ingoings and outgoings. Out you come there!’
‘Outgoings is right,’ muttered Ben. ‘I got to go, Drew. I’ll speak to Young Archibald, though. I swear I will. Don’t give in to the doldrums, mate. I’ll—’
‘Get the hell out of there, I say!’ The turnkey’s boots clattered on the stone steps. ‘Get the hell out or I’ll charge you double!’
‘I’m coming!’ Ben leant towards the grille and whispered. ‘Keep your hairt up, Drew. They kinna hang ye. They won’t even keep you in here more’n a day or two, not if I can stop it. Here’ – he reached into the pocket of his frieze jacket, and pulled out a greasy packet – ‘It’s bread and pickled onion. Fresh fae the baker. I thought you might be glad o it.’
Drew seized the bread, and thrust it into the bosom of his jacket. ‘Ay well, thanks for that. And Ben …’
‘Ay?’
‘Would you have a bawbee about you? I dinnae get no grub in here withoot. I paid ma last sixpence and what did I get? Bloody stewed limpets. Limpets! Beggars’ broth! He cannae leave me in here, Ben. You tell him …’
‘You come on out o’ that!’
Ben fumbled in his purse and drew out a shilling. After a moment’s hesitation he passed it through the bars. Drew snatched at it, and feverishly pocketed the coin. ‘Don’t let them bloody debtors see! Thanks, Ben. True blue, that’s you. But that Young …’
‘I got to go, Drew.’
‘Find oot!’ Drew shouted after him, as Ben followed the turnkey away. Drew clung desperately to the bars. ‘Find oot what they’ll do! And tell Young Archibald … Ben, you’ll come back, right?’
‘Ay, I’ll do that …’
‘Like hell you will,’ snarled the turnkey, grabbing Ben’s arm and dragging him away. ‘Out, you! And be thankful I wasn’t taking another shilling. Five minutes indeed. I’ve a mind to be reporting you to—’
‘Stow it,’ said Ben. ‘You got your shilling. I doubt you’ll be reporting that. I’m off.’
As soon as he was outside the great gates Ben drew a deep breath of clean air, and stood up straight, blinking. He tended to slouch, which perhaps came from stooping down to get on a level with his fellows. For Ben was known to be good company, though steady with it. He’d drink with the others, but no one had ever seen him the worse for it, and it was reckoned to be impossible to provoke him to argument, let alone fight. He had an ugly freckled face, wiry reddish hair, and mild blue eyes. His father had been employed by Robert Stevenson as a stonemason at Pentland Skerries, and stayed with the firm thereafter. He was killed falling from the temporary bridge on the Bell Rock, just a week before the lighthouse was completed. That had happened two months before Ben’s birth. The widow took her new-born infant home to Orkney. A small pension was forthcoming, supposedly anonymous, but Benjamin was aware very early on of the identity of his patron. Mr Stevenson had also offered John Groat’s orphan an apprenticeship, to commence when he was fourteen. So Benjamin sailed for Edinburgh within a week of his fourteenth birthday, and was promptly directed to the Survey of Sutherland as ’prentice under the assistant chainman. What his mother thought about it no one knew; probably not even Benjamin had any idea. As for Benjamin himself, even those who worked with him closely knew rather less about him than that. He was a quiet fellow, and got on with folk, and Mr Stevenson thought very highly of him.
The sun hadn’t reached into the hollow of the Castle Rushen moat. Out on the harbour quay the day was already bright. Ben shuddered, and walked round the castle, past a stone-breakers’ yard, and on to the harbour quay at the front of the castle. Who’d have thought such an imposing building could house such stinking misery inside? Just like people really, thought Ben, and grinned to himself. He’d done his best, but it was good to be out of that place. Being a peaceable fellow himself, he’d had little enough to do with jails, thank the Lord.
The castle faced straight onto the harbour. The tide was coming in fast over flat slabs of rock and seaweed. A couple of herring smacks were moored at the Castle Quay, with the sea running in around their exposed keels. A schooner was unloading coal, and townsfolk with baskets and barrows were queuing up to buy, their boisterous banter drowning out the screams of the gulls. Further upriver a gaggle of farmyard ducks foraged in the exposed seaweed. Compared with Douglas harbour, where they’d berthed yesterday, with its fine new pier and good lighthouse, this place was a backwater – literally, one might say.
Ben wandered along the quay, and crossed a stone bridge over the river that flowed into the harbour. An old fellow was leaning on the bridge smoking a long clay pipe, watching the tide flooding in over the exposed mudflats.
‘Morning,’ said Ben cheerfully, stopping beside him.
‘And a good morning to you.’ The old man removed his pipe, and looked Ben over sideways. ‘You’ll be a stranger in these parts, then?’
‘Ay.’
‘English?’
‘Not I!’
‘Scotch?’
‘No that either!’
‘You’re not sounding like an Irishman. Welsh?’
‘No. Orkney,’ said Ben, leaning on the rail beside his questioner. ‘But I’ve been away fae home a long time. You’ll ken this place pretty well, then?’
‘I’m living here all my days.’
‘Tell me, then – when we came last night, it was just gone high tide. It falls a good way, then?’
The old man looked at him sideways. ‘More’n twenty feet just now. At low tide you’ll not hardly be seeing a pint of water in the harbour, barring the river. Three-and-a-half hours after high tide the whole harbour’ll be dry again.’
‘That must make the fishing difficult.’
The old man sucked on his pipe deliberately; he seemed to be staring out to sea, but he was watching Ben out of the corner of his eye. Evidently he decided it was worth being communicative. ‘Aye well, it’s dangerous awful in the bay outside. But once your boat’s in she’s as snug as can be, as you’re seeing indeed, here in the duck pond – that’s the name we’re putting on it here. When the herring are coming in, you see, the smacks are mooring off Derbyhaven mostly, and that’s where they’re beaching them in the winter.’
‘Derbyhaven?’
‘You are a stranger and no mistake!’ The old man looked him over, but didn’t ask any direct questions. Instead he jerked his pipe in an easterly direction. ‘Over that way, a mile or two. That’s Derbyhaven.’
‘And there’s a better harbour there?’
‘Harbour?’ the fellow repeated scornfully. ‘Bless your heart, there’s no harbour there at all. But you’d never be mooring in Castletown Bay, not when there’s a westerly in. So it’ll be the fishing that brings you here, no doubt?’
‘No.’ Ben leaned his elbows on the rail, and deliberately grew confidential. It was worth getting alongside the locals, though he was wary of the old fellow’s sidelong glances. So far everything he’d said seemed true enough.
