His Last Fire Read online

  She has found out nothing about the other woman. Yet their marriage is also nothing. Rare meetings. Pared-down questions; opaque answers from the edge of the mattress.

  Winter sets hard. Yesterday’s horse-dung frosted. House martins, swifts long flown the city. Carrion crows stalk the streets.

  Tom Cranch comes often. Stands sipping and smiling, waiting to hear treasonous tones, she assumes. Yet men are cautious now; he can’t have much to report. His own speech is like his drinking, rapid, gratified. She listens. He tells her about America or describes a future where property is unimportant, where everyone votes and no one starves. She reminds herself that he is trying to trap her.

  She looks forward to his smile of pleasure, his latest tale of a reformed world. He charms her into speaking, holding his head at an angle, bright-eyed, like a blackbird listening for a worm. He brings her a poem he’s written. About Levellers and frugal meals and simple cotts by rippling streams.

  She tells him she was in the great crowd at St George’s Fields in June among the dandelions and flattened grass. He was there, too. Printed the tickets for it, he says. There’ve been two huge meetings since. He printed reports of those. Now a final one, near the Jew’s Harp House, Marylebone, where city succumbs to open country. The great men will attend, the heroes, to speak against the Acts. Will she come?

  A sudden surge of men from the street breaks her imagined flight.

  ‘Three bottles of your best claret to begin!’ they order, roaring.

  ‘What a man you are, Byng! Bagged woodcock near St Martin’s and snipe at Five Fields. Will you cook them, Miss Battle, when they’ve hung enough?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says to the men who never noticed her marriage. ‘No,’ replies in a low voice to Cranch when they’ve moved away.

  She doesn’t think her father will let her go, she says. It was bad enough last time. Bawled red in the face about the mob. His gout is like the fiend.

  Some nights James doesn’t come home at all. She needs evidence if she is to accuse him. To avoid a lofty denial, cold laugh. She rummages again, more extensively. This time, something. Is under the table picking up torn foolscap when the door rattles.

  He doesn’t come in; it rattles more. Furtive knocking. She gathers the shreds together and into a pocket; opens a crack.

  ‘Please let me in,’ says Tom Cranch. ‘I’ve escaped from the spunging house. Bailiffs won’t think to come here.’

  She draws the bolt behind him.

  ‘Ran through my money.’ He’s breathing heavily. ‘Reports of general meetings all printed by me – T. Cranch, Printer at the Tree of Liberty, no. 444 Strand, opposite Buckingham Street – and no payment! Bailiffs broke in, took me up. The man was drunk. There was a window.’

  His eyes are wild with urgency. She could stroke his dark cropped head.

  ‘I must leave the country. Besides, the Acts will be passed at the end of the month. There’s nothing for it. Boat to Philadelphia. Come with me.’

  He needs her money. Embraces her with undeniable energy. Relish.

  She stuffs a bag with clothes, a loaf, her store of cash. He watches her cast the shreds of foolscap from her pocket all over Wintrige’s papers, snatch up an undelivered letter.

  Screeching gulls left behind. When sea-sickness has passed they huddle together, fend off icy blasts. Rip open the undelivered letter to R. Ford.

  During the whole of the last five years I am sure, sir, I was always regular in my reports to you and anxious to do everything in my power for the service of government. Not a person on earth, not even my own wife knew of my connection at your office. You know yourself had I been discovered it would have been attended with much personal danger. My part was ever to declaim their beliefs and my disguise to cover myself by folly and silliness.

  Spy. Spy to spymaster. No other woman.

  Half-way to Philadelphia. They eat the bread, swear to be true.

  LASCIA CH’IO PIANGA

  BREAD WILL BE

  SIXPENCE THE QUARTERN

  if the people will assemble at the

  Cornmarket on Monday.

  Fellow Countrymen!

  How long will ye quietly and cowardly suffer yourselves to be thus imposed upon and half starved by a set of mercenary slaves and government hirelings? Can you still suffer them to proceed in their extensive monopolies while your families are crying for bread? No! Let them exist not a day longer; we are the sovereignty; rise then from your lethargy. Be at the Cornmarket on Monday.

  *

  With downpayments and annuity Mrs Clavering bought a sizeable house in Jermyn Street. Contingent upon return of Lord F’s letters. She furnished it with taste: exotic hangings, old masters, new, patriotic seascapes (A Two-Decker Firing a Morning Gun in the Thames Estuary), highest quality mattresses. Found girls with good looks, respectable backgrounds. Schooled them in posture and conversation; employed singing, keyboard, dancing masters. Paid out pounds for silks at Kings’s, trimmings at Price’s in Tavistock Street. On every floor, bookcases sat in corners of delicately painted rooms; moss roses and carnations scented the air; spinets waited.

  No flying leap for half a crown here or a night’s lodging for five shillings and a bottle of wine. Let alone she who’d satisfy your wishes in Green Park for three pence and a dram. The price was five guineas, fifty for a virgin. And such was the quality of Mrs Clavering’s that some men were content to play cards, converse, listen to exquisite Harriet Sayles sing Haydn airs.

  Attention to detail, above all discretion and order enabled visitors to feel entirely at home or, in the case of the slightly inferior, positively elevated. Mrs Clavering’s own wit and good looks, though sharpened with age, enhanced the delight of all who came. Her background was impeccable; she had some French, a little Italian. Enough of everything to attract the noblest from nearby St James’s.

  Joseph Young, who’d fixed the bill to the Monument without being seen was absorbing Milton when he wasn’t reading Tom Paine. His mind oscillated between Latinate syntax and common man’s rhetoric, even as his burin dug into metal plate. Apprenticed to an engraver, his days were filled with images. But it was word-cut images that leapt within him. The sketchbook in his pocket contained as many phrases as drawings. Despite natural gentleness he longed for just conflict. At secret meetings friends sought his stirring phrases; notices were written in his well-taught hand. He was growing a pamphlet, a tender, wayward sprout in his brain’s packed soil.

  When the crowds gathered he stood on the margin, knowing how it would go. Hissing, hustling, pelting with mud. Mealmen, cornfactors, Quakers the target. He didn’t shift with the tide as it grew, dispersed, reformed. He wished for sudden unavoidable immersion, but stood, pressed against a wall, tall, thin, black hair tied back, peering, myopic. Mud became brickbats, stones. He heard the riot act, turned away west. Not desertion; self-preservation. A strong sensation of mental power welled in him. He would be ready soon. Even before the apprenticeship was complete at the end of the year. Ready to address his fellow men, to move, compel. How long will your families cry for bread?

  The education of Mrs Clavering’s girls was not confined to Jermyn Street. She took the most beautiful to superior masquerades to mix with the best names in town; a guinea subscription for each was well worth it. For a select few there were outings to the theatre. Mrs Clavering was fond of the theatre. Even more the opera. When offered the use of his silver ticket by Mr Simpson she took it with delight.

  So to the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, in expensive, not quite ostentatious gown and headdress. But she experienced only the delicious smell of candles, hair grease, powder, pomade, sweated velvet, dust of the stage: the delicious smell of anticipation. She was turned away by the proprietor.

  Mr Simpson took proprietor Taylor to law. His ticket was paid for, he’d lent it in good faith to an old friend, all was legitimate. Mrs Clavering, in sober dr
ess, was called before chief justice Sir J. Easton. Was declared by Taylor’s lawyer, obviously and notoriously an exceptionable character, improper to be admitted to the pit of the King’s Theatre. Cross-examined, she admitted she’d kept a large house in Jermyn Street for twenty years, was in the habit of letting out the same to ladies who were generally esteemed handsome and sometimes to single gentlemen. His lordship leaned towards her kindly, as so he should, said she was not bound to incriminate herself further. Yet he found against Simpson. Taylor could object to whom he wanted, especially for seats in the pit where persons of the highest rank and fashion usually assembled.

  Mrs Clavering was incensed by the hypocrisy. Easton was keeping his nose clean (what was left of it, she told herself, coarsely.) While she lost no money over the case – visits increased through commiseration, especially those of the chief justice – it was most disagreeable to feature in the print shops for so many weeks.

  Order and discretion. Necessary for all strands of life. The chaos of France lurched dangerously close. Constant sea victories were needed to show where right lay, for revolution at home could not be countenanced. The poor must be fed into quiescence even if that meant substituting herring for bread, someone suggested, three per person daily, two a penny salted. The rich could abstain from pastry.

  Joseph strode down Fleet Street, through Temple Bar, past Strand whores, Charing Cross carriages, wagons, the stocks empty now, but not for long. He felt pulled towards the places of power to where, had this been Paris, the multitude would have surged. We are the sovereignty now! His great vision – addressing a vast crowd in St George’s Fields – shone before him. Rise then from your lethargy! Lethargy was real enough, induced through inanition. Days-old mouldy bread or none at all. Not that he longed for blood: the horrors of France disgusted him, but haunted him too, so near were they to the principles in which he believed – liberty, reform, humanity. Here, as he neared St James’s, lived ministerial hirelings, court jugglers, corrupt, licentious, vice-riddled, a band of parasites living in luxurious indolence out of the public taxes. If only he could write like Paine!

  Up Haymarket where triumphant crows cawed on rooftops, dodging militia in Pall Mall, he slipped in fresh dung, knocked himself out on the shaft of a passing carriage. Returning with boxes, packages, Mrs Clavering stepped down gingerly, irritated at the inconvenience, had him carried insensible into the back of her house.

  He ran a fever, was delirious. Was convinced a nest of despots lived at the dark end of the corridor where he lay. That it grew,

  Thick swarmed both on the ground and in the air,

  Brusht with the hiss of rustling wings.

  He almost gave himself away. Books were found when his stinking clothes were removed, exchanged; a sketchbook of indecipherable doodles and writing; yet it was concluded that his brow and thigh were noble and besides he was too far west to have been involved in the Cornmarket riot.

  He came round to the smell of delectable ragout. Veal, most like. He was wrapped in a blanket on a bench, evidently outside a kitchen. A maidservant stared into his face.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘They call it a nunnery,’ she said. Ran off, stifling giggles.

  He knew at once. Had helped engrave the anonymous series: The Lady Abbess leaves her celebrated nunnery. The Lady Abbess arrives with due pomp at the K---‘s Theatre. The Lady Abbess is trounced by a tailor…

  He must get out. It was the last place he should be – awash with court corruption! There were phrases to write down, phrases that strode with him when he fled the Cornmarket. He sat up, swung his legs round and fell at the blast of pain in his ankle. On his knees he struggled to push himself up just as Mrs Clavering appeared.

  ‘You cannot walk unaided. I’ll have Kelly and Page carry you upstairs.’

  There, with little grace, the footmen dropped him onto an elegant sofa. Still dazed – someone had administered laudanum – he perceived a dazzle of textures, gleaming objects. Reached for his spectacles, but the coat was not his. Two young women stood to one side, impertinent breasts jutting above Grecian folds. He smelled their scent, the chocolate they sipped.

  ‘Leave us, girls. I would speak with Mr Young.’

  Even without eyeglasses he saw the wonderful accuracy of his master’s draughtmanship. Mrs Clavering’s authority was not confined to her dress. Her bearing was queenly, her nose emphatic. The rouge he’d hand-painted not a disguise for sunken cheeks; her profile fine, magisterial. No wonder Taylor had objected. She’d not look out of place in the royal box.

  ‘I am sorry for your injuries, Mr Young. You were careless.’

  ‘I …’ A goldfinch sang sweetly in a brass cage.

  ‘You have been well tended, however. Your clothes have been changed, a surgeon has bound your ankle, relieved your pain; you have been nourished.’

  It would make a good tale for the newspapers, the rescue of the young man from his unfortunate accident – her girls real nuns of mercy. Then, for she had no doubt of his sympathies, she would play the good citizen, exposing the revolutionary, traitor to his country. Taylor could hardly turn her away from the King’s Theatre after that.

  ‘I am grateful to you, Madam. Please allow me to leave.’

  ‘Wait. I have the contents of your pockets. And you will need help to return home. It’s surely too far to stumble on crutches.’

  He looked away. She knew. At any moment, she would deliver him up to some pox-ridden fop, some vicious, powdered … some grand infernal Peer. He heard music above. The sound of running footsteps, a man’s shout, laughter.

  She watched him. He was rightly named, she thought, young. His demeanour so serious that she longed to break it, make him laugh. He reminded her of Edward Gage years ago: the more he’d resisted the harder she’d tried.

  ‘I don’t much fancy this one,’ she said, handling the thumbed volume. ‘Paradise Lost. What pleasure can there be in that?’ She gave it to him.

  ‘The mind and spirit remains invincible!’ he declaimed, snatching it from her.

  Had she been younger she’d have sat herself next to him, close, made him sweat. Made him nestle the goldfinch between her breasts. Nowadays she received attention only from old men. Like Sir J. Easton, whose tastes required her two most hardened girls. Whose pockets were no doubt stuffed with Keyser’s Pills even while he’d wielded his power over her in the court, playing kindly one moment, condemning her to public sneers the next. Too long concealed, revulsion against the old rake spread its heat through her body.

  ‘And this, Mr Young. The Rights of Man. Is this not a banned book?’

  ‘It is a book that tells the truth, that stirs the mind and heart. That everyone should read in this benighted world. A very jewel of a book.’

  ‘By heavens, then I’ll keep it if I may.’

  He blinked. ‘If you will read it. Read it and learn.’

  She suppressed a guffaw. Observed his taut calves as he struggled once more to rise. Could she keep him here longer? She was damned if she’d surrender him to anyone. Let the chief justice enjoy his whipping under the same roof as a revolutionary! Let Taylor stew!

  ‘Wait. I should compensate you in some way for my errant coachman, Mr Young.’

  ‘Please let me go. I must return to my work.’

  ‘Stirring up the minds of the populace, no doubt.’

  He groaned with impatience, impotence. Lord! She had forgotten the charms of the incorruptible. He’d certainly never had a woman. And the house was full of girls who were more adept than she’d ever been.

  She drank his vulnerable defiance, strong yet sweet like chocolate. In the next room, chords announced Harriet’s voice. A Handel aria. Listening, she saw him listen, flinch at music of thrilling sorrow. Lascia ch’io pianga. On and on. No. She wouldn’t give him to one of the girls; not even her best.

  Deposited by the coachman at his mast
er’s above the bookseller and printshop in Aylesbury Street, Joseph was welcomed back by a man who disliked his opinions, admired his skill. A broken ankle was no hindrance to a good engraver. A witty rendering of the Cornmarket riots awaited him, the mob ragged and vicious, led by unshaven ruffians in French revolutionary dress, setting fire to bread shops.

  When his apprenticeship was over he’d choose what subjects to engrave. Etch his own designs not those of others. Until then he must take on this task, cut cleanly into the metal plate. Live in his mind: rehearse grand phrases of his pamphlet, recite lines of Milton, paragraphs of Paine, whatever he could to quell the melody that threatened to out-sing them all.

  MAD

  I, Robert Sanders, with five years’ schooling, was help-meet to Edward Gage. I accompanied him to southern Europe, Ottoman and Attic lands, India; collecting vessels, ritual objects, tiny carvings, stones, statues, shards; beautiful, strange. I learned how much straw, sacking, how many planks were required to box and transport what Edward bought. Dealt with removers, stowers, reliable carriers; learned about pack-horses and shipping routes. Evolved a method of communication in every language, though I spoke none. My brain grew balloon-like with knowledge. I developed a love for decorative knife-handles.

  I’m a small man, not much to look at, but strong. There’s nothing I cannot lift. For years people turned to me: my calm, certainty, they said. I’ve grown to believe it of myself. I surmount all difficulties. I’m never fazed. Edward was entirely dependent upon me.

  We were constantly abroad. When home, he was morose, refused all social engagements. Sent me to conduct visiting scholars around the collection, dispense with them as soon as possible. He would catalogue and place the pieces we’d brought back, create new groupings, rearrange old categories; speak to no one but me. Wouldn’t move from the library. He said he’d spent long periods there as a boy, dreaming; as a man he spent much longer periods, the regular domestic round dissolving under his detached stare. He slept, if he slept, on a couch in the extension he’d built to house the collection. He washed rarely, changed his linen less often, ate when I could persuade him.