Infernal Revolutions

by Stephen Woodville

  Attention having been distracted by a group of trulls and doxies who even I would not have lusted over, Dick was no nearer to being served than when we had come in. Parched, I waited a few more minutes then went off in search of my own serving boy. As I waited in my turn, I could not help but overhear the conversation of a table of sailors next to me. A debate was taking place as to whether the colonists were our inferiors, our superiors or our equals.

  ‘Inferiors!’ yawped a couple of the scabbiest-looking English dogs imaginable, perhaps friends of Taylor Woodbine, going on to justify their view with the argument that Americans were descendants of people who could not hold their own in the stronger society of England. Americans, in their view, were undisciplined, uncultured and uncouth, and would never prosper without the guidance of England. ‘’Tis only the middling and the poor English who ever emigrate here,’ the scabbiest concluded in triumph, ‘the rich stay in Europe. That says it all, dunnit?’

  ‘Of course the rich stay in Europe,’ insisted an oddly distinguished-looking boozer, who appeared to be an alumni of the same Good Man Brought Low School as I. ‘’Tis a good life sucking the poor dry. They would come here and do the same if they were able to, but they cannot; the people here would not allow it, because they are the descendants of those true, vigorous Englishmen whose liberties were taken away from them by the tyrants and madmen who ruled us in the seventeenth century. It happened to them once, and they will not let it happen to them again. Therefore I conclude that the Americans are our superiors in the only thing that really matters, everyday living. They have a stronger belief in the rights of the individual, and they are more open to new ideas than we are. The only surprise about this war is that it did not happen sooner.’

  ‘I think they are our equals,’ diffidently offered the noblest and most revolutionary of the lot, a pale thinker of a boy with blond hair and a tattoo of a heart on his left forearm. ‘People are the same all over the world. There are good and bad Americans as there are good and bad Englishmen. Political views are attachments to a person, not their essence. ‘Tis quite possible that some of the loudest shouters about liberty are the biggest tyrants in the home; but really, as home is society in miniature, ‘tis home where all benevolence should begin.’

  Here the salty Locke broke off and swallowed hard, as if all the talk of home had brought on a bout of sickness for it. The pair of rascally yawpers tore into his argument like wolves, but I could only stare at the lad with something akin to love. Proud to be composed of the same dust as him, I was just about to go to his defence when a mighty hand slammed down on my shoulder.

  ‘Oysterman!’

  I turned to see the smiling rockface of my old Twinkle friend, Isaac Tetley.

  ‘Isaac! Well blow me down!’

  ‘I thought I sensed a priggish presence in the place. How are things, Sir, and what on earth are you doing in this place dressed like that?’ He fingered the collar of my russet coat. ‘Cruising for a bit of cauliflower?’

  I could have bounced the same question back if I’d had the nerve. As it was I introduced him to Dick and explained our mission. His response, rather disconcertingly, was to laugh riotously.

  ‘You? A spy? Now I have heard everything!’

  A few heads turned and viewed us, alerted by Isaac’s indiscreet shout. I shook my head at them, mouthed he’s joking, and pointed a finger at Isaac’s head. However, this mime of madness belied the anger I felt at the insult; I fancied I would make rather a good spy.

  ‘Yes, that’s us, man,’ drawled Dick, less perturbed. ‘Information traders, pupils of the Taylor Woodbine Academy of Chameleons. Our job’s to blend, but not to bend.’

  ‘You stick out a mile in here.’

  ‘Well, we’re just beginners at the moment. Give us another month and you won’t know us from the woodwork.’

  ‘You’ll be dead by then,’ said Isaac confidently.

  ‘Really?’ said Dick with dispassionate curiosity. ‘We’ve been told by the English Machiavelli that we’re about to embark on the time of our lives.’

  ‘I’m not saying you won’t enjoy it; just that it will not last very long. They send people out there they want to get rid of.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Dick, winking at me. ‘Better get that drink in quick.’

  ‘Have we time now?’ I protested primly, trying to hide the queasiness Isaac’s remarks had induced in me.

  ‘You’re travelling over on the ferry tonight, are you?’ said Isaac. ‘There’s no rush in that case. Charon’s over there.’ He swivelled his giant craggy head around. ‘Oi, Fatty!’ he shouted mightily to someone at the far end of the room. ‘Got two more here! What time are you sailing tonight?’

  ‘When I’m fucking ready!’ a big drunk in tiny round spectacles replied. ‘When I’ve ‘ad me fun!’

  And fun he seemed to be having, for he was in the middle of an affectionate tussle with what looked from this distance like a bear.

  ‘The Hackensack Valley will be shut by the time you two worthies arrive then,’ said Isaac, acknowledging Fatty’s answer with a thumb the size of my toe. ‘Fatty Von Horst is in love with that bear as he never was with his wife.’

  ‘I thought sailings depended on tides, not bears,’ I said, my Brighthelmstone knowledge shining through.

  ‘Fatty doesn’t bother with tides. Says the moon is for women. As long as he can see the bit of land he’s aiming for he’s happy. Just grimly sets a course towards it. For that reason he’s unlikely to take command of anything larger than the Paulus Hook Ferry; though personally I’d love to see him put in charge of the troopship that takes the dragoons home. A magical mystery tour of the seven seas, chances of ever hitting the British Isles a million to one.’

  ‘You’re not a devotee of the dragoons then, Mr Tetley?’ noted suave Dick, at home in conversation.

  ‘Hate their pampered guts, Mr Lickley. I’ve had one or two set-to’s with them since I arrived, particularly one called Burnley Axelrod, the brashest and flashest of a brash and flash bunch.’

  ‘B-B-Burnley?’ I exclaimed, all sorts of distant bells ringing. ‘Burnley?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you know him, Oysterman.’

  ‘’Tis because of him I’m where I am now.’

  ‘He’s your father?’

  ‘No, no. He was the one who lured me into the clutches of the press gang, shortly after saving my life, very possibly. Gave with one hand, took with the othe

  ‘Unusual for a dragoon to leave the score equal.’

  ‘Then he took the girl I loved.’

  ‘That’s more like it. Anything else?’

  I thought hard.

  ‘No, I think that is all.’

  ‘So, a two-one defeat. Still not bad, provided he’s finished with you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I babbled. ‘Why shouldn’t he have finished with me? I do not ever intend to see him again.’

  ‘People do not intend to meet ghosts, but they do,’ Isaac pronounced sententiously, before taking a mighty swig from his pot, and getting back to the plot. ‘Tell me, Oysterman, where is it you are billeted?’

  ‘Trinity Church, Broadway.’

  ‘Interesting. For only two nights ago I saw Mr Axelrod prowling around the back of the place. Up to no good, by the looks of him.’

  ‘Is that so strange?’ Dick said. ‘New York is a small place, after all. Whores, I imagine, have to be rooted out, not being as plentiful as they are back home. And where better to find them than next to a church?’

  ‘Come, come, Mr Lickley, we are talking about dragoons here. They dwell in luxurious mansions two miles away on King George Street. They have the best American whores delivered every night. They have the finest French brandy on tap. Any needs left over are catered for instantly by hired black flunkies. What need to be ferreting around the Bowery?’

  ‘An inter-regimental errand,’ suggested Dick helpfully.

  ‘Dragoons do not run errands, Mr
Lickley. They are the most aristocratic and therefore the most autocratic regiment in the army. People go to them if any business needs transacting. Submission is always made to them on their terms and conditions, as I’ve found out to my cost with the fur trade they are trying to control out of Albany. No, the only explanation is that he was up to no good. Nothing but the prospect of vindictive mischief could lure them from their lairs of luxury.’

  ‘Well, whatever his reason for being here,’ I argued desperately, ‘I do not see what it has to do with me. And even if it does, what does it matter? I am going to be dead within a month.’

  I tried to laugh it off in the manly manner Burnley himself had endorsed, but in truth I felt sick inside – sick with the thought that Burnley’s actions did have something to do with me, and sick with the sound of the phrase dead within a month.

  ‘A month, a year, a decade,’ said Isaac, inspired to rhetoric by my easy dismissal of the Sable King. ‘What is death anyway but a cure for life?’

  Though distressingly trite, this remark was the cue for a prolonged three-handed debate on death, thankfully lubricated at last by several pints of foul but wet beer. Around two in the morning, just as we were concluding that the history of no man’s life is a jest, we saw Fatty stagger towards the door, with his bear upright and lumbering beside him. ‘Twas our cue, and the true start of our adventure.

  ‘Time to go, Dick,’ I said, upending one last draft into my gullet, and grimacing. ‘And as for you, Sir,’ I slurred, turning to Isaac. ‘I require your hand.’

  He gave it, I shook it, and solemnly we parted.

  Isaac’s valediction ringing in our ears – If I were a religious man, boys, I’d pray for you – we set off after the two silhouettes meandering down Cortland Street. Using our passes to rebuff the cresset-waving sentries who ran up to examine us, we eventually arrived at the wharf and looked out at the hulking forms of British warships at anchor, dark and ominous in the thin moonlight.

  ‘I wonder if the Twinkle is still afloat,’ I sighed, the quietness of the night inducing an elegiac mood, ‘or whether it has capriciously decided to scuttle itself?’

  ‘Never mind about the Twinkle,’ said Dick. ‘Where’s the ferry? And where’s Fatty gone, for that matter?’

  ‘Down here, boys,’ came a call from the murky depths below. ‘Welcome to the Paulus Hook Ferry.’

  We looked down and saw some sort of glorified jolly boat on which Fatty, his bear and four rowers were waiting, ghostly under the feeble glow of a lantern. Leading to the ferry was a narrow, rickety gangplank covered with slime. How Fatty had got across, let alone the bear, was a great mystery. My heart sank, then nearly stopped completely as Fatty rang a bell with hellish vigour.

  ‘All aboard for the first sailing of the day!’

  ‘Bloody old fool,’ whispered Dick, before staring hard at the plank and trying to compose himself with deep breaths. Moments later, the pressure almost intolerable, Dick set off on his run and managed to execute the daintiest and quickest of prances down the plank.

  ‘It’s easy, Harry,’ the liar called back in triumph from the safety of the deck, ‘just think carefully about what you’re doing.’

  Knowing that if I stopped to think what I was doing I would never get over, I dashed wildly at the plank with eyes closed and escaped with no more than a soaked boot and a sprained hand.

  ‘Good lads,’ approved Fatty, as he strode confidently back up the plank to unwind the mooring rope. ‘Many a passenger has slipped in here. Why it’s called a slip, I suppose. Some never resurfaced. God knows where they went to. Not even washed up later.’

  Shuddering, I peeked over the side of the ferry, and braced myself to see a gallery of white skulls grinning up at me from just below the surface of the water. I was still searching when I realized that I was being observed myself, and turned to see Dick and Fatty in collusion together.

  ‘Ha, ha!’ roared Fatty. ‘Gotcha! Only joking, son. No-one’s died yet.’

  ‘Poltroon!’ called Dick in between gasps. ‘You fell for that one!’

  The laughter sounded vindictive to me, so I did not like it. Shrugging moodily, I sat down on the only dry seat I could find, took off my boot to empty it of water, and brooded on Dick’s perfidy. As I did so the bear shuffled over to me, and looked at me sympathetically.

  They did that to me once too, its eyes appeared to say.

  As he studied me further, however, he seemed to change his mind about me, and think perhaps that I was a succulent fish caught especially for his supper, because he kept raising his paw occasionally as if to swat me. Always, though, he dropped it again, no doubt thinking it would do him no good in the long run. After a while he settled into what Fatty said was his usual ferry posture: deeply contemplative, looking out to sea, his left paw trawling through the water in the small hope of a fish swimming smack into it – which, we were told, one had yet to do.

  ‘Not very busy tonight, Fatty,’ said Dick, as we pulled away from the wharf, and started to bob alarmingly.

  ‘Not much call for the night-time service since you British arrived. Used to be frequented by men of intrigue going back to their wives in New Jersey; now ‘tis just occasional spies like you. Still, your government pays me well enough for the duty, so we’re not complaining, are we, Dougal?’

  The bear twitched his tiny ears and looked around in puzzlement. I looked around to see if the big ears of the rowers were twitching, for the further we moved away from safety the less I liked our calling to be so publicly bandied about, for obvious fear of betrayal; but the men, lost in their heavy work, twitched not.

  After a while Fatty grew chatty. He regaled us with stories of his love life – quite droll in their sordidness – and his ideas for making more money, such as building a new hotel and horse-racing track at Paulus Hook once the war was over. Though mildly entertained, we were more interested in staying alive as the ferry rocked and blundered through ever wilder waves. For our own reassurance we began to ask technical questions about the crossing, such as how long it took and whether tides affected it, but Fatty was vague to the point of ignorance about most things, as typified by his remark that the tide was either high or low, or possibly neap; he couldn’t be sure at this time in the morning. When asked whether a crossing had ever ended in disaster, Fatty changed the subject and said he had to concentrate on his navigation, a subject which had not noticeably troubled him up to that point. With great show, he held up two fingers to his right eye, closed the left one, and squinted in the general direction of the New Jersey shoreline. ‘Always two finger widths from the bend in the river,’ he pronounced, free with his trade secrets. We presumed he was referring to the Paulus Hook landing stage, but of course he could have been referring to anything, or indeed making it all up in order to impress us. Far from being impressed or reassured, we had no alternative but to trust him, and hope that the dismal-looking gloom of New Jersey, where not so much as a candle flickered, would soon be within swimming distance.

  We must have been half way across, the water getting very choppy, when a strong whiff of smoke reached us, more than just the usual here-comes-Autumn scent. Always a strong believer in the superiority of animals’ senses, I turned to see what Dougal’s nostrils were making of it all. Sure enough, they were twitching like mad, indicative of something unusual afoot. Eventually, perplexed beyond endurance, Dougal rose up on his back legs, hung his forelegs down meekly, and gave the air a really good examination.

  ‘Down, Dougal, down!’ shouted Fatty as the ferry rocked violently. ‘Yer bloody stupid animal, get down!’

  ‘’Tis the smell of the smoke that’s unsettled him,’ I said, as Dougal obeyed with impressive obedience. ‘We’re not on fire, are we?’

  ‘Can’t be us,’ said Fatty. ‘No fire has ever broken out on the Paulus Hook Ferry.’

  It did not necessarily follow, but looking down at the water slopping around our boots, fire did indeed seem the most unlikely w
ay to destroy the service.

  ‘Not you having a discreet drag, is it, Dick?’

  Dick, who had been sitting very quiet for the last ten minutes, turned round with a face that looked ill even in the pale moonlight.

  ‘What?’ he said, dazed.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said, as he suddenly leaned over the side of the boat and deposited his evening’s grog upon the waves. Chortling inwardly to myself, I marvelled at the wondrous ways in which God worked, and patted him patronizingly on the back.

  ‘Ah!’ said Fatty a few moments later, having carried out a 360º survey with his keen seaman’s eyes. ‘There, I think, you will find the cause.’ He pointed back to Manhattan Island. ‘See that reddish glimmer? That’s a fire, that is.’

  ‘Must be a big one,’ I remarked with scepticism, having seen the faint glow a long time ago, and assumed it to be the beginnings of dawn.

  ‘Yep, big all right. Never seen one as big as that before.’

  ‘You do not seem too bothered.’

  ‘The fire’s there, I’m here,’ said Fatty reasonably. ‘Besides, there are fires every week in New York; the Rebels are always trying to burn the place down. Looks like they might have succeeded this time.’

  ‘Surely they will be able to contain it?’

  ‘Doubt it. Whole damn place made of wood, no fire service worthy of the name. Could be the end of New York as we know it.’

  Indeed, even as we spoke the red glow got perceptibly bigger, and a tuft of smoke went billowing past us, which Dougal tried to swipe with his paw. Dick even thought he could hear a faint crackling sound on the seaborne wind – a claim which I verified by turning to the oracle, and observing the fretful twitching of Dougal’s ears.

  ‘Do you think we should go back?’ I said.

  ‘What on earth for?’ said Fatty.

  ‘To help out.’

  ‘Pointless. It looks like it’s got a grip. We would not be able to do anything except run around like smoked-out ants.’

  ‘But we have friends there.’