A Spectacle of Corruption Page 12

  I cannot say that I believed him to be lying, but neither was I entirely convinced he told me the truth. My uncertainty was such that I thought it best not to burn my bridges, as the saying goes, over this enigma, which as yet meant nothing to me. I had no way of knowing how largely Mr. Johnson would figure in these events. I merely stood and thanked the priest for his time. “If I have further news or questions, I will call on you again. Please ask your man to be less rigid with me in the future.”

  “I do not know that my parlor is the best place for us to meet,” he said. “And as to my servants, it would be very hard if I could not ask that they approve my visitors for me.”

  “Then it will be very hard,” I said.

  As for Ufford’s hired curate, Mr. North, I thought there might be some good in talking to him immediately. Ufford thought fit to make his speeches from his church in Wapping, but North lived there, and he would have a far better knowledge of the goings-on among the porters. I therefore took a hackney to his neighborhood, hoping he would have arrived home by that time. It took some inquiring to learn of the location of Mr. North, but I received directions soon enough and was on my way.

  And a sad way it was. Here were unpaved streets full of refuse that flowed like a great brown river. The stench of rot and filth was everywhere, but children played in this soil all the same. Men staggered about in a gin stupor, and women too, some clutching babies with utter carelessness. And should an infant dare to cry out, it got but a few drops of its mother’s gin for its trouble.

  Liveried footmen did not visit regularly in that neighborhood, so my appearance generated a fair amount of notice from gawking children in tattered clothes and wizened women who pursed their mouths and squinted at me. But like a haughty footman, I paid these folk no mind and continued about my business, dusting off the dirt and dung that the lowlies flung in my direction.

  I learned something far more interesting while rooting around those streets, however. My escape from Newgate had now become generally known, and had grown into something of a celebrated tale. I did not believe that the daily newspapers had been granted enough time to publicize the event, but already wandering peddlers shouted out their broadsides and ballads recounting my adventures. I learned of this in the most astonishing way—by hearing a ballad singer calling out “Old Ben Weaver’s Got Away” to the tune of “A Bonny Lass to a Friar Came.” I grabbed a copy at once and read the lyrics—the most wretched drivel, I assure you. They were accompanied by a woodcut depicting a man—who resembled me only in that he had arms and legs and a head—leaping naked from the roof of Newgate as though he were a great cat who could safely land from any distance. How had the tale of my nakedness circulated? I could not say, but information flows through the veins of London, and there is no stopping it once it starts.

  My encounter with Mr. Rowley was spoken of as well, but these broadsheets, which were composed for the poor and lowly, celebrated my acts as the revenge of the repressed against his ill users. I took no small satisfaction in this, and in the way in which my escape was described, with much admiration and wonder. Benjamin Weaver, these articles said, smashed through two dozen doors, singlehandedly defeated a score of guards—using only his fists against their firearms and blades. He leaped from (and to!) great heights. No lock could hold him. No constable could defeat him. He was a strong man, a master of escapes, and an acrobat all combined. These accounts sometimes veered toward the fantastical and depicted me fighting armies of villainous Whigs and corrupt Parliamentarians—not to mention violent Rome-inspired Papists.

  Though these versions of my adventures were fantastically exaggerated, I now flatter myself that had not a celebrated prison-breaker by the name of Jack Sheppard emerged a bit later, escaping from prison half a dozen times in a variety of extravagant fashions, my own acomplishment would be far better recalled than it is today.

  Yet, while I delighted in my name being spoken of with such admiration, I saw that there can be no good without a touch of bad. My championship came with a steep price, for the ballad seller informed me—without ever once suspecting to whom he spoke—that a hundred and fifty pounds had been placed on my head. I was somewhat gratified that I should fetch so mighty a sum, but I would have traded that gratification for a greater hope of being left to my own devices.

  Mr. North lived in one of the better houses on Queen Street, though even the best house on Queen Street was a mighty poor house. The edifice was cracked and crumbling, the stairs so damaged as to be almost impassable, and most of the front windows had been bricked to avoid the window tax. The landlady showed me to his chambers—two rooms on the third floor of this feeble building—and I found him at home with his wife and four small children, who made the most appalling noises. Mr. North greeted me at the door. I now had the opportunity to study him more closely than I had before, and I saw that his black coat was worn and patched, his white cravat stained, his wig unpowdered and disordered. He appeared, in short, a meager representative of his church.

  “You were just with Ufford. What do you want?” he asked me, treating me in a surly fashion no doubt because of my livery. I thought it mighty unkind of him to look down upon a man of my supposed station, but I was not there to become his friend.

  “I beg a moment of your time,” I said to him. “In private, if you please.”

  “On what business?” His impatience made him appear older than his relatively meager years. He knit his brow and bared his teeth like a cur.

  “On business of the utmost importance, which can only be discussed in privacy, and not with your landlady lurking just out of sight, listening to us.” I repressed a smile at the sound of her shuffling a few steps down.

  “You must tell me more than that,” he insisted, “if I am to grant you audience.”

  “It concerns Mr. Ufford and his connection to a great crime.”

  I don’t believe I could have said anything else half so effective. He ushered me into the back room, a small sleeping chamber that he evidently shared with the entirety of his family. There was but a large mattress on the floor, piles of clothes, a few chairs cobbled together of broken things. He stepped out, said a few words to his wife I could not hear, and then rejoined me and shut the door. With the door shut I felt ill at ease in that poorly lit room, smelling of sweat and fatigue.

  “Speak your business, then.”

  “What do you know of Mr. Ufford’s relations with Walter Yate and a tobacco man called Dennis Dogmill?”

  He narrowed his gaze. “What is this?”

  “Can you not answer the question?”

  He blinked at me a few times, and then his eyes widened to the size of apples. “You’re Weaver, aren’t you?”

  “My name is immaterial. Please answer the questions.”

  He took a step back, as though I might attack him. I could hardly blame him, what with the press full of accounts of my prison breaking and ear severing. “Ufford told me he had hired you to find out who was sending him those notes. You must be very dedicated to continue your inquiry even though you are fleeing from the law.”

  “I am fleeing from the law because of that inquiry,” I said. “I have killed no one, and I believe that if I can find out who sent those notes, I may discover the true killer and so unsully my name.”

  “I am afraid I don’t see how I might be of use to you. I have never been invited to concern myself in Mr. Ufford’s projects, and I have never wished to be invited either, for his ideas are fantastical and his thinking inept. He would have you believe, I am sure, that he is out to help the laboring man because he is a Christian, but Mr. Ufford cares to help the poor because he believes that the poor, if content, are more easily herded.”

  “You do not agree.”

  “I am not in a position to agree or disagree,” he said, “being of the poor myself. An education at one of our nation’s universities may confer knowledge, but it does not confer wealth—and certainly not wisdom.” He paused for a moment. “Can I offer you someth
ing to drink? I haven’t much of quality, but a man on the run for his life must build a powerful thirst.”

  I declined the offer, preferring to continue with my inquiry.

  He cleared his throat. “Then allow me to take a drink for myself, for I find this conversation not a little disordering, and it leaves my throat uncommon dry.” He stepped out of the room, took a pewter mug of ale from his wife, whom he kissed on the cheek and murmured to affectionately. He then smiled thinly, returned to the sleeping chamber, and closed the door.

  “Do you know,” I asked, “if Mr. Ufford had any dealings with Griffin Melbury?”

  “Melbury,” he repeated. He took a sip from his mug. “The Tory standing for Parliament? I suppose he may have. They are both Tories, so it is possible they may have had some business together, but I could say nothing of its exact nature. Though I must inform you that my understanding of Mr. Melbury is that he has honorable intentions, if you understand my meaning, and that might not appeal to Mr. Ufford.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand you at all.”

  “Oh, just that Ufford is rather, shall we say, dissatisfied with our current monarch.”

  I admit freely that I did not understand politics so well that I could be absolutely certain of North’s implication. “Please don’t be coy, sir. Say precisely what you mean, so there will be no misunderstanding.”

  He smirked. “I don’t know how much clearer I might be. Mr. Ufford is, in all likelihood, a Jacobite. He supports the old king. Do you understand?”

  “As he is a Tory, that should be no surprise. I was under the impression that Tories and Jacobites were mere variants of the same thing.”

  “Ha,” he said. “That is what the Whigs want you to believe. In reality, they are quite different. Tories are High Church men who want to see the Church restored to its great days of power. They tend to represent old money, old power, privilege, that sort of thing. In general, they are counter to the Whigs, with their Low Church ways, all latitudes and laxness. Jacobites, on the other hand, want to restore the son of James the Second to the throne. You do know that James the Second was forced to flee for his life some thirty-five years ago?”

  “I’d heard something about that,” I said sheepishly.

  “Yes. James was a Catholic, and the Parliament would not stand for a Catholic to take over the throne. So James fled, and now there are those who wish to see his line returned to power. Mr. Ufford is very likely among them.”

  “But if Ufford is a Jacobite, and Jacobites are not one with the Tories, why does he support Melbury, the Tory candidate?”

  “These Jacobites always masquerade as Tories. And if the Tories win the upcoming election, the Jacobites will almost certainly see this as a sign that the people are tired of Whigs and our current king. Westminster is a particularly important election, since it has the largest popular franchise in the country. What happens in Westminster may well determine the fate of the kingdom, and it seems as though Ufford wants to have a say in that.”

  “And does this connect with his interest in the porters?”

  “I believe it has occurred to him that all these laborers are selling their life’s blood to a pack of heartless Whigs. He therefore believes their anger could be turned against these Whigs and harvested for a Jacobite invasion. These porters, in his mind, could be turned into ready soldiers for the Pretender.”

  “And if Mr. Ufford’s Jacobitical project were discovered,” I observed, “this parish would need a new appointee.”

  North shrugged. “That is true, but I would not fabricate a story of treason because of the distant chance I should find myself in Ufford’s post. Were he arrested, more like than not I should be wanting employment entirely. I merely tell you what I believe to be true—that Ufford wishes to fire up the porters to the cause of the Pretender.”

  “From what I have seen, with their riotous cheers against Papists and Tories, they have not shown themselves to be Jacobitically inclined.”

  “I don’t believe Ufford has won them over sufficiently to learn of their politics or discover just how malleable they might be. I’m sure you are well aware that the poor, the suffering, and the hopeless are inclined to Jacobite sympathies—not because they have any notion of how the Chevalier is supposed to make a better king than George, but because George is the king now and they are unhappy. It therefore makes perfect sense to them that they would be better with a different monarch. I believe it is this inclination that Mr. Ufford intends to draw upon. But I will thank you to say that you have not heard as much from me.”

  “Come now. You cannot fear these men. They have been trying to regain the throne for nearly thirty-five years and have nothing to show for it. How fearsome can they be?”

  “They may not have regained the throne, but in thirty-five years I promise you they have learned a thing or two, mostly about how to operate in secret and how to protect themselves. They’re everywhere, you know, hidden from sight, operating with secret codes and passwords and signs. And you must recollect that these are men who can be hanged for their beliefs. They have survived this long only by their skill in concealing themselves from peering eyes. Take my advice, Weaver. Stay clear of them.”

  “Or what shall happen to me? What have I to fear that has not already transpired?”

  He laughed. “Your point is well taken.”

  “And what of Melbury? You say he has no knowledge of this scheme?”

  “I cannot speak to what he knows or does not know. I cannot even say for certain that Ufford is a Jacobite; it could be no more than a rumor that dogs him. I can only say that I find it hard to believe, from what little I know of him, that Melbury would countenance such a plot. He strikes me as the perfect species of an opposition politician, not a man who plots treason. Of course, I am only guessing, but my rather limited experience of Melbury is that he is an ardent defender of the Church and would not relish seeing the country fall into Romish hands.”

  “Of course. Are you a Tory yourself?”

  “I am not a party man of any stripe,” he said. “Politics is for men who make their living in such activities or who have no living to make. I am not so lucky as to belong to either category. I minister to a large parish and do so for thirty-five pounds a year. I haven’t the time to concern myself with who is in Parliament and who opposes the king. And I don’t possess the franchise, so my opinion is immaterial. But I do support the idea of a strong Church, so I would most likely be drawn to the Tory party.”

  “Have you ever heard of a man called Johnson?” I asked. “Perhaps in association with Mr. Ufford, perhaps not.”

  “I had a neighbor named Johnson when I was a boy in Kent, but he was killed in a fire some fifteen years ago.”

  “I don’t think that is who I mean.”

  He shrugged. “It is a common name, but it means nothing in particular to me—and I can think of no Johnson in Ufford’s circle.”

  I could see that my questions here would yield little bounty, so I thanked Mr. North for his time and began to excuse myself.

  “Are you certain,” he said, “you would not care for a drink?”

  “I am certain,” I told him.

  “Perhaps something to eat, then. I imagine it must be difficult for you to find the time to take a meal in your current crisis. My wife and I have not much, but we would be glad to share with you what little is on our table.”

  “I would not think of so presuming upon you,” I said. And then I paused, for I could see no good reason why a man of such little money would insist on giving food and drink to a stranger wanted by the law. There was, however, one ill reason he might do so. It suddenly occurred to me that they might not have been words of love he had whispered in his wife’s ear.

  For an instant I thought to strike North hard in the face for his treachery, but that would prove a waste of my time. More than that, I understood it was no treachery to his way of thinking. He did not know me and owed me no loyalty. I was but an escaped murderer to
him, and if a man with four children and a painfully meager salary sees an opportunity to secure four times his yearly income by doing his duty as a British subject, he cannot be called to account for acting as most any man would.

  I merely turned from him, threw open the door, and rushed through the front room, terrifying Mr. North’s wife and children as I pushed my way past. The priest’s lady must have known what was at issue, for she stood before me and attempted to block the hasty departure from her home of 150 pounds’ worth of escaped felon. Having no time for genteel respect for the softer sex, I merely shoved her aside and began to make my way down the stairs, taking them two or three at a time.

  As I approached the landing, I could see a pair of constables just entering the house, pistols drawn. They only had time to look up before I threw myself at them and knocked both down like pins on a bowling green. Somewhere the landlady screamed, but I could not devote any attention to her and could only hope that she did not take it in her mind to do something heroic like strike me on the head with a kitchen pot.

  The two constables were momentarily dazed, so I took advantage of their confusion, and of their wearing hair rather than wigs. That is to say, I grabbed each by his locks and knocked their heads together soundly and with enough force to render them useless to the world and to themselves. With the two men agreeably slumped, I helped myself to their pistols and dashed out into the street.

  A cold rain had begun to fall in thick sheets, blown by a hard and cruel wind. The weather worked well to my advantage, for it limited visibility. Still, I thought, as I tucked away my newly got pistols, my footman’s disguise was no longer of any use.

  I could only hope my next excursion would be more profitable than my last. During my trial, both witnesses against me had admitted to condemning me only because they were in the employ of Arthur Groston, so I thought I would see what the man had to say for himself.

  After my arrest, I had sent Elias out to learn what he could from his ample connections among the legal men of the metropolis. Though he was no ruffian and feared to question low men, he nevertheless screwed up his courage and discovered it was widely believed that there would be eyewitnesses who could provide proof of my guilt. We both found this passing odd, since there could hardly be witnesses to an event that had never taken place. I could only conclude that these witnesses had been paid for, and I sent Elias to treat with the dozen or so most notorious purveyors of false testimony.