‘Yes,’ Andrew said at last, ‘I think you are right.’
Blackstone hailed us warmly across the throng. ‘Well, gentlemen, is this not a fine sight for a morning? She’ll pass the bar this morning and be unloaded before dinner-time, I’d stake my horse on it. Is that not so, Dunstan?’
‘Aye, sir, no doubt,’ said the overseer, with little enthusiasm.
‘Now, then, get you to those brickworks and see if you can’t wring some work out of those lazy dullards. We’ll need eight hundred more for Monavagher than that idiot Cookston told me.’ He turned his attention to us, the smile re-forming on his face. ‘And now, gentlemen, you have had a pleasant morning I hope?’
‘We have found plenty to occupy us,’ Andrew answered. ‘But now I must seek out my old master’s agent, and give him instructions about the Madeira about to be landed.’
Blackstone clapped him on the shoulder, looking not displeased that Andrew would be leaving us. ‘Aye, quite right. Very good, very good.’
Andrew had warned me that he might have to leave me with Blackstone a while, and had counselled me not to leave the public view in the docks until he had returned. I wondered for a moment why he felt the need to give my grandfather’s agent his instructions again, for amongst what little I had caught of their conversation earlier in the morning were instructions regarding the Madeira. I knew enough not to question him on it in front of Blackstone, and so said nothing as he left us to make in the direction not of the agent’s house, but of the brickworks. Blackstone did not notice, so engrossed was he in the attempts of the ship to negotiate the bar and ease herself triumphantly into Coleraine harbour.
Two great cheers went up, one from the crowd on the quayside, one from the ship. Scrawny men scampered like boys down the riggings, and others made ready the ropes, huge heavy coils waiting to be flung out to shore. Another cheer went up as the anchor was dropped, and then the ropes were caught on the quayside and tied fast to iron bollards. A gangplank was thrown down and soon a straggling troupe of weary and exhausted passengers was making its uncertain way on to dry land. Blackstone found his way to this group and detached from it his carpenters: he would have had two apprentices too, had not a tanner, in his apron and still reeking of the noxious fumes of his trade, claimed them as his own.
The passengers safely disgorged, the business of unloading the merchant cargo began. The customs officers, even I could see, kept a close eye on some loads but turned their backs resolutely to others, their palms no doubt already profitably greased by some merchant’s coin. It took well into the afternoon before all the cargo was ashore, its contents and provenance verified, and allocated to its rightful owners. Amongst those checking and marking receipt of their goods was my grandfather’s agent; of Andrew there was still no sign. The agent counted out three bolts of silk, two barrels of oil, and the cask of Madeira. It seemed a small enough item to warrant such special instruction, but then I knew little more of trade than did Sean, and I did not ponder it long.
Blackstone oversaw the landing of his goods with a degree of satisfaction and an eye that missed nothing. He took particular care over the loading on to carts of some cases of slates. ‘For my own new house. The slates produced here are not of a quality I would happily use. I advise my wealthier clients also to spend the extra coin now to save them expensive repairs in the future. But do they listen to me? Ha! Not many. But when I come to the end of my labours, I’m damned if I’ll sit under a leaking roof. Welsh slate, FitzGarrett. Welsh slate.’ He glanced uneasily at the customs officers, but they fortuitously, it seemed, had turned their attention elsewhere, and showed no interest in the contents of the heavy cases loaded on to his carts. It appeared Matthew Blackstone was not above bribery when it came to his own interests.
There was a degree of relief in his face as the second of his carts was drawn away from the docks in the direction of his brickworks, and his good humour was such that he offered me a very favourable price on a sack of dates he had that morning bargained his way to, but I laughed and told him it would not be worth the wrath of my steward to make purchases without him.
‘He is a good man, that one, but you will not keep him long I think: he does not wait upon his opportunities. I will not beat about the bush, FitzGarrett. You need someone you can trust to manage your business, or you will not see one penny in two that belongs to you. To add an alliance in business to the one in marriage between our two families would do neither of us any harm. It would give me, and my son, greater trust amongst the Irish, and strengthen your support for the plantation in the eyes of the king. Neither of our families would lose by the arrangement.’
‘And if I do not support the plantation?’
‘Then the day will come when you will lose everything that was ever dear to you.’ Blackstone then left me, urging me to consider his words.
Remembering Andrew’s warnings, I would have lingered longer by the quay, had it not been for the young man I caught sight of, emerging from the abbey grounds and coming towards the river. He was dressed in the robes of a Franciscan friar and walking towards me with a purpose that left no doubt that he thought he knew me. I had not been prepared for this, for recognition as Sean by someone who might have been a mere acquaintance, a close friend, or a sworn enemy. The set of his face suggested the latter. Whatever this man was to Sean, it would soon become clear to him that I was nothing but a fraud.
As a paralysing panic worked through me, good fortune, in the shape of a recalcitrant donkey, came to my aid. The creature, a few feet in front of me and between me and the oncoming stranger, objected greatly to the attempts of its handler to encourage it away from the quayside with its load. The more he pulled and cursed, the firmer the beast stood, until at last, at the end of his patience, the man kicked it in its hind quarters. The thing let out a terrible screech and took off at a speed neither I nor the carter had thought it capable of, sending barrels of apples and fish rolling and sliding all over the quay, with merchants and shore porters alike running after them. I heard one barrel crash into the river, and that was enough to bring me out of my own stasis: I ran and I did not look back. I went through yards and behind walls, anywhere that I thought might shield me from the sight of my pursuer. When I was at last satisfied that I had lost him, I went in search of Andrew. It was almost half an hour afterwards that I found him, in a tavern close to the brickworks. It was a desperate place, where poor ale was served to poor men, and women of no attraction or hope sought to entice what remained from the pockets of those men. He was drinking alone, a jug of beer before him, and ignoring the efforts of a young but pockmarked woman to engage him with her charms. I thought of Margaret, in the inn we had eaten at two days ago, clean and lovely and unsullied, and still unable to interest Andrew, and I pitied this poor and hopeless creature.
He seemed startled by my voice. ‘You have been dreaming, I think.’
‘Dreaming? No, not dreaming.’ He moved along on the bench and I sat down. ‘Did you find much entertainment at the shore? How was Blackstone?’
‘Eager for my grandfather’s business, but he is a man who favours a direct approach. I think the subtlety of destabilising my family’s position through an Irish curse would hold little attraction.’
‘You are probably right,’ he said, still somewhat distracted.
‘What did you learn from the brickmaker?’
‘The brickmaker?’
‘That is where you went, is it not?’
‘What? Yes, yes. He told me very little that I did not already know.’ He pushed the jug towards me and beckoned to the girl for another tankard.