not?’
‘The responsibilities of an estate, dear boy. I came into my inheritance when my father died in ’53, and it behooved me to marry and settle down to bring forth the next generation of Portmans.’
‘I did not realise you were married and had a family.’
‘I was married less than a year. My wife died giving birth to a daughter.’
‘I am sorry, Harry, I did not mean to pry. I always assumed you were a confirmed bachelor as I am.’
‘It is no secret. I simply do not talk about it. Beth was too young, barely seventeen. No one had told her what to expect and she did not understand what was happening to her when her pains began.’ He paused, remembering her screams which went on and on and the strident way she had cursed him. ‘God will punish you for this!’ Her words were punctuated with screams of pain. Feeling helpless and unable to stand any more of it, he had gone out to walk about the garden until it was all over. He should have been with her to comfort her, but no, men had no business anywhere near childbirth and he would be told when he could come in. Why had he not insisted?
Instead they had called him in to look at her pale, dead body. It had been washed of blood, but a heap of linen thrown in the corner was saturated with it. He tried not to look, but his eyes were drawn to it in horror. He had not wanted to know his lustily yelling daughter and had packed her off to a wet nurse and after that to a foster mother. She wanted for nothing, but that did not make him feel any less guilty about it. ‘No woman, let alone one so young, should be asked to give up her life to gratify a man’s need for an heir,’ he told Ash.
‘You are being too harsh on yourself, Harry. You could not have known what would happen and next time it will surely be plain sailing.’
‘There will not be a next time. How can I put anyone, particularly someone for whom I have the tenderest feelings, through that torture?’
‘Women do have a choice, my friend, to marry or not to marry, and most, if you ask them, would certainly say they want to be married and have children. It is their lot in life and they know it.’
‘You are a fine one to talk,’ Harry said. ‘A bachelor of, how old?’
‘Thirty-two. I have given up expecting to meet the lady with whom I could contemplate sharing my life. I am too set in my ways. We should drive each other to distraction and as I have no great estate to worry about, there is no need.’
‘But you have mistresses?’
‘Naturally I have. But there are ways to prevent conception.’
‘What use is that to a man who needs a legitimate heir?’
‘But you must have an heir somewhere,’ Ash said.
‘So I have, a muckworm of a cousin who has no care for the land, nor the people who depend upon it, and would ruin his inheritance in a twelvemonth with his gambling.’
‘Then you must prevent that and marry again.’
‘I am not like to die in the immediate future.’
‘I hope you may not, but you can never be sure, can you?’
‘No.’ The answer was curt, and spying a couple of chairs for hire, Harry beckoned the men over and they climbed in, effectively ending the conversation. In this fashion they were conveyed to the Old Bailey where they took their seats to listen to the trial.
The room was already crowded. Some of the audience had an interest in the case, but many came to the proceedings simply out of curiosity. Until the entrance of the court officials they talked, ate pies and fruit and noisily speculated on the fate of those to come up before the judge.
Those of the Dustin Gang who had been apprehended were brought into court and ranged in the dock. There was Alfred Dustin, his wife Meg, their twenty-four-year-old daughter, Matilda, and her husband, Bernard Watson. All were charged that ‘they not being employed at the Mint in the Tower, nor being lawfully authorised by the Lord High Treasurer and not having God before their eyes, nor weighing the duty of their allegiance to our lord, the King, and his people, did between the first day of May and the tenth in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and sixty-one, feloniously and traitorously forge and counterfeit forty coins of pewter in the likeness of silver shillings and sixpences’. They all pleaded not guilty.
The first witness was the landlady of their lodgings who had gone into their rooms to clean them when they were out and had found a mould filled with chalk, some clay pipes, much burned, and two sixpences, which had been stamped on one side but not the other. When Bernard Watson came home she had taxed him with her finds and he had admitted to her that he was counterfeiting and had shown her how the coins were made.
‘He had a mould,’ she said. ‘It was filled with chalk and had an impression of a sixpence in it. He poured in pewter, which he had heated in a tobacco pipe over the fire. He said good-quality pewter was best and he obtained it by cutting up a tankard. When the piece was taken from the mould he nicked it with a clean tile to mill the edges, then he scoured it with sand to make it look bright. Lastly he put it into a pot of water boiled with a powder he called argol to make it look silver.’
‘What did you say to this?’ the judge asked.
‘I told him I would have none of it and they must all find other lodgings.’
‘You lie,’ Bernard Watson protested. ‘I never made a false coin in my life.’
The woman turned to the judge. ‘Your honour, as God is my witness, I tell you true.’
‘Then what happened?’ the prosecutor urged her.
‘He said he would pay me well to pass the coins off when I went shopping, but I refused and said they must all leave.’
‘And did they?’
‘I left the house and went to fetch a constable. When I brought the constable back, they had packed up and gone and taken all the sixpences with them.’
The constable was called next and told the court that he found nothing except a broken-up pewter tankard and the bowl of a pipe with a residue of pewter in it. He saw no counterfeit coins.
‘God, I do believe the rascals will get off,’ Ash murmured.
‘Patience,’ Harry responded, flicking invisible fluff from his sleeve.
‘Where did they go?’ the prosecutor asked the witness.
‘They went to a house in White Lion Street. I got the address from a man at the Nag’s Head, who heard them speak of it. I went there with Constable Bunting and we broke down the door and found them all gathered to make coins.’
‘I suppose you were the man at the Nag’s Head,’Ash whispered to Harry.
‘Shh,’ Harry warned him, smiling.
Other witnesses were called to corroborate. Their defence that they were making buttons and buckles to sell in the market was thrown out. Alfred, Meg and Bernard were sentenced to hang; Matilda’s plea that she was not aware her parents and husband were doing anything but making buttons was accepted and she was set free. She left the court vowing vengeance against whoever had ratted
