The Flight of Sarah Battle Read online

  Digham is endlessly kind to Lucy, relieving Joseph of the necessity to placate, to explain. He has no idea what the old man says about him, but although when he does go to Paternoster Row, she still sometimes looks in that worshipping way, she’s more interested in news he might have about Matthew. Which he rarely has.

  Two rooms at the back of Digham’s on the second floor serve as bedroom and nursery for Lucy and the sadly named baby, Matthew. At first the old engraver refuses rent from her, but then agrees that she continue to limn his prints and that she sell them for him downstairs in the shop to pay for her keep. Moreover, she’s graduated to topography, at last, colouring scenes of ruined abbeys, sublime Welsh mountains.

  Digham is too generous to remind Joseph of his original warning against living with Lucy. Joseph has always valued the old man’s opinion when it’s one he wants to hear. But in any case, he has forgotten. His increasing success cheers him, feeds his confidence. Yet there’s a dullness. It’s like coming across a sheaf of drawings, brown and cockled by damp. There’s nothing he can do about it. His relief at Lucy’s move doesn’t remove his acid sense of worthlessness. Wood’s palls. Fanny fancies another man. Fanny Lobb. Fanny Loblolly. What did he expect?

  For the moment it’s Battle’s that contents him. He’s found a patron, a place to display his work and an intriguing woman, like neither Lucy nor Fan.

  *

  Summer, and the melancholy William Pyke pays Sarah one of his occasional calls. Apart from the recommended man-midwife, she has not accepted any more of his offers of help.

  ‘Not now, Mr Pyke. But in a few years, when Eve is old enough to learn I shall ask you to help me find a school for her. Or, if none exists, for most girls’ schools teach little more than French and dancing, then good scholars. I can teach her everything I know, but after that I would have her taught as men are. Tom would have wished it.’

  ‘Ah yes. I shall be happy to help. Meanwhile, Mrs Cranch,’ he smooths down his sparse white hair, ‘I’ll tell you about Thomas Spence, the bookseller, you know. I’ve been attending his trial. A man after Tom’s own heart.’

  ‘I’ve heard the name but know nothing of him.’

  ‘He’s being tried for seditious libel in his book, Spence’s Restorer of Society. I tell you especially, because in it he recommends the abolition of all private land, an idea which I know was dear to Tom. A courageous man, who speaks well, is thought somewhat mad, but not so mad he can’t be sent to Newgate, as no doubt Tom would have been had he remained in this country. Perhaps you should take consolation in that, my dear.’

  ‘You are kind to think of me, Mr Pyke.’

  ‘I also must warn you of the particular stir being caused by Mr Wintrige outside the coffee house. I fear you may be unaware of it. Look. You may not have seen this.’ He shows her a defaced handbill that he has removed carefully from a wall.

  Unbeaten!

  The Hero shall win another Wager!

  5 bottles of Port

  5 dressed Capons

  5 broiled Eels, buttered

  2 Legs of Mutton

  5 Plum Puddens

  5 mincemeat Pies

  1 Whole Cheshire Cheese

  To be Consumed by Jas. Wintrige all at One Sitting!

  Enquire at Battle’s, Change Alley

  It was defaced in two places:

  Let poor Men eat Dust!

  And in a different hand:

  Kill and cook Wintrige!

  ‘They have been posted liberally in streets all about here. And many have been written upon, understandably, by hungry men. But remember, summer is when crowds gather.’

  Sarah is shocked by this danger. Furious with Dick whom she suspects as author of the handbill. She knows too well about mobs. And a few weeks ago, angry crowds entirely demolished the disused Queen of Bohemia, once a Corresponding Society tavern, on the rumour of a murder. Inside, surgeons using the abandoned building for anatomical study, escaped with their own lives, leaving behind cadavers and instruments of dissection. What better excuse for the hungry to attack Battle’s than a man within, gorging himself on monstrous meals?

  William Pyke offers to remonstrate with Wintrige but it is hopeless.

  ‘His mind is fixed, there’s no moving him,’ he says. ‘All you can do is stop the handbills, keep him out of view of the windows and hope he becomes too ill to continue. It seems hardly right for me, an apothecary, to speak so!’

  A freak storm strikes the metropolis. Thunder, lightning, a hurricane; torrents of rain flood the streets. The Strand becomes a foul canal, coaches and shop-fronts splattered with mud and dung. In the court of common pleas, Westminster, rain smashes a skylight and pours down on the assembled wigs. Men rush into Battle’s through sheets of water and stand about, steaming.

  Sarah, made nervous by the threat of mob attack, is in the nursery with Eve. The child, almost a year old, hides her face in her mother’s hair to shut out shocks of light, the crack and boom so close, like houses breaking up.

  A kitchen maid knocks, puts her head round the door.

  ‘Miss Battle, please to come downstairs. Dick do ask it.’

  ‘No, Bessy. Eve needs me, as you can see. Whatever’s the matter? Is the building flooded? Are people trying to break in? Surely they won’t do it in this weather?’

  ‘Nobody have broke in, Miss Battle.’

  ‘Then please go away. I shall come down when the storm is over.’

  Later, when Eve is soothed, Sarah leaves her child sleeping with a perfect quiet that makes her weep to see, descends to an unusual hush in the main room. The storm is over, the steaming men have left.

  ‘Miss Battle,’ says Dick, somehow older and more arthritic since she flew at him about the handbills. ‘Mr Wintrige it is.’ She looks over and sees he’s not there. Retreated to bed again, she hopes.

  ‘Mr Wintrige be in your office, Miss Battle. Please to come wiv me.’

  In the office the shutters are drawn and Wintrige is lying on his back on her desk, papers and account books piled to one side.

  ‘Is he dead, Dick?’

  A surgeon she has met before speaks up. ‘Your husband has had a fit, Mrs Wintrige.’

  Dick clears his throat loudly and prods the surgeon, who begins again.

  ‘Mr Wintrige has had a fit, Miss Battle.’ He holds a candle over the great bulk, indicates the slight rise and fall of the chest. ‘He still breathes. His heart beats, if slow and distant. He is not dead, but it is my belief he will not wake.’

  In dim light, close to the man from whom she’s kept away so long, Sarah sees the mass of broken veins hatched across his fleshy face, as though a cat has used it for a scratching post. Colossal legs have burst their stockings. She’s shocked by yellowed skin.

  Six men carry Wintrige to his room where he lies like a giant puffball turned to stone. Someone prevents Dick from pouring liquid down his throat. With regular bleeding Wintrige lingers on for fourteen days, until one morning Dick says: ‘he ‘ave slid away, Miss Battle.’

  A post-mortem reveals no disease other than a wrecked liver. It is said that just before the fit he almost succeeded in drinking six quarts of punch. That he ate and drank to excess for months is taken into account. The man was no lunatic. Nor was it a case of cynorexy, pure greed, insatiable appetite like a dog. Wintrige had enough education to know the likely consequences of his excessive consumption. His actions were deliberate. According to the witness Lyons, he had recently said: ‘If it were now to die, ‘twere now to be most happy’, after finishing Mrs Trunkett’s pound cake with raisins and brandy. The verdict, felo de se, however, causes much dispute and discussion in Battle’s. Dick, though not within Sarah’s hearing, agrees with it and claims Wintrige ate and drank himself to death for the unrequited love of Miss Battle.

  It is some time before the image of Wintrige’s bloated, immobile body and distorted expression fade from Sarah’s mind, some time before she can separate revulsion from relief.

  5

  Sa
rah’s release from the burden of Wintrige has an effect that surprises her: she dreams of Newton. Her earliest days with him. It’s as though Wintrige’s death delivers her from sorrow and care and permits return to the simple love of her childhood.

  She looks out the sketchbook she’d kept for him the day he was killed, turns page after page of caricatured oddities, features exaggerated into hilarity, actions tipped over into farce.

  Here are figures slumping over their drinks, enfolded in newspapers, gripping each others’ collars in furious dispute, farting complacently, grinning into the steam of their coffee. Dick balancing a pyramid of dishes. Sam gathering fury. Itchy wigs, bursting waistcoats, watery eyes, bulging calves stretched out for admiration.

  She feels again Newton’s closeness when she presses her head into his sleeve. Smells dusty thread. Hums his tunes.

  And here, on the final pages of the sketchbook, are the rioters with their bludgeons, their sacks of cobblestones. The tiny image of herself behind a lamppost, observing. Then a drawing she’d quite forgotten: infantrymen kneeling to fire, pointing their rifles straight at the artist. How prescient! Did he think of that sketch as he took her mother’s hand and ran with her across Poultry?

  She sees how skilled he was. As a child his drawing seemed like magic; now she knows that it was a kind of magic, innate, unforced, a talent. Like Tom’s ability to talk to anyone in the street, to expound and inspire.

  Yet Newton had had little success. She somehow knew it, even as a girl, for he never bought new clothes, lived off free coffee. Sat in Battle’s all day as though he had nowhere else to go. What would have happened to him had he not been killed? Would his luck have improved? She doesn’t think so, doesn’t think he would have succeeded like Joseph has.

  She will show Joseph the sketches, for it’s wonderful that she knows another artist. She may ask to see some of his own satires, which, from the few she’s glimpsed, are more ferocious and grotesque than Newton’s. She’s adjusting to Joseph’s arrogant manner, so different from Newton’s, but he’s an interesting man and she likes him.

  *

  Philadelphia, 17 February 1801

  Dear Sarah Mrs Cranch,

  Mary write my words. I so pleased when your letter come I cry for joy. I miss you in the house. You and Mr Cranch. I so happy about your baby. I wish I see her. Mr Wilson he not let me and Willie go to England. Willie grow tall and big. Blue eyes turning brown.

  Maybe we come one day Sarah Mrs Cranch. Mary say pray God Almighty. I say it too. Mr Wilson say he glad Mr Jefferson president. That man he still visit Mr Wilson.

  Your friend,

  Martha

  The very sound of Martha’s voice comes back to Sarah when she reads the letter and imagines her dictating to her sister. Although she’s hardly allowed herself to hope, the news of the continuing rule of Robert depresses her. Nor is there any reply from him. Martha’s presence in Battle’s would have lightened everything, helped maintain connection to her life with Tom. Martha could have told Eve about her father, and she herself would have escaped Robert’s tyranny, even if she didn’t see it that way. Sarah feels a great weariness, a sadness she finds hard to hide from her child.

  A few months later the public mood lifts, with peace soon to be signed between England and France. Crowds take the horses from the carriage of Bonaparte’s Aide-de-Camp and pull it through Bond Street and St James’s Street to Downing Street, almost overturning it in their excitement. Squibs, rockets, bonfires illuminate the night, pistols are fired out of sight of the Watch, surging crowds demand Lights! Lights! in every window, smashing those houses still in darkness, pelting them with mud and brickbats.

  Battle’s resounds to toasts and cheering, twice as much punch is drunk, French wine is in high demand. Sarah, musing amidst the uproar, unable to rejoice, is astonished to hear that Joseph Young’s wife would speak with her.

  The girl stands in her office, a child sleeping against her shoulder. The candlelight is poor yet Sarah recognises the frantic look she noticed once before.

  ‘Mrs Young! Sit here. Will your baby wake?’

  ‘I hope not. Miss Battle, I can think of no one to turn to except you. I already ask so much from Mr Digham, you see. You and I know nothing about each other, but I think you are kind.’

  ‘What is it, Mrs Young?’

  ‘Please call me Lucy. Though I pass as Mrs Young, Joseph and I are not married. Nor do I live in Little Russell Street any more.’

  ‘I see. Tell me what’s troubling you, Lucy.’

  ‘It’s my brother. I have a brother, Matthew. He has been arrested. Once before he escaped arrest, but this time, this time they’ve definitely caught him. And now…’ She bursts into tears and wakes the baby who also cries.

  ‘Lucy, soothe your baby back to sleep, then we’ll lie him on the sofa here and you can tell me about your brother.’

  *

  They see Joseph ever more rarely at Digham’s place in Paternoster Row. In Little Russell Street Joseph employs a man to operate his press, a woman close at hand to limn his engravings. No one replaces Lucy in the shop, but since he gave up producing portfolios for hire some time ago and wastes little time on satires, there are fewer customers. The demand is for his ‘serious’ paintings and prints. What visitors he has come to commission, must discuss pose and price with the artist himself.

  As Fanny’s desire for him expires, his thirst for the noisome, for harsh, warm gutter life dwindles. When his mind darkens he doses himself into oblivion behind shutters and soon the squalor of his rooms resembles that of the old lodgings in Albion Place. No one sees this but himself; his public person impresses, frequently charms.

  ‘Lucy’s upstairs with little Matthew,’ Digham says to him when he ducks into the old engraver’s shop one morning. ‘I’m always pleased to see you, my young friend.’

  ‘How are you, William?’

  Digham conceals surprise at a question not often asked. There’s something else his ex-apprentice wants.

  ‘As well as I can expect at my age. Anhelous at times when I’m up and down stairs. Thank the Lord I have Batley to turn the star-wheel. Oh, short of breath!’

  ‘Are you kept awake at night?’

  ‘Very little. You know my sad history: I’m glad of a child in the house. And a pretty woman. Both are flourishing. It is better for them here even in this dark old place than with you, Joseph. That was always a bad arrangement. And you, you are free of course.’

  ‘Yes. I’m becoming known. Money flows, William. You will be pleased to hear I’ve given up Wood’s.’

  ‘At last! What does your Sal or Moll say to that?’

  ‘She’s gone for someone else. Besides she’s become fat.’

  Digham peers up at Joseph. He thinks he can guess.

  ‘Lucy had a visitor,’ he says. ‘The proprietor of the coffee house, Battle’s. You know her, I think. Mrs Battle, is it?’

  ‘Sarah.’

  ‘Ah yes. Sarah Battle. A good, kind woman. And a looker, I’d say.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘She hasn’t Lucy’s beauty. She’s not immaculate: her colouring’s too high, her nose too long. There’s something of the selenite about Lucy I think occasionally: her pale perfection. Though like the moon, she always revives, grows full again. Sarah Battle, on the contrary, is of this world. And intelligent. I took to her right away, especially when she wanted to see my work!’

  ‘She’s buying the series of Shakespeare women for her coffee house. I’m painting a whole new set.’

  ‘Hoho, you’ll have asked a good sum, no doubt! And it shows she has taste. A widow, I believe. Somewhat older than you, is she?’

  ‘Oh, perhaps. Not much.’

  ‘If she were nearer my age I’d make her an offer. Every man needs his cynosure, his guiding star, even if she’s earthly. Perhaps especially when she’s earthly. Not that any woman would want an old mole of a man like me. Who’s limning for you now, young man Young?’

  *


  It’s only the remnants that are taken at the Seven Stars, Bethnal Green, a spot north-east of the city walls remote enough for escaping madmen, for resurrectionists digging up bodies in the churchyard. Nevertheless a foolish place to meet, the publican well known for his opinions. The main conspirators are already in prison after the raids on the Royal Oak and the Nag’s Head a year ago and on Thomas Jones’s house, which they ransacked for papers, taking away sacks of evidence as well as Lizzie and her child, Edward.

  Contrary to Joseph’s belief, Matthew never went to Hamburg, but lurked in safe houses and unsafe ruins of houses, risking his life from falling beams, collapsing half-burned floors. Moving on every few days, he saw himself as a rat. Hated but hating, cunning. Uncatchable. As the hue and cry faded he sometimes came across a fellow United Briton or two, trembling in a cupboard in a tumbled building. Gradually a few of them dared meet together to plan and dream.

  The Runners break down the door of the tap-room, grab the men by their collars, discover a cutlass and two archaic pistols. As he emerges, handcuffed, under the stars and glaring moon Matthew sees light-horsemen surrounding the tavern, swords drawn.

  In Bow Street Police Office they’re searched. A list in secret code is found. In soap-boiler Clarke’s pocket scrawls from the memorable meeting with ‘Captain Evans’ the year before:

  Newgit cobathfilds  clarkevell prisns  berricks  towr  benk  stop myul cochis

  Lucy wouldn’t recognise Matthew if were she to see him now. He has a beard, long hair, his clothes are filthy. He is taken before the Privy Council, called together at a disagreeable hour.

  The room is full yet silent. Fifteen Privy Councillors sit at a long green-covered table, hands clasped or fiddling with inkwells and pens, sifting papers, fingers tracing routes on maps, drumming impatiently. Messengers and other servants edge the room.

  ‘You are brought here, Matthew Dale, on charges which may affect your life. You may refuse to answer, if the answer will criminate yourself.’

  Briefly he is at a loss, intimidated into blankness. For a year he has barely said a word. More fox than rat, he’s survived by speed of movement and decision. In safe houses he’s been fed, given precious coins and sent on his way. Coins enough to pay a girl sixpence in a doorway and hasten off as she pulls down her skirts, or buy half a pint of shrimps, occasionally a pamphlet from a bookstall. His mind runs on iron lines, driven by hatred which surges now. He sees they are the same as the masters at the school, as his father. But he is no longer a boy, knows the exact worth of those before whom he stands.