A Killing Too Far

by Andrew Wareham

  “What purposes, Sam?”

  “Assisting young men to find a living for themselves, away from the hopeless poverty of England in a new world where land is free, and crops grow almost without labour. Taking the poor and downtrodden, Uncle Abe, to a place where they can stand proud and untrammelled under a warm sun. If you prefer, sir, we might refer to the process as organising the transport of bonded labourers to the Virginias.”

  “Do you really believe we should, Sam?”

  “Only if it is profitable, Uncle Abe. You did suggest that we might see as much as two pounds a head clear for each man we sent to America. Was we able to despatch a ship each month, with perhaps a hundred of brave young volunteers to each, then there would be more than two thousand pounds a year, sir, and that is not to be sneezed at!”

  Abe was not sure that he could approve, having given the endeavour his mature consideration.

  “I have thought deeply over this last month, Sam, since burying my poor boy. I must ask myself, and you, whether we are correct in our way of life, Sam. What profit a man if he achieves worldly wealth and loses his soul?”

  Sam was unfamiliar with the quote, but presumed it was from the Bible; that would have to come to an end he decided very quickly. Too close an acquaintance with the Good Book was hardly desirable for men in their profession. Uncle Abe was still young enough to sniff around a girl’s petticoats and that would be much better for him than inhaling the incense in a church; possibly, something could be arranged, he must bear it in mind. Besides that, looking at his dried up and rapidly aging wife, he would be doing the old man a favour.

  “A good question, Uncle Abe. When I have accumulated a sufficiency of worldly wealth then no doubt I shall have the leisure to consider it. For the while, I have better things to do. I do not believe that you wish to go into your retirement, to sit with the dotards, tucked up warm in the inglenook. There is work to do, sir. My lady is inclined to believe that she is by way of raising my hopes, she tells me, though it is early days yet, and I must put together an inheritance, it would seem.”

  Abe roused himself sufficiently to offer his congratulations, but mournfully added that he no longer had such an incentive, for lack of an heir of his own.

  “Tut! You are still young in body and spirit, Uncle Abe. If you have no heir on the right side of the blanket, then set up for creating one on the wrong side. A sprightly little lady in a house not so far distant that you could visit on frequent occasion – well, a year or two and you never know what might eventuate, Uncle!”

  Abe was inclined to be shocked, overtly. To himself, he had to admit that his own lady had long ceased to welcome any nightly trespasses on her person; a somewhat younger companion, and far more accommodating, might not be such a very bad idea.

  “Such a thing to suggest, Sam! The very thought of it! However, you are right that we should make a visit to one of the western harbours. I know a few folk in Liverpool, am almost a stranger to those in Bristol, wholly so to the merchants of Glasgow. You may remember that I indulged in a little of malfeasance with the goods of a Bristol merchant, not so many years ago, so let us travel to Liverpool next week. I do not think my name is known, shall we say, in Bristol, but there is no need to take a chance.”

  Sam agreed; one should not return to any locale where one might have left tracks.

  “Horseback or coach, Uncle Abe?”

  Coach was more comfortable, providing it did not rain and leave the vehicle axle deep in the mud. Horseback was quicker and less visible – the man on a horse was not obliged to hold to the main roads, such as they were, but could follow the tracks over hill and dale, selecting which towns and inns he wished to be seen in. For a sedentary gentleman, getting on in years, the horse could be very tiring.

  “It might be as well for us to travel separately, Sam. You by horse and myself in a coach. Using different roads as well. Best that we happen to be out of town at the same time rather than that we be seen to be travelling together, obviously on business. Hiring the coach from the livery, I must be known to be going to Liverpool. Riding your own horse, you could be anywhere, Sam.”

  That seemed wise to Sam.

  “Where would we meet in Liverpool, Uncle Abe? I do not know the town at all.”

  “At the warehouse of Mr Hayes, down at the docks, Sam. He is a known man, easily found and has done business with me on occasion. We arrive in Liverpool, put up at inns where we fancy, separately, and come together at say ten o’clock of the morning, on foot and unnoticed outside his front door.”

  They decided on a day convenient to both and parted to put their travel plans in hand. The distance was not so great, but Sam allocated three days to the ride; he did not wish to tire his horse and did not know the country, might profit from inspecting the scenes he passed.

  To his disappointment, Sam saw little other than fields and labourers working them. Past sowing and well before harvest, there was nothing other than idiots, as he presumed, hoeing the turnip fields and cleaning ditches and trimming hedgerows in the enclosed lands and pottering in the Great Field, in the half of parishes where champion still held sway. Once away from the newly expanding Potteries, there was nothing of mining or manufacturing to be seen; the land was still old and unchanging.

  North to Warrington and then almost due west along the river to the sea, still in Old England. Only on reaching Liverpool did the land wake up and join the Modern Age.

  Liverpool was just expanding, the Atlantic trade taking off, mainly because many of the new adventurers in the slave trade had based themselves there rather than in Bristol. Sam had been told that the change had come about simply because Liverpool had a great estuary which made a sheltered harbour with far more land available than at Bristol. It had been easier to build the new refineries for molasses and brown sugar from the West Indies, and there was a supply of cheap labour to hand, Liverpool being the port of preference for the Irish trade and its cargoes of starving, displaced Paddies. Cotton was coming into Liverpool as well, in small tonnages yet, but growing.

  It was a red brick town, Sam saw, low and ugly; building was flourishing, houses and commercial places going up everywhere. Where there was such activity, there must be money.

  Mr Hayes was easily discovered – there was a large billboard outside his premises – ‘Nathaniel Hayes, Merchant’ in large black letters, with smaller scarlet underneath informing the literate that he dealt in sugar and tobacco both.

  Sam scratched his head as he made his way back to his inn, a mile distant, away from the hurly-burly of the docks, well inside the realms of respectability where the people with an assured income lived. Sugar, he understood, came to England primarily from the Sugar Islands, while tobacco was far more of a Virginian crop; why should the one man be dealing with well-separated locations? It was possible that he preferred not to be too prominent in either.

  He considered asking the landlord, then decided it were better not. If Mr Hayes was in any way shady, then wiser far not to be associated with him in public eyes.

  Sam ate his beefsteak and refused the oblique suggestion of a warmer for his bed and slept well; he could not feel happy taking a female other than Josie to his bed, he found; possibly it was a weakness in his character. In the morning he was pleased to see it was raining, that he had reason to wear his greatcoat when he left the inn; he felt much more comfortable striding out into town with pistols tucked away and sensibly hidden in each of the big pockets. It was not, he told himself, that he was a bloody-handed man, it was merely that he felt more comfortable with a piece of protection at either hip.

  Uncle Abe was present and seemingly wideawake and at peace with the world, a little smile on his lips; Sam surmised that he had not refused a warmer for his bed.

  Well done, the old fellow. He needs to remember that he ain’t dead yet, Sam mused.

  He made his greeting.

  “Uncle Abe, you seem well this morning! Tell me, before we go inside, why does this Mr Hayes trade to the Su
gar Islands and to the Virginias both?”

  “From memory of a few years since, Sam, he prefers to spread his endeavours and his ships about the world. A sudden war in the Sugar Islands and he could lose all of his traders in one fell swoop. But it is unlikely that he would find his tobacco and rice carriers from Virginia and the Carolinas gone as well. Insurance, one might say. Not merely war – a hurricane out of season, early or late for some reason, could destroy one or the other, but rarely both.”

  Sam was reassured; they were proposing to deal with that rarity, an honest man.

  “In fact, a very sensible disposition of his assets, Uncle Abe. A wise man.”

  They entered the warehouse, finding an office close to the big doors looking out to the wharves. The building was well-kept, Sam noticed, stone-floored and with brick walls to shoulder height and heavy timbers above; Hayes had spent money on a dry and secure building for his stock. It was larger than most, Sam thought, a frontage of at least eighty feet and extending back a good two hundred. A merchant could store many tens of thousands of pounds worth of stock there. Glancing about at the racks he saw quantities of pottery in the familiar chests from Stoke as well as bolts of woven cotton and wool and any amount of ironware. Part of the floor space was caged off behind strong, and expensive, iron bars, contained barrels and coffin sized wooden crates.

  Abe followed Sam’s eye.

  “Gunpowder and muskets for the African trade, Sam. Lead ball as well, no doubt, from our Peaks and chests of knapped flints from the chalk Downs of the South Country. There is a great call for muskets for the Slave Coast. Gin, as well, in case bottles and earthenware jugs, stoppered and sealed. Some of mirrors and fripperies of a like kind, but mostly firearms and gin for a cargo.”

  Sam nodded and asked no further question. It was clear that Hayes loaded some ships for Africa and others for the Americas in three separate trading ventures. He must make contact with him on another day and discuss the matter of gin, though it did not necessarily make sense to transport the precious liquid overland. It might not be impossible to establish a distillery in Liverpool itself.

  A boy of eleven or twelve years, still not grown up, came across to them and begged, squeakily, to know their business.

  “Mr Abraham Makepeace and Mr Samuel Heythorne, of Leek and Stoke-on-the-Trent, to see Mr Hayes on a matter of business.”

  The boy muttered the names to himself and scurried off through an inside door.

  Sam noted that the lad was barefoot, as was reasonable for his age, but was dressed tidily enough besides in canvas trousers and shirt, suitable for dockside. Mr Hayes paid enough for the boy not to be ragged.

  The messenger returned inside five minutes and begged them to follow him. He took them through the door into an inside room and sat them in comfortable chairs and said that Mr Hayes would be with them presently.

  Less than ten minutes later and Hayes himself appeared and led them to his office. He was well-fed, not particularly tall, in his late middle age and either a very courteous man, Sam thought, or he knew sufficient of Uncle Abe to treat him with a degree of circumspection.

  “Mr Hayes, it is good to see you again. May I bring my nephew, Mr Samuel Heythorne, to your attention?”

  Greetings were exchanged.

  Mr Hayes wondered how he might assist the pair.

  “Our last dealings were not unprofitable, as I recall, Mr Makepeace. A matter of red-grain quarrying powder that was available from a working that had failed, I believe.”

  Sam knew that the red-grain powder found in quarries was coarser and of a lower grade than that used by the military for its muskets and cannon. No doubt it was cheaper to purchase but could be fobbed off on ignorant black men on the Slave Coast as the finest kind.

  “A very pleasant little transaction, Mr Hayes, but not one I am able to repeat. On this occasion, we wish perhaps to discuss the problem of an excess of hands on our local lands. The number of people is growing, it seems, far beyond the capacity of even the Potteries to employ them all. Should no action be taken, then starvation is inevitable, and probably mass disorder and riot as well. To maintain public order, and to avert the unmitigated horror of famine in our streets and villages, some measure must be taken to remove the feckless from their idleness and put them in the way of honest toil, Mr Hayes.”

  Mr Hayes showed himself much affected by the prospect of misery in the fields, of hunger stalking the streets.

  “A dreadful outcome if it should be so, Mr Makepeace. How may such evil be averted, do you think?”

  “Young, and as yet healthy and robust, hinds to be taken from the fields of England and sent to the New World and to labour there to their benefit and that of their new masters. A few years of indentured toil and they may progress to ownership, or lease, of their own lands and a life of riches and eventual ease, no doubt.”

  A smile appeared on Mr Hayes’ chubby features.

  “Indentured labourers, in fact. There is indeed a call for such, Mr Makepeace and you offer honest sons of the soil as well! The bulk of those sent to service in the Colonies are criminals taken from the towns, gutter-rats, no more. They cannot work for never having learned how and often are more bother than they are worth, gracing whipping-post and gallows with an awful frequency. I venture to say that I could send as many as fifty of free bodies on every ship I sail to the American ports – at least four hundred a year, if you could locate so many.”

  “My nephew, Mr Heythorne, will be most engaged in the actual recruitment of the bodies, Mr Hayes. Perhaps he will wish to discuss figures with you.”

  Sam smiled diffidently, the young, untried man in company of his elders.

  “My first thoughts, Mr Hayes, had been to look towards the villages to the south of Stoke, where the fields are rich in the valleys but the hills to east and west restrict the amount of land to cultivate. Every year sees a flow of bodies north to Stoke and the nearby towns and I suspect I could locate as many as a hundred a month from that part of the country alone.”

  An hour of discussion brought agreement that Mr Hayes would move any excess that he could not carry on his own ships; he believed it would not be too difficult to discover bottoms to take them across the ocean. Payment could also be dealt with easily, Mr Hayes said.

  “In the larger towns and harbours of the Virginias and Carolinas there is by way of an auction for indentured servants when such appear, always fewer than are required. The purchaser - taking their labour for between three and seven years, depending on circumstances, then to release them with a sum in cash in their hands - may offer ten or even twenty pounds, rarely in cash, but commonly by note of hand or even Trade Bill, all to be resolved in Liverpool. I would expect to be out of pocket to the tune of nine pounds for each servant, allowing for cost of feeding and clothing and carrying them across the seas. Once my nine pounds, and the cost of the transaction, was deducted, then there might be as little as ten shillings or as much as ten guineas remaining to your share, gentlemen, the money available some eight months, typically, after the servants’ arrival in Liverpool.”

  There was a risk, Sam noted, and he and Uncle Abe were to bear it. There would be a small profit almost guaranteed, and the possibility of a very large windfall on occasions. He caught Abe’s eye and nodded. The three shook on the deal.

  “Just as a supposition, Mr Hayes, what if there were young females who wished to change their place in life?”

  “So long as they be honest and respectable maidens - not the merest of street drabs - then they would be welcome indeed in the Colonies, for there are more men than women travel there, in the nature of things. I am very sure that there would be a substantial profit in their case, provided they be well protected.”

  And, Sam mused, if they were not protected, then there would be brothels very willing to purchase in fresh stock. Not so public an auction, perhaps, but one at which there would be anxious bidders.

  “I shall return to my home county, Mr Hayes, and devote myself to o
ur new endeavour. I much hope to see you within a few weeks, escorting the first of the hopeful young emigrants.”

  “A bite to eat, a pot of tea at least, before you go, gentlemen? It is close to midday and you will not wish to travel far today, I must imagine.”

  They agreed, sitting to the desk as amiable acquaintances as much as businessmen, as was Hayes’ obvious intention. He knew Abe already but wished to discover more of Sam, it transpired.

  “Mr Heythorne is your sister’s son, you tell me, Mr Makepeace.”

  “He is indeed, Mr Hayes. She wed a small farmer nearly thirty years since. He has managed to save his groats and bring in more land and is now a very comfortable yeoman, to our great pleasure. Sam is his third boy, with no claim of his father’s land, as must be appreciated, but who had the good fortune to be to hand when the Scottish villains reached as far as his home in the vile rebellion under the Papist pretender a few years since. He and other lads of the parish picked up their hunting crossbows and dealt at hand-to-hand with a small band of cattle reivers and brought back the beasts they had stolen and then were called into the militia where they chased the wicked rebels back to their mountains in Scotland, standing finally on the field of Culloden. Having, as they say, seen service, Sam found the confines of his father’s farm to be galling and came down to the towns to join me in my little enterprises. He has prospered greatly, as have I, and is now a coming man in Stoke with a wife and hopes of a family.”

  Mr Hayes was a successful merchant, could sum up a man’s character with some facility. He concluded that Sam was a young man of ability and little scruple, and handy with a knife or pistol in the dark, and possibly in daylight as well. He would be an easy man to work with, Hayes decided – one who was confident in himself and had no need to strut and bluster before a crowd.

  They parted the best of friends, expecting to make money from their new partnership and very pleased with each other.

  “Will he be honest in his dealings with us, Uncle Abe?”