Authors: Nicky Penttila
Kitty was the one who believed most of all of them that showing their troubles would convince others to help. Instead, it convinced others she should be attacked. Maddie did not doubt that Kitty had fought back. She did not deserve to be attacked in the first place. What had happened to the English that gutting women was considered the moral course of action? Men were cowards. Tyrants, and then cowards.
As the tea steeped, Bamford led Moore to the table. After Maddie poured for them, he gestured for her to sit with them. She sat to Bamford’s other side, across from Moore, so the man would have to look at her. She was so weary of his bull-headedness.
Bamford considered her a moment. “One thing ironical in all this. That banner of Kitty’s, the green one? It ended up in Tate’s window over on Oldham Street, not a stone’s throw from the Quinns.”
Maddie pictured the stores along Oldham. “The grocer’s?”
“Aye. Yeoman gave it him, or so he said, and he hung it up, ‘
Manchester Female Reform Society
’ still clear to see. Some of the women knew it for Kitty’s, and, well, they didn’t like to see that. They came around, and brung their children, and smashed every window in the place. Riot lasted till this morning, from what I heard.”
He saw Maddie looking at the old-fashioned knotted buttons on his coat. “You can hear a lot when folks take you for nothing but an old, deaf codger. I passed people who should have known me—constables, even—and they didn’t bat an eye.”
“Did the yeoman attack?”
“Shots fired; one dead.”
Moore lifted his cup, and then set it down, untouched. “Add Tate’s to the boycott listing, then.”
“At least it’s not another ale-house. More than half of them are already off-limits.”
“She lost the banner.”
“She fought for it,” Bamford said, “and we’ll keep fighting, man. Her life will not have been in vain.”
Moore frowned, staring at Maddie. She felt the force of his pain and anger like a saber to the throat. This time, instead of meekly accepting it as she had all this time she flashed it right back. He didn’t own sorrow, or grief, or anger.
His gaze flicked away, to Bamford. “What is it like, outside?”
“Confusion, generally. Artillery on Market Street, though we could steal it or break it easily enough. Shops shut tight, warehouses padlocked. The foulest rumor on the streets and in the pubs is of thousands of pikemen on the march to Manchester, from Oldham and Middleton, of all places. I were both places this morning, and saw not one pike.”
“They tell themselves their own horror stories.” Maddie gave up on drinking her tea, as well, pressing her palms on the table. “The magistrates dreamt of mobs, and created one..”
Bamford patted her hand. “Well put, daughter of the movement. General opinion is the authorities are stunned and unsure how to proceed. Even the nobs are looking askance at those magistrates, saying they put everyone else in jeopardy. And the men of business are crab-pot boiling mad that the Exchange is closed another day.”
“And the reformers?”
Bamford pulled his hand back and wiped his brow. “A man shot dead on Deansgate, not even part of the meeting. Yeomanry and constables picking fights in Oldham, and all over creation. Yesterday, an innocent babe knocked out of his mam’s arms by a yeoman in too much hurry to get to St. Peter’s field.”
“They’ve lost everything, too.” Moore’s gaze slipped past Maddie to the casket by the door.
Maddie slapped the table. “You have not lost everything. You do have me. You gave me life. How am I nothing now?” She sat back, as surprised as they at her outburst.
Moore looked down into his mug. “I had another girl. Emily died with her mother, rest her soul.”
Maddie blinked, replaying his words over and again. “Emily was my name. Before they changed it. Can you not see?” It hurt her throat to push the words out. She had no more breath.
“Not mine. Another case of nobs killing decent folk. I say revenge is past due.”
He was wrong. She might not be called Madeline Wetherby, or Maddie Quinn, or Emily Moore, but she was herself. She was not dead. His words—all their words—might harm her, but she would carry on.
Bamford jumped in. “Cool yourself, Richard. Your burdens are heavy, but do we that, anything close, and we lose the fine sentiment of the powerful folk. This is the first time in my memory the rads, the reformers, and the rich agree on something.”
Failing to get purchase on her father, Maddie had turned on Bamford. “They slaughtered us, and you wish to make political hay?”
“No, dear, not I. I merely wish to pay my respects. Might I stay the night with you? The service is in the morning?”
Moore shrugged, his eyes returning to the casket. Rising heavily, his feet followed the track of his gaze.
Bamford rose as well. “I’ve more people to see, and then I’ll pick up a little bite for our supper, shall I?”
Maddie’s stomach growled, a surprise after more than a day of torpor. She roused herself as he adjusted his wig.
“Might I return to Middleton with you tomorrow? I’d feel better walking with a companion.”
“Headed to the castle? A wise course, I’m afraid.” His smile was sad. “How about if I see if the baths are open? You want to be clean and proper for saying your goodbyes.”
Maddie looked down, suddenly seeing herself through his eyes. Uncombed hair, with who knew what in it. A man’s coat over a torn skirt, both stiff with dried blood. She hadn’t washed in more than a day, and never noticed.
Madeline Quinn would never have let herself go in this way.
The next day, with martial law lifted, Nash and Deacon could not stop themselves from returning to St. Peter’s field. Even two days after the event, rubbish and clothing lay strewn across the stamped flat ground. The wagons were gone, and the bodies, but the rust-red dirt remembered.
Deacon picked up a tiny clog, alone without its mate. “It looks like a toy battlefield.”
“The screams were real enough, and the blood.” Was any of it Maddie’s? Deacon’s man hadn’t found her at the morgue or the infirmary, but Jem had heard something of her lookalike over in Clock Alley. He prayed she wasn’t mortally injured. She might not have dared go to the infirmary; he’d heard the doctors there had turned their backs on a man who would not retract his reformist views, even as his arm hung nearly off his body. Other marchers rightly feared the loss of their livelihoods if it was known they took part in what the Tory papers now called a mob. The radical papers were calling it “Peterloo,” coined from Waterloo. He hoped the word stuck.
Maddie must be well, because she had to read his letter. She couldn’t go to her grave thinking so ill of him. He saw Trefford hurrying down Peter Street. “The meeting’s on.”
Deacon, face set as stern as their father’s ever had been, tucked the tiny shoe into his pocket. “Good. We won’t have to hunt them down to give them our medicine.”
It wasn’t so much a meeting as a wake. “They brought it on themselves,” Malbanks shrilled out at the room in general and an exhausted-looking Nadin in particular. “The London papers blame us. How can they so misunderstand the matter?”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have jailed their correspondents.” Nash’s entrance, as usual lately, took them by surprise. Heywood, sitting on the far side of the room, looked to him with something like hope in his eyes. Nash slid his gaze past the man, not trusting his face to hide the disgust he felt at the old man’s deeds. He set them in their places by introducing his brother as rudely as possible.
“Shaftsbury, these are the committee men Malbanks, and Trefford. You know Heywood and the constable, of course. Gentlemen, my brother, Lord Shaftsbury.”
“A good friend of one of the blameless young women your cronies beat to death on Monday.” Deacon looked down the straightedge of his nose at Malbanks, who quivered, though not with the fear Nash expected.
“Then she deserved it. The women were the worst of it. What will the world come to—women out running for Parliament and men and infants dying at home for want of a good meal?”
Showing how little he cared for the man or his blather, Deacon turned his back to Malbanks and marched to one of the tall windows that looked onto the field. The committee man then set his sights on Nash. “I hear your wife’s funeral is today. A pity.”
So he didn’t know, or he was playing some double game Nash had no time for. He thought of all the pain this man had caused him, had caused families across the county. It took all his strength not to leap across the bare three feet that stood between them and dash that simpering face into the table.
Malbanks evidently mistook his restraint for sorrow. “We thought we’d leave you to your grieving. Such a pretty thing but, it’s true, breeding will tell.”
Nash’s hand struck out, serpent fast, for the man’s throat, the better to rip his tongue out, and smiled grimly at the flash of terror that replaced the usual smirk. He’d barely touched the man when the crash of a trestle to the tiles startled them both.
Heywood had kicked it over, though he remained seated. Nash looked hard at him, and was shocked at the change. Heywood looked to have aged twenty years in the past two days.
Good
.
Malbanks took advantage of the moment’s respite to sidle away from Nash, but found his way blocked by an unsmiling Deacon. Instead, he reached for one of the papers strewn across the table.
“Look at this,” Malbanks pleaded, picking one up. “Even
The Beacon
scolds us.
The Beacon
!”
“No country-wide rebellion, after all.” Deacon could not sound more cutting.
“My spies told me wrong. How could I know?”
“You might have listened to the good men of Manchester.”
“Which would those be? Merchant and worker, owner and weaver, who can tell anymore?”
“You might start with not arresting your own kind. Nash here spent the evening in the clink, thanks to the idiots you deputized into the yeomanry.”
Malbanks cringed. “He did accost a man charged with keeping the peace.”
Deacon pulled the clog from his pocket. “You accosted women and children, frightening them so that they deserted even their shoes.”
Malbanks stood straighter. “Aye, I would have, but it were Heywood there signed the order.”
Nash crouched beside Heywood’s chair. His old mentor took his hand between his own. “I cannot believe I allowed this to happen. It breaks my heart even to touch on the idea of those women, those babes. Your Maddie.”
“Not mine. It were her sister struck down. My Maddie lives.”
“Could that be true?”
“I heard it from my foreman, who heard it from Bamford, who saw her with his own eyes yesterday. That’s all I have, but I believe she may be well enough.” For a woman whose husband had deserted her and whose sister had been killed by his band of brothers, he amended silently.
“Thank the Lord.” Heywood sighed. His head seemed to quiver, as if he could no longer hold it quite still. “If only you were still on the committee, I would gladly hand over the reins. To give them to one such as that?” He glanced toward Malbanks. “I’d die first.”
“Your service did precious little good.”
“A Judas, my wife calls me. Malbanks has the right of it: I did sign the order.” He shuddered, his eyes closing. “She’s leaving for her sister’s. Magistrates are paid nothing, and it’s cost me so much. I’d go with her.”
“It’s the least you could do.” But Nash frowned, remembering. “Her sister? She’s not in Lancashire, is she?”
“Lower Canada.”
“You’d leave the country?”
“I don’t recognize this country. I didn’t wish to cause it; I don’t wish to remain part of it.”
Nash, still holding Heywood’s oddly frail hand, tried to reconcile the man in front of him with his mental image of his old mentor. All fathers were frail. All men. He’d thought he’d have a fight on his hands, but instead he felt driven to save this man, who did not deserve to be saved. Was mental anguish and self-enforced banishment penance enough?
He patted the hand. “Here’s what we’ll do. The Quinns served by tradition as magistrates for the county, but father instead gave the role to you. Now it’s time for Lord Shaftsbury to take it back.”
A shard of light returned to Heywood’s eyes. “Would he buy out my business holdings as well?”
“No. But I will, along with Clayton. With the new Netherlands contract, and your portion of the profit from the trial contract, we will cover your holdings in town, at the least.”
“Might work. You buy me out and Shaftsbury takes his due…” Heywood stroked his chin, looking past him, at the others around the table. Nash wasn’t sure what the man saw. Deacon and Malbanks already were claw to claw. Deacon waved a copy of
The Beacon
in the other man’s face.
“So have you told the papers you apologize yet?”
“Balderdash. They got what they deserved. The question is, how can we get Fleet Street to see it our way?”
“There is one way.” Deacon tapped the paper against his chin as if in thought.
“Yes?”
“We could write to another town, perhaps Plymouth or Bath.”
“And ask for their support?”
“Yes. Ask them to go out and cut down a hundred of their citizens. That will make the dozens killed here look insignificant.”
Malbanks had to sit down. Nadin guffawed. Deacon nodded towards him, acknowledging the praise.
Heywood rose, reaching for Nash for support. “Getting a taste for your new chief magistrate, Malbanks?”
Nash nodded confirmation to Deacon, whose scowl melted into the sweetest of smiles. “Now that I’ve met you, Mr. Malbanks, I’m twice as pleased to join your little party.”
Malbanks shuddered. Nash thought he might truly be shocked. But the shrewd man of business quickly recovered. “It’s no party. This is hard, difficult work.”
Deacon pulled out the chair beside him. “Then we should begin immediately. Share the burden. Shall we start with reviewing the minutes of the past few meetings?”
“Minutes?”
“To be sure. We’ll need to send them to the Home Office, at the very least. I’ll help you organize them. I have an excellent hand. And, of course, I’ll frank the letters myself, so we may be ever as detailed as can be.”
Trefford stumbled into the conversation. “But we don’t keep minutes.” Malbanks’s glare staked him to his chair.
Nash put his arm around Heywood, who leaned into it gratefully. “I’ll take you home.”
“Take the coach. It looks like we’ll be here quite a while,” Deacon added cheerfully. “Won’t we now, gentlemen?”
* * * *
Maddie wished she’d never seen her mother’s grave. Nor her living father, so strong in form and so weak in substance. He stood at the foot of the reopened gravesite, as still as an ancient oak, and just as expressive.
The reformers’ public meeting hadn’t merely stolen Kitty’s life, it had spirited away her friends, as well. Only Mr. Bamford joined them for the prayer of farewell. Mrs. Fildes was recovering from her wounds; others sat trapped in jail or equally trapped at home, not daring to admit they took part in what now had been declared an illegal meeting.
If they did not come to the churchyard, many had shown their respect in other ways. As the cart carrying Kitty’s coffin trundled through Long Millgate Street, the working people came to a sudden halt. Men doffed their caps, women held their children close. The blocks fell silent as they passed, a sign of respect to the woman and to her father, walking behind her.
When their eyes fell on Maddie, though, some in the street did a double-take. Others simply stared. After the first block of this, she pulled her bonnet closer to her face, tucking the forever stray curls deep into its cap. At least no one recognized the dress, the one Kitty had worn to the lawn party. There had been no other dress in the cottage.
Maddie scooped a handful of the fresh-turned ground that had rested so long. She held it a moment before casting her final farewell. The tang of the clay mixed with the honeysuckle of soap she’d used at the public baths this morning. The soil pricked her ungloved fingers, gritty and infertile.
She let it go, spraying across the center of the unadorned box. With it, she let go her dreams of making a family of the Moores. Her father’s rejection knifed her, but it was her own expectations that had made the deepest cut. She had wanted him to come at her with open heart and open arms, and only because she wanted it so. That he did not—that he could not—should not have been such a surprise. As Nash said, if her father wanted to know her, he would have sought her out. Instead, he treated her as dead. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to declare that it had been a complete mistake to seek him out. If she hadn’t, she always would have wondered. At least now she knew, hard as it was to hear.
She knew a bit more about Manchester, as well. As poorly as some in high society might take her “fall,” they took the search for basic rights for all even more ill. Would anyone speak out on behalf of the working-man now? The publishers of sympathetic journals and tracts would be closed down or thrown into jail again, just as a decade earlier. Fear overcame logic; terror trumped sense. There was no room for dreamers here, or Utopians.
As the digger crunched his shovel into the clay earth, she turned her back on that life. Her steps felt lighter, as if her expectations had been a weight around her hips, now released. She wasn’t quite ready to face the future, but found some contentment in the moment, in the sudden change from chill to warm as she moved out of the shadow of the church.
Mr. Bamford caught up to her, taking her arm. “Can’t say how sorry I am. He’s a good man, but her death—your Ma’s—took the stuffing right out of him. Kitty’s glow gave him life, but now I see it were a trick of the light.”
“We all of us have feet of clay.” She leaned closer, comforting the comforter. He’d fetched his good clothes for the services, and looked the proper country gentleman. She pictured how it would be were he her father, but quickly let the impulse pass. Her imagination was what got her into these troubles in the first place.
The Shaftsbury coach and four stood to the side of the street before the cemetery gate. They’d passed it as they entered, a half-hour before. Empty, its presence was appropriate to an acquaintance of the peerage, but a mighty sign of respect for a weaver’s daughter. But then an earl could afford the luxury of a public drubbing of the town’s leaders.
As they passed by this time, though, the door sprang open. Bamford pulled her back a step, protecting her.
It was no highwayman, but Nash. Solid and real.
Had it been only three days since she’d seen him? He carried a new tension about his chocolate eyes, set deeper in their sockets than usual. And that bruise on his temple must ache. Had he slept at all?