The Flight of Sarah Battle (9 page)

And roaring cried, white Sand O!

7

One evening in Battle's a man asks after James. Sarah knows spies sit in every coffee house and inn. James warns her to be careful what she says, though she's hardly garrulous.

‘Mrs Wintrige?'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you know where your husband was this afternoon?'

‘I have been here since six o'clock this morning.' She heard a thrush sing from a roof ridge on the way. ‘He was surely at the Customs Office today as usual.'

‘He was expected at a meeting this afternoon. He never came.'

She pays no attention. Nowadays they close before nine. Staying open late causes suspicion.

Two weeks later he comes again. She recognises his red neckerchief, his lively push through the press of men around the bar.

‘Thomas Cranch, Mrs Wintrige. Enquiring about your husband again.' He catches her eye. ‘I'm from the Society,' he says quietly.

‘Yes?'

‘He is ill, I hear. He sent us a letter today. He's too ill to attend the meeting. Coughing blood. Can we be of help? Recommend a physician?'

Leaning towards him to hear, their foreheads touch. She draws back hastily, sees surprise, pleasure hop across his face. He drinks porter. He is short, thickset, his black hair cropped, his movements energetic. Printer and bookseller, he tells her.

‘British Tree of Liberty. 98 Berwick Street, Soho.'

Or so he says. She warms to him despite herself.

James slips into bed about midnight, undershirt smelling of anxiety.

Half-asleep she asks: ‘Are you unwell?'

‘No. Been at a meeting.'

‘Have you coughed up blood?'

No. Why do you ask?'

She turns over. Shifts away.

Stares into the dark with indignation: he has another woman.

She fails to sleep. He snores. Perhaps several women. Whores.

She's in Battle's at six, her father grumbling, a waiter late. She sets about seeing that fires are laid and lit under the coffee cauldron and in the fireplace where men toast their backsides, pat the dog, read aloud the latest news, hold forth. Checks that floors are swept, meat is prepared, onions sliced, clean glasses and coffee dishes lined in ranks.

Another woman. The words embed. She was told of a common law wife before their marriage whom he left. She finds relief in the pattern.

Later she remembers a conversation she once overheard. She knew the men. Knew they were radicals who drank at the Red Lion but dropped into Battle's occasionally to test the mood, check on the opposition. They were reluctantly tolerated by Sam because they came so rarely, always paid and were discreet. They'd not been seen for some time.

‘Wintrige,' she'd heard.

‘Our old friend Wintrige,' the man called Baldwyn said and laughed. They all laughed: Pyke, the oldest, Hadfield with the scars over his eye, down his cheek, Harley the young one. Slapped their thighs in merriment. Newton would have caught them all on a page, with their oddities, looking conspiratorial.

‘Is he honest?' asked the one called Coke.

‘Well, he's no Iago.'

‘I should hope not. But can you
trust
him?'

‘Can you trust a man that foolish, that silly? He's taken minutes enough times. He'd play the buffoon, only he hasn't the wit.' They laughed again. Left as soon as the government spy Nodder appeared with his threadbare moustache.

Foolish, silly? Buffoon? It isn't the Wintrige she knows. The man to whom she's married. But the day takes over; she can puzzle no more about it.

He's out when she returns. Dripping wax on his papers she rummages. What does she hope to find: a message in a woman's hand, a diary of assignations? There are books and books of minutes: once he'd actually been president of his division, now he's secretary. She reads the endless names, dates, subscriptions, sums of cash paid out to wives and children, which taverns for the next meeting; all in his tiny, neat, sloping letters. The life of the Corresponding Society about which he'd been so reticent is exposed: harassed by Blackheath Hundreds; justices terrified the landlord, moved to Angel, High Street; considered the best means of defending the several imprisoned Citizens; experienced a very narrow escape from the Bow Street Runners; adjourned at three o'clock in the morning; appointed as delegates Jas. Wintrige, Joseph Young.

There are those starry, overwrought phrases:
Infant Seed of Liberty
;
Hydra of Despotism; Strong Arm of Aristocracy; Yours with Civic Affection.

And then a sealed letter addressed to R. Ford. Which goes the next day.

That night they coincide, unusually.

‘Who is R. Ford?'

‘Ho, ho! Been spying on me, have you?'

‘I saw a letter, yes. Is it a man or a woman?'

‘A
woman
? Why should you think that? You, with your apple cheeks!' He pinches them hard. ‘It's for the Society. Our new strategy. We shall demand a meeting with the Duke of Portland. Don't trouble yourself with thinking. You couldn't understand.'

He shouts his loud laugh, mirthless, and his eyes slide away into their shadows.

She finds out nothing about the other woman. Yet their marriage is also nothing. Has almost always been nothing. Rare meetings. Pared-down questions; opaque answers from the edge of the mattress.

*

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

Tom Cranch comes often to Battle's. Stands at the bar, drinks, waits to hear treasonous tones, she assumes. Yet men are cautious now; he can't have much to report. His own speech is enthusiastic. She listens. He has a good disguise if he's a government spy. He tells her about America.

‘There's wilderness with bears and wolves, eagles and catamounts. But the wild men have made peace. Americans honour wise Indians, you know. They've even made a saint of one, St Tammany.

‘Philadelphia is built to a rational scheme with straight roads and plenty of space to make the city healthy. In truth, it is a new-created world.'

‘All built on the backs of slaves. Deny it if you can, whoever you are.' A bystander, listening in.

‘Thomas Cranch, printer, bookseller, Berwick Street. In fact, sir, Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1780.'

‘Don't you believe it.' The man stomps off.

Tom Cranch is not fazed. He describes a future where property is unimportant, where
everyone
votes for members of parliament and no one starves. She has to remind herself that he's a spy and is trying to trap her.

She looks forward to his smile of pleasure, his latest tale of a reformed world. Knows what he says is true. Does he
really
not believe it himself? How can he speak like this yet actually think it's treason?

He charms her into talking to him, holding his head at an angle, bright-eyed, like a blackbird listening for a worm. Or, because of his red neckerchief, a robin. He brings her some verses by a poet he's just met called William Blake:

The Sun does arise

And make happy the skies…

‘If you like it, I'll lend you the book. The illumination is wonderful, unlike anything you've seen.' She folds the paper, tucks it into the pocket of her dress.

She tells him she was in the great crowd at St George's Fields in June among the dandelions and flattened grass. That she'd never been to such a thing before; how she'll never forget it. He was there, too, of course, he says. In fact he printed the tickets for the meeting. Yes, wasn't it wonderful? There've been two huge gatherings of the Society since. He wrote and printed reports of those. Now there's to be 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've never noticed her marriage. ‘I'll give them to Cook.'

‘No,' she replies in a low voice to Cranch when they've moved away.

Her father won't give her the time off, she says. It was bad enough in June. He bawled red in the face about the mob when he'd heard where she'd been. Said they were sticking the French flag up all over the city. He'll guess she's doing the same again, for she no longer has the excuse of visiting Charlotte and her little boy since they moved away. And her father's gout is like the fiend. He says he'll kill it with a dose of colchicum.

Some nights James doesn't come home at all. Is this what he had in mind when he spoke of her forgiving nature? Should she write him a note? Should she leave him? No. Return to Battle's would be too great a humiliation. And of what can she accuse him?

‘Come now, James. We are
married
.' She could throw his words back at him. But she needs evidence to avoid a sliding denial, cold shout of a laugh. His fathomless eyes.

She locks the door, rummages again, more extensively. This time there's something on the floor. She's under the table picking up torn foolscap when the door rattles.

He doesn't come in – the key's in the lock of course. It rattles more. There's furtive knocking. She gathers the shreds together and into a pocket, turns the key, 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. Has he brought her the book of poems?

‘Ran through my money.' He's breathing fast. ‘Those reports of general meetings all printed by me – T. Cranch at the Tree of Liberty, 98 Berwick Street, Soho – and I've had
no payment
! No one from the Society has
paid
me! I've nothing. Can't pay my bills. Bailiffs broke in, took me up.

‘I was lucky, though. 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 America. Come with me.'

He needs her money, she thinks. It is always so.

But he embraces her. With undeniable energy. Delight.

She stuffs a bag with clothes, a loaf, her store of cash from the pearwood caddy. He watches as she casts the shreds of foolscap from her pocket all over Wintrige's papers, snatches up an undelivered letter.

*

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

17 December 1795

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. Never once have I stinted in relating Every Detail of information to you.

Not a Person on earth, not even my own Wife knew of my Connection to your Office. What Reward I have received has been concealed entirely. You know yourself that Discovery would have been attended with great personal Danger. My Part was ever to declaim the Beliefs of their Society, to be One of Them, and to allay Suspicion by playing the Fool in their meetings.

Spy. Spy to spymaster. No other woman.

En route to Philadelphia. They eat the bread, embrace again and again.

PART II

1

Rev. Mr Dale and Mrs Dale wait in vain in their dark, panelled Tower rooms to be informed of the marriage of their daughter. The subject becomes one they will not raise with each other. On the other hand according to the headmaster, Matthew is contrite. Obedient, concerned with his lessons, he has made no attempt to escape when, during several school vacations he's confined to a small room in the inner courtyard.

It will not be long before he leaves and goes up to Oxford to follow in his father's footsteps. Mr Dale quashes Mrs Dale's wish that he should spend the weeks before the university term at home.

Lucy hears nothing from Matthew. She writes letters that convey little except her love and longing. Sometimes they are taken by friends of Joseph. She believes, hopes they are delivered, not destroyed.

She earns her keep hand-colouring in Albion Place. Enjoys the easy attention it requires, keeping within the lines, the pleasant feel of the fine bristles smoothing paint onto paper, the patterning of repeated colours. She is part of Joseph's world: artists, engravers, printers and their train of nameless colourists in cold lodgings and backrooms, wives, sisters, kept women.