The Wreck Read online

  ‘I didn’t think of it! I’m so stupid, I should have arranged a priest. You should have absolution. We both should.’

  ‘And what would I say? Bless me, Father, for I am about to sin?’

  ‘If it’s sin, it’s for the good of all.’

  ‘Sare, we’re about to take part in one of the most seditious acts committed in this realm. I’m not sure what the ledger of the Almighty looks like, but I’m certain that if you seek absolution for a sin, and then die in the commission of that same sin . . . well, it probably doesn’t count. Oh, and the priest would very possibly be off to the Runners in about five seconds flat, sanctity of the confessional be damned.’

  ‘But what if you . . . ?’

  Sam put a finger to her lips, a gesture he’d used since they were children whenever he wanted her to stop squealing or squawking at him. He had pressed hard then, hard enough to hurt. Now the pressure was barely discernible pressure.

  ‘I’m hoping not to be able to answer that question for some decades yet,’ he said. ‘But I fancy God is fairer than the government. I can speak to Him directly, and He knows my heart, so He knows I believe that what I am doing is right.’

  ‘I do hope intention is enough.’

  ‘It’s all I have – apart from you, of course. And you must survive this. Go at the first sign of trouble. Don’t stop to warn us, not if there’s no time. Just go, and don’t come back here.’ He took her hands in his. ‘Promise me that if something goes wrong, you will flee.’

  ‘I will not.’

  These past months, Sarah had noticed a certain set to Sam’s face. He still laughed – he joked all the time with the other men, without meaning to exclude her from their banter – but he was careful never to show fear or sadness, as though expressing those emotions would cause them to arrive in greater number.

  Now, though, he looked frightened. ‘You must!’ he said. ‘I cannot draw myself up for what’s to come, good or bad, without having your promise.’

  ‘Where would I go, anyway?’

  ‘Well, as to that . . .’ Sam reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a token: smooth ivory etched with the ouroboros. ‘It could mean death to be caught with this. But in the right company, it might save your life.’

  ‘Have you met any of the others outside our group?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Briardown told me of one, though – a man who captains a ship that will be at the docks. Before he weighs anchor, if anyone boards and gives him this token he’ll stand them passage. But I don’t know where he’s going, or even the name of the ship. According to Briardown, we shall know it when we see it.’

  She held up the token. ‘Do the others have one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Henry?’

  ‘Yes, I believe so. Briardown pressed this one into my hand a few weeks ago and whispered the instructions. Took all of a minute, and I saw him do the same with Henry a few days later, and Tully.’

  She frowned. That Henry had carried this possible salvation in his pocket with his figurines, yet hadn’t told her – well, it stung.

  Of course, Sam hadn’t told her either. When she asked him why, he looked down. ‘I should have, I know. But I hoped it wouldn’t be needed. I’ve barely been able to look at it, honestly, because I wish it didn’t have to exist. As for Henry, he probably assumed you have your own, the mooning idiot. I don’t think he’s interested in a world that doesn’t contain you. No more than I am.’

  ‘But Briardown . . . he didn’t think I was worth saving.’

  The sting came, then; the hurt at being excluded. She always tried to deny it entry into the front of her mind. It was a feeling worthy of a child excluded from a game, and it weakened her.

  ‘I suppose he didn’t think you’d need it, as you weren’t to be involved,’ said Sam. ‘You should take it, though.’

  ‘But you might need it!’

  ‘Sare, you know I won’t. I will be in a new world tomorrow, however things go.’

  CHAPTER 7

  Sarah was breathing in the dung-infused air as she watched the lowering light eat away at the corners of the loft. Running her finger over the token, she felt the smooth ivory riven by the grooves of the snake. Sam had gone to wash himself before the sun set and the pump water grew even more uncomfortably cold. For now, this room in which a new world may have been conceived was hers.

  She had changed into breeches and a loose shirt under a jerkin. Tied her hair up in rags and shoved it into a cap, praying it wouldn’t betray her by tumbling out. Smeared some dirt onto her face in the hopes it would mimic the shadow of emerging whiskers.

  She was alone, at the edge of everything.

  She wondered whether she could kill someone if she had to. Could she slice a person’s skin with a piece of metal? Perhaps she would not emerge any better than the yeomen of St Peter’s Field. But when she pictured her mother and father, their blood leaking into the dirt, her fist clenched as if around an imaginary hilt.

  Sarah went to the wall of the loft and removed a loose section of wooden board, revealing a small hollow. It was home to a scrap of oilcloth that she used to store her offcut paper from the printer’s shop, together with her pencil stub. To the finder of this letter, she wrote.

  I do not know whether I will return here. If I do not, it may be that I am too occupied with the formation of the provisional government. It may be that we have failed, and I am in prison. It may be that I have flown.

  It is my intention to burn this letter if I ever return here. If it remains long enough for a stranger’s eyes to fall on it, I wish it to stand as my testimony.

  My mother and father were slain by men on horseback who cut into their own countrymen for no greater crime than listening. It should not have been so. My brother has gone hungry many times these past years so that I can eat. It should not have been so.

  I pass bodies sitting with their backs propped against walls, having died where they begged. I see small bundles placed on the dead carts. Those left alive are in mortal danger if they gather to raise their voices against the injustice. There is food, I am told. It sits just across the seas. It could relieve our hunger, if the government was pleased to let it in. But the English merchants object, and the government has more fear of their displeasure than of the poor, and so the dead increase. It should not be so. It should never be so.

  It is why I will go with the men when they rise, though most do not want me to do so. Women hunger, and women die, so women must also fight.

  It is my hope that we will have entered a better world by tomorrow. If we have not, we may well have entered the next world.

  We are not lawless. We are not savage or evil. We do not seek charity. But honest work – when it can be had – is no longer a path to survival. The government is deaf to us. We have tried to make them listen, and they have stuffed their ears. Revolution is the only remaining course.

  She signed the letter, folded it, and wondered if anyone would ever read it, ever know a woman had been involved.

  Her jaw clenched as she thought of Briardown’s belief that she should be excluded. He had used the fiction of feminine frailty like a cage, when it suited him. She was sure some of the yeomen on St Peter’s Field had held similar views, which hadn’t stopped them riding women down and inserting steel into their hearts.

  *

  Sarah was still fuming about Briardown when she heard Tully plodding up the narrow stairs. He emerged into the loft, florid and coughing, and thrust a cloth bundle at her, which she nearly dropped. When she unwrapped it, she was amazed that the cloth was not shredded: inside lay five cleavers of varying sizes, all polished.

  Sam came in then, negotiating the stairs more easily than Tully had. He looked at the cleavers on the table, then at the butcher.

  ‘The right tools for the right job,’ Tully said.

  The others arrived over the next half-hour or so. Henry, hands jammed into his pockets, walked over to her and bent to whisper, ‘After�
�. . . well, everything. Would you accompany me on a walk?’

  The suggestion seemed almost obscene: strolls in the gardens were for the free and fed.

  Before she could answer, Tully walked over to them.

  ‘I want you to see this,’ he said, bringing out a small, well-made wooden box that was banded with iron. ‘My mother’s,’ he said. ‘She kept her precious things in it. A ribbon from my father. My milk teeth. We all have something precious, and I think she’d like it if I used it again.’ He opened the box and handed it to Henry, who placed his little baker and thief figurines inside. Sam put Emily’s old ribbon next to them.

  Sarah wrapped her letter back in its oilcloth and handed it to Tully. ‘I know a place to keep the box,’ she said. ‘Just until we’re back later.’

  They heard the door opening, and Tourville climbed the steps into the loft. He pressed his back against the wall, standing to one side like a sentry to signal the imminent appearance of their leader.

  ‘I have written a declaration,’ Briardown said when he entered the loft, holding a scroll. He paused when he saw Sarah, perhaps not recognising her in her urchin disguise. ‘Our lookout?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘So do your duty.’ He inclined his head imperiously towards the opening in the loft wall, and she turned away before he could register her annoyance and upbraid her.

  She walked to the wall, crouched and pulled back the canvas.

  ‘As to this declaration,’ he said, unfurling the scroll and holding it like a crier with one hand on top and one on the bottom.

  Sarah listened with half an ear as she stared out at the darkening street. Across the road, men were going into the Horse & Coach tavern. Some in small knots, some alone; well dressed, mostly, with a few labourers mixed in.

  ‘Your tyrants are destroyed,’ Briardown began.

  She was surprised to observe a few men emerging from the inn. Wasn’t it a little early for anyone to be leaving? Perhaps they had been in their cups all day, yet they were not staggering as men usually did after many hours in the tavern.

  ‘The friends of liberty are called upon to come forward!’

  More were emerging now, none obviously the worse for drink. There were, suddenly, ten, fifteen of them.

  ‘The provisional government is now in session!’

  One of the men began striding across the road towards the stable. The others followed, reaching into their coats.

  ‘They are coming!’ Sarah cried. ‘They’ve been waiting at the Horse & Coach, and now they’re coming! A dozen, more!’

  There was a silence, then an intake of breath. Tully picked up a cleaver. Sam, who wore a dagger in his belt, reached for a rifle and positioned himself between Sarah and the top of the stairs. Henry reached over to snuff out a candle, but Briardown shook his head. He drew his pistol and gestured for Tourville to station himself at the other side of the door.

  Tourville either ignored or misunderstood his leader. He drew his pistol then dashed down the narrow stairs as fast as he could without breaking his neck.

  ‘What in God’s name . . .?’ Briardown yelled after him.

  Sarah glanced out around the canvas again. Downstairs, the leader of the men from the tavern – constables and Bow Street Runners – pounded on the stable door, the sound reverberating throughout the loft. Some of his followers were holding pistols.

  In the next instant, after only a few strikes of his balled fist, the stable door yielded, gaping open. Two of the constables grabbed Tourville and dragged him outside as he struggled and shouted, while footsteps pounded up the loft stairs.

  ‘They will only be able to come up one at a time,’ Briardown hissed at his men. ‘So that’s how we will take them.’ He whirled, pointing his pistol at the stairs.

  But the leader of the constables was already at the top. He whacked his staff against Briardown’s arms, forcing him to drop the pistol, before hitting the back of Briardown’s head until he buckled.

  Their leader, who seconds earlier had been preparing to declare a new government for the whole of England, was now slumped on the ground like a rag doll.

  The Bow Street Runner moved aside to make way for his fellows and the constables. In seconds, the small loft was a mayhem of shouts and shots and the scrape of metal.

  Sarah pressed herself beside the opening in the wall and tried to see Sam among the knots of men now struggling with each other around the room. None of the intruders had noticed her yet. She didn’t know what she could do for Sam, but she intended to try. She tensed, ready to spring as soon as she saw him.

  Tully held his cleaver in front of him as though he was about to chop into an animal carcass. A constable kicked him in the stomach, then two of them dragged him by the hair and under his arms to the door.

  When Henry reached for one of Tully’s knives, the butt of a pistol was brought down hard on his wrist. He cried out, bending and grasping it with his other hand.

  Beyond Henry, Sarah glimpsed Sam in the far corner of the room. One of the constables was approaching him. His shoulders tensed as he raised the rifle. Aimed. Fired.

  The ball caught the top of the constable’s hat, carrying it halfway across the room before it flopped onto the floor. The man ruffled his own hair, as though grateful that the hat was gone, smiled, and started moving towards Sam.

  Sam did not turn to her, so she startled when he yelled shakily, ‘Go! Get out of here!’

  ‘Not without you!’ she called back.

  Why was the constable being so slow in his approach? She saw that Sam’s rifle was slung over his shoulder, and he had drawn his long dagger from its sheath.

  ‘We’ve been asked to take you all alive,’ the constable said, inching closer. ‘Is that possible? You going to put down your knife, lad? You were talked into this, weren’t you, by the older ones. Put that thing down now, and we’ll see what’s to be done.’

  Without lowering the dagger, Sam shouted, ‘Go! Now!’

  Sarah glanced outside to the slick cobbles below. She looked back at her brother, willing him to struggle and break free. ‘You too! Run!’

  The constable had nearly closed the distance when Sam thrust out his arm, keeping the man at dagger point. Suddenly he turned to face Sarah and darted towards her. She allowed herself a small sliver of hope as she braced for the impact when they both jumped.

  The constable caught Sam by the back of his coat.

  He struggled as he kept his eyes on Sarah, who was frozen, waiting for him, unable to believe they would not make this journey together.

  The constable now had his hands around Sam’s upper arms. Sam inhaled, lifted his legs, and kicked her. Not enough to hurt, not badly, but enough to send her toppling out of the opening in the wall.

  CHAPTER 8

  Sarah lay on the stones for a moment or two. Breathed. Tensed, rolled onto her stomach, winced, saw rivulets of what was probably her blood between the cobbles.

  The noises around her came back gradually at first – muffled shouts, clangs, stamping feet – then in a rush, slicing at her ears.

  She looked up to see Sam being dragged out of the stable. She must only have been dazed for a few moments. Now she was on her knees, staring at her brother. Sam, still struggling, widened his eyes at the sight of her.

  One of the Bow Street Runners turned in her direction and saw what he no doubt thought was a boy. He started towards her and moved past Sam, who violently lurched to one side and sent the man sprawling.

  The constables tightened their hold on Sam and shoved him into the back of an enclosed cart, which started to drive away. Sarah went to run after it.

  Several seconds passed before she realised her legs were carrying her not after the cart, but towards the docks.

  *

  Sarah could not hear footsteps thundering behind her, though that did not mean she was safe; she could only hear the drag of chains at anchor as the tide scraped them against the rims of their hawses. All ships scheduled to d
epart on the evening tide were making ready to do so.

  She kept looking around for Runners and constables as she tried to convince herself to run back, put on women’s clothes, and plead for mercy at the gates of the gaol that held her brother. But she knew there would be no mercy for him. And she would be swallowed alongside him, picked clean, digested.

  At that thought, she wanted to sit down, close her eyes and clamp her hands over her ears to keep out the noise of the docks – she did not want clanking and lapping and sloshing. With those sounds muffled, she could perhaps convince herself that she was part of a victorious mass streaming through the streets.

  It was an indulgence she could not allow herself. As she walked, she tried to imagine dashing back up the loft stairs, taking her letter from Tully’s box and burning it. Then she would give the sailor figurine back to Henry, closing his hand around it as he had hers, telling him she did not need luck anymore, that she had all she wanted.

  Her breathing slowed, but then it caught on the image of Henry’s face, her terror that his quick smile might be ruined by a fist or a boot, the lips and cheeks bruised and sunken without the teeth.

  Henry and Sam were young, but their youth would not inspire kindness in those who extended none to thousands of ragged, hungry children.

  There was some hope that if Sarah remained at liberty she could do something for them. Perhaps with the help of other radicals – this ship captain might have connections.

  She understood Briardown’s need for secrecy, but she wished he had told Sam the ship’s name. In the low light, she was finding it harder to read them. And as she weaved between the sailors, the longshoremen and the passengers, she knew that she would soon attract attention. She appeared to be a slight lad with a dirty face, so she might be taken for a pickpocket. But she had to keep trying.

  Briardown had told Sam that they would know the ship when they saw it.

  She passed one called Hanover – not a place Briardown had ever mentioned, as far as she could remember. Lady Adelaide – did one of the Cabinet ministers have a wife of that name? She might need to come back to it. Mermaid – Pa had told them stories of such creatures, but Sam had never really listened.