Marcus would beg and no one would come to help him here on Simon’s ship.
Satisfied, James turned to walk out up the wooden stairs that would lead him to the deck. He had his foot on the first step when Marcus’s voice rang out behind him.
‘The boy’s alive.’
James felt hotly resentful that it made him stop. He forced himself not to turn, not to look at Marcus, not to take up the bait. He spoke in a calm voice as he continued on his way up the steps to the ship’s deck.
‘That’s the trouble with you Stewards. You always think there’s hope.’
CHAPTER ONE
Three weeks later
WILL’S FIRST GLIMPSE of London came before the sun rose, the forest of masts on the river jet-black silhouettes against a sky barely one shade lighter, joined by hoisting cranes, scaffolding, and every upright funnel and flue.
The docks were waking up. On the left bank, the first warehouse doors were unlatched and thrown open. Men were gathered shouting their names in the hope of being taken on for jobs; others were already in the shallow boats, winding rope. A satin-waistcoated mate called out a greeting to a foreman. Three children in rolled-up trousers had begun groping in the mud for a copper nail or a small piece of coal, a rope end, a bone. A woman in heavy skirts sat beside a cask calling out a day’s wares.
On a river barge making its slow way along the black water, Will pushed out from behind roped-down barrels of rum, ready to jump down onto the bank. He was tasked with checking the ropes that tethered the barrels to stop any slippage, then looping crane tethers or just straining under the weight himself to unload cargo. He didn’t have the ox build of many of the dock labourers, but he was hardworking. He could throw himself against ropes and haul, or help heft sacks into a cart or a boat.
‘Pier’s ahead, bring her in!’ called Abney the bargeman.
Will nodded and took up a rope. Unloading the barge would be a morning’s work, before they’d break for a half hour, the men sharing pipes and liquor. His muscles already ached with strain, but soon he’d find the rhythm that would carry him through. At the end of the day, he would be given a hard crust of bread with pea soup steaming hot from the pot. He was already looking forward to it, imagining the warming taste of the soup, feeling lucky to have fingerless gloves that kept his hands warm in the chill.
‘Get those ropes ready!’ Abney had his hand on one of the ropes himself, right near one of Will’s knots, his cheeks ruddy with alcohol. ‘Crenshaw wants the barge clear before midday.’
The barge sprang into action. Stopping a thirty-ton boat with nothing but currents and poles was hard in daylight, harder in the dark. Too fast and the poles would snap; too slow and they’d ram the pier, wood splintering. The lightermen sank their poles into the silt of the riverbed and heaved, straining against the whole heavy weight of the barge.
‘Tie her up!’ came the call, seeking to secure the barge before the unloading.
The barge slowed to a stop, barely rising and falling on the dark water. The lightermen sheathed their poles and threw out mooring lines to tie the barge to the pier, pulling on the ropes to draw them tight, then knotting the ropes further.
Will was the first to leap down from the barge, and he looped his mooring line around a bollard, helping those aboard draw the barge tight to the pier.
‘The foreman’ll be drinking with the ship’s merchant tonight,’ said George Murphy, a big-whiskered Irishman, pulling rope alongside Will. That was the subject that all the men on the docks talked about – work and how to get it. ‘Might offer more work when this job’s done.’
‘Drink makes him swing, but it also makes him miss,’ said Will, and Murphy gave a good-natured snort. Will didn’t add, Most of the time.
‘I was thinking I’d try to catch him after, see if I can get hired on,’ said Murphy.
‘Better than standing at the gate hoping to get called up for day work,’ agreed Will.
‘Might even have the chance of a bit of meat on Sunday—’
Crack!
Will’s head whipped around just in time to see a rope release from its tether, flying up into the air.
There were thirty tons of cargo on this boat, not only rum but cork, barley and gunpowder. The rope whipping up through the iron rings released all of it, snapping canvas, barrels rolling, tumbling. Right towards Murphy. No—！
Will threw himself at Murphy, knocking him out of the way of the cascade, then feeling a teeth-jarring burst of pain as a barrel hit his own shoulder. Breathing heavily, he pushed himself up and looked at Murphy’s shocked face with a rush of wild relief that the man was alive, with only his cap knocked off, revealing a head of flattened hair above his whiskers. For a moment he and Murphy just stared at each other. Then the full scale of the calamity dawned on both of them.