Marley Read online

  “In many things, but not in all.”

  “Our work is entirely within the law.”

  “Man’s law, not God’s.”

  Scrooge quietly absorbs the blow.

  “And one day,” says Fairchild, “man’s law will catch up with that of the Almighty.”

  “I trust that it will, sir.”

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  “And what then?”

  “Then Mr. Marley will have to comply with both God’s law and man’s.”

  “What has Mr. Marley to do with it?”

  “The contracts and negotiations are his portion of the business. I only maintain the records.”

  “A fine excuse that is.”

  “It is not an excuse, Mr. Fairchild. It is our arrangement.”

  “And yet you are half owner.”

  “I am.”

  “So you must approve of these contracts and negotiations of his?”

  “I must not and I do not. Belle awakened me to the unsustainable and unsavory qualities of this business a good while ago. As a result, I have on many occasions entreated Mr. Marley to locate other cargoes, other routes.”

  “And?”

  “I fear he has made but slow progress.”

  “You fear? Do you not know?”

  “Mr. Marley deals in complexities and entanglements. I deal in innocent sums.”

  “These are sums of men, Mr. Scrooge. These entanglements are forged with iron chains.”

  Scrooge hesitates, the shadow of something not fully incarnate passing before his eyes.

  “As long as you are linked to those poor sufferers, Mr. Scrooge, you shall not be linked to my daughter.”

  “I understand.”

  “So. You may wait until the passage of the Slave Trade Act, or you may redouble your efforts to convert Mr. Marley in advance. It is up to you.”

  “I shall not wait, Mr. Fairchild. I shall take it up with him the very moment he returns from America.”

  Fairchild harrumphs. He takes one last draw on his pipe, finds the bowl cold and the effort fruitless, and sets it down. “Fair enough,” he says. “When the work of conversion is fully accomplished—when you and our African brothers have been freed from the wicked ties that bind you all—you shall have my permission to save my daughter from the poverty that shall fall upon this family at my death.”

  He says the last as if the notion of his own end delights him without limit.

  Eleven

  “They mean to be married!” shouts Fan before Marley has even reached the gangway. He has not been expecting to see her to begin with, and her impenetrable and contextless greeting disorients him. These last few months his mind has been on anything but the romance between Scrooge and Belle. It has been on anything but romance at all, really, at least not romance of the conventionally approved variety. “Belle and Ebenezer!” she clarifies at the top of her lungs, and it all becomes clear. “They are to be married!”

  She bounds up the gangway in a swirl of cornflower blue, the most brilliant display of life and color anywhere upon this dead drab waterside, and she is so delighted to have spied her long-lost Jacob that she does not notice as he palms a scrap of paper handed him by a statuesque woman to his left. The woman smiles and watches as the two embrace and stumble off toward the quay, upon her face the perfectly equable look of a gambler whose card will surface in time. Her contentment fails only when he crumples her note into a pea-sized ball and scuffs it to tatters in the dirt beneath his shoe. So much for her affair with the mysterious and darkly romantic Dr. Payne.

  Fan is still going on about the as-yet-unscheduled wedding. “Ebenezer forbade my writing you with the news,” she says, “but he could not keep me from checking the listings each day so as to be first when your ship arrived.” She positively beams, her expression that of an impish child who’s gotten away with some petty mischief.

  Marley, having lately seen his share of wickedness, finds himself enchanted by her enthusiasm. “Naughty Fan,” he says, ever the complicit rogue. Her very youth is sufficient to burst something within his brain. Did they even have girls this young in the Americas? None that spoke any language known to a European. Savages, they were. Nothing at all like Fan. While she chatters away he permits himself to inhale her fresh-bathed scent and touch the crisp shoulder of her dress, and he very nearly swoons. “So the old fellow has agreed to tie the knot,” he says when he has collected himself. “Did you ever—?”

  “Miracles happen,” she says, a manifest miracle herself.

  “Perhaps it was my fault. Absent my supervision, the old boy got up to some new tricks.”

  “Quite the opposite, Jacob. You left him far too busy. Why, we barely saw him for Friday suppers.”

  “Perhaps he was dining with Miss Fairchild in secret.”

  Fan shakes her charming head. “He worked until all hours. Mother and I came to fear for his health.”

  “And yet Cupid still found his opportunity. Poor old Scrooge,” he laments, one hand going theatrically to his chest. “Stricken through the heart.”

  “There are worse fates,” says Fan.

  “Name one.”

  “Never knowing love.”

  Marley laughs. “You had your answer at the ready.”

  “I’ve had ever since you departed to think about it.”

  “Fair enough,” says Marley, taking her hand. “Let us fetch my bags, and then I shall go see about your lovesick brother.”

  * * *

  Once he and his partner are alone, Marley gets down to business. “I’m afraid I have brought home more work for you.”

  “I welcome it,” Scrooge answers with an unaccustomed airiness, “provided you resume doing your own share.”

  “I shall.”

  “Then we shall be as content as ever.”

  “You’re a changed man, Ebenezer.”

  Scrooge straightens up, a gleam in his eye. “I am the man I ought to be. The man I should have been from the start.”

  “Can I still rely upon you?” Marley’s question is not entirely idle.

  “Absolutely. So long as you do not rely upon me to forfeit my life for the sake of my ledgers.”

  Marley smiles without entirely meaning it. “God bless you, then. God bless you for a man transformed.”

  Just here is the moment when Scrooge would ordinarily lower his head so as to return to his bookkeeping, but for once he does not. This alteration from his usual rhythm sets Marley on edge. Apparently they are to continue talking. “Should you have any doubts as to your ability to support your intended…” he begins, taking the long way around.

  “I do not, or else I would never have asked for her hand.”

  “Of course, Scrooge. Of course. It was but a figure of speech. A way of introducing the results of my work abroad.”

  “Ah,” says Scrooge, living and learning.

  “For we have been most successful in gaining a foothold in the New World.”

  “Splendid,” says Scrooge, establishing upon his face an expression that says he means it. The look puts Marley on the wrong foot again. He feels as if he is talking with a stranger. What magic has Belle worked upon him?

  “Our investments are quite secure,” he begins.

  “I should hope so. We have invested enough in this American adventure. One-third of our capital, if my accounting is correct.”

  “Which it is, I have no doubt.”

  “A figure of speech, Jacob.” Scrooge chuckles, having caught his partner at his own game. “So what have you done with it?”

  “I’ve diversified.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Multiple accounts, multiple banks, multiple identities.” He withdraws from his pocket a sheaf of papers and flattens them upon Scrooge’s desk. “This will serve as your map to our dealings in the New World.” The pages are crammed with charts, diagrams, arrows, and numbers, all annotated in a hand so small that a mouse would require corrective lenses to make everything ou
t. Scrooge takes it all in over the span of a moment, and his face illuminates.

  “ ’Tis a thing of beauty, Mr. Micawber.”

  “ ’Tis an engine for making money, Mr. Scrooge.”

  “I can see that. And a very powerful one.” He unfurls a long finger and indicates one detail in particular. “I do like this,” he says, tap-tap-tapping with a hard fingertip. “Interest compounded upon overhead compounded upon interest. That’s lovely. It never ends, does it?”

  Marley cedes a self-congratulatory smile. “By the time Monteverdi’s first shipment arrives here, we shall own it entirely.”

  “And when will he learn the truth?”

  “At the final accounting, I should say.”

  “By which you mean the Day of Judgment.”

  “Thereabouts.”

  Scrooge studies a calendar. “Judgment Day aside, by summer’s end our investment will be repaid threefold.”

  “Guaranteed.”

  Scrooge straightens the papers, folds them, and secretes them in a drawer. Then he draws a deep breath, comes to his feet, and extends a gracious hand to Marley. “You, sir,” he says with perfect delight, “are making yourself the savior of my incipient marriage.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “You know Belle’s hatred of the slaving business.”

  “I do.” He puzzles, awaiting clarification.

  “Her father’s, as well.”

  “Yes, yes. But what has this to do with slaving?”

  “Good God, man! Your American operation generates four times the profit margin that slaving ever has! Properly developed, it will free us from that wicked trade entirely!”

  “Ah,” says Marley, just as if he has been doing Scrooge’s bidding all along, divesting them little by little of the odious business. “I take your point.”

  Wordless glee from Scrooge.

  “On the other hand,” says Marley, full of regret, “we shall still have those empty vessels down along the African coast…”

  “Then don’t send them there in the first place. Concentrate only on east-west crossings. Simplify.”

  Marley pulls at his chin. “One hates to put all of one’s eggs in a single basket.”

  “So long as we are engaged in slaving, I shall never be wed.”

  “Poor Ebenezer,” says Marley with the lascivious grin of one to whom never being wed might be terribly appealing.

  “I am quite serious. Those are the terms.”

  “Very well. Let us see how things go.”

  “The threat of abolition is growing serious, too.”

  “Abolition?” He has not been reading the news, or else the news has not been making the transit to North America.

  “The Slave Trade Act. Should it pass, the entire trade will be cut off.”

  Marley reflects. “Then perhaps we have found our exit just in time. Should the act pass, I mean.”

  “Even if it doesn’t pass,” says Scrooge, “the time has come.”

  * * *

  Isn’t this a fine welcome home? Marley fumes at his desk for as long as he can endure being one room away from his reformed partner, sorting bits of paperwork and reacquainting himself with the slim contents of his desk and looking out the window at passersby having a more pleasant time of it than he is on this lovely spring day. He keeps a smile upon his face and whistles a merry tune that he picked up somewhere in the New World, hoping to drive Scrooge mad but failing. By and by he has had enough and he exits without a word of farewell.

  Out on the street, he steams. The nerve of Scrooge to instruct him in his business. The ingratitude of Scrooge to turn his American triumph into a demand for further labor. The softness of Scrooge to let a woman bend him to her will. This is not the man with whom he threw in his lot all those years ago. This is not the Ebenezer Scrooge who minded his own affairs and kept his nose clear of Marley’s. This is a changed man, a potentially dangerous man, a man who must be contained if the enterprise of Scrooge & Marley is to move forward.

  His mind alive with these thoughts, he plunges through the streets like a ship of war. He juts his chin and leans forward as into a gale, taking long, incautious, oblivious strides that part the crowd without regard to the presence of man, woman, or child. Behind him, the pennant of his pigtail streams out in declaration of his warlike intent.

  Thus he roams the city for hours, losing himself several times over and eventually finding his way home without conscious effort, drawn perhaps by the lodestone lure of the riches he has hidden there. At a certain point he simply looks up from the gutter to find himself standing in the darkness outside his own gate. With a screech of old iron he lets himself into the yard and follows the overgrown path to the broad front door. The familiar knocker, an enormous and disused thing of tarnished marine brass, hangs silent as an empty gibbet while he fishes out his key and works it into the lock. All the district roundabout is silent, absent even the nighttime cry of cat or bird or babe. No bell sounds from the pinnacle of some church tower. No toper bellows from the depths of some alehouse. The whole world is dead.

  He pulls the door shut behind him and finds his way up the broad staircase in the comfortable and conservative dark. He has long been profligate with candles, but Scrooge’s insistence upon meddling in his end of the business instills in him a new caution. He has placed altogether too much trust in the man. He has given away more secrets than may prove healthy. From this day forward he shall need to work in greater darkness, and he must begin now.

  Instead of going directly to his quarters he haunts the passages of his deep-shadowed house, creeping from door to door with a ring of keys jangling in his hand, admitting himself one after another to the offices he has established there. Within each he moves from cabinet to desk to closet to secret sliding panel, confirming the presence of every pound note and piece of eight and ducat. All is well, of course, for Scrooge is nothing if not honest. The only funds missing are the fifteen thousand pounds sent to Marley in America, required to facilitate the Monteverdi business. Reassured, he lingers in the last of the offices like some dragon reclining upon his treasure and reflects upon the state of his affairs. Krook & Flite, Squeers & Trotter, Nemo & Hawdon, Mr. Pecksniff, and the remainder of his fictional allies have been true to him as no one else on earth, and from this day forward he shall entrust his fate strictly to them. Scrooge may handle only such harmless calculations as he shall permit him to see. There is already treasure enough behind these false fronts to place Marley—provided he gets his due—within England’s more elevated classes. And when poor old swindled Monteverdi’s ship comes in—well, on that day he shall be a rich man indeed.

  Let Scrooge, with his miserable counting and calculating, settle for a smaller share. He will never be the wiser.

  Twelve

  As spring turns into summer, Marley’s mood brightens. Any day now that enormous cargo of pelts will begin its voyage across the Atlantic, and his fortune will take a turn for the better. Of course he will still bow and scrape to the likes of Bernière, perhaps even more theatrically than ever before, but the charade will acquire an even deeper delight. Imagine it! His wealth will soon rival that of the city’s richest merchants, and he will have accomplished it without once soiling his hands with honest labor.

  The ship upon which the cargo will arrive is not a part of Scrooge & Marley’s secret armada, and so the only word he receives regarding its schedule comes through the network of shippers and financiers that he established in America. They are a charmingly credulous lot—bumpkins really, piteously faithful and forthcoming in their correspondence—and they keep him apprised of their activities on a weekly basis. The Betsy has suffered a delay upon her journey from Africa, they say, thanks to a setback involving the loss of a large percentage of its cargo to dysentery and native stubbornness. The ship’s resourceful captain, finding his hold lightened and his masters’ profits imperiled, has wisely sought additional lading in the West Indies. Thus the delay.

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p; As alive with anticipation as any child on Christmas Eve, he slacks off the pace of his daily work and concentrates on the enjoyment of summer in the great city of London. His thoughts turn to the fairer sex, and they subsequently sort themselves out and settle upon Fan, whom he invites one noontime to share a stroll in Hyde Park. The world, as he has recently seen on an international scale, is crowded with women willing to be partners in whatever adventure he might propose, and for however long his interest might remain aroused. There are always more, and yet there is always Fan. He must seek a middle way of some kind. Good God, he thinks, even her brother, the native calculating machine, would be sorely tried to strike such a balance.

  “I thought you would never write,” she says as she hurries breathless to the gate.

  His only response is an inscrutable half smile.

  “After all, Jacob—you said that I should have until May to decide upon our future.”

  He cocks an eyebrow.

  “And now it’s the middle of June.”

  He squints. “When did I speak of our future? Or of your deciding upon it?”

  “Jacob.” She says his name as if he might be teasing. “You promised it before you sailed to America.”

  “Oh my,” says Marley, offering her his arm. “That was so very long ago, I fear I cannot properly remember.” He sweeps her along the walk like a man sweeping away the past, setting in motion by sheer will some newly minted replacement that suits him better.

  “You remember everything, Jacob. I know your mind.”

  “You do?”

  “I wanted to run off with you, but you proposed marriage instead. You proposed a potential marriage, but marriage still.”

  He stops dead. “I swear, you must be thinking of someone else.”

  Believing that she detects a coy curl to his lip, she throws her arms about his neck—to the vast alarm of a passing matron unprepared for such a display. “Oh, Jacob! You are a great tease.”

  He peels her away and they resume their walk, in closer proximity now than before. “So you have made your decision, then?”