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

by Andrew Wareham

  "Three shot, the fourth, however, died in less obvious fashion."

  "He raised a pistol to the porter, who defended himself mightily with his stick, sir."

  "Like as 'ow it was the old musket butt, sir!"

  "Ah, yes - a familiar wound, now that you come to say so. You were a soldier, I presume?"

  "Jolly, sir, twenty years from a boy drummer, sir. Billy Ruff'n for five of they, sir, then I were at Gibraltar and then on Benbow, 74, sir, till the wars ended. Corporal, I was, sir; four times I got made up."

  He did not mention how he had lost his stripe three times, and it would not have been polite to ask.

  Trelawney leant forward, inspecting the bodies.

  "Two rounds in the chest and stomach, very close - the shirt is burnt, I see."

  "Yes, sir. I called him to lay down his arms and he cocked the pistol he was carrying, sir."

  Murphy pointed to the weapon on the floor beside the corpse.

  "Dragoon pistol, military issue, I see."

  "Many of them to be found, sir. I have been told that it was common for horse-soldiers to pick up the weapons of fallen comrades, so as to be having extra barrels loaded when it came to a fight, sir. Come discharge, sir, they handed their kit in to the Quartermaster, two pistols and a straight dragoon sword, and there was none to ask what they carried out of the gate besides. In my few months in this post, sir, I have come across French and German military pistols by the score, and even more of broad-arrow marked pieces."

  "Clear enough, Mr Murphy, and no question but that it was self-defence. The other two men would appear to have been pistolled once from the front, and then finished off with a provost marshal's shot."

  The provost had the duty of completing the work of a firing squad when necessary - which it very often was, ordinary soldiers aiming astray when forced to the unpleasant duty or simply hitting off-centre with their inaccurate smoothbores.

  "Ah, to be sure, now, Mr Trelawney, it does look like that, superficially, you might say. In fact, sir, neither of them was dead and was lifting their shotguns towards the customers of the bank at the counter there, and had to be stopped quickly and certainly. I will testify, sir, that my men had no other course to take."

  Murphy's statement was made aloud, in front of the manager and cashiers who could be expected to say exactly the same in their turn - they knew who paid their wages, and it was not the coroner or his investigating magistrate.

  Trelawney knew very well that the men had been killed out of hand, quite deliberately, and that was murder, according to the law. He knew as well that he would not be able to prove a case in court, and had no great wish to do so; armed robbers caught in the act would certainly hang so it might be said that an amount of legal time and money had been saved, and a very strong message had been passed to the local criminal community - 'rob banks and die' would be graven on any number of memories.

  "I would beg you and your men to remain in Bristol until the inquest is held, Mr Murphy, but I have no expectation that any adverse finding will be made. If your men are literate then you might wish them to write out their own statements for the court."

  Murphy bowed his acceptance of the command, and of the willingness to make all tidy implicit in it. He made a note to mention Mr Trelawney's name to Lord Mostyn - one good turn deserved another.

  Book Eight: A Poor Man

  at the Gate Series

  Chapter Six

  Luke rose from his knees, weary and perplexed; he had spoken to God for two hours, and had received no reply. Past experience had convinced him that prayer would solve any problem, that opening his heart to the Lord must always bring him relief, comfort at a minimum, normally a course of action to follow as well. Today, and for the past week, he was as solitary and desolate as he rose as when he had first bowed his head.

  He had not known what to do a week ago, still had no indication of a proper course to follow.

  He sat over a lonely pot of tea, running over the same irreconcilable set of demands upon him.

  He wished, very much, to marry, and was quite sure that he had but to ask his young lady to receive her joyful assent to becoming a minister's wife. His income was barely sufficient to keep a wife in the state appropriate to a gentlewoman, and children would be a burden rather than a blessing; his manse was also far too small, and poorly furnished, and he would need two servants at least. Marriage would eat up all of his income, his allowance as well as his small stipend, and leave him even less able to offer useful charity.

  He wished to continue to serve the poor and the deprived, but was increasingly doubtful that his work was of any value at all to them; all he could do was to push the unfortunate into the despair of the workhouse.

  He wished to be a good member of his Family, but no longer knew whether his kinfolk were to be numbered amongst the saved and godly. More worrying still, he did not know whether that was a bad thing, for he was coming to believe that religion and hypocrisy walked hand in hand - he could no longer be certain in his mind that his work in the back-streets was anything other than a sop to the conscience of the prayer-gabbling worthy. It was not impossible that his brothers knew better than him what was right or wrong - and this was a very new and difficult concept to assimilate.

  He had been sure of his vocation since his early years, had known as a boy still in the classroom at Freemans that he would be a minister. Now he wondered just how childish that ambition had been, to what extent it had been no more than romantic self-aggrandisement - 'St Luke leading lost souls to Salvation', a chorus of angels to one side, Heavenly trumpets to the other.

  "Vanity," he muttered aloud. "Adolescent arrogance combined with long-lasting ignorance - and now mine eyes are opened to my own inadequacy. I can no more!"

  The decision was taken - he could no longer masquerade as a minister. It was a vast step, one he trembled to take without more serious thought, yet had spent a week in little else since the realisation had come upon him. Advice could only come from the Lord - and he could hear nothing in prayer or the silences of his mind, which, in itself, was an answer - he was no longer a favoured servant of God. He could act, or sit in indecision for the rest of his life - he wondered just how many ministers did that, whether he was the only man ever to have experienced crippling doubt; it was unlikely.

  He pulled pen and paper to him, addressed a brief letter to his committee, informing them that he could no longer remain as minister, they must replace him as and how they would. He intended to vacate his house that day; he could no longer stand empty-handed in front of the needy or offer empty prayers before the righteous of his congregation.

  The price of bread had risen again, even rye bread was becoming expensive and the potato harvest had not been good. The effect was to force more and more families to porridge oats, a bland and unsatisfying staple, often eaten three meals a day for lack of money to buy meat, or turnips even, for a stew. Milk was still cheap, luckily, and a child might not suffer too much on such a diet, provided it did not last too long.

  The mill-hands needed more money, higher wages, and knew that trade was good, profits better than for years. The unofficial shop-stewards had come to him for advice, unwilling to take the final steps to illegality, less and less able to find an alternative.

  "Another penny an hour, Reverend Star, six bob a week, and the family could eat a pound of bacon a week and two cabbages and a stone of potatoes, and perhaps an apple apiece for the little ones. The difference between growing up healthy and rickets, you might say, sir. But will those skinflints cough up? You know the answer to that, sir."

  Luke knew, and he also knew that a combination of the men, leading to a strike, would be unlawful, and he could not in all conscience lend the name of Star to that particular form of criminality.

  "I will speak to some of the owners, Mr Pike, but I can offer little hope, I fear."

  Luke had called upon his brother, George, a man with an increasingly great reputation in the town - 'a true son of h
is father', it was being said. It was hardly an accurate statement, for George lacked any sympathy for the ordinary man, or, indeed, any other sort of being; his sole motivation in life was to outdo his father in terms of wealth, and he felt that he might achieve that before he was forty, with a little of luck and a lot of hard business sense.

  "I pay the going rate, Luke, and a little over the top to get the best. I will not increase my wages over that, see no reason why I should - I am not in the charity game, that's for you, not me. If they can't feed their children, then the answer is obvious - produce a damned sight fewer of them! In any case, don't tell me they are too poor to feed themselves! Go out into town any night of the week - the pubs are cram-packed full! If they can afford to drink, then they can afford to feed their families!"

  It was obvious to Luke that they could not afford to drink, did so from despair not from enjoyment - yet it was so self-destructive an act!

  "I fear you are partly right, brother. Money that should go to the house-keeping is thrown away on liquor, and I have no idea what can be done about that."

  "Nothing, Luke! Those that drink are capable of no better, lesser beings who cannot be brought to reason because it is beyond them. We call them human beings, but they are not, you know - they are just drunks, a lower species of animal that happens to walk on its hind legs. The thing is, brother, that they are not all like that, and we should recognise that fact, and accept all that it means."

  Luke was lost, had no concept of George's meaning.

  "Half of the men - so-called - in town are no more than hopeless sots, Luke - incapable weaklings who suck their lives from a bottle and destroy the women and children in their contiguity. Give them more money and they will drink themselves the more quickly into their graves. But what of the other half?"

  "Well... they scrimp and save and do all they can for themselves and their families. They teach their children their letters and sometimes they put enough together to open a small shop or buy a horse and cart and set up as carriers or follow a trade on the building, perhaps."

  "Just that, brother. On no greater wage than any other working man, they make something of themselves. Some make money, some just manage to bring their children up to do better in life than they have; a few fail, of course. What they don't bloody well do is go whining with their hands out, begging something for nothing!"

  Luke tried to argue that not all men were born with the brain or the initiative to attain success, but he did not truly believe that himself - every human being had a duty to better himself and to surrender to fate was to lessen one's own humanity. To give coins to the drinkers was no more than to encourage them in their self-destructive course, to lessen their already tiny chances of saving themselves.

  Where did that leave him as a minister? His charitable works were no more than money thrown to the feckless, imitation pearls cast before true swine in fact!

  If he no longer was possessed of a vocation, then he must pack his bags, vacate the chapel's house, walk off into the black night of despair.

  'Very dramatic!'

  He knew that he would go no further than Freemans, and that by the carrier's cart in order to take his few keepsake possessions and his valises and trunk with him. He knew as well that he would speak to Ellen, to Miss Porter, he corrected himself, just as soon as he had decided what he must do next, how he would spend the rest of his life.

  That, of course, was the pressing question - what he was to do with himself. He was too old to read for any other profession, had not sat his terms at University in any case; he had no knowledge of cotton, or of iron or steam or coal; he had never learned the Land. He could write a good sermon and deliver it in chapel, but that was not the most valuable of skills in the market-place, words were cheap - unless, of course, they were printed...

  A newssheet might be an answer - a local paper, devoted to the doings of the county's worthies, reporting on the successes of cotton and iron and ship-building, expounding on the improvements being made in the towns by the local Boards coming into existence in almost all. Crusading against the Demon, no doubt; exposing the misconduct of the Militia and Yeomanry bullies; calling for the proper policing of the towns and supporting the new Watch Committees, where such existed; reporting, sadly, on the cases coming before Quarter Sessions and Assizes; supporting valuable charities providing education for the poor - there was much that a newssheet could do. It would be necessary to sell advertising, of course, so a careful line would have to be walked between indignation and a rational enthusiasm for the great progress made by local businessmen.

  He would need a shop front and a clerk for a town office, and a workroom behind for the press itself; a printer and his boy; pony and trap to distribute the paper to the small shops that would sell it, a driver as well.

  He would need then to buy the press and all that went with it, and paper and inks, and to live for a few months while the enterprise established itself.

  He had no knowledge of what it might cost, was certain only that he could not pay for it himself, for he had no funds at all. Perhaps it was not so good an idea, after all.

  Thomas was pleased to see him, not in the least distressed to discover that he no longer possessed a vocation, could no more be a preacher.

  "The Chapel tends to be on the vulgar side, you know, Luke - I have never had any great love for this 'Hallelujah, brother!' sort of stuff. You know, I have never been able to see Our Lord as a rabble-rouser - not His sort of thing at all, I think. Not that I am criticising, far from it! If it takes a modicum of showmanship to bring the lower orders to their knees, then I am sure that the end is thoroughly desirable, although the means are a little suspect."

  Lord Star sat back, comfortable behind his father's big desk.

  "You might wish to spend three years at one of the Universities so that you could be ordained in the Church of England? We could always find a Living for you and promotion would be easy to arrange. Purchase a few acres of slum housing and the Bishop would look favourably upon you! I remember, in fact, the late Lord Andrews telling my father that the Archbishopric itself had bought tracts of land down by the River in London and was having problems collecting its rents - paying on the sly for local enforcers to bring in the arrears and not wishful to attract knowing eyes, for fear of public fuss; hoping to sell out again, in fact."

  Luke had no wish at all to make a career in the Established Church, having left his own denomination because he had gained a perception of its hypocrisy.

  "One could, of course, find you a place with Mr Saul Mostyn's institutions?"

  Only as a last resort, Luke implied - he was no longer drawn to a life of service.

  "Good! Better far that you should change the direction of your life quite entirely. Have you any plan in mind?"

  Luke ventured on his scheme to set up a newspaper, a Lancashire Thunderer; Thomas was not impressed.

  "Too political, brother, and inevitably tarring the whole of the Family with its brush. You would be forced to become a supporter of one Party or the other, and that would have its costs - which might well outweigh any benefits to be gained. In later years, perhaps, but not now while there are so many divisive issues coming to the fore. You would have to make a stand on Catholic Emancipation, on the Trades Unions, on the whole business of Reform. Not desirable when it would be obvious that you had set yourself up using family money. No, I do not think that is a move I could support."

  The Head of the Family had spoken, and Luke was bound to knuckle under, or divorce himself entirely from the Stars, and their funds.

  "The decision must be yours, Thomas - and clearly you have a greater knowledge than I of what is or is not acceptable in the current state of the world."

  "Good! The Family could benefit from your obvious abilities in other fields, Luke. All of our endeavours are in the field of cotton at the moment, apart from our holdings of speculative land, that is. It cannot be wise to limit ourselves to just the one enterprise - a single catastrophe
would destroy us - so I have been looking about for another activity. There is a possibility of organising ourselves in the field of beverages, I believe, and I have been mulling it over for much of the year. The importation of cocoa is one field where we could profit; the manufacture of cordial drinks is another. There is a movement towards Temperance - so-called - which could create a desire amongst the middle order of people to purchase drinks which have no alcohol in them. In towns especially one is most unwise to drink water except it has first been boiled, as you know, and there is a need to add some flavour to water from the kettle! Tea, obviously, is growing in popularity, but there are some objections to its excessive consumption."

  Many doctors believed that tea was debilitating to the human frame when taken too frequently; as well it had been argued that the tea habit had been observed to grow at the time of a massive expansion in the population and a few divines had hinted, delicately and obliquely, that the brew stimulated the female sexual appetite, thus explaining the puzzling phenomenon.

  Luke, widely-read in the publications of the non-conformists, was aware of the arguments against the consumption of tea, nodded in grave agreement.

  "Cocoa, however, is unexceptionable. Many sailors will have grown used to its consumption at sea and some amount comes into Liverpool already. Were we to import more and sell it either in the block or ready-grated as powder in quarter or half pounds, in our own bags, then I think we could make a very respectable profit. An intelligent man could make a very successful new business for us. A member of the Family would be so much better, so much more reliable."

  Luke thought he could take charge of such an enterprise, suggesting as well that they might think of making and selling lemonade in sealed, safe bottles as a cold drink.

  "Investigate the possibilities, of course, Luke. What of ginger beer? Can that be made by the hogshead, do you know?"

  Luke was to be set up in a house in Liverpool and should investigate the profitability of the new business with an aim to its early establishment. He found himself to be enthused at this wholly new direction for his life, was grateful for the opportunity.