by H. G. Parry
“Stephen’s flag ban,” Wilberforce said. His mind had been very far from Parliament, and for a second he struggled to recall it. “Hold on, I think that’s going through—”
“Tomorrow,” Pitt supplied. He smiled very slightly. “I don’t know why you always think I don’t know these things.”
“I don’t see why I need to be there, though,” Wilberforce said. “It will go through. Nobody has any reason to oppose it.”
“Nobody except the MPs who, unbeknownst to them, were being guided by the enemy until a few short hours ago. The enemy who almost certainly knew what that motion was actually about. They may not know their real reasons for wanting to oppose it, but that won’t stop them from standing up and doing so.”
“Someone will argue for the bill against the opposition if I’m not there.”
“They will. But they won’t know what’s behind the opposition, and they won’t be prepared. And they’re not William Wilberforce. This is your battle. It always has been.”
Wilberforce shook his head, trying to gather his thoughts. He had thought of nothing more than having a very long rest that afternoon, but that was beside the point.
“But—I’d have to start almost immediately for the village again.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t think about that, but… Forester won’t be here until late this afternoon, even if he gets the letter at once. It might go astray, and then he won’t come at all. I can’t leave you here alone.” He didn’t, though he wouldn’t say it, even much like the idea of leaving him with Anton Forester.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you can. It’s my home; I can spend a few hours in it without company.”
“It’s not just without company. There’s not a soul in the place, and you’re exhausted.”
“Not quite. I will be if I have to argue with you about this for much longer.” He shivered, and Wilberforce on sudden suspicion reached out and put his hand to his forehead. His friend shook it off impatiently, but not before he’d felt the heat.
“You’re burning up.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“Oh, excuse me. You’re somewhat feverish. Is that understatement enough?”
“Better.” He shook his head. “I appreciate your concern, truly, but it makes no difference.”
“Of course it does!”
“No, it doesn’t. I promise you, I’m not going to die in the next few hours because you leave me here alone. But even if I knew for a fact I would be dead by nightfall, I would still ask you to go. And that isn’t an act of self-sacrifice. Have you considered that every spellbound slave across the British Empire has spent years being commanded to rise up and take revenge? Have you considered what might happen if somebody else finds a way to use that command as the enemy did?”
“It’s only one bill,” Wilberforce said, but his protest sounded weak in his own ears. “It won’t end slavery; it won’t end spellbinding; it may not even end the slave trade.”
“I know. But with the enemy dead, it’s the best chance we’ve had in twenty years, and if it fails, we may not have another. The difference between it failing and succeeding may be your presence. For that reason alone, if no other, you need to be present at that debate.” He shook his head, very slightly. “Forget about the danger to Britain, if you like. Forget about the enemy. Fina has just reached halfway across the world and saved Great Britain and Europe. Do you truly want to tell her that we didn’t do everything we could to save her people? Do you really think we can justify letting the slightest opportunity pass now?”
“You’re right. God forgive me, but of course you are. You can stop getting all parliamentary about it.” He took a deep breath and tried to collect himself. “Very well. Good. I’ll leave immediately.”
“Thank you,” Pitt said with a sigh. He sank back down. “You can get a carriage at the inn—if they tell you that you have to wait until this evening, tell them you’re William Wilberforce and you’re acting on behalf of the prime minister of Great Britain. Say it haughtily, for once in your life. You’ll get there in time.”
“I will. Are you sure I can’t send someone from the village—?”
“I’m not here,” Pitt reminded him. “I’m at Putney Heath.”
“Even though the enemy is dead?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Very well. I’ll go. I’m sure Forester will be here soon. Just… try to rest.”
“While you try to save the country,” he said, with a trace of bitterness. “It’s not exactly a fair allocation of duties, is it?”
“You spoke for me in the House of Commoners when I couldn’t do so,” Wilberforce reminded him. “Years and years ago.”
“That’s true,” Pitt said absently. “I’d forgotten.” He shivered again, just once, and closed his eyes.
“Are you cold?”
“A little.”
“Well. It’s England,” Wilberforce said, and got a very faint smile in response. It was as though he had already gone somewhere else.
It took Wilberforce a while to find another blanket, but he eventually found one someone had left on a chair in another room. He took it back to where his friend was lying and laid it over him carefully.
“Thank you,” Pitt said without opening his eyes. “Now please go and abolish the slave trade.”
“I will,” Wilberforce promised, and left once again for the village.
Henry Thornton sat in the House of Commoners on Monday afternoon, waiting for the crowds to settle around him and the Speaker to call order. Although it was only five o’clock, it was dark outside, and the cold wind sliced through the assembly like a knife. It was a relatively thin assembly, even though Parliament had opened only at the end of last week. The prime minister was still absent due to what was proving to be an unusually long illness, and the entire House had a feel of treading water until he returned.
More important for Thornton, Wilberforce wasn’t beside him. This worried him more than he had let on to anyone. He had no very clear idea of where he was, except that he wasn’t in his house, Barbara was going about her days in quiet desperation, and the Wilberforce children were bewildered and miserable. There had been a letter delivered to Thornton on the morning of his cousin’s disappearance, but all it said was that he had been called away, he would explain when he returned, and in the meantime could you, my dear Henry, look after my family, who are the joy of my life?
Thornton had done his best. But that had made him far from easy. He almost hadn’t come to the House today—he rarely spoke anyway, preferring to do his work on various committees—but the bill regarding the use of neutral flags was being voted on, and if his vote was needed, he would never have forgiven himself for staying away. So he sat in the House of Commoners, and worried.
Then, without warning, a voice he hadn’t been expecting to hear called his name, and a very familiar figure was squeezing past the seats toward him.
“Any room here for me?” Wilberforce asked.
“My dear Wilber!” Thornton greeted him, with both surprise and pleasure. He shifted immediately. “Sit down, quickly. Good to see you.”
He frowned as his cousin slipped into the seat next to him, thanking the person to the other side. Up close, Wilberforce looked absolutely exhausted. “Are you quite all right?”
“I’m too tired to say for certain,” Wilberforce replied cheerfully. “I just arrived back in London a little under an hour ago. I stopped to wash and change clothes at your town house, by the way. I hope you don’t mind. There was no time to go back to mine, and I knew I had some clothes there from the last time I stayed.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” Thornton said as Wilberforce paused to stifle a yawn. “But what on earth are you doing here? Where have you been?”
“I promise I’ll tell you all I can,” Wilberforce said. “For the present, would you please do something for me?”
“Of course.”
“If I seem to be missing something important, p
articularly if I seem to be drifting off to sleep, please poke me very sharply. I’m relying on you.”
“If you want me to,” Thornton said slowly. “But… are you sure you shouldn’t just go home?”
“I’m sure I want to, but yes, I’m sure I shouldn’t.” He yawned properly this time; he clearly couldn’t help it. “Oh dear. I hope this session isn’t too boring. I won’t last, and Pitt would kill me.”
“Ah, I see. This is one of those things the two of you do with mysterious injunctions to other parties to just trust you both.”
“Yes. Please just trust us both.”
“Of course. Consider yourself poked sharply.” He paused. “How is Pitt? I’m assuming you’ve seen him.”
Wilberforce hesitated, then shook his head. His face was suddenly grave. “I don’t know,” he said. “He was alive when I left him.”
Thornton felt his eyes widen. “Good Lord. Is it that serious?”
“I hope not. He might be better after a long rest.”
“He’s already had one. The government are relying on him being back by the end of the month at the latest. If he’s not, they won’t be able to hold on.”
“He knows that.”
“Of course he does.” Thornton shook his head. “Poor Pitt.”
The sitting was called to order, and Wilberforce was spared having to talk further. Apart from anything else, he was too tired to waste words, and too naturally talkative to do anything else.
It was, Thornton considered, a very boring sitting: mostly formalities and inconsequential bills to be voted on to aid the war effort. Wilberforce, however, did not show any signs of drifting, either into daydreams or into sleep. His eyes, heavy-lidded and dark circled but still sharp and intelligent, flitted from speaker to speaker, and once he leaped to his feet and spoke himself.
“Was that it?” Thornton whispered as he sat back down.
“No,” Wilberforce said, with a slightly embarrassed laugh. “No, I just had an opinion about that.”
Thornton laughed, too, and felt very fond of him.
The motion to give the Royal Navy the authority to seize and detain ships flying neutral flags was raised amid the other war business. All had been expecting it, and most had read Stephen’s book, so there was a general murmur of approval even before the first speaker rose to argue for its implementation.
All was going perfectly, Thornton allowed himself to think after yet another politician, this one far from an abolitionist, rose to support the motion. Wilberforce, however, still listened, and he was sitting pressed close enough to Thornton that the tension in his small frame was palpable.
Sure enough, just as the speeches looked about to wind up, Colonel Tarleton rose to his feet.
“Mr. Speaker, I would like to protest,” he said. Tarleton was, of first importance to them, still one of the leading anti-abolitionists; beyond that, he was a violent man who hated the Clapham Saints very personally. Right now, he was angry. “Has it occurred to anyone what effect such a motion would have on the trade of our own nation? Indeed, the effect on the slave trade would be so profound that I must infer that this bill is the work of the abolitionists, coming at us from a side wind.”
Thornton caught his breath and glanced at Wilberforce. To his surprise, as Tarleton spoke on and as he finished, Wilberforce made no move to speak whatsoever. Instead, he sat there, quietly attentive and interested, but seemingly with no desire to either confess or deny.
Instead, when Tarleton had sat down once more, a plump, bushy-eyebrowed figure in a yellow waistcoat got immediately to his feet. It was Charles Fox.
“I only wish that the bill may indeed have the effect on the slave trade that some gentlemen seem to apprehend,” Fox said, with perfect innocence. Thornton noticed, however, that he carefully did not look at Wilberforce. “Unfortunately, I cannot flatter myself in the hope that it will produce such a consequence; if, of course, I could apprehend such a tendency, instead of that being with me an argument against the bill, it is one which would render me ten times more enamored of it.”
Thornton felt his mouth dropping open and clenched his teeth tight to stop it. Wilberforce sat next to him, quiet and still. It was as though what was happening was of no importance to him at all.
The bill was passed almost unanimously as the clock outside struck one, and amid the satisfied clapping, the Speaker dismissed the House. Fox looked across at Wilberforce before he rose, and winked.
Wilberforce stayed where he was, his usual restless activity finally dulled. He looked as though a lot were suddenly catching up to him all at once. But he returned Fox’s wink with a smile of his own.
Thornton checked everybody was out of earshot before he turned to Wilberforce. “You spoke to Fox before the session,” he said. It was almost an accusation, but a delighted one.
“I found him at his club,” Wilberforce confided. “I thought about it all the way to London, what I would say if somebody did object to the bill on the correct grounds. Pitt and I had reason to believe somebody would. And I came to the conclusion that the best thing I could do would be to remain absolutely silent, as we planned all along. Somebody had to refute it, though, so I thought it best to let Fox in on it.”
“You could have said what Fox said.”
“Anything I said would have drawn the anti-abolitionists’ attention like moths to a flame,” Wilberforce said. “Besides, Fox is a much better liar than I. He loved this.”
“So will Pitt,” Thornton said. “He’ll be so annoyed to have missed it: you working with Fox on something you all want as much as each other.”
Wilberforce laughed. “I’ll tell him he’s free to stay away as long as he likes. Fox and I get on very nicely together in his absence.”
“Is that… Was that why you came back?” Thornton asked after a second’s hesitation. “I mean… is everything now as it should be?”
“Yes,” Wilberforce said. He sounded very weary, but very content. “I think everything is going to be perfectly all right now.”
“Excellent,” Thornton said. He stood. “Come on. We’d both best be getting home. Barbara will be so pleased to see you. I’ve a carriage waiting outside—would you like to share it?”
Wilberforce blinked as if recalling himself. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, thank you very much.”
“Come on, then,” Thornton said. “Let me take you home.”
PART FIVE
SUNRISE
England
23 January 1806
It was a black, bitter-cold January night. Wilberforce was warm under the covers of his bed, but he could feel the frigidity of the air on his face as he stared up at the ceiling. In the hallway, he heard the clock strike: half past two. He’d arrived home by midnight: the House of Commoners was still holding back somewhat while the prime minister remained absent, and he had tried to avoid sleeping in town away from Barbara lately. Since his return, she had understandably clung to him tightly.
The official celebration of Queen Charlotte’s birthday had taken place a few days earlier. Wilberforce had gone along for a few hours, partly from social obligation, and partly in the hope of seeing Lady Hester. The Victory had made its delayed return the week before, with Hester and Fina safely on board, and the two of them had been caught up in the swirl of celebrations for Trafalgar and state mourning for Nelson that ensued. Wilberforce had seen them both when they had first arrived, but only sporadically since. Hester was indeed there, clothed magnificently in green and black velvet studded with rubies and with her dark chestnut hair caught up in a headdress of feathers and diamonds. Despite her style, she looked grave and preoccupied, and her smile when she saw Wilberforce lacked its customary mischief.
“Mr. Pitt knows all about the bill going through,” she assured him before he could ask. “It was a tremendous load from his mind. Just as well, as news from the war is still not looking promising.”
“We never expected that to change immediately,” Wilberforce said. “It will in the
end, even if it takes years. How is he? Is he truly at Putney now?”
“He’s truly at Putney,” Hester confirmed. “He insisted on it, to be close to town while Parliament is in session.”
Wilberforce nodded. She had not answered the first part of his question, and he didn’t press her. “Can I call on him there?”
“If you can brave the horde of physicians,” Hester said, making a sour face. “People keep calling them in, and they keep everyone else out. I’m not allowed to see him, if you can credit that. And of course not a single one knows what’s truly amiss.”
“What about Forester?”
“He says there’s nothing more he can do,” Hester said. “Either the elixir will work, or it won’t. I don’t believe that for a moment, of course, but he’s difficult to budge, and my uncle told me he was quite right and not to threaten him with violence.”
“I thought you said you weren’t permitted to visit your uncle.”
“I don’t usually wait for someone to permit me to do things before I do them. In this case, I’m not sorry. If you come tomorrow, I could sneak you in the back as well.”
With anyone else that would be a joke. Hester was deadly serious. “Thank you,” Wilberforce said, “but I’ll write and ask for permission. I wouldn’t want to delay his recovery.”
He had written the very next morning and had been politely but unmistakably denied by a doctor. A few people had been admitted for urgent business, probably at Pitt’s insistence. He wondered if Pitt had agreed to have his visit refused, and decided that he hadn’t. After all, Hester was being kept out too, and Pitt had never refused Hester anything.
Beside him in bed, his wife stirred and shifted drowsily to face him. “Wilber? Are you still awake?”
“Yes,” he whispered, a little guiltily. “Sorry, did I wake you?”
“No. I could just tell. Are you worried about something?”
“Not worried,” he said, not entirely truthfully. “Uneasy.”
“About Mr. Pitt?”