A Spectacle of Corruption by David Liss Read Free Book Online Page A

once for not working as hard as Dogmill reckoned he ought to. We stood there, Weaver, watching it, none of us willing to walk over and stop it, though we outnumbered him something severe, but that don’t signify. You take a step toward him, and you lose your badge. You have a family, it will be without bread. And there was something more, too. I got the feeling—it’s hard to say it, but it’s so—that twenty of us would not quite have been a match for him. He’s a big man and a strong man, but that ain’t it. He’s
angry,
if you know what I mean. And that anger is something vicious.”
    “And he is behind these gangs?” I asked.
    “Not direct, but he knew what he was doing when he arranged that we should separate out as we done. There’s a whole lot of gangs now, and we don’t ever come together. Now, the biggest gangs are Walter Yate’s and Billy Greenbill’s, who they call Greenbill Billy on account of his funny lips.”
    “And not because of his name?”
    Littleton removed his hat and scratched his nearly hairless head. “There is that, too. Howsomever, Greenbill Billy is a nasty fellow, and it’s said he’d see the other men what want to lead the workers dead, and the workers dead too, rather than yield to another man—any man but Dogmill, that is. I suspect he don’t want Ufford sticking his own bill into the mess, since it ain’t none of his business, as he reckons it, and has no cause to jab his shitten stick in the porters’ arse pot. The priest wants the gangs to form one big labor combination to fight Dogmill, and if that happens, Greenbill Billy goes from being the most powerful porter on the quays to no more than just another turd in the pile.”
    “Are the other gangs willing to set aside differences and become a combination?” I asked.
    He shook his head. “Just the opposite. They compete with one another, for Dogmill’s nearly got control of the whole dock now, and he don’t let any one gang work unless it’s outbid another. So our wages keep getting lower and lower, and we’re fighting all the fiercer over these little scraps.”
    “And you suspect that Greenbill Billy is behind the notes?”
    “Could as likely be as not. I’m in Yate’s gang, and I know he don’t go for that sort of thing. He’s a good man, that Yate. Young he is, but smart as a pig running from Bartholomew Fair, and he seems to want to do right. And he’s got the prettiest wife I ever saw. I wouldn’t mind a wife like that, let me tell you. I’ve seen her look at me once or twice, too. I know I’m a bit older than Yate, but I still have some charms that the ladies glance to. Stripped to the waist, I look like a young man, and it wouldn’t surprise me if so pretty a girl didn’t sample the wares away from her husband, if you take my meaning.”
    Feeling we had somehow lost our way, I attempted to bring him back on course. “Perhaps I should have a word with Greenbill, then.”
    Littleton snapped his fingers. “That’s the thing I propose. He likes to spend his time at a tavern called the Goose and Wheel, off Old Gravel Lane, near the timber yard. I ain’t saying he’s the one who sent the note, mind you, but there’s a good chance that, if he didn’t, he knows who did.”
    “Have you told all of this to Mr. Ufford?”
    He winked at me. “Not so much of it.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because,” he said in a whisper, “Ufford is a horse’s arse, that’s why. And the less he knows and the scareder he is and the more he goes bum-firking from this place to that, the more he gives me ale and bread and a coin here and there. I’ll be honest with you, since I don’t want you hearing this elsewhere and thinking ill of me. I told him not to bring you in. I said it was because the Church don’t need no Jews to do its business, but the real reason is that I don’t want him to get his mind put at ease too quick. It’s bad for my belly. This here is winter, and there ain’t no work for the quays