by Sonia Velton
“He’s gone. My husband told him to go.”
“Madam, I had no idea the master would do that. I never wanted—”
“What did you think he would do when you told him? Do you ever think about the consequences of the things you say? Are they even true?”
“What do you mean?”
She stared at me intently, as if searching my face for answers to questions she hadn’t asked. Then she collapsed back onto her pillows. “He knows you are pregnant. I have tried to help you, Sara, but you are determined not to be helped. Well, try to live by your own hand, if you must, and may God help you do it. You are destined for a life on the parish and nothing more! Make sure you are gone by nightfall.”
She rolled away from me and buried her head in her arms. A sick feeling crept up from my stomach, such as I had not felt for months, and there was a constant dragging ache from the base of my belly to the small of my back. What had I done?
* * *
I gathered a few of my things and left Spital Square as soon as I could. Flurries of snow caught in the pools of light from the windows of the houses lining the square. I walked through them, covering my head with my shawl and breathing into the small pocket of air to warm my face. I knew even then that something bad was going to happen. Disquiet seemed to trickle through the streets. Then there was the strange knot in the pit of my stomach. A twisted clench that made me stop every so often and lean one hand on an icy wall to catch my breath. When I felt ready to go on, I found myself hurrying, my bag banging and swinging round my legs.
As I turned left out of Pearl Street into Grey Eagle Street, I saw a group of journeymen walking toward me. I stepped back into the shadows and watched them pass. Each held something in his hands. I couldn’t see what it was until one raised his arm to wipe his sleeve across his face and I saw the blade of a cutlass beneath his greatcoat.
I followed them to Buttermilk Alley. There seemed to be journeymen everywhere. The door to Bisby Lambert and John Barnstaple’s cottage was open and more journeymen spilled into the street. They huddled in groups and spoke in low, urgent voices. I pushed past them into the house, dropping my bag near the door so that I could move more easily through the crush of men inside.
You might have thought that John Barnstaple was made of honey, the way the other weavers swarmed around him. He sat at the table and so many heads leaned in toward him that it was only when they parted that I could see what he had in front of him. Six flintlock pistols, laid out on the table.
He took one in his hand, cradling it almost lovingly, rubbing his thumb along the polished wood as he stuffed the muzzle with powder and shot. Once he had finished, he put it down and reached for the next.
“Where did you get those?” I said.
He looked up, surprised by my presence and the sharp concern in my voice. “What are you doing here? This is no place for a woman now.”
“The pistols,” I insisted, nodding at them. “What are you planning to do with them?”
It was a foolish question. Some of the men sniggered and exchanged mocking glances.
Barnstaple shrugged. “Thorel hasn’t paid his subscription. The men won’t put up with it any longer. It’s time they made their point.” He rotated the pistol to half-cock, then placed it next to the others. “We are all ready,” he said.
Laughter swelled behind me. I turned around and saw Ives pushing through the other men toward Barnstaple. He carried a stuffed sack in front of him. It had been crudely gathered at the edges to give the impression of arms, legs, and a head. Scraps of silk had been stuck all over the body so that it appeared comically overdressed. Barnstaple let out a howl when he saw it.
“Ives, you’ve done a grand job there,” he said, clapping the boy on the back so hard that the effigy’s head lolled forward.
“What is that?” Lambert’s voice cut through the boisterous laughter, silencing the men around him.
“Not so much what, Lambert, as who. Don’t you recognize him?”
Lambert looked thunderous, but Barnstaple just laughed and grabbed something from behind him. Then he leaned forward and stuck it on top of the misshapen figure, now sitting like a baby on Ives’ lap. “What about now?”
There it was again, the searing knot in my gut that made me grab the edge of the table for support. I let out a low moan. It was Thorel’s hat. The elegant upward sweep of each side was edged with Persian blue velvet and a small rosette was secured to one side.
“Where did you get that?” demanded Lambert.
“No matter,” replied Barnstaple. “He will not miss a hat by the time the mob has finished with him.”
Lambert brought his hands down onto the table with such force that even Barnstaple jolted back in surprise. “Stop this.”
Barnstaple rested his forearms on the table and pushed his face as close to Lambert’s as a lover’s. He had only to whisper his response: “Or what?”
“Or I’ll call for the parish constables.”
Barnstaple reared back, snorting with laughter. “The Petticoat Police?” He folded his arms across his chest and stared at Lambert. Slowly he shook his head. “You don’t know much about the English mob, do you? It’s not a dog I can call to heel. It’s a force, like the tide or the wind, and it’s coming for Thorel, whether you like it or not.”
“Why are you defending him?” asked Ives, bouncing the stuffed Thorel on his knee. “He was unpleasant enough to you this afternoon.”
“There’s things you don’t understand, Ives. You’re just a child.”
“I’m man enough to understand you’re sweet on Mrs. Thorel.”
Barnstaple sucked his teeth. “What’s this, Ives?”
Ives sat up straight in his chair. Near every weaver in Spitalfields was packed around them, yet all eyes were on him.
“Thorel just gave him his marching orders for spending all his time weaving for Mrs. Thorel instead of finishing his master piece.”
Barnstaple tutted with exaggerated disapproval. “Who’d have thought it of you, Lambert? Go on, Ives.”
“Don’t know any more. Every time she turned up, they sent me away.”
A gleeful Barnstaple banged his hand on the table. The pistols gave an alarming jump. “You scoundrel, Lambert! You rogue!”
The other weavers laughed as if they were at an alehouse and one clapped Lambert on the back so hard he fell forward.
Then Barnstaple was serious again. “All the more reason for you to join us. So, are you with us, Bisby Lambert, or not?”
My hand went to my belly. The tightness had begun to ease, only to be replaced by a sickness that brought my other hand to my mouth. Something was happening to me. I edged closer to Barnstaple and put my hand on his arm. I must have been digging my fingers into him because he looked up at me in alarm. I bent toward him until my face was close enough to his ear for him to hear my words, even though they came out in faint gasps. “Please help me. I’m not well.”
Barnstaple glared at me. “What would you have me do, woman?” he said in a savage whisper. “Boil some water and rip up a muslin while the real men go out for Thorel? Find a woman to help you.” He pulled his arm away and picked up another flintlock, holding it with more care and tenderness than I could ever remember him showing me, and busied himself tapping powder from the flask into the muzzle as if I had not spoken. I turned and pushed through the journeymen to get to the door.
Outside I drew in a lungful of air so deeply it made me cough. I leaned against the wall, resting my head on the bricks. I tried to focus on the chill of them against my face. It was a connection to reality when my mind kept clouding and wavering, as it had on that first afternoon at Mrs. Swann’s. Then I started to slip down the wall, sinking into my own skirts until a hand gripped me from behind and broke my fall.
And as I fell, I thought, It must be him. It must be him catching me because ot
herwise he has abandoned me completely.
Esther
I did not rise to take supper. It was all I could do just to sit up in my bed when Moll brought me a cup of sweet tea. She did her best to pat air into my pillows and settle me against them, but all she succeeded in doing was catching my hair and jabbing my back with her elbows. I let out an exaggerated sigh.
“Sorry, ma’am,” she said. “Shall I close the shutters?”
It was evening already. I had been so preoccupied that I had hardly noticed the creep of the dark into my room. Now I wanted to shut it out, along with the thought that I might never see Bisby again.
I nodded and Moll walked over to the window. She stood there so long that I grew waspish. “What are you doing?” I snapped.
“There’s something going on outside.”
There was an edge to her voice that made me throw back the coverlet and inch my feet along the rug to find my slippers. I rubbed at my arms and tutted about the cold all the way to the window.
Spital Square wasn’t empty. Despite the bitter weather and the late hour, groups of men loitered. Then more began to appear. They came from Lamb Street ahead and milled, directionless, in the center of the square.
“Whatever could their purpose be?” I thought aloud. Moll said nothing, staring down and chewing her lip. Then I saw someone hurrying across it. She was trying to run while clutching at a shawl slipping down from around her shoulders. Her gait was cumbersome, ungainly, as if she were carrying something heavy. Then she stumbled forward and fell to her knees, curling up like a woodlouse on the freezing street.
“Oh, sweet Lord, it’s Sara!”
Moll and I collided as we turned at the same moment. I allowed her to go first and she fled through the door and down the stairs faster than my heeled slippers would allow me to follow. By the time I got to the front door, Moll was already out in the square bent over Sara, trying to help her to stand.
“Bring her in,” I said, scattering snow flurries with my windmilling hand.
Inside Sara gripped the newel post of the stairs with both hands. She was panting after her exertions and, despite the cold, beads of sweat flecked her hairline. After a moment she straightened, keeping one hand on the banister. “They’re coming, madam,” she gasped.
“Who, Sara? Who’s coming?”
“I’ve come to warn you.”
“Calm yourself,” I said, stroking the hair away from her face. The anger I had felt earlier had dissipated at the sight of her. “Moll will get you some water.” I nodded at Moll, who set off down the hall.
Sara swallowed hard and stared at me with wide eyes. “The journeymen, madam. They are coming for the master.”
“But Mr. Thorel is not here,” I said. I did not want to tell her that he had slammed out of the house barely an hour before without telling me where he was going. “What business do the journeymen have with him?”
“It’s the combination. He hasn’t paid them their money and now the mob is out to get him. You must leave!”
A mob? Was that what those men wandering outside like sheep were meant to be? I almost wanted to laugh, but then I remembered the vicious hiss of the weavers who had thrown ink at me. “Come, Sara, you are upset. It’s been a difficult day for us all. I will send Monsieur Finet out to those men with some soup and bread. They will go home when their bellies are full.”
“And me, madam?” Her voice was small, like a child’s.
I looked at her sternly, but how could I turn her out onto the street at this hour? “You may stay here till the morning.”
We had not even reached the end of the hall when a crack rang out so loudly that it stopped us dead and made me grip Sara’s shoulders so hard she yelped.
30
Sara
I knew they must be near when the pistol shot rent the air. I pulled myself away from Madam’s terrified grip and went into the front parlor. Men were snaking through the streets, holding aloft lit torches, which gave the square an eerie glow and occasionally threw their faces into sharp relief. Madam came up behind me. “Oh, dear God,” she murmured. We stood there, watching, but I knew we were not searching for the same face.
Then someone threw a stone. It hit the bricks near the window and bounced back onto the pavement.
“We must close all the shutters,” Madam said. “Get Moll and Monsieur Finet from the kitchens. We can each take a floor.”
I went to do her bidding, but as I moved there was a tiny pop, then a flood of warmth all over the inside of my legs. I took a few steps forward in surprise, as if I could walk away from the strange sensation, but each time I moved more fluid trickled out of me. My petticoats stuck to my legs as I walked. I stopped and turned. Madam was staring in horror at the puddle on the parlor floor.
She screamed for Moll.
When Moll appeared at the door, she was talking so fast that I could hardly follow what she was saying. Then she saw the parlor floor and the words evaporated from her mouth. She looked from the floor to Madam and made a silent O with her mouth.
“Moll,” said Madam, her voice deliberately measured now. “We need to call for help.”
Moll blinked back at her. “Help, ma’am?” Her voice wavered. “Who can help us now?”
“Don’t you know anyone who has ever had a baby?” Madam clipped back.
Moll shook her head. “No, ma’am. The only babies I’ve seen born were to the cows back home.”
“Mrs. Anstis,” I said. They turned to look at me as if they’d forgotten I was there. “The widow at Coats Lane, she’ll know what to do. She’s a midwife and apothecary.”
Madam looked relieved. “Moll, fetch Widow Anstis from Coats Lane.”
“Coats Lane?” exclaimed Moll, clearly quite forgetting herself. “I couldn’t get her from the other side of Spital Square. Have you not looked outside?”
We all turned and stared at the window, which was now glowing orange against the dark wall. For a moment I felt disoriented, as if it might be dawn before the night had even started, but then I realized that a fire was burning in the middle of the square. Madam marched to the window and slammed the shutters closed. As she slid the iron catch into place, there was a hammering at the front door. “Upstairs, quickly.” She herded Moll and me, like small children, to her own room and sat me down on her bed. As I watched her close the shutters, I felt very strange. I was no longer in control of my body. Instead I was being carried along by something quite apart from myself.
I could hear Madam instructing Moll to boil water in the kitchen and fetch linens, but their voices seemed to come from far away. A pain gripped me, so intense that I struggled to breathe. I was floundering, my hands searching for something to grab.
Then Madam was there, her hand outstretched for me to take. I pulled down hard on her arm while she tried to hold it firm as my body convulsed in pain. When I began to resurface, I heard the banging start again on the door, only it became rhythmic and persistent until I could hardly tell it apart from my own heart beating.
Esther
Moll and I hovered by Sara’s bedside. Every so often—in the moments that Sara was quiet—one of us would wring out a piece of linen in the basin on the washstand and mop her brow. Moll kept the fire burning brightly in the grate, with a pot of scalding water next to it. I had immediately called for boiling water but, once it was there, I hardly knew what I was meant to do with it.
Beneath the window the crowd was simmering as well. We had refused to open the door and the mob swelled around us, like turbulent water. I climbed onto my dressing table stool and peered over the top edge of the shutters to see what was happening. I was not the only one. Across the square, lights appeared in other windows, blinks of an eye as shutters were opened, then hastily closed.
A group of men had surrounded the fire in the center of the square. Suddenly they broke apart and a boy was pushed f
orward. When he came nearer to the fire I could see that it was Ives, frightened and excited at the same time, clutching something to his chest as a child might hold a toy. Then one of the men crouched in front of him and the boy clambered onto his shoulders. The man staggered as he got to his feet, and as Ives checked his balance, the thing he was carrying swung limply from his hand. It looked like a stuffed mannequin, or a scarecrow perhaps. Something had fallen from it. One of the crowd bent to pick it up and handed it to Ives, who put it on the thing’s head. It looked more like a man with its hat on … The blood turned icy in my veins.
Ives tossed the stuffed man onto the fire. It went up with a satisfying whoosh, which made the crowd cheer. Someone handed the boy a pistol and he pulled back the hammer and pointed it up to the sky. The mob quieted in anticipation as the fire spat and roared in front of them. Nothing happened. Ives lowered his arms and peered down into the barrel, prompting someone to grab his arm and pull it roughly away from his face. The pistol fired with a bang and a spark of light, which propelled the boy backward off the man’s shoulders and sent the crowd scattering. The same man who had pulled the pistol away from the boy’s face helped him to his feet again. I tried to see his face, but he was swallowed into the crush of men around him.
Behind me Sara let out a guttural scream. I stepped off the stool and ran over to the bed. She was moaning like an animal, and Moll stood beside her wringing her hands, saying, “It’s coming, ma’am, it’s coming!” over and over. Downstairs a window shattered. For a moment all I could hear was Sara, then a creaking sound from downstairs, like the shifting timbers of a ship. The creaking turned to splintering as the shutters split apart.
I ran out of the room to the top of the stairs, leaving Moll wide-eyed with terror behind me. I could see straight down the stairwell into the parlor. Men were climbing in through the open window. Once inside they crawled over the room like ants, fingering the velvet of the cushions and stroking the backs of the chairs. One picked up an ornament from the mantelpiece and weighed it in his hand before slipping it into his pocket. One by one, they started coming up the stairs.