The Slightest Provocation

by Pam Rosenthal

  “Been so long, too long… Egad, just look at the both of us. Not boys any longer, eh?”

  It would go all right. Well, it would have to, Kit told himself, now that he’d been presented to the lady with the blue eyes and decided chin. He knew a reasonable, formidable creature when he saw one; Mrs. Morrice would make sure it went all right.

  But what in the world had Oliver been up to, and how would Kit find it out?

  Unbearable, to have to go through all the motions of civility right now. A lucky thing that Mrs. Morrice was determined to take the lead. Well, someone had to.

  Still, he needed to speak to someone-Mary, or perhaps even Richard-about what he’d just seen transpire at the coaching inn.

  “Shall we all take some tea at the George,” Mrs. Morrice was asking, “or go for a drive in the barouche?”

  “A ride in the barouche, I think,” Mary said, when it had become clear that Kit and Richard were each too absorbed in their separate thoughts to be able to answer Anna’s question.

  Regrettably, though, it would have to be tea in the George’s parlor, at least for Kit and the ladies. For a fellow in what appeared to be a state of extreme agitation had just now approached Richard and expressed an urgent need to speak to him.

  “You all won’t mind, will you,” Richard said, “if I have a word with Mr. Dickenson here for a moment before I join you inside?”

  Dickenson, who appeared to be some sort of trades-man, nodded apologetically to the group. Anna Morrice returned his greeting with great cordiality.

  “A moment only,” Richard said.

  “Of course.”

  I need only follow Anna’s lead, Mary thought, to negotiate this fascinating reunion. What a marvel she is, getting Kit to talk of pugilism, of all things. Poor dear, he looks so distracted, so very emotional-I can’t imagine how he’d be able to keep hold of himself if she hadn’t chosen his favorite subject.

  It seems there’s to be a mill tomorrow, somewhere out in the countryside; Richard’s quite looking forward to it. And although Anna must confess to Lord Christopher that she herself has never seen the attraction of such sport, she affords herself willing to believe that, as Richard says, it’s more scientific than brutal, and very much an exhibition of character.

  And Kit is charmed. Richard is quite correct, he tells her; scientific is precisely the word for it. He’s charmed and he’s clearly also hoping that Richard will invite him along tomorrow to see the fighting. Oh yes, he’s telling Anna, it’s a great national institution, pugilism, too easily misunderstood by foreigners and even by some ladies. But if one takes the time to read the principles of the sport, particularly as delineated by the great Mendoza…

  Allowing me to take the time to cajole our landlord into getting us a decent tea: cheese (sorry, my lady, no chutney) and sandwiches. I almost ordered scones (but caught a tiny warning signal from Anna; the scones must be dreadful here). So we’ve got sweet buns and (at the landlord’s prompting) a bit more of his splendid Devonshire cream.

  But here’s Richard, looking as though he’s been considering something, very seriously and in extremely short order. The same look of resolution Kit adopts from time to time, which usually means there’s consternation ahead.

  How intensely Kit is staring at him.

  “A most fascinating conversation I’ve been having,” Richard began now. “With Dickenson. Known him for years, a Dewsbury linen draper and a faithful reader of the Review. And”-he paused for emphasis-“a long-time and stalwart friend of liberty.”

  Thank heaven, Kit thought, that we’re going to be speaking of something real.

  And don’t worry, Mary, I shall be fine.

  For Mary, and Mrs. Morrice as well, had clearly found Richard’s opening words to be tactless at the very least-Mrs. Morrice showing her annoyance in the curtness with which she handed Richard his dish of tea. Richard shrugged as he took it from her.

  “Yes, thanks. Ah, well, as I was saying. You see, Mr. Dickenson has just informed me that he’s witnessed a most curious occurrence. A man extremely well known, and up until recently held in the highest esteem, by those involved in the great struggle…”

  Though he could use a lighter hand, Kit thought, with the rhetoric.

  “That same man,” Richard continued, “within just this past half hour, has been unmasked as an agent of government repression, when Dickenson, and some others, saw General Byng’s servant doffing his hat to him.”

  Still, it was good that things were finally making sense. No matter how shocking the facts of the matter seemed to be.

  He turned to Richard. “And I take it there could be no mistake as to whose servant the man was?”

  “None. Dickenson made sure of it.”

  “Or to the identity of the highly esteemed man?”

  “None there either. Dickenson has already made Oliver’s acquaintance, though he didn’t like to tell me exactly how.”

  “It’s all right,” Kit said, “I can guess at that part. Wat’s a magistrate, you know, and I’ve been doing his business for him during his illness. It’s turned a bit complicated of late, though-difficult to get to the larger truths.”

  “And you have an interest in the larger truths after all.”

  “Rather, yes. And I’ve been lucky to see some interesting events. For I’ve seen Mr. Oliver before, in the company of a Home Office functionary-a man doing rather the sort of work I’d aspired to. Of course, I didn’t know who Oliver was at the time. And then I promptly forgot about it until my recent charming conversation with Mrs. Morrice. They were together at the fives court in London, you see. Of course, it might have been quite innocent; the appeal of pugilism being so widespread among Britons, much as I was telling Mrs. Morrice.”

  He paused. “I have no proof of any connection between Oliver and the Home Office. All quite circumstantial. Still…”

  The two men were silent for a long moment.

  “Magistrate’s business, eh? And Home Office business as well. Gives one quite a breadth of perspective,” Richard said. “Well, I shouldn’t want to ask you to betray any commitments you’ve made, no more than you’d inquire any further about my friend Mr. Dickenson.

  “But as to Mr. Oliver’s connections. Well, in fact, he did show up at some meetings last spring, in the company of a Mr. Mitchell, who was arrested soon afterward. People have been inquiring about such things, you see, because there have been more arrests, a number of them this week; just this morning General Byng and his militia broke up a meeting-took a number of men into custody, all but Oliver, don’t you know, who somehow managed to escape. Dickenson knows some fellows who are in an uproar about it.”

  Kit nodded. “No doubt the London delegate, as he calls himself, has got another meeting to address tonight at Leeds. Couldn’t have him missing it.”

  “It does seem that Byng was protecting him, perhaps under orders. Of course, we can only guess whom Byng is taking his orders from.”

  Kit nodded. “It’s a knotty set of problems. Perhaps if either of us had been more of a scholar when we’d had the opportunity… well, why should the government be sending a man out to this part of the country, to try to foment revolution among its angry workingmen? For it is beginning to look that way.”

  “Or a certain part of the government. The Home Office perhaps?”

  “If you like. Hypothetically speaking.”

  “Of course,” Richard said, “hypothetically speaking. Well, you know it wouldn’t be easy to ask Englishmen to give up certain liberties. Right of assembly, no imprisonment without due process of law. Unless there were a threat so large-well, it would have to be something more frightening than petitions for reform, or propertyless men passing Paine and Cobbett from hand to hand…”

  “The threat of an uprising.”

  Richard shrugged. “A smallish one, I should think, called for a specific date, with soldiers waiting to make arrests. And since no one else was calling for such a thing, I expect it might have had to fall
to the government to do so. Hypothetically speaking.”

  Kit chewed the last bite of his sandwich rather meditatively. “It would take a great deal of organization. A lot of magistrates to keep in line. Communications always a problem with this sort of thing-it’s a small office, you see.”

  Richard laughed. “Well, it won’t fly,” he said. “Dickenson’s on his way to speak to a newspaper editor. The Leeds Mercury, splendid little organ of reform in this part of the country-one might expect a public scandal. And then, of course, my own publication will take it up, from rather a longer focus. Need a good writer, of course, but that’ll come.

  “But even before it appears in print, every reform-minded man in the region will have heard the news-through the grapevine, you know, word of mouth. The provocateur is exposed already. The kingdom is safe, I believe, for the nonce.”

  “Ahem.” Anna’s voice rang clear and distinct across the tea cart.

  “My dear?”

  “Mrs. Morrice?”

  “Is anyone going to enlighten me as to these wondrous happenings?”

  “I shall,” Mary said, “at least to the extent that I’ve followed the conversation. Quite remarkable…” Her voice trailed off, her gaze softening at the sight of Richard and Kit bound together in their endeavor to understand the truth of a matter that meant quite different things to each of them. And-as gentlemen-to keep the discussion all on the plane of the hypothetical.

  But it was rather stretching things to ask them to rehearse the broad outlines of the story, when what they really wanted to do was to work away over the fine points, and not around a tea table.

  “Go find a public house,” Anna told them. “Hash it out over a couple of pints of ale. Mary will explain it to me in your absence. We shall be entirely capable of digesting the information and amusing ourselves in the bargain, until dinnertime at least.

  “For you two will come to dinner, won’t you? I believe you remember the Misses Raddiford, Kit… I may call you Kit, mayn’t I? Their cook sets a plain table, but a very good one. And the ladies have sorely missed Richard’s friend all these long years. ‘The bright-eyed little boy,’ they called you this morning at breakfast, ‘with the lovely manners when he remembered to use them.’ ”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Their tea had grown quite tepid when Mary had finished recounting what she knew of the Oliver affair.

  “Remarkable.” Anna sighed. “And not a little bit frightening, an official of Lord Liverpool’s government sending a provocateur among the people. Well, that is what we’re saying, isn’t it? That Lord Sidmouth sent this man on a tour of the Midlands, to stir up insurrection?”

  “It does seem to be the case,” Mary said, “as with that other man earlier this year.”

  “Indeed, a Mr. Castle played a large role in instigating the riot at Spa Fields. Luckily, it all came out in court. But this could have been so much worse, implicating men from the whole region. Well, we’re fortunate that Oliver was unmasked. And that now that the word is being circulated, no one will venture out and get hurt. But do you suppose that this Oliver fellow might have gone rather beyond what the Home Office expected of him?”

  “It does seem possible,” Mary said. “And I’d almost like to think so, having recently developed a certain tolerance for Kit and his… loyalties. Still, leaving aside all prejudice, the evidence does mount up, and not in Lord Sidmouth’s favor. The government does seem to want to stir up anger among the people, turn reformers into insurrectionists for the purpose ofmaking the rest of us fearful.”

  The ladies were silent for a time until Anna spoke again. “He’s well worth tolerating, Mary.

  “And how fascinating finally to meet him,” she continued. “After all these years he’d become a figure of legend to me, rather like the angel Lucifer, if not so tall as one imagines Lucifer to be. Richard didn’t speak of him often, but occasionally he’d retreat into a horrid little melancholy over the rupture of their friendship.”

  “They were awfully close.” Mary sighed, paused, and then smiled at a new thought. “And they may become so again, in the course of protecting each other from calamity out in the countryside tomorrow. Those outdoor bare-knuckle matches can get rather raucous. I used to beg to be taken along-disguised as a boy, you know-but Kit wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “Is pugilism really so interesting?” Anna asked.

  “Actually, it is-there’s something to all that twaddle you were entertaining him with. For myself, I could dispense with the gentlemanly self-congratulation it inevitably evokes, about English pluck and bottom, our native honest virtues, and so forth. But the strategic elements are worth following. While as to the boxers themselves, the muscularity…”

  “Ah, there is that. I wonder that more ladies don’t…”

  “We’re allowed to watch the gloved exhibitions in London. There’s a fives court near Leicester Square; one can sit in an enclosed area. Perhaps, when… well, perhaps if…”

  She’d been drifting into a pretty fancy, about London, about the future, about Kit. A fancy only, she told herself sternly.

  “Today’s discoveries are a great confusion to him,” she told Anna now. “He’d hoped for a position in the Home Office, you see.”

  “I do see,” Anna said, and covered Mary’s hand with her own.

  Nor had Anna been speaking twaddle about the Misses Raddiford. Kit had been a favorite, as Richard’s aunts reminded him several times over an excellent dinner, the reminiscences of his eyes and manners being served up once more to accompany the dessert course.

  Fortunately, it was necessary to make a brief night of it. Kit and Richard wanted to get an early start tomorrow morning, to join the throngs at the boxing match, while Anna would spend the day at the old ladies’ hearthside. The oldest Miss Raddiford had bought a great many skeins of wool, very cheap for the quality, that needed to be rolled up and then to be worked into several dozen shawls for the parish poor for the winter months; of course, the work would go much faster if Lady Christopher would consider joining them.

  “Most assuredly, Miss Raddiford. I shall be delighted.”

  Thank you. Anna shaped the words silently from across the table.

  “I shall think of you,” Kit said, “your hands quite immobilized, held captive by Miss Sophy Raddiford as she winds an endless ball of wool.”

  They’d come to the top of the narrow staircase at the inn.

  “In fact”-he shut the bedchamber door behind them-“I’m thinking of you that way at this moment. And quite an appealing picture you make, too.”

  They didn’t speak of Mr. Oliver that night; in truth, they didn’t speak very much at all until the following morning.

  “Belcher,” Mary said, “will be scandalized by the condition of that neckcloth.”

  “Yes, I expect so.” His eyes had grown distant again, even with his body so warm and his arms tight about her.

  “Come on,” she said. “Time to pull ourselves out of bed. You and Richard will want to be at the front of the crowd. And at least his aunts will give us a decent breakfast.”

  In fact, they didn’t speak at all of Oliver until two days later-and then very briefly, in the carriage, their arms about each other, watching the afternoon skies darken and the clouds pile up high above the moors and then the meadows. The air was cool and tremulous, the leaves quivering as though in nervous anticipation of the impending rain, as Mr. Frayne drove them south through Derbyshire again.

  She expected that Kit had continued to discuss the Oliver business with Richard, before or after the boxing match (which, both gentlemen had agreed, was a splendid exhibition of native English pluck) or perhaps while walking on the moors the following day. They’d discussed a great many things, Kit said, in the course of rebuilding their friendship.

  Which wasn’t to ignore the fact that they disagreed rather more than they agreed, their only areas of pure accord being pugilism, a sense of fair play, and an affinity for strong-minded women. Still, h
e concluded, a friendship could go pretty far on those three.

  Mary thought she discerned a hint of ruefulness, a knowledge that their affections could never be so pure as in boyhood. At least they’d never duel again, though-which might be saying the same thing in another way.

  “His newspaper isn’t bad, you know, even if it’s far too enamored of its own rhetoric.” Kit stared at the blue velvet ceiling, as though the words he needed were written on it. “Too clever, too… fatuous in its claims for progress and the future, even when it speaks the truth about present injustice.”

  “He showed you a few pages?”

  “He pressed a few years’ worth of pages upon me; Belcher has packed it up somewhere. I don’t object to it, but there was only one of his scribblers who truly impressed me. A Mr. Elyot, in one of the older issues. Excellent treatment of the Corn Laws. Sober, not afraid to use facts.”

  He’s jesting, of course. Richard must have told him that she was Edward Elyot; Elyot was her mother’s family’s name, though he might have forgotten that information. No, she thought, he’s teasing me.

  “I shall have to read this Mr. Elyot myself one of these days,” she said, and kissed him to show that she was amused but hardly gulled by his joke.

  There wouldn’t be more than kisses, however, today in the bouncing carriage. One could lose one’s taste for an old pleasure. No matter: they’d found some fascinating new ones last night, at an extremely comfortable inn at Matlock.

  “I wonder what he’ll do now,” she said. “Mr. Oliver, I mean, now that he’s been exposed. Well, he can’t have any further career as a provocateur…” Her voice had trailed off at the word career.

  She began again. “In any event, it’s a good thing that the workingmen of Grefford won’t be embarking on his false crusade. It would have been tonight, you know, around midnight. I should hate to think of Nick and his grandfather, arrested by the militia, tried for sedition…”