The Flight of Sarah Battle

by Alix Nathan

  She closes her eyes more tightly. Gilbert notices a delicate erubescence rise from her neck to her face.

  *

  Thomas Jones, revolutionary silversmith, has a second wife, Lizzie, several years younger than him. When his first wife died in childbirth along with the baby, Thomas transferred much of his distress to the cause of revolution. He met Lizzie in a tavern whose landlord was friendly to democracy; saw the sense in distraction from his widower’s grief.

  Matthew is happy minding Lizzie’s first child when, some days, feeling the need for society and pocket money she returns to the tavern to work. Thomas’s silversmithing is a success and in the Jones home in Plough Court there are mats on the floors, there’s more than one upholstered chair and plenty of bedding. The child, Edward, is lively, just walking and has begun to speak. Matthew observes a childhood quite unlike his own, the fond parents attentive to their offspring.

  Thomas probes, for he must ensure the division has not been infiltrated. Questions Matthew about his father, his education, his beliefs. The boy, as he thinks of him, is painfully honest. Soon both find relief in the other’s confidence.

  ‘Matthew. You should know that there are government agents everywhere, paid well. We must always be alert for them.’

  ‘Aren’t the men sincere? They seem so to me.’

  ‘Sincerity must ring like gold. The gleam of silver deludes – it is malleable in heat.’

  ‘Do you suspect someone? The Snob?’ This is the nickname of Jas Bacon, the shoemaker.

  ‘No. That’s just his manner. I tell nobody but you. Pole. The baker. We must watch him, cautiously. He is too quiet.’

  Once in a while the United Britons dare to meet in Thomas Jones’s house. A back way takes them through the court and into the cellar. There the threatened French invasion shakes their unity.

  ‘We should think again. I am unhappy with this heavy dependence on the French that we have nourished for so long,’ says Arthur Heron, his face basted remnants of leather.

  ‘What? Where’s your trust, Heron?’ says John Boxer irritably, breathing harshly. Jones admonishes him: ‘Citizen.’

  ‘Where’s your trust, Citizen Heron?’

  ‘They have betrayed the revolutionary cause, Citoyen Boxer.’ Heron can stand up for himself. ‘They are more desirous of establishing an extensive military despotism, than of propagating republican principles.’

  Matthew holds back, watches Thomas whose opinions are now his guide.

  ‘Moreover,’ Heron continues, ‘they joyfully massacre priests.’

  ‘Priests,’ growls Boxer.

  ‘And prisoners.’

  ‘There’s some justice in your view, Citizen Heron.’

  ‘Thank you, Citizen Jones. We must effect change with our own hands. It would therefore be best we join the Volunteers and keep the French out of our country.’

  Roar of disapproval from soap-boiler Clark and his companions. A murmur from Pole.

  ‘We can’t succeed without French arms,’ Boxer rasps.

  ‘But as Volunteers we shall be armed!’

  ‘Citizens! We surely do not want to become a mere part of France,’ says Thomas. ‘We want our own English Republic.’

  ‘Keep out Bonaparte with our own arms, citizens, then remove the King!’ Heron’s voice is rising.

  Amid shouts, jeers, a stick appears through a hole in the ceiling, a sign from Lizzie that the men must disperse. Perhaps she’s seen a gathering of Runners on the corner of the street. Or some known opponent pass by slowly, listening to the night.

  *

  Joseph makes his way to Change Alley with a large, flat cloth-wrapped parcel. His mood is circling down. Soon his mind, closing in, will catch itself and start to burn. He’ll need Fan with her blinding drugs of raucousness, songs, sex, drink and pipes of opium and tobacco to stanch the fire.

  He’d far rather go to Wych Street than Battle’s Coffee House, yet he knows there’s money promised, possibly a lot. The area makes him feel queasy; too close to the rich with their well-cut waistcoats and airs, and the rushing, jabbering jobbers and operators pumping the engines of revenue. Owner’s daughter ran off with a Painite, they say. Good for her.

  He makes his way to the central bar where a frowning woman apparently unaware of him takes orders from everyone else.

  Infuriated by her inattention and the stench of coffee and chocolate he peers into her face.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve come to see Mr Samuel Battle. Mr Sopwith brought a message.’

  Instead of replying she clicks her fingers at a passing waiter, points at Joseph, turns her back.

  In his dark office Sam Battle makes up for the sour welcome to which he guesses Joseph has just been treated, offers him a dish of coffee.

  ‘Mr Young, I have a proposition.’

  ‘So I understood.’

  ‘Several men ask to use a private upstairs room for weekly meetings of… of …’ But Joseph won’t help him. ‘Of… ah yes, connissewers. Connissewers of art. I hear your work is for hire.’

  ‘To hire out both portfolios so regularly would be to deprive others. I should prefer to sell them.’ Was it the coffee that provoked this cunning move or a final burst of energy before his mood plunged? ‘And if I sell them to you then I must draw or engrave a whole new supply.’

  ‘How much do you ask?’

  ‘Sixty guineas for two portfolios.’

  Sam sits down. ‘Sir, do you imagine I am a wealthy man?’

  ‘No doubt you will charge your connoisseurs for hire of the room.’ Joseph hears the voices of his friends Jack and Hugh: ‘Show us your shiners!’ they shout. ‘I don’t imagine you are poor, Mr Battle. I think you’d best see the work.’

  He unwraps the parcel. ‘Look, bound in morocco; beautifully done, the title in gold.’ He opens up the first portfolio and Sam is defeated as Joseph knew he would be.

  Licking his lips, his eyes darting wildly over the sheets Sam agrees to the price, urges Joseph to wrap them up again.

  ‘Mr Sopwith also told me you have prints from Shakespeare.’

  ‘Shakespeare’s women.’

  ‘Ah! Are they, are they like…?’

  ‘They are nothing like these. They are entirely respectable and in high demand.’

  Shivering with erotic sensation, in defiance of a dead wife’s ghost, Sam has no memory of his daughter’s longing to improve the coffee house with lectures and concerts. He’ll recoup the cost of the Amorous Scenes before long and then make money. And if he has a few Shakespeare prints downstairs, too, won’t that somehow make up for what’ll take place above? Some of the merchants who go elsewhere today might change their minds once they know what’s on offer, both downstairs and upstairs.

  Joseph returns home empty-handed with his pockets full of shiners. For a few hours he’s light-hearted.

  *

  Nine men assemble in the taproom of the Bleeding Heart, Hatton Garden. Eight division commanders and Matthew, assessed by Thomas Jones in his position as commander of the North City division as exceptional. Not just for his education and youth. Thomas has seen the hatred that propels Matthew, a hatred whose other side is the gentle playfulness of his relationship with Thomas’s toddling son Edward.

  Each man present uses a pseudonym or none; no notes are taken. They await ‘Captain Evans’ whose fame as a naval hero masks a landowning Irishman embittered, hardened. The organisation is military: companies of ten, each with a commander, groups of five a ‘deputy division’ commanded by a captain. The North City company is not typical, for most of the companies contain Irish dockers, soldiers, discharged sailors.

  ‘Captain Evans’ is mild and courteous, his manner deeper than a veneer. Superior in birth, education and naval experience, it is not hard for him to achieve discipline and loyalty.

  ‘I am sure you understand the danger in our very existence; much worse here than for the companies now growing apace in Sheffield and Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Chatham.
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  ‘Yet it is here that we must begin. London is the head and the head must lead. I know the courage of all of you is without question.’

  ‘We can assure you of that, Captain.’ Matthew, silent, observing, longs for the details, the plans, to know his part.

  ‘A coup d’état here in London, the capture of the King, will fire up the citizens, our fellows in the streets. Once the news is out, citizens will rise all over the country with our companies to the fore in every city and town.

  ‘Tonight I want men with special knowledge. It is they who will help me put flesh onto the bones. And these are the bones: to storm the Tower and Bank, seize barracks from within, throw open the prisons. As these succeed so shall we capture the King and the Man-Eaters who surround him. At that point shall the people rise up, inspired, supported, for soldiers will turn in droves. Of that we can be sure. Then as a sign to the rest of the country we stop the mail-coaches in Piccadilly.’

  Each man is allotted a place, given two weeks to find all necessary information. For Matthew it is the Tower. Of course he could draw plans here and now, he says, having lived there all his early life. But he well understands that more is needed: points of entry and exit, points of particular danger, numbers of soldiers, times of guard change.

  ‘My intention is this, Captain,’ he says to his leader. ‘I shall supposedly be reconciled to my parents, claim complete renunciation, and so return to their apartments. From there I can ascertain everything necessary.’

  ‘Will they not turn you in, Citizen? Such parents do exist.’

  ‘They know nothing of my whereabouts and occupation for the last three years. I shall tell them tales, promise to go up to Oxford, and, above all, speak in such anti-Jacobin terms as will convince them well.’

  ‘Don’t convince yourself in the process, Citizen,’ says Captain Evans, smiling mildly.

  It is the greatest day of Matthew’s life.

  *

  Early in 1800 a bill appears upon the Monument:

  HOW LONG WILL YE QUIETLY AND COWARDLY SUFFER YOURSELVES TO BE HALF STARVED BY A SET OF MERCENARY SLAVES AND GOVERNMENT HIRELINGS? CAN YOU STILL SUFFER THEM TO PROCEED IN THEIR EXTENSIVE MONOPOLIES, WHILE YOUR CHILDREN ARE CRYING FOR BREAD?

  NO! LET THEM EXIST NOT A DAY LONGER. WE ARE THE SOVEREIGNTY, RISE THEN FROM YOUR STUPOR!

  FELLOW COUNTRYMEN! BE AT THE CORN MARKET ON MONDAY!

  From Monday there is hissing, hustling, pelting with mud, the target meal men, corn factors, Quakers. The crowd shifts, disperses, forms again, mud becomes brickbats and stones and all week tumult pounds the streets for bread and revenge, the militia is called out, the Riot Act read.

  The bill is pasted up by Joseph reluctantly resuming his radical beginnings. There’s no Corresponding Society now to which he can belong, only furious groups that meet clandestinely to prick on chaos. Once an eruption occurs all rush to join. But a riot is hardly a coup. Only Captain Evans’s United Britons plan for revolution and he’ll have nothing to do with them.

  It’s not so much Joseph’s new income that disturbs him enough to act once more, just once, as what he sees for himself on the streets: the starving poor, the very servants of the rich in wigs powdered with flour. Perhaps there’s a shred of rivalry with Lucy’s brother. Not that there’s any information at all about Matthew. Still, Joseph has a good rough idea.

  Once the crowds are moving like a tide, he makes for Fanny Lobb’s, where mayhem galvanises the cock and hen club like an electric charge. Where Fanny’s songs, her gyrating and gestures ignite a riot of sensuality.

  Nowadays he often stays away from Little Russell Street for longer than one night and Lucy is not unhappy when he doesn’t return for two or even three. She is pregnant. Knows for certain from the pricking of her breasts, her lethargy, desire to think of nothing but herself.

  She’s not told Joseph and has no one else to tell. She thinks vaguely of her mother but not for long. She fears Joseph will not be pleased. Wonders how to tell him. First she must wait till the right moment, when his mood is fond. Yet will she want to jeopardise such a moment, risk his anger? Why would he be angry? Would he not be glad to have a child? She knows him better than she did at first. Understands him not at all.

  She hears the street door close, braces herself. Will she tell him tonight? Might she leave it till tomorrow? First she must wait until he’s recovered from his excesses.

  With remarkable discipline she refuses to allow herself to envisage that life of his. She cannot complain, being only his wife in common law. Besides, sometimes she loves him. And always she admires him: The movement of his hands when he sketches, when he paints, even more so when he cuts through copper still amazes her, so rapid, certain, almost not human at all.

  She recalls the lions in the Tower menagerie. As children she and Matthew had often watched them, how the great beasts never moved unless they had to. Matthew would do his best to rouse them from sleep, rattling a stick up and down the bars. Mostly they ignored it, but occasionally they rose to their feet, stretching their hugeness, exposing massive teeth in enormous yawns. Joseph getting out of bed in the morning; yes, there was something of the bored lion about him. The lions never wasted a movement. Joseph is like that in his work: each action unwavering, absolute, even if in daily life he’s more like a bear, clumsy and dangerous.

  She sees immediately something is wrong. He comes over to her and takes her hand, a gesture he never makes when returning from Fanny.

  ‘Lucy, there is trouble. Arrests. They have arrested men in Red Lion Passage and the Nag’s Head in St John Street. I think it’s Irish they’ve taken at the Royal Oak, but not at the Nag’s Head.’

  ‘Matthew,’ she whispers.

  ‘They’ve seized the house of one of the leaders called Thomas Jones. Confined his wife and child. I believe Matthew was living with them.’

  ‘Then he is taken.’

  ‘It seems he may have escaped. It was hard for me to find out. If he has, he’ll surely try to get out of the country.’

  ‘Where, where will he go?’

  ‘He’d best sail to Hamburg. There are plenty there who think like him. Tonight he may be in a safe house on his way. Or, well… Perhaps not.’

  ‘Then, where? Where will he be?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. How can I know?’

  ‘Where do boats to Hamburg sail from, Joseph?’

  ‘Wapping, perhaps. Lucy, I’m tired out! I must sleep. I’ll ask again, find out more in the morning.’ As is his way, he collapses on the bed fully dressed. Will not rise till late tomorrow.

  While her mind shrieks with anxiety she knows she can now act without interruption; that she must find Matthew while Joseph is unable to prevent her.

  She drags her bag out from beneath the bed, the same bag she had when Joseph found her in the doorway. His clothes are too big for Matthew, yet she must take her brother something to disguise himself. Shirts, breeches, the smallest coat, stockings even, for will it not be cold in Hamburg? Where is Hamburg?

  She wraps bread and cheese in a cloth, thrusts money also wrapped in cloth deep among the clothes.

  Remembering the day she fled from Joseph, scrupulously leaving coins on his table, she buttons on her outdoor clothes and adds all the coins she can find to the money already in her purse.

  Closes the door on the sleeping man, hurries to the end of Little Russell Street, narrowly avoids a contingent of the Bloomsbury Volunteer Corps and hails a hackney.

  6

  Only one more year before the new century. Only one more year till an election in which President Adams will be ousted and Vice-President Thomas Jefferson elected to the presidency. Or so the Democratic Republicans hope.

  The Indian Queen rings with hostility to the national bank, the national debt, both of them forms of corruption, they say, with denouncements of Britain’s shameful piracy in pressing American sailors to serve in the British Navy, and with the Jay Treaty.

  ‘Damn John Jay! Damn everyone that won’t
damn John Jay! Damn everyone that won’t put lights in his window and sit up all night damning John Jay!’ they roar.

  The Federalists are split and democratically inclined newspaper editors and pamphlet writers dig joyfully into the fissures. Robert and Tom discuss starting a newspaper. Eckfeldt urges it, as does Willet Folwell, and several other men of means from the Indian Queen promise to back the enterprise. There’s a rumour that Jefferson himself would become a sponsor.

  Tom is keen. Inspired by the prospect of Jefferson in power he is excited at the thought of writing newspaper columns as well as pamphlets.

  ‘It’s the best way to bring about the revolution of reason. I’m sure of it: newspapers, pamphlets for all to read.’

  ‘Och, there are already so many newspapers, Tom. They grow like brambles, eh?’ Robert says. Sarah watches the two of them, seeing, momentarily, a Newton cartoon, Robert with his huge, sledge-like feet, his ice-blue eyes trying to pierce Tom who, like an American robin with his red neckerchief, sings high up in a tree out of reach of Robert’s darts. It’s rare for her to think of Newton these days.

  Robert says: ‘We’ll be swept up in the wash of scurrility, Tom, just you see. People will think we’re purely political and no one will buy our books, except for a few political supporters. We’ll make no more money! And we’ll have to fill columns with reports of balloon flights and notices of runaway servants.’

  ‘We’ll refuse advertisements selling bonded labourers at half the usual price of a slave. It sickens me, that. But we could advertise ourselves, the shop, our publications!’

  ‘Pah! A rag bag of scraps and political venom.’

  ‘Is William Cobbett to blame for all the rhetorical duelling?’ Tom asks.

  ‘Porcupine’s Gazette certainly stirred things up. Libel charges were filed in ‘97, you know, and he still hasn’t come to trial. I don’t want to get into that sort of thing, however much it might amuse you.’

  ‘I thought frank Scotsmen always spoke their minds.’