Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 02 - Lineages and Lies (10 page)

“You just have to exhaust the possible, right?” Nick added.

The computer behind Nelson politely announced, “Darling, you have mail,” in what sounded like Marlene Dietrich’s pre-recorded voice.

“That tickles me every time she says that.” Smiling, Nelson touched some keys and a schematic of a building filled in the screen. “excellent! I’ve been waiting for this. Are you still a Luddite, Nick, as in the old days, hoping all the machines will
self-destruct? These new computers really
are
remarkable. And this Internet—my word! Amazing!”

“Yeah, well I guess my days atop the pillar are just about over. I may be weakening, but no one’s going to make me a cheerleader for high-tech toys.”

Nelson chortled as he placed the schematic in a file with a few deft moves of the mouse. He turned again to face Nick.

“Always the radical, eh? Glad to hear it. The world needs people like you.”

Nick then explained that his client had a couple of conflicting family traditions. One said that the immigrant ancestor arrived on the
Allégorie
—except he was not listed as having done so, according to the Society’s records. The other tradition stated that the ancestor arrived that same date on a ship called the
True Faith
, an English ship. Of course, the man wanted the
Allégorie
tradition to win, Nick said; but he needed certainty.

“It’s conceivable, I suppose,” Nelson said ruminatively. “These colonial arrival lists are scattered to the winds. To say they are incomplete is a gross understatement. Perhaps some local official received the wrong passenger-list information, or later, years later, there was a transcription error, a confusion of the manifests of the two different ships. This blunder could have been the result of something as simple as a ripped page, an inkblot, or a column of names placed too close to the wrong ship’s name. Or perhaps a boozed-up notary or clerk, spelling unfamiliar Anglo-Saxon names with a French twist. And you know of the calendrical confusions: Old Style Julian versus New Style Gregorian, or a new year starting in spring for some,
in January for others. The ships might not have arrived on the same day—or even the same year—at all!”

Nelson went on to suggest that the passengers of the
True Faith
could have been English or Irish Catholics, recusants with French-sounding names—a not uncommon situation due to the Norman Conquest and cross-Channel aristocratic and royal marriages. Perhaps they had sought a life among co-religionists in the new French colony on the Mississippi. But he felt sure he would know about such an unusual, though not unprecedented, event.

“So,” Nelson said, “if separated from the English ship’s name, the passengers’ names would not have appeared odd mingled with the
Allégorie
’s passenger list. Stranger things have happened in the annals of record keeping. But you say we have only the testimony of one of the immigrant’s great-great-grandsons, who supposedly wrote a monograph, now lost, suggesting that there was some merging? Otherwise, we don’t know who walked off the
True Faith
, because no records on this side survived.”

“That’s about the shape of it,” said Nick.

“Well, it’s quite convoluted. But anything’s possible, considering all the colonial turmoil that was going on. Two different ships, two groups of people, a colossal mistake in record keeping that placed individuals where in fact they were not. Who rightfully belongs to which ship? Hmmm … a corrected passenger list for the famous
Allégorie
. Would deletions be necessary? Additions? Could cause a delicious stink.”

Nelson stagily rubbed his hands at the prospect of such a research coup. His love of logic took over. “Obviously, we would need to find the
True Faith
as she
began
her voyage. If you
don’t
locate your man on that ship,
and
if individuals from the
True Faith
in fact appear in error on the known list of the
Allégorie
, then you have something solid: there was indeed some sort of merging, and the accuracy of the known list is therefore eminently questionable. When you’ve proved that, how you convince the Society that they’ve been in error for nearly two centuries is beyond me. After all,
they
certainly know their own records better than anyone.”

Nick had taken the equation “ALLÉGORIE = TRUE FAITH” literally, as a working hypothesis. Could they have been two ships, similar in some essential way, a similarity that now held deadly secrets? He had formulated the scenario of the conflicting family traditions and the faulty records to get Nelson talking about his specialty. There was no one better at it in the city. His ploy was working. It
was
a murder investigation, though, and Nick didn’t want Nelson to know any more than necessary.

“An interesting problem,” Nelson said. “Almost the inverse of the situation with the
Allégorie
.”

“How’s that?” Nick asked.

“Well, there’s a frustrating impossible gap in the
Allégorie
’s voyage, as well. Your client, I assume, has proof that the
True Faith
left a certain port, but we don’t have anything concrete to show that it arrived here. By contrast, we know the
Allégorie
arrived in New Orleans, but we lack primary documentation on its embarkation from the French port, believed to be St.-Félicien-sur-Mer.”

“I wasn’t aware of that,” Nick said.

“Let’s get back to this English ship. Frankly I can’t imagine what a ship like that was doing here, unless it was something
peculiar, an emergency port call, or perhaps it had been captured. Europe was constantly at war, and there was tremendous trade friction in the Southeast at this time among the French, the Spanish, and the English, all jockeying for alliances with the various Indian tribes. This being New Orleans, though, there was some smuggling by the hard-pressed colonists with the Spanish. But France, on paper, guarded her monopoly and tried to keep her arch-foe England and her colonials out. Even in the 1750s, Governor Kerlérec was taken to task for letting in some English merchant ships with much needed flour—the French must have their baguettes, you know. Be that as it may, where does your client say the ship sailed from in 1731?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly what British port,” Nick said. “That’s really why I’m here.”

“Oh, this
is
going to be fun for you. Like looking for a needle in the Atlantic. Do I detect the need for a little expense-paid trip to England for research, you sly dog?”

“Could be,” Nick said. “I wouldn’t argue with that… . Something you mentioned earlier puzzles me: all these years—what, since 1820-something—everyone has just taken the Society’s word that their manifest is correct?”

“Oh, certainly not. Eighteen twenty-three was the year of the Society’s founding. The documentation, which I and many other researchers have personally reviewed, is beyond reproach. It has been proved with reasonable certainty that the St.-Félicien-sur-Mer records were destroyed in a fire during Napoleonic times. Nevertheless, the departure and arrival are copiously documented through primary testimony by the passengers and crew, Louisiana colonists
and officials, and a slew of other contemporary sources. There’s even a Rare New Orleans broadsheet newspaper of the time. The lineages of the passengers and crew have been exhaustively traced, and they are where they are supposed to be before and after 1731. Which is more than I can say for your research target.” Nelson paused; his gaze moved around the room.

Then he found the thread of his thoughts again. “The Society has done really amazing work on the subject. Have you ever been out there? Wonderful place. So well maintained. State-of-the-art facility. There’s a special room for their documentary treasures, and they pump out the regular air at night to control mold, mildew, insects, and other ills that manuscripts are heir to. Pump in inert gases, for God’s sake, helium, or argon, or both—I forget. I mean, can you imagine the cost? Absolutely marvelous! You know how I adore technology, as much as you despise it.”

Nick said, “For the sake of argument, let’s say an English ship named
True Faith
did land in New Orleans on the same day as the
Allégorie
. Where would she have sailed from?”

Nelson crossed his arms and pondered the question. “If it’s an English name, one must follow the language, and maybe one’s intuition.” He winked. “Paying colonists, or ‘persons of quality,’ as they used to say, could have sailed from just about any major English port: London, Newcastle, Hull, Liverpool, Plymouth. Since we’re talking about possible Catholics, check the Irish ports, too.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, don’t forget Bristol—but be aware if you find something there, you may have to tell your client his immigrant ancestor was something less than a person of quality. He may be like our local French
Creole blue bloods: most are reluctant to admit descent from colonists before 1727, whom they consider beneath them. It could be a shock.”

“I can’t help it if the truth hurts,” Nick said. “Tell me about Bristol, anyway.”
All is not Bristol-fashion, shipshape
. “I’m curious.”

Nelson straightened in his chair and cracked his knuckles, as if he were about to give a piano recital. “Well, England was the leader in the shipping to America of indentured servants and of felons condemned to transportation. France tried the convict scheme in Louisiana under John Law and the Company of the West, but that effort was by and large a flop. Bristol was the premier port for such business. And big business it was. You’re no doubt familiar with England at this time, through your literary background.”

“Sure,” Nick said. “In Defoe, Dryden, Pope, Fielding, Sterne, Swift, and retrospectively in Dickens, we see tremendous social upheaval. It was a medieval England, London especially, which faced the first onslaughts of the modern world, the early brutalities of rapid urbanization. The social system wasn’t ready. As the population increased, poverty rose. Life and labor were cheap.”

“A+ to the literary type!” said Nelson, warming to his subject, cutting in on the dance. “Crime had skyrocketed. The legal system reacted harshly. One could get the death penalty for stealing five shillings from a shop or cutting down a tree. For crimes less severe than murder, treason, rape, witchcraft, highway robbery, arson, and burglary, a convicted criminal might be offered an alternative: transportation, or, as we would call it, exile.”

“Any of your ancestors travel that way across?” Nick asked.

“Oh, most certainly. And I’m honored to claim them. That took real guts, and yes, true faith, in one’s self, and in God. These convicts were euphemistically called ‘His Majesty’s Seven-Year Passengers,’ seven years being the ordinary term of exile. Getting caught back in England before term meant immediate hanging. No reprieve for that. Unless, of course, you could buy your way out of it. England of that day reminds me of our contemporary New Orleans.”

“Transportation sounds like a good deal to me,” Nick said.

“Doesn’t it, though? The unfortunates without the necessary cash for bribes could look forward to public hanging—then perhaps to being drawn and quartered—branding, beheading, amputation, or a slower death by deprivation or one of the myriad diseases on the menu at Newgate, Bridewell, Tyburn, or another city’s hellish prison. Most people today know the story of Australia as the destination of transported felons who became colonists during the mid- to late-nineteenth century; but America’s earlier saga of forced emigration is a secret better kept, and one many would prefer to remain secret.”

Nelson stopped here, and looked at his desk. His suddenly preoccupied eyes told Nick that something had occurred to him. But he went on without sharing whatever it was.

“Let me quote some figures,” he said, getting up to consult a book. Nick suspected he was trying to hide a look of discovery on his face.
What was it he’d put together?
Nick sensed it was vastly important to the mystery he was investigating. And Bristol seemed to be a crucial clue… .

“Yes, here we are,” said Nelson, now back in his chair. “Something like 50,000 inmates of the fetid prisons and workhouses of Britain were transported to the English colonies of America, especially Virginia and Maryland. Reprieved felons, prostitutes, orphans, abducted children, political and religious nonconformists, prisoners of war, vagabonds, and just plain old poor folks down on their luck. It was white slavery with a thin veneer of moral justification. You could say America was Britain’s first off-shore hazardous waste site.”

“Didn’t these people jump at the chance to make a new life?”

“Not every lawbreaker turned to crime out of desperation. Why leave England, when there were more and richer pockets to pick than in America? Think of the Mafia or the drug cartels of today; there were plenty of professional criminals, more than ever before in the history of England.”

“Fagin and Bill Sikes from
Oliver Twist
.”

“Indeed. Another discouragement was the trip itself—so bad that it rivaled the abysmal conditions of the much larger African slave trade. Indentured servant or convict, the transatlantic trip was exceedingly deadly, unless, again, you had sufficient money for bribes; and even then, unscrupulous captains knew many tricks to steal their passengers’ valuables and honor. The crossing was normally five weeks; there were enemy ships, storms, leaky vessels, smallpox, lice, and ‘jail fever,’ which covers about everything else, I suppose. A hundred or two hundred men, women, and children, five weeks chained in the belly of the ship, guns and cannon trained on them to keep down mutinies. The worst
captains and crews subjected the men to brutal punishments, and the women to unspeakable humiliations. One in seven died on the trip, twice as many men as women.”

“I think I flew that airline once. Talk about rude stewardesses!”

Nelson scarcely heard Nick’s remark. He continued.

“After the Transportation Act of 1718, more than a century since the practice had begun, all ships dealing in freighting convicts had a surgeon on board. Someone realized, finally, that the convicts and indentured servants were precious commodities; the object was to get them to the destination alive, if not exactly healthy. The merchants, ship captains, and planters on the other side all profited handsomely. Trading their convicts for cash, tobacco, rum, and sugar, they would also often get paid by the British government for their services. Many a man in the trade became quite wealthy.”