Scott blinks at Thomas’s tidbit of news. Hogarth covers his mouth to hide what Thomas thinks is another grin.
“It is true.” Hélène offers a small shrug. “A tailor. Pierre.”
“Well, Madame the widow Kharlamov,” says Hogarth as he glances at Samuel Scott. He then returns his focus to Hélène. “As a beautiful French woman with a Russian name, you could not choose a better place to come than here. I assume you are London-bound?”
Hélène nods. Thomas does the same.
“Well, our little London is the gateway to the world.”
“Not so little.” Thomas is eager to share what he has heard and read. “What I hear is six thousand. No, I must mean six hundred thousand. Bigger than Paris.”
“I cannot confirm any number, for how could I?”
Hogarth’s eyes glow as he speaks to the subject. “No one could ever count all the people in the alleys and closes. Any number must be wrong.”
Thomas nods at the painter as decisively as he can. Has he not said the very same thing himself about Paris and its population counts?
“But I tell you this, my French friends.” Hogarth leans back in his seat. “London may have crowds and dirt, squalor and thieves, gin and whores – excuse me, Madame Kharlamov – but it’s more alive than any other place. It bursts with freedom and ideas. It is the drama of life itself.”
“But Paris.” Thomas holds open a single hand.
“Paris?” Hogarth makes an incredulous face. “If it offers so much, why then are you here at Gravesend and not still in France?”
“Because,” says Hélène, as if that is explanation enough.
“Yes, because,” Thomas adds. “Because we choose.”
Hogarth looks down at the table for a moment. When he again makes eye contact, first with Hélène then Thomas, he says, “Forgive me. I was rude. I said too much.”
“Our Willy sometimes sounds like he wants to be Lord Mayor.” Samuel Scott gives his friend an indulgent smile. “He’d be a good one, I have no doubt, but he’d have no time to paint. That would be a loss.”
“I write,” comes out of Thomas’s mouth. It surprises him.
“But in French, I suppose?” Samuel Scott asks.
Before Thomas can reply, Hogarth calls out, “Here she is!”
Thomas sees the serving woman approaching with a tray.
“Sally, our new French friends here were saying terrible things about you. They said you’d forgotten all about our food.”
“That right, sir?” Sally winks at Thomas. “Doubts it very much. This is a true gentleman, here. But you painters, on the other hand? You’re a different story.”
She lowers the tray onto a corner of the table and slides it in to fill half the tabletop.
“Here’s a start, milady and gentleman. Take your share before these other two dig in. Back with the rest as soon as I can.”
Hélène and Thomas stare at the tray. There’s a stack of four small plates, a large omelette, half a roasted chicken, two kinds of cooked whole fish, a dozen sausages, a pile of smoked herrings and a full loaf of uncut dark bread.
“There is mistake?” Hélène asks Thomas. “Mistake?” she asks again of William Hogarth and Samuel Scott.
“Yes, it is,” Thomas says.
Hogarth and Scott swap self-congratulatory smiles.
“We English,” offers Scott, “we are a robust race. We take breakfast seriously. Best meal of the day.”
“True enough.” Hogarth takes the carving knife in hand and slices off a thick slice of the chicken’s white breast. “This is our fifth day here at Gravesend and each starts off more or less like this. When Sally comes back, I expect she’ll be bringing our bowls of oatmeal. This inn has the most delicious sweet cream.”
“And,” adds Samuel Scott, “a pitcher of small ale and tea.”
“Mais comment?” says Hélène.
Thomas cannot take his eyes off the spread of food. “But it is petit dejeuner, not the evening meal.”
“Welcome to England.” Hogarth opens his hands like he’s the host.
“Hear, hear.” Samuel Scott is handpicking the sausages he wants.
Hélène shakes her head. Thomas shrugs.
“Il faut s’adapter,” he says. “We join our new friends, Hélène. Bon appétit.”
—
“Yes, it’ll be a little crowded,” says Hogarth as he reaches up to take hold of Hélène’s hand. With his help she steps on the rail then down into the boat. “But it won’t be too bad. There is room for your things. We left London in a hurry and did not come away with much.” In a whisper close to Hélène’s ear, he confides, “We took this boat for our outing, but we’re going to put it back.”
“Vraiment?” Hélène looks at the painter with new eyes. Could he not be hanged for such a thing?
“In any case,” says Hogarth, returning to a normal voice, “our boat will be better for you and Tyrell than the long ferry. Not only will we not charge you a penny, but we’re good company to boot.”
Hogarth glances round. None of the others in his party seems to be listening to a word he says.
“You are kind,” says Hélène.
“Ah well, Madame Kharlamov, you’ll not be disappointed with our wit, nor with the basket Sally has packed for us. We’ll not go hungry on this trip.”
Hélène looks round to see where Thomas is. She finds him up near the bow. He’s in conversation with Samuel Scott and one of the other painters in this group of Englishmen. The other two men, whose names she’s been told but immediately forgot, are using a rope and a couple of oars to put up a sheet of canvas around a bucket in the middle of the boat.
“Hogarth, why they put more sail like that?”
Hogarth looks embarrassed. “Ah, that’s for you. For when and if....” He hunches his shoulders. “You understand.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Hélène hopes her face is not as flushed as it feels. “Excuse me.”
Arms outstretched for balance, Hélène wends her way slowly toward the middle of the boat. She wants to speak with Thomas, who has just taken a seat atop a canvas bale.
“Thomas, have you all the names?” she whispers, staying with the English she wants to learn.
“Un deuxième William, un John et un qui porte un nom drôle. C’est Eb ... en ... ezer.”
“Painters all?”
Thomas shrugs.
“Ah bon.” Hélène stands as best she can in the gently swaying boat. It’s still tied to the wharf. “Thomas and me, we thank you kind English. You are gentlemen. Merci William, William, John, Eb ... en ... ezer et Samuel. Un grand merci de nous, Thomas et moi.” Hélène curtseys to the bow of the boat and to the stern where Hogarth is making sure his easel and paints are safely stowed.
As Hélène retakes her seat beside Thomas, it’s Hogarth who replies on behalf of all five men.
“Gracious Madame, and pleasant Tyrell, we ask only one thing of you both as we sail up the Thames.”
“What’s that?” shouts out Sam Scott.
“That they listen to our lies and laugh at our jokes.”
Scott bats the air. Hélène and Thomas laugh, a little after the others.
“As French,” Thomas rises to say, “we too know lies.”
“That’s for sure,” shouts one of the three English whose name is either William, John or Ebenezer.
“But,” Thomas continues, “we do not lie about this. Your hospitalité is loved by us. By Hélène et moi. Merci.”
“You’re welcome, but that’s enough.” Hogarth loosens the last line keeping the boat tied to the wharf. “Casting off.”
—
As the boat makes its way up the Thames, rolling with the incoming tide and pushed by a wind that billows its one large sail, Thomas is content for a time to simply sit where he is and study
the distant sights on the opposing shores. At this great distance he could not tell England from France.
It pleases him to see Hélène smiling and chatting with the Englishmen. After yesterday’s nightmare coming out of Calais, he was worried she’d be sick again. Yet right from setting off, she seems fine. The river’s rolling swells are having no effect on either of them.
Hélène has the gift of appearing like she’s listening to every word the English are telling her. He wishes she would pretend to listen to him like that. He supposes that she does not because she knows him so well. Whereas these strangers might offer her a path toward something better in her new life, which at the moment Thomas cannot.
“You see at this point how the Thames begins to twist and turn,” says Samuel Scott in a loud voice. He’s looking directly at Thomas. “Like a snake.”
“I do see,” Thomas says.
“Altogether, it’s a little over twenty miles.” It’s the other William telling Thomas this. “From where we started this morning to where we dock. At Billingsgate.”
“Bills Gate is London?” Thomas asks.
“That’s right.”
Thomas sees Hogarth shaking his head. “I think all our guests want to know is that we’ll be in London before dark. Am I right, Tyrell?”
Thomas looks at Hélène. She gives a subtle nod. “Yes, Hogarth. But nous— we appreciate hearing talk. Interesting, we think.”
Hogarth does not hide his broad smile this time. “Well, we’ll let you be for a while. Hear that, chaps?”
There are mumbles from several mouths.
Thomas breathes in the rich salt smell from the river and the wind. He turns to watch the seabirds, some shrieking, others silent as they circle and swoop. A few come down to bob upon the waves. Large and small, some black, most white, but some with many shades of grey, they’re on a constant quest for what keeps them alive. No different than for those inside this boat, except ambition is as important as food.
“Look!” shouts the one called John. “Dolphins.”
First Hogarth, then everyone else aboard spots the creatures out in the middle of the river. Arms stretch and point. No one says a word. Half a dozen pewter-coloured arcs glide up and down and in and out of the water.
“Thomas,” asks Hélène, “why is the dauphin the title of the premier fils du roi?”
Thomas shakes his head. “I do not know.”
“Always wondered that myself,” Hogarth offers. “But then, one doesn’t expect things to make sense in France.” The artist arches his eyebrows at Thomas.
“You make joke?”
“Yes, but it isn’t much of a joke if you have to ask.”
“Monsieur Hogarth?” Hélène taps the painter lightly on the arm.
“Yes, Madame.”
“Your England, it was ruled once a time by the queen?” Hélène’s eyes look very bright as she waits to hear Hogarth’s reply.
“Oh, at least twice. Most recently by the late Queen Anne.”
Hélène looks at Thomas as if to say, “See.”
“The most famous,” Hogarth continues, “was Elizabeth, our great Virgin Queen.”
“A vierge?”
“So she said.” Hogarth hunches his shoulders.
Hélène looks at Thomas meaningfully, but what the glance means is lost on him.
“A fine stretch of the river is it not?” Samuel Scott has moved down to join the conversation. “Perhaps not so much at this season, but from spring to autumn it is a veritable delight.”
Scott’s remark triggers something in Hogarth. A pensive look spreads across his face. He stands up in the gently moving boat. With one arm outstretched for balance he places the other upon his chest, above his heart.
“Above all rivers thy river hath renown
Whose boreal streams, pleasant and preclare—”
“Ah, Dunbar,” Scott interrupts. “But what does ‘preclare’ mean, pray tell?”
“It means, or rather, two hundred years ago it meant clear, very clear,” says Hogarth. “Excuse the ill-bred Scott, will you please, Monsieur et Madame?”
Thomas is delighted to hear some verse and to see the sport between the painters. It reminds him of his own circle of writer friends and Gallatin. Thomas glances at Hélène. She too is much amused. And it is Hélène who with a gentle wave of the hand urges Hogarth to continue on with his verse.
“Merci, Madame, but I think it best to jump closer to the end. I doubt our unrefined companions will allow me to recite the whole.
“Where many a swan doth swim with wings fair,
Where many a barge doth sail and row with oar,
Where many a ship doth rest with top-royal.
O town of towns, patron and not compare,
London, thou art the flower of Cities all.”
Hogarth bows with an outstretched arm extended toward the Thames flowing by.
“Bravo,” says Thomas. “Poésie. I did not expect. Well done, Hogarth.”
“Oui, yes,” adds Hélène. “London comme une fleur. Pretty.”
“Willy has found an appreciative audience at last,” says Sam Scott. “And they’ve not even seen your real work.”
“The very first stop.” Hogarth winks at Scott. “I’ll make them admire my canvases one by one before taking them to their lodgings.”
“Ah, perhaps not this day,” says Thomas, brow wrinkled. “I— we wish to go chez Gallatin. Maybe another day to see your paintings, Monsieur Hogarth.”
Hogarth shows an enormous grin. “Another joke, Tyrell. Of course we’ll get you to John Gallatin. Does he live near his shop, close to St. Paul’s?”
“He writes Church Street.”
“Oh my.”
“You do not know a Church Street?”
“London must have three dozen Church Streets.” Hogarth looks to his English friends. Each confirms with a nod that it is so. “Almost as many as there are Cock Streets, Alleys and Lanes.”
“In one letter he say silk weavers from France live all around.”
“Aha, the Spittle Fields, or maybe the aromatic Sewerditch.” Hogarth’s expression is that of someone much pleased with himself. “I’m pretty sure there is a Church Street right beside Hawksmoor’s new church. I’ve sold engravings at the market nearby. That was before my work became well known in France.” Hogarth looks at Thomas with an expectant face.
Thomas gives the painter the smile he wants.
—
“We’re not too far now,” says Hogarth as he sits down alongside Thomas. They each have a mug of small beer in their hands.
“Joy! Two days long.” Thomas sees the painter chuckle. He knows it’s the way his words come out. He must practise and practise until the English cannot tell he’s not one of them.
“As long as you promise not to tell your King Louis,” says Hogarth before he takes a sip, “I’ll tell you what’s round the bend.” The artist points toward the front of the boat.
“But I am obliged to write the king every week.” Thomas’s face is deadly serious.
Hogarth leans back.
“A joke, Hogarth.”
“So you do have humour in France. Excellent!” Hogarth takes another sip.
“We have everything.”
“Yet you’re here, you and the beautiful widow with the Russian name.”
Hélène turns round at that. She smiles at Hogarth and winks at Thomas.
Thomas takes a good drink and sits back. It is only the first day in England – an ascent up a wide, fast-flowing river – but he likes what the day has brought him so far. The company is most pleasant, and all is well with Hélène.
“As I was saying,” Hogarth says, addressing himself alternately to Thomas and Hélène, “if you look on the south side over there, you can make out different clusters of masts. Some
with booms and rigging, some without.”
“I do,” says Hélène.
“Yes, me as well.”
Hogarth assumes a serious face. “We’re going by two, no, I must correct myself, three reasons for England’s might.”
“What is might?” Hélène asks.
“Pouvoir,” says Thomas. He looks to Hogarth for confirmation.
“Yes, pouvoir. We are the mightiest naval power of all.” Hogarth pushes his shoulders back. His eyes take on a challenging look.
“Is right,” comes from Sam Scott. He’s sliding past, sniffing the sausage in his hand.
“When you say we,” Thomas queries Hogarth, “you mean England?”
“Great Britain.”
“Ah, oui. C’est plus que l’Angleterre.”
“That it is. Scotland and Wales as well. And for our naval might, we have three major bases right along this stretch of the Thames.” Hogarth points up ahead.
“That’s Greenwich. It rises from the shoreline up to the top of its green hill. That’s a naval hospital at the water’s edge, designed by none other than Wren. You know the name of Wren?”
Thomas and Hélène shake their heads.
“Well, you’ll know it soon enough. Sir Christopher Wren, God rest his soul, was the greatest English architect there’s been. Died and went to his reward seven, maybe eight years ago. His London churches – there must be fifty of them – are the finest buildings in the land.”
“Catholique et Romaine?” asks Hélène.
Hogarth tilts his head and blinks at the widow with the Russian name. He laughs. “Very droll, Madame.”
“And over there and there,” Hogarth makes sure he has their attention as he swings his pointing finger. “Those are the dockyards of Deptford and Woolwich. But two of the dockyards where we Britons build and repair our ships.”
“And does King Louis know about these places your George has?” Thomas offers the painter a grinning face. Though he’s joking, he wonders if Brest, Rochefort or Toulon match up with the English yards Hogarth has just described.
Hogarth purses his lips and nods. “Oh, you can bet he does. There are no secrets about our naval strength. We also have dockyards at Gillingham and Portsmouth.”
The Maze Page 16
