Poor Tom's Ghost

by Jane Louise Curry

  “Pa?” Roger moved quickly as the trolley was rolled to the head of the stairs, and touched his father’s arm.

  “Don’t worry,” he said softly. “ ‘Go on, I’ll follow thee’.”

  No one else seemed to hear, but Tony’s eyes fastened on him in an intent, unfocussed way. “Jack?” he whispered. “No, not Jack…”

  “What did he say?” asked the doctor as the ambulance attendants took up the weight of the trolley and started down the stairs. “Roger, is it? Roger, did you catch what your father said?”

  “Nothing really. I don’t know. Jo?” He turned. “Do—do you want me to come with you in the ambulance?”

  Jo rubbed her eyes wearily. “Only if you’d like. Alan’s going to follow to bring me back once Tony’s more comfortable, but Jemima will be here in case Pippa wakes. Do you want to come?” She waited on the top step.

  “Not if you don’t need me.” Roger looked back toward the bedroom door. “I’ve something else to do.”

  Only later, in the ambulance, did Jo think what an odd answer it was for two in the morning.

  The house slid into sleep at last, Pippa, Jemmy, even Roger for a while, though he struggled to keep awake. For it was here that Tom would come. Must come. Tony slept where he was safe from walking, so it was here that Tom must come. Must.

  But when he came, pale with hurt and anger, throwing wide the lost door from the old stair passage and hurling his muslin-wrapped parcel onto the chest at the bed’s foot, both Roger and Pippa were lost in sleep. His candle cast its glimmer across their dreams, but neither woke to see him snatch the letter, break the seal, and scan those few lines that tumbled all his hopes that the woman he had seen had not been Katherine.

  The low, moaning grief that had wakened him on the first night echoed at last in Roger’s dream, but waking this time was an even deeper struggle than that first. He swam upward from a great, dark depth, and when his eyes at last dragged open it was at the sound of the front door’s heavy slam. What he saw was the great bed with its embroidered linen hangings, and the crumpled letter lying on the coverlet. The parcel’s wrappings were strewn across the floor, and on the chest a peach-flower-and-corn-coloured gown of tissue silk and light brocade hung grotesquely to the floor, its pinked sleeves with silver lace ripped from the bodice, and the wide frounced skirt torn down through its silken roses to the hem.

  Roger sat up in alarm, feeling half shadow himself on the shadowy camp bed, and swung his feet to the dark, polished floor. Tom … Tom had come and gone. How was he to tell him, to warn him, now? How follow? Roger rose and crossed to the bed, meaning to smooth out the paper and take it with him, but his fingers only stirred it slightly, as if he were no more than a faint disturbance in that older place. Touch, feeling—they were there, but he felt as queerly insubstantial as a child in the fever of some illness, powerless and muffled up in silence.

  Roger looked around him wildly. He had not understood. He had not thought it through. For, what was he here, in this older place, but a ghost? A ghost out of the future, but a ghost no less. How was he to unravel the web that Jack had spun if he could not even pick up a little piece of paper? How could he hope to unwedge the newel post and retrieve the other sheets? And without them, how much of the tale would Tom believe? Roger hurried into the moonlit passage and plunged downward, the broad rail smooth under his hand, to the newel post on the landing, a dark, polished globe as smooth and vivid to the touch as silk. But to grasp it, to get some purchase on it, was like trying to pick up a bead of mercury between one’s fingers—impossible.

  In his desperation he did not hear the heavy front door open again and close, nor the sharp little scratch of noise that followed it. When a candle flared alight, he was caught like a rabbit dazzled by torchlight, standing frozen with his arms around the newel knob. Jack stood below, on the rush mat by the door, shading the guttering candle with his hand. He had rid himself of the dress, and in his doublet of claret-coloured silk, and mouse-grey sleeves and hose, with his thin, arrogant face, looked like a painted figure from an Elizabethan miniature eerily come to life.

  “Ho! Who’s to home?” he called, with a wry quirk of an eyebrow. “Tom? Sister Katherine?” When no answer came from Tom, he stepped nervously across the gleaming floor toward the stairs. “Tom? Who’s here? ’Tis you, isn’t it?”

  Roger did not move for fear of frightening him away. If you’re not afraid to break the rules … you can cross that line and be a player in the past yourself. Perhaps he had known all along what it must come to. Only Jack could mend what Jack had broken. Only Jack could stitch up this ragged rent in the curtain between past and present. Only Jack.

  At the foot of the stairs Jack slowed suddenly and held the candle high. “Who’s there? I—” His glimmer of fear turned to fury. “Who are you? Get away from that post whoever you are! ’Tis my gold in there, all I’ve saved, and you’ll not dip your fambles in’t.” Shifting the candlestick to his left hand he took the stairs two at a time, drawing his knife as he came.

  But on the landing he saw at last that the shadow by the newel post was more a shadow than a man.

  “Who… What is’t you want?” he faltered. “Who are you?” As Roger let go the post-knob to move towards him, he stumbled backwards into the corner of the landing, stammering, “No, n-no.”

  Roger reached out in alarm toward the wavering candlestick.

  “Please, no.” The words were scarce a whisper.

  Pippa, watching numbly from above, saw the two figures blur and merge until they moved as one, carefully placing the candlestick out of the way in a corner of the landing. The shape was Roger and not-Roger, both flesh and blood and shadow. It stepped to the newel post to grasp it as Roger had done, worked loose the great knob, and pulled it free. From the deep socket it drew some folded papers, stuffed them inside the claret-coloured doublet, took up the candlestick once more, and hurried down the stairs.

  Goe on, Ile followe thee

  HE HAD THOUGHT IT WOULD FEEL strange, but it did not. The candle was snuffed, the door locked, and Roger was over the threshold into New House lane, bent for the river and the ferryman’s house. Surprisingly, more than anything it felt like coming home to a place one had known years before—oddly vivid and strange in its familiarity. He knew that he must find a boat. Tom would try first for Syon Wharf, and then for Temple Stairs in town. And if there were no watermen putting up for the night at the ferryman’s cottage, no boat to be had? He could swim as far as Syon Wharf or look for a horse to hire to town. Or walk.

  Money. How much was the hire of a boat? Roger felt at his waist and found the purse hanging there. Not much. A dozen or so smallish coins. Why had he not thought that he would need money when his hand touched the coins inside the newel post? It was too late now. Pray God he had enough.

  Coming found the curve of road past the church, Roger saw a yellow glow wink out in a window of the timbered cottage at the water’s edge where the flat-bottomed ferry was moored and broke into a run. In the dooryard he was brought up short, cracking his shin on one of the benches where Mrs. Fairman served wine and ale and bread and cheese to travellers. “Mrs. Fairman”? Where had that had come from? The noise and his muffled exclamation roused a terrier who came scrambling out from among the wharf pilings with a piercing, angry yap as alarming as any bulldog’s growl.

  “Who’s there? ’Tis too late t’ cross tonight.” The light sprang up again, and a wicket in the cottage door opened a crack. “Who’s there, I say? Ah, ’tis you, Master Garland. What is’t you’re after?”

  “Has my brother come this way, Mr. Fairman?” Will Fairman. The man’s name came as easily as his face was familiar.

  “Aye right, he did. And took away John Tomasin, who was enjoyin’ a pipe and a bottle and a good tale or two away from his old woman—who’s a terror, I hear, and fearful company now she’s paid by the magistrates to go viewin’ corpuses so’s the plaguey ones aren’t passed off as clean to ’scape the quarantine. Right cru
el it was to take ’im back to Lunnon so suddenlike. Indeed—”

  Roger cut in firmly. “Did he say ‘to London,’ Mr. Fairman? And was it John Tomasin who brought him up from Bankside?”

  “It was. But as for Lunnon I couldn’t swear. Thinkin’ on it now you ask, may be he said no more’n ‘down river.’ In a hurry, he was, for he—”

  “Mr. Fairman, I’m in a hurry too. Are any of Tomasin’s fellows laid up here for the night?”

  “No lad, there’s not.” Mr. Fairman scratched his beard consideringly. “But if you’ve a borde or three in that bung of yours, you’re welcome to that sweet little skiff tied upstream from the ferry.”

  It was as sour-looking a little pram dinghy as Roger had ever seen, but it had oars, and not above a half-inch of water slopping in the bottom. Roger came back to Mr. Fairman and the candlelight to finger through his purse. Three shillings was steep—absurdly so if he found Tom at Syon—but since there was no knowing when or whether the boat would come to Isleworth again, he gave the man a gold crown and left him staring in disbelief.

  The moon was rising still, and when Roger pushed out from the shadows of the ferry and the tree-clad ait, he found himself riding the silvered river in a world of cricket song and night-birds and the quiet lap-slap of barely moving water touching boat and bank. As soon as he was clear of the ferry he sculled half round with an oar over the stem, then fixed the oars in the rowlocks and bent his back to pull hard downstream.

  The work felt good and he was good at it—it was far too long since he had been on the river! He rowed a true, fast course between mid-channel and Syon water meadows where the silvery reeds were full of sleeping swans and drank it in with wonder. Too long? He gave a grunt of laughter as he pulled. In a manner of speaking, it was the very first time he had been on the Thames. Those other times were centuries yet to come.

  As the little boat drew abreast of Syon Wharf and landing stairs, Roger saw that they were chained off and deserted. Up across the pasture the great turreted three- storied house shone pale above its garden walls, one window lit where scant weeks ago every one had blazed with candles. So. No watchman even, who might have been bribed to delay Tom with hemming and hawing over which gentleman and lady had taken a wherry for where. Roger bent his back to the oars again, moving into the deep channel and rowing steadily but more slowly, for Mortlake was a good long pull downstream. It was not likely that Tom in his haste would stop there, but it was possible, and there was Katherine to think of, too. She must be warned. One of Tom’s friends must take word to Kingston.

  He was rowing now in slack water, the pause between the flow and ebb tides. The tide would soon be turning and the going easier. As Roger bent and pulled, bent and pulled, he began to wonder. Mr. Fairman… Syon all ablaze with candles … he even knew that John Tomasin the waterman had deep pock-marks on his cheeks, wore an earring, and had his boat upholstered in green and gold. But if he knew what Jack knew, why then did so much—the moon on the beautiful river, the curving sweep of tree-clad banks, the sleeping swans—seem so new, so never-seen?

  Beyond the tiny village of Strand-on-the-Green, Mortlake slept among the trees on the opposite bank. Rather, most of it slept. Pulling ashore beyond the town wharf, Roger moored the little boat to a tree on the bank and made his way toward the inn and the sound of music. Through the open front door he saw Bob Armin, arms flung wide, leading the refrain to “Friar Foxtail.” Jack Wilson’s dark head was bent over his guitar, and others sat on the benches circled round them, singing and laughing: Bob Goffe, Ned, Sam Gilburne and Sam Crosse. Roger hesitated—a more cheerfully gossipy lot would be hard to come by. If they learned how Tom had been diddled, Tom would never hear the end of it.

  “With the players, are ye?” The voice came from a bench under a dooryard tree, where the small red glow from a pipe brightened as the speaker took a puff. “Sorry, lad, I didn’t mean to startle ye. I’m landlord here, and when I’ve finished my pipe I’ll be packin’ ’em off to their lodgings, for I’ll not have ’em sleeping till noon on my benches. Is’t one o’ them ye’re after?”

  “No. Tom Garland. Do you know him?”

  “Aye, to see him. But he’s not been here. You’ll do best to ask at Mr. Phillips’ in the morning.”

  “Yes,” Roger said uncertainly, turning away. “Thank you.”

  “Aye, good night to ye, lad.”

  At Augustine Phillips’ the front of the house was dark, but from the lane down along the side garden, Roger caught a glimpse of light at a window. A servant seeing to the locks and shutters, most likely. But still, a servant would know if Tom had been there. Boldly, Roger vaulted the low hedge and made his way among the box trees and borders to the window where the light still glowed.

  “They’re all abed, young Garland.”

  Roger whirled in alarm to see the shadow of a man in the deeper shade of a medlar tree. “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” he quavered. “Who’s there?”

  The man moved into the moonlight, his voice coolly amused, but not friendly. “An apt greeting, Jack. But I did not mean to be rehearsing the ghost of Hamlet’s father. I may ‘revisit thus the glimpses of the moon’ but I trust I do not ‘make night hideous’.”

  “No, sir. You startled me, but I w-was not skulking,” Roger stammered. “I didn’t wish to rouse the house. I hoped to catch a servant, sir, or one of the ’prentices.”

  “To ask after Tom? He’s been and gone not half an hour past. He stormed in like a madman, borrowed three pounds of me, wrote a line or two to be taken tomorrow to his father-in-law in Kingston, and was gone.”

  Roger’s heart sank. “Did he say what he meant to do?”

  “No, nor what had ’mazed him so.” Dark, keen eyes skewered Roger. “If your fine hand is in it, Jack, and it comes to ill, we’ll see you never tread another stage. We took you on for Tom’s sake. We would as happily be rid of you for it.”

  Roger scarcely heard. If Tom had written to Kingston in his first shock and anger, Mr. Purfet Katherine’s father, would never make head nor tail of it. And Katherine would be in danger. What use was anything if she were lost?

  “Have you pen and paper?” Roger burst out anxiously. “I must send to Kingston too. Tom’s wife’s in danger Tom knows nothing of. It’s my fault, but there’s no time to explain it. If one of the ’prentices could take the letters to Kingston now, tonight, I’d pay my last gold piece.”

  “Would you? Then it must be a serious matter indeed. Come, I’ve paper and ink to spare. And Heminge’s ’prentices are here—the house John’s let for his family is short of beds. I’ll wake Jack Rice and find a man to take him a-horseback. There are too many ruffians on the heath and the Kingston Road to send a boy alone.”

  Roger’s shoulders had begun to feel the strain of the unaccustomed work, but the tide had turned and though the ebb had not begun to run in earnest, he kept to the deep channel where it was strongest and made fair time past Putney’s church and on down the silver ribbon of water as the river slowly widened between the wooded banks and ran at last past Chelsea fields. There Roger let the current carry him for a while, and turned to look ahead where Lambeth House on the south bank grew clear against the sky and then slid slowly past. In the moonlight, the river and the town were fresh as new-minted silver, sharp-edged and true, to Roger a world both familiar and heartbreakingly new. Not even the stench from the King’s slaughterhouse beyond Mill Bank could spoil the silvered town. The Abbey, like Lambeth House, Roger knew as well as Jack did, but Westminster Palace, the apple orchards along the bank by Lambeth Marsh, the gardens and their palaces—from Whitehall down to old Somerset House—were so lovely among their midnight trees that they seemed scarcely real.

  Roger came to himself with a start of alarm to find that he had completely shipped his oars and was drifting in a slow curve down past the Strand Lane stairs. For one frightening moment he had the sense of someone or something at his back, a presence gathered like a cornered cat to pounce. There was
nothing there to see, but it pulled him up sharply. Jack? Was there still Jack to fear? He might not be buried quite…

  Roger wavered for a moment, trying to think what to do. Tom would have headed first for the Temple, but he might be as much as an hour ahead by now, and with the Temple so near the thieves’ dens of Alsatia, Roger shared the fear Jack would have had that his finery would get him robbed and killed. Like Tony … set upon in the Strand. But where would Tom go next so late? The Cardinal’s Hat, where the wine was best? The lodgings in Brande’s Rents? They were the most likely places. But then the name of the Blue Pump from Alan’s notes leapt to his mind, and he pulled hard for the south bank and Paris Garden Stairs. The Blue Pump. “Poor Tom’s Last Refuge.”

  There were lights behind the dingy horn-paned windows of the Windmill in Paris Garden Lane and a thin sound of revelling, but the Orange Tree was shut up with a placard on the door, and between it and the bottom of Holland Street Roger counted eight other doors sealed up. Few of the houses, stricken or no, had lit their street lamps. The sick cried out behind their walls, and somewhere beyond a curtained window a frightened child wailed thinly. Even in Holland Street where the houses were not crowded up against each other and where the gardens were dark with trees, the bright summer night was oppressive. As Roger passed one house’s bridge over the drainage ditch he saw two men with a coffin frozen in the shadows under the garden fruit trees, a-sweat with fear that he might be a magistrate’s man out prowling with his seals to shut them away from their livelihoods. The bells of St. George’s, St. Saviour’s, and St. Olave’s tolled in turn and then together for their dead.

  The Castle, at the bottom of the street, was closed and dark, but at the Blue Pump, the door under the sign of a man pumping with all his might actually stood open with the thin sound of music drifting out. In the dim front room two or three determined drinkers listened to a pert old man with an untuned lute quaver out “The Ballad of Watkin’s Ale” and nodded and cackled their approval.