‘You did not say such things to me last night,’ she said.
‘I thought them,’ he said grimly, ‘although I did not say them. I was tired. I hoped it would be nothing. I hoped we should have no cause to fear.’
‘Do we have cause to fear?’ He was making her feel worse and worse.
‘The wife of one of the managers of A. Easter and Sons gives aid to two criminals escaping from justice and you ask if we have anything to fear?’
She was weak with shame. ‘Oh John, whatever shall we do?’
‘The cousins shall give notice to Mr Richards, for a start,’ he said angrily. ‘I shall write to them at once. You should never have introduced them to such a man in the first place.’
Being rebuked so sternly made the tears gather in her eyes, and John realized it was no use pursuing the matter. It was distressing her too much and served no purpose.
‘Don’t cry, Harriet,’ he said, trying to be kinder. ‘We will take legal advice. I will send a message round to Cosmo Teshmaker straight away. Let us see what he has to say.’
Cosmo Teshmaker had lived on the edge of the ebullient Easter family for more than twenty years, but he was first and foremost a solicitor, so when John’s message arrived, asking for his advice and marked ‘URGENT’ in letters an inch high, he put on his best hat, took up his new gold-tipped cane, and went gliding off to Fitzroy Square at once to attend to it.
He was almost disappointed to find that the matter was so easy to deal with.
‘I do not think you need to be unduly alarmed, Mrs Easter,’ he said. ‘For as I see it neither you nor Mr John could have known that the two farm labourers you assisted were employed by conspirators, which is your opinion, Mrs Easter, I believe, nor that they were part of the conspiracy themselves, which is your opinion, is it not, Mr John? They did not carry arms, you say?’
‘Oh no, no,’ Harriet assured him.
‘And they removed themselves from the scene of the commotion at the very first opportunity?’
‘Yes.’
‘And are now out of London?’
‘Yes. I sent them to Manchester, to a friend of – ours.’
‘He would be a business acquaintance of some sort, I daresay?’
Harriet looked anxiously at John, who was squinting at the carpet, his face dark. What was she to say now? Must she admit the full story of her involvement with this man? Mr Teshmaker would be sure to agree with John, and see him as a dangerous insurgent and not the sort of person with whom the wife to Mr John Easter should associate. Whatever else she did or said, she must try not to harm her dear John any further, particularly now when he was being so understanding and she had been so foolish.
‘We met him when were were in Manchester on business,’ John rescued. ‘Yes, indeed.’ Oh how very good you are, dear, dear John, to protect me so!
‘He would be trustworthy?’
‘Entirely, in my opinon.’
‘Then my advice to you, dear lady, would be to lie low, keep mum and wait for the matter to blow over, as it most certainly will. If the two labourers were merely servants, as you believe, they will not wish to do or say anything that would associate them with this conspiracy, and if they were conspirators their desire to stay hidden and silent will be even more imperative. It will blow over.’
‘Yes,’ Harriet said. But he could see she didn’t believe him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Caleb Rawson was a man who drove himself hard, nature having given him the strength and disposition to do it. He was one of those people who can exist on very little sleep and his energy was legendary. ‘Tek it to Caleb,’ his fellow weavers would say, for they knew that whatever hour of the day or night they brought him their problems he would deal with them.
So when the Abbotts came knocking at his attic door that February morning in the dank, early hours, he put on his breeches, lit the remains of his candle, shook the sleep from his head like a dog shaking himself free of water, and went to attend to them, wide awake and in full command of his situation and his senses.
‘What’s amiss?’ he asked as he opened the door. ‘Come in.’
They handed him Harriet’s note, and began to tell their tale. But when they started to make the same excuses that won favour with Harriet, he stopped them in mid-sentence.
‘Nay,’ he said, ‘best to speak t’ truth, if I’m to aid thee. I’d not think ill of thee, if tha’d’st broke into t’ party and shot the lot of ‘em, every man jack from Harrowby down.’
‘It en’t the Cabinet what’s dead, sir,’ Jack Abbott said, ‘leastways not accordin’ to the papers. ’Tis a constable, so they do say. We’m hunted men sir.’ And in the flickering light of Caleb’s candle, they certainly looked it.
‘Tha must quit t’ country,’ Caleb said. ‘I’ll get one of t’ barges to tek thee to Liverpool. Then tha must tek ship there to the Indies or America or some such. The further the better!’ He was already on his way out of the door.
They followed him meekly, accepting exile as they’d accepted Harriet’s help twenty-eight hours ago, quietly and without protest because they were still numb with shock. There was nothing in their heads except the ambush in Cato Street and the fear they still carried with them. They began to tell the story of it all over again as soon as they reached the street.
‘Nay,’ Caleb said, holding up one blunt hand to prevent them. ‘If tha means to survive, lads, tha’d best leave such talk in England. Not a word of it from now on. Tell ought and tha’s dead men.’
Their folly annoyed him, but he was used to folly among his fellow insurrectionists. Few of them seemed capable of the detachment and determination that he saw as the prerequisite for success. Their plans were inadequate and their tempers uncertain, and both were great weaknesses in them. He knew it but he didn’t criticize them for it. When all was said and done he could hardly expect them to have quite the same urgent motivation as he did.
Ever since his wife and son had died of the smallpox, he had been a man dedicated to change and reform. It was the only way he could contain the driving anger their unnecessary suffering had left in his personality. He knew from the bitterness of that experience that pain and suffering were the direct result of poverty, and he was convinced that poverty would only be alleviated when the poor were given the vote. It was obvious, simple and urgent. Now every step he took was one step nearer reform.
As he watched the barge inch through the oily murk of the Manchester Ship Canal with its extra cargo hidden under the tarpaulins, he felt he had struck one more blow in the struggle for liberty and he was glad of it.
Then he set off to Mr Mulliner’s mill, where he was employed to weave black crepe for the funeral trade, and quietly got on with the rest of his day.
Back in Fitzroy Square, Harriet was still anxious. Even her diary was little consolation to her now. She confided her fears to it, of course, explaining that she only meant to help, that she had known nothing of the conspiracy, that she was truly, truly sorry for her folly, but it wasn’t until Caleb’s laconic letter arrived two days later that she was able to relax even a little.
‘The cargo you sent,’ he wrote, ‘is on its way to the Indies. You will hear no more of it.’
But there was still the trial of the conspirators to face, and that was reported in terrible detail in all the newspapers. Harriet read them with fearful fascination. By the second morning it was clear to her that these wild, foolish men had almost certainly been provoked by government agents, but they’d been too simple and too much inflamed by their own passions to realize it.
And by the final day when the jury pronounced their inescapable verdict, she was torn with pity for them, even though she knew they were parlous sinners and would have committed murder if they hadn’t been prevented. She read the words of the judgement, trembling with compassion:
‘That you, and each of you, be taken from hence to the gaol from whence you came, and from thence be hanged by the neck until dead, and that after
wards your heads shall be severed from your bodies; and your bodies be divided into four quarters, to be disposed of as his Majesty shall think fit. And may God of His infinite goodness have mercy upon your souls.’
She was quite horrified when she went to dine with Nan and Mr Brougham later that week to discover that the others around the table took the matter so lightly.
‘I wonder how much a seat at the execution will cost this time,’ Sophie Fuseli said, mounding food onto her fork. ‘There ain’t been a public hanging these many months, so ’twill be a pretty penny. But then it ain’t every day of the week you get to see a dozen men a-dancing at the rope’s end.’
‘I should like to see it,’ Matilda said, her eyes shining. ‘Would you buy me a ticket, Billy dear?’ She was sparkling at him, teasing him, touching his cheek with lingering fingers.
‘’Ten’t such a fine thing to see, I can tell ’ee,’ Nan said brusquely. ‘I was in Paris during the revolution, on the very day they put the old King to the guillotine, and I saw it all, a-hackin’ and a-choppin’ and blood in all directions. That’s a fearsome sight.’
‘I should like to see it, fearsome or not,’ Matilda said, pouting at Billy and smoothing the folds of her muslin gown luxuriously across her belly.
‘Well you shan’t,’ Billy said, amiably but firmly. And he turned to his mother. ‘Now she’s breeding again, Mama, she must stay at home, must she not?’
‘If ’tis to be my sixth grandchild or a hanging,’ Nan said, grinning at Matilda, ‘why then, I favour the grandchild.’
‘Amen to that,’ Sophie Fuseli said. ‘There will always be other hangings. I daresay Mr Brougham could arrange one for ’ee if you asked him prettily.’
‘I cannot offer you my present client,’ Frederick Brougham said urbanely, ‘the man is a mere bankrupt you see, my dear, and insolvency ain’t a hanging matter.’
‘Now if I’ve took a craving for the sight of hanging men?’ Matilda teased, giving Billy the full benefit of her fine grey eyes and her pretty plump cheeks. ‘You couldn’t deny a craving in a breeding woman, now could you, my love?’
‘Cravings are for food,’ Billy said, sparkling back at her, ‘as you know right well, you impossible creature.’
‘No they ain’t,’ she said, shaking her curls. ‘You can take a craving for the smell of sea air, or a coal fire, or any number of things. Ain’t that so, Mrs Fuseli?’
‘So we hear,’ Sophie allowed.
‘Very well then,’ Matilda said, looking at Billy imperiously, ‘if I ain’t to see the hanging you can rent me a house in Bury ready for the summer. I’ve a right to that, in all conscience. A family house, for us and our two children.’ And now she was looking at Nan questioningly.
‘I see no reason why not,’ Nan said coolly. ‘Your Billy can afford it, or if he can’t, I daresay I could arrange a loan.’
And what of me? John thought. You do not even consider whether Harriet and I might care for a country house too. But he said nothing, for if she couldn’t offer it of her own accord, it would be demoralizing to ask for it. Always Billy, he thought, never me, and I work twice as hard as he does. And then he was ashamed of himself for being so jealous.
Harriet was watching Billy and Matilda too, but she was making a great effort not to envy them. How happy they are, she thought, and how very well they look. For Billy was every bit as plump as his Matilda, as though they were breeding together. And she glanced at her dear, slender John, squinting at the table, and she wished she could make him happy like his brother, instead of distressing him so. This trial had upset him as much as it had upset her. Oh how she wished she’d never been involved in it.
But at last the whole horrible episode was over. The five principal conspirators, Thistlewood, Brunt, Ings, Davidson and Tidd, were publicly hanged, the lesser six quietly transported to Australia and the Easter family turned their attention to Matilda’s new baby, who was born at the end of April in her new house in Bury and was a boy called Edward Percival.
‘And now, perhaps,’ Harriet told her diary, ‘I may take up my ordinary life again. My dear John is still unhappy and works so hard. I would I could tease him into laughter as Matilda does Billy.’
May began tenderly and tentatively but with an unmistakable balm in the air and the promise of gentleness and warmth and colour. It would be Will’s second birthday this summer.
‘He should have a birthday party with all his cousins,’ John said, looking down at him as he slept moist-skinned and red-mouthed in his little truckle bed. ‘I’ve a mind to rent a house in Bury for the summer, like Billy and Matilda.’ His brother’s new establishment behind the Athenaeum in Chequer Square was extremely fine, and had renewed all his old shameful feelings of jealousy and rejection. They were invited there for the christening, of course, in six weeks’ time, so it would be pleasant to have a country seat of his own before then. ‘How if we were to rent a house in Bury?’
‘I would rather spend the summer in Rattlesden with Annie,’ Harriet ventured, adding hastily, ‘But only if you were agreeable to it, of course.’ If they were to live in Bury all summer she would have to visit her parents at least once a week, and once a week would be far too difficult and far too often.
‘I have to visit Norwich this Thursday,’ he told her. ‘I will call in at Rattlesden on my way back and see what may be done.’ Were there houses in the village large enough to contain his household and, even more important, impressive enough to equal Matilda’s obvious style? For himself he would be happy in a cottage, but he could not bear to think that his choice might leave poor Harriet open to criticism.
But he was in luck. There was a sizeable house standing empty no more than a hundred yards away from the rectory. It had belonged to a cousin of the manor.
‘We buried her last Thursday,’ Annie told him cheerfully. ‘Eighty-two she was. Imagine that! ’Tis a good age. And now they need a new tenant. Would it suit, think ’ee?’
‘Only one way to find out, Sis,’ he said. ‘When could I see it?’
It was a long, low rambling building, facing the sunshine, in a garden framed by burgeoning white lilac and fragrant with tawny wallflowers, its pink-washed walls warm and welcoming. He liked it at once. And when he discovered that it had its own pump inside the kitchen and an indoor privy, and that there were five bedrooms and a well-panelled dining room and a little pale blue parlour that seemed designed to suit his quiet Harriet, he rented it on the spot.
Afterwards as the ‘Phenomena’ rattled off along the road to London, he was surprised at himself. To have made such a quick decision was really rather extraordinary. More like Billy or his mother. But it felt so right. And it was a beautiful house.
Which exactly what Harriet said, when she came down to Rattlesden four weeks later to take possession of her new country home and attend the christening of Edward Percival Easter.
‘Oh John!’ she said, throwing her arms about his neck. ‘’Tis a lovely house. And so near to Annie. Why the children will be able to run from garden to garden all summer long. It couldn’t be better. How clever you are to have found it!’
‘That was Annie’s doing,’ he said, basking in her approval. It had been a long time since she’d kissed him so lovingly. And unasked, what was more. It was a most rewarding moment.
And so they settled down to enjoy the summer. Billy and Matilda gave a grand party in their grand house for all their local friends and relations, at which Billy’s friend Jeremiah Ottenshaw at long last plucked up the courage to propose to Matilda’s cousin Maria and was accepted, to nobody’s surprise except his own; John spent as much time in Rattlesden as he could, given the vast amount of work there was for him to do in London; and Annie and Matilda and Harriet played in the sunshine with their children, and dined with one another every other day and were ridiculously happy together; and Nan and Frederick Brougham decided to spend their entire summer in Bury for, as Nan said, in her trenchant way, ‘If we en’t earned ourselves a rest, my dear, I shoul
d like to know who has!’
And then, just as they were all enjoying their holiday, Queen Caroline, the long-estranged wife of their newly-proclaimed king, decided to return to England and claim her right to the throne.
The papers were full of stories about her. Her progress was followed hour by hour and her clothes described in lavish detail; ‘A rich twilled sarcenet pelisse of a puce colour lined with ermine, and a white willow hat similar in shape to the fashionable leghorn hats’ for her arrival in Dover; ‘a black twilled sarcenet gown, a fur tippet and ruff, and a black satin hat and feathers’ for her progress to Canterbury. Her horses were taken from the shafts of her barouche and ‘the people themselves’ drew the great lumbering vehicle wherever she went. There were festivals and fireworks, a hundred men carrying flambeaux at the entrance to Canterbury, flags and banners and cheering crowds all along the road to London, and a royal fair at Blackheath. It was a triumph.
To Nan’s considerable annoyance, Frederick Brougham was recalled to London by his cousin for a conference.
‘There is like to be a trial of some kind,’ he said, ‘for the King will never accept her as consort. He made that abundantly clear to us even before we went to Italy to discover her opinion in the matter. If she persists in courting the favour of the crowd, as she does at present, there will be nothing for it but legal action. ’Tis my opinion he will seek a divorce.’
‘And you will act for him?’
‘Why no, indeed. Henry and I are already spoken for upon the other side.’
‘To defend the Queen?’ She was very surprised.
‘Why not, pray?’ he teased.
‘When you know she’s took lovers?’
‘You and I are hardly in any position to cast blame upon her on that account, poor lady. The King has amassed some formidable evidence against her and will find more if he can, so she will need a strong defence. He offered her fifty thousand pounds a year for life, you know, if only she would renounce her title and stay abroad. Her refusal put him into a parlous rage and now we are all to feel the edge of it.’
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