London - Edward Rutherfurd [367]
The practice of paying a preacher to promote a good cause was common enough; the Virginia Company often employed chaplains. But today, with a crowd of five hundred before him Meredith had the big opportunity for which he had earnestly begged Sir Jacob; and he did not waste it.
The message he had prepared was twofold. The first part, the introduction, concerned Pocahontas; this was to intrigue the crowd. The second, the real purpose of the sermon, was an encouragement to settle in Virginia. He did not try to persuade them it was rich; he assumed they knew it was, and he deployed his several biblical texts accordingly. Finally, rising to a passionate climax, he concluded:
“Come then, and take possession of thy bride, Virginia, thy new-found land.”
It was exactly the kind of sermon the Virginia Company favoured. The instant the peroration – which had transfixed the listeners – came to an end, company servants were moving swiftly through the crowds with sheafs of handbills informing prospective settlers or investors how to apply at the company headquarters in Philpot Lane.
Julius, standing with his father, heard it all. He could see that Sir Jacob was highly satisfied, and he was glad, because he liked Meredith. After they had congratulated him, and his father had to go elsewhere on business, he felt too excited to return home directly.
Sir Jacob was still in an excellent temper when Julius returned home; and he smiled indulgently as his son approached him with a piece of news.
“Do you know, father, I saw the strangest thing.”
Julius had seen little of Martha Carpenter since she left the parish to marry Dogget. Occasionally she would come to visit her brother and his family, but that was all. As for her new family in Southwark, Julius knew nothing about them. So he had been curious when he saw the little group in Watling Street.
They, too, had come to see Pocahontas and, though Martha distrusted Meredith for once writing plays, they had stayed for the sermon. There was Dogget, five children, the eldest a year or two older than Julius, and an infant that was clearly Martha’s. Seeing that Martha recognized him, he went over politely to speak to her; and it was then that he made the discovery.
“The boatbuilder and two of his children have a white flash in their hair, father, just like us. But the strangest thing is their hands. Dogget and one of the children have a sort of webbing, between their fingers.” And then he stopped abruptly, for the change in his father was terrible to behold.
For a second, Sir Jacob looked as if he had been hit, and seemed to stagger. The boy wondered if his father was having a seizure. Sir Jacob recovered himself but, still more disconcerting, he stared at Julius with apparent loathing.
“What name? Dogget?” Sir Jacob knew nothing of the humble Doggets of Southwark, nor was there any way he could think of that such people could be connected with him.
Except, of course, for the foundling. Sir Jacob felt a cold wave of fear within him. The orphan; the gutter child. As he stared with loathing, it was not his son that he saw, but a horrifying vision – as though the ground under his feet had opened up to reveal a whole world of subterranean cellars, pits and passages, the dark corrupted ventricles of his own ancestry from which who knew what horrors might worm their way up into daylight to confront him. And no wonder then, forgetting the boy, that he muttered aloud: “The curse.”
Julius stared. What curse? What did his father mean?
But all Sir Jacob said, with a terrible force, was: “Do not go near those people. They are all accursed.