Dermot said angrily: “Are the coal heavers always to be robbed by you undertakers, then?”

If Delaney was offended he did not show it. “Look around you, me boy,” he said mildly, indicating with a vague wave the silver coffee service, the carpeted room, and the bustling business that paid for it all. “I didn’t get this by being fair to people.”

Mack said: “What’s to stop us going to the captains ourselves, and undertaking to unload ships?”

“Everything,” said Delaney. “Now and again there comes along a coal heaver like you, McAsh, with a bit more gumption than the rest, and he wants to run his own gang, and cut out the undertaker and do away with liquor payments and all, and all. But there’s too many people making too much money out of the present arrangement.” He shook his head. “You’re not the first to protest against the system, McAsh, and you won’t be the last.”

Mack was disgusted by Delaney’s cynicism, but he felt the man was telling the truth. He could not think of anything else to say or do. Feeling defeated, he went to the door, and Dermot and Charlie followed.

“Take my advice, McAsh,” Delaney said. “Be like me. Get yourself a little tavern and sell liquor to coal heavers. Stop trying to help them and start helping yourself. You could do well. You’ve got it in you, I can tell.”

“Be like you?” Mack said. “You’ve made yourself rich by cheating your fellow men. By Christ, I wouldn’t be like you for a kingdom.”

As he went out he was gratified to see Delaney’s face darken in anger at last.

But his satisfaction lasted no longer than it took to close the door. He had won an argument and lost everything else. If only he had swallowed his pride and accepted the undertakers’ system, he would at least have work to do tomorrow morning. Now he had nothing—and he had put fifteen other men, and their families, in the same hopeless position. The prospect of bringing Esther to London was farther away than ever. He had handled everything wrong. He was a damn fool.

The three men sat in one of the bars and ordered beer and bread for their breakfast. Mack reflected that he had been arrogant to look down on the coal heavers for accepting their lot dumbly. In his mind he had called them oxen, but he was the ox.

He thought of Caspar Gordonson, the radical lawyer who had started all this by telling Mack his legal rights. If I could get hold of Gordonson, Mack thought, I’d let him know what legal rights are worth.

The law was useful only to those who had the power to enforce it, it seemed. Coal miners and coal heavers had no advocate at court. They were fools to talk of their rights. The smart people ignored right and wrong and took care of themselves, like Cora and Peg and Buck Delaney.

He picked up his tankard then froze with it halfway to his mouth. Caspar Gordonson lived in London, of course. Mack could get hold of him. He could let him know what legal rights were worth—but perhaps he could do better than that. Perhaps Gordonson would be the coal heavers’ advocate. He was a lawyer, and he wrote constantly about English liberty: he ought to help.

It was worth a try.

The fatal letter Mack received from Caspar Gordonson had come from an address in Fleet Street. The Fleet was a filthy stream running into the Thames at the foot of the hill upon which St. Paul’s Cathedral stood. Gordonson lived in a three-story brick row house next to a large tavern.

“He must be a bachelor,” said Dermot

“How do you know?” Charlie Smith asked.

“Dirty windows, doorstep not polished—there’s no lady in this house.”

A manservant let them in, showing no surprise when they asked for Mr. Gordonson. As they entered, two well-dressed men were leaving, continuing as they went a heated discussion that involved William Pitt, the Lord Privy Seal, and Viscount Weymouth, a secretary of State. They did not pause in their argument but one nodded to Mack with absentminded politeness, which surprised him greatìy, since gentlemen normally ignored low-class people.

Mack had imagined a lawyer’s house to be a place of dusty documents and whispered secrets, in which the loudest noise was the slow scratching of pens. Gordonson’s home was more like a printer’s shop. Pamphlets and journals in string-tied bundles were stacked in the hall, the air smelled of cut paper and printing ink, and the sound of machinery from below stairs suggested that a press was being operated in the basement.

The servant stepped into a room off the hall. Mack wondered if he was wasting his time. People who wrote clever articles in journals probably did not dirty their hands by getting involved with workingmen. Gordonson’s interest in liberty might be strictly theoretical. But Mack had to try everything. He had led his coal heaving gang into rebellion, and now they were all without work: he had to do something.

A loud and shrill voice came from within. “McAsh? Never heard of him! Who is he? You don’t know? Then ask! Never mind—”

A moment later a balding man with no wig appeared in the doorway and peered at the three coal heavers through spectacles. “I don’t think I know any of you,” he said. “What do you want with me?”

It was a discouraging introduction, but Mack was not easily disheartened, and he said spiritedly: “You gave me some very bad advice recently but, despite that, I’ve come back for more.”

There was a pause, and Mack thought he had given offense; then Gordonson laughed heartily. In a friendly voice he said: “Who are you, anyway?”

“Malachi McAsh, known as Mack. I was a coal miner at Heugh, near Edinburgh, until you wrote and told me I was a free man.”

Understanding lit up Gordonson’s expression. “You’re the liberty-loving miner! Shake hands, man.”

Mack introduced Dermot and Charlie.

“Come in, all of you. Have a glass of wine?”

They followed him into an untidy room furnished with a writing table and walls of bookcases. More publications were piled on the floor, and printers’ proofs were scattered across the table. A fat old dog lay on a stained rug in front of the fire. There was a ripe smell that must have come from the rug or the dog, or both. Mack lifted an open law book from a chair and sat down. “I won’t take any wine, thank you,” he said. He wanted his wits about him.

“A cup of coffee, perhaps? Wine sends you to sleep but coffee wakes you up.” Without waiting for a reply he said to the servant: “Coffee for everyone.” He turned back to Mack. “Now, McAsh, why was my advice to you so wrong?”

Mack told him the story of how he had left Heugh. Dermot and Charlie listened intently: they had never heard this. Gordonson lit a pipe and blew clouds of tobacco smoke, shaking his head in disgust from time to time. The coffee came as Mack was finishing.

“I know the Jamissons of old—they’re greedy, heartless, brutal people,” Gordonson said with feeling. “What did you do when you got to London?”

“I became a coal heaver.” Mack related what had happened in the Sun tavern last night.

Gordonson said: “The liquor payments to coal heavers are a long-standing scandal.”

Mack nodded. “I’ve been told I’m not the first to protest.”

“Indeed not. Parliament actually passed a law against the practice ten years ago.”

Mack was astonished. “Then how does it continue?”

“The law has never been enforced.”

“Why not?”

“The government is afraid of disrupting the supply of coal. London runs on coal—nothing happens here without it: no bread is made, no beer brewed, no glass blown, no iron smelted, no horses shod, no nails manufactured—”

“I understand,” Mack interrupted impatiently. “I ought not to be surprised that the law does nothing for men such as us.”

“Now, you’re wrong about that,” Gordonson said in a pedantic tone. “The law makes no decisions. It has no will of its own. It’s like a weapon, or a tool: it works for those who pick it up and use it.”