The Flight of Sarah Battle

by Alix Nathan

  At eight Matthew is pacing the quay. Smiles break on his taut face. Leopard is late and he can hardly bear the wait.

  At last, some twenty minutes later, the man arrives, walking rapidly, panting slightly. They shake hands. Matthew notices that Leopard wears exactly the same clothes. A strong sourness suggests he slept in them.

  ‘Citizen Dale! Did anyone ask for me? No sniffing quay guards?’

  ‘No, Citizen Leopard. Not a soul.’

  ‘That’s a relief. But let me warn you, Matthew, I am a little jumpy today.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘My business has not gone well. I cannot stay long. But now, let me see. No one found you out either, then? Your parents do not suspect? The school?’

  ‘So far not. But have you forgotten, Mr Leopard? Have you forgotten my revolutionary act?’

  ‘Ah! No, by god, no! What have you done then, citizen?’

  ‘I should like you to guess.’

  ‘How can I do that? I hardly know you. It’s impossible.’ He looks around him and back at Matthew, taps his right foot impatiently.

  ‘What I have done can be seen,’ says Matthew proudly. ‘It can be seen from here.’

  ‘From here! Well! In that direction I see ships, more ships, London Bridge, waterworks, Hanks’s timber, Fowler’s, Clove’s.’ He tails off. Must he play games for this final ‘transaction’?

  ‘Wrong direction.’

  ‘Oh. Behind me then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then that leaves the river itself, barges, ships. Nothing revolutionary that I can see. All looks the same. Wharves, warehouses on the other side. Left is all that remains,’ he swings round slowly, ‘the walls of the Tower.’

  ‘The Royal Arms are flying,’ says Matthew, ‘for it’s the King’s Birthday today. June 4th.’

  They both look towards the White Tower.

  ‘Good God! Do my eyes deceive me? Did you do that? Did you? Your revolutionary act. The work of a genius! Citizen Dale!’

  From the ramparts of the White Tower a second flagpole protrudes and from that flagpole the French Tricolor flutters in the glory of the June morning.

  ‘Did you do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how? How on earth?’

  ‘My father is chaplain of the Tower,’ says the boy, ashamed and proud.

  ‘You live there then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it true there are apple trees in the grounds?’

  ‘Yes. But what of that? I was up early. No one saw me – not even the lions in the menagerie. And still no one has noticed else it would have been struck by now.’

  ‘Where did you find a Tricolor?’

  ‘We made it. My sister and I. We sewed it last night from pieces of silk we found.’

  ‘So, you’re not in this alone. Did you tell her about me?’

  ‘No. But in any case, Lucy will not tell. Nor shall I tell of her when I am found out.’

  ‘Then surely you had better not return. And I…’

  They are stopped by an immense booming.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s not the powder mills exploding!’ shouts Matthew, for Leopard has nearly jumped out of his skin. Cannon are firing from St James’s and suddenly, very close, they’re answered by those at the Tower.

  ‘It’s for the King. Yet my flag still flies!’ The boy laughs like a child.

  ‘Matthew. Tomorrow I take a ship to America. To freedom. The only land in the world where liberty, equality and fraternity truly live – better by far than your France. No, don’t be downcast. The flag’s a grand gesture. You have proved yourself.’

  Leopard paces around the boy with tense steps.

  ‘Come to America with me! I shall escape my little trouble here and you will escape punishment. For what will they do when they find that it was you?’

  The boy’s delight has gone. He watches the sharp eyes darting like flies.

  ‘Yes, come with me. We can meet here tomorrow before the sailing. It had better be nine o’clock; we can’t board before the tide’s in. Bring as many clothes as you can fit in a single bag. I believe the winters are cold there. And bring as much money as you can. For your passage.’

  ‘I shall have to steal it.’

  ‘Is stealing worse than hoisting the flag of the enemy on the King’s Birthday? We are at war with France! That’s treason! Punishable by death!

  ‘Now Matthew, think only of America. Your future lies there not here. Here there’s only repression and punishment. The ship sails to Philadelphia. I shall set up a law office and you, with your precision you could take up the law yourself! Oh, there’ll be all manner of opportunities. And women, Matthew! There’s women aplenty in the land of liberty!’

  The boy looks down, oppressed by youth and desire. Leopard glances about him again. His ears prick up, cat-like.

  ‘Come now, Matthew. Let us shake hands on it. If I’d a bottle we could toast ourselves. To America! Till tomorrow! Nine o’clock!’

  And he’s gone. Along stones still black from the stream of liquid fire when the sugar warehouse went up. Matthew feels utterly dejected and excited beyond anything he’s ever known before.

  America. Freedom.

  He looks up. The tricolor is no longer there.

  *

  June 5th is hot again. A burning sky dries the sludge at low tide, magnifies the stink of fish and sewage. The upper air is clear, the lower clammy with steam and smoke, hops, malt, pitch. There’s little activity on the river, the barges beached, boats bobbing only in mid-stream. The gulls at Porters’ Quay have flown up-river to Fishmonger’s Hall to await the flounders and smelt, shad, lampreys, jack, perch, chub.

  The tide returns, boats breathe again, ships shift. The gulls, satiated, swoop back to their spattered row on the barges that knock against the stone. The boxes from B E N G A L have not been unloaded. Porters’ Quay is deserted. No one comes all day.

  4

  What with the rioting and the burgeoning number of radicals, Government winds tight the wire. Even in Battle’s someone’s arrested for giving out handbills urging on the rioters. Sam is disgusted, as near as he can to being ashamed it’s happened on his premises. Sarah looks away, knows she’s like to be blamed.

  Not that James is seen in Battle’s: it’s not known where he drinks. But Sam assumes that his daughter goes along with her husband’s views as a woman should, even with those views. After all, his own wife curbed her Methodism at his command. And he’s right for the wrong reason. Sarah’s feelings diverge: she is drawn to the ideas, no longer to the purveyor of them. His attraction for her was an odd thing from the start.

  She and James see each other rarely: she’s up and out before six, he comes in late. She leaves supper for him; they write notes to each other.

  James,

  Betsy says the coal is low. Please call in at Seagur’s.

  Sarah

  Sarah,

  I have told Betsy to wrap the rolls each in two napkins so they remain hot. I dislike a cold roll for breakfast.

  Did you give her her money?

  Jas.

  Occasionally they walk out on a Sunday as Sarah no longer goes to church, and of course they’ve no need to fear recognition as they did during their stilted courtship.

  ‘Now this will amuse you,’ he says, knowing from somewhere before that she likes to be amused. When was that? Yes, when he first sat in Battle’s and watched her, red in the heat, competent in all she did, not flirtatious. Saw her smile to herself momentarily.

  After two years of marriage neither one knows the other. He sees no reason to change his pre-marriage calculations. Her visions from that time have vanished.

  ‘A cricket match. Team of Greenwich pensioners with one leg against another with one arm. Tars against tars.’ He gives his short shout of a laugh that’s more shout than laugh. ‘We must go south over the bridge to Walworth. Someone’s put up a thousand guineas. Think of that! The one-armers will win, surely.’

  ‘I
t will be painful to watch, not amusing.’

  ‘Painful? To them, maybe. Haha!’

  ‘No, James. I should find it a painful spectacle. You go. I’d rather see if the porpoises are still in the river. I heard they swam up yesterday.’

  ‘I’ll go to Walworth later. I’ve finished all my notes. The game will last the whole day and longer. Bound to be slow.’

  They join the crowds along the banks at London Bridge. Gulls wheel; thousands of clacks and whistles issue from starlings on nearby buildings. Three porpoises leap and dive as if playing to the audience and when the rain comes on sport all the more. Sarah feels a childish joy at the sight; the ghost of a sensation in her elbow to jog Newton into sketching the scene.

  ‘Look at that!’ A cheer goes up at a spectacular double leap and turn.

  ‘Swum away from the French, eh? Right up the river.’

  ‘No, no! They’ve come to see the flag now the Tower’s gone revolutionary!’ A round of cackles at this.

  ‘Ate up all the smelts, them poipoises!’ a fisherman complains.

  ‘It do indicate an ‘ard winter, I’ve ‘eard. Just you wait and see. Freeze over it will.’

  James wonders if porpoises are good to eat.

  The rain becomes heavy and people disperse.

  Back in Cheapside they remove their drenched outer clothes to drape and steam before the fire. James creeps up behind Sarah and clamps his hands on her breasts. She jumps. Shrinks.

  ‘Come now, Sarah.’ He turns her to face him. ‘We are married.’ Out of their shadows his eyes fix on her mouth.

  ‘I’m chilled from the rain.’ It’s the truth, but she won’t tell him the rest. Cannot say that she married the idea of him, had never much cared for the body. And the idea turned out to be false. He was to have been her escape into a better life.

  His stockings stink. His nibbling lips are thin, his fingers long and cold.

  *

  He mentions a huge gathering in St George’s Fields at the end of the month. She thinks of the luminous phrases he discarded when he ceased his courtship.

  ‘I shall go,’ she tells him.

  ‘I’ll get a ticket for you. Did you know that people were killed in the Fields some years ago, shot by redcoats? St George’s Massacre. 1768.’

  ‘The year I was born,’ she says.

  But she must go. Hear, see for herself. She lies to her father, asks for a free afternoon. Draws his permission like a pulsing tooth.

  The June day shines. Her walk is long: from Lombard Street into Gracechurch, Fish Street Hill, over London Bridge and along the Borough where soon she’s moving in waves of women and children, families, even babies, towards the fields. She’s not been near crowds of people since childhood. Remembering, she looks for bludgeons, cutlasses, sees none, though plenty of sleeves rolled up in the heat.

  Acres of field, walled between the Obelisk and King’s Bench prison, already surrounded by mounted troops, their horses snorting, pawing the ground impatiently; packs of nervous militia, for each man a musket. She won’t look at them, sees, instead, sand martins swooping over dirty pools. Hundreds and hundreds of people, thousands, she can’t guess how many. James is there somewhere, making notes with his pen and portable inkwell to transcribe later that night.

  She shows her ticket, seeks out a group to join, for the space is so huge it terrifies her. Someone offers a corner of their blanket and she sits there among dock and burdock with wives and children of bakers, shoemakers, cordwainers, a watch-face painter. Men climb onto the wooden stage and silence drops on the thousands. The speaker begins – ‘Citizens!’ – and the people stir like one body to his words. They flinch, smile, tense with emotion, fill with glory, and in moments Sarah, too, is swept quite out of herself till she weeps and shouts with the rest.

  ‘Are we Britons and is not Liberty a British RIGHT? There is no Power on Earth shall silence the Voice of an injured Nation!’ Of course she cries for the injured nation. Cries for the injured, weeps for the dead. Her mother and Newton. Shot by soldiers. Lost to her. But her loss washes out into a sea of ideals that surges round her.

  ‘The Voice of Reason, like the Roaring of the Nemean Lion, shall issue even from the Cavern’s Mouth! Universal Suffrage! Annual Parliaments! Men may perish but Truth shall be Eternal!’

  Elation pulls citizens to their feet. It’s a huge gathering. Yet peaceable: no shapes caper among flames in Sarah’s imagination, let alone on the field. There is no violence. Horse and foot guards slink away unused.

  She is inspired. Carries the day home with her, compact in her mind, to be kept alive for ever in layers of memory. James is already writing up his notes when she arrives home; must have taken a ride in a cart. Puts a long finger to his lips pursed with determination.

  I have faced the world, she tells herself, I have sat on the ground with it, shouted with it, risen up with it. It is not as she once envisaged. Now when she hears of bread riots, of anti-crimping riots against cruel press-gangs, she is moved. When she hears that someone has thrown a stone at the King’s coach she closes her ears to the bursts of disapprobation led by her father. Habeas Corpus is suspended; new acts against seditious activities and treasonable practices are drawn up. Her negligible marriage has brought her something after all. A real cause.

  5

  Not present at St George’s Field, his dues unpaid, his membership lapsed, is Joseph Young, an engraver, in his last apprentice year.

  Now it’s well past dawn. He’s spent most of the night at Wood’s, a cock and hen club he visits whenever his mood begins to plunge. He’s still a couple of streets from his lodgings in Albion Place, the upper floor of an ill-patched house, three-quarters of a mile due west of Winkworth Buildings, City Road.

  In a doorway he sees a girl. It’s the bag that catches his attention first, then the clothes, she’s no beggar, and pretty, though he can’t be sure in half-light. He’d not have noticed her at all if it hadn’t been this late. He’d cleared off early from Wood’s when a raid threatened, dodging the Watch with his long stride.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  She looks up at him, pale, opens her mouth but doesn’t speak. Perhaps can’t. Her position suggests she collapsed, unable to stand any longer.

  ‘Let me help you.’

  She closes her eyes.

  ‘You must come indoors. I live nearby. You can shelter there for the rest of the night.’

  She shrinks back against the wall, her eyes still shut, banishing him.

  ‘If you don’t come, one of the Runners will arrest you.’ She looks at him then and he reaches down, lifts her, takes her bag, holds her upright with his other arm. They shuffle along, scuffing summer-baked mud.

  He puts her in the one upholstered chair and takes the blanket off his bed. The room is chill: he’d dowsed the fire before leaving. There’s nothing to eat but when she mouths ‘thank you’ as he tucks the blanket round her, he realises she’s too dry to speak. He’s out of water, will have to go down to the yard and pump some, but here’s an almost empty jug of beer.

  ‘I expect you won’t like this but drink it, please.’ She sips, grimaces, sips again.

  ‘Sleep now. You’re safe here. I’m an engraver; quite respectable.’ Well, quite. ‘In the morning I’ll get you something to eat.’

  But she’s already asleep.

  He removes her hat, wants to loosen her hair from its pressed hat shape to sketch her in her exhaustion, doesn’t, stands looking at her hands clenched tightly beneath her chin and goes to bed in his coat.

  *

  Despite the hangover he wakes after three hours and lights a fire. When she opens her eyes he asks her to watch the kettle while he buys food.

  Perhaps she’s an orphan. He remembers when his mother died and his father went to pieces and apprenticed him to Digham. He was fourteen, his life cut, deadened until he grew to love his master like a father. William Digham. On a surge of affection for the dear man he buys hot rolls from a street seller,
cheese, butter, milk. Later he’ll fetch a baked dish from the Eagle.

  She’s stoking the fire. Has warmed the teapot, replaced his blanket, folded neatly on his bed.

  ‘Please tell me your name,’ she says.

  ‘Joseph Young. And yours?’

  ‘Lucy Dale. I think you saved my life, Mr Young.’

  ‘No, no. You were nowhere near dying.’

  ‘I’m sure I was.’ She pauses, then indicates the chaos of his room. ‘I couldn’t find any plates or cups, Mr Young.’

  ‘Call me Joseph. I expect I’m not much older than you. All this? Well, I live and work here. Alone. People say I’m disorderly. I’m sorry.’

  He finds a plate under a book, wipes it with his cuff, locates his own unwashed cup and an unused one hanging on a hook on the wall. They share the plate which he balances on a wooden chair.

  ‘I’m terribly hungry.’ He can see she is, beneath her polite gestures. He sits cross-legged at her feet, there being nowhere else to sit.

  ‘When did you last eat, Lucy?’

  ‘Breakfast two days ago.’

  ‘Had you no money?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘You could have bought a pie or a cheesecake.’

  ‘I decided to speak to no one.’

  ‘So you spent the first night in the streets?’

  ‘Yes. I walked about. Sat on steps when I needed to rest. I didn’t close my eyes once. I didn’t dare to.’

  ‘Where did you intend to go?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She fascinates him. Pretty, yes, if quietly so. Resolute and helpless all at once.

  ‘You can live here!’ he says. ‘That’s it! There’s plenty of room. I’ll move a few things. I know it’s a muddle but I could clean it up.’ Not that he’s ever cleaned anything in his life. She turns from his gaze. ‘Oh, but perhaps you have a home to go to.’

  ‘No. I shan’t go home.’

  ‘So you have a home.’

  ‘It’s not a home to me any more.’