The Wages Of Virtue (A Poor Man at the Gate Series, Book 8)

by Andrew Wareham

  "What of timbers for the ribs, Mr Knowles?"

  "Compound, sir, like the masts of a first-rate of the navy - six or seven, even eight pieces scarfed together, drilled and bolted and held tight to each other. Easier to get the shape just right, sir, as a bonus, you might say. Double skin, iron plates inside and out, and they're going to add strength as well. A high, wide open bridge for the seamen to steer from, and cabins for them all, because she's going to be at sea for days at a time, Newcastle to London or Southampton at five or six knots, so she's got to have a galley and a mess as well, but she's going to pay for herself, and quick-time too!"

  "Lay your keel, Mr Knowles, and send your reports to me alone, no copies to Sir Matthew. Orders for your boilers and pipework and such as if you are building a couple of ferries for the Island. We shall spring our new ship as a surprise for them all, Mr Knowles."

  "Yes, Sir William, an excellent idea, a great joke, I am sure. Will you just put the instructions into writing for me, Sir William?"

  Hathaway was able to report a profitable coal yard and wished to build another in Portsmouth Harbour, possibly on the Gosport side, a little clear of the navy.

  "Probably in Poole as well, Sir William, in a year or two. I have word besides that a local man is setting up along the coast at Shoreham, copying us, and have no doubt there will be many more, and all wanting the services of steamers, sir, at least a dozen inside the year!"

  Sir William wondered if he was not overstepping the mark just a little - he knew that he was certainly giving ammunition to Alec Fraser. The new lord seemed to be a bit more enterprising than the old, more inclined to chance his arm, one might say; it could be wise to speak to him, separately, and ask his approval of the new ship. He must discover when my lord would next be in London - travelling up to the estate would be too much out of the ordinary, would attract attention.

  "Is all well besides, Mr Hathaway?"

  "Very much so, Sir William. Thank you for the recent increase in my salary, sir."

  "Make money for the firm and you will be looked after, Mr Hathaway. If you have any ideas of your own then please to tell me of them, I am always looking for extra profits!"

  Hathaway felt that he was not in himself an innovator - his genius lay in applying other men's ideas, he believed. Mr Knowles was far more into new engineering ideas, was in fact in the way of designing a new means of boarding a ferry, a ramp that would swing up and down to make a roadway from ship to shore for the wagons to use.

  "It will be quicker than a gangway, Sir William, and uses the ship's own engine for its power, if I can just work out exactly how to stop the water gettin in."

  That seemed quite an important proviso - Sir William warned him to be very sure indeed of that little matter.

  The extra orders for iron plates went north and were met without query, Alec Fraser's only reaction being to request the funds to build another furnace and pouring room at Roberts.

  "It will pay for itself in the space of three years, my lord, and have twenty years of life, at least. If Mr Joseph is right, my lord, and the steam trackways come to cover the country in iron rails, then we shall need to build still more furnaces. We could give thought to their location, my lord - it might be said to make sense to set up in the east of the country as well, my lord."

  "A new plant entirely, you suggest, Mr Fraser? Where? I can see advantages in reducing the distance to send the product, but I have doubts about spreading ourselves too thin. Was you to have a set of furnaces in Sheffield, say, as well as the existing works in South Wales, then you would be forever travelling, wasting time on the roads. Better far to expand at Roberts Old Works, I think, onto the flat land there; the New Works is surrounded by hillside and would demand much more money."

  "Part of the flat land is very wet, my lord, though it could be drained without too great an expenditure; but we would need at least eight acres, and half of that would be built up."

  "Buy the terraces and demolish them, Mr Fraser. Are they occupied by our people?"

  "Not to my knowledge, my lord."

  "Good! Had they been we should have been obliged to build elsewhere for them, but if they are not our problem then it saves us money. Is eight acres enough? Will we wish to grow again in ten years time and regret then that we had not bought more land now?"

  "I would be inclined to buy those awkward hillsides above the New Works, my lord. In time we can flatten them to an extent or dump our slag and cinder in the glens in between them to level them off. The land will cost pennies now, my lord, but could be valuable in ten years - or it might never be used but at so low a price will represent only a trivial loss. If worst comes to worst then we can build housing there and make our profits that way."

  "Do so, Mr Fraser. To change to another, and more important topic, has Mr Joseph been active in the works lately, do you know?"

  "He has spent some hours in the workshop here, my lord, in company with his secretary, Mr McGregor, and will be here again tomorrow, all of his castings being ready and the plate for his boiler all made up. I believe it is his hope to have his new locomotive assembled within the week - the frame is ready, axles and wheels attached to his satisfaction. He has been busy at the New Works as well - they have cast a fortress gun to his design, bigger and of longer range than any before. I understand it throw a ball of sixty-four pounds weight, the barrel very thick at the breech and tapering off along its length, rather like a wine bottle in shape. Percussion lock, of course."

  "It will need a very heavy carriage, will it not?"

  "A fixed gun, sir, able to traverse left and right and the barrel sliding backwards against a pair of large springs to absorb the recoil. Very strong springs indeed, my lord - a difficult task to forge them, one understands."

  Fraser did not seem to like the invention, and Robert tended to trust his judgement. Joseph could be rather wild in his enthusiasms.

  "How is it to be tested?"

  "Mr Joseph proposes to take it north on a lighter, my lord, to the sand dunes along the Lancashire Coast, up towards Morecambe, where there are miles of flats at low tide and the fall of the ball could be observed at a distance. He would construct a temporary battery to house the piece."

  "I think I should discuss this with him, at some length."

  Robert could see a strong chance of this experiment ending in explosive failure - the new, large springs could break or the barrel could jump off its carriage, or the breech could simply split under the pressure generated by the charge. Rule of thumb, as he remembered it for cannon, was that the load of black powder should be one third of the weight of the ball for a long gun, significantly less for mortar or howitzer or carronade. Twenty-one pounds of gunpowder was no small amount...

  Joseph had always been inclined to take risks, confident in his own abilities to the extent that he pooh-poohed the caution of lesser men; influenced by grief, caring less for himself, he might step over the boundary from confidence to recklessness.

  "I have made my calculations, Robert, am within reason certain of them. It is smooth bore, of course - though I can see the day of the rifled cannon coming - and that reduces the pressure on the breech. There really should be no danger, or no more than a normal risk - it is always possible that there might be bubbles unseen in the casting, but that is an everyday sort of thing, impossible to predict or allow for."

  "So be it, brother. But I will beg of you to tie a very long string to the lanyard and to trigger the piece from the shelter of a substantial wall. Have we contracts for fortress cannon at the moment?"

  "A battery to go on the works at Gibraltar and another for Corfu - that was used to be the old Republic of the Seven Islands and is now ours, you will be reminded. Forty-two pound long guns, as have been made these past twenty years. I think that the Board could be persuaded to take bigger cannon for Gibraltar - it is more and more important to us and to our trade. There will be contracts for Malta, I should imagine - again necessary to protect our traders."

&n
bsp; The task of obtaining contracts at the moment must fall to Robert, he felt - it needed a man based in London and with the ear of the right officials and politicians. If he was to reduce his dabblings in mere trade, as an aristocrat should, then he must pass the task to another of the family - and that meant James. That would require much thought, he feared.

  "Go ahead with your tests, Joseph, but I would prefer you to remain in the land of the living - do not succumb to despair, I beg of you! And do not grow careless because you feel that it does not matter! It matters very much to me, and to the rest of the family."

  James blushed, muttered something incoherent that might have been thanks.

  "Now, regarding other matters. It is my intention to involve myself far less in the business and its day-to-day concerns. I must if I am to have a voice at Downing Street, and you can imagine how much that might be of value to us all. Thus, I think that you should take a greater part in the iron and coal activities; Mr Fraser should be told to report to you and to seek permission for large expenditures from you rather than me. As well, you must discuss the future plans with him. If we are to build great guns - and I think we should - then how should we organise ourselves? As well, we sell to the States at the moment, and very profitably; is there a market for our products in the Germanies or Austria or even Russia?"

  Interesting questions, Joseph thought, and well out of his field - perhaps he must widen his activities, hone his brain on new problems. He wondered if there were those in the commercial line who might have knowledge of selling overseas.

  Robert was not dissatisfied as he left for the estate, he hoped that he might have helped his brother and turned Alec Fraser's mind into a proper direction.

  Fraser entered his house soon after six in the evening, greeted by wife, son and, incoherently, by the baby. The house was warm, bright, decorous - all that the dwelling of a coming man should be; wife and children were the same.

  "Roast leg of lamb for dinner tonight, Mr Fraser. Cook assures me that it is a good joint and that we shall enjoy our meal."

  His wife's diction was near perfect, he noted with great approval, quite possibly more genteel than his own, and his son, still less than fluent nonetheless spoke clearly and addressed him as 'Papa', as was proper - no 'Dad' here!

  They played and talked before bedtime and then the nurse took both children away while the adults sat to table.

  "My lord returned to the estate this afternoon, my dear. Well, he hoped to reach Stafford at least, but will be lucky to do so for it is coming on to rain. He was so good as to discuss young Robert's future with me. He agrees that we should teach him at home until he is seven and then he should attend one of the new schools until he is of a proper age to be sent up to Edinburgh, to the University."

  "Day school, Mr Fraser?"

  "If there is one that is more than a Dame School within our reach, then yes. Otherwise he must board. He must have a proper grounding in the classics if he is to talk with his betters on equal terms. If he is to become an engineer then he must have knowledge - there is no alternative."

  "Must he become an engineer?"

  "My lord said the self-same thing, my dear! No, of course not, though I hope he might. He could choose the Army - though I trust he will not, bearing in mind Mr James - for I could purchase a commission and my lord would give the good word that would make a Line Regiment accept him. If he wished we could find a place for him as a midshipman, or, he might choose to take Holy Orders. Less respectably, he could read to be an attorney-at-law. But all, except the navy, demand that he can demonstrate a genteel proficiency in literature and the arts, though for the Army the barest patina will suffice."

  He could not become a farmer, for they would never be able to buy him enough land to make a living and a tenancy would be rather low for his perceived status in society.

  "At least little Rosemary will never have to go away to school."

  "My lord was very strong that she should have a governess in a few years - for a young miss who has been properly brought up will have the greatest of advantages in our society where nine out of ten of the manufacturers' girls have learned only from their mothers. Having had a governess will tell every set of parents much about her eligibility as a bride."

  The ranks of the County might just be open to a girl with a little of money and much of the upper classes about her.

  The firm of 'Starlings Import and Export Agents' opened its doors in Liverpool with little public fuss or show.

  Mr John Starling acted as his own traveller initially, calling upon the apothecaries of the town with samples of his Indian and Persian wares and able to take orders for delivery from stock. Opium and hemp were both in short supply, due to turmoil in the waters of the Mediterranean, and he was able to turn an immediate profit on his first cargo. He had expected to have to offer a significant discount on his first deliveries but found that he could charge a good market price despite being a newcomer. He sent a demand overland for all that his suppliers could find for him.

  He investigated the possibilities of selling Persian carpets as well, but he found that market to be very thin - a few rich manufacturers were interested but most of the gentry preferred the traditional and fashionable French artefacts and the middle order were content with the English products, Axminster and Wilton, far cheaper and of reasonable quality, though of lesser artistic integrity, no doubt.

  A few hours of every week went to acquainting himself with local conditions and getting to know England again. He made no attempt to contact his brothers, content that they had noticed his presence at their father's funeral and must attempt themselves to track him down - it would be interesting to see how long it took, and whether they would wish to speak to him. He had enjoyed the guilt on Matthew's face, hoped he had enjoyed some poor nights of sleep since.

  Somewhat to his surprise was the discovery that Quarrington was no longer merely an obscure Bristol merchant, had in fact always had connections with the landed gentry and was now using them to rise, or return, to the company of the great. Had he been aware of that a few years before he would have been less adventurous in his dealings with the man - perhaps, but he had had no intention of returning to England then. Now, injured and never wholly to recover, he could not pursue the buccaneering life he had so much enjoyed; his sword arm was impaired and he lacked the endurance, could not stay active for days at a time with almost no sleep; he was limited to a sedentary existence, the office chair rather than the captain's quarterdeck, and that had meant a return to a place of safety - provided England could be seen as such.

  If Quarrington got wind of him then there was a very good chance that he might hang, assuming he did not send his own men to do the job privately, because he had publicly humiliated him - there would be Bristol men who knew the story and would still sometimes tell it. Exhibiting Mr Star - the clever villain - on the Tyburn Tree would announce to the whole world that Jonathan Quarrington was not to be taken lightly - that he might be abused, but would never forget.

  By far the best course would be to quietly get out, to go to America, but he could not do that and take any money with him - he would be hard-pressed to lay his hands on a thousand in cash because he could not sell up, he would have to abandon everything. He could not start all over again, he no longer had the energy, so he must lie low, remain unseen. The Star family was unlikely to announce his rediscovered existence - they would surely wish to hide their black sheep - brother Thomas was building a very respectable name as a Public Man, must be looking for worldly promotion which might be jeopardised.

  All he could do for some years, he supposed, would be to make his fortune and regain the independence he had compromised by his unsuccessful fraud in India - who would have thought they would be so wide-awake!

  He set up a folder in his desk drawer, entitled it 'Star Family', and began to collect every piece of information he could quietly discover. Brother Luke was a clergyman and still unmarried - there might be some dirt to dig
up there; George was a very sharp mill-owner and building a name as a hard, and rich, man; Mark was a hanging judge - nothing especially wrong there; Bob was a sheep farmer, recently wed and innocuous; his sisters, the surviving pair, were married into mediocrity; Henry was a rogue in America, known as such so he could hardly be exposed; Matthew, the murderous bastard, was a land-owner and ship-builder and protected by the Andrews interest as well. A day of thought and he created separate files for Luke and George - he would concentrate on digging up information on them - it might take years but there seemed a better than average chance that he could find something useful on them.

  He wondered for a while whether he could start a rumour that Joseph Andrews had killed his young wife, Mary Star, but he would have to expose himself to an extent to do so, and he had no way of obtaining or plausibly fabricating evidence. He would have to give that a miss.

  He hired on a pair of young men for the Liverpool office.

  One was the son of an Irish family in a small way of business as apothecaries in the south of the country, in Waterford; he had fled after the local priest had denounced him as a sinner, he having been so careless as to put two local misses in the family way at much the same time. Mr Leary had explained that he had not been able to decide which he loved better, but to no avail, and he had decided absence to be the wiser course. His knowledge of the trade would be very useful, John thought.

  The second young man had learned the bookkeeping trade at his father's feet in Liverpool, third son with no prospects, and had brought his sober self to John's office. He was aggressively honest and wholly trustworthy and deeply Christian; John did not understand him at all, but he was sure he would be a very handy man to have about - he hired Ezekiel Blake at one hundred and twenty pounds per annum, half as much again as the going rate, and secured his loyalty forever.