by Sara Fraser
‘Dear God, let her not be hurt! Let her not be hurt!’ Tom gasped frantically as he stumbled down the slope.
The dangling figure’s hands were now scrabbling at the mask and Tom cried out in relief: ‘Thank you, God! Thank you.’ And then called, ‘Amy, I’m here! It’s Tom! I’m here, Amy!’
As he reached her, Amy managed to tear the mask away, and stare in dazed shock at Tom’s face, now several inches below her own.
Disbelievingly, she uttered, ‘Tom? Is it you? Are you here, Tom?’
Fighting to control his rampaging emotions and speak calmly, he told her, ‘Oh yes, I’m here, my dear. And I’m going to get you down from there. But first I need to know, are you hurting at all? Do you feel as if you’ve any broken bones or have other wounds? Move very slowly and carefully as you check yourself. I’ll be back soon.’
While she did as he had asked, Tom ran back to where he had fallen and retrieved the saddlebags he had dropped there.
When he returned to Amy, she announced in wonderment, ‘It’s like a bloody miracle, Tom! I think I’ve only a few little scrapes and bruises by the feel of things!’
‘Thank God!’ he exclaimed, found a knife in a saddlebag and stepped up to her dangling body. ‘You take this knife, my dear. I’m going to lift you as high as I can. That’ll free the harness of your bodyweight and you should be able to cut through enough points of it to free yourself. Do you think you’ll be able to manage to do that?’
To his amazement, she giggled mischievously and retorted pertly, ‘It’s certain that I’ll manage to do that without half the struggle you’ll have trying to hold my weight up, Master Sampson Potts.’
It took a brief instant for the sly humour to dawn on Tom, and then he burst into helpless laughter. Laughing with him, Amy reached out and clutched his head to her breast. His arms enfolded her waist and they stayed for long, long moments locked together, their mingled laughter rising up through the tangled leafy branches above.
Later, when Amy cut through the last binding section of the harness and Tom lowered her gently to the earth, she wondered aloud, ‘It’s strange nobody’s come looking to see what’s happened to me, aren’t it?’
‘Indeed it is, but they’ll no doubt be coming soon,’ Tom agreed thoughtfully, and asked her to describe her jump from the gondola.
A troubled frown crossed her face and she shook her head as if to clear it. ‘Do you know, Tom, the strange thing is it’s only this instant that the jump’s come into me thoughts. Bloody Vincent Sorenty threw me out o’ the gondola! The cheeky bugger thought I was feared to do it. But I wasn’t feared to do it! He just acted all day like he thought I’d be, and wouldn’t tell me what we were going to do for the performance. I’ll be giving him a real earful when I get hold of him, no matter how famous and rich this performance has made me!’
‘What?’ Tom couldn’t credit he had heard correctly. ‘He threw you out of the gondola?’
‘He bloody well did,’ she declared emphatically, and went on to relate in detail the sequence of events. Tom listened with ever-intensifying anger, but at the same time another emotion was also burgeoning ever more strongly.
Amy had finished her account when the first distant shouts sounded from the other side of the rising ground.
Tom came to an instant decision. ‘Amy, what I’m going to ask you to do might sound very strange but believe me, I have good reason for it. Go and meet them, and tell them that you freed yourself from the harness. Don’t say I was here, and get them to take you straight back to the camp. Tell them the parachute is so tangled up in the high branches they’ll need to come back with ladders to free it without ripping it to bits.
‘I beg you to do this, my dear, without further questions. I’ll come to you tomorrow morning and explain everything. Please! Trust me, and do as I ask.’
She reached up, pulled his head down, kissed his lips and was gone, running up to the top of the slope and shouting, ‘I’m here, lads. I’m coming!’
It took Tom more than an hour of clumsy climbing and edging his way up and along branches, slashing cloth and cutting ropes, tugging, pulling with all his strength to free the voluminous parachute. He bound it into as tight a bundle as he could and carried it away in the opposite direction to the canal basin.
It was long past midnight when, utterly weary, he returned to his room above the rear courtyard at the inn, still carrying the bundled parachute and his saddlebags. He stowed them in his room, locked the door and went in search of food and drink.
Among the few people still drinking in the bar room, the main topic of conversation was the flaming balloon crashing to earth and the deaths of Vincent Sorenty and the two crewmen. Amy’s parachute descent was only mentioned in passing. When Tom’s shock at hearing about the crash had passed, he couldn’t help but feel aggrieved on Amy’s behalf for the way her exploit had been relegated to something of little or no importance.
Back in his room, he stowed the seal-bearing parchment of ‘Magisterial Authorization of Right of Arrest in Warwickshire and Worcestershire’ in his innermost pocket. Primed and loaded his brace of pistols. Then lay fully dressed on the bed to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep before the inn’s night-watchman came to wake him as arranged.
FORTY-SEVEN
Saltisford Canal Basin.
Sunday, 27 September, 1829
There were no musket-armed guards on the meadow or enclosure gateways when Tom rode through them at dawn. The charred remains of the balloon and gondola lay across the launch pad and the tented encampment looked deserted.
But as he rode into it Amy came running from her tent calling, ‘Tom! I’m so glad to see you, Tom!’
He dismounted and folded her in his arms. ‘I didn’t hear about the crash until quite late in the evening, my dear, and I couldn’t come to see you because I urgently had to find some people. Now, are the crew still abed?’
She shook her head and told him excitedly, ‘Oh, no! They all left last night, after having a great big row with Mario Fassia. They were blaming him and Vincent Sorenty for their mates’ deaths. But he was blaming their mates for being too careless with the lighted flares.’
‘Has Fassia left also?’ Tom questioned tensely.
She shook her head. ‘He got as drunk as a lord when they’d gone and he’s snoring his head off in his tent right now.’
‘Which tent is it?’
‘That one there.’ She pointed.
He gently released her and took holstered pistols and chain-manacles from the saddlebags.
‘Will you tether my horse, please, while I arrest Fassia.’
‘Arrest Mario?’ she exclaimed. ‘What for?’
‘For the murder of his sister, Graziella Fassia,’ he said quietly, and walked away, leaving her gaping after him in shocked disbelief.
Mario Fassia was fully clothed, laying spread-eagled on the low cot, snoring loudly. A half-full bottle of wine was on the floor beside him.
Tom picked up the bottle and emptied it over Fassia’s face. Fassia woke up coughing, snorting, cursing. He sat upright, rubbing his eyes, as Tom told him loudly, ‘Mario Fassia, I’m arresting you in the King’s Name. If you make any aggressive moves I’ll shoot you dead!’
Blinking constantly, eyes watering, Fassia squinted up at Tom and croaked hoarsely, ‘Arrest me? Shoot me? What for?’
‘For the murder of your sister, Graziella Fassia.’
‘Aaaaagggghhhh!’ Mario Fassia’s long-drawn-out, piercing scream carried across the meadow, startling the horseman riding into the enclosure.
Fassia rolled off the cot and fell face downwards on the ground, venting loud, choking sobs.
Amy came running to the tent, shouting, ‘Tom, are you all right? Are you all right?’
‘Shhh!’ Tom signalled her to be silent and stay outside, then knelt at the side of the sobbing man and began stroking his head, telling him soothingly, ‘I know that you didn’t want to hurt her, Mario. I know that she drove you to do it. It’s not r
eally your fault, my poor Mario. You and Vincent truly loved each other. Why did she have to be so evil? So cruel? Why couldn’t she accept that you and Vincent were meant by fate to be together?’
The horseman dismounted and came quietly to stand by Amy.
‘Poor, poor Mario,’ Tom crooned in rhythm with his stroking hand. ‘Fate had brought you and Vincent together and your cruel, selfish sister was going to destroy you both, to destroy you for being in love. You were forced to destroy her first, my poor Mario. You had no other choice if you were to save your own beloved, Vincent. No other choice, my poor Mario.’
‘No choice! I’d got no choice!’ Mario sobbed.
Tom urged gently, ‘Tell God now! Tell God that you had no choice, my poor Mario. God will understand. He’ll reunite you with Vincent. Tell God now, how she forced you both to kill her. How she forced you both, my poor Mario!’
‘We’d no choice!’ Fassia whimpered brokenly. ‘I swear to you, God, she forced us to do it to her. She persuaded Vincent to take her up for the flight to London. Then, when we were flying she told us she knew we were fucking each other, and she was going to take us all to the Devil. She pulled out a box o’ Friction Lights and some oily rags, and screamed she was going to set fire to the gas and burn us in the Fire of Hell. I took hold of her and she knocked me down, and Vincent, my lovely, sweet Vincent, came to help me, and we had a hell of a fight with her before we managed to get her out of the gondola. And still she managed somehow to grab hold of the parachute we’d got tied to the mouth-hoop, and it tore away. It was the Devil who gave her that strength, God! Because she was so cruel and evil. So fuckin’ cruel and evil!’
He collapsed, sobbing helplessly.
Tom rose and opened the tent flap. ‘Did you hear all that, Amy?’
‘We both did, and remember every word of it.’ The horseman grinned broadly. ‘Well now, Constable Potts, youm putting me in the shade again, aren’t you?’
Tom laughed. ‘Good God, no! I’m sharing the glory with you, Constable Shayler. Tell me, what time did the messenger reach you?’
‘The bugger woke me up just after I’d gone to bed and got to sleep, so you owe me a very large favour for coming here.’
‘And you will receive it, my friend, because we‘re sharing this arrest and prisoner escort back to Redditch. I’ll give you the full story on our way back.’
Piqued by this switch of Tom’s attention, Amy snapped pettishly, ‘You can arrange separate transport for me, Tom Potts. Because I’m going back to live with my friends in the Fox and Goose.’
FORTY-EIGHT
Redditch Town.
Monday, 28 September, 1829
At midday in the Lock-Up, Lord Aston and Joseph Blackwell were seated on a bench in the kitchen alcove with Tom, Will Shayler, George Maffey and Ritchie Bint stood facing them. Mario Fassia, dosed with laudanum to quiet his constant loud lamentations, was locked in a cell.
‘Now, Thomas Potts, let My Lord Aston hear the full story of how you achieved this remarkable success.’ Joseph Blackwell beamed like a proud father at Tom. ‘Which I never for one single moment ever doubted that you would so achieve.’
Tom bowed. ‘Very well, Sir. The major credit for this success must be given to Charles Green, Constables Shayler and Bint, and Corporal Maffey, because without their unfailing help I wouldn’t have succeeded in arresting the murderer of the Haystack Woman, Graziella Fassia. Charles Green has intimate knowledge of Vincent Sorenty and the Fassia family. He told me the family are afflicted by an extremely rare, hereditary physical deformity, the third and fourth fingers on both hands being peculiarly deformed by malformation of the proximal, middle and distal phalanx joints. Mario Fassia and his sister, Graziella the Haystack Woman, shared that deformity.
‘Because Aerostation is a singularly rare profession with very few practitioners, Charles Green is kept constantly informed of any balloon flights made in this country and Europe, such as the flight made by Vincent Sorenty and Mario Fassia from the Saint Michaels Street Gasworks in Shrewsbury, with the object of reaching London. This flight was due to take off on Saturday, 11 July. But because of adverse winds could not be made until the late afternoon of Sunday, 12 July when the wind was favourable, which carried the balloon over the Needle District.
‘Now Graziella had been Vincent Sorenty’s mistress for some years, and was carrying his child. It was through her that he and Mario Fassia came to meet. But among certain London circles Sorenty had long been rumoured to be a queer Molly. As was Mario Fassia. Sometime after their meeting, and unknown to Graziella, they became lovers. She eventually found out that fact, which resulted in her tragic end.
‘With reference to Methuselah Leeson’s claim to have met with the Devil’s Monk, and being enveloped in the Monk’s robe, I think those robes were the parachute which was taken by the wind and blown into the Abbey Meadows. Methuselah or his wife found it later and cut it up into separate pieces. After Nellie’s death, Hector Smout came into possession of the ropes and the harness which he gave to me. Those and the pieces of silk are in the end cell if you wish to see them.’
‘I’m a busy man and not at leisure to spend time gawping at bits of rope and cloth like some country mawkin,’ Aston snapped irritably and rose to his feet. ‘I must be off, Blackwell. I’ve very important matters to attend to. I’ll remand this fellow, Fassia, to Worcester Jail at tomorrow’s Petty Sessions. I bid you a Good Day, Sir.’
‘Good day to you, My Lord.’ Blackwell rose and bowed as Aston hurried out of the Lock-Up and shouted at his coachman, ‘Take me to Birmingham and make haste to get there. I’ve not a moment to waste!’
Blackwell turned to Tom. ‘My Lord Aston is rushing to a business concern he owns in Birmingham, Thomas Potts. It’s a printing shop which trades under the name of Solomons Bros. Have you ever seen that name, I wonder?’
Blackwell chuckled and slyly winked.
When his friends had left, Tom checked on the prisoner, who was still snoring, and then went up to his garret bedroom. He sat down on the narrow cot and a wave of loneliness welled over him.
‘I shouldn’t have given George Maffey the rest of the day off.’ He sighed. ‘He’s always pleasant company for me.’
The bells suddenly jangled. Tom went wearily down the flights of stairs and wearily opened the door. Dressed in bonnet and gown, her large travel trunk at her feet, Amy smiled nervously at him.
‘I want to come back home, Husband. I want more than anything else in this world to be your true-hearted, faithful wife again.’ She paused. ‘And your lover, my dear, sweet Tom.’
He stood for some moments absorbing her words. Then told her quietly: ‘You have just made me the happiest man throughout all of this earth, my beautiful Amy.’ And folded her gently in his arms.