Will Starling by Ian Weir Read Free Book Online Page B

surgeons have you, Jemmy.” She spoke very low, dabbing his forehead with a bit of rag she’d moistened in rainwater. “They won’t have you, if you die. I’ll carry you on my back to the sea, if that’s what it takes. I’ll build a fire on the shore, and burn you. That’s my promise to you, my love. And dogs can piss on the ashes, if you won’t come back to me. I’ll piss on them myself, I swear to Christ. I’ll hike my skirts and straddle what’s left, if you go and die on me, you bastard. Please Jemmy, God damn you, don’t you go away.”
    5
    The London Foundling Hospital was built by a philanthropical sea-captain named Thomas Coram, on the site of an old cricket ground at Lamb’s Conduit Fields. It squatted — and still squats today — at the end of a sweeping drive on the north side of Guilford Street, where the jumble of the Metropolis begins to peter into fields and open spaces. Behind a sweeping semicircular wall with iron gates are kept the little wages of sin, for such is the governing notion of the place. The foundlings gathered into Thomas Coram’s arms are the offspring of virtuous women who have Fallen. There are two plain brick buildings and a chapel, fronting onto an open courtyard; the west wing houses the little male wages, and the east is for wages of the female persuasion.
    Before accepting an infant, the Governors required evidence that the mother had previously been of good character, to which she might — God willing — be expected to return, once her little burden had been lifted. They also required evidence of the father’s desertion. If there was satisfaction on both counts, then the fortunate mother could trudge away, leaving her infant to the permanent guardianship of the institution, in token of which the Governors would choose a new name to bestow. Inspiration had long since failed by the time Your Wery Umble arrived at the iron gates — or else it flared up in spurts of perverse whimsicality — the upshot being that the companions of Will Starling’s childhood included Admirall Bembow and Richard Shovel, not to mention Edward Plantagenet and a gamine named Female Child, whom I loved to distraction for several years without the slightest glimmer of hope or acknowledgement.
    Foundlings did not actually spend their earliest years at the hospital. Once accepted, they were farmed out to wet-nurses in Kent, where I lived ’til I was four. I have snippets of recollection from those days, but nothing adding up to a whole: a white cloud in a blue sky, the chill of a hard-packed dirt floor against my naked arse, the baleful ogle of a monstrous chicken. Most of all I recollect — or think I do — a red hand hoisting a vast white blue-veined breast. I couldn’t tell you much about its owner, except that she must have been kind enough to the nippers in her care. After all, here I am today.
    At length I was trundled to London on a wagon, and deposited at the Foundling Hospital, where I remained for the next ten years. They dressed us in uniforms and taught us to read from the Bible — taught the boys, at any rate. They taught odds and ends of skills as well, though nothing very ambitious. The girls would aspire to domestic service, it was supposed, while the lads would mainly end in the Infantry or Navy. A foundling might serve for fodder just as well as the next young man.
    At fourteen years, the foundlings were apprenticed out to employers. I caught the eye of a chimbley sweep, as you might expect.
    â€œIs he honest and reliable?” the sweep demanded of the warders who flanked me, one on either side.
    Oh yes, they assured him, lying through their ivories. Yes, this was the very lad for slithering up his flues.
    â€œI will do my utmost, sir,” I vowed, my smile as earnest as God’s promise of salvation. “I will not let you down.”
    I went off with him that same afternoon.