Britannia’s Son (The Duty and Destiny Series, Book 4)

by Andrew Wareham

  Chalfont had never been in battle, was openly aghast, the more because it was clear that Frederick was speaking from memory, fond recollection.

  “You enjoyed it, sir!”

  “One is never so alive as when one may be dead in the next second – it is sheer joy, Mr Chalfont, the delight of winning, of seeing other men conquered by their fear when one has defeated one’s own again.”

  Chalfont was suddenly, bitterly, envious. He had been cast out from the hermetic community of the fighting man.

  “Simple exercises at first, Sir Frederick, with something light – a broom handle will do! Thrust, parry, slash, just sufficient to make your arm tired and ceasing the instant fatigue becomes apparent, never forcing beyond that, building slowly and surely.”

  “David, who would we approach to consider the question of whether a lieutenant unjustly compelled to send his papers in might be commissioned in another regiment?”

  LeGrys thought a moment, assessing just who amongst their contacts and network of influence might be of use in this case.

  “The agent, Mr Rakeman, who we used for the enclosure, sir. I have corresponded with him on minor matters since and have nosed out a possible enclosure near to the village of Piddletrenthide which we are hoping to bring about.”

  “Good – send him a letter, please – Mr Chalfont’s case, obviously.”

  Frederick was quite pleased to hear that LeGrys had a business interest on land – it might turn his ambitions from privateering. A career as a land shark would be at least as profitable and was much less likely to be fatal.

  “Our Mr Cleckheaton, sir, in Bolton, the speculator in building,” Hartley began.

  “Defaulted, has he?”

  “No, certainly not, sir, anything but, has paid early by three days, in fact, to ensure that all paperwork might be completed by the due date as a signal of good faith, accepted as such. I am informed by my contacts that he is Low Church reliable, sir – would scorn to take a farthing that was not his, and would not give a penny either. I have not met him, but he has a proposition for us that means we would come into regular contact.”

  “I presume you think it to be interesting, Mr Hartley.”

  Hartley, still pale, but fleshier after six months of feeding by his bride, wagged a finger from side to side.

  “It is, and it isn’t, sir – it is not something on which I can give a decision. He wants ten thousands, sir, and a sleeping partnership, not a loan, him to contribute ten thousands as well and run the business, of course. He will order bricks by the million and boards by the shipload, discounting heavily for bulk, and build houses, terraces, a town, next to mills and mines, a speculation, sure that investors and manufacturers will buy blocks, will queue up to take them off his hands. He will aim to pay us eight percent and put all profits over and above back into capital.”

  “Ten thousand is a lot, but that is nearly double the return on Consols, and growing.”

  “His last venture – and I have seen his figures – returned thirty per cent.”

  “Compounding at, say, twenty per cent added to the capital fund, doubles our ten thousand in forty two months, using the rule of seventy,” Frederick said, looking up from his sheet of scribbling paper.

  “So that in the fourth year our initial ten thousands are returning sixteen hundred per annum, sir.”

  “Yet you are unhappy, Mr Hartley! Why?”

  “High returns, sir – they sound too good to be true, so they probably are! They are very high because cash money is very short, sir. An end to the war will bring an end to that shortage, I suspect. If we lose this war, then everything except land must collapse, sir.”

  “We will not lose, Mr Hartley!”

  “Yes, sir. A downturn in trade, sir, such as happened just a few years ago when the Canal Bubble burst and half of the country banks failed, would leave houses empty, unsold, and bills still to be paid, and could last for eighteen months, sir.”

  “That is true – it is a gamble, is it not – we might have to find another ten or twenty to pay those bills or lose everything. I will think it over, Mr Hartley. Give me a day, sir.”

  “Elizabeth! Put your thinking cap on, my dear, tell me your opinion on these.”

  He laid out the papers, the proposal and its arithmetic neatly set out in Hartley’s bold copperplate. She sat, read, reread, took pencil and paper and calculated. After half an hour she looked up.

  “It is an honest proposition, Frederick. It is one that has risks, but I would like to do it.” She hesitated, uncertain of the boundaries, of what she was permitted in financial matters. “I had wondered, husband, if, when next you take a prize, you might possibly wish to make contact with my Kearton cousins, the ones with the coal drifts, to see if, perhaps, they might be able to open new seams, drain the existing galleries, produce more. A steam engine to work pumps might do wonders!”

  “Sound them out, my love! It will have to wait, as you say, on a respectable prize – which may be years or might be never. I really must not sell more out of the Funds, would, in fact, be hard pressed to defend Cleckheaton’s ten if the trustees to the entail should take me to task.”

  “Might they? I had not considered that.”

  “Do not! Except when the holder is a minor they will not so much as glance at an account book. They would not connive at selling land, but anything less they would never know about.”

  “They have a legal duty, Frederick…”

  He laughed, shook his head at her naiveté. “They are lawyers, my dear. They have a duty to kiss the collective arses of the rich…”

  “How vulgar, sir!”

  “… and of the powerful, and to hang the poor. Oh! And an obligation to enrich themselves, I almost forgot.”

  “But, Frederick! England is a country made free by the law!”

  “True – the rich have a legal freedom to be powerful and the poor are free to starve and the lawyers are free to be parasites. As well, if you are poor, intelligent, utterly ruthless and lucky, then you are free to break every law and climb to wealth and power yourself – or be hanged.”

  “You have climbed.”

  “Middle order, my dear – much easier for our sort who are born with a silver spoon. A man with no connections would not have made the step from Master and Commander as I did, walking into the first possible chance, and it was the Alton votes and Farquhar that gave me Charybdis, and with the Pagets will get me my next ship. But it is better now than it used to be. Your north country, I read, now has more than a thousand men born poor and now rich, made free by the new industry. There is hope yet!”

  She grinned reluctantly – the vulgar nouveau riche of industry were her pet hate. Their wives especially had sneered at the shabby-genteel Hacketts.

  “Why do you care, Frederick? One minute you are talking of the children of Baron Harris, privileged and free, the next you are supporting the poor!”

  “My people, my foremast jacks, outfight the French and the Dons because they believe they are free-born men. It would be disloyal of me not to fight the lawyers and politicians for them. Besides, I am a patriotic Englishman – I want my country to continue to change into a better place, richer and able to build a bigger Navy!”

  Her simple, open, fighting sailorman had depths to him she discovered, wondering whether the extra opportunity to read that early promotion had brought was serving to compensate for a lack of polite education. It was a pity that sailors in the nature of things never went away to the great schools, never became part of their network but formed their own closed, alien society, quite separate from the political classes.

  “So, sir, the Kearton mines?”

  “Discover all you can, my dear. The opportunity will probably arise when I am at sea, the money to my account, your Power of Attorney to disburse it as you will – so be ready.”

  “You mean that I am to take the decision, husband, I am to decide whether it is wise, and then do it.”

  “I will not be able to. If
you prefer, then Hartley can do everything, but I had far rather yours was the hand on the tiller.”

  “Yes, so would I … he is a good man, but I am the more intelligent and, I suspect, the better able to make a judgement.”

  A fortnight later, mired in the snow of a horrible February, she tentatively broached the possibility of visiting her cousins in the summer, after London.

  “We should, it is always wiser to know the people you do business with. Can we do so, bearing in mind their standing?”

  “Mine-owners and yeomen farmers, Frederick – to invite them to a wedding, as connections, is one thing, to make social contact with them, another. We could not, for sure, invite them to Abbey in the ordinary way of things.”

  “I agree – too far out of their station in life. We, however, could call upon them, staying for a few hours but not overnight, I believe, particularly as they are more than two hundred miles away, outside of any local comment.”

  “If we were passing by, for example on a visit to Leeds, to see my old family home – quite unexceptionable that I should return to visit acquaintances in the neighbourhood – then it would be possible, an ordinary courtesy, ill-mannered not to see Mama’s family.”

  “I agree – and you might well enjoy returning to Leeds as Lady Harris?”

  She blushed, bridled, then started to laugh, nodded.

  She became grave again, took a deep breath.

  “Do that again, my dear – most enjoyable!”

  “What a disgusting man you are, sir! I have something I must tell you.”

  “Then by all means do, my dear.”

  “My disgraceful brother, sir – I overheard Mary in the kitchen saying that her sister Betty, who is Papa’s parlour maid, was sure that the upstairs maid and my brother were, well… doing that!”

  He resisted the temptation to enquire what ‘that’ was.

  “For some three or four months now, my love. Doing the boy no end of good and her no harm at all.”

  “But, she has lost her honour!”

  “Mislaid it more, my dear, probably ten years since.”

  “But she cannot be older than I, Frederick!”

  “Much of an age, my love, twenty or so.”

  “But, consider, Frederick – ten years ago she was only…”

  “Yes, I know. I am assured that she is a good girl and will not put the bite on your brother, and I have had the message passed to her that if she should find herself in the family way then she is to come to us and we will set her up in a cottage as a widow woman with fifty a year of her own, on the Long Common estate or close by, out of your brother’s way, him to know nothing. She knows what she likes and likes what she knows, and she’s enjoying a well-washed young man and teaching him a lot that he really needs to know. Most importantly, when she’s gone he will start to find his bed a lonely place!”

  “What of her mama, sir?”

  “No! Much too old for him.”

  “May the Good Lord spare me from untimely levity! As you well know, I was asking why her mama had not protected her.”

  “Possibly too busy bringing up a dozen more on a pittance – she might be a widow. Just as likely she’s a whore – I have heard of mothers selling their young daughters, sometimes much too young.”

  “Cannot such children be protected?”

  “Tell me how.”

  She could not, enquired instead of the nature of children such as the link-boy, Harold-wiv-an-Haitch.

  “Waifs – orphans and runaways. They live on the streets of every town, begging, stealing, rag-and-boning, mud-larking, sweeping, link-boys. Some of them run in gangs, a few steal for fences, too many sell themselves. I read in a pamphlet last year that two of every three die before their sixteenth birthday and that those who live are often stunted and deformed. Boys only, of course.”

  “Why – are there no female orphans?”

  “There are, and there are men who will find a use for them, however small they may be. For some, I am told, the smaller the better.”

  “That is vile!”

  “It is.”

  “Do you hang them for that, as a Magistrate? As you did that wicked tutor?”

  “We hanged the tutor for assault. The law acknowledges no crime in sexual congress with the young, would, indeed, be more inclined to put the little girls in the Bridewell as whores.”

  She stared, reading his face to see if he thought to be making a joke, shook her head in horror.

  “There is a need for a mission to rescue the children of the streets, Frederick.”

  “There is. One day, when we have the time, when I have left the sea, then perhaps we may do something ourselves. Till then – if you can find a deserving, useful society working for these children, send them money.”

  “And our children will be cosseted and protected.”

  They looked out of the windows, at the darkening sky, clouds threatening yet more snow, seemingly sat on top of the beeches in the avenue.

  “Another bitter winter, the fourth in a row, my dear.”

  “God help them, the poor mites!”

  Elizabeth turned from the scene, looked Frederick full in the eye. “My brother, sir, it occurs to me that you know a lot of what he is doing. Did you have any hand in this?”

  “You told me he seemed frightened of women. I watched, and saw that you were right. He needed to know that he was a man. I asked Ablett to discover if there was a maid in your father’s house who was no maiden, and he was as useful as ever!”

  “If I have heard of it, then Papa and Mama…”

  “Will too. I would be amazed if your mother was not well aware of the situation – and I suspect she is secretly pleased for the boy’s sake!”

  Elizabeth’s eyebrows were almost at her hairline, raised so high in shock and outrage.

  “Maids chatter, my dear – if you have heard one conversation here, your mother must have heard ten there.”

  She nodded slowly – it seemed all too probable; Mama would have some explaining to do! Second thoughts followed very rapidly – three months of marriage, though most enjoyable, hardly formed the basis to query her mother’s judgement.

  “Papa, sir, will be very upset. He would certainly see such a thing as depravity.”

  “Not at all, my dear – he will speak first to your mother and she will rapidly disabuse him. Maids’ gossip, silliness, only to be expected – she will straitly forbid him to embarrass his son with such wild accusations, so wounding to the poor boy! I have every faith in her ability to deal with that problem!”

  On reflection, so had she.

  Book Four: The Duty and Destiny Series

  Chapter Four

  “An elegant dwelling, Sir Frederick, although it is a fraction understated.”

  “I presume that to mean ‘rather small’, Mr Russell?”

  “How common! I expected better of you, Sir Frederick!” Russell laughed, delicately waved a dogskin-gloved hand in deprecation. “The gentility of the address more than compensates for vulgar considerations of mere size, sir – besides, four bedchambers, each with a dressing room – who needs more?”

  There were hotels in plenty in London; it was not like rural Dorset where any visitor had to be offered a bedroom. Frederick agreed, the house could be run the year round with just a pair of servants resident, butler, chef and another six or eight for the Season, brought up from Dorset for the purpose.

  “As well, it was owned previously by the Dowager Duchess of Kensington, so it is known as one of the finest, Sir Frederick, has its own cachet. Her heir is not a fashionable man, immures himself in the fastnesses of rural Herefordshire, one understands - digging and things agricultural - and has a mansion in any case when he really must come to Town.”

  “The Dowager Duchess is dead? I had heard that she was cured.”

  “Of the stone? So I understand. Sadly, the cancer proved less amenable to magnetism, but I am sure she was glad of one source of relief, poor soul!”

  F
rederick had posted up to London on receipt of a most polite message begging the honour of his company, knowing that he was in some way obligated to Mr Russell and must accept his generosity. It was all very strange!

  “I must put this in the hands of Stainer, my lawyer, to complete, I believe, Mr Russell.”

  “Bid him contact me, Sir Frederick, and all shall proceed quietly and discreetly. With your permission, sir, the house, which is just a little old-fashioned, I believe, shall be refurbished, in the best military taste!”

  Frederick smiled in appreciation, made his thanks, pleaded that he was waited for at the Admiralty, made his escape from Russell’s overpowering generosity.

  “Sir Frederick, a pleasure – and it is rare that I can say that with any honesty to my callers in this office, sir.” The First Lord was in a rarely welcoming mood, having just experienced a particularly trying interview with an indigent post captain, beached in the American War on a whiff of shyness and tearfully begging for employment or a court martial to clear his name and enable him to seek other preferment in government service, neither of which would be granted after this lapse of time. Sir Frederick was welcome because he knew he would not be requesting a ship yet, and because he was well aware that he would happily find him a plum when he eventually did.

  “I regain my strength daily, my lord, and felt I should bring myself to your attention, being in London. By harvest time, I expect, my lord, to be fit to serve at sea and would then welcome a command. Six months from now is too long, I am well aware, for any promises to be made, or indeed for the vaguest plan, but I felt that I should ensure I was not forgotten, sir, that you should not come to think that I had swallowed the anchor.”