The Hungry Tide (21 page)

He was sitting with his head in his hands when he heard a small cry. He lifted his head and heard it again, a thin mewling sound like a young kitten. He’d never heard a new baby cry before, but he heaved a sigh. At least Will had a son – or a daughter – to remind him of Maria. He choked and then swallowed hard as the bedroom door opened and Mrs Scryven appeared.

‘Is that water hot yet, sir?’

He stared up at her. ‘Water?’

‘Aye, I asked thee to put on some water, Mr John.’

Uncomprehendingly, he gazed at her. ‘Maria, is she—?’

‘Aye, she’s doing fine and she’s got a bonny little lass.’ Mrs Scryven beamed down at him. ‘Now if I could trouble thee for hot water?’

He gave a great whoop of delight and jumped to his feet. With a bound he leapt on to the bannister which Maria had so thoroughly polished, and slid gleefully down to the bottom, his coat tails flying.

Mrs Scryven wiped the baby’s face with a clean white cloth, then placing a kiss on her forehead she warmly wrapped her in a blanket and put her into the makeshift crib. She sponged Maria with warm lavender water to refresh her and gave her sips of cool water with the pale taste of rosemary in it to relax her.

‘How kind thou art, Mrs Scryven.’ Maria looked into the old woman’s brown eyes as she gently attended to her. She had forgotten the pain and felt as if she was floating on a cushion of air.

‘Tha reminds me of my mother,’ she said, and tears gathered in her eyes.

‘Aye, well – if things had been different!’ Mrs Scryven shook her head sadly. ‘But it wasn’t to be. I’m reminded of it every time there’s a bairn born.’

Maria lay back on the pillow and waited.

‘When I was just a young wench, I got caught with a babby. I went me full time for I wanted it, even though ’fellow wouldn’t marry me. Not that that mattered, there’s plenty of bastards around, especially in high places. But my family were shamed, said I’d brought disgrace on ’em and wanted nowt to do with it.’

Maria put out her hand and took Mrs Scryven’s in hers.

‘I’ll tell thee about it maybe one day,’ she continued, her voice gruff. ‘But not now. I lost my bairn at birth, but I’ve brought thee one.’

John knocked nervously on the door the next morning. Mrs Scryven had said he could go in for a few minutes. His own clothes and hairbrushes had been removed to another room and in their place were piles of clean white bed linen and strips of torn up flannel. Bowls of scented water had been placed around the room and the warmth of the fire drew out the perfume.

‘How are you Maria?’

She was lying in bed, dark tendrils of hair framed her pale, smiling face. Her eyes were luminous and she smelled of warm milk and lavender.

‘Look at my babby,’ she said softly, turning towards the side of the bed.

He looked and saw that placed on top of a chest was a drawer, and in the drawer was a small bundle, covered so closely that all he could see was a haze of golden down.

‘Lift her out and tha can look at her properly.’

‘Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly. I might drop it!’ he answered in alarm.

‘Here, I’ll get her.’ Mrs Scryven bustled over and lifted the baby out of her crib and put her in Maria’s arms. ‘What a fright she gave us, ’little love, coming so quick.’

He bent over and touched the baby’s tiny hands gently as if afraid she might break, and she stretched her fingers and curled them around one of his. His eyes opened wide and he said in amazement, ‘How strong she is! What name shall you give her, Maria?’

‘The choice is thine, and Mrs Scryven’s – tha was both so kind.’

He was embarrassed for a moment, then looked down at the baby still holding tight to his finger. ‘My mother’s name was Sarah,’ he said, his eyes moist.

‘So was mine,’ Maria smiled back at him.

‘’Tis a good name,’ said Mrs Scryven, wiping her eyes with her apron, ‘t’was given to me at baptism.’

‘Then Sarah it shall be,’ said Maria happily.

‘You’re beautiful, Sarah,’ he breathed softly and stroked her silky cheek.

‘Tha’ll make someone a good husband one day, Mr John. Tha must wed and have a bairn like Sarah.’ Maria in her bliss was anxious to place everyone in the same state of rapture as herself.

He continued to gaze down at the infant, at the soft golden down of her hair, her tiny nails and her small pink face and fine lashes.

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps I’ll wait for Sarah.’

Mrs Scryven smiled.

‘Pooh, what a stink!’ Tom wrinkled his nose in repulsion as they clattered over the old bridge into the town.

Will laughed at his son’s expression. ‘It’s no different from what it was,’ he said. ‘Tha can’t have forgotten already.’

‘Nay, it was never as bad as this, Fayther, never. It makes me feel sick!’

‘It’s no different,’ his father insisted. ‘Tha’s just got used to ’smell of sea air, that’s all. It used to hit me just ’same when I came home from ’sea.’

The smell of blubber from the processing yards hung on the air and combining with woodsmoke, as small fires were lit with damp wood in the impoverished hovels of the town, it formed a choking, nauseating fog.

They drove the waggon into the yard of the Cross Keys inn and Will walked with Tom into the Market Place. He had intended dropping the boy off and driving on to the Infirmary, but he couldn’t resist coming into the town to savour the carnival atmosphere. The town was already brimming with people who had come in for the annual fair and Will felt an uplifting of spirits as he responded to the noisy, throbbing excitement of the crowd.

The Hull seafaring fraternity always tried to come home in time for Hull Fair, and if their ships were late the men would be angry and disappointed. It was the big event of the year and people saved what little money they had to buy from the foreign merchants who arrived with their packhorses laden with goods, to see the jugglers, magicians and performing bears, or to have their fortunes told by the itinerant fortune tellers.

They pushed through the crowd, passing the travelling musicians and the hurdy-gurdy grinder, and Tom shook his father’s arm as they heard the piercing voice of Doctor Black shouting out the efficacy of his potions. He was tall and thin and dressed in a long black cloak and a grey curled wig which was rather too large for him, and slipped constantly over one eye. The stall in front of him was draped with a red velvet cloth and artistically displayed on it were dozens of bottles of liquid in vivid shades of red, yellow and blue, guaranteed, he assured the crowd, to cure all ills from the pox to childbed fever.

He picked up a bottle of deep blue and held it aloft. ‘This potion – made to my own receipt,’ he shouted, ‘—on my word of honour, will cure the dreaded pox – which,’ he lowered his voice to a hiss, ‘is the scourge of all men.’

‘Can tha guarantee it?’ called a voice from the crowd.

‘That I can,’ he replied, turning to find the face to match the voice.

‘So, tha’s tried it then?’ called back the heckler to the delight of the crowd.

He ignored the jeers and picked up another bottle, filled with sulphurous yellow liquid. ‘This, my friends, I gave to a young man who had been bedfast all of his young life, due to a wasting disease.’ Here the good doctor took out a large handkerchief and blew loudly on his long nose.

‘Shame, shame!’ called the crowd in mock sympathy.

‘But, I am happy to say,’ he continued, whisking his hanky back into his pocket with a flourish, ‘that after only one week of my miraculous remedy, he had risen from his bed.’ At this, wild cheering and clapping erupted from the crowd, the doctor took his bow and then held up his hand for silence. ‘And – has deigned to come here today to give you proof of his well being!’ He turned and with outstretched hand introduced a man who had been sitting quietly behind him and who, but for being about twenty years younger, was a mirror image of the esteemed Doctor Black.

The young man rose, his face pale because of the amount of white chalk on it, and bowed to the crowd, his hand to his forehead, and proceeded to extol the virtues of the potions which, he said, had only recently snatched him from the jaws of death.

Tom, who was standing on tiptoe in front of Will, suddenly shouted out, ‘I bet thee a shilling tha can’t cure me fayther’s leg!’

Doctor Black searched the crowd to find Tom, and called to him, ‘A gambling man, and so young! Just one bottle, young sir, will relieve all your dear father’s pain, whereas two bottles will effect a cure, and if it don’t, then on my honour as a gentleman, I will return your money! Just send your poor, dear father to me.’

‘He’s right here,’ shouted Tom cheekily and got a cuff from Will as the crowd, on seeing who it was, roared with laughter whilst the doctor, not seeing the joke, became exceedingly confused and quite put off his practised patter.

‘Come on, tha young peazan,’ Will laughed as they pushed their way out of the crowd, who goodnaturedly slapped them on their backs as they passed. ‘Tha just might see a miracle afore long, just tha wait!’

Tom laughed. He knew his father didn’t mind the joke, but he himself would be quite prepared to fight with anybody else who might make fun of his father’s injury.

Will gave Tom a couple of coins which he put deep into his breeches pocket with his hand over them. He knew well enough that if he didn’t the money might easily disappear into someone else’s pocket.

‘Watch out what tha’s doing, Tom. Keep with ’crowd and don’t wander off down ’alleys on thy own. It’s times like this that ’press gangs and navy men are on ’lookout for young lads like thee, and tha might never see home again.’

He intended to frighten the boy, for although Tom had always been made aware of the dangers when living in the town, Will knew that these men were unscrupulous and would not hesitate to snatch boys of tender years and carry them off to the navy ships where they were worked so hard that they often died of exhaustion, or were washed overboard during violent storms and never heard of again.

‘They’ll not get me, never fear, Fayther, I’ll punch them and shout till they let go.’ Tom danced round, throwing punches at an imaginary foe and grimacing horribly.

‘Aye, I reckon they’d send thee back soon enough,’ said Will ironically, ‘but watch out all ’same!’

Telling Tom to meet him by the Seamen’s Hospital, he turned and walked slowly back to the Cross Keys. The stimulation that he’d felt as he entered the town was ebbing away. How easy it was to forget, after just a few short weeks of living at Monkston, the dangers of the town, when children were not safe alone and a man could be drawn into crime simply because of poverty. The crowd had grown larger and there seemed to be an undercurrent of tension. He saw a flash of colour and realized that there was a detachment of soldiers in the street. If the crowd grew ugly as it sometimes did, if there was resentment against the military, then street fighting began and the jail soon became full. Will hesitated, wondering whether to go back and take Tom with him. He looked back into the crowd but he’d disappeared, and he knew that he would never be able to find him.

He dismissed his fears as fanciful. Tom was still a town lad, and wary of strangers, but all the same the next time he brought him, he would make sure that he stayed by his side.

The surgeon ran his fingers expertly over the scarred stump. ‘It’s healed very well, Foster. Much better than I would have imagined.’

Will nodded, ‘I’ve been sea bathing. They say salt’s supposed to be good for wounds.’ He had risen early every morning and immersed himself in the bitter cold sea. Maria had said he was crazy, but he’d revelled in the keen, sharp glow of his body as the water washed over him, tautening his muscles and strengthening his lungs as he took great gulps of pure air. He had also been using some of Mrs Scryven’s ointment which she had made up for him, but he didn’t tell the doctor that as he was sure that he would discount it, or ask him what was in it, and Will couldn’t tell him as Mrs Scryven kept that secret firmly to herself.

‘Now, Foster. Do you realize what it is that your employer has asked us to do on your behalf?’

‘Fix me up with a wooden leg, sir. That’s what I understood.’

‘Not just that.’ He looked down at a letter on his table. ‘I have been asked by Mr Rayner, on behalf of Mr Masterson, to fit you with an artificial limb.’ He gazed critically at Will. ‘You are very lucky to have such generous benefactors, Foster, for such a proxy limb as they ask for would cost a pretty penny, I can tell you. However, I can’t help you. I can cut you up and stitch you up, and give you treatment that will hopefully keep you in this world, but I am not in the department of providing extra limbs, wooden or otherwise. No,’ he went on, ‘if Mr Masterson has money to throw away, then I suggest he sends you off to London or Edinburgh, where they are skilled in such matters.’

Will stood up and leaned on his crutch. ‘I’m sorry to have wasted thy time, sir. There’ll be no question of me going all that way. I’ll manage as I am.’ He turned towards the door.

‘Hold on, man, hold on. Don’t be so hasty. I didn’t say we couldn’t do anything. I only said that
I
couldn’t. I’m no good at all with an adze or chisel – not like some of you whaling fellows – I’ve seen some of the fine work that comes off the ships. No, what we’ll do is send you downstairs and get you a peg leg, and then it’s up to you to find a carpenter to make it fit comfortably. I’m quite sure that you’ll manage somehow, but as I say, it’s not really my province.’

Will was dismissed, acutely conscious of having taken up the surgeon’s valuable time over a matter which was of no real importance. The surgeon’s priority was saving life and limb, and what happened to the patient after was of no consequence. He had agreed to see him only in deference to Isaac Masterson, whose ships he sometimes sailed on as surgeon, and but for that Will would not have expected to see him again.

The limb the Infirmary provided was crude and unmanageable, and the leather strap cut cruelly into his thigh. As he reined in outside the bootmaker’s and climbed awkwardly down from the cart he felt lopsided and insecure.

‘I’ve got some good calf leather here that I kept on one side for thee, like Mr Rayner said.’ The bootmaker shook his head. ‘But that limb is no good. It needs to be built up to fill ’boot. If tha can get that done, then I’ll make ’boots straight away.’