Silas continued on to the docks, arriving at the main entrance just in time for the morning call on. A crowd of several hundred men had gathered in the square before the gates: young and old, English and foreign, all jostling one another for a place near the front. As the gates opened, the calling foremen made their appearance and read out the names of the men they needed.
Silas had to wait for the crowd to thin and the rejected men to slink back home before there was room to press on. A cool morning mist hung low in the air, chilling his bones.
He wasn’t like these men. They were unskilled laborers with little choice than to break their backs unloading cargo for wages that would barely pay their rent. He knew how to navigate and handle rigging; how to splice ropes and mend sails; how to read and write; and how to do sums. He would find better options inside.
And if you don’t, you still have time to declare your love for Miss Williams in exchange for a hundred and twenty pounds.
Where had that thought come from?
No matter how tempting, it was an absurd offer. He needed to find somethingreal, not the fantasy she was living.
The dockyard itself was within a walled enclosure spanning some twenty acres, divided into Eastern and Western docks with distinct areas dedicated to various imports. The air grew pungent,the smells of the cargo layering over one another in waves—tallow, rum, tar, and burnt tobacco. (This last one was ever present, rising in great black plumes from the long chimney of the tobacco warehouse, where they burned the leaves that had been ruined by mold or rot.)
Imposing, yellow-gray brick buildings framed the quay in an orderly row that stood six stories high. Most of these were bonded warehouses to store the wealth of the empire’s colonies—tobacco, sugar, tea, timber, ivory, and all other manner of goods. Silas didn’t stop here to inquire about work. That sort of trade was an ugly business, and not one that he wanted to be a part of.
The bright, ringing sound of a hammer striking metal drew his attention to a middle-aged man on the quay, hammering iron hoops around a large oak cask. The wood staves that formed the rounded sides of the cask trembled slightly with every blow.
Silas’s father was a cooper, though he worked for a brewery rather than a dockyard. Still, crafting kegs couldn’t be that different from crafting barrels to hold whale oil or wine.
If only the old man had seen fit to teach me the trade.
He’d been adamant that Silas wouldn’t need it. He would have been furious to see his son come back to this, despite all his efforts to claw their family up the social ladder.
Perhaps that, more than anything else, was what pushed Silas to approach the man.
“Good morning,” he called.
The cooper acknowledged him with a nod, pausing to wipe the sweat from his brow and catch his breath. “You lookin’ to buy?” He gave Silas a once-over, trying to assess what his role might be.
“No,” he replied swiftly, before he could give rise to any false hopes. “I’m looking for work.”
“Are you a cooper?”
“No, sir.” He seemed to be good at causing disappointment. “But my father was. I grew up watching his craft.”
A shameless exaggeration. Silas couldn’t remember more than bits and pieces of his father’s work—the sounds of beating metal and the scent of toasted wood mingling with the yeast of beer from the brewery. He’d done more growing up at sea than he had at home.
“It takes at least five years to be better than useless, an’ most of my apprentices start young.” The cooper raised up his hammer again, apparently deciding that he’d taken enough time from his work. When he spoke again, Silas had to strain to catch his words between his strikes on the iron hoop that banded the wooden staves together. “How old are you?”
“Four-and-twenty.” An age by which he’d hoped to make lieutenant.
“Bit late to start on somethin’ new.”
Silas stiffened at the frank assessment. Did this man think he was clever to have noted the obvious? “Be that as it may, I need work.”
“Why didn’t your father take you on?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Silas said coolly. This was going about as well as his conversation with Miss Danby at the gambling club.
Steady, he reminded himself.You can’t afford to lose your temper.
“Beg pardon,” he forced himself to add through a stiff jaw. “I’d rather not get into it.”
The cooper shrugged, though only with the shoulder that wasn’t engaged in hammering. “I already have an apprentice.” He glanced up at Silas, his gaze lingering on his arms. “I might find room for a strapping fellow like you, but only if I could be sure you’d stay on long enough to be worth my while. Plenty of folks say they want to learn the craft, but don’t have the eye for it. I’ll not waste my time if you lose heart after a year or two. What’s your name?”
“Silas Corbyn.”
“John Davies,” the cooper replied without formality. “You have someone who can vouch for you? Someone who can prove you’re a man to finish what he starts?”
