long-standing scandal.”

Mack nodded. “I’ve been told I’m not the first to protest.”

“Indeed not. Parliament actually passed a law against the practice ten years ago.”

Mack was astonished. “Then how does it continue?”

“The law has never been enforced.”

“Why not?”

“The government is afraid of disrupting the supply of coal. London runs on coal—nothing happens here without it: no bread is made, no beer brewed, no glass blown, no iron smelted, no horses shod, no nails manufactured—”

“I understand,” Mack interrupted impatiently. “I ought not to be surprised that the law does nothing for men such as us.”

“Now, you’re wrong about that,” Gordonson said in a pedantic tone. “The law makes no decisions. It has no will of its own. It’s like a weapon, or a tool: it works for those who pick it up and use it.”

“The rich.”

“Usually,” Gordonson conceded. “But it might work for you.”

“How?” Mack said eagerly.

“Suppose you devised an alternative ganging system for unloading coal ships.”

This was what Mack had been hoping for. “It wouldn’t be difficult,” he said. “The men could choose one of their number to be undertaker and deal with the captains. The money would be shared out as soon as it’s received.”

“I presume the coal heavers would prefer to work under the new system, and be free to spend their wages as they pleased.”

“Yes,” Mack said, suppressing his mounting excitement. “They could pay for their beer as they drink it, the way anyone does.” But would Gordonson weigh in on the side of the coal heavers? If that happened everything could change.

Charlie Smith said lugubriously: “It’s been tried before. It doesn’t work.”

Charlie had been a coal heaver for many years, Mack recalled. He asked: “Why doesn’t it work?”

“What happens is, the undertakers bribe the ships’ captains not to use the new gangs. Then there’s trouble and fighting between the gangs. And it’s the new gangs that get punished for the fights, because the magistrates are undertakers themselves, or friends of undertakers … and in the end all the coal heavers go back to the old ways.”

“Damn fools,” Mack said.

Charlie looked offended. “I suppose if they were clever they wouldn’t be coal heavers.”

Mack realized he had been supercilious, but it angered him when men were their own worst enemies. “They only need a little determination and solidarity,” he said.

Gordonson put in: “There’s more to it than that. It’s a question of politics. I remember the last coal heavers’ dispute. They were defeated because they had no champion. The undertakers were against them and no one was for them.”

“Why should it be different this time?” said Mack.

“Because of John Wilkes.”

Wilkes was the defender of liberty, but he was in exile. “He can’t do much for us in Paris.”

“He’s not in Paris. He’s back.”

That was a surprise. “What’s he going to do?”

“Stand for Parliament.”

Mack could imagine how that would stir up trouble in London’s political circles. “But I still don’t see how it helps us.”

“Mikes will take the coal heavers’ part, and the government will side with the undertakers. Such a dispute, with workingmen plainly in the right, and having the law on their side too, would do Wilkes nothing but good.”

“How do you know what Wilkes will do?”

Gordonson smiled. “I’m his electoral agent.”

Gordonson was more powerful than Mack had realized. This was a piece of luck.

Charlie Smith, still skeptical, said: “So you’re planning to use the coal heavers to advance your own political purposes.”

“Fair point,” Gordonson said mildly. He put down his pipe. “But why do I support Wilkes? Let me explain. You came to me today complaining of injustice. This kind of thing happens all too often: ordinary men and women cruelly abused for the benefit of some greedy brute, a George Jamisson or a Sidney Lennox. It harms trade, because the bad enterprises undermine the good. And even if it were good for trade it would be wicked. I love my country and I hate the brutes who would destroy its people and ruin its prosperity. So I spend my life fighting for justice.” He smiled and put his pipe back in his mouth. “I hope that doesn’t sound too pompous.”

“Not at all,” said Mack. “I’m glad you’re on our side.”