Chapter 46
“I used to be a tailor,” said a gaunt, one-armed man named Michael Thompson.
Dressed in patched gray trousers and a threadbare black coat, he sat on a crumbling stone bench near Clerkenwell’s ancient St. John’s Gate, his one remaining hand resting in his lap.
With his wispy gray hair, skeletal frame, and sunken, ashen features, he might have passed for a man in his seventies, but he said he was fifty-four.
“Even had my own shop not too long ago,” he said in his soft voice. “But a man’s life can turn in an instant, can’t it? Especially if he’s an artisan or small shopkeeper. He gets sick or hurt, or his shop burns down, and everything he’s worked a lifetime to build up is suddenly…gone.”
“Where was your shop?” asked Hero.
“Down in Southampton, my lady. Did a good trade, too, what with all the naval officers always in port. But then I fell and broke my arm must’ve been three—no, I guess it’s been nearly four years ago now.
They said it was broke so badly it would kill me if I didn’t let them cut it off, so I did.
But I shouldn’t have. Whoever heard of a one-armed tailor?
If I could’ve kept my shop, I might have been able to make a go of it with my apprentices.
But I came down with an awful fever right afterward; thought I was gonna die, for sure.
And even when it finally broke, I was so weak I wasn’t good for anything for months.
That’s when I lost my shop, you see. I could still cut fabric, though, so I got along doing piecework for a couple of job tailors I knew who were working for the Navy.
Only then the war ended and it ruined every last one of them. ”
He fell silent for a moment, his gaze on a trio of young women dressed in white who were walking toward Clerkenwell Green with a banner that read Peace and Goodwill.
It was because of the noontime meeting in nearby Spa Fields that Hero had changed her mind and decided to come to Clerkenwell today, although she was being careful to keep her distance from Spa Fields itself.
“Guess it would have ruined me, too,” he was saying, “if my arm hadn’t done it already.
That’s when I came up to London, thinking maybe I’d have more luck here.
” He shook his head, his lips pressing together in a thin line.
“Guess it’s bad everywhere, isn’t it? Between the war ending and this cold, nasty wet weather we’ve been having all year, there’s a heap of folks downright starving to death.
Starving or freezing.” He nodded toward another group of women, this time with a banner that read Have Mercy on the Children.
“That’s what the meeting here today is about, isn’t it?
Asking the Regent for relief for the people’s suffering.
If my wife and children hadn’t already died long ago, I don’t know what I’d do.
I’d never be able to feed them or keep a roof over their heads.
Half the time I can’t even feed myself.”
“I’m sorry,” said Hero.
Thompson swallowed hard and looked down at the fist he now held clenched in his lap.
Hero waited a moment, then said gently, “Was your father a tailor?”
Thompson shook his head. “No, my lady. He was a sailmaker, down in Southampton. But I wanted to be a tailor, so he apprenticed me to a man named Evans. Only, Evans died four years into my apprenticeship. My father was dead by then, too, so I had no position and no money to buy a new one. I didn’t know what else to do, so I took the King’s shilling. ”
“You were in the Army?”
“Yes, ma’am, five years. Sent me to the colonies, they did, first to New York, then the Carolinas.
” A wistful, faraway look crept into the man’s soft brown eyes, and he sighed.
“I’d never seen anything like it—the Carolinas, I mean.
The water there is so blue, you think it can’t be real.
They’ve got sandy beaches that stretch on for what seems like forever, and these great spreading trees draped with floating trails of long wispy stuff that looks like an old man’s spun beard.
It’s so warm there, a man could sleep without a blanket most of the year, if he needed to.
If I’d been smart, I’d have stayed there after Yorktown rather than letting them ship me back here.
” He watched a group of laughing men stroll past with white, green, and red cockades on their hats and a red banner inscribed Liberty or Death, then said it again: “If I’d been smart. ”
Hero looked up from scribbling notes. “You were at Yorktown?”
“Aye. And at Cowpens and Waxhaw Creek before that.”
“Were you with Lord Bridgewood and Sir Samuel Toole?”
Thompson turned his head and spat. “Yes, ma’am.
Of course, they weren’t no ‘lord’ and ‘sir’ then, just Lieutenants Bridgewood and Toole.
Bridgewood had me flogged once, you know—a hundred and fifty lashes.
That cat, it felt like a blizzard of razors, slashing and slashing at my back.
I can still feel it when I breathe too deep.
It’s like there’s something inside me hasn’t been right ever since. ”
“Why did he have you flogged?”
Thompson gave her a long, steady look. “And if I tell you, will you be telling him what I said?”
Hero set down her pencil and closed her notebook. “No, of course not. You have my word as a gentlewoman.”
He hesitated a moment. Then his jaw hardened and he said, “I knew what they’d been doing, you see.
They were afraid I’d tell the Colonel, so Lieutenant Bridgewood, he accused me of stealing a watch.
I hadn’t done it, of course, but who was gonna take the word of a tailor over the son of a lord?
Truth is, I saw him take it off a colonial farmer they’d killed when they chanced upon him plowing his field. ”
“Bridgewood murdered a man?”
Thompson nodded solemnly. “Him and Toole together. Wasn’t the first time, neither—not by a long shot.
They thought it served the colonials right, you see, for rebelling against the King.
” He paused, his eyes narrowing as he stared unseeingly at a laughing group of apprentices heading up the hill.
“Until then, I don’t think I’d realized there are men in this world who not only don’t feel the pain of others but actually enjoy seeing other people in pain.
They were like that, all three of them. They enjoyed hurting people they hated, and they hated the colonials. ”
“All three of them?”
“Toole and the two Bridgewoods.”
“What two Bridgewoods?”
“Lionel—him as is Lord Bridgewood now—and his younger brother, Ensign Aiden Bridgewood. If they saw an isolated farmhouse, they’d push their way inside, kill the men if they tried to stop them, then rob the house and violate the women.
” Thompson paused, then added, “Well, Toole and Lieutenant Bridgewood would have their way with the women and girls. The Ensign had other tastes.”
Hero felt a chill run down her spine. “What happened to Ensign Aiden Bridgewood? Do you know?”
“Last I heard, he took up a sugar plantation in Jamaica, right next to this other officer we had in the regiment. Pitcairn was his name. Ensign Pitcairn, from Fife.”