The Flight of Sarah Battle (6 page)

‘It 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.'

‘You've fled.'

She holds her cup in both hands; perhaps they're still cold. Yet her face is faintly flushed. He observes the shape of it, the set of her eyes, her small, determined mouth, her hair much fairer than his own. Her beauty is delicate, but certain: his fingers itch to sketch her.

‘It's because of my brother. Matthew. Papa beat him. I could hear it a whole floor away. And Mama wouldn't stop him. Then they beat him at school, too! When he came home Papa said he must go back and live at school. He's arranged it with the headmaster. He must stay until he's eighteen. It's like sending him to prison.' She breaks into sobs.

He casts around for a handkerchief, sees only inky rags, the one in his coat pocket filthy, but she takes one from her travelling bag.

‘What did they beat him for? How old is he? What in heaven's name did he do?'

‘Oh, Matthew is fifteen, a year younger than me. But we're friends. We've always been friends. We never quarrel, unlike some brothers and sisters. I shall not live at home if Matthew is not there.'

‘But what did he do that was so bad?'

‘He hoisted a French flag on the White Tower on the King's Birthday. They said it was a crime.'

‘Oh lord! What an extraordinary thing to do! And how on earth…? Was it his idea?'

‘Yes, but I helped him sew the flag.'

‘Oho!'

‘We found pieces of silk in my mother's box of stuffs. A proper sized flag: three yards wide. Matthew attached it to rope.'

‘You're revolutionaries! Wonderful! I've known several myself, but none like you, for they're all men. Lucy, you are the first revolutionary woman I've met.'

He begins to sweat. Holds his fists hard on his thighs. Forgets his lack of sleep.

‘I cannot claim that title – I'm not sure I believe in revolution.'

‘I was once in the Corresponding Society. Have you heard of it?'

‘No, I haven't. All I know is that Matthew is angry the whole time. He hates where we live. Hates the school. Oh, poor Matthew! But it's no use my crying about him, is it? I shall make a plan to rescue him. Though I don't suppose … At least I can write letters to him. Do you think they'll let him receive letters?'

‘I don't know. Perhaps not. I'll help you, Lucy.'

‘Will you?'

‘We'll secrete letters to him somehow. I have friends of all kinds. But where do you live that he hates so much?'

‘The Tower. We live in the Tower. We already live in a prison, you see! The prison for traitors. My father is chaplain. The soldiers there must attend services; sometimes the King comes.'