A Place Called Freedom - Ken Follett [60]
“I’ll do anything,” Mack said, thinking of Esther.
“The coal heaving gangs are all run by tavern keepers down in Wapping. I know one of them, Sidney Lennox at the Sun.”
“Is he a good man?”
Cora and Peg laughed. Cora said: “He’s a lying, cheating, miserable-faced, evil-smelling festering drunken pig, but they’re all the same, so what can you do?”
“Will you take us to the Sun?”
“Be it on your own head,” said Cora.
A warm fog of sweat and coal dust filled the airless hold of the wooden ship. Mack stood on a mountain of coal, wielding a broad-bladed shovel, scooping up lumps of coal, working with a steady rhythm. The work was brutally hard; his arms ached and he was bathed in perspiration; but he felt good. He was young and strong, he was earning good money, and he was no one’s slave.
He was one of a gang of sixteen coal heavers, bent over their shovels, grunting and swearing and making jokes. Most of the others were muscular young Irish farm boys: the work was too hard for stunted city-born men. Dermot was thirty and he was the oldest on the gang.
It seemed he could not escape from coal. But it made the world turn. As Mack worked he thought about where this coal was going: all the London drawing rooms it would heat, all the thousands of kitchen fires, all the bakery ovens and breweries it would fuel. The city had an appetite for coal that was never satisfied.
It was Saturday afternoon, and the gang had almost emptied this ship, the Black Swan from Newcastle. Mack enjoyed calculating how much he would be paid tonight. This was the second ship they had unloaded this week, and the gang got sixteen pence, a penny per man, for every score, or twenty sacks of coal. A strong man with a big shovel could move a sackful in two minutes. He reckoned each man had earned six pounds gross.
However, there were deductions. Sidney Lennox, the middleman or “undertaker,” sent vast quantities of beer and gin on board for the men. They had to drink a lot to replace the gallons of fluid they lost by sweating, but Lennox gave them more than was necessary and most of the men drank it, gin too. Consequently there was generally at least one accident before the end of the day. And the liquor had to be paid for. So Mack was not sure how much he would receive when he lined up for his wages at the Sun tavern tonight However, even if half of the money was lost in deductions—an estimate surely too high—the remainder would still be double what a coal miner would earn for a six-day week.
And at that rate he could send for Esther in a few weeks. Then he and his twin would be free of slavery. His heart leaped at the prospect.
He had written to Esther as soon as he had settled at Dermot’s place, and she had replied. His escape was the talk of the glen, she said. Some of the young hewers were trying to get up a petition to the English Parliament protesting against slavery in the mines. And Annie had married Jimmy Lee. Mack felt a pang of regret about Annie. He would never again roll in the heather with her. But Jimmy Lee was a good man. Perhaps the petition would be the beginning of a change; perhaps the children of Jimmy and Annie would be free.
The last of the coal was shoveled into sacks and stacked on a barge, to be rowed to the shore and stored in a coal yard. Mack stretched his aching back and shouldered his shovel. Up on deck the cold air hit him like a blast, and he put on his shirt and the fur cloak Lizzie Hallim had given him. The coal heavers rode to shore with the last of the sacks, then walked to the Sun to get their wages.
The Sun was a rough place used by seamen and stevedores. Its earth floor was muddy, the benches and tables were battered and stained, and the smoky fire gave little heat. The landlord, Sidney Lennox, was a gambler, and there was always a game of some kind going on: cards, dice, or a complicated contest with a marked board and counters. The only good thing about the place was Black Mary, the African cook, who