Northern Stars

by Laurence Cockcroft

Ruth understood Ellie well enough to know that Ellie herself had no idea if she really would try to visit them by train, or any other means. But she wanted to tell them she would be thinking of them and would miss them. Ruth felt the tears welling up in her eyes: she would miss this free spirit who was so different to herself, but so warm. For once speechless, she clasped Ellie round the neck and let her tears flow into her friend’s messy golden hair. Joshua and Mick stood their distance, wishing they could let their tears flow too.

  Suddenly Jess and Davy appeared at their side.

  ‘Ruth,’ said Jess, ‘are you ready now, lass?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ruth hesitantly, ‘I think I am, Dad,’ as she pulled herself away from Ellie.

  Managing to remember that her father had never met Ellie, she added: ‘An’ this is Ellie what ’id us and kept us from being takken to join you.’

  ‘An’ that’s me dad,’ added Ellie, pointing at Davy.

  Jess and Davy looked at each other warily before breaking into smiles and shaking hands.

  ‘You’ll come and see us, Ellie?’ said Ruth.

  ‘Aye, tha’ can be sure o’ that, me duck,’ said Ellie. ‘Are you going wi’em to London, Dad?’

  Davy looked at his feet. ‘Well, love, if you’ll mind shop for a couple o’ weeks, we’ll ’ave Charter presented an’ I’ll be back in no time.’

  Ellie looked at Mick. ‘Right, Mick, we’ve got work to do. Let’s be off and let these travellers get on their way.’ With a wave of her hand, she disappeared into the crowd, with Mick following behind her. Ruth and Joshua looked up at their dad, and Joshua said quietly:

  ‘Let’s go back to the camping field, Dad.’

  ‘Aye, right enough, lad,’ said Jess as the four of them walked with the rest of the marchers out of the square.

  CHAPTER 8

  LONDON AT LAST

  Sometimes the road was separated from the fields by a hedge; sometimes the grass ran right up to the road. Every quarter of an hour or so, a stagecoach carrying a good fifteen people, inside and out, struggled with the column of marchers for a portion of the road. The drivers seemed to take a particular delight in spattering the column with small stones and mud as their teams of eight horses were driven as close as possible to the marchers. Ruth was walking on the outside of a row, which included Marion and Jim, and as she looked up at the giant swaying coaches, she could see both fear and hatred written on the faces of the passengers perched on the top of the coach.

  ‘Look at ’em. Should be locked up, the lot of ’em,’ said one middle-aged man in a battered grey top hat.

  ‘And dragging their wretched children with them!’ said a lady sitting beside him, who looked as if she felt she should be inside the coach.

  ‘Wretched yourself!’ shouted Joshua in reply, just in time to get an apple core thrown at him as the coach raced on towards the head of the column.

  Both Ruth and Joshua had been expecting that somehow their welcome would grow warmer as they came closer to London. They could not help feeling that these brushes with the stagecoaches were a bad omen, for the word being passed down the column was that London was now very close.

  In fact, they saw little change in the countryside for another mile or so: there were green fields on each side of them. But eventually they sensed that the rows ahead of them were marching faster. Marion was the first in the group closest to Ruth and Joshua to realise the meaning of the faster pace.

  ‘This’ll be it then, you two,’ she said. ‘We must be getting really close now. An’ I don’t know about you, but I can scarce walk another yard.’

  ‘Marion, I never expected to ’ear tha’ say that,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Well, tha’s ’eard right enough, lass,’ said Marion. ‘I can’t wait till we’ve given in t’Charter and got back on’t road to Tod.’

  ‘Nay, lass,’ said Jim. ‘What about Queen and Tower o’ London. Surely tha’ wants to see them before tha’ gets back to ’Eathcote’s sewing shop?’

  ‘’Eathcote’ll not ’ave me back after this lot,’ said Marion. ‘An’ a’m not so sure about t’Queen. They say she gets fifty thousand pounds a year. There are a few childer I know what could use some o’ that. I’ll not be ’olding back for staring at ’er.’

  ‘Well, whatever there is to see, we’ll see it soon,’ said Jim, as they felt the road beginning a gradual descent.

  Looking ahead, they could see that the column had begun to lose its formation and was spilling out into a disorganised crowd. As the rows around them merged into the crowd, Ruth and Joshua struggled for a place at the front. As they emerged, they could see green fields stretching before them but beyond the fields and still distant, what looked like a model of a city.

  ‘That must be it,’ said Joshua. ‘But it looks right small from ’ere.’

  ‘Aye, but big enough when yer inside it, lad,’ said a big man behind him with a gruff voice. ‘D’yer see that building wiv a round top, li’e a dome? That’s St Paul’s Cathedral and it’s the biggest in t’world. It’d take more than a thousand of you, piled one on top of the other, to get t’top.’

  ‘St Paul’s?’ said Ruth. ‘Oh, aye, I’ve ’eard o’ that in Sunday School. Christopher Wren what built it, weren’t it, and used to be ’auled up in a weft box to see ’ow they were getting on wi’ roof?’

  ‘Well, you know a thing, to be sure,’ said the big man behind her with what Ruth guessed was a cockney accent. ‘But you can only see what they call the City from ’ere. That’s all the banks what’ve got our money. Parliament and Buckingham Palace are away to the right and you can’t see them from ’ere.’

  The London Route

  ‘It still looks a long way,’ said Joshua.

  ‘We’ll be there soon enough now,’ said the big man. ‘This is the Archway Turnpike, an’ once we’re through it, we’ll be along ’olloway Road in no time, and then into Copenhagen Fields where the London brothers should ’ave a camp fer us. And not too far from where my brother lives, sure as I’m Johnny Devlin,’ he added.

  ‘With something to eat?’ asked Joshua anxiously.

  The lack of welcome they had received in the last few days had been matched by a lack of food. The porridge oats they had been generously given by the Nottingham Chartists were exhausted, and Joshua felt desperately hungry. He hoped the London Chartists would be generous.

  Gradually, the leaders of the column, including Jess and Frank Mather, began to reassemble the jumbled crowd of marchers back into a column. Judd Ackroyd, with his sledgehammer now slung with a rope across his back, and Eric Naylor had been carrying the charter on a pole slung between them.

  ‘Mr O’Connor wants it up now, lads,’ said Jess. ‘’E’s gone ahead, but ’e said we should be sure to let people know what we’re about.’

  As the banner went up, some kind of order was restored to the column, and the leaders asked the turnpike keeper to open the gate. The normal charge was a penny per head, but the sheer press of numbers, the resentful look on many of the marchers’ faces, and the sledgehammer on Judd’s back, caused the keeper to forget his toll. Opening the gate wide, he let the column of three thousand flood down Highgate Hill towards London.

  This downhill stretch of road, with fine houses on either side, was welcome to Ruth and Joshua. After a hundred yards, they saw on the left a fine new building with clean stones and a large garden in front of it.

  ‘That’s the new Whittington almshouses,’ said Johnny Devlin, looking down at Ruth and Joshua. ‘If yer lucky enough to get in there when yer old, you’ll be all right for the rest of yer life. And ’oo do yer fink they’re named after?’

  The children looked blank.

  ‘Never heard o’ Dick Whittington?’ said Johnny.

  ‘Oh, ’im wi’t cat!’ said Ruth, dimly remembering a story her grandmother had told her. ‘Didn’t he become Lord Mayor o’ London?’

/>   ‘Sure enough, that’s the one,’ said Johnny. ‘Remember the story? ’E ’eard the sound of church bells and a voice said to ’im, “Turn again, Whittington.” Well, this is where ’e turned – look at that stone.’

  Ruth and Joshua stopped and looked at the engraved stone by the side of the road, marked simply:

  TO SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON

  THRICE LORD MAYOR OF LONDON

  1821

  ‘Well, ’e was lucky enough in London,’ said Johnny. ‘Thanks to ’is cat, ’e grew so rich ’e could even lend money to King Henry V, and there was enough left over to build these almshouses five ’undred years later.’

  Joshua began to wonder if he should be staying in London instead of returning to Todmorden. But then he had no cat; and the hungrier he became, the more he could smell his mother’s oatcakes.

  Sensing Joshua’s thoughts, Johnny added:

  ‘Well, it’s not everyone can make a fortune. We’d best keep our place.’ And the three of them rejoined Marion and Jim in their row several paces ahead.

  Now the column marched southwards down a well-gravelled road which continued to slope gently towards London. Shops and houses stretched for most of its length, although there were gaps between them through which they could see meadowland on which cattle grazed. Many of the householders and shopkeepers had stepped onto the street to see the column, still over three thousand strong, march down the road.

  ‘Well, the citizens of the ’olloway Road have never seen anything like this,’ said Johnny. ‘They’ve seen stagecoaches with thirty folk on board, and flies drawn by fine bay ’orses, sometimes a column of soldiers going up north, and even an ’ighwayman or two, but never a crowd of this size fighting for their rights.’

  Joshua and Ruth felt uneasy again as they saw the looks of fear and dislike on the faces of the people who stood in small groups along the street.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Johnny, ‘we’ll be welcome enough when we get to the Copen’agen Fields where our London friends should’ve turned aht fer a welcome.’

  As they approached the Nag’s Head public house, the column turned right off the Holloway Road and onto a rougher track between hedgerows running between fields. Here too there were many cattle grazing on each side of the road.

  ‘These are Laycock’s cows,’ said Johnny. ‘They say he’s got five ’undred if he’s got one. And the milking maids to go wiv it!’ he laughed. ‘You’ve only got to walk over to Laycocks’s barn over there,’ he said, pointing east, ‘and you’ll find enough milk being sold fer ’alf of London. And old Laycock’s rich enuff, that’s for sure – though not as rich as Whittington, and I doubt there’ll be many memorial stones to ’im.’

  But the herds thinned out as the column marched further down the track and passed by a large white building with porticos and bay windows.

  ‘And is that a lord’s house?’ asked Joshua.

  ‘Blimey, no!’ said Johnny. ‘It’s full of poor Scots women and children who can’t afford the fare back to Scotland. They call it the Caledonian Asylum – that’s a funny name fer the Scots’ asylum and that’s why this is the Caledonian Road.’

  ‘And ’ow do they get in there?’ asked Ruth, unsure if it was for good or bad people.

  ‘Well, their fathers ’ave to ’ave died fighting Bonaparte at Waterloo or firing a cannon for Nelson at Trafalgar.’

  ‘An’ are there many of them?’ she continued.

  ‘Well, a good two ’undred,’ said Johnny, ‘but the mothers are beginning to die off now, and they throw the children out when they’re twelve and the mothers ’ave gone.

  But look over there – that’s Copen’agen ’ouse, where you can get a damned fine beer – and the road going down to King’s Cross.’

  By this time, the column was filing off the road and onto a rough grass field lying between the Caledonian Asylum and Copenhagen House. At one point in the field there was a flagpole flying a three-coloured green, black and orange flag, with smoke that seemed to be coming from cooking fires. Now the column broke up again, and those at the front rushed forward towards the smoke.

  Sensing the possibility of food, Ruth and Joshua rushed forward, leaving Johnny well behind. But Marion had not been far from them as they marched along talking to Johnny, and she now caught up with them in the rush to the cooking fires. Her short stature helped her to squeeze with the children through the ranks of marchers as near to the fires as possible.

  Suddenly she and the children found themselves facing a line of wood fires with cooking pots hanging over them. Each fire was being tended by women with rough woollen dresses; it was hot work and their faces were running red. For the most part, they had been there for more than five hours, but it was a cold day and it had taken a long time to collect the wood for the fires. The stews they were cooking were not yet quite ready, but the marchers were looking down at them, hungry and impatient.

  Eric Naylor was amongst those at the front, within earshot of Marion, Ruth and Joshua.

  ‘What’s in it, love?’ he cried. ‘A love potion or a good London stew?’

  The cook nearest to him ceased stirring her cauldron and looked up. ‘What’s in ’ere is best we can cook and most we can afford!’ she shouted.

  ‘Well, if it’s best tha’ can cook, I’ll ’appen try me luck down ’ere,’ said Eric.

  At that, she threw her big wooden spoon at Eric, who watched in disgust as the lumps of fatty gristle slid down his jerkin. He picked up the spoon and began to draw it back behind his head, just as Marion dashed in to hold his arm from behind.

  ‘Now then, Eric; none o’ that, lad. Tha’ should be grateful for what this lass is doing. Keep quiet and wait thy time.’

  ‘Thank you, sister,’ said a voice from across the fire. Marion took her eyes off Eric and saw coming towards her a woman who was about four inches taller than her, with short-cut black hair, a pale face and horn-rimmed glasses. Her hand was stretched out to shake Marion’s as she said:

  ‘That was quick of you. Chartist men will pick a fight anytime. You’ve got to be careful. I’m Susanna Inge, Secretary of the Female Chartist Association of London. Why don’t you come round and help us with the cooking – and keeping the men in order.’

  ‘Well, a’ didn’t come to London to cook, but I’ll give thee a hand, lass,’ said Marion. Turning to Ruth and Joshua, she added: ‘An’ you two ’ad best come too. Tha’ can always stir a pot.’

  ***

  They spent the next three hours with Susanna Inge moving up and down the line of twenty fires, helping to stir pots and making sure that hungry marchers did not quarrel with the cooks. Once he had been given a big ladle and responsibility for a pot, Joshua quickly found ways to quietly fill his belly. Ruth was happy enough to wait her turn and preferred to listen to Susanna and Marion. Ruth thought of Marion as being completely fearless because she always spoke her mind. But Susanna seemed to be not only fearless but to know everything there was to know about the Charter, who was fighting for it and what Parliament would think about it. In particular, and to Ruth’s amazement, she seemed to be questioning whether Feargus O’Connor was the best leader the Chartists could find.

  As they moved from one cooking pot to another, Susanna gave Marion her views on the problems the Charter’s supporters found in London.

  ‘London’s not one place, you know. There are lots of little Londons. Villages really, like Islington – that begins with those buildings over there – or Camden – that we’ll march through a bit of tomorrow and where lots of Irish live – or Kensington – where the lords and ladies who live off the rest of us live. Some people in London are doing well enough, and some people are doing damned badly. But the ones who are doing badly don’t all know each other. They’re in different trades and different boroughs and we can hardly bring them together, never mind reach agreement on what to do.’

  ‘An
d what made thy father a Chartist?’ asked Marion.

  ‘Well, my father’s a printer in Soho Square, and because he’s a good one, he’s usually had plenty of business. But whatever the state of his business, he’s always printed for the radicals – whether it’s been for the Reform Bill, or against the Poor Law, or against transporting the Tolpuddle Martyrs to Australia. And since we live above the printing shop, I’ve been folding and binding his printed papers since I was six years old. And I’ve read nearly every one of them since I was twelve – and that’s a good thirteen years ago. But what with Lord Liverpool, the Duke of Wellington and our books and papers being carried off at midnight, it’s a dangerous business. So I know enough to know you’ve got to fight them tooth and nail. Nobody will give us the Charter – I wouldn’t be surprised if they won’t even let the petition into Parliament.’ Here she broke off. ‘Will you help Jenny over there, Marion? It looks like her pot’s about to fall over.’

  By the time Marion returned, she was ready to hear more. Susanna carried on as she surveyed the line:

  ‘But it’s not just the government that won’t listen to us. I’m worried that our own leaders might be bought off. You must have heard O’Connor speak. Just watch him carefully again tomorrow. He loves the crowds and the way they cheer him. Make him a government minister, with another kind of power, and I wonder what he’d use it for?’ She laughed. ‘Not for women, anyway, I’ll be bound. When the Charter says, ‘Universal Suffrage’, he thinks it means votes for men only. How dare he? Don’t we know as much as them? Don’t we carry as many burdens? More, I’d say.’

  Marion had never thought about that. She had somehow trusted the men to do the best they could for everybody – women and children included. The right to vote was a new prospect, which sounded better and better as she thought about it. ‘That’d be grand, Ruth, wouldn’t it?’ she said. ‘But by the time it comes, we’ll probably both be grandmothers.’

  ‘Why should you be?’ said Susanna. ‘That’s why we’ve founded the FCA – Female Chartist Association. Not just to cook dinners for all these men but to fight for our rights too.’