by Robin Blake
When we had discussed all this, Furzey told me that if I went out to the Moot Hall now, I would be just in time to hear the announcement of the election result, which had been deferred from noon to two o’clock. We locked the office and went together, finding a tightly packed crowd about to hear from Mayor Biggs on the hall’s steps. Shifting from foot to foot, and waiting to hear their fates, the four candidates were ranged under the portico behind the mayor.
‘As recording officer and mayor for this ancient borough of Preston,’ he intoned, ‘I, William Biggs, hereby declare the votes cast in the late election to have been…’
The crowd stirred and then was still. Their murmuring ceased.
‘For Mr Nicholas Fazackerley…’
He paused, looked up as if to make sure all were duly listening, then returned his eyes to his paper.
‘Three hundred and ninety-one votes.’
There was a solid cheer and a few boos. The votes looked enough to take Fazackerley back to Westminster.
‘For Mr James Shuttleworth, three hundred and eighty-four votes.’
This was greeted by a thinner, reedier cheer, but one that still prevailed over a few Whig catcalls.
‘For Mr Francis Reynolds, two hundred and thirty-one votes.’
There was a loud hurrah from half a dozen in the crowd, though whether in support of Reynolds himself, or to cheer his defeat, was difficult to tell.
‘And finally, for Sir Henry Hoghton, fourteen votes.’
This was what the people had been waiting for. They erupted into a cacophony of derisive whoops and yells, whistles and slogans, caperings and slappings on the back. Hoghton, to the delight of nearly everyone present, had been humiliated.
The mayor and two defeated men retreated into the Moot Hall while a musical band no fewer than sixteen strong, which had formed up in the coachyard of the Bull Inn opposite, marched out carrying drums and brass instruments. It formed up opposite the hall steps while men came running out behind them with a pair of carrying chairs gaudily festooned with flowers, tinsel, bunting and paper garlands. These were placed in line astern of the band, ready for their occupants who were, of course, the two victorious candidates. The town wanted to see them chaired.
The new MPs were supposed to put on a show of resistance while being led to their chairs, though in the case of old Fazackerley the reluctance was quite genuine: to lurch precariously on a flower-decked chair being mobbed by a thousand drunken revellers was the last thing he was likely to enjoy. For young Shuttleworth, on the other hand, this was his first election, a new and shining experience, and he showed his enthusiasm by waving his arms and clapping his hands.
The band struck up Lillibullero and set off around town on a long, looping progress. The two chairs bobbed along, hoisted high above the jostling ruck on the shoulders of a team of burly porters, with bells around their hats and knees. Nicholas Fazackerley sat holding on grimly to the arms of his chair, with a fixed, painful smile across his mouth. Shuttleworth held himself more loosely, laughing and blowing kisses as he processed through the borough that he had fought for and won. Looking at him I remembered the halting speech I had seen him try to make that morning in the rain, how he had misjudged the crowd and their ideas about the most important issues of the day. He looked as if he had learned much in the last week and, watching him, I felt a perverse surge of optimism for the future, as one always does, however delusively, when the young take up burdens previously carried by the tired and the cynical.
In all this commotion I lost sight of my clerk. I myself did not follow the procession far, but I sheered off and returned to the Bull Inn where I engaged a room for the inquest hearing on Monday. I went on to the addresses of the two chosen witnesses of Satterthwaite’s death, and finally to Dick Middleton. With his defect of speech, he did not want to answer the summons, and I had to speak to him in stern terms before he agreed.
Returning to the office, dismally aware of the work I had left undone during the past fortnight – mundane legal work of the dullest but, unfortunately, the most fee-worthy kind – I picked up a pile of testaments, leases, and matrimonial agreements and brought them to my desk. As I dumped them down in one heap, a sheet of paper, folded and sealed, was swept from the top of the desk to the floor by the down-draught, and I bent to retrieve it. It was a letter, which I had not previously noticed, addressed to me.
I broke the seal, wondering how long it had been waiting for me. It was a single sheet, written on both sides. I glanced at the signature before beginning to read. It was unsigned and yet, as I read, its author soon became apparent:
Cragg,
I do not owe you any explanations, but before we parted the Satterthwaite woman told me you took an interest in her case. I write merely to urge you to abandon that interest – and to abandon her to whatever judicial fate awaits her, which I hope will be the gallows. I now know what I was too besotted to apprehend before: that she is a witch, or worse, and wholly undeserving of pity or indulgence.
I met her first when I came incognito to Preston last year, and thought she shone with vivacity and beauty like a pocket sun surrounded by provincial dullness. I was on political business, meeting the upholders of a certain gentleman with a stake in these islands, now living on the Continent. But I did not forget Maggie (nor she me) and we resumed our dalliance this year when I returned, under another false flag, to gather more intelligence. My master is interested to know the names of his most formidable enemies in Lancashire, and we thought this election an apposite moment to collect the information. It was easy to worm my way into the confidence of Whigs such as Hoghton, Satterthwaite, Drake and Wilson. I had become especially friendly with Drake, and it was he that I was meeting at the windmill – we were to go shooting – when you saw me as you passed by on the road. (Did you know that I saw you just as you saw me?) But I never suspected Maggie’s role in the murder of Allcroft, or her connection with Drake, for by then I was growing infatuated. When she was arrested I mistook it as a sign, not of her guilt, but of the corporation’s prejudice against her, so I played angel and got her out of prison. We both knew then that I would be forced at once to flee – as indeed I have – but she would not flee with me. Of all people, she told me that she wanted to go with Drake. Drake! Is there any fathoming the passions of a woman? Or the perfidy?
I therefore beg you, do not help her, Cragg, or offer her comfort of any kind. She is depraved even in the eyes of your depraved correspondent. She deserves whatever she gets.
There the letter ended, and I laid it on the desk. So, I thought, Maggie had even made a fool of Peters, the self-assured spy. He thought he knew everything yet he left town in the belief that her fancy lay towards Michael Drake. How much more he would have hated her had he found out about Jotham Allcroft!
With this consummate display of deception filling my thoughts it was impossible to address the legal papers, so I went into the library and, as I still do every Friday, sat at the desk to record the facts in my journal. I was beginning to feel a certain satisfaction now. Even though the run of inquests that flowed from this case was still not finished, I felt a sense of completeness, of arrival at the desired end.
In my writing I made a special effort to set down everything I could of what Maggie Satterthwaite had said to me in the House of Correction that morning. Finally I copied in Peters’s letter and then, putting the journal away, I sank into my comfortable chair, determined to distract myself by finishing the last part of The Man of Law’s Tale. I picked up the book and read how the unfortunate Constance was cast adrift in a rudderless boat yet again and, defying all laws of likelihood, ended back in Rome where her frightful adventures had started. Reflecting on the neat circularity of her life story, I dropped off to sleep with the continuing raucousness of the election’s end echoing distantly in my ears from outside, and the logs of my library fire hissing gently in front of me.
* * *
A vast, final election feast was to be laid on that evening in the
open air of Market Place. Every elector was invited with his wife, so that more than 700 places were laid, on long trestle tables. Six beeves, a dozen pigs and sheep and 100 chickens were roasted for the occasion, and 300 gallons of ale were provided to wash it all down.
Elizabeth and I, however, were not there. We supped quietly alone in our dining room, listening to the joyous din being made by the feasters not 100 yards away. I picked disconsolately at my herring and potatoes, knowing she was looking at me askance as she ate. Finally I broke the silence.
‘I know, I know. It’s entirely my fault. I forgot to vote, and if your name isn’t on the poll list, you don’t get a ticket to the feast.’
My wife’s severe expression did not soften a fraction.
‘I was so looking forward to it, Titus. Our friends are all out there, enjoying themselves.’
‘I know and I am sorry. But I was entirely caught up in this case, you see. And, anyway, my heart has not been in the election since I uncovered some of the things that have been going on.’
‘To have tickets, all you needed to do was go through the polling hall. You did not have to cast a vote.’
I sighed but had no answer. Being too busy is rarely an excuse and, as she pointed out, I could have registered a suffragium non fero.
We did not stay up late and the party was still in full flow as we went upstairs.
‘Oh! Titus, I forgot to tell you.’
I was brushing her hair, which I liked to do at night. As well as making her even more beautiful to me, it pleased her senses and made her dreamy and, sometimes, amorous.
‘Lorris delivered a book this morning while you were out,’ she said. ‘Did you find it?’
‘My rebound Aesop! I must see it.’
‘It’s in the hall.’
‘I’ll fetch it and we shall read something from it.’
So, having administered the last stroke of the brush, I went down to fetch the small volume. I found it hidden out of sight under a copy of the Gentleman’s Magazine on the half-moon table. I am always delighted by the neat parcels that bookmen make, with smooth new brown paper, tied with string and sealed with wax. I broke the wax, cut the string and took the book upstairs.
Elizabeth sometimes liked to work her embroidery in bed while I read aloud to her. She did so now as I settled in at her side with the book in my hand. The festive sounds from outside were still audible, but slowly diminishing, as the guests began to go their ways.
Before opening it I examined the new binding itself, on which Lorris, as usual, had done an expert job. The cover was of fine kidskin, like satin to the touch and best tobacco to the nose. The gold leaf for the motifs on the front and back covers, and the titling on the spine, was skilfully laid in, and inside the boards he had used a lovely marble paper. Finally he had sewn the pages anew with red and yellow silk threads, which he gathered in neat seams at the top and bottom of the spine. It was a binding, I thought, to last the length of our children’s lives, should we ever be blessed to have any.
‘So what will you read?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘I hope not one of those self-satisfied fables in four or six lines that end with nothing but a commonplace.’
‘No, I have one that bears on the case of Maggie Satterthwaite. In fact, it helped me to—’
‘Maggie! How could I have been so terribly mistaken about that girl?’
I had earlier given her a detailed account of all that had passed between us, and read to her from the relevant section of my journal.
‘It can be difficult to spot madness when it has method.’
‘I don’t think she is mad, only bad. Like a fruit rotten within. The skin looks fresh and beautiful enough but underneath the flesh stinks.’
‘That is Peters’s opinion also. You both took her side before.’
She laughed.
‘I did not think I would ever be bracketed with the devious Mr Peters. But I suppose you are right. Neither of us knew then that she had killed. So go on, what is this fable that bears on the case?’
‘It is The Scarecrows and the Foxes.’
And so I read the story of the two scarecrows who observe a pair of foxes creeping from the woods to steal chickens, and how the fox abandons the vixen, as he thinks, to save himself, but she turns the tables and outfoxes the fox.
‘What is the moral at the end?’
I read it out: ‘There is never honour amongst thieves.’
‘That is a dull moral,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I can give it a better.’
‘Which is?’
‘It is better to bluff than to run.’
‘And that is exactly my point about Maggie. It is just what she has done.’
‘The cunning vixen. Was she brought up on Aesop, I wonder?’
I turned and kissed her on the shoulder.
‘If Drake and Maggie were Mr and Mrs Fox, what of the scarecrows, I wonder? What do we learn from them?’
‘They are poor blameless souls looking on. They are like us, Titus.’
‘I don’t feel so blameless tonight,’ I said. ‘I am very penitent that we did not go to the feast.’
She rolled towards me and, to show I was forgiven, tenderly gave me back my kiss.
‘Oh, you and I don’t need to feast to be happy, Titus my love. Perhaps we do better without roast chicken – eh, Mr Scarecrow?’
Epilogue
THE SCARECROWS AND THE FOXES
A Fable attributable to Aesop
MR AND MRS SCARECROW, standing together in a field, were accustomed to seeing a dog-fox and a vixen slip each night from the covert and run across the field to the farm, where they would kill a chicken for their supper.
After a time the farmer lost patience. Taking up his bow, and calling his dog, he resolved not to rest until he had killed whoever it was that lived in the covert and was stealing his chickens.
The vixen, spying his approach, cried out, ‘Husband, we must fly! The farmer is coming to kill us because we stole his chickens.’
The fox was afraid, but cunningly he thought of how he might escape being killed by the farmer.
‘Yes, fly we must,’ he said quickly. ‘We will go on my count of three. One – two – three.’
The fox jumped out into the open and took to his heels, congratulating himself that he would get away while the farmer chased after his wife, who was the slower runner. But his mate played a cleverer hand. She did not run into the open, but crouched low in the covert and watched her husband flee into the distance while the farmer gave chase.
After some time the scarecrows saw the farmer return, well satisfied. The body of the fox was slung over his shoulder.
‘Good vixen,’ he called, when he saw his victim’s wife taking the evening sun at leisure in front of the covert. ‘Come home with me and celebrate, for I have killed the thief that stole my chickens.’
‘Willingly,’ she cried. ‘How shall we feast?’
‘On roast chicken,’ he replied.
Watching the farmer and the vixen go in together, Mr Scarecrow began to lament.
‘Alas, that we cannot eat roast chicken, like the farmer and the vixen,’ he cried.
‘No,’ said his wife. ‘The price of chicken is too high. We are better off as we are.’
Background Note
1. POLITICS
BY 1741 THE terms Whig and Tory, which had once stood mainly for attitudes of mind, had begun to define parliamentary parties. Whigs, who governed the country for most of the eighteenth century, were modern, metropolitan and supportive of the Protestant settlement of 1688, and of the later Hanoverian succession to the throne. The Tories were country-minded and conservative, often with a nostalgic affection for the ousted Stuarts.
The country was ruled by a coalition of the King (the second of four successive German Georges), his ministers and Parliament. In the 1730s the most powerful figure was Robert Walpole, the first British ‘Prime Minister’. Walpole had an unrivalled ability to manage George II, while maintaining a majority of Whi
g MPs to vote with him. He carefully kept out of foreign wars and, though there is some truth in his enemies’ charge that this only provided more money for filling his own and his cronies’ pockets, the policy was genuinely beneficial to trade (including, it must be admitted, the slave trade).
By the 1741 election Walpole was losing his grip. The bribing of MPs with sinecures infuriated the public, as did taxation (too high and on the wrong things), the size of the army (too large), the cost of defending German territories (not our business), and attacks on British shipping by the Spaniards. Meanwhile the Pretender, James Edward Stuart, still claimed the throne from faraway Rome. The Jacobites had been in long-term decline, yet some felt that this government’s unpopularity had revived them, especially in country areas.
In about 1740 a new group of dissident Whigs grouped around the heir to the throne, Frederick, Prince of Wales. Lord Bolingbroke wrote them a manifesto, entitled The Patriot King, for a new kind of monarch, like King Alfred the Great, who would unite the country under the supposedly fundamental principles of English government: common law, ancient rights and economic, military and naval security. All these ideas were encoded in the masque Alfred, and in its rousing hit tune, ‘Rule Britannia!’, which was first seen privately by the thirty-three-year-old Frederick and his friends at Cliveden House in the summer of 1740. The Earl of Derby’s son, Lord Strange, who in my story mounts the play in Preston on the eve of polling, was one of the prince’s friends, and had probably been present at that original performance.