Death of a Radical (5 page)

“Ostrich feathers!” the milliner declared, “worn flat about a little yeoman's hat. And roses are
quite
out—oh dear me, yes. I did see a sprig of laurel on a pleasant lilac bonnet in the Park last Saturday—St. James's I mean, of course, where all the
quality
walk. But roses …” She gave a dismissive snort. “
They
just will
not
do this season.”

Favian Adley squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could close his ears as well. Oh, the airless, cramped, freezing misery of a winter journey by public coach! The leather upholstery sweaty with the breath of penned human beings; the ceaseless struggle to find some way of bracing one's weary frame against the constant lurch and sway.

His purgatory had begun with his mother insisting on rising at five o'clock to accompany him to the Belle Sauvage, one of the busiest coaching inns in London. It was a mystery to Favian how his diminutive mama could attract the attention of so many as she orchestrated waiters, pot-boys and even ostlers to do her bidding. She displayed her son center stage in her comedy, loading
him up with such “comforts” as a stoneware foot warmer—which she twice insisted be filled with freshly boiled water by a sniggering boot-black. And then there was the woolen night-cap she had begged her son, her hands to her breast in supplication, to wear under his hat. (Favian had managed to slip that into a pocket.)

As the vignette of his tearful mother supported on the arm of her servant shrank within the frame of the coach window, Favian closed his eyes in the hope of anonymity at last. Instead the wretched milliner had taken it upon herself to introduce the whole company. There was a sallow gentleman with large bags under his eyes who presented himself as Mr. Jones, a retiring curate, a spinster named Price and a neat little girl, perhaps of fourteen or fifteen, with big brown eyes and glossy wings of dark hair peeping out from under her bonnet. Her companion, Miss Price, gave the girl's name as Miss Bedford, but when the spinster whispered to her charge Favian caught the name “Lally.”

“Mrs. Burroughs, milliner to the gentry, that's me—and who might I have the honor of addressing?”

The blasted woman jostled him with her foot. With a great show of reluctance Favian opened his eyes.

“Mr. Adley,” he muttered.

“Well, Master Adley, what takes you up north? Returning to school? Been poorly, have you?”

“Madam, I am a collegian! A gentleman of Oxford.”

“Hoity-toity! A
gentleman
of Oxford no less.” Mrs. Burroughs cast a knowing look about the company.
“Never mind, my dear,” she said, leaning forward to tap Favian's knee. “Dorothea Burroughs is not one to take offense.”

Favian recognized the tone. She was setting out to make a boy of him. The situation called for extreme measures. Favian resorted to an exhibition of his most revolting cough. It was a fine example, with a sickening catch of phlegm ending in a dramatic wrench for breath. Generally after such a performance strangers left him in peace. Indeed, he noted with satisfaction that the other passengers looked quite uncomfortable. Dorothea Burroughs, however, was made of sterner stuff.

“Such a terrible cough! Poor young man! No wonder your mother was fretted all to pieces about you. For that was your ma, was it not, that accompanied you at the inn? I said to myself it had to be, so moved and tender she was toward you. Why do you not wear that nightcap she gave you under your beaver? You put it in that pocket, I fancy.”

“I'm not a child, ma'am!” he expostulated, outraged that he had been stung into sounding like one.

Dorothea Burroughs launched into a series of anecdotes containing intimate details of various acquaintances who had succumbed to putrid chests through not having sufficient care of themselves. Unnerved by this assault, Favian began to cough in earnest. Mrs. Burroughs rattled on as he bent forward, gasping for breath.

The curate sitting next to him blinked at the young man's discomfort. Miss Bedford peeped out from beyond
his bulk. Was this what was meant by being talked to death? A surge of terror threatened to overwhelm Favian.

A little gloved hand impinged on the edge of his vision proffering a large red handkerchief. He reached out and clasped the hand. It was warm beneath its smooth casing of thin, polished leather and perfectly steady. His chest felt as if it must crack asunder for straining against the congestion in his lungs. He was growing light-headed. Dimly, against the stream of the milliner's babble, he heard Miss Bedford's soft voice.

“Hush. Try for a shallower breath.”

He hung on to the warm hand. With an explosive retch, he coughed up the obstructing phlegm and air seeped into his sore lungs. He was conscious of the other passengers shuffling in their seats as the crisis passed. Mrs. Burroughs alone seemed oblivious to the specter of dissolution that had glanced up among them. Favian released the gloved hand with a wan smile to its owner. The solemn brown eyes turned mischievous as Miss Bedford smiled back. She had remarkably luxuriant eyelashes.

“You'd do well to mind your prayers, young Master Adley,” commented Mrs. Burroughs. “You have need of the Almighty's aid with that cough.”

Favian turned his head to his clerical neighbor, his voice languid with the exertion of his recent crisis.

“Mr. Jones, sir; you are an educated man. I have been much struck by Pliny's arguments in his
Natural History
—I'm sure you know it:
that the supreme being, whatever it
be, pays heed to man's affairs is a ridiculous notion.
What would be your opinion?”

“Saints preserve us! Never say the boy is an atheist!” exclaimed the milliner.

“Now, now Mrs. Burroughs, I am certain that the young gentleman did not mean to shock you,” responded Mr. Jones. He smiled at Favian under the hedge of his eyebrows. “Now did you, Mr. Adley?”

“Indeed Mr. Jones, as it happens, I did—but the philosophical question has merit all of its own, do you not think?”

The milliner clamped her lips shut and drew her skirts away. Satisfied that she had excluded him from her presence, Favian leaned back gratefully and composed himself to sleep.

The
London Union
rattled to a halt in the cobbled yard of the White Horse Inn, Leeds. Favian tumbled out into the buttery sunshine, wrung out and aching. With a shy smile and a bow to Miss Bedford, he snatched up his bag and made his escape. He turned down Boar Lane, past the imposing edifice of Trinity Church and out into the broad sweep of Briggate. There was a chill in the air. Passers-by hurried with their heads down, preserving a space between themselves and the next man. Across the wide thoroughfare a tight pack of inns jostled for street space, shop fronts for the long yards that lay behind, with their stables and higgledy-piggledy hives of rooms: the Bull and Mouth, the Albion, the Old King's Arms. A
group of citizens stood talking, their arms crossed, faces guarded under the brims of their hats. Favian gave the group a wide berth and turned his steps toward the river. Beyond a lumbering luggage wagon, he discovered the comfortable bow windows of the Royal Hotel.

The inn was warm and full of talk.

“Been a row on Briggate,” said the pot-boy, a long stringy youth with bad skin. “Did you see owt? A hundred or more they say. Could hear 'em from 'ere.”

“I didn't,” responded Favian, sorry he had missed the excitement. “What was it about?”

The boy caught his master giving him a hard stare and flicked the table with a grimy cloth.

“Apprentices complaining. Wages been cut again. What can I get you?”

Favian asked after the Carlisle coach and was informed that he had two and a quarter hours to wait before its arrival. The pot-boy stood before him, his eyes fixed on his face, his mouth slightly open, waiting. Flustered, Favian ordered the dish of the day.

It felt delightfully robust to eat at the public table in the coffee room. His mother would have insisted he dine in a private parlor. He was not hungry but Favian forced himself to swallow half the plate of broiled pigeon put before him. Then he withdrew to a settle in the bow window to while away his wait with a book.

Favian kept his copy of
Pig's Meat
by the radical philosopher Thomas Spence for his public reading. He had purchased it over a year previously from a bookseller in St.
Paul's renowned for the number of times he had been prosecuted by the government. He had so far failed to finish it. He had, however, gained much entertainment from the reactions of those of his elders who happened to notice what he was reading. Mr. Spence was one of those free-thinkers condemned by the respectable as a filthy Jacobin who only desired to corrupt honest English persons. Favian, who enjoyed thinking, prided himself on giving a hearing to all philosophy.

Favian arranged the tract before his face in such a manner that the cover might easily be read and slid a look about the room. Much of the company had dispersed. Favian sighed. Word for word
Pig's Meat
made dull reading. His thoughts turned to his visit north.

Favian Adley had never known that careless resilience of youth where vital spirits give the illusion of immortality. As a child he loved to watch any trial of physical ability—whether it be a cricket match or a couple of porters fighting in the street. There was one man among his acquaintance who seemed to him to bring together the two halves of his ideal—to combine physical grace and confidence with the inquiring mind of a gentleman scholar, and that man was his cousin Raif.

They had first met when Favian had been five or six years old. His father had taken Mrs. Adley abroad on a trip to Vienna—the very first time Favian had ever been separated from his mother. He had been in good spirits for the first few weeks but then he had succumbed to one of his regular bouts of lung fever. Unable to reach
his parents, his nurse had sent word to his most illustrious relative, the Duke of Penrith. The duchess was still mourning the tragic loss of her youngest son and the duke had taken his wife to Brighton, hoping to distract her from her profound melancholy. By return of post the duke had replied that the little boy should be sent to recuperate on his Yorkshire estate. So Favian and his nurse found themselves at Ravensworth with a skeleton staff and the young marquess, Charles, as titular host. Those few weeks might have been as barren and confined as all the rest for Favian, for cousin Charles, then fifteen, shied away from the company, being still raw from the loss of his brother; but that summer cousin Raif was at Ravensworth.

More than a decade later, Favian could recall precisely the sensations and scenes of that magical visit. On the second day, left unsupervised, he had discovered the duke's library, an imposing room, well kept and containing many valuable books. He had climbed to the uppermost rung of the library steps in order to view the collection from a proper perspective when his cousin had entered through the French doors from the garden, a volume of essays from
The Spectator
in his hand.

He had not seen the boy at first. Favian remembered the thickness of his corn-blond hair and the way he moved with a controlled grace that implied a vitality commensurate to any physical challenge. He had sensed another presence and looked up. The boy was used to encountering impatience from adults, but the blue eyes
registered a friendly interest as the youth nodded a greeting. They had fallen into conversation. Favian remarked that he was not familiar with Mr. Addison's entire work but that he had found himself particularly diverted by that author's essay on ghosts and apparitions. His new friend had agreed it was an entertaining piece. Considering the memory, Favian realized that his companion must have been amused under his courtesy. The boy he then was had been exhilarated to converse with a man of near twenty without being dismissed.

From that moment, young Favian's every waking thought turned to finding the means to be in the vicinity of his hero. Never before had he experienced the vibrancy of such anticipation: ears tuned for the sound of his nurse returning; stretching on tip-toe to look over the high sill of the nursery window, down into the courtyard where Raif and Charles collected their dogs each morning to go shooting. The boy watched Charles and Raif go out where ever they wished. They took their guns from the gun-room, whistled to the dogs, and walked out. His nurse had never thought to take Favian further than the lawns and the narrow paths of the rose garden. He longed to see the wood, to be with the men like a normal boy.

That morning Nurse stepped out to visit the house-keeper's room. Favian was nervous as he edged into the corridor. In the distance a servant was dusting a table. A voice called. The girl answered with a pleasantry. He scarcely seemed to register upon the vastness of the main stairway as he crept down. The door to the library was
open. At the end of the vista, sun streamed through the glass of the French doors.

The panes made a dreadful clatter in their frames. He was certain that someone would catch him. As he crossed the lawn every window in the house seemed an accusing eye at his back. Favian was not used to running. He walked as quickly as he could to the white gate that led to the home wood. And there he was. In the wood. He was light-headed with the unexpected exertion and the daring of what he was doing. He had read of woods in print on pages but nothing had prepared him for the vitality and variety of the colors, the smells, the sensations. It was strange and exotic to be so entirely surrounded by living, unconstructed things. There were birds everywhere. He could hear them move about and call to each other in the foliage around him.

A dog barked nearby. That would be the others. He left the path to follow the sound. Cousin Raif would be so surprised to see him walk out of the bushes. He would not imagine that the boy could be so bold.

Then he was lost. The dog moved off and the under-growth seemed to close around him. He could not see where he was. He was proud and he would not cry for his nurse. He folded himself into a ball by the root of a large oak and despaired.