by Jon Clinch
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For Wendy. Forever.
Marley was dead, to begin with.
—CHARLES DICKENS, A CHRISTMAS CAROL
1807 Prelude
One
Sunrise, but no sun.
The merchant ship Marie tied up at the Liverpool docks hours ago, beneath an overcast sufficient to obliterate the moon and the stars—and now that dawn has arrived conditions have not improved. The fog over the Mersey is so thick that a careless man might step off the pier and vanish forever, straight down.
But Jacob Marley is not a careless man.
The Marie belongs to him, every plank of her hull and every cable of her rigging and every thread of her sails. Every other plank and every other cable and every other thread, to be precise. The rest are the property of his business partner, Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge could tell you exactly which plank and which cable and which thread, because that is how his peculiar and peculiarly focused mind works. Marley relies upon him for that. The two have been shackled together in business for exactly eight years now, although it seems like a thousand. They may as well have emerged together from the womb.
Scrooge lies abed at this cruel hour, rigid as a corpse behind his curtains, sorting his dreams into stately columns and rows. Marley is out here, dockside in the damp, to oversee the unloading of the Marie and the modifying of her identity to accommodate a modified world.
The ship’s crew, weary from their journey but invigorated by landfall, have dispersed to tavern and knocking-shop, where their arrival has the routine and rhythmic quality of a changing of the watch. Whether standing at a brass rail or stretching out upon some ghastly damp cot, each man assumes a position only recently vacated by a recently satisfied customer. These previous are not merchant seamen like the men of the Marie but Royal Navy men instead, just now reporting back for duty upon a moored ship known to Marley by reputation. She is the HMS Derwent, recently in from Plymouth on her maiden voyage, although the newspapers have been full of her for months. A newly christened brig-sloop of nearly four hundred tons, she is slated to sail for the African coast at the turn of the year—and there to begin interdicting the heretofore perfectly legal slave trade. The Derwent is but the first of many ships set to engage in this devilish work, under the oversight of His Majesty’s newly constituted West Africa Squadron. To Marley’s way of thinking, it is all a great waste of iron and men and shipping capacity.
He watches the sailors as they strut and stagger past, youngsters sharp and gay and confident of their place in the world despite their recent immersions in grog shop and whorehouse. And once the Derwent has swallowed them whole he turns his attention to the unloading of the Marie. Armed with a fistful of negotiables, he enlists a rough band of longshoremen from alleyway and flophouse. Man after man they squint into the daylight with a cough or a groan or a regretful shake of an aching head, and then they fall to emptying her decks and purging her hold like an army of half-crippled insects, bearing away bales of fragrant tobacco and white cotton, barrels slowly aslosh with molasses, and hogshead after hogshead of refined sugar—a pharaoh’s ransom heaved in teetering pyramids upon the quayside. Marley observes them closely, keeping watch upon the forward hatchway for the emergence of a set of heavy strongboxes. In all truth he cares little for the Marie’s legally manifested cargo, as long as these particular boxes—chained each to each like prisoners, labeled Scrooge & Marley in a fierce and florid hand—remain secure. The ordinary goods are but passing through his clutches on the way to their true owners, while the strongboxes belong to him. And partly to Scrooge, of course. The instant he spots them he orders them borne straight to his carriage, their weight sufficient to set the weary springs groaning. The customs agent, in exchange for a secret handful of Spanish dollars, fails as usual to notice them.
His most important mission accomplished, Marley turns his back upon the laboring men and strides up the gangway and proceeds belowdecks. He seeks Captain Grommet, master of the Marie for longer than anyone can say, and he finds him sharing a ration of rum with Mr. Flee, her first mate. The two have been allied far longer than Scrooge and Marley, although to less cumulative financial effect. Grommet, clad all in black, is a hatchet-faced skeleton thin enough to conceal himself in the Marie’s rigging. Flee, discounting the jut of his evil-smelling corncob pipe, is as square and solid as a sea chest stood on end. This present tot of rum is clearly not their first of the morning.
“Ahoy there,” Flee hiccups, not grasping their visitor’s identity in this chamber whose only light drips from a waterous green deck prism mounted overhead.
Grommet silences him with a baleful glance. He brings himself to his feet, unfolding like a conjured specter. “Good morning, Mr. Nemo,” he says, in the oily tones of an undertaker hopeful of finding work.
Marley clamps his thin lips into a razor-cut line but does not correct him, for it is his custom in all matters relating to the Marie and her various cargoes to do business under that name. “Grommet,” he says. “Flee.” His eye is on the jug.
“I know, I know,” confesses Grommet. “It is a bit early.”
Marley offers the hint of a smile. “That’s nothing to me.”
“Very good, Mr. Nemo,” says Flee, hoisting his cup. “Very good indeed. You’re a true gentleman and a kind master.”
“I am not so true,” says Marley, reaching into the depths of his overcoat to withdraw a pair of envelopes—one marked “G.,” the other “F.” He holds them close to his vest, as if deciding whether or not he should provide these two with their pay after all. “Nor am I so kind. The simple fact is that I shall no longer be your master, although whether or not you stay on with the ship will likely be your decision.”
Grommet’s black eyes flare. “You’re selling her?”
“So it would appear.” Marley reaches out and tucks an envelope into each man’s pocket, with a tenderness prompted more by the negotiables within than by the individuals under his employ.
“It’s that damned Slave Trade Act, ain’t it?”
“That and certain other concerns.” For Marley never tells anyone his entire business.
Grommet’s mind begins working. “Perhaps we could arrange to haul some other cargo on that leg.”
“Some other cargo?”
“Anything you wish.”
Marley scoffs. “What I wish, Captain Grommet, is that you could name for me some other cargo whose value equals that of a hold packed with men.”
Grommet cogitates. Flee chews his lip. They can think of nothing.
“In the absence of such miraculous cargo,” Marley goes on, “Mr. Hawdon and I have elected to sell the Marie and leave the business of slaving to the Americans.”
“Americans.”
“Just so. I’m certain that you’ll get along famously. The new owners are a pair of Quaker gentlemen: a Mr. Bildad and a Mr. Peleg.”
Grommet makes a mental note, the gears within his bony head grinding almost audibly. The names seem to ring a very old and rusty bell.
Marley turns on his heel and makes for the companionway. “By the sound of it, they’re Old Testament fellows. Believers in the Almighty and so forth. If I were you, I’d mind the rum.”
* * *
Marley follows the last few men down the gangplank to the quay, where he enlists a brace of them to help rig a long plank acro
ss the Marie’s stern. Together—Marley is as willing to bark his knuckles as the next fellow—they suspend it from the quarterdeck rail, just below the wooden plate that bears the ship’s name. That sorry panel is as disreputable-looking as the rest of the ship, having like the balance of her endured two or three decades of nautical abuse with little in the way of cosmetic or even mechanical attention. Under close examination, it would seem to have begun life either a shiny black or a deep oceanic blue, with incised letters done up in gold leaf, the letters themselves surrounded by nosegays of stylized flowers similarly executed. Marley studies it from every perspective, noting with satisfaction that the fog has begun to burn off and the sun to emerge at a favorable angle. Then he scrambles down and strides toward his carriage.
He returns bearing a folding table in one hand and an ancient portmanteau in the other. Regaining the scaffold, he sets up the table and opens the portmanteau wide. A single glance reveals within its depths a collection of rags filthy and filthier, burnt candle ends, slender vials containing traces of pigments everywhere along the spectrum from earthy to brilliant, iron nails gone mostly to rust, a much-used wooden mallet, the broken stubs of a score of Conté crayons, a stoppered vial of some clear solvent, an array of mysterious hand-built tools that resemble medical instruments or devices of torture, at least one corroded knife, various lengths of string, graphite powder leaking through the weave of a rough cotton bag, straightedges straight and otherwise, a set of cold chisels in various sizes, a dozen lucifers bound up with twine, quantities of bear grease and whale oil sealed up in little tin tubs bearing carefully lettered labels, paintbrushes of the highest quality and the lowest, and atop it all a single plover egg, painstakingly wrapped in cotton wool.
With these implements he works a miracle, for although Marley possesses many talents, the greatest of them is forgery.
Within an hour’s time the Marie has been rechristened the Mariel. No observer should ever guess that the new painted letter was not incised and gilded thirty years prior, right alongside its fellows. Even the floral sprays around the name have been shifted and augmented, balancing the design and fooling the eye. Marley is satisfied, and Marley’s standards are the very highest. As he dismantles his works and regains the carriage he congratulates himself upon having committed an act almost godlike, for back in his locked desk at Scrooge & Marley are official papers documenting the tragic loss of the Marie somewhere in the Atlantic, one week ago today. They will prove useful with the insurers.
1787
Two
Professor Drabb’s Academy for Boys has all the qualities of a prison but the warmth, all the qualities of a graveyard but the fresh air, all the qualities of a slave ship but the view. It is no place to make friends, but young Ebenezer Scrooge has been friendless before and he shall be friendless again and so his time here marks no particular loss.
The Academy occupies a mansion of dull red brick, grand at one time but diminished now by years of neglect. All barriers between the indoors and out have grown permeable, and the dank chambers packed tight with row upon row of desks and tables and beds exhale the stink of earth and rot and decay. The professor keeps some wretched livestock (a few grizzled sheep, a flock of mangy chickens, two or three gouty pigs), which roam as freely in the building as in the yard. The breezes stalking the halls via broken or missing windowpanes and crooked doors that won’t close properly if at all do little to mitigate the stink, and can be counted upon only to provide certain seasonal variations upon it—summer means acrid chicken droppings tracked from dooryard to dining hall to sagging cot, winter means starved rats decaying behind the walls.
Professor Drabb patterns his management of the operation upon the methods of God Himself, which is to say that he acts capriciously and at great remove. Entire days have been known to pass—weeks, in the more extreme cases—during which he has gone completely unseen except by one or two boys who are privileged to wait upon him in his lofty room, high in the windy cupola, just below the creaking weathercock. From time to time he issues commands by means of these worthies, although in the end it’s impossible to say how accurately or completely his meaning makes its way down the stairs.
This year, one of those fortunate boys is Jacob Marley. His origins are unknown and his presence within these halls is unexplained, neither of which is cause for singling him out. Here at the Academy, every boy has secrets. Secrets are their refuge and their currency and their stock in trade, and in this respect Jacob is no different from the rest. Rumor has it that his father is a diplomat of immeasurable wealth and his mother is a lifelong intimate of Queen Charlotte. Rumor has it that his father is a spy for either the Prussians or the French or both, and that his mother is a mystic who, having blinded herself with a poker, now resides alone in a mossy dungeon where she is attended to by a loyal army of nuns who do nothing but read her the book of Psalms from morning till night. Rumor has it that Jacob poisoned his twelve older brothers so as to guarantee himself a more satisfactory inheritance.
No one knows for sure.
Jacob Marley is about the same age as Ebenezer Scrooge, although he has the advantage in seniority. He has been a student at Professor Drabb’s for many years, while Ebenezer is new. Scrooge arrived at the close of the summer perched upon the box of a wagon driven by an anonymous individual in his father’s employ, and when the horses passed beneath the crumbling archway and drew to a halt upon the weedy courtyard he let himself down without assistance, trunk and all. He entered the main hall as the wagon clattered off, only to find it echoing and empty. Along various winding passages he wandered like a drop of mercury in a maze, following channels worn into the ancient planking by the passage of generations of ill-used boys. He found Professor Drabb’s office but no Professor Drabb. He found classrooms presided over by great looming monstrous boys and narrow beady-eyed devilish boys and no boys whatsoever. He found laundries and workshops and underground manufactories where children toiled like the damned.
Undaunted, he exited into the courtyard and scoured the property from margin to margin. To the north was a dry riverbed, to the west was a half-burnt forest, to the south was a scrubby hedgerow marking the limit of a neighboring farmyard, and to the east was the lane via which he had gained this paradise. Every inch of it was unpopulated. He returned to the mansion and dragged his trunk up to the second floor, where he deposited his belongings at the foot of a sagging and apparently unclaimed bed. Then he headed back down the stairs to join one of the classes he’d seen in progress. The other children—they seemed about his age, although they looked like old men long denied nourishment—ignored him vigorously. Thus began his lessons at Professor Drabb’s Academy for Boys.
* * *
As far as Ebenezer can determine, the business of Professor Drabb’s Academy for Boys is carried out entirely by the boys themselves. They teach the classes and they cook the meals and they fend off the creditors. They mete out discipline and they enforce policy and when the sheriff comes knocking they pay the bills. It is all according to a principle that Drabb calls Manly Self-Determination, whose tenets are explained in a framed broadsheet hanging upon the wall of each public room. The language employed by that disquisition is so archaic as to be very nearly Anglo-Frisian, and the logic wielded in its coils would mystify a scholar of the Talmud, and the type in which it is set is cruelly microscopic. There is every chance that no party on earth, not even its ostensible author, has read it all the way through and survived.
The details do not matter, though, for the principle is the thing. All the rest is interpretation, a task at which generations of boys have proven themselves remarkably expert.
Ebenezer waits the better part of a week before Drabb himself finally makes an appearance. Unannounced and unanticipated, he comes floating down the stairs from his aerie, soft and vague and aimless, the very dreamlike picture of a careless and benevolent god. He is clad in some kind of shabby academic gown or formal sleeping garment, and atop his very round head is a stocki
ng cap pulled tight to his eyebrows. He yawns as he comes, and he makes straight for the kitchen where preparations for supper, such as it shall be, are under way.
If any boys but Scrooge notice him, they give no sign. Ebenezer, on the other hand, puts down his work and follows the professor straight into the kitchen. “Excuse me, sir,” he says, hoping to introduce himself, but Drabb makes no response. Two or three of the boys look up from feeding the iron stove or hacking away at withered carrots to give their new classmate steely looks. Another, hard by, touches his sleeve in warning.
Drabb adjusts something within the folds of his robe and gives an imperious sniff. “Chicken tonight, is it?” he asks no one and everyone.
“Soup,” says the largest of the youngsters present, a surly-looking villain who has taken upon himself the run of the kitchen.
“Chicken soup?”
“Just soup, sir.”
“What sort?”
“Vegetable.” Meaning carrot peelings and tepid water.
“I would prefer chicken.”
“As would we all, sir.”
“I would prefer roast chicken, actually.”
“We’re down to a half dozen, sir.”
“A half dozen what, boy?”
“Chickens, sir. Like you was asking about.”
“No matter. I shall require no more than one.”
“But the boys, sir…”
“What boys?”
“Our boys, sir. Your boys.”
Drabb surveys the hungry looks of the children gathered roundabout. “These preening, privileged rapscallions?” he says. “Do they think their fees should cover not just the most prized and practical education in all of England, but luxurious dining as well?”
“I don’t know, sir. You would have to ask them.”
