Mad Blood Stirring

by Simon Mayo

  ‘For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch

  [He was louder this time.]

  ‘And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.’

  Tommy looked puzzled but said nothing. Sam asked the question for him.

  ‘What’s that mean?’ he said, looking in turn at the King, Joe and Habs.

  ‘We should be holdin’ hands,’ said Habs, ‘and Juliet’s sayin’ that when a pilgrim holds a statue’s hand, it’s somethin’ like a kiss, I guess.’

  Sam looked unimpressed. ‘You both sound mighty annoyin’ to my way of thinkin’. I know this was a long time ago, but ain’t that a strange way o’ courtin’?’

  King Dick ignored the exchange. ‘So Romeo says, “Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take” and kisses Juliet.’ He looked at Habs then Joe. ‘Well, then?’

  Now it was Joe’s turn to blush. ‘You mean here? We probably shouldn’t.’

  ‘Because …?’ probed the King quietly.

  Now Joe looked directly at him. ‘With respect, King Dick, you know very well why.’

  ‘Tell me …’ Even quieter.

  ‘Because,’ said Joe, a hint of steel in his voice, ‘a coloured boy kissing a white boy would be considered an abomination. And if that happens on a stage, well, we’d most likely be locked up. And if it’s that stage there’ – he pointed to the other end of the cockloft – ‘we’ll all be in the cachot. For ever.’

  King Dick found his bearskin hat and placed it on his head. He was seven feet tall again. ‘Let me guess, Mr Hill. You gotta small little Baptist church round the corner from your mamma’s house? ’Cos that sounded mighty like somethin’ you’d hear in a sermon, and not from the lips of a smart boy like you. This here is a play. A fiction. Romeo can’t marry Juliet if they don’t kiss. This isn’t pully-hauly, it’s jus’ a kiss.’

  Ned and Sam were mute, Tommy reddened again, while Habs twirled some hair between his fingers, eyes to the floor.

  ‘Maybe you an’ I should work somethin’ out, Joe,’ he said. ‘Maybe when there’s no one else lookin’ at us and watchin’ everythin’ we do.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Joe. ‘Is there anywhere in this prison where no one else is watching you?’

  ‘Few places,’ said Habs.

  The King picked up his club and rose from his box. When he stretched, the club hit the ceiling. ‘So, we rehearse again tomorrow. Mr Hill, please talk to your shipmates, to see if we can find us some white players. Then see if you can work out a way of kissin’ Mr Snow here without it bein’ some kinda a-bom-in-a-tion.’ He swept out of the cockloft, Alex and Jonathan darting in his wake.

  3.9

  Block Seven

  IT SEEMED AS though, all Joe’s life, he had consulted Will Roche. More than anyone else, it was Will who had been there when Joe had needed advice or counsel. It hadn’t, as it turned out, always been wise advice or timely counsel. But old habits die hard, so Joe found himself back at his mess and talking to the bunk below.

  ‘Do you even know the story, Will?’ Joe realized he sounded exasperated.

  ‘Only what you told me. Never had much time for books, myself. Got to kinda relyin’ on you to tell me things if I really need to know ’em.’

  ‘Well, you need to know this. I’m playing Juliet, and in Act One, Scene Five she gets kissed by Romeo.’

  ‘I assumed. You did say it’s ’bout love an’ all.’

  ‘And you don’t have a problem with that?’

  ‘What’s to have a problem with?’

  ‘Habs Snow is playing Romeo, Will. I’d be kissing a coloured man. On stage.’

  Roche was out of his bunk in seconds. He appeared inches from Joe’s face, shock written into every feature, surrounded by a cloud of liquor and tobacco fug.

  ‘Have you lost your mind, sailor? Taken leave of your senses?’

  ‘It’s the play, Will. It’s just acting,’ said Joe, realizing he was already parroting King Dick’s arguments.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to act your way out of a lynchin’ then, and I won’t be able to do nothin’ to stop it.’

  Joe had known what Roche would say but was annoyed to hear him say it all the same. ‘Won’t be able or won’t want to?’ he asked, and saw that his words had stung.

  ‘You gotta know where to draw the line,’ Roche snapped, dropping his voice to an urgent whisper, ‘and kissin’ Negroes on a stage is way, way across that line. By God’s truth. That’s what your mother would say if she were here beside me now, and you know it.’

  Stung to sudden anger, Joe swung himself to the edge of the hammock.

  ‘You’ve no idea what my mother would say. You’re just mentioning her because you think it might make me do what you say. Hell, Will Roche, that was unfair, and you know it. I’m telling you ’cos I always tell you, but maybe I just need to decide everything for myself now.’

  Roche stepped back, pained by the force of Joe’s reply.

  Joe took a deep breath. ‘It’s a play, Will,’ he said. ‘I don’t live in Verona, I’m not a fourteen-year-old girl and I’m not getting married. And after that, I’m not going to die. Happy so far?’

  Roche nodded.

  ‘The man who falls in love with Juliet is called Romeo – Habs Snow’s playing him, like I said. He isn’t a sixteen-year-old Italian, Will, he’s a dumbass sailor just like me, pretending to be something he’s not.’

  ‘But when you kiss,’ said Roche, his finger raised, ‘that ain’t pretendin’, is it? That’s goin’ to be happenin’ right in front of everyone.’

  Joe felt his skin prickle. ‘But we’re telling a story …’

  Roche had hung his head then retreated to his berth. Joe jumped down and balanced himself on the end of his hammock. Roche lay with his hands behind his head, eyes fixed on a spot somewhere above him.

  ‘I hear what you’re sayin’, Joe Hill, I really do. I understand it ain’t real, but I also understand men. These men.’ He pointed around at the other occupants of the prison. ‘And whether you like it or not, most of ’em will not have it. Maybe all of ’em, for all I know. They’re not gonna pay sixpence to see a fine young white man like you kissin’ the likes o’ him. And if you think they’ll just sit there and take it, well, you’re not as smart as I took you for. This ain’t somethin’ you need to think about, this is jus’ somethin’ you know.’

  Neither of them moved for a long time. Roche was on his back, looking at the hammock canvas above him; Joe was perched on the edge, his feet on the floor and his head in his hands. He knew that, whatever happened next, things wouldn’t be the same again. He was no clearer about the kiss, only that the person he wanted to talk to was Habs. Not Roche.

  Joe felt a tap on his shoulder and looked up to see the ginger-haired tarp-man Toker Johnson, looking agitated. ‘Hurry, boy, you gotta hurry!’ he said. ‘Or we’ll be late and that’ll be noted.’ He moved on to Roche, who got a shaking. ‘C’mon, old man, stir yourself.’ He scurried off to round up a few more stragglers.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to be “noted”, would I?’ said Joe. He’d said it to himself more than anything, but it seemed to galvanize Roche. The old sailor hauled himself from the hammock, then pulled Joe to his feet. ‘C’mon. You should see this,’ he said.

  They joined a stream of men walking up the stairs, most chatting or calling out to shipmates, but Joe and Roche walked in silence. Joe’s head was so full of the argument, the play and the kiss, he gave no thought to where he was heading or what he was doing. He was just following Roche because he had asked him to. As he had so many times in the past. As he might not do again in the future.

  What would his mother say, anyway? Their last conversation seemed so long ago he wasn’t even sure he could summon her voice, never mind what words she would say. Then, unbidden, his father came to mind. Joe hadn’t thought of him for an age but now the force of the memory left him reeling. He might not know what his mother would say but, even after all these years, he felt certain he understood hi
s father. The thought of him in the theatre, his delight in watching the dubious Polly hiding her highwayman husband in The Beggar’s Opera, how he had applauded the courting of Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew.

  When Joe came out of his reverie, he was in the cockloft. On a makeshift stage at the far end, a man was about to be flogged. Stripped to the waist and hands tied to two metal rings that had been knocked into the ceiling, he was already in distress. Whether he was sobbing or merely trembling, Joe couldn’t tell.

  ‘What the …’

  He turned to go but Roche held him back. ‘You should see this – this is what happens.’

  ‘Really?’ Joe’s eyes blazed. ‘We didn’t witness enough floggings at sea? You think I’ve forgotten mine? The scars haven’t just gone away, Will, and you think I need to see this again?’

  ‘It’s Larson,’ said Roche, nodding in the direction of the stage. ‘He was buggerin’ one of the New York crew. Caught him in Seven. Fifty lashes. The Brits’d hang ’im.’

  As he spoke, the flogging began. The prison’s master-at-arms, also stripped to the waist, let fly with his adapted hammock rope. The knotted cords whistled through the air, followed swiftly by the rip of tearing flesh. Joe winced at the memory, but he still hadn’t taken his eyes off Roche. Larson screamed as the master lined up again. When the thongs hit him a second time, the sound changed: a duller, wetter sound. This master knew his art; by hitting Larson in the same place the pain would be deeper, the wounds more terrible.

  Joe forced himself to speak. ‘Fifty will kill him,’ he muttered.

  Roche nodded silently.

  ‘Are you … enjoying this?’ Joe asked him. ‘Is this good for you?’

  ‘This,’ said Roche, ‘is good for them.’ He indicated the crowd around them. ‘It’s their justice. Not British justice, not officers’ justice, but their justice. Our justice.’

  Amidst the infernal noise around them, Joe took Roche’s head between his hands and waited until the old man could do nothing but stare at him. ‘Well, I’m telling you,’ he breathed, ‘as Christ is my witness, it sure as hell isn’t my justice.’

  Joe made it to Block Four just as the turnkeys arrived.

  3.10

  Outside Block Six

  10.30 p.m.

  BLOCKS TWO AND Six were slightly set back in the arc of buildings that made up Dartmoor Prison. They had been late additions, hurriedly built, and appeared to have forced their way in; the crescent of buildings was now somewhat jagged and irregular. As a result, there was a small patch of ground, no more than a few yards square on either side, where it was possible to hide. Edwin Lane and two other Rough Allies were taking full advantage. Crouched in the shadows between Five and Six, he pointed a gloved hand at the thirteen flaming lamps that lit the path from Four all the way up to the market square.

  ‘Top six got to go out,’ he said, his high nasal twang travelling easily to his colleagues. ‘The ones nearest the square. They’re yours, James. I’ll snuff out the ones on the block. And the six on the palisades behind are yours, Hitch. The darker we make it, the better.’ He gripped both men’s arms, silently pulling them back against the wall while a British patrol passed along the military walk above their heads. ‘We got about a minute before more of them cursed Brits come back the other way.’ The Allies watched as the redcoats ambled beyond the roof tiles of Four. ‘Let’s go.’

  Armed with a thick glove and a wet cloth, they each set about their work. James sprinted, crouching low, across the patch of open ground. Reaching the path’s first oil lamp, he flung open the glass and smothered the wick in a fluid motion. As he moved on to his second, Lane had just reached the corner of Four. Each block had six lamps – one on each corner, one halfway down each side – and he extinguished the first. As Lane’s lights started to go out, Hitch began his work on the iron palisades. These were by some measure the highest of the lamps, and Lane had been glad to persuade the six-foot Hitch to join him in the task. As Lane ran around Four, he glanced in through the cracks in the block’s stuffed-up windows: through one he saw a game of cards, through another men reading. ‘Nigger games, nigger books,’ he said. ‘Ain’t nothin’ good gonna come from that.’ He ran to the next lamp.

  By the time Lane had put out his fourth he knew the minute was up and he’d have to leave the rest lit. He ran for the no-man’s-land behind Five, the two shadows of James and Hitch closing in from left and right. They dived into darkness just as the next patrol swung into view. Lying low and breathless, they surveyed their work.

  ‘Put out seven on the path.’

  ‘Four out on the palisades. Sorry, boss. There weren’t no time.’

  ‘Still enough,’ said Lane. ‘I only got four o’ the six. Now we wait for them dopey Brits to realize they need the lamplighters out again.’

  3.11

  Block Four, Cockloft

  10.30 p.m.

  THE SCENERY ON the cockloft stage comprised a large, roughly painted backdrop with two side flats at each end. From the front they formed a good setting for any play but, at the back, the construction provided a small, concealed space. Unless there was a search, anyone hidden backstage would go unnoticed. As soon as a distressed Joe had appeared, Habs had brought him here.

  ‘We got punishments, too, y’know. King Dick can be brutal to his own as well,’ said Habs. They were both sitting on the floor, backs to the backdrop. ‘You seen a bastinado?’

  Joe shook his head. ‘No, but I’ve heard of it. Used for foot-whipping.’

  ‘Or ass-whipping. Tha’s what we use it for. One poor bastard got twelve last week. ’Nother chef who was stealin’ the food and sellin’ it round. The King didn’t like it. And that was it.’

  They sat in the dark, the only light coming from the lamp on the landing and some moonlight through the tiny windows high on the wall. The silence of the cockloft contrasted sharply with the noise coming from the two floors below them.

  ‘A thousand men not sleepin’,’ said Habs. ‘Tha’s a lotta noise.’

  They sat a while listening to the sounds of the block, both suddenly aware of every breath.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind about moving to Four.’ Joe’s voice was barely a whisper, but Habs detected a new determination. ‘If you think the King’s offer is still open, I’d like to say yes. I know my crew are in Seven, but I don’t want to stay there any more.’

  Habs stayed silent. These weren’t questions, they were statements, and he sensed Joe had more to say. The pine box beneath them creaked as Joe shifted his weight.

  ‘The first captain of the Eagle was a savage.’ Joe’s voice was the smallest Habs had heard it and he held his breath to make sure he didn’t miss a word. ‘Jenson was his name.’ Joe paused. ‘He was a monster. Always whipping someone, sometimes every day if the mood took him. He would get to us all in turn. For whatever reason took his fancy – insolence, laziness, drunkenness. I took three beatings.’

  ‘You had the lash three times?’ Habs was incredulous. ‘What was the count?’

  ‘Three the first time – wasn’t so bad. Six the second,’ Joe wrapped his arms around his knees. ‘Then it was supposed to be twelve …’

  ‘Twelve? Jesus Christ.’

  ‘But I fainted after nine, and the master-at-arms took pity on me, so …’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Just turned fourteen.’

  ‘Why’d it stop? How’d it stop?’ He felt Joe shift against him and squinted into the dark. ‘Joe, what you doin’?’ In the dark and shadows, Joe was taking his clothes off. ‘Joe?’

  ‘Something to show you.’

  Last to go was the prison vest.

  ‘Sweet Mother of God.’ Habs’s whisper was brittle with shock. Even in the backstage quarter-light he could make out the huge tattooed cross that covered the breadth of Joe’s back.

  ‘What have you done?’ Habs’s fingers slowly traced the outlines of the cross on Joe’s shoulders and down his spine. He felt the scar tissue like raised stri
pes across Joe’s skin and held his palm flat against them, like a preacher with a healing touch.

  Joe shivered. ‘It was all I could think of,’ he whispered. ‘Jenson was a religious man. Someone had told me a cross would ward off a flogging, that even Jenson wouldn’t dare abuse a cross. It would be like whipping Christ himself. So after that third beating had healed, I got this.’

  ‘And did it work?’ Habs sounded breathless.

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’ Joe pulled his shirt and jacket back on. ‘Jenson dropped dead a week later.’

  Habs snorted with laughter, then started to cough as he tried to control himself. ‘Tha’s ’bout the funniest, nastiest story I ever heard. And you ended up with the best damn tattoo I ever saw. Maybe I’m gonna find one of them tattoo boys here and get me a cross done, too.’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Joe, now back on the floor. ‘They’re drunk most of the time, they’d mess you up for certain.’

  ‘Like your eagle? Back o’ your neck?’ said Habs. ‘Not the neatest I seen.’

  Joe was silent for a moment. Then: ‘I suppose not,’ he muttered.

  ‘In truth, I barely knew it was an eagle,’ said Habs. ‘Could be an albatross.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Or a penguin.’

  ‘I did it myself,’ said Joe. ‘That’s why it’s shit.’

  Habs was lost for words. ‘But why … how d’you …’

  ‘I wanted to make myself ugly,’ said Joe. He swallowed hard. ‘No: I needed to make myself ugly.’

  ‘When was this?’ Habs’s question was barely more than a whisper.

  ‘On the prison ship. Before Plymouth, couple of months back. There were some men, they … thought I’d be their fancy boy.’

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ groaned Habs.

  Joe kept his voice flat and emotionless. He had steeled himself for this moment and he didn’t want to stop now. ‘They kept telling me they loved my hair. How I looked “unspoilt”. Then they told me all the ways they wanted to “spoil” me.’ He paused and breathed deeply.