Watery Grave (20 page)

“Ah, that explains it!” said he, interrupting.” I caught a most exotic odor from him —the most remarkable spices. But proceed, Jeremy. Pardon my intrusion.”

“He speaks English of a rather curious sort, yet for the most part quite comprehensible. We talked while you were with Mr. Grimsby, and he said the strangest thing about Lieutenant Hartsell.”

“Let me hear it then, bv all means.”

As Sir John and I made our way together through the busthng morning crowd in Covent Garden, he pulled me close and exclaimed the difficulty in negotiating a way through such disorder.

“There is no pattern to their movements, ” he grumbled.” It is all back and forth, this way and that. Some simply dawdle and chat. My stick does me no good, for it seems always to be colliding with something or someone, nor can that something or someone be depended upon to then move from my path. I’m afraid I shall have to depend upon you completely through the piazza, Jeremy, until we make our destination.”

“What is our destination, sir?”

“Oh? Did I not tell you when we started out? Sorry I meant to keep no secrets. We’re for St. Paul’s.”

“In the Garden?”

“Of course! I would not subject myself to this chaos if I was headed for the other. The din here is intolerable!”

It was, in truth, loud, chaotic, and disordered, and yet I quite liked it for the very reasons Sir John found it repulsive. It was indeed no place for a blind man to venture unaided. But the piazza pulsed with the life of London, and most specially in the mornings when the cooks and kitchen slaveys and boys such as myself came out to do the buying, or some simply to wander about and listen to the cries of the hucksters and the sellers. It seemed the liveliest place in the city at such times.

Yet I said nothing of this to him. I simply held tight to his right arm and muttered my instructions in his ear: “A little to the left here, ” “A crowd ahead, let us give them a wide berth, ” et cetera.

Thus we made our way until the church was mere steps away. It was then Sir John informed me that it was not the church proper to which we were headed but the rectory.

“You see it, Jeremy? It should be just to the right, unless I am mistaken. It must be a largish building, for it accommodates many visitors and guests such as him we visit.”

Indeed it was a large building, of red brick construction. It was, as I later discovered, maintained as a kind of hostelry for clerics of the Church of England who visited on various matters whilst their bishops were in London during the sessions of Parliament. I guided Sir John round to the entrance and up the two steps to the door. We stood before it for a moment.

“Just here?” said he.

“Just here,” said I.

Then he banged upon it stoutly with his stick. I believe he enjoyed doing that. I had never known him to make use of an ordinary doorknocker. Just as he was about to repeat the summons, the door opened and a woman of some years and wide dimensions appeared. She seemed rather formidable.

“Sir John Fielding,” said he, “to call upon the Reverend Mr. Andrew Eagleton.”

“What is your business with him?” she asked most suspiciously.

“That is of no concern to you, madam. Leave it that I am Magistrate of the Bow Street Court, as you no doubt know, and I wish to talk to him in my official capacity.”

Still she held on stubbornly: “He has committed no crime.”

“That’s as may be, madam, but he may have been witness to one, and that I can only determine by talking with him.”

Though her hard face became no softer, she relented at last and swung the door wide.

“All right,” said she, you may wait in the sitting room whilst I fetch him.”

Together we moved inside. I ushered him through the next door to the left, which she had indicated with a sharp wave of her hand. Once in the sitting room with Sir John ensconced in a chair and I beside him, we heard the housekeeper’s heavy tread upward upon the stairway which I had glimpsed on my way in.

“Why is it,” remarked Sir John, “that women are so much more difficult to intimidate than men?”

For that I had no ansver and gave none.

The room was empty but for us two and quite silent. The thick walls of the building and the well-fit glass of the windows kept out the hullabaloo of Covent Garden. Only the ticking of a clock upon the mantel could be heard until, through the sitting room door, came the sound of two descending sets of footsteps on the stairs.

As they continued, Sir John said to me, “I want you to watch this fellow carefully, though not obviously. In my experience, preachers show a great talent for dissimulation.”

“I shall, sir.”

Then, only moments later, the door opened and a man in black entered, one of about the age of thirty, tall and fair. He seemed the very picture of what a young cleric should be. Sir John rose, introduced himself and me, and shook hands w ith the Reverend Mr. Eagleton. The latter pulled a chair near, and both men sat.

“This,” said the young man, “is an unanticipated honor.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Why, sir, as long ago as my time m Oxford your name was known to me. All Queen’s College was alive with talk of you and your Bow Street Runners. Now I have the opportunity to meet you, as it were, in the flesh. I count myself lucky and indeed honored, as well.”

“Well, and I, Reverend Eagleton, find myself somewhat abashed. I’d no idea my modest reputation would reach so far. Oxford, you say?”

“Certainly, sir, and even in the little country parish of Stanton Har-court, where I served for a time as curate, your name was heard, though not as oft as at the universit) —simple country folk, after all.”

“Of course,” said Sir John, “yet they are the very salt of our English earth.”

“Amen and amen. May God bless them all.”

By this time, reader, you may be as dismayed by your reading of this exchange as I was in listening to it. On the part of Reverend Eagleton it seemed the most unctuous sort of flattery; while I can here but quote his words, I cannot convey the tone of voice in which they were uttered, which was honeyed but somehow solemn and boyishly eager all at the same time. Perhaps more surprising was Sir John’s response, for he seemed to consume these candied words and puff up upon them before my very eyes. Could his natural vanity be fed so easy on such sweet pap?

“You say you were a curate, ” said Sir John, “but your title tells me you have been ordained to the priesthood. ‘

“I have been, yes, and that but three years past. Though I come from modest stock, my dear father somehow found money enough to defray the expenses, may God bless him for it.”

“Indeed,” said Sir John, “yet how did it happen that, newly ordained, you accepted a place as modest as chaplain on a Royal Navy frigate?”

“Ah well, yes, that,” said he with a most serious smile.” For two reasons, chiefly. The first was that there was no vicarage open to me at the time. And you may not credit it, sir, but I craved a bit of adventure. I had lived so sheltered a life up to that point —and I thought that, after all, I might do some good among those rough seamen. In all modesty, I believe I did.”

“I’m delighted to hear it,” said Sir John.” Are those the two reasons then —the lack of a suitable vicarage and a craving for adventure?”

“No, I count them as but one and the same. The other reason, the greater reason, was this: I had had bubbling inside me during my last two years as a curate … a book!”

“A book? Do tell.”

“Oh, yes sir, with your kind permission I shall. I had taken many, many notes there in Stanton Harcourt, gone so far as to write out a prospectus strictly for my own use that I might better understand what ought to go into the book when I should have time enough to write it. And upon consideration of my options following ordination, which I confess were not many, I decided that on shipboard my opportunities would be much greater to write —and indeed they were!”

“Bravo! And were you able to fmish?”

“I was, yes. I brought my notes, my prospectus, and the necessary books along on the voyage, and the two and a half years we were away proved more than ample time.”

“What is the nature of the work?” asked Sir John, leaning forward on his stick, as if truly eager to know.

“Theological,” said Reverend Eagleton.” In style it is hortatory, and in content Latitudinarian.”

“Ah,” said Sir John, “Latitudinarian —how exciting.”

(I must remark here that I hadn’t the slightest notion what Reverend Eagleton meant by that — nor, do I believe, did Sir John. Yet the magistrate encouraged him by a smile and a nod of his head to continue; that, of course, was all that the cleric needed.)

“I reach out on one side to pull in the Church of Rome,” said he, throwing out one arm, “and on the other to pull in the Methodists,” and out went the other arm. He drew his arms together in a kind of self-embrace. These gestures, though eloquent, were lost on Sir John, I fear.

“For what have we all in common?” —resuming.” Why, the Holy Scriptures, of course!” He gestured with his left hand to an invisible Bible he held in his right.” I argue from the Scriptures against dogmatical intolerance, of which, going back to the last century and the one before, we were as guilty as they.”

“I had not realized the Methodists had been around so long,” said Sir John.

“Well, no, naturally not. Here I refer to the Church of Rome, but … well, you get my drift —a nautical term. I mean to say, you understand?”

“Oh, indeed I do. It sounds a worthy work indeed. And you are in London to find a publisher for it?”

“Yes,” said he, “with the right dedication to an influential patron, this book could win me preferment. I could secure a chaplaincy to a noble household, a prebendary!”

“A bishopric,” suggested Sir John.

A glint came into the eye of the cleric for just a moment —but then he laughed in a deprecating manner.” Oh,” said he, “I aim not so high so soon, yet who knows what the future might bring? I am no less worthy than others.”

“I’m sure, I’m sure. But, you know, I have acquaintances within the world of publishing.”

The Reverend JVlr. Eagleton nearly jumped from his chair, so eager was he.

“Could you … well, would you consider putting in a word for me?”

“I would consider it certainly, but let us talk of other things for a moment, shall we?”

“Oh, yes, as you wish, sir.”

“Let us talk of life aboard the HM.S. Adienture.”

“Ah, the
Adventure
! Well, I admit I was puzzled when the housekeeper told me that you thought I may have been witness to a crime. You referred, naturally, to that lamentable matter involving Lieutenant Landon. I know the man, of course, and respected him greatly. I was as astonished as any on board to learn of the accusation against him the night before we anchored. But as for being a witness to the crime he has been charged with, I’m afraid I can’t help you there. During that dreadful, dreadful storm I was belowdecks in my cabin the entire time, praying that we might survive. I don’t mind telling you, sir, that I have never been so frightened in my entire life. But no, Sir John, I saw nothing—absolutely nothing.”

“I thought that might be the case,yet it was only proper of me to ask.”

“Yes, but … well, I’m surprised that you are involved in this case. Is this not before the Admiralt) Court?”

“Indeed, yet I am assisting, more or less in an advisory capacity.”

“Assisting the prosecution or the defense?”

“Would it matter? I’m for the truth. Reverend Eagleton. I always am.”

“To be sure, to be sure. Of course it does not matter.”

“I believe that in addition to serving as chaplain on the
Adventure
, you were also schoolmaster to the midshipmen. Is that correct?”

“Well, yes, it is not unusual for the chaplain to hold the position of teacher also —or so I was told.”

“How many were in our class of midshipmen?”

“There were four, but about a year into the voyage one of the boys was killed — an accident, fell from the top rigging onto his head and died immediately. Terribly sad. I preached a lovely sermon at his funeral. Though short, it was one of my best, I believe. I wrung a few tears from those hardened old seamen.”

“Jeremy and I have met but two of the remaining three —Midshipman Boone, who is a bully and not liked by the crew.”

“Poor Boone!” said the cleric.” He is so pitifully inept at maths that navigation is simply beyond him. I fear he will never pass his lieutenant’s examination. Perhaps he takes out his frustration on his inleri-ors —not commendable, of course, but understandable.”

“And we also met Midshipman Templeton, who is a sneak.”

“Goodness, Sir John, you do judge them harshly. They are but boys, after all.”

“That I grant you. Now tell me, who was the third surviving member of your class?”

Reverend Eagleton did not like the turn taken in the interrogation. The questions and comments were harder-edged and now put to him with increasing rapidit He responded by pouting.

“Midshipman Fowler, and he is a perfectly fme young man. ‘

“While you were their teacher, you were also their spiritual adviser, were you not?”

“As chaplain, I was spiritual adviser to all aboard the
Adventure
.”

“Yet since the midshipmen were presumably the youngest aboard, did you not feel a special responsibility toward their spiritual welfare?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“Did any of the midshipmen ever come to you with complaints, asking for advice, or moral guidance?”