His Last Fire Read online

  ‘So, you’re not in this alone. Did you tell her about me?’

  ‘No. But in any case, Sophie will not tell. Nor shall I tell of her when I am found out.’

  ‘Then you had better not return. And I . . .’

  They were stopped by an immense booming.

  ‘It’s not the powder mills exploding!’ shouted Matthew, for Leopard had nearly jumped out of his skin. Cannon were firing from St James’s and suddenly, very close, were answered by those at the Tower.

  ‘It’s for the King. Yet my flag still flies!’ The boy laughed like a child.

  ‘Matthew. Tomorrow I take a ship to America. To freedom. The only land in the world where liberty, equality and fraternity truly live – better by far than your French. No, don’t be downcast. The flag’s a grand gesture. You have proved yourself.’

  Leopard paced around the boy with tense steps.

  ‘Come to America with me! I shall escape my little trouble here and you will escape punishment. For what will they do when they find that it was you?’

  The boy’s delight had gone. He watched the sharp eyes darting like flies.

  ‘Yes, come with me. We can meet here tomorrow before the sailing. It had better be nine o’clock, in time for the tide. Bring as many clothes as you can fit in a single bundle. I believe the winters are cold there. And bring as much money as you can. For your passage.’

  ‘I shall have to steal it.’

  ‘Is stealing worse than hoisting the flag of the enemy on the King’s Birthday? We are at war with France! That’s treason!

  ‘Now Matthew, think only of America. Your future lies there. The ship sails to Philadelphia. I shall find work as a lawyer and you, with your schooling, there’ll be all manner of opportunities. And women, Matthew! There’s women aplenty in the land of liberty!’

  The boy looked down. Leopard glanced about him again.

  ‘Come, Matthew. Let us shake hands on it. If I’d a bottle we could toast ourselves. To America! Till tomorrow!’

  And he was gone with his rapid steps. Along stones still black from the stream of liquid fire when the sugar warehouse went up. Matthew felt utterly dejected and excited beyond anything he’d ever known before. America. Freedom.

  He looked up. The Tricolor had gone.

  June 5th was hot again. A burning sky dried the sludge at low tide, magnified the stink of fish and sewage. The upper air was clear, the lower dense with steam and smoke, hops, malt, pitch. There was little activity on the river, the barges beached, boats bobbing only in mid-stream. The gulls at Porters’ Quay had flown up river to Fishmonger’s Hall to await the flounders and smelt, shad, lampreys, jack, perch, chub.

  The tide returned, boats breathed, ships shifted. Satiated, the gulls swooped back to their spattered row on the barges knocking against the stone. The boxes from B E N G A L had not been unloaded. Porters’ quay was deserted. No one came all day.

  SHELL: THE PEDLAR’S TALE

  Nancy Mason took no excuse from the kitchen, threw out drinkers with the wrong opinions but couldn’t resist trinkets, gewgaws, cloth. Beggars were turned away, even sailors wounded by the French, but pedlars never.

  She eyed him quickly – not a trouble-maker – and ran her hand over the goods spread on the table. Ribbons, pretty fragments of lace, useful squares of muslin and calico, baubles, buttons of wood, bone, mother-of-pearl, pins, pincushions, thimbles.

  ‘They’re good quality,’ the pedlar said. Nancy was too shrewd to agree. She picked out some pearl buttons.

  ‘How much for these?’

  He assessed her with dully glittering eyes.

  ‘I’ll level with you, Ma’am. I’m looking for lodging. Will they pay for a week?’

  Nancy rarely troubled to rent out rooms. It was enough keeping the casks rolling in, maintaining a supply of pies. But to have that collection of delights under her roof was irresistible. Besides, she reasoned, the man was gentle, quiet, even fair of face. Must have come down in the world.

  She saw little of him, hadn’t expected to, but soon Betsy told her he’d taken no food, not left his room for three days. Then she reported him feverish and coughing badly.

  Betsy was fourteen, of little experience; the man was probably drunk. Nancy went up to the third floor by the back stairs. She noted his tray of goods on the chest, hat and clothes folded on a chair, water in the basin. He was in bed, yet not unshaven, smelling little, apologetic. She sent for leeches but he only worsened. She called in surgeon Pyke, one of the radicals who met to drink here in her house in Red Lion Street.

  ‘Take goods to pay,’ gasped the pedlar, anhelous; still nameless. Nancy chose two squares of lace.

  Before Pyke’s second visit the pedlar became agitated. Nancy had taken to bathing his fine brow, burning from fever – Betsy was useless – even combing his long hair with one of his own bone combs.

  ‘I’d rather Mr Pyke came no more, Ma’am.’

  ‘He must. I’ll not have you die.’

  Pyke approached her later.

  ‘Here’s a surprise, Mrs Mason. Your pedlar is a woman.’

  *

  Nancy was handsome, stately. As a young girl, impatient with her origins, she’d gone to London where, from the inevitable but superior whorehouse she made her way to the stage. So many had achieved success – think of Perdita Robinson! Here were the attractions of wonderful cloth: satins, sprigged muslin, gauze, of breeches and sweeping velvet cloaks, boxes of glass and paste jewels. She played minor parts. It was not applause but impersonation that suited the country girl newly launched in town; ladies’ maids, fairies, minor goddesses, any part to play but herself.

  She became mistress of a worthless baronet for six months then kept house for an ageing merchant. Three children had not survived birth, two sons grown and departed. When the merchant died, leaving his property and name to her, though they’d never married, she opened the house, served good ale, allowed no gaming and no anti-Jacobins. She could tell a government spy before he’d even walked through the door, and although her acting days were done she bluffed with conviction when quizzed. Her customers were men of radical opinion, some more, some less educated, but all touched with the energy of rebellion. She cheered them with her common sense and unexpected wit; listened to their talk, warmed to the heat of their feelings, the colour of their language. And James Hadfield, the warmest of them all, she took to her bed.

  ‘I feared hanging,’ the pedlar woman said, when, after a time, Nancy questioned her. At first she’d merely calmed the woman and tended her as Pyke’s treatment took effect, practising gentleness unused since her children were at home. Against a backdrop of ribaldry about the woman in breeches, an affection grew between them, until Nancy at last dared to satisfy her curiosity.

  It was the Popery seventeen years ago, said the woman, giving her only name as Ellen. She’d got mixed up in Lord Gordon’s riots in the summer of 1780.

  ‘They said the king was in danger from papists. We went to defend him. My husband George took me.

  ‘But there were those that rampaged. Attacked buildings. We watched them. We heard the muskets, saw bodies, stepped over them, ran for our lives.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘They said it wasn’t safe to go home. The soldiers knew people from our street took part. We’d be hanged for riot. Some were. They said to go out of the city or hide or disguise oneself. I changed clothes with George. We went different ways.’

  Pyke had advised against mental over-exertion. Ellen’s tale was long. Nancy, though drawn like a bee to nectar, drank each measure slowly.

  ‘I met some pedlars. Learned where to get goods; to judge which houses were welcoming, which to avoid. Being a pedlar I could move away quickly if anyone suspected me.

  ‘I flattened my breasts with a bandage. Kept to myself during the bleeding, but after a while it stopped. I grew to like
men’s clothes,’ she said. Her voice reduced to a whisp again, her smile shadowed.

  ‘And George?’

  ‘I never saw him. Someone said he’d died.’

  Nancy thrilled to the story, its drama, its squalor, even to the royalism she would normally reject. How fat and comfortable her own life seemed against Ellen’s perpetual disguise. It was better than the stage, this extraordinary act. Ellen told how at first she slept under hedges, washed in dewponds, bedded down by the ashes of cold ovens; of kindly scullions, heartless children with stones. Perfecting her role, she drank more ale than she could hold, took to a pipe, brawled at cock-fights. Hovered outside a whorehouse. Gradually she made money, bought a horse and cart, rented lodgings. And now she’d returned to London.

  ‘You need play the part no more,’ said Nancy. ‘The spies are after them as speaks against the war. They’ve no interest in you. No one remembers those riots, I’m sure. You can be a woman again. I’ll find you a gown – cut it to size.’

  On the day Nancy gave Betsy the pedlar garments to burn, she helped Ellen from the bed, laying clothes out for her. Glimpsed thin limbs, withered breasts, translucence of old age; knew her to be thirty-eight.

  Ellen offered her goods, no longer irresistible glitter to Nancy, but mute companions of her new-found friend’s hard life. She took a yard of printed Irish muslin, some pale lilac ribbon. And a silver walnut. It was lighter than it looked, a real walnut shell painted to seem metallic. She pushed a tiny catch and it opened on a minute hinge, revealing miniatures of the king and queen in delicate blue, white and pink brushstrokes, one in each half.

  She tucked the walnut in her pocket. How the men downstairs would sneer at the royal portraits if they knew, obsessed as they were with revolution! Often she fingered its smooth fragility.

  Nancy had always preferred men to women. Men had provided her living; all her children had been male. She’d escaped her mother as soon as she could. Women were only ever competition or reluctant servants. Ellen broke this rule. Nancy felt fondness as for a precious thing, strange, frangible, uniquely her own. She gave Ellen a better room, retrieved gowns packed away in presses and refashioned them; was glad to pay Pyke for his medicaments. She fed her small delicacies – brandy creams, ratafias, oysters – hoping she’d put on flesh, find lost radiance. She longed to show off her treasure to Hadfield, Coke, Harley and the other men whose fancies sometimes led to danger, but knew their tolerance evaporated with each jug of ale. She kept her to herself.

  Yet something eluded Nancy. Of course Ellen had changed herself utterly to save her life. She had become adept at walking and holding herself like a man. She didn’t find it easy being a woman again after all this time; gown, cap and shawl seemed merely fresh disguise. Although Nancy had seen her at her weakest, the lines of her face were hard, closed.

  Pyke warned Nancy the consumption would prevail. When Ellen wanted to take to the streets once more Nancy tried to prevent her.

  ‘What need have you? Stay here; get well.’

  ‘You are kind. I saw you were when I first came.’

  ‘You chose my house.’

  ‘The streets were so crowded that day.’

  ‘Victory celebrations.’ How the men had railed that night!

  ‘But I must go out again.’

  ‘You’re not well enough. Stay. Be like a daughter to me.’

  The hardness cracked, broke open.

  ‘I cannot. I must find him. My son.’

  ‘You’ve a child?’

  ‘I told you only part. George and I changed clothes. Hid in the burnt out ropemaker’s by Stepney causeway. After three days I went home to my child. John. I’d left him with my neighbour. But when I returned no one was there. Not George nor John nor my neighbour. Nobody.’

  Here was the core, the kernel.

  ‘People said my neighbour’d been arrested and John taken away for safety. I went to my sister but she didn’t have him and George had no family. Nobody knew. I dared not ask at Newgate lest they arrest me. Nor at Coram’s.

  ‘In man’s clothes I could seek him freely. I asked as I went from house to house. Perhaps he’d been taken in by someone kind. When I heard nothing, I moved on. Found new suppliers, tried different directions. I’ve searched for seventeen years.’

  Pity welled. For Ellen. For herself. Ellen was no longer hers. Never had been.

  ‘Sometimes there was hope. I heard of a boy who was dumb. They said his parents died when he was very young. He was stunned in a fight, suddenly began to speak. I went to look but it wasn’t him.

  ‘I asked gypsies. They were not friendly to me, being rivals in trade. I watched children come out of school, stared at every urchin, asked sweeps, tinkers. He’ll be twenty years old now. How shall I know him?’

  Her eyes darkened, hollowed. Nancy’s loss was as nothing.

  *

  She filled two drawers with Ellen’s goods. Felt a remembered pleasure, but neither used the cloth to make kerchiefs nor trimmed her hats with ribbon. Nor did she take up the search for John, since Ellen never gave her surname and nothing among her belongings revealed it.

  Nancy had grasped a passing friendship. Held it fast while she could. It consoled her that Ellen had chosen Red Lion Street in which to die. She would never care for another woman as, momentarily, she’d cared for Ellen.

  From time to time she held the walnut in her hands, registered its surprising lightness, opened the tiny clasp, admired the almost invisible brushstrokes, wondered at the bland painted faces. She kept it from Hadfield, who would have stamped it underfoot as a piece of royalist trash. Not that she didn’t share the views of the man with whom she shared her bed. But Ellen’s was a loss no man could comprehend, futile, fatal: she’d lived half her life disguised, dried out, empty.

  Nancy touched her shell, her memento mori, as she chivvied the maids and cheered the drinkers, balanced the accounts and dragged the boots off her inebriated lover.

  SHELL: THE SAILOR’S TALE

  Wagons draped with captured colours, French, Spanish, Dutch; naval lieutenants on foot, marines playing; carriages of admirals, the commons, speaker, mace-bearer, clerks of the crown, masters in chancery, judges, peers, Lord High Chancellor. King’s household, Queen’s, the princesses, three dukes; twenty carriages of state drawn by one hundred and twenty-two horses. To St Paul’s to thank God for victory. December clear and bright.

  Behind lines of foot guards, horse, city militia, East India volunteers, pushing crowds, curious, impertinent.

  Gallant British tars escort the flags. From the Ardent that had fought more bravely, lost more men in the fury of Camperdown than any other ship, John Airey. Newly-promoted. Reluctant, tossed on a cross-stream. This day will mark the end, William Leopard instructed him. Come the new year you and I shall sail to America and liberty.

  William was older than John, recalcitrant, called the battle shameful. But he hadn’t been there. Numberless seamen, the captain and master died as they broke the Dutch line, shattered their vessels. John, exhausted, smoke-smothered, pitch flaming beneath his feet, had stepped over the dead gunner’s mate to take his place. A torn spar fell, missing him. Crushing the mate’s already crushed body. Unlike his friend, John cannot dismiss these events. Yet neither does he feel pride. He tries not to think.

  There’d been few prospects for a young man with a little education, attached to bleak East seascapes. He’d been adopted at three by a childless surgeon whose sickly wife died soon after. His own origins were obscure – he’d only a shadowed memory of his mother – his parents ‘lost’ during a disturbance in London. A friend of a neighbour with whom he’d been left took him to her home village in Suffolk, where the surgeon also lived. No one would explain what happened. Perhaps they didn’t know. He’d wondered if his parents’ end had been ignominious; never dared ask.

  After his wife died the melancholy surgeon em
ployed an old woman to run his modest household and later a girl, Margaret, a seaman’s daughter. Growing into manhood, John perceived the changed relationship between Margaret and his adoptive father almost before it began. His heightened awareness charted the infants she lost, the gradual souring of her expression, just as she became the object of his own desire.

  The surgeon was often away; John, fair of face, unclouded, was five years Margaret’s junior, not thirty years her senior. For a few months he found tenderness, eased her irritability, caused her to think of smiling. But it was a small house and such pleasure requires privacy. They were soon found out.

  John acknowledged that his conduct was a poor return for his upbringing. He became a quota-man, taking the offer of £30 to join the navy. The surgeon stepped up his intake of laudanum, dwindled gradually into blackness. Margaret cast her eyes downward, the lines round her mouth set; she began to resemble the surgeon’s childless wife.

  John was quick; learned the work of an ordinary seaman easily on his first ship in Lowestoft. Before long he was promoted Able Seaman Airey, assigned to the Mars at Spithead. Strong enough to take grog without becoming drunk, obedient yet articulate, he was an obvious choice for seamen’s delegate when mutiny blew through the fleet like a sudden squall.

  At first it was a mere cry, polite, respectful. They asked for little enough: increased wages, unchanged for a hundred years; sixteen ounces in the pound not fourteen; improved provisions, vegetables instead of flour; sick seamen better attended, paid until well; grievances against officers looked to; leave to go on shore.

  The Admiralty was silent. Then came an order to sail: the petitions, one from each ship, ignored.

  The Queen Charlotte sent a signal to the rest: three cheers hailed from fore-shroud to fore-shroud, defiance ringing out in Sunday sunshine. A line of small boats toured the fleet to the sound of the Easter service.

  They formed a General Assembly, two men from each ship. John Airey and William Leopard the Mars’s delegates. Like John, William was a quota-man, though for quite different reasons. John’s crime had been ingratitude; he joined the navy from remorse. William, a lawyer charged with fraud, took the £30 bounty in place of prison. John was in awe of him, his education, his appearance. He resembled Charles Fox, a rough engraving of whom he kept in his bulging blue jacket, along with pamphlets and both volumes of The Rights of Man. Short, stubby, lank black hair. Erratically shaven, clothes filthy, he risked a flogging each time he outwitted a critical officer. The friendship with John was unbalanced, yet teachers need pupils. They rowed to the Assembly in mutual pride.