Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (38 page)

‘Might I say a prayer over the body?’ I said. Blake, I could tell, was impatient to examine Dearlove more closely.

The constable did not relish the idea, but could hardly refuse. I shut my eyes ostentatiously; Blake folded his hands and also assumed an observant pose. Through half-closed eyes I saw the constable had closed his too.

‘Receive into thy hands, oh Lord, thy servant Thomas Dearlove,’ I intoned as loudly as I could manage. ‘He was a good man, a devout man, who devoted himself to the poor and the needy and brought succour to those without … those without.’ There was an awkward silence while I searched for something more to say. ‘He was a good man … he visited the sick and lost in the rookeries. He met with resistance and violence, but he persevered and he was respected. He taught the little children …’ I rambled on for as long as I could and, when inspiration declined, began on the Lord’s Prayer, so as to warn Blake I was coming to an end.

As the words ‘Thy will be done’ issued forth, however, the constable protested, ‘What are you up to?’ He had Blake by both arms and the sheet had slipped from the body, revealing Dearlove’s bare torso and a number of ghastly slashes.

‘What is it, Constable?’ I said, my horror unfeigned.

‘He was poking round the body! He was sniffing it! What’s your game, you old monster?’

‘He should be reported to your senior officer at once!’ I said, and seized Blake’s other arm, dragging him up the stairs. While the constable locked the deadhouse door I offered to hold Blake. I began to walk him through the courtyard. As luck would have it, prisoners from the cells were being brought out at that very moment to a waiting covered van, to be conducted to various prisons. The process was far from orderly and so we ducked through the queue and made off as fast as we could. Two constables tried to pursue us, but Blake slipped into one narrow alley, then another, and pressed us deep into the shadow of an old doorway where we both gasped for breath.

‘Was it worth it? What did you see?’

‘Slashes to the stomach like the others, but not so elaborate. And something else I need to think about. Either way, it won’t take long for Loin to work out it was us,’ he said. ‘We will have to make the best of what time we have left.’

On the river side of Temple Bar was a row of ancient doorways, some prosperous, some less so. On one unfeasibly narrow shopfront, cobwebbed with age, its windows darkened, was a discreet but smartly painted sign, ‘Alfred and Thomas Carlile, printers and booksellers’. On either side of the names was an old white pattern of thorns and leaves. It looked oddly familiar but I could not recall why.

The interior was dimly lit with oil lamps and hung with mildly suggestive prints – ladies with large amounts of exposed bosom beaming invitingly at fat, over-eager gentlemen in white court wigs. The man at the counter, a florid-looking fellow with pockmarked skin, looked up.

‘What d’you want?’ he said brusquely. ‘Nothing here you can afford.’

Blake took off his hat, then his eyepatch, then his gloves, pushed his hair back from his face, placed both hands on the counter as if ostentatiously to display his missing fingers, leant forward and
stared into the man’s eyes. The transformation was impressive and accompanied with an air of menace. The man’s eyes flickered uncertainly and he took a step back.

‘My name is Jem Blake and I need to talk to your father.’

‘He is sick.’

‘All the more need then.’

The man frowned. ‘He has done nothing wrong. Paid his dues. Leave him alone.’

‘I’m no bluebottle.’

‘Does he know you?’

It seemed to me that Blake hesitated. ‘No. But I need to ask him about something that happened a long time ago. Seems everyone else has short memories. Want to ask him about Spa Fields and the
Republican
.’

The man considered Blake’s words. ‘I’ll ask him if he wants to see you. If he won’t, that’s it.’

‘Can’t say fairer than that.’

He disappeared into the back. When he returned he said, ‘He’ll see you. But don’t upset him. Don’t tire him. He has had enough pain in his life. Who’s your friend?’

‘He comes with me.’

He gave me a hard look. ‘All right. Take off your hat. You’ll be in the presence of a great man.’

At the end of a corridor we came to a dim, stuffy room. In an old chair bolstered by cushions sat an old, tired-looking man, a thin blanket across his bony knees and a stick across his lap. He stared into the embers of a small fire burning in the grate. His hair was cut close to his skull; his eyes were sunken, blinking out of dark-grey shadows; his cheeks were hollow and his skin had a dried-out, whiskered look. Slowly he shifted his gaze to us, and I saw that he was not as old as I had thought. I imagined him robust as his son now was; hardship had wasted him.

‘So, you want to talk about the old days, do you?’ he said. It was a West Country voice, hoarse and strained but unmistakeable. No one, it seemed, was truly from London. ‘Well, you are the only one.’

‘Come to ask you about Spa Fields. The bookseller Dugdale says you’re the one that remembers.’

‘Bookseller, eh? Is that what he calls himself?’ He turned back to the fire.

‘Tell me, Mr Carlile, what is the significance of the white thorn and laurel on the shop sign?’

‘Oh, you saw that, did you? Smart fellow. Twenty, thirty years ago it was the infidels’ sign, the symbol of republicanism and freethinking. A sop from my sons.’

I recalled now that I had seen the same embellishment on Wedderburn’s, Dugdale’s and Woundy’s premises.

‘I need your help, Mr Carlile,’ Blake went on. ‘Five men have been murdered, three of them printers whom I think you knew twenty years ago – Eldred Woundy, Nat Wedderburn and Matthew Blundell – and I suspect it was Spa Fields that tied them.’

‘Did Dugdale also tell you that I was in Dorchester gaol for most of that time? What makes you think that I can tell you what you wish to know?’

‘There’ll be more dead if you don’t.’

‘So you are a bluebottle. Why trouble me? Think I did it?’ He laughed, a cracked, mirthless sound. ‘In all the years when the law came after me I was never accused of murder. And now chance would be a fine thing. Look at me. I’ve not been out of this house since before the winter. Like as not I never will again.’

‘I’m not a copper, Mr Carlile, and I’ve not come after you. Coppers want to put a lid on it. They think it’s powder for Chartists’ guns.’

‘You think to tease out my words by abusing them. You’ll have to do better than that. Come here, let me see you. Tell me your name again.’

‘Jeremiah Blake.’

‘Some pretty bruises. You related to—’

‘No’.

He shrugged. ‘As you like. You have the look of him. Do you know who I am?’

‘Richard Carlile.’

There was a silence. Carlile’s eyes slid back to the fire. ‘So you do not.’

I could not forbear to speak. ‘We’ve been many years in India, sir. He cannot be blamed for that.’

Carlile looked at me briefly, dismissively.

‘India,’ he said, and he frowned with distaste. ‘“Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care—”’

Blake interrupted: ‘“But there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.”’

I had no idea from what they quoted but I had seen Blake perform this trick before.

Carlile said, ‘“Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured—”’

‘“To subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.”’

The older man added, ‘“Such is the irresistible nature of truth—”’

‘“That all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.”’

‘“My own mind—”’

Blake did not hesitate: ‘“Is my own church.”’

‘So you know your Tom Paine, Jeremiah Blake. I went to prison for selling
The Age of Reason
and I named my son Thomas Paine Carlile for him. I raised my boy downstairs and his brother with his ideals of freedom and liberty, his notion of the tyranny of church and state. I gave them the weapons of rational argument and clear thought, the education I struggled and sweated for. I taught them to use a printing press, the greatest gift of man to man, the greatest disseminator of truth and knowledge. And how do they use their education? As Nat Wedderburn did, by printing filth and selling it to those who can afford it. Tom Paine said, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.” He was talking about freedom. I have learnt its truth in other bitter ways. For all I know, your father schooled you in those words and they mean nothing to you either.’

Blake said, ‘I had no father. I need to know about Spa Fields. I mean to catch the monster who has done these things. I’ll do it with or without your help.’

‘Why do you not ask Connie Wedderburn?’

‘She is blinded by grief and she will not talk of the past.’

Carlile sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. ‘I heard of Woundy’s death. And Nat’s. I was sorry. I did not know about Blundell. I have not heard his name in many years. I wondered if anyone would remember or come.’ He brought his hands together. The sensation seemed to cause him pain.

‘I’ll tell you what I remember, Jem Blake, for all the good it will do you. Twenty years, is it, since Spa Fields? Doesn’t feel it. I was in gaol most of the time, as I said. They put me away in 1819. Charged me with blasphemy, blasphemous libel and seditious libel. I wrote things about the government it did not want the people to read. The first two charges were dismissed, but they had me on seditious libel. Three years I got.

‘I had been at the Peterloo massacre, you see. One hundred thousand men and women gathered peacefully to demand the vote. People were going hungry. The government had suspended habeas corpus, said the country was on the edge of revolt. It was tyranny by any other name. The local magistrates issued warrants for the arrest of the speakers, and the army went in and used their swords on the crowd. Men and women went down before them. I saw a woman hacked to death by a soldier.’

I had, of course, heard of ‘Peterloo’. But the account I had been given had been very different. A tale of a rioting criminal mob.

‘I escaped, got to London and published an account of it. The government confiscated the copies and closed us down. I got hold of a new press, wrote another version. That was the first edition of the
Republican
, my newspaper. We denounced the corruption and iniquity of the government. We demanded true representation. The government branded us traitors, and put a duty of four pennies on the press, so the poor couldn’t afford it. We ignored the stamp and we sold more copies than
The Times
itself. More than
The Times
!’ He cackled. ‘They got me in the end, gave me three years, then let me out and gave me another two because I couldn’t pay the £1,500 fine. In all I did over nine years in gaol. All those years in the damp cells ruined my lungs. Now I’m dying.

‘The
Republican
never paid the stamp, and the government kept arresting us. But it never closed us down. When I was gaoled, Jane, my wife, kept it going. When she was gaoled, my sister Mary took over, until she was arrested. But there were always people to fight on. One hundred and fifty men and women went to gaol for selling the
Republican
. Among them were Matthew Blundell, Eldred Woundy, and Nat and Connie Wedderburn.

‘They were members of the Spa Fields congregation. It had been started in 1821. There must have been about 200 odd: freethinkers, infidels, republicans, radicals of all different hues. It was to be a community of like-minded souls, living together, holding everything in common. They took some houses round Spa Fields and in Guildford Road, pooled their labour and undertook to govern themselves democratically through debate and democratic vote, the women with the same rights in the community as the men – at least at first. They farmed some of the common land, advertised their trades. They had a communal kitchen, a laundry, and all the children were minded and schooled together. Connie Wedderburn – Connie Sharp, as she was – taught the younger ones. The notion was that the community would support the individual. If a man went sick, his family would still eat; if he needed medicine the community would pay. When I was first in prison, the Spa Fields congregation helped my wife. When I came out after three years they gave us shelter. I was grateful for that.

‘Nat Wedderburn was an apprentice shoemaker with a fancy to be a literary man. Woundy came from Wales; his father was down the mines, I think. Blundell was a compositor and a former lay preacher who had lost his faith. The three of them ran the Spa Fields press. Printers were always keen on learning and education – which was how I knew them. They wrote to me when I was in gaol. Lord! How young they seemed then, and I was only ten years their senior. They wanted to sell the
Republican
and they asked me for advice on politics. I told them we must have a democratic republic and open debate, education for all, the rights of men and women, and we must fight the corruption of organized religion.