A Seditious Affair

by K. J. Charles

  They held each other in silence, until Silas took a deep breath. “How’d you get here?”

  “Guesswork. I recalled something Mistress Zoë said and concluded that your friend Jon must be her brother Shakespeare. Then I put two and two together.”

  “You and your memory. You ought to do a show at Astley’s.” Silas looked around. “This isn’t Jon’s place.”

  “It’s Quex’s, the club.”

  “Is it, now? Your—Lord Richard ain’t going to like this.”

  “He’s not going to find out. Silas, I am aware that you would never willingly endanger me. But I hope you know that if you had come to me, you would have found nothing but welcome.”

  “Aye.” Silas rested his head on Dominic’s shoulder for a moment. “I know.”

  “I’ll talk to Quex. Ensure that you can stay here safely.” Dominic glanced around, checking the room was otherwise empty and the door shut. “I, uh, assume you know that Quex is a woman?”

  “He ain’t.”

  “I assure you—”

  “What Will Quex is is a cove with a cunny,” Silas said. “He reckons he’s a man, so does Jon, and it’s nobody else’s business until they ask you to join them in bed. Don’t start thinking of him any other way, or you might say something that’ll land a lot of people in trouble.”

  That was undeniable, and Quex had made sure Silas was cared for. Dominic decided that he might never have noticed anything. “As you will. Goodness knows there are more pressing issues. Have you debts?”

  “No. Always been careful.”

  “Any savings? I don’t suppose you had insurance?”

  Silas snorted. “No.”

  “Then will you let me help? A loan. I’ll charge you interest.” Or, of course, Silas could take the work Richard had offered, but to press that now would be criminally foolish.

  “Usurer.” Silas pushed his stubbled cheek against Dominic’s hair. “Ah, Dom. I don’t know. I can’t think about it yet.”

  “No, of course not. Just make me one promise? Don’t vanish again. I spent last night and this morning wondering if you had been arrested for high treason or were dead in a gutter, and I should rather not repeat that.”

  Silas smiled against Dominic’s skin, and Dominic held him, carefully, until he was asleep again, then went to find Mr. Quex.

  Chapter 11

  The next few days were…odd.

  The calamity was such that Silas couldn’t seem to take it in. He slept heavily and dreamed, of the shop or the fire. Once he dreamed that he was sitting at the counter with Dominic, reading The Marriage of Heaven and Hell while the shop burned around them. He kept remembering that they had to flee, in little bursts of panic, and then forgetting because Dominic had read out, He who has suffer’d you to impose on him, knows you, and they were arguing over the meaning as the flames licked their feet.

  Sleep was still better than waking and remembering that he was ruined. No home, no business, no income, no possessions. Not a penny in his pocket and barely a pocket, come to that, because the few clothes he’d scrambled to pull on when the alarm was raised were scorched full of holes.

  And yet. He was safe and warm in the little room, with four good meals a day, even if they were porridge or stew spooned into his mouth by a patient maid because his hands were bandaged up. He was pretty sure Dom had ordered Will and Jon to get him fed, as sure that they’d have done it anyway. Harry had come, half-running along the corridor in his distress, and then turned up the next day with a pile of clothes in his arms, good sober clothes for a respectable working man, and a pile of smarter things for a respectable clerk. Silas had asked him, Why not bring one of your fancy weskits and an earring while you’re at it? He grinned at the memory.

  If you had to lose everything, you couldn’t do it in better company.

  It was a few days before the quack agreed to take off the bandages on his hands. He’d come twice daily to apply salves, and Silas was of the opinion he was just bumping up his bill. Whether it was the ointment or that his hands hadn’t been worth making a fuss about to begin with, they weren’t too bad at all on Sunday evening. Pink in a fair few patches, a little sore still, but no lasting damage done.

  He was turning them over, trying to be glad for what he had instead of cursing what he’d lost, when Dominic came in.

  “Your hands.” Dominic came to sit by him on the bed. “They look better than I feared. Do they hurt?”

  “Not so much.”

  “Good. Tell me, have you left this room at all?”

  Silas hadn’t left the bloody room since Wednesday afternoon or whenever Jon had brought him there. Four days between the same walls. It didn’t feel like prison—he knew damn well what prison felt like—but it didn’t precisely hold a man’s interest either.

  “No, I’ve not. There a problem?”

  “I thought you might be bored.” Dominic gave him that quick, flashing smile he used when he wasn’t certain. “Dine with me?”

  “Dine with you,” Silas repeated.

  “There are rooms downstairs which we, our set, use for private engagements. A meeting room where one can dine, and a bedroom. I’ve taken them for tonight. Nobody else will come.”

  “I thought I wasn’t supposed to be here.”

  “You aren’t,” Dominic agreed. “As far as the others are concerned, Harry and Julius have laid claim to the rooms, and they’ve sacrificed themselves to an evening at home accordingly. I’ve ordered dinner. We could have the whole night, Silas. We can talk, and eat together, and sleep in the same bed, without hiding. I’m exhausted by the hiding. I want to dine with the object of my affections and then share a bed. That is all I want to do, it is what everyone else does, and I am so blasted tired of every law and custom and shibboleth that forbids it. Can we not have that, just once more?” He spoke quietly, because he was controlled, careful Dominic. In his head, Silas had no doubt, he was shouting.

  Silas put a hand on Dominic’s arm, a light touch because his hands were a little tender still, and felt him shudder. “Aye, Tory. Let’s have that.”

  —

  It was an excellent meal. Plain fare, Dominic called it. Veal in one kind of sauce, salmon in another, rich but not overwhelming. Silas was not ravenous, for once, after days of rest and feeding up. Turned out you could enjoy food better if you took it slow and talked over it and didn’t need to get every mouthful down as quick as you could. Another privilege of wealth.

  Silas didn’t point that out. He had, this night, no desire to argue. So they didn’t talk about politics or about the bookshop and what Silas would do. They talked about Keats’s poetry and Blake’s; about Grimaldi’s pantomime, which they had both seen; and about the new king’s relations with his hated wife. Silas argued for free divorce. Dominic, surprisingly, gave cautious consideration to the idea of divorce in the case of cruelty or irreconcilable difference.

  “It was Richard’s parents,” he explained, pouring Silas a glass of excellent claret to go with the cheese. “His father married very late in life, to a very young lady. Their marriage was based on Cirencester’s desire for an heir and hers for a title, and they both got what they wanted, but…”

  “Not worth the bargain?”

  “No. It was an extraordinarily unhappy marriage. She resented his manner, and his personal attentions, and in due course his children.” His eyes drifted, as they did when he was remembering something. This didn’t look like a good memory. “Not that easier divorce would have helped, since he would never have granted it to her. But there was nothing good or godly in that marriage, nothing at all. She was driven to desperation, and…it did not end well.” Dominic tilted his glass, looking into the depths of the wine, then made a face. “That said, in my view neither his majesty nor Queen Caroline has made the slightest effort to behave as befits their station, and I cannot approve of divorce for no better reason than self-indulgence.”

  “Well, then.” Silas raised his glass, accepting the end of that conversation
. “Here’s to divorce for them as need it, and the long marriage their majesties deserve.”

  “I shall not drink to any such thing. I don’t want to drink, I don’t give a curse for the king’s affairs, and I don’t want to waste any more time on other people’s self-inflicted miseries when we have a chance to be happy. Come to bed with me, you blasted radical. Bring me your revolution.”

  —

  They lay together after, Dominic’s head on Silas’s shoulder. Most often they’d sit and drink and talk and stay awake, because it would be Wednesday, and that would be all they’d have. This night they had a bed to share and to wake in together. Maybe, if Dom didn’t have to go to work early, time to fuck again. Silas had no idea when Dom started work. For once, it didn’t matter. For once the clock was not the enemy.

  Silas’s eyelids were drooping when Dom said, “We have to discuss it at some point.”

  “Urgh.” He blinked and sat up. “What?”

  “You. Where you’ll go. What you’ll do.”

  “We have to do that now?”

  “I was rather hoping that satisfaction would make you pliable. I’m very happy to keep going until it does.”

  “Sod off, I’m an old man. Pliable to what?”

  “Richard’s offer remains open, and it is from the best of motives, but I understand your hesitation. However, if you won’t accept that, you require an income. And for my own selfish reasons, I should prefer your occupation to keep you fed, out of prison, and with sufficient free time for me. Quite seriously, would you open another bookshop if you had a loan to do it?”

  “I can’t take a loan from you.”

  Dominic’s breath hissed. “Let me approach this another way. What can I do? What can I ask, what can I offer, what is it that you’re hoping I say? Tell me, Silas, because I don’t know. Don’t refuse me because I’m rich. Take my help because I am your friend.”

  “Your lover,” Silas pointed out. “Which is different.”

  “My love,” Dominic said. “Which is different still. I love you. I am entirely convinced that you love me despite your refusal to admit a damned thing. You are the one person with whom I find talking and fucking and companionship to be an equal and mutual joy. I never thought it possible to understand and be understood as we do. And it is hard enough to know that my friends regard this, or me, with amusement or contempt; it is hard enough for us all to live in the shadow of the gallows; and I am damned if I will let you roll additional boulders in our path with your accursed independence that I have no desire at all to infringe. I don’t want to put you under obligation. Why the devil would I? I want you to accept my help because you’re my lover, and lovers do that!”

  Silas opened his mouth, closed it again.

  “You’d freeze in the streets before coming to my door,” Dominic said, more moderately. “And I’d like to believe that was because you don’t want to endanger me, but it’s not, is it? You won’t take from me because you can’t see past our different standings. And a year ago I respected that, but, Silas, you have everything of me that matters, and you cannot leave me with nothing but coin while I watch you struggle and starve.”

  “Easy to say,” Silas began, managing to control his tongue. “But you ought to know—you got to understand— How the hell can I stand equal to you—”

  “Because you are my equal.”

  The fire crackled. Downstairs, conversation rose and fell. Silas stared at him.

  “I’m not sure why that’s in question,” Dominic went on. “It’s almost as though you don’t believe a word of all the claptrap you spout. What the devil makes you think I hold you as my inferior?”

  “You’re a gentleman,” Silas managed.

  “A particularly oblivious one? One who cannot see what’s in front of his nose? Do you not think it is conceivable that, after a year and a half of relentless argument, you have persuaded me of your case to some degree? I had no idea you were so unsure of your own abilities.”

  Silas took a deep breath, staring ahead. “That’s it. That’s what it is.”

  “What is?”

  “It’s not that you’re a gentleman. It’s you. It’s how you listen to me, and how you think about what I say, and how you look when you read Blake, like you’re seeing angels yourself, and imperial Tokay because you wanted me to taste it when you still had a bloody great black eye I gave you. That’s what I can’t see past, or over. I can’t see a sodding thing but you.”

  Dominic grabbed Silas’s shoulder, pushing him down onto his back. “Damn you. Say it, Silas. Say it.”

  “Fuckster,” Silas said. “I love you, and you know it.”

  “Good. Good.” Dom sounded a little ragged.

  Silas looked up at him, into those unwavering eyes, and let out a long sigh that felt like it carried some hard things with it. “And…Aye. Well, you’re right. It makes sense.”

  “What does?”

  The words came surprisingly easily, in the end. “If you lend me, to get started again. Makes sense.”

  “Of course.” Dominic kissed him, relaxing over his body. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll still sell politics.”

  “I know.”

  But not write. Or at least, not print himself, not till he was earning. He couldn’t use Dominic’s money to fund sedition.

  The thought was, horribly, a relief.

  “Hell,” Silas muttered.

  Dominic frowned. “What?”

  “I just thought, I’ll need to stop writing for a bit. Concentrate on the shop. On myself.”

  “Yes…?”

  Silas shut his eyes. “And it felt like a rest. Like putting down a burden. I want to run my shop, and have Wednesdays, and not fight anymore. Let someone else do it. Not keep risking my neck. I want to walk away. I’ve never walked away from a fight or a duty in my life, and I want to do it now.”

  Dominic was silent a moment. At last he said, “In ancient Rome, under Augustus, a legionary’s term of service was twenty-five years. One gave the best years of one’s life, and retired with the respect of one’s fellows and a plot of land to farm. That seems a reasonable exchange to me. And you haven’t even had the land.”

  “Shame we don’t do that for soldiers now. No. I see what you’re saying, but no. This ain’t a job of work; it’s what I believe. For me, for others. What sort of man doesn’t fight for what he thinks right?”

  “Most of them.”

  Silas snorted. “Aye, true. That’s the problem.”

  “You lost your home and business,” Dominic said. “It is not selfishness or greed to rebuild your own life before you return to changing the world.”

  Return. He hadn’t even thought of return.

  Dominic gave Silas an affectionate, exasperated look. “Good heavens, you are the most absolute of men. There are points in between martyrdom to the cause and renouncing it altogether, you know. Declare yourself a holiday.”

  A holiday from principle, and Dom wasn’t even questioning that it would be a holiday. Silas could just stop for a while, regain his energy, think again. Take a breath.

  Surely he was entitled to take a breath?

  Chapter 12

  On Tuesday, Silas went back to Fox Court, to Brunt’s room and the Spencean Philanthropists.

  He was reluctant, truth be told. The hopeless fantasies of the Spenceans were too painful, and even the thought of saying that he was walking away made him churn with guilt. He had not been to one of their meetings in more than a fortnight, and they had doubtless assumed he was another apostate. He might as well never go back. It would have been easier not to, and therefore he went.

  He was greeted with a little surprise, a lot of warmth. Davidson clapped him on the back. “Good to see you again, Mason. You’re the very man we want, and just in time.”

  “That’s right,” Thistlewood said. “We need determination now. Steady hands and unwavering courage. We will prevail.”

  He didn’t look like he’d prevail. He looked ravenous, as t
hey all did, with sunken eyes and dull skin. Unwashed, unshaved, animal, because they’d been pushed too far down to be men.

  Silas couldn’t stop fighting this. Nobody should stop fighting this.

  “And d’you see what we’ve got?” Davidson said, with an effort at enthusiasm. “See this? This is going to do it. This’ll strike our blow!”

  Silas looked around him. It was dark, even during the day, in this poky space with the shutters closed and nary a candle, but he could see enough.

  “Bugger me,” he said.

  The place was an arsenal. He could see hand grenades, finished pikes, a couple of pistols, balls of rope yarn. “Dipped for fireballs,” Ings said proudly.

  “The West End Job,” Silas said with a sinking feeling. “It’s on?”

  It was. Thistlewood, Ings, and Brunt spoke over one another in their haste. They and their forty or fifty men would divide up, some capturing the cannon at Grays Inn Lane and the Artillery Ground, others spreading out to assassinate as many government ministers as possible. “We’ll meet here,” Thistlewood instructed, indicating the cramped little room that barely held twelve, “and draw lots for the duty of assassinating each minister. He who fails in his task shall be run through on the spot.”

  Silas took a deep breath to give his opinion of that, but Adams was already speaking. “I told you all. I warned you. Mr. Hobbs from the White Hart says there have been officers from Hatton Garden and Bow Street asking—”

  There was a general groan. Thistlewood said, “Be silent, curse you.”

  “I shall not. The officers have asked if radical meetings were held at the White Hart. Mr. Hobbs says there is information laid at Lord Sidmouth’s office. They know of us.”

  “Ha!” Thistlewood exclaimed. “Mr. Hobbs is a poltroon and a turncoat.”

  “Adams is right. The Home Office know something’s up,” Silas said. “I’ve got a…an informant there. I don’t know what they know, but they expected you—us to strike on the day of the mad king’s funeral—”

  “Well, we didn’t strike then, so that scotched them!” Thistlewood’s eyes were fever bright. “And the plan now—”