Seelye would object to her stowing away, of course, but he would protect her from real harm, so long as she convinced him to let her to stay on the boat.
At the far dock, the men settled the crate onto the narrow boat’s deck. It would leave soon without her. It was time to decide.
Still, she hesitated.
Then, like a sign from heaven, someone caught her eye. A woman strode down the wharf in a faded blue skirt, so surefooted and sure of her purpose, Jane longed to be her.
She looked down at her feet and told herself, ‘This is the first step toward a life of my own design.’
At which point, she was jostled from behind and sent tripping down the stairs. She kept her balance and her bag by some miracle. And when she managed to stumble to a standstill, she looked up and saw—straw.
Her bonnet, knocked askew, blinkered her. She straightened it with as much dignity as she could muster and hurried through the crowd toward the narrow boat’s mooring.
It was not the March to Destiny she’d envisioned, but it would do.
Chapter 25
In which Reading or not, here she comes.
5 April 1817
Afternoon
Reading
Seelye found Percy with a little searching on the wharves. Here the River Kennet, eastern terminus of the Kennet and Avon navigation, flowed into the River Thames.
Around him, men worked ceaselessly, loading, unloading, tying up or casting off. The waterway was crowded, too, with countless loads of stone and coal headed east to the great metropolis and crated trade goods from overseas bound inland to merchants and drapers.
The day was fine, everything was going to plan, and Seelye was filled with animal high spirits.
Percy stood nearly eye-to-eye with him from the bow of a beautiful specimen of narrow boat. Her name, Invictus, was elaborately stenciled on the outside cabin wall along with the K&A company seal. His friend stood hatless and muffled in his greatcoat, grinning ear to ear.
From stem to stern, Seelye inspected all 70 feet of the freshly-painted vessel. After which, Percy explained that his acquaintance, Charles Dundas, Chairman of the Kennet and Avon Canal Company, owned it. The Invictus was a ‘flyboat’ customized to convey investors who wished to inspect the company’s wharves and infrastructure on the Rivers Avon and Kennet, as well as the miles of man-made canal and aqueducts constructed to link Reading to the new floating harbor in Bristol.
“I’ve hired the boat’s crew with Dundas’ blessing. I thought they might answer,” Percy said modestly. “And we’ll have priority.”
“You’ve outdone yourself and that says a great deal.”
“Come aboard. Stow your things,” Percy cried merrily.
Seelye boarded and followed him aft where Percy introduced the boat’s skipper, Mr. Plimpton, and pointed out the skipper’s two sons, Jacob and Marcus. They had their hands full battening down Bibendum’s crate in the long, open area amidships.
Seelye asked the older, wiry man helming the boat, “What is priority precisely, Mr. Plimpton?”
“Other boats let us go first through locks where possible, milord. There’s no race to get there, or fist fights for our turn, as happens betwixt crews on deadline. Makes for a pleasanter trip.”
Though the Invictus had a typical narrow boat’s length and seven-foot width, the boatman’s cabin astern was longer than those on working boats and boasted exotic wood and polished brass trim.
Ducking through the hatchway, Seelye stepped down into a narrow sitting room fitted out with a small, ornate cast iron coal stove, two chairs and compact mahogany table. A few cooking implements and a dish display hung on the wall by the stove. The low-pitched ceiling hung just overhead. A framed, hand-tinted map of the K&A navigation decorated one long wood-paneled wall, a map of Bristol harbor the other.
When he stood dead center, the walls weren’t far from his outstretched fingertips. A tight fit for two big men, but he and Percy would likely spend most of their time on deck.
Through an inner door lay the berth with two fold-down beds mounted on the long walls, as well as other ingenious built-in amenities for the canal company’s chairman or guests on a tour. A small shelf washstand had a custom basin for water and slots filled with hand towels, soaps, lotions and shaving mirror. Below, tucked out of the way was a wide-bottomed chamber pot.
Curtained portholes punctuated the long walls at the head and foot of each bed. When he glanced out the left porthole, he overlooked the water. Out the opposite porthole, he saw lower legs scissors by on the narrow walkway from the boat’s stern to the bow.
Full of gig, Seelye tossed his bag on the floor by Percy’s carryall and retraced his steps. When he emerged from the hatch, something came flying at his head. He caught it reflexively.
“What in blazes?”
He turned the homely ball of rags tied with rope this way and that.
“We travel incognito,” Percy said.
“I, for one, am not the least nostalgic for our days roughing it.”
“Come now, it’s part of the adventure, Seelye.”
“Can’t this be a gentleman’s adventure?”
“When doing something out of the ordinary, I find it best to keep a low profile. See?”
Percy held his greatcoat open to reveal the full horror of his dress: a loose, rough linen shirt and a pair of ill-fitting, faded, patched trousers that bagged at the knees and ended above his hairy ankles. The old cotton kerchief around his neck was knotted without finesse or irony. His boots were gone and in their place was the final insult: wooden clogs.
At his insistence, Seelye untied the bundle and found a worn homespun shirt balled up with a pair of equally faded, patched blue cotton canvas trousers. He let the rope fall.
“Don’t lose your belt, Seelye.”
He wanted to refuse point-blank but he needed Percy. He bent to retrieve the frayed length of coir.
“Must I, Percy? My half dress is rather casual these days. I’ll leave my boots scuffed.”
Percy crossed his arms over his chest, unmoved. And the canal adventure lost some of its luster.
“My footwear?”
Percy nodded at Jacob moving past and Seelye groaned. The young man’s bare feet were well-callused.
“I’ll go barefoot, too, if that helps,” Percy said.
“A happy thought. Not ten toes to offend my sensibilities, but thirty.”
“Forty. Don’t forget Marcus.”
“Happier still.”
For Bibendum’s sake, and for Jane’s, Seelye would obey his friend and wear rags. He went below to change.
To avoid greater embarrassment, however, he’d make himself unrecognizable. He’d stop shaving—the scruffier his beard grew, the better—and leave dirt under his nails, though the thought disgusted him. His only consolation was clean linens on a quality mattress in the berth. At least he’d sleep like a gentleman.
From Percy, he learned there were simpler berths tucked under the bow for crew. Even so, Mr. Plimpton had accepted the job on three conditions: first, that they pay for the Plimptons’ meals and a room in a tavern or farmhouse wherever the flyboat moored each night. The skipper was none too keen to sleep with a bear on board, crated or no. Second, his wife would not accompany them to cook. And third, the two gentlemen would lend a hand if needed.
The skipper’s older son, Jacob, secured ropes and tidied the deck along the narrow boat’s length.
Plimpton leaned against the ram’s head astern with a forearm draped over the tiller. According to him, they only wanted a Shire horse to be on their way.
A flyboat was built, as the name implied, for speed and light loads. With their ursine cargo weighing less than a well-fed party of financiers, a single draft horse could tow the vessel all day at a remarkable clip with no changes. Plimpton intended to have as few delays as possible.
Seelye approved whole-heartedly.
The boat had no covered hold between the boatman’s cabin and the bow but a
n open area for seating that now accommodated the great wood and iron box. The four-and-a-half foot-wide crate was almost seven feet long and left narrow walkways on each side of the deck.
Seelye bent down to peer inside. Bibendum was groggy but calm. The bear had somehow turned around and curled up inside—Jane did say something about dens and instinct.
At each pass from bow to stern, Jacob gripped the crate’s iron window bars to step nimbly past the box, the contents of which moaned every so often.
When the skipper’s younger son, Marcus, arrived with a horse, Plimpton requested permission to get underway.
Seelye was about to grant it, when he caught sight of something over the skipper’s shoulder. He shaded his eyes to look again in growing disbelief.
“It can’t be,” he said and nearly toppled overboard.
Jane emerged cool and pale as a wraith from the earthy bustle at the end of the dock.
Damnation.
He disembarked, snatched away her portmanteau, took her by the elbow without so much as a “Hello,” and dragged her over to an unoccupied stevedore. He hired him to carry her bag so he could keep a firm grip on her.
“Let me go,” Jane said.
“Not a chance, sister dear. You must go home where you belong.”
He led her and the stevedore to the stone steps up to the main street.
“I’m going to Bristol,” she said and tried to loosen his hold on her.
“No, you’re for London and I’m for Loose Chippings or whatever it’s called,” Seelye answered.
“Bal-ly-na-hinch,” she said, breathless from his rushing her up the stairs.
“As you say,” Seelye agreed blandly.
It was then he noticed they were becoming a spectacle, so he frog-marched her around a corner out of sight. He bade the dock man leave her bag and find a travel carriage with a distraught young coachman running frantically this way and that.
While he was gone, neither in-law spoke. It wasn’t long before the man returned with John Coachman the younger.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got her,” Seelye reassured the man and thrust her bag into John’s slack arms. “Take this and bring the carriage along. I’ll see she’s loaded aboard.”
“Back in a wink, milord,” he said.
Moments later, the duke’s travel carriage cleaved slowly through the crowded street to pull up near the furious damsel, her annoyed in-law, and the amused dock man.
Seelye ‘helped’ Jane into the coach with firm hand at her back and locked her in from the outside.
“Stop for nothing but the changes!” he ordered.
John scrambled onto the box and snapped the team in motion.
Seelye offered the dock man four pence for his help.
“No need, sir. I’d’a paid to see tha’ on a stage.” He tugged his forelock and left shaking his head.
Jane’s carriage left the docks, Seelye saw that for himself. What happened after it rolled out of sight was anyone’s guess.
He directed Mr. Plimpton to start off immediately when he jumped back aboard the narrow boat.
Jacob secured the tow rope to the forward mast and tossed the other end to Marcus for the horse’s harness. With the slack, the older brother looped the line over a large iron hook set in the stone wall. On the skipper’s order, he hauled hard to pull the boat into motion allowing the horse to start towing with less strain. Once under way, Marcus mounted the shire horse rather than walk the crowded towpath.
What the devil was Jane up to? Her sudden appearance came as a shock. He’d agreed to take her bear to Ireland. Didn’t she trust him to do it properly? It was all arranged and going well. Yet, there she was with bag in hand as if she expected to join them.
Leaving Reading, any flash of white muslin or glint of pale hair on shore made him jumpy as a cat in a kennel full of hounds.
According to the skipper, they would travel the River Kennet and on a stretch of the Avon farther west. Rivers were wide enough to prevent unwelcome boardings. Sections of canal in between were only wide enough for two narrow boats to pass each other, so a persistent irritant had only to lift her delicately-laced hem and mince aboard wherever it narrowed.
Distance was the answer, as much and as quickly achieved as possible.
“Will we continue after sunset, Mr. Plimpton? Or better yet, throughout the night?” Seelye asked.
“Wouldn’t be wise, sir. There’s a rhythm to working the locks tha’ you mustn’t rush. Day’s are long enough in June as it is. If we left a lock open even a crack in our hurry, we’d strand ourselves good with the Devil an’ an angry lock keeper to pay before the section’s refillt for us. Mr. Dundas wouldn’t like tha’ at all.”
Seelye pretended to listen, nodding and making sober, thoughtful sounds. The skipper went on to reassure him they’d make the trip quickly despite the numerous locks along the way. Even going uphill would be no difficulty. They’d reach the Bruce Tunnel and the K&A’s summit in good time.
“Then,” Plimpton said, “I’ll welcome”—meaning, expect—“you gentlemen to help leg her through.”
“How does one leg a boat?” his lordship asked, suspecting unpleasant exertion.
“Where they’s no towpath or chain in a tunnel, all hands lie on boards, stick they legs out an’ walk the boat down the wall,” Plimpton said. “You’ll want to leg it barefoot, being the brick’s slippery. Now, if they’s chains in the walls, it’s easier. Heard of a new chain in the Bruce, but it weren’t there last time I come through.”
“Sounds like fun,” Seelye lied.
“You an’ Mr. Percy are game ones, I’ll give you that.”
The first section of river, the Brewery Gut, kept skipper and crew busy. The horse towed the flyboat past a massive steam-powered pumping station, the first of its kind, according to Plimpton, then on to the Fobney Lock southwest of Reading.
Beyond the town, the land opened up to countryside gilded by the sun in the west. He and Percy relaxed on deck.
The Invictus soon reached the cut through water meadows to the K&A’s first man-made channel. Wildflowers grew in profusion. Irises, lilies, dog rose and cow parsley punctuated the marshy stretches. Swans harassed ducks among the tall grasses. Willow trees overarched the banks and brushed boats passing beneath their drooping crowns.
Seelye went below to fetch his sketchbook and pencils. Might as well record the scene for Jane.
They slipped past laden narrow boats headed east.
“Most haul coal from Somerset collieries to London, though some carry limestone quarried from Combe Down near Bath,” Plimpton said in a voice that carried from the stern.
The chairman’s boat did indeed have priority among westbound traffic. Without exception, skippers steered to the other side of the channel, slowed, and let their towlines fall slack into the water so the Invictus could precede them through locks. There were nods and curious stares from those left behind.
The Horsemen had no idea how odd a picture they presented. Though dressed as laborers, Percy reclined like a pasha in the bow to snatch at flowers while Seelye sat against the oversized crate sketching.
He refused to pantomime work for the benefit of real boatmen, as his costume was enough mortification of the flesh for him. Besides, he was curious to see how one operated a lock.
The first they came to was closed. The paddles were left shut by the last boat that filled the basin to go westward.
Two pairs of great paddles enclosed every lock basin, Plimpton said. When going up to the summit, locks filled to raise boats higher, when going downhill, locks drained to lower the boats.
Jacob hopped to the grass embankment with a large iron windlass called a key. He fit this handle on the spindle of the gear mechanism and strained to crank it. At first, the pair of thick wood and metal paddles swung open slowly like french doors but as it opened, the weight of the water made the key spin faster. Water flowed out of the basin, a trickle at first, increasing to a great flood till the water leveled an
d the boat could enter.
Marcus led the horse forward on foot to bring the Invictus inside. He looped the tow rope deftly around a wood bollard on the bank and yanked it tight to stop it. Meanwhile, Jacob closed the rear paddles and jogged forward to the other set. Once those paddles separated, water surged in to refill the basin, raising the boat to the higher level beyond.
That done, Jacob hauled the boat into motion before Marcus urged the horse forward to pick up the slack and continue smoothly.
Jacob jumped aboard with the key and left the second pair of paddles open for an eastbound boat waiting to slip right into the filled basin.
They would repeat this more than a hundred times over the navigation’s length. All the locks were necessary, the skipper said, as the K&A was the steepest of all the kingdom’s canals.
“A true feat of engineering,” Plimpton boasted as if he’d built it himself. “For me, I admire Mr. Rennie’s aqueducts best. You’ll see why for yourself in a few days.” The skipper said he enjoyed sharing facts about the canal to entertain the guests he ferried up and down its length for Mr. Dundas. But added, “Won’t, if you find me wearisome.”
“It’s fascinating,” Seelye said.
“I’m an investor,” Percy told him. “Please, go on.”
“We’ll make the trip in four mebbe five days, an’ it’ll go fast ‘cept for the Caen Hill flight at Devizes. That’s a hard day’s work,” the skipper said, “Getting through is a young man’s task, which is why I’m grateful to my wife. I’d wanted sons, an’ I’ll be scuppered if she didn’t oblige me.”
“They’re fine young men,” Seelye said and felt a pang of envy. Ainsworth fairly burst his buttons with paternal pride once he knew his wife was safely delivered of their sons.
Will I know that feeling someday?
There was no seeing into the future, so Seelye opened the journal and sketched what lay before his eyes.
The draft horse covered the distance to Woolhampton as quickly as Plimpton promised.
His Lordship's Last Wager Page 21
