Morgan's Run

by Colleen McCullough

  “Our lovemaking will be rather more public,” he said dryly.

  A Gallic shrug. “All the world makes love, cher Richard.” Suddenly she gasped and reached into her reticule. “I forgot! I ’ave a letter for you.”

  He took the folded sheet and stared at the seal curiously; not anyone’s he knew. But the front was clearly addressed—by the copperplate hand of a scrivener—to Mr. Richard Morgan.

  “Sir,” said the letter, “your name has been drawn to my attention through the kind services of Mrs. Herbert Barton. I believe that you are a gunsmith. If this be true, and you are able to furnish good references and perhaps demonstrate your skills in my own presence, then I may have employment for you. Kindly present yourself at nine of the clock to my establishment at 10, Westgate Buildings, Bath, on the 30th of September.”

  It was signed, in a shaky, unschooled hand, “Horatio Midder.” Who on earth was Horatio Midder? He had thought he knew the name of every gunsmith between Reading and Weymouth, but Mr. Midder was new to him.

  “What is it? Who is it from?” Annemarie was asking, trying to peer over his shoulder.

  “From a gunsmith in Bath named Horatio Midder. Offering me a job,” said Richard, blinking. “He wants to see me on the thirtieth at nine in the morning, which means I will have to leave tomorrow.”

  “Oh, it is the friend of Mrs. Barton’s!” caroled Annemarie, clapping her hands in joy. She hung her head until her long black lashes cast shadows on her cheeks. “I mentioned you to her, cher Richard. You do not mind?”

  “If it means a job,” said Richard, picking her up and tossing her into the air, “I would not care did ye mention my name to Old Nick himself!”

  “It is too bad,” she pouted, “that you will have to go away tomorrow. I have told everybody in these ’ouses—houses—that we are married and you have moved in, and we have many invitations to visit.” The pout grew poutier. “Perhaps you will have to stay in Bath on Friday night too—I will not see you until Saturday.”

  “Never mind, if it means a job of work,” said Richard, taking one of his chests to a spot where he thought Annemarie would not want to put anything of her own. “I am still sorry that ye moved the bed downstairs,” he hinted. “Since Willy has elected to live in the cellar, there was no need.”

  “What does it matter, Richard, if you get a job in Bath?” she asked with inarguable logic. “We will be moving again anyway.”

  “True.”

  “Is it not nice to have a room for my desk?” she asked. “I love to write letters, and it was so cramped upstairs.”

  He walked to the room behind the bedroom and looked at the desk, very solitary. “We will have to buy furniture to keep it company. How odd! In all my life I have not needed to furnish a place, even when Peg and I lived on Temple Street.”

  “Peg?”

  “My wife. She is dead,” said Richard curtly, suddenly needing a drink. “I shall go for a walk while you write letters.”

  But she followed him downstairs, where the living room and the kitchen lay, the one containing four wooden chairs, a table and a sideboard, the other a counter and crude fireplace. Could Annemarie cook? Would Annemarie have the time to cook, if she spent her afternoons and evenings with the late-rising Mrs. Barton?

  On the doorstep she stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

  “Egad!” cried an affected voice. “Mr. Morgan, is it not?”

  Richard broke the kiss with a jerk and slewed around to see Mr. John Trevillian Ceely Trevillian posing not three feet away in all the glory of cyclamen velvet embroidered in black and white. The hair on the back of his head rose, but, aware of Annemarie, he could not do what he longed to do—turn his rump on Ceely Trevillian and stride away down the lane.

  “Mr. Trevillian, as I live and breathe,” he said.

  “Is this the wife I have been hearing about?” the fop fluted, pursing his painted lips in admiration. “Do introduce me!”

  For a long moment Richard stood silent, striving to keep his face expressionless as his rum-clouded mind raced through all the possible consequences of this unhappy, inopportune encounter. To one side of and behind Mr. Trevillian stood a small group of men and women he had not so far met, but assumed from their indoor dress that they lived in one or the other of the boarded-off sections on either side of Annemarie’s apartment. What should he do? How should he answer? “Do introduce me!” Ceely had said.

  Like almost every other Englishman, Richard knew very little about the law, but he did know that once he spoke of a woman as his wife, in effect she became his wife at Common Law. When Annemarie had proposed that she tell her friends and neighbors of a marriage between herself and Richard, he had retained, even in his hungover state, sufficient sense to resolve that she could prattle on about marrying him as much as she wanted, but he would make sure he never confirmed her talk.

  Now here he stood, confronted by his inimicus Ceely Trevillian in the midst of Annemarie’s neighbors, neatly impaled on the horns of a dilemma: if his introduction implied that she was his wife, then as long as he cohabited with her, she was his Common Law wife; if he publicly disavowed her, she acquired the status of a whore in the eyes of her neighbors and the persecution would start.

  He gave a mental shrug. So be it. His wife she would have to be until—or if—he ceased to cohabit with her. Though he loathed her tasteless musical analogies quite as much as he loathed himself for being caught in her sexual toils, he could not turn her from a respectable maidservant into a trollop. Of their two lives, hers was the one that revolved around Jacob’s Well and its denizens.

  “Annemarie,” he said curtly. Then: “What are you doing here?”

  “My dear fellow, visiting my hairdresser—Mr. Joice, y’know.” Ceely indicated a simpering man at his elbow. “Lives next door, which is how I learned ye’re married and come to live here.” Out came a lace handkerchief; he passed it delicately across his brow. “’Tis a warm day for the end of September, is it not?”

  “Oh, sir, please to come in,” said Annemarie, curtseying in a flurry of petticoats. “A rest in the cool of our living room will soon make you feel better.” She ushered the unwelcome visitor in and sat him on one of the chairs, then fanned his brow with the edge of her apron. “Richard, my dear, do we ’ave anything to offer the gentleman?” she asked dulcetly, obviously impressed with so much style.

  “Until I fetch beer and rum from the Black Horse, naught,” said Richard ungraciously.

  “Then I will find you a pitcher for beer and one for small beer,” she said, and bustled with many twitchings of her skirts into the kitchen, making sure that Ceely got an eyeful of ankle.

  “I owe you no thanks, Morgan,” said Ceely as soon as they were alone. “That tale you fabricated about me has led to several very unpleasant interviews with the Commander of Excise. I do not know what I did to offend you while you tinkered with Mr. Cave’s apparatus, but it was certainly not sufficient to deserve the tissue of lies you told the Collector.”

  “No lies,” said Richard levelly. “I saw ye at work by the light of a full moon on a cloudless night, and heard your name.” He smiled. “And because ye were injudicious enough to converse frankly with Mr. Cave and Mr. Thorne while another listened, you will be exposed as the villain you are, Mr. Ceely Trevillian.”

  Annemarie came in, an empty white pitcher in each hand. “Is beer acceptable, sir?” she asked the visitor.

  “At this hour of day, quite,” said Mr. Trevillian.

  A pitcher in either hand, Richard went off to the Black Horse under Brandon Hill while Annemarie settled in another chair to talk to the awesomely grand gentleman.

  When he returned he discovered that his trip had been for nothing; Mr. Trevillian was standing on the stoop, busy kissing Annemarie’s hand.

  “I ’ope we see you again, m’sieur,” she said, dimpling demurely.

  “Oh, I can promise you that!” he cried in his falsetto voice. “Do not forget that my hairdresser lives right next door.”


  Annemarie gasped. “Mrs. Barton! I will be late!”

  Mr. Trevillian offered his arm. “As I know the lady well, Madame Morgan, pray permit me to escort you to her house.”

  And off they went, heads together, he mouthing pretty nothings, she giggling. Richard watched them turn at the corner of a nearby lane of half-finished houses, emitted an angry growl and went to get his father’s handcart. It had to be returned. The silly French bitch! Simpering and groveling to the likes of Ceely Trevillian just because he wore cyclamen velvet some poor workhouse child had been forced to embroider without seeing a farthing’s recompense.

  The daily coach to Bath left the Lamb Inn at noon and made the trip in four hours for a price of four shillings an inside seat or two shillings on the box. Though he had saved scrupulously during the six months he had worked for Mr. Thomas Cave, there was very little money left; the trip to Bath would cost him a minimum of ten shillings he could ill afford. He had come to no arrangement with Annemarie over domestic expenses, and yesterday’s two meals had been taken at the Black Horse, a more costly business than the Cooper’s Arms; she had not offered to pay the shot, nor apparently disapproved of the amount of rum he drank. Her tipple was port.

  Thus Richard set off to walk clear to the other side of Bristol in time to secure a two-shilling seat on the box; this necessitated sitting on top of the coach exposed to the elements, but the day did not promise rain.

  Posting inns were busy places, endowed with large interior courtyards in which grooms and horses trailing harness walked to and fro restlessly, ostlers ran in all directions, and servants bearing trays of refreshments tendered them to the prospective passengers. Finding the team of six horses not hitched to his vehicle yet, Richard paid two shillings for a seat on the box and went to lounge against a wall until Bath was announced ready for boarding.

  He was still lounging there when William Insell ran through the gates and paused to look about, chest heaving.

  “Willy!”

  Insell came hurrying over. “Oh, thank God, thank God!” he gasped. “I feared ye might have left.”

  “What is it? Annemarie? Is she ill?”

  “Not ill, no,” said Insell, pale eyes goggling. “Worse!”

  “Worse?” Richard grasped his arm. “Is she dead?”

  “No, no! She has made an assignation with Ceely Trevillian!”

  Why did that not surprise him? “Go on.”

  “He came to see the hairdresser fellow next door—or so he said, but the next moment he was aknocking on our door, and I had not got up the stairs from the cellar when Annemarie opened it.” He wiped the sweat from his brow and looked at Richard pleadingly. “I am so thirsty! I ran all the way.”

  Richard disbursed a penny for a tankard of small beer for Insell, who drained it at a gulp. “There! Better!”

  “Tell me, Willy. My coach will be called at any moment.”

  “They made no secret of it—it was just as if they had clear forgotten I was in the house. She asked him if he wanted to do business with her, and he said yes. But then she did one of her flouncing acts—said the time were not right, you might come back. Six o’clock this evening, she said, and he could stay the night. So he went next door to Joice the hairdresser—I could hear him neighing through the wall. Then I waited until Annemarie went upstairs, and ran to find you.” His anxious face fixed its hang-dog eyes on Richard, begging for approval.

  “Bath! Bath!” someone was shouting.

  What to do? Damn it, he needed this job! And yet the man in him was outraged that Annemarie could prefer Ceely Trevillian to himself—Ceely Trevillian, of all men! The slur was insupportable. He straightened. “No job in Bath,” he said ruefully. “Come, we will go to my father’s and wait there. At six o’clock, Mistress Latour and Mr. Ceely Trevillian are in for a nasty surprise. It may be that he will never see the inside of a court for excise fraud, but he will remember what happens this evening, and so I swear it.”

  How, wondered Dick, sensing terrible trouble brewing but not able to find out what kind of trouble, can I demand the truth from a thirty-six-year-old man, son though he is? What is going on, and why will he not tell me? That cringing creature Insell sits fawning at his feet—oh, there is no harm in him, but a good friend for Richard he is definitely not. Richard, Richard, steady on the rum!

  At a little before six, just as Mag was about to serve supper to a pleasantly full tavern, Richard and Insell got up. Amazing how well he stood the rum, thought Dick as Richard walked an arrow-straight line to the door with Insell weaving behind him. My son is horribly drunk, trouble’s in the wind, and he has shut me out.

  Twilight still infused the sky with a subtle afterglow because the weather was fine; Richard walked so swiftly that Willy Insell was hard put to keep up with him, the rage in him growing with every step he took.

  The front door was unlocked; Richard slipped inside. “Stay down here until I call you,” he whispered to Willy, then ground his teeth. “With Ceely! Ceely! The bitch!” He started up the stairs, fists clenched.

  To find the scene inside the bedroom one straight out of a classical farce. His lusty inamorata lay on the bed with legs akimbo, Ceely on top of her clad in his lace-trimmed shirt. They were heaving up and down in the traditional motion, Annemarie giving vent to small moans of pleasure, Ceely emitting grunts.

  Richard had thought himself prepared for it, but the anger which invaded him drove reason from his brain. In one wall was a fireplace, beside it a scuttle of coal and a hammer for breaking down the larger chunks. Before the pair on the bed could blink, he had crossed the room, picked up the hammer and faced them.

  “Willy, come up!” Richard roared. “No, do not move! I want my witness to see ye exactly as ye are.”

  Insell walked in and stood gaping at Annemarie’s breasts.

  “Are you prepared to testify, Mr. Insell, that ye’ve seen my wife in bed doing business with Mr. Ceely Trevillian?”

  “Aye!” gulped Mr. Insell, trembling.

  Annemarie had told Trevillian that Richard was drinking very heavily, but he had not imagined in any of his rehearsals for this moment what the sight of a very big man in a black rage would do to him; the cool and collected excise defrauder felt the blood drain from his face. Christ! Morgan meant murder!

  “Damned bitch!” Richard shouted, turning his head to glare at Annemarie, quite as frightened as Trevillian. Shivering, she eeled up the bed and tried to retreat into the wall. “You bitch! You whore! And to think that I acknowledged ye as my wife to save your reputation! I did not deem ye a whore, madam, but I was mistaken!” His furious gaze went from her to the window-sill, whereon sat Trevillian’s watch, purse and fob. “Where is your candle, madam?” he asked, snarling. “Whores advertise for custom by putting a candle in the window, but I see no candle!” He reeled, staggered, sat heavily on the side of the bed and put the hammer to Trevillian’s forehead. “As for you, Ceely, ’twas you forced me to call this slut my wife, so you can take the consequences! I’ll have you up in court on charges of wife-stealing!”

  Trevillian tried to slither away; Richard took his shoulder in an agonizing grip and tapped the hammer very gently against his sweating brow. “No, Ceely, do not move. Otherwise your blood will be all over this pretty white counterpane.”

  “What are you going to do?” whispered Annemarie, sounding very afraid. “Richard, you are drunk! I beg you, not murder!” Her voice rose shrilly. “Put the hammer down, Richard! Put the hammer down! Not murder! Put it down!”

  Richard obeyed with a spitting sound of contempt, though the hammer remained much closer to his hand than to Trevillian’s.

  Think, Ceely Trevillian, think! He is murderous but not by nature a murderer—work on him, calm him, get this thing going in the direction it was intended to go!

  Richard lifted the hammer amid Annemarie’s shrieks of terror and used its head to flick Trevillian’s shirt up around his belly. Then he looked at Annemarie in feigned amazement. “Is that
what ye wanted? My, ye must be desperate for gold!” He didn’t know which one of the guilty pair he hated more—Annemarie for selling her favors or Ceely Trevillian for putting him in this cuckold’s situation by forcing him to indicate that she was a wife; so he hurtled, rum-impelled, down the only path he could see would make both of them pay. At least on this memorable evening and for however long after it that his rage endured. Not as far as a court, no. Not as far as a profit, no. But if he died for it, he would make them fear him and fear the consequences.

  His hand shot out too quickly to see, took Trevillian by the throat and lifted him bodily to kneel in the middle of the bed. “I have here a witness that ye stole my wife, sir. I intend to prosecute ye for”—he hesitated, plucked a figure out of nowhere—“a thousand pounds in damages. I am a respectable artisan and I do not relish the role of a cuckold, especially when my cuckolder is a turd like you, Ceely Trevillian. Ye were willing to pay for my wife’s services—well, the fee has just gone up.”

  Think, Ceely, think! It is going where I thought I would have to lead it without his aid. He is talking more, acting with less violence. The rum is slowing him down at last.

  Trevillian wet his lips and found the words he had rehearsed. “Morgan, I acknowledge that ye have the right to take measures at law, and I admit that ye’d get some damages. But let us not air this matter in a court, please! My mama and brother—! And think of your wife, of her public reputation! Were her name to be bandied about in a court, she would be jobless and cast out.”

  Yes, the rage was dying; Morgan looked suddenly confused, ill, at a loss. Trevillian babbled on. “I admit my guilt freely, but let me settle this out of court—here and now, Morgan, here and now! Ye would not get a thousand pounds, but ye might get five hundred. Let me give you my note of hand for five hundred pounds, Morgan, please! Then we can call the matter settled.”