The Forest (85 page)

Grockleton was on time.

He walked over and joined the Customs man under the oak, where they stood together. Puckle glanced around again.

‘We are alone,’ said Grockleton. ‘I’ve been watching.’

‘That’s all right, then.’

Grockleton waited a moment, to see if the Forest man was going to open the conversation; but as it seemed not, he began: ‘You think you can help me?’

‘Maybe.’

‘How?’

‘I might tell you things.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘I has my reasons.’

The scene Grockleton had witnessed was still vivid in his mind. What this fellow had done to annoy the landlord of the Angel Inn he had not discovered, but it had clearly been more than a question of brawling or drunkenness. Indeed, Puckle had appeared to be quite cool and sober at the time. But whatever it was that had caused Isaac Seagull to drag him to the entrance of the Angel and, quite literally, kick him into the High Street in front of him, Grockleton would never forget the look this fellow had given Seagull as he picked himself up. It wasn’t drunken anger: it was pure, undying hatred. Customs officer although he was, Grockleton had never received a look like that. He hoped he never did.

Shortly afterwards he had ridden after the Forest man as he went home and, passing him on a deserted stretch of the lane, remarked quietly that he would pay well if there was anything Puckle ever wished to tell him. It was just a hunch, of course, but it was the job of a Customs officer to make such approaches.

He hadn’t really expected anything to come of it; but two days later Puckle had made contact. And now they were talking.

‘What sort of things could you tell me? Things about Isaac Seagull?’

He couldn’t be sure that the landlord of the Angel was actively involved in the smuggling. Normally speaking, you could assume that the landlord of any inn received contraband, but he had long suspected that Seagull might be doing far more.

‘He’s a devil,’ Puckle said bitterly.

‘I had the impression you quarrelled.’

‘We have.’ Puckle paused. ‘’Tain’t only that, though.’ He looked down. ‘You heard about when they raided Ambrose Hole a few years back?’

‘Of course.’ Although the raid on the gang of highway-men had taken place just before his arrival in Lymington, Grockleton could not fail to be aware of it.

The other man now spat with disgust. ‘Two of them taken was my family. An’ you know who gave them away? Isaac damned Seagull. He knows I know, too.’ This was cause for hatred indeed. Grockleton listened carefully. ‘He treats me like a dog all the same,’ Puckle continued with heartfelt bitterness, ‘because he reckons I’m afraid of him.’

‘Are you afraid of him?’

Puckle said nothing, as though unwilling to admit it. His gnarled face reminded Grockleton of a stunted oak, just as Seagull’s made him think of a jaunty lugger, with a sail run up before the breeze.

‘Yes,’ the forest man said quietly at last, ‘I fear him.’ And then, looking straight at Grockleton: ‘So should any man.’

Grockleton understood. Violence between the smugglers and the Customs men was rare, but it could happen. Once or twice, if he had given them too much trouble, a riding officer might get a knock on the door and a bullet in the head. His claw-like hand clenched, but he gave no other sign. He was quite a brave man.

‘So what do you want?’ Puckle asked.

‘To intercept a big run. On shore. What else?’

‘You haven’t the men to do it.’

‘That’s my business.’

Puckle looked thoughtful. ‘You’d have to pay me a lot of money,’ he said.

‘A share of what we take.’ They both knew this could be a small fortune.

‘You’d take Isaac Seagull?’

‘So long as he’s there, yes.’

‘Kill him,’ Puckle said quietly.

‘They’d have to shoot at us.’

‘They will. I’ll need money before. Plenty. And a fast horse.’ Seeing Grockleton look doubtful he continued: ‘What d’you think they’ll do to me if they find out?’

‘They might not.’

‘They would. I’ll have to leave the Forest. Go away. A long way.’

Grockleton tried to imagine Puckle outside the Forest. It wasn’t easy. People did leave, of course. Not often, but it happened. And with plenty of money … He tried to imagine Puckle with money and couldn’t do that either, but then he sighed to himself. People changed when they acquired wealth, even a man like this. Who knew what he would become with money in some other place? Puckle was mysterious. ‘Fifty pounds,’ he said. ‘The rest later. We can arrange for you to collect your share in Winchester, London, wherever you like.’

He saw Puckle react, then try to hide it. The sum had impressed him. Good.

‘Won’t be for a while, yet,’ Puckle said. ‘You know that.’

Grockleton nodded. The big smuggling runs were usually done in winter when the nights were long.

‘One thing,’ the Forest man went on, looking thoughtful. ‘I’d need a way of getting word to you. Can’t be seen near you myself.’

‘I know. I’ve thought about that already. I may have a solution.’

‘Oh. What’s that, then?’

‘A boy,’ said Grockleton.

It was some weeks before Mr Martell came to Lymington, but when he did, he chose his time carefully.

On a fine summer morning he rode down the turnpike into the town. He was feeling optimistic. He had preferred to ride ahead, leaving his manservant to follow in the chaise with his dressing case and portmanteau. As he rode past the
turnpike’s tollgate at the entrance to the borough, he realized that he had never been here before.

He had no doubt that he would have a pleasant visit and an interesting one, too. He liked young Edward Totton. They might not have a lot in common, but he had always liked the younger man’s cheerful spirit and the fact that Totton wasn’t frightened of him, which many people were. He actually quite enjoyed his stern reputation: it protected him from those who would have liked to take advantage of him; but it amused him when a young fellow like Totton refused to be abashed. Besides, in this case it was actually he who was intending to make use of Edward Totton.

Mr Wyndham Martell was in an enviable position: he didn’t have to please anyone. Master of a large estate, heir to another, a graduate of Oxford, of good character: in the society in which he lived there was no man, unless such a person were impertinent, to find fault with him. If he was courteous – and in his somewhat reserved way he was – this was because he would have despised himself for being anything else. The only danger to his enviable estate might have been if he were a gambler or a debauchee and Martell, whose natural inclinations were towards the pleasures of the intellect, was far too proud to be either. He had enough personal vanity to present himself well; he had concluded, quite reasonably, that for a man in his position to be without vanity would be an affectation. He intended, for himself and for his family name, to make a figure in the world and he could afford to do it on his own terms. That is to say, he had decided to enter public life as that phenomenon, so rare in the politics of any age, an independent man who cannot be bought. And if this should be adduced as evidence that his pride was really quite above the usual, why then, so it must have been.

His real reason for coming to see young Edward Totton, besides his kindly feelings towards the young man, was that
Lymington, which lay conveniently between his two estates, returned two Members of Parliament.

‘And I think that at the next election’, he had informed his father, ‘I might like to be one of them.’

Why had the modest borough of Lymington two Members of Parliament? The short answer was that good Queen Bess had granted them a few years before the Armada when she wanted some extra political support. Did two Members for such a small place seem excessive nowadays? Not very, when you considered that Old Sarum, the so-called pocket borough on the deserted castle hill above Salisbury, returned two Members – and had practically no inhabitants at all.

The system of elections evolved in the borough of Lymington was actually typical of many of England’s towns in that Age of Reason and, it must be said, it had the merits of safety, convenience and economy. Indeed, its electors considered it a model for all times and places.

Elections in some boroughs, alas, were not so well managed. Scurrilous pamphlets about the candidates provoked bad feeling. There was expense, for electors had to be bribed; there was trouble, when electors for another candidate had to be made drunk and then locked up; there could be still more trouble if they got out. Even a limited democracy, it was agreed by all parties, was a dangerous thing and nothing showed it more clearly than the drunken brawling of an election. They ordered this matter better, however, in Lymington.

The two Members of Parliament were chosen by the town’s burgesses, of whom there were about forty; and the burgesses, in theory anyway, had been elected by the modest tradesmen and other obliging freeholders of the borough. Who were elected to the position of burgess? Sound men, worthy men, trustworthy men: friends of the mayor or whoever had the responsibility of running the town. Quite often the burgesses of Lymington actually lived
there; but the quest for good men might lead much further afield. Twenty years ago when Burrard, as mayor, had decided to create thirty-nine new burgesses, he had only chosen three from the town itself; his search for other loyal men had taken him all over England. Why, he had even gone to the trouble of finding one gentleman who lived in Jamaica!

There were hardly ever disputes between the burgesses as to which Members they should elect. Until twenty years before, the Burrards had shared the control of the borough with the Duke of Bolton, who had large interests in the county, and there had been a slight disagreement once over whether the duke’s friend Mr Morant should or should not be given a seat at one election. But since then the duke had ceded the borough entirely to Burrard, so that even that possibility for disagreement had happily vanished.

But how were things managed, it might be asked, when an election came? How were the burgesses who might live two hundred miles away – let alone the good gentleman in Jamaica – to get to Lymington to record their votes? Even this had been taken care of, by a simple expedient. Elections were not contested. There were no rival candidates. If there were but two gentlemen standing for the two seats available, then the trouble and expense of an election poll were clearly superfluous. All that was necessary was for a proposer and seconder to appear before the mayor upon the appointed day and the thing was done. So easy were these arrangements that it was agreed that there was no need even for the candidates themselves to appear, thereby saving them what might have been a tiresome journey.

Thus, in the eighteenth century, were the Members for Lymington chosen. Whether a different method would have produced better representatives cannot be known; but this at least is certain: the burgesses, and the Burrards, were entirely satisfied.

Martell’s father would have preferred his son to stand for
a county seat as these tended to be Tory, whereas Lymington, like most trading towns, was solidly for the Whig party. Traditionally the Tory party was for the king, the Whig for the post-1688 Parliament which, although loyal, believed in keeping the royal power in check. Country squires were often Tory, merchants usually Whig. But these differences were not always real. Many of the greatest landowners were Whigs; often as not, one’s party depended upon family alliances. Even the king would sometimes prefer a Whig leader to a Tory. The interests and beliefs of Sir Harry Burrard, baronet, and the gentlemen burgesses of Lymington were unlikely to differ from aristocratic Mr Martell’s in any significant way.

Indeed, there were only two things about Mr Martell’s behaviour this morning that would have struck his contemporaries as odd. If Martell wanted a Lymington seat, why the devil go there when he could easily write to Burrard or meet him in London? And stranger still, why was Martell deliberately going to Lymington when he knew – for he had made careful enquiries – that the baronet would be away?

To ask such questions, however, was not to know Wyndham Martell.

He was always thorough. At Oxford, unlike many young bloods, he had chosen to work quite hard. He had already made the most careful study of the estate he had been left and started a series of improvements. Had he been a clergyman, no matter how high his social position, he would certainly have paid attention to the welfare of every parishioner. So if he thought of applying for a Lymington seat, he meant first, like a good general, to reconnoitre the place thoroughly.

Of course, he knew it was possible that Sir Harry Burrard might not care for such intrusive behaviour. There was a well-known case where a borough patron, afraid that a candidate might charm his own burgesses away from him, had only agreed to give him the seat on the condition, set
out in writing, that once elected the said Member swore never to set foot in the constituency he represented. Even in the eighteenth century this was thought a trifle eccentric. But without going so far as this, Burrard might not approve of his sniffing around his borough, so he had decided to do it discreetly by visiting young Totton. One thing was sure though, by the end of a week he’d know a good deal about it and make up his own mind whether, and upon what terms, he wished to take the business further.