The Emperor's Gold

by Robert Wilton

  [THE BURY AND NORWICH POST, 3RD AUGUST 1805]

  Late in the afternoon of the 3rd, Tom Roscarrock was seen to walk slowly into the coffee house on Drury Lane. Tiredness was crowding behind his eyes after two days’ travelling, his thighs were dull and stiff after the hours on horseback, and he scowled at those servants and customers who slowed his path to the corner table. He let out a soft hiss of discomfort as his saddle-sore backside settled on the chair, and growled for something hot to drink.

  Gabriel Chance, itinerant prophet, was heading directly for London – and might already be in the capital. As Roscarrock had reckoned, the tailor of Bury St Edmunds, briefly Chance’s host, had been lying when he’d claimed to have no idea where his fugitive guest was headed. Roscarrock had implied that he knew more than he did, and had implied that he was more predisposed to violence than in truth he felt up to after a day’s travel, and the tailor’s breathless denials had collapsed in five minutes. Before heading off to address the crowd, Chance had told his host than any letters coming for him should be forwarded to the Mermaid Tavern in Hackney.

  After such an investment of time on the road, it had felt underwhelming.

  Roscarrock had thanked the tailor politely for his newfound honesty, and equally politely described the range of terrors that would be exacted on him by an outraged Government and a vengeful God should he fail to forward any future correspondence for Chance to Mr Morrison Cope, at the Admiralty. Then he’d turned his horse back to the south again, and London.

  Bury St Edmunds had showed little trace of the rampage of a few nights before. The misrule of those few dark hours had been absorbed by the town and forgotten by the inhabitants. He wondered how many men were still slumped in gaol waiting for the Magistrates to decide whether the unrest was better punished or quietly consigned to history.

  It felt good to be out of the press of streets and into fields again. He’d stopped for supper at a roadside inn, but it had been so grim and dirty a place that he’d slept out under the warm stars instead, horse tethered to a tree and the soft swell of a grass bank comfortably under his neck.

  But Gabriel Chance was not staying at the Mermaid Tavern in Hackney. Roscarrock had gone straight there, as a travelling and sympathetic friend of the tailor keen to catch up with him. The indifferent ignorance of the surly individual behind the counter as to Chance’s presence or even existence – coupled with the nagging possibility that two days’ effort might only have produced another lie from the tailor of Bury – had hit like the seasickness he hadn’t felt in twenty years.

  Roscarrock had stalked out of the Mermaid quickly and gracelessly, anger scalding the tiredness that ate at him. He had checked how the roads lay around the tavern, then found an unobtrusive spot under some trees and watched the building for an hour; but there was no sign of hurried departure or any reaction at all to his interest in Chance.

  The Mermaid seemed too elaborate a lie for the tailor in Bury to have conjured himself or concocted with Chance. In which case, sometime after leaving the attic room to go to inspire the crowd with his holy sedition, Chance had decided to change his plans. Or had he been prompted to by someone else? By the dragoons’ attack?

  Roscarrock had only started to think clearly at the end of his vigil outside the Mermaid Tavern, watching Hackney’s drowsy afternoon activities drifting past him, the routines of the village and the first returning travellers from the markets in nearby London. By changing plan, Chance had cut himself loose from the frail lifeline of his wife’s letters, and he’d have needed strong reason to do that; Roscarrock had a sense of their importance to the itinerant prophet. In fact, he surely wouldn’t cut himself loose: if the landlord at the Mermaid hadn’t been asked to forward any letters, then Chance would have to come back to collect them. Jessel would need to post a watcher in the tavern.

  The change of plan, the abandoning of his system, and the proximity to London all suggested that Chance was now focused on some specific action, and that his timescale was shortening. What, beyond the presentation of a petition to Parliament, was planned for the 6th?

  As Roscarrock had stood up, brushing the dust off his thighs and reaching for his horse, one final possibility had struck. If Chance had been intending to stop in Hackney, rather than disappearing into London just a mile further on, then it was for a reason – for someone to meet. That person or people, and that meeting, might still be here.

  At the Dolphin Inn, where he and Jessel had met Phil, the informer, Roscarrock left a message for the Government spy. Then he’d hauled himself back onto his horse, and ridden on to London and the coffee house.

  Roscarrock hadn’t lost hope in the possibility of progress. But, slumped back against the coffee house wall, gazing through the bumps and evasions of the circulating customers and servants, mouth soured and head unrevived by coffee, he’d been too tired even to consider it.

  So when Phil’s face suddenly distorted itself against the coffee house window and peered in, Roscarrock found it hard for a moment to convince his brain that his visit to Hackney and the squashed features through the glass were both real. He dropped his indifferent glance back to his empty cup, and waited.

  Phil slipped in as if part of the street dust. He had not opened the door himself, and those who had done so did not seem to give way as they left, but Phil was inside as the door closed. Roscarrock let the front feet of his chair drop loudly to the wooden floor, and still he didn’t look up.

  ‘You waiting for anyone, mister?’ Now he looked up, and Phil was standing above him indicating the unoccupied chair across the table. He shook his head.

  ‘Got your message, Mr, er, Grey.’ Roscarrock just nodded. Phil sat as if making no more than polite conversation, voice low. ‘Mr Albert not here?’

  ‘Audience with the King.’

  Something flickered around Phil’s prim mouth.

  ‘You’re right, Mr Grey. Something’s on tonight.’ Roscarrock’s tiredness evaporated with the words. ‘Meeting of our little reforming group in Hackney.’

  ‘Had you planned to tell us about it?’

  ‘Honestly, Mr Grey, the meeting’s a one-off. No messing.’ Phil was in his professional business manner, and Roscarrock believed him. ‘I wouldn’t have known about it – not everyone’s asked, I think. But after you tipped me off, I asked a couple of acquaintances, casual-like, and it turns out there’s a group coming together.’

  ‘Who? The hotheads?’

  ‘You could say. Don’t know who exactly, but Ted Wass’ll be one, him as was after muskets when we met last time. And here’s the thing: we’re meeting in no normal place.’ Roscarrock just looked the question. ‘Basement of the old church. Ten tonight.’ There was life in Roscarrock’s eyes now, anticipation near his face. ‘Want me to go? You and Mr Albert going to be keeping an eye?’

  ‘You go. And yes, we’ll keep an eye.’

  Phil leant forwards, and there was none of his usual fluency. ‘Serious, Mr Grey: you need to look out for me. If this is getting bigger, then I’m—’

  ‘We’ll look out for you.’

  On the 3rd of August, the Vicar of St Wulfram’s Church in Grantham received a letter from the Bishop of Lincoln. It informed him that certain influential local residents had raised significant concerns about his attitudes on grounds both social and theological – there were no specifics in the letter, and certainly no mention of the Vicar’s regular discussion meetings with the late Reverend Forster and others. The Bishop was naturally extremely worried by this situation, particularly at a time of such disquiet nationally. The Vicar was consequently relieved of his position in the parish of St Wulfram’s, with immediate effect, and ordered to London for consultations on whether, and where, he might appropriately find a position in the future.

  A week later, the Bishop would receive a short reply from the Vicar’s housekeeper. The note said that the housekeeper did not know what the Bishop’s letter had contained, but that she felt obliged to warn the Bishop that there would
be a delay in response because the Vicar was currently undertaking a tour of north country churches expected to last several weeks, and was not contactable before his return.

  London’s bells had already clanged nine across the great hive of the city before Jessel reached the coffee house. He’d gratefully swallowed a mug before one of the servants brought him the message from Tom Roscarrock. Jessel glanced at it, swore loud enough to silence the whole room, and ran for the street. It would be ten at the earliest before he could gather any soldiers, and even then he’d be well short of Hackney.

  In a stone chamber below the world, seven men were considering revolution, like children debating whether to steal apples. One was a blacksmith, two were shopkeepers, one was a weaver, one considered himself a writer but was unemployed, one was an itinerant tailor, and one a Government spy.

  Phil, the informer, was affecting a slouch in a whining chair, but he could feel every muscle screaming his worry. He’d met these men before, most of them. It had never been a particularly friendly group – he didn’t make friends easily – but it had always been what you might call respectful. There’d been a civility – a sort of tradesman’s politeness – to their empty discussions; even drink had made them congenial rather than heated. Tonight was different. Wass, one of the shopkeepers, was brutal angry about something – business, or family perhaps, it wasn’t clear – and snapping at anyone whose drive didn’t match his own. Phil had heard from one of the others that Miles, the weaver, was on the verge of losing everything, and desperation showed in his face and his words. They were all edgier, and the weird setting wasn’t helping.

  The old church had been pulled down just a couple of years before, too small for the growing population. But the tower still stood, vast and odd over the village. The rest was a wasteland of fallen stone, left while they decided what to do with the site and dwindling night by night as fragments of church were carted away to become new bridges or houses or walls. Among the foundations of the church there had been a storeroom, and it remained beneath the rubble, accessible if you knew which truncated blocks of carving to squeeze between and which boards to lift. Phil had known the place – done a couple of deals himself down in this convenient dungeon – and these men knew it well. They’d crept here individually and in pairs with the first of the darkness, uncovering lanterns only as they hunched down the worn stone steps; now the lanterns made distorted shadows of their plotting in the corners and picked out nasty, glistening streams of moisture on the walls.

  ‘Tuesday might be the chance to—’

  ‘I’ve had it with “might be”, mate.’ Wass spat the last word, vicious. ‘We’ve been talking for years, and it hasn’t done nothing. Go on talking for years more; it’ll do nothing.’

  ‘It’s last chance for me.’ Miles, sullen and empty.

  ‘I can’t be waiting on a bunch of Suffolk peasants. We have to make sure that this march of theirs changes things once and for all.’

  One of the lanterns flickered suddenly, and the faces flickered with it and the shadows behind them shivered. The seven were gathered around a long thin table, the only significant furniture in the storeroom apart from a crude cupboard in the corner. Sitting on a mixture of chairs and boxes and lumps of stone, the conspirators glowed in the gloom.

  ‘Maybe it—’

  ‘I told you, mate. No “maybes”! Maybe isn’t cutting it anymore.’ Wass turned to the little man sitting silent and compact next to him, and his voice softened. ‘What do you say?’

  Phil was sitting at the other end of the table from the little man, next to the big cupboard, and watched him uneasily. This was their special guest; this was the tailor, and the tailor unnerved him.

  Gabriel Chance said, ‘Passivity and fear can be crimes against the Lord’s will, as much as oppression and the denial of our rights.’

  ‘Damn right. There’ve been petitions before and they’ve done nothing.’ Wass looked around the gloom. ‘The march has to become a proper riot, and that means the Suffolk boys have got to be panicked, and that means the soldiers have got to be panicked first.’

  The blacksmith said, ‘My cousin’s a porter at the Admiralty. With him, we could arrange a little surprise maybe. That would get them panicking all right.’

  Phil listened to the words rolling slow from the face, watched in alarm the madness blooming.

  ‘You mean killing?’

  ‘Maybe I do and maybe I don’t.’ The blacksmith was incapable of haste. ‘Scare them, anyhow.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want viol—’

  ‘Well I do, and we’re all in it together now.’ Wass reached for the object on the table in front of him. ‘Violence is just what’s needed.’ He grabbed at the object, and Phil’s eyes widened. This was the blacksmith’s contribution to the lunacy: he’d brought two swords with him, and they shimmered like waiting snakes on the table. Not normal swords, either, not sabres pinched from a couple of drunk soldiers. He’d made these himself, according to the limits of his skill and his imagination: two heavy, crude broadswords.

  Wass gripped the cord-wound hilt of one of the swords with both hands, and lifted it a few inches from the table with difficulty. ‘What do you say to violence, Mr Chance?’ His eyes stayed on the blade of the sword.

  The tailor’s face was white, even in the lantern light. ‘If it is necessary to advance the Lord’s work, then we must not shrink from it.’ He spoke as if he could not control what he was saying – as if the words came through him regardless of his own thoughts.

  Phil had listened to Chance with bewilderment and worry: bloke was mad, obviously; but it was dangerous mad. Phil had been in more riots than he could remember, and more than a couple of conspiracy meetings, and in the end they usually came down to the fact that men would do all kinds of stupidity if they were in a group and angry and if possible a bit drunk. This was different. This was preaching holy logic, and it was giving justification to Wass and his ridiculous mediaeval weapon. Unconsciously, Phil shuffled his chair backwards a fraction, and knocked against the decrepit cupboard.

  The sword clattered down onto the table, and someone hissed in irritation at the noise. Wass glared at them. Phil watched from the corner. Madness, and he was trapped in it. Bloody Government. Barely enough shillings for his boots, and here he was cornered in a cellar by a bunch of lunatics with homemade broadswords. There was the crazy-wary shine in the eyes now; he’d seen it before. The moment of discomfort and collective doubt when they all realize that a joke’s going too far; the moment when they giggle foolishly and walk away feeling lesser men, or when they plunge ahead. He’d seen it in petty thieves, he’d seen it in radical plotters, and he knew it in himself. If they should ever find out that he was playing for both sides, well – in the state Wass was in, and the blacksmith – they’d… Phil felt sick. He’d felt it before, and he’d survived. But a man’s luck had to run out sometime.

  The man next to Chance whispered to him, and Chance nodded, and whispered to Wass.

  Wass nodded. ‘Mr Chance has to leave now, gents. He’s got ways to go still tonight. Sure we’re all grateful he was here.’ He turned to the little tailor, speaking with reverence. ‘Godspeed, Mr Chance. We’ll meet again, I think.’

  Phil was breathing more evenly. Chance’s departure might serve as an interruption to the building excitement, might let things calm down a bit.

  Chance stood, slowly and delicately, and turned towards the steps. Then he stopped, and looked back at the huddled group. He put one hand lightly on Wass’s shoulder, and began to speak. ‘My brothers, to see the promised land and not to strive for it is the devil’s counsel. It is not merely faint-heartedness, but betrayal. I am a man of words, and not action. It is my greatest shame. I have travelled this country, gorging myself on the wrongs done to our people, and I have failed to find a way to use my energy for good.’ He looked genuinely uncomfortable. Phil watched in amazement. ‘Among you here, you true men of action, I am honestly humbled.’ He gave Wass’s sh
oulder a little pat. ‘I know you will not fail, because your hearts are strong. I know you will not fail, because the Lord is with you, and is calling to you.’

  Phil glanced around the shadows, and felt fear again. Deliberately or not, Chance had tipped them over. Before, it might have been a joke, something to step back from tonight and feel silly about tomorrow. Now it was a crusade, and none of the men in the cellar would be able to step back.

  Now Chance had disappeared into the darkness. Where the hell were the Government men? They’d been wanting Chance for weeks; were they waiting outside? He peered up into the gloom that had swallowed Chance, trying to catch the faintest suggestion of sound. They must have had time to get to Hackney by now. After all this effort, were they going to miss their prey?

  Had they even believed him? Phil shifted his focus back to the table, his fellow conspirators, and his stomach heaved and his chest flushed cold. Wass was staring at him with some dark triumph in his eyes, and his hand was back on the sword hilt.

  The others hadn’t moved, or changed expressions, but they were all watching Wass as he started to speak. ‘Before we go on, gents, something else we need to settle.’ He dragged the sword towards him, scraping clumsily over the table. ‘Now that it’s just us, so to speak.’ Phil was following the roughly pointed and sharpened blade tip. ‘Seems like one of our number hasn’t been straight with us.’ He was still staring at Phil, certain of his triumph, and the eyes of the other men were dancing between them. ‘Seems one of our number has been a bit too keen to spread the word. Well, Phil? If that’s your name. Why don’t you tell us what the plan is?’

  He stood up, dragging up the sword hilt and then lifting the blade in his other hand so that it held level, pointing straight at the informer.