Victorian Dawn (A Poor Man at the Gate Series, Book 12)

by Andrew Wareham

  Trapped by their own thrift in times of relative plenty; so much for Adam Smith!

  Matthew wondered what, if anything, could be done for these unfortunates. He had glanced through the accounts he had received each year and had seen very little opportunity to raise wages – the quarry income was just not high enough. He had come to Bethesda more to discover whether the managers were cheating the owners, pocketing a part of the profits that might otherwise be used as increased wages, but it was unlikely that every manager, in every quarry, would be a thief.

  Matthew repeated that he would inspect the quarries and discover the reality for himself; it was not that he doubted the minister’s word, but he must see the evidence in order to comprehend it.

  He was given the paths he must walk to reach the three quarries, was warned that a horse did not make great sense. It might not be impossible to ride a sure-footed mountain pony up the tracks, but very few had ever tried the experiment.

  “Then how, sir, does the slate come down to be sold?”

  “By inclines, sir. The slate is lowered by pulleys of one sort or another down a railed track, not unlike a trackway, sometimes almost vertically downhill for hundreds of feet. Many of the quarries have two or three such inclines before reaching a roadway which leads to river or canal or the sea itself. The men walk, sometimes miles across the mountain, to get to work. Many live in barracks at the quarry, coming in on Monday morning and going home on Saturday night. It is common enough for the barracks men to leave home at three o’clock of a Monday morning to walk the paths to arrive for six o’clock start; arrive a minute late and be sent home again, that is the normal rule.”

  “What of food?”

  “The barracks is a room, no more. Bed, blankets, food, water, fire – they must bring all themselves. When I say a ‘room’, it is normally no more than a disused shed, too small or derelict to be of value to the quarry any longer.”

  “I shall visit the first in the morning.”

  “Go to Tan Y Bwlch, if I might advise you, sir. The sky says rain for the morrow and you will not wish to cross far over the mountainside when the tracks are slippery, and the underground mine there will at least give you cover for your head.”

  Matthew took the minister’s advice and was glad to walk for no more than an hour; his legs ached from the effort of keeping a balance and he was tired from the strain of watching not to lose the path in the mist and rain. In places there had been a drop of more than five hundred feet just inches away from the verge of the track, many times greater than the distance to deck from the masthead of a ship of war. He had thought he had a head for heights, but not in these conditions.

  The pit at Tan Y Bwlch had been a quarry, then tunnels had been dug to follow the slate seam as it sloped underground, a cavern excavated under the mountain. He found the manager and was taken on a tour of inspection, the man visibly proud of his achievements and delighted to display all he had done. They penetrated a distance – Matthew had no idea how far, a three or four minute walk, down a tiny tunnel occupied by a narrow trackway and had then entered the workings proper. A cave had been carved out of the rock, its dimensions he could not gauge because it was mostly unlit. There were working faces visible, men beating shot-holes into the slate, mostly working from ladders built on site and roughly pegged into the near-vertical wall. Some of the men were eight or ten body lengths high off the floor of the cavern. They had no ropes or belts to tie them onto the ladders; most were standing upright and using both hands to work.

  “They dig a hole into the slate, sir, big enough to pack with black powder, and when they have the face mined, then they explode it. If they get it right, then the rock slumps down and little of it is pulverised and lost as rubbish. They make the holes by throwing a pointed iron rod into the one spot repeatedly. I have heard of places where they have thought to use a steam engine to turn a drill, but it has not worked. Here we are content with the old ways – the men use the jwmpah, as they call the rod, and can often cut as much as three inches into the face in an hour, able to blast perhaps three times a week. Then it is trim out the slabs and bring them onto the working floor for cutting and splitting and then send them outside.”

  The manager pointed to a group of men sat or stood on a flat section of the bottom, dressing the slate.

  “More comfortable in an underground working such as this, sir. In a quarry they will be out in the rain and cold but here they are as snug as a bug in a rug, you might say, sir.”

  “Candle light. No lanterns?”

  “The men cannot afford them. They each have their own candle and sometimes they place it in their hats; if more convenient they set it on a rock.”

  “One candle?”

  “Enough to work by, sir. They need no more.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “No gas in slate, sir, it is not like a coal mine where the firedamp may explode. They are used to the conditions; this is the way it always has been. Great ones for their traditions, sir, these slate people.”

  “They are a skinny lot, looking at them. Is one of their traditions not to eat a decent meal?”

  “The price of food has risen far faster than that of slate, sir…”

  Book Twelve: A Poor Man

  at the Gate Series

  Chapter Three

  “Cotton, suh, thet’s what this plantation produces, suh. Always has, suh.”

  The overseer stood in front of Lord Frederick Masters, arms folded, defiant; he was not to be told his business by some English lord, chased out of his own country and come to Virginia to make a nuisance of himself. This lordship might own the plantation, but his place was to sit on the veranda in the cool, holding his little ladyship’s hand; he had no right to interfere with an overseer born to the trade whose daddy and granddaddy both had held the place before him.

  “Cotton is not ideally suited to this ground and to the climate, Mr Ferguson. This land should be growing tobacco.”

  The overseer stood his tallest; he was a massive, heavily bearded, full-bellied thirty-year-old, more than six feet tall and, in his own opinion, an imposing figure.

  “This plantation, suh, grows cotton! Always has, always will, suh. It has grown cotton for nigh on fifty years now, suh, and it don’t goin’ to change for me, suh.”

  Lord Frederick was not about to be bullied by some back-country hick, unwashed, ignorant and stupid as well. He freely accepted that he was himself no expert in agriculture, but he had been well advised by those who were and, most importantly, the land was his and he would be obeyed upon it.

  “I repeat, Mr Ferguson. I have bought tobacco seedlings from Mr Bentley, my father by marriage, and they will be sown here. There will be no further crops of cotton. This is the last season for cotton. It will no longer be grown here. That is my order, Mr Ferguson.”

  “Well, is that so, suh? Well then, if that be so, then see if you can order the servants to make the change, suh, for I ain’t goin’ to!”

  “And is that your last word, Mr Ferguson?”

  Lord Frederick’s voice grew quieter, softer in intonation, as if, Ferguson thought, the man was scared.

  “Damned right, it is, suh!”

  “Then you are dismissed, Mr Ferguson and will leave this plantation today. Do you wish to argue your case with me, sir?”

  That was, Ferguson believed, a challenge, an invitation to fight or to run.

  Ferguson was carrying a quirt, a flexible cane nearly a yard long with which he habitually ‘tickled’ idlers in the fields. He had pistols in his belt as well. He could see that his English lordship had a pistol holstered at his waist, a statement that he was a man of honour. It was worth a risk. He could claim that the Englishman had pulled a pistol on him and had missed while he had hit home, all in a duel provoked by the man himself.

  He glanced around, could see no witnesses; there were a few blacks in sight, but their word was valueless in any court. He flailed with the short whip, missed his target; he had intended to lash
the Englishman across the face, knowing he had a weak eye, but he hit across the quickly raised arm instead. He grabbed for a pistol at his waist but found himself falling for some reason. He spat a mouthful of blood, realised then that he was shot. He could not breathe; he hit the ground and then he died, all in seconds.

  Lord Frederick whistled to the frozen black slaves, beckoned them across. None had dared move, for fear that they might somehow be blamed.

  “Take him to his house. Get the body out of sight – we don’t want the yard all cluttered up and untidy! Tell Caspar to come to me. Now.”

  Six of the slaves grabbed hold of the body and carried it to the old overseer’s cottage, home to three generations of Fergusons since they had left Scotland; the dead man had not gotten around to marrying and was the last of the clan, so it seemed.

  The stables boy, Caspar, came running; in England he would have been the head groom, in charge of the stud and responsible for some very fine horses; here he was just a boy, despite being well into his thirties.

  “Take a horse and go to the sheriff in town. Beg his pardon and tell him that I have shot Ferguson after he attacked me. He is to come here. Do you understand?”

  “Go to she’iff, Massa Lord, sir. You done kill Massa Ferguson for lashing you with he cane and then he pull a pistol. He got to come here.”

  “Well done, Caspar. Go now.”

  Lord Frederick glanced at the trail of blood in the dirt yard, signalled to one of the gardeners, too old to work in the fields and pottering around the flower beds rather than be left idle.

  “Clear up the mess, Isaiah.”

  Lord Frederick had expected a confrontation with Ferguson but had not thought it would come to bloodshed; now that it had, he was little concerned. Plantation owners who killed overseers had little to fear from Virginia law, provided the bullet hole was not in the back. He could show the open wound of the lash across his arm as well; that would be more than sufficient justification.

  “Lavinia, my dear?”

  His wife appeared from inside the house, out of the direct rays of the sun where her complexion could not be harmed. She was a lady and must preserve her white skin; farming wenches from the hills might be brown, and wind-blown besides, but she was not to be mistaken for that sort.

  “Frederick, did I hear a shot, sir?”

  “The fool Ferguson lashed at me with his cane, my dear. I have called for the sheriff to discover whether there is to be an inquest on the man.”

  “Oh! He is dead then?”

  Lavinia was very decorative, Frederick thought, and a good wife – they had been married three years and she had presented him with two sons already. She was not, however, remarkable for her intellect. He thought of commenting that there would hardly be an inquest in other circumstances, but she would not really understand him and might suspect him of mocking her. Her father was a most valuable relative to possess as well; he was rich, as went without saying, possessor of a fine plantation and owner of a merchant house in Richmond and of two sea-going ships that traded to London; he was also a member of the State Legislature, with all of the influence that conveyed. He had made Frederick a number of valuable presents in addition to the financial settlement on his daughter; his most recent gift had been twenty blacks experienced in tobacco and a young white man who was to have been a junior overseer under Ferguson, responsible for the tobacco crop.

  “Young Mr Buckley will now become overseer for the whole plantation, my dear; I can see no great difficulties.”

  The sheriff rode in two hours later; he must have saddled up the instant Caspar had given him his message.

  “Good afternoon, Lord Frederick, suh. Your boy says you killed Ferguson consequent on his lashing at you with a whip, suh?”

  Frederick raised his bared arm and removed the bandage protecting the broken skin.

  “God damn it, suh! I would have seen him hang for that, suh! You pistoled him, suh?”

  “I had a pistol at my waist for fearing that he might try to attack me, sheriff. I had to tell him that we were to grow no more cotton but were to plant tobacco, a crop he did not know. Mr Buckley was to enter the plantation as junior to him and to take over the great fields while Ferguson was to keep to the hogs and corn and vegetables. I was sure he would take offence at this and suspected him to be a man with small control of his passions. He carried always a pair of pistols.”

  “You are a hand with a pistol yourself, Lord Frederick, suh?”

  Frederick pointed at the scarring across his face.

  “I am no great gunman, but I have seen my share of battle, sheriff.”

  “So you have, suh! You have indeed!”

  “What am I to do with the body, sheriff?”

  “Well, I should reckon on havin’ it put underground, suh. Politest sort of thing to do, suh!”

  The sheriff fell into paroxysms of laughter, much tickled by his own wit.

  “Quite. I had meant to enquire whether I should have it taken into town, to the graveyard there.”

  “No, suh! Don’t put no felons to bed with the law-abidin’ respectable sorts of folk. Put him down with the slaves, suh! He ain’t no more than an overseer, suh, and they’s mostly got more than a little of black blood in them!”

  “So be it, sheriff.”

  Frederick leant over the veranda rail and yelled into the yard.

  “Isaiah!”

  The old man came at as close to a run as he could manage.

  “Tell the boys that Ferguson is to be buried up on the hill, next to their dead. Do it now. Get rid of him!”

  Isaiah whistled and knuckled his forehead, trotted off to give the orders.

  “Mr Buckley is due in here in the morning. I cannot imagine that he will have any great difficulty in establishing himself, sheriff.”

  “Neither he will, suh, iffen he’s Jeb Buckley’s boy, what I thinks he may be; thet’s a man what don’ take no nonsense at all, suh, and brought his boys up right besides! I’ll just send two of my deputies up to stay in the Ferguson place overnight, suh. Don’t do no good at all for they bond-servants of yours to think the place might be short of masters.”

  Young Mr Buckley was perhaps twenty years of age, short and bandy-legged and very thin; he was sandy-haired, wore his locks long, the fairness a statement that he was not one of ‘those’ overseers. He spoke very little and observed everything. He was obviously pleased when told that he was now the sole overseer and was to take charge of Grafhams, if he thought himself able.

  “Seen how at Broadlands, sir. Mr Bentley brought me on from just as soon as I could read and write, sir, that being needful of an overseer. Do I gets the house, sir?”

  “Move in today, Mr Buckley.”

  “Yes, sir. No more cotton, sir, but tobacco where it can be. Hard on the soil, tobacco, sir. Needs plenty of manure, sir, and can do with some of they fert-ee-lizers what come by the ships, sir. Bring a barge load up the river and on the wagons after, sir.”

  There was an increasing trade in guano, brought in from cays in the Sugar Islands.

  “We have the Arabian stud, Mr Buckley, grow beans and corn and such for the boys, as well as a good herd of hogs. Can you look after all of those as well?”

  “Don’t know Arabians, sir, but I can learn ‘em. The head boy knows his trade, do he, sir?”

  “Caspar is very good with the horses, or so I believe, Mr Buckley. Ferguson whipped him often, but I suspect that might have been for knowing more than he did.”

  Buckley nodded; that made sense.

  “Shan’t whip he, unless he got a mouth on him, sir. Make him up to top hand, sir, with a bigger cabin. He got a woman, sir, do you know?”

  “I think not. Ferguson did not approve of the boys having women of their own.”

  “Man sounds like a fool, sir. Slave has a woman of his own and she has a dozen of little ones, they comes in free to the plantation; don’t have to buy them, and if they gets to be too many, well they sells off at a good price for being born
to the work.”

  It was harsh, Frederick thought, but practical in their society, and he had not come to Virginia to tell them they were wrong and should turn themselves into little Englishmen.

  “What is the best way to grow tobacco, Mr Buckley? Seeds direct into the ground or set the seedlings in a nursery?”

  “Nursery, sir. Only plant the strong ones, sir. Takes a bit more time and fuss, but slaves don’t cost nothing, sir. Need to turn the barn into a smoke house, sir, and cut plenty of good firewood, sir; hardwoods, not pines. Best to take in part of the hillsides, sir, where they ain’t no farms but they’s plenty of timber, sir. Belongs to the State of Virginia, sir, most of the land that ain’t claimed because of it being waste.”

  “I shall speak to Mr Bentley.”

  The member of the State Legislature put his senator’s hat on and took a trip into Richmond, seeking his small favour from the Governor. What he offered in return he did not disclose to Lord Frederick – probably merely a promise to vote in the right way on some minor measures of interest to the Governor’s people – but he came back with the official deeds relating to eight square miles of hillside above Grafhams plantation.

  “Five thousand five hundred acres, thereabouts, Lord Frederick. If you find yourself needing more, just pass the word, sir. I see you are dressed smart again today, my lord! London tailoring, I must presume!”

  “No, sir, Richmond’s best, guided by my valet Perkins in the cut and fall of the cloth. There is a very good snyder set up shop since last year, a fine tailor indeed, one of Germany’s best!”

  Mr Bentley vowed to patronise him within the month – as a leader of society, he must dress the part.