Alas, the animosity between Lord Delingpole and the Home Secretary indeed proved to be a barrier. Almost a year would pass before Lord Delingpole succeeded in effecting Mr. Gibson’s transfer from York.
Chapter 5: London, January 1814
John Price paced along Leadenhall Street with his arms wrapped across his chest and his hands tucked in his armpits for warmth. He had not wanted to spend his Saturday half-holiday shut up in his bedchamber, despite the bitter cold of the day, but he could find no companions interested in a lounge at a coffee shop. He decided to make an excursion to his favourite used book shop, and look for some scientific treatises about weather. In London, last month, there had been a fog so thick and dark that anyone going abroad had to carry a lantern. Coachmen hired beggars to guide the horses through the streets. A strong wind arising out of the north blew the fog away but brought with it temperatures so severe that the Thames was frozen solid between London and Blackfriars bridge. He had heard that some men of science claimed the strange weather afflicting the globe was as a result of recent severe earthquakes in America.
Another theory held that a variation of the rotation of the earth on its axis—
“John! Hey! Is that you? Slow down, will you! Hey!”
John paused, and was turning to see who wanted to speak to John and to confirm that he was in fact the John the person wanted to speak to, when a mighty slap on his back almost sent him sprawling to the pavement.
“It IS you, then, by g-d! Brother John!”
John looked up and beheld a young man with a bronzed countenance and brawny frame.
“Richard?”
For it was indeed Richard, the middle son of the six Price boys, whom John had seen only once in the past eight years, now grown to manhood.
“John, you are the runt of the litter, aren’t you now? You haven’t gained an inch since we were in grammar school.”
Richard grabbed John’s hand in a hearty handshake, exclaimed over the softness of that hand, then threw his arm around John’s slender shoulders, and proposed that they repair instantly to a public house to toast their unexpected reunion.
After being half-carried to the King’s Arms on Lower Thames Street, John listened to a lengthy discourse from Richard on his great good fortune on having been taken into the East India Company—the “Com’pn’y”—how it was preferable to any other service on the seas, including the King’s Navy, for superior accommodations, certainty of promotion, and guaranteed riches. “The best thing old Sir Thomas ever did,” declared Richard, “was place me in the way to be taken aboard the Neptune in the year five. I have been promoted to third mate while Sam is still a midshipman and you have been scribbling away at the police office.”
“I shall be promoted one day,” John replied stiffly. “From inventory clerk to police clerk, or perhaps to river constable.”
“Ooooh, that’s grand then, truly. Bashing thieves over the head with your cudgel. Here’s to your good fortune.”
“Richard, you must have arrived back in London before the freeze-up,” John observed. “When did you make port?”
“Oh, aye!” agreed Richard. “Late October, it was, after the very devil of a journey back from Canton, had to put in at the Cape for repairs, and then again at St. Helena, and now the good old Neptune must be patched together again before we can be off! More holes in her than a tea-strainer!”
“The weather has been especially peculiar this year,” John remarked.
Richard scoffed. What was a little ice and fog to a man such as himself who had sailed in the teeth of a typhoon, or survived the monsoons of Bengal, or the blistering heat of Cathay?
The more Richard spoke, the more his voice, expressions, and gestures reminded John most powerfully of their late father, and the recollection was not altogether agreeable. But he gave a sudden start when the thought occurred— and he asked his brother, did the news of their father’s demise reach Richard in Cathay?
“Oh, aye,” Richard answered, draining his mug of ale and filling it again from the jug placed before them. “I got a letter from Fan. How Fan did carry on for a man she hardly knew! ‘Devoted husband and father’! Well,” Richard laughed, “the old bugger devoted himself to climbing on our mother enough times, so I suppose you might say he was a devoted father. Taught us all to love the sea, though, did he not? So, how is mother? Is the old girl hard up?”
“Did you not send her a letter?” John sniffed, aware that he himself had not written for several months.
“Well, if I wrote to her, and let on I was here in London she would be pressing me to give her some money. So, does she have enough to keep herself on?”
“I think so, because our uncle—”
“Good old Sir Thomas, then!” said Richard with satisfaction. “We shall drink his health, and long life to him. For I have nothing to send her.”
“But you just said you were better paid than William—”
“What? And don’t you suppose I know how to spend it as well as make it?” Richard laughed. “I have a little friend in Canton—-mind, do not tell mother. Let’s have another, shall we?”
John felt in his pocket, to see if he had enough coins to pay for their drinks, as it suddenly dawned on him that as the elder brother, he
