‘What’s clogging you this time?’ asked I.
‘Nothing.’
‘Doesn’t seem like nothing.’
‘You’re …’
She huffed, lifted her skirts and stepped back through the mud.
‘Bessie, wait.’
‘What now, Jonathan?’
‘Do not leave in a temper,’ said I. ‘We are business associates, are we not?’
She paused at these words, and I saw the mist part once more as she made her way back. She stood before me, hands upon her hips.
‘Can we not cosy together on occasion?’ said I. ‘If that’s what’s vexing –’
‘You wanted my breasts in your face.’
‘A method of sleep only.’
‘You demanded a finger in your –’
‘I’d prefer the laundry boys not hear it,’ interrupted I. ‘And by the by, any friend would have done the same.’
She grunted, sending the mist into eddies. ‘The laundry boys have listened to half the city’s secrets. They can listen to yours. Now I must propose that our liaison is confirmed as one of colleagues, not lovers.’
‘I see no reason why we can’t have a little of each.’
She rolled her grey eyes, which I didn’t much welcome, for ’twas yet another remembrance of my mother.
‘Agreed?’ she confirmed.
‘Fine with me,’ replied I, stepping closer and resting a hand upon her hip.
‘I will be no whore to you, understand?’ said she, swatting it away.
‘You’re a public ledger for every dick and his dog, but not your trusty employer?’
‘Employer?’
At this Bessie slapped my cheek and stormed off. The many laundry boys watched my aloneness, candy moving about their cheeks. I raised my cudgel at the closest one, feigning a strike, and they dispersed like chickens.
Left standing alone in the mist, I considered how lightly the affection had landed between us, an indiscernible midge that spread the slightest of ripples. I shrugged and set about my business.
DEFOE
The embrace of ruin
July 1724
He would much prefer a surgeon’s scalpel but he has no way to procure one. After every shaftment, Defoe makes a knot to prevent tensility, then begins his intertwining again. The rope – made from the unravelled threads of his hessian blanket – has the thickness of his thumb, about twice the girth of its failed predecessor, which tore during its first test. Poison would also be preferable if he could get his hands on some.
After several hours, his rope is three-and-a-half shaftments long. He yanks and it holds firm. Yes, strong enough to withstand the force. According to Isaac Newton, the rope requires the multiple of his mass – fourteen stone – with the acceleration of gravity – thirty-two feet per second – being a total of … that unbearable Isaac Newton. His show-humility at the Academy dinner. All that bowing. The poorly disguised bootlicking of Harley. Harley. Harley! Not even a word of reply to his supposed friend in the compter in six weeks. Nor Applebee. Nor Sheppard’s associate. Not even his father has deigned to assist. He takes a full draught of gin, wincing. Pausing from his sewing, he reviews the two letters he has drafted.
Dear Father,
To lessen the burden upon poor Mary, I humbly request that you serve as executor of my affairs upon my death, which will have passed by the time you read this letter.
I hereby assert the following to serve as my last will and testament:
1) Of my worldly possessions and inheritances – I bequeath all to Mary for the even distribution to my children.
2) Of my works in letters – I bequeath all future royalties to Mary for the even distribution to my children.
3) Of my debts and encumbrances – in lieu of repayment, I offer to all my creditors an invitation to a Poetry Recital by Lord Robert Harley, Earl Mortimer.
4) Of my hopelessness – I bequeath all disappointment to you, Father.
In adolescence I thought myself a child not of a father, but of the world. But today I die very much,
Your indebted son,
Daniel Defoe
July 1724
Defoe folds the letter, places it at the end of his bed, and opens the second.
My Dearest Wife Mary Tuffley,
I shouldn’t blaspheme at a time so near my reckoning, but it should be known to God what I consider Heaven to be. I don’t imagine its entrance gated by portly cherubs or its clouds inhabited by winged Seraphim. No. To me, Heaven is the Saturday morning we shared at Newmarket Inn, in the August of 1699. I slipped out of bed just as you were stirring and brought a steaming coffee to your side, together with a nectarine tart dusted with sugar and the rim rippled like a castle. Through a sleepy smile, you said, ‘Ohh I adore today.’ We sat in bed, chewing. The sun spread across the fading linen that was bunched in our laps. Your thoughts have always been loud. And almost always generous. I looked at you, to my left, your fingers cupping the steaming mug, your eyes moving about the room. Your face was full of these generous thoughts. This is Heaven, I thought. The finest afterlife.
We must accept the nature of things as they are; we must accept that all my attempts at worldly accomplishment have ended the same – like the abandoned seesaw in Crumlum’s playground – with success against the damp earth and failure sticking high in the air. And the problem is, I can’t trust myself. I will make the same decisions over and again. I’m shamed to admit it, but I even began devising a scheme to invest in another business. A private wherry-boat business!
It would be one thing if I was the only piece of flotsam getting sucked down the hole, but now I’ve brought my family along for the ride. It is detestable, and I will not subject you or the children to it any longer.
I wonder why I couldn’t have satisfied myself as writer only. It has always brought a reliable enough income. I simply – embarrassingly – haven’t been capable of forsaking my pride and ambition. As it is with such things – esteem, status, money – you jump into a bottomless pit, grabbing the side as you go, so the further you fall the more volume there is to fill.
So, my darling, my wonderful wife, I must sacrifice our togetherness for the sake of your progress, and the progress of our children. It is paradoxical, of course: you are the reason I live, and for that I must die.
To practical matters:
1) I have entrusted Father with execution of my last will, which dispenses all that is mine to you, for distribution among the children at a time that you see fit.
2) Please tell the children that I died at sea while voyaging in service to King George.
3) I demand that you remarry, and hereby absolve you of all vows. I only request that your chosen husband has a purse and demeanour unlike his antecedent.
4) If there is money for a tombstone, I should like my cenotaph carved from marble and inscribed as follows:
Daniel Defoe
(1660–1724)
Writer, Statesman, Trader.
Died at sea.
‘The day we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity’
(If the lettering is expensive, omit the quote.)
Farewell, my love. If there is a corner for me in the afterlife I shall set aside a cushiony space for you, and wait eternally as,
Your loving, devoted husband,
Daniel Defoe
Defoe folds the letter and seals it with a drop of tallow that sizzles brown upon the paper. He tests the strength of the rope once more, then begins making some allowance for the slipknot.
No turning back now, he tells himself, for the sake of wife and children. He takes more gin, wipes the tears from his hot cheeks and sets to work.
WILD
I lay out my empire, arm myself, conquer my first foe
1706
Thus wrote My Lord Mayor Thomas Rawlinson, his blood-waxed imprimatur no less impressive than the Queen’s:
Dear Mr Jonathan Wild,
We confirm receipt and thank you for your correspond
ence dated Monday fourteenth of the month they call December in the year 1705.
Our Lord Mayor sends both his thanks and encouragement for your capturing of thieves or ‘enforcement’ as you call it. Below is a summary of payable rewards, the full schedule of which is available at our offices:
For crimes punishable by whipping and branding (e.g. enticing an artisan, abortion): 2 pound sterling.
For crimes punishable by transportation (e.g. theft of bacon, killing a deer): 10 pound sterling.
For crimes punishable by hanging (e.g. going about with a blackened face, murder): 40 pound sterling.
In order to redeem payment pray have a Justice sign the attached form, and submit, along with an Application for Reward, to the office of Charles Hitchin, Under-Marshal to the City of London.
With sincere regard for your support and concern,
Arthur Kitten
Private Secretary to
The Honourable Lord Mayor Thomas Rawlinson
Despite the rupture in our affections Miss Lyon and I operated peaceably as colleagues, with her tasks now solely devoted to the management of our informants and the filling of our ledgers. There was one ledger, though, which she knew nothing of, and was hidden in my snug breast pocket. It was entitled WONK I ESOHT and functioned as so:
1) It was split into three columns.
2) Words were coded backwards.
3) The first column was inscribed with the names of every soul known to me, e.g. Henry Winterbottom Esq. or Miss Mary Mollineaux. If I didn’t know the name I described them as best as I was able, e.g. ‘eye tfel on htiw erohw’ or ‘sffuc yffulf htiw rehctub yllom’.
4) In the second column I placed a single X if that person was in my confidence or employed by me.
5) The third column was utilised if I suspected disloyalty. In this event, next to the first X I would apply a second X. I wasn’t yet sure the consequences – though I knew they would be dire – for those persons marked with a double cross.
Next was a task that brought me much satisfaction; the finding and fitting out of my new place of business. Sitting in Stern’s Coffeehouse, surrounded by other merchants equally inflated by their affairs, I ran my forefinger down the rental classifieds of Applebee’s Journal and Parker’s Post. I attended many inspections until I happened upon a fairly priced and handsome building in Barbican that was exactly what I sought, with offices out front, storerooms behind and a privy above. I was quick to provide a bond to the landlady, Mrs Segoe, who over putrid tea told me of her buttonmaker husband, Mr Thomas Sempe Segoe, who died the last year from ‘melting of the brain’.
‘Right before he expired, he just looked at me,’ said Mrs Segoe, pointing at me, like I was her. ‘He just looked at me, silly, kind husband he was, looked at me and said, “Mary. Mary, what was in that fish?”’
She bestowed me eight weeks without rent to make my necessary modifications.
It may have been mendacious when I first penned concern to Mayor and Queen, but now it was no lie, it was true. True that I was no thumb-twiddling minister who sat devising taxes in Whitehall. True that I was no purse-lined rector sermonising to dumb-faced parishioners who fantasised of tasty chicken. True that I was no navel-gazing writer cooking up useless worlds. No, I was no lawmaker, no fear-monger, no writer – I was a heaving oarsman in the belly of London’s boat, propelling the whole vessel forward. I was enlivened, energised, fuelled by the rhythm of my fellow oarsmen. The drumbeats were many, with new ones born each day: walking a traffic-riddled Bloomsbury, bargaining for cod at Smithfield, being woken by the Cheapside bells, catching an out-of-tune yet angelic Salve Regina from the levered windows of Clerkenwell Elementary, squelch from the nightmen’s boots, the vexed exhalation of impatient horses, steam rising mid-air from thrown bathwater.
In my new office in Barbican there was the tangy and vitalising smell of freshly hewn pine, as shelves and cabinets were hammered into floors, and panes of glass squared into windows. Even though I now had funds to pay the carpenters in money, I favoured credit, sitting the foremen down for a dram and talking of their opportunity to join in our great and prosperous enterprise. For there would be many more finials to finish, many more floors to lay, many more bricks to stack; so why be so pesky about the present invoice and endanger all the future ones?
I found a firm specialising in bank-building and engaged them to forge me a strongbox beneath the floors of the downstairs storeroom. I kept the key stuffed inside King Richard, which I mounted to the wall with three nails, like a purple Saviour.
In my office was a large desk centred with crimson hide and finely bevelled edges. I thought of Mr Makepeace Sterling, the Wolverhampton lawyer, and called for a bookbinder to make me volumes to put upon the shelves. There was pipe smoke to procure too; I needed plenty, so spent an afternoon at the stocks market choosing two pipes as long as my arm, detailed in Indian patterns – elephants, canopies, upturned slippers – and handled in ivory. The oakwood signage above my office door was cut with the following words:
Office of Jonathan Wild, Thief-Taker.
Centre for the recovery of stolen goods.
Bessie, as promised, sent me Company men for interviewing. There was no shortage of them, older than fifteen and younger than twenty-five, strong enough to kill a cat and fast enough to evade a watchman. I lit my pipe repeatedly (so far from my mouth, not so easy) and puffed smoke towards their dumb eyes, that all seemed possessed with the same bloodless void as Blueskin Blake’s.
Will you follow orders blindly? Will you return to me every last skein of stolen silk? Will you tell the world lies, but to me the truth? To all these questions they gripped their cocked hats and nodded without a word. In my ledger I recorded the names of every man that visited me, and of the twenty that came each day, I chose only one. And so it was that my army was built.
I coupled each man with a whore, installed them in cupboards, furnished them with cudgels and off they went. Loot was deposited via a slot in my back door that chuted directly into my strongbox.
Soon enough, my nights were spent listening to the blessed clang-and-scrape of a snuffbox or the susurrus of a stuck cravat sluiced clear by the weight of a silver-clasped pocketbook or – my personal favourite – the steady tinkling formation of a coiny pyramid. I gave up trying to sleep so I could freely fantasise at the growing of my fortune. I reserved rest for afternoons, when there was a sweet, rich silence to ruminate on the next acquisition, and clear mornings when a golden stream of eastern sun struck the foot of my plumply feathered mattress.
Pistols are not cheap contraptions, you can be sure, but to my advantage there’s a busy second-hand trade (proprietors must lack longevity) and Bessie procured me a pair of Berettas from Master Winterbottom Esq. at an acceptable price. Winterbottom, who was now astonished at the prodigious business I sent him thither, offered to instruct me in their operation. We met in Bethnal Green before my morning repast, he standing grim and erect, with his nose held high and tendrils of what remained of his hair quavering in the wind. His deportment was sombre and professional as he laid the mahogany duelling case across one knee and flicked the silver clasps. Inside were two elaborately carved flintlocks and a variety of instruments to clean and load the things, all snugly tucked into velvet homes.
‘Don’t ever leave them loaded, unless you’re to make certain use of them,’ warned he. ‘Or they’re liable to backfire, as it’s called.’
‘Where’d you gain the proficiency,’ I asked of him, taking one in my hand. I considered the Italian device not dissimilar to a pregnant woman, that is, an alluring beauty disguising a most dangerous commitment.
‘I’ve seen my share of battle.’
‘Aye?’
‘Aye, boy.’
‘Were you a man of the military?’
‘Are you hear for pistolling, or interviewing? Now keep your elbow locked, or you’ll fire left.’
‘I suppose esquires duel quite often, over women who swoon from lifting a teacup. I once kn
ew –’
‘Shut it, Wild.’
‘I’ll need holsters too. They’re to be on show.’
‘I have just what you seek.’
‘Now, enough with all this technique bull,’ spoke I. ‘I’m yet to breakfast. How do you fire the thing?’
‘Pull back with your thumb, like so.’
With his enormous, bristly thumb, Winterbottom cocked the ornate lever until it clicked. One doesn’t need knowledge of warfare to know the anticipation of the subsequent hush.
‘And FIRE!’
The pistol exploded. A puff of sooty cloud hung there, unmoving.
‘You hit nothing,’ taunted I, taking up my pistol. ‘Now watch a first-timer outshoot you.’
I tried cocking the hammer, which yielded no result.
‘The hammer, it’s all stiff.’
Winterbottom started laughing, the same insistent laugh to which I was accustomed.
‘Hahahaha.’
‘You want me to buy these broken things or not?’
‘Hahahaha.’
‘It’s broken,’ declared I.
‘There’s nothing broken about it. You aren’t strong enough to pull the hammer back.’
The first call of business at my Barbican office was none other than Mr Gyssels of Flanders. It was seven in the morning (!) when he donged my brass bell; I was barely out of bed, and in need of my pisspot and morning beer. I buttoned a coat over my nightshirt, spilled a goblet of wine and stepped right in the puddle. Nothing worse than one wet stocking in its boot, thought I, opening the door to Gyssels’s fresh face.
‘Do you shave every day?’ asked I, clearing my throat.
‘I couldn’t find you at the specified address,’ said Gyssels, apparently in no mood to jest.
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