Illusions Of Change (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 6)

by Andrew Wareham

  Henry gave careful thought to his appearance. Should he be Southern or Northern in aspect? He consulted with the judge and then spoke to Colonel Miller and received conflicting advice. The judge favoured caution and conventionality, Mr Star should not be in any way conspicuous; Colonel Miller felt that he should make himself known, that he should be remembered by any of those present who might in future wish to do business down South.

  “Are you, in fact, Mr Star, to be a Southern gentleman temporarily in the North or a Northern gentleman who occasionally goes South?”

  A good question.

  Further discussion with the judge determined that Henry was an English gentleman who dwelt in the South. It was a plantation owner who stood in church, awaiting his bride’s appearance.

  She entered on her father’s arm, dressed, indeed overdressed, all in white and occupying the space of three, satin and lace, veil and train and a tail of bridesmaids all testifying to her pride of place and achievement.

  The congregation gave a deep sigh - awe, envy and sheer amazement all combined – rarely had such a statement been made in their experience. They wondered just what she was saying.

  Henry had not thought of himself as a small man, but realised he was dwarfed in this company. Still, it was the bride’s day, and that was quite right and as it should be; traditionally it was the groom’s night, but he had doubts about that. He squared his shoulders manfully, smiled as she joined him and her father stepped back and the priest commenced his traditional greeting; he must meet his fate like a man, he thought. He wondered whether his father would be proud of his demeanour, suspected he might laugh.

  He performed his duty during the long festivities and then took his bride to the hotel they would occupy for three days before taking ship. He found her shy, untutored but willing, did his very best to match her enthusiasm; she made no complaints so he presumed he had been successful. It occurred to him, belatedly, that he had forgotten to adjust his household staff in anticipation of his wife’s arrival; he would have to be quick on his feet, making a clearance of the younger females before she guessed their nature. There was no end, it seemed, to a husband’s duties.

  She woke before him in the morning, was ready and joyful when he stirred, proceeded to very noisily demonstrate her pleasure in all that he was doing to her. He needed his breakfast when he finally reached the dining room.

  Two more days ashore then ten in a larger, slower, more comfortable ship south. He calculated the demands on his endurance and called for another round of toast. He would need to eat well over the next fortnight.

  John Quillerson had no time to eat, he was far too busy. He was making money! It was not an activity that had occurred to him in his youth, he had never envisaged such a thing, now found it to be rather a pleasing occupation. It was not exactly easy, it demanded in fact quite a lot of work, but it was very satisfying. The sole drawback to business, as far as he could discover, was that the law insisted on interfering with his practical initiatives.

  He had opened stores in a dozen backwoods settlements, each welcomed by the farming communities and providing a valuable service to the neighbourhood as a whole. His prices were carefully calculated to make him a small but predictable profit and he was open in his mark-up. In each store he had a notice of typical New York and Albany prices for the goods he sold and a list of freight rates that he paid. His customers could work out for themselves that they could not do better by going to town and buying there.

  There was a profit for him, of course, he had to make a living; most of the buyers had no trouble with that. The sellers often wondered whether they would not be better off taking their produce to town in their own wagons, but very few of them did so more than once – the merchants in New York welcomed them with open arms and paid them far less than they had hoped for, often openly cheating them, knowing that they could not turn round and take their goods home again, while those in Albany often simply would not buy – they had sufficient in stock already.

  “I’ve got time,” Quillerson explained, repeatedly. “If they won’t offer me a good price then I can put the stuff away in my warehouse until there’s a shortage. If needs be, I can charter a ship and send my cargo up to Boston or down the coast to a dozen other ports. Then there’s the fact that they know me, and expect me to be back every month with another load for them, reliable in quantity and quality, not like a small farmer or smith who they might see once a year, maybe.”

  The buildings were his biggest problem, and the yard beside them. He could not file for ownership of the land, not in a dozen different places, the law would not let him. Buying from the holder who had filed on a section was difficult and he had to rent in almost every case. Then he had to build his store, and rooms for the storekeeper and his family, and put up his fences and a stables for the wagons and their horses, all costly and relying on the goodwill of the ground landlord.

  The English commission came as a very useful extra and provided him with a very steady little income that could make his bank manager happier, the interest on his loans covered by an external income.

  The gentleman who had explained the nature of the services asked of him had been very forceful in his demands for confidentiality and that provided a slight problem. He could not risk making his offers to the wrong person. If he unwittingly offered a bribe to a committed and wealthy Emancipationist then public outrage would ensue and the source of his funds might well be compromised. If he offered money only to openly admitted pro-slavery advocates then he was wasting his time, their influence was already in the right place. He had to discover the waverers, the open-minded, the poor, the persuadable amongst the legislators and judges and newspapermen and divines of the state and then achieve introduction to them. Judge Chard and Colonel Miller provided him with his first leads and after that he had to slowly, cautiously, build his own set of contacts.

  Colonel Miller pointed him in the right way of doing things, suggesting that a little of blackmail might often go a long way.

  “Find a man’s weakness, Mr Quillerson, that’s the way forward! The possibility of public exposure on the one hand or a full pocketbook on the other and it is quite amazing how many of our brightest and best will come to think the right way.”

  Within a couple of months Quillerson had become the intimate of the keepers of a number of second-rate brothels. The top quality houses would always protect their clientele, confidentiality was part of their stock in trade, but the next layer down were invariably open to purchase and he rapidly built up files on the predilections of any number of lesser lights among the great and not-so-good.

  Contact with the acknowledged leaders of state and country was far more difficult to achieve; paradoxically it was less important. The major figures made policy pronouncements; the lesser interpreted them and put them into effect and had a far more direct influence on actual day-to-day events. The President might open his arms to the poor and ragged fugitives, but it was the minor district magistrates and judges who sent them back South again and the local newspapers who carefully reported the crimes committed by escaped slaves and the preachers who regretted their immoral behaviour and their presence in respectable communities.

  Book Six: A Poor Man

  at the Gate Series

  Chapter Four

  The bank was visible, proud and obtrusive a few yards from the gates of the sepoy cantonment. The brick building had been refurbished and now sported a sandstone block façade and a shady portico across its whole width. Four tall, bearded, white-uniformed guards stood imposingly by the only door, armed with ceremonial, but sharp, tulwars, mediaeval-seeming traditional swords, and replaced at night by eight less handsome but much more heavily armed gentlemen, all adding to the appearance of solidity and English worth that must typify a trustworthy financial institution.

  There was a shaded yard to the side where carriages and cabs – gharries – could wait, quietly secluded. It had occurred to David Mostyn that piles of horse apples fes
tering in the Indian sun were not conducive to the atmosphere he wished to create around his front door. He kept a pair of sweepers there as well, together with a low-caste labourer whose job it was to shout at any passer-by who seemed likely to spit scarlet betel over the sacred white stone steps.

  Workers were cheap and it seemed worthwhile to use them to establish the front that could contribute so much to Mostyn’s prosperity.

  Inside, all was mahogany and shade, ceiling fans worked by punkah-wallahs giving an illusion of coolness and at least stirring up the air. The windows were small and heavily barred, to impart the correct feelings of safety, both for customers and their money.

  A round dozen of Indian clerks sat at desks behind the high counter while two superior English gentlemen stood as tellers. David had discovered at an early stage that his customers did not like putting their money into brown hands, were even less enamoured of accepting it from them. It was irritating and rather silly, he thought, but he had to live with it, he was here to make money not to educate the ignorant.

  He had secured an audience with a very senior gentleman of the Honourable Company, had crawled very correctly and had come to an agreement to the effect that the educated Indians should be kept properly in their place, most definitely must not be placed in an apparent superiority to sahibs. It was possible, David had said, that a customer’s cheque might be refused at the counter, that he might be told that his account had insufficient funds to allow him his cash. Some few of the younger men might well be inclined towards carelessness, it was not so uncommon an event.

  The prospect was appalling, but could not be denied. Indian men could not be placed in such a position they would enjoy it too much.

  “I would wish, therefore, sir, if it might be possible, to beg that I might give employment to two of your Junior Writers to become tellers at Mostyns. I had not realised in London that this would be necessary or I would, of course, have brought young gentlemen with me, but I now appreciate that I must remedy my rather serious error.”

  He had grovelled sufficiently and was permitted to take two of the younger men, at a significant increase in salary, of course, to compensate them for leaving the caring hands of John Company. They were neither the brightest nor the best, but they would be quite sufficient for bankers.

  The young men themselves were happy to make the change – the Company promoted exclusively by seniority and, though cholera often helped empty the dead men’s shoes, they could well be twenty years in servitude before making their first step upwards. Junior Writers were not expected to marry or to set up any sort of permanent household and they were glad to leave this protracted public schoolboy adolescence behind.

  The façade of worth had been created and David sat in his office behind it, seeking profit and unconcerned where he found it.

  It was an interesting place, India, ruled by a private company with the active assistance of the English government, the effect being that neither took responsibility for the whole. The Company monopolised all legitimate commerce, but permitted outsiders to trade as well; the government provided armed forces but allowed the Company to recruit and control its own armies and naval forces. An active Governor-General could ensure supremacy for the English government, an inefficient successor could give the Company a free hand.

  Provided an adventurer exercised caution and intelligence, neither always available to them, then it was possible to carve out a large fortune very quickly, working in the inevitable grey areas where neither Company nor government wished to be found.

  The opium trade into the Middle Kingdom was the most obvious area of enterprise. The Company, with its permanent shortage of silver, had to encourage smuggling into China to pay for its tea and silks, and the government forces had to protect the trading ships for them. The risks for the smugglers almost all occurred on land, in Canton, and could sometimes be serious, the penalty for possessing opium being death. Mostly the Chinese authorities could be bribed, sometimes they could not, and it was commonly said to be impossible to predict which would be the case on any given day. Experienced China hands claimed that it was all a matter of internal politics, which was something never revealed to outsiders because of the pretence that their empire was unified, wholly one in a single set of beliefs and behaviour and therefore could not experience such a thing as power struggles and dissension.

  The bulk of the trade was in the hands of a few country merchants, houses large enough to have bought a noble family or a triad to protect them. The rest of the smugglers were rabble, small ships acting independently, often in a precarious relationship with Chinese pirates who themselves were occasionally found to be Imperial war-vessels for a week or an inconvenient month or two.

  Some of the smaller smugglers were ambitious, hoping to grow and become respectable, most were content simply to make money and run. Some had turned their attention elsewhere.

  David Mostyn had an appointment in his book, Captain John was to see him.

  Captain John had borrowed two thousands and repaid two thousand six hundred on the dot of six months, exactly as agreed. The worst of the storms past, he now had another proposition.

  “I wish to continue my involvement in the trade up to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, Mr Mostyn, but as well I intend to send a vessel to the south east, to the waters of the Papues where the Chinese have long traded for pearls and gold dust. Not on their mainland but in the islands to the east, just north of the Great Reef that Captain Cook wrote of. Those are wild, untamed waters and the ship I have in mind must be armed and manned to defend itself. There is a ship-sloop, three-masted but relatively small, some five hundred tons burthen and of nine guns on the broadside, and a pair of chasers fore and one aft. Nine pound guns on the broadside, twelve pound, the chasers. She was a French privateer, taken when the Mauritius fell, bought into Company service but now found surplus to their requirements – she is a little too big to chase the smallest inshore pirates in the shallows, too small for service in Chinese waters against their fleets of war junks. The Royal Navy is sending eighteen pound frigates to convoy the merchantmen off Canton, I am told.”

  “Because she is being sold out of service, with the official expectation that she will be broken up, the Murat will come in very cheap. Some five hundred guineas will bring her into my hands, still with her guns aboard, they also being scrapped.”

  Neither man made any mention of who the five hundred would be paid to or how much, if anything, would go into the Company’s purse.

  “I want a captain and two mates, and their juniors, and one hundred of English seamen for the guns. Another hundred of Malays or Lascars to sail the ship and form boarding parties. I need Europeans for the guns solely because of size – the Indians and Malays are more slightly built, lack the bulk to heave cannon in and out quickly. There would need be a Gunner to work the powder room, a boatswain or serang, some petty officers, and they could be of any origin.”

  “Paid how, Captain John?”

  “Six months wages, cash in hand, before we sail. A share of trading profit on the ship’s return. For those with families, a death benefit on a laid-down scale. Any injuries to be compensated, again according to a list.”

  This smacked more of piracy than peaceful trading. It sounded as if the intention was to deprive the Chinese junks of their pearls and gold rather than seek to find their own. What the eye did not see, David reflected, could remain unknown.

  “Powder, ball, rations, trade goods, a medical man, small arms, all would have to be provided, I should imagine, sir?”

  “Ten thousand sterling, Mr Mostyn. Four thousand in specie, the remainder in paper. Wages must be paid in coin, I fear.”

  “Where is your Murat berthed, Captain John?”

  “Trincomalee, sir, far distant from here, out of sight of the more senior members of officialdom.”

  And what was not under their noses, they would take pains not to know about.

  “When would you expect your first voyage to be
complete, Captain John?”

  “Eighteen months, thereabouts, Mr Mostyn, though such matters do not run to clockwork, of course and it could be longer or much shorter. Say a loan of two years duration when one considers how long it may take to move the cargo. I would expect to pay sixty per centum, again.”

  They shook hands on the deal, nothing written for safety’s sake. If war with China resulted from a moment’s carelessness on the part of his master then Mostyns would prefer not to be involved.

  “A friend of mine in Macao, Mr Mostyn, a German gentleman, Reverend Schmidt, has a significant quantity of Chinese ivories and jade pieces, an amount of Imperial jade included. I believe he would be willing to sell. He is to return to Europe soon and does not wish his superiors to become aware of his collection, so cannot leave it behind or take it with him. One understands that he has made a number of converts to his faith, some of them having given him gifts in gratitude for his forgiveness of their many sins.”

  David acknowledged Captain John’s generosity; he now owed him a favour on a later day.

  A couple of days later Mr Mostyn happened to meet with Mr Benson, just in passing mentioned the existence of Reverend Schmidt. One of Benson’s traders would divert to Macao on her return from Canton and a share of any profit would come to Mr Mostyn personally, not to the bank.

  Ivory was available in India, of course, in the tusk, an amount being openly traded into China. More was in demand in Europe where the keys for the piano-forte, for example, used tons of the valuable material each year. Additional supplies could probably be found from Burma and the Malay States and possibly other locations around the coast of the South China Sea. David discussed the question with Major Wolverstone and Mr Benson, formed a joint venture with them to send a trading ship to discover the possibilities.