‘What a lot we shall have to tell Papa,’ Caroline said, unabashed. ‘Won’t we, Pheemy?’
The arrival of the police, Will’s heroic departure, and the forbidding appearance of Euston station were all discussed at length over dinner that night.
‘It’s a horrid place,’ Caroline told her father, annoyed with it now that it had taken her brother away from her, ‘so cold and bleak and empty. There isn’t even a coffee shop. Only a windy old platform for people to stand on. Ain’t that right, Pheemy?’
‘It was very draughty,’ Euphemia said.
‘I gather you weren’t impressed,’ John said, rather pleased by their lack of enthusiasm, for he’d always preferred the old stage-coaches to the new railways.
‘I’ll tell you what though,’ Caroline went on. ‘I think Easter’s ought to sell papers there. We would do a roaring trade.’
‘I doubt it,’ her father said. ‘Not in all that noise. Not in a place like that.’
‘But we could alter it,’ she urged. ‘Don’t you think so, Papa? If there were a newsagent’s there and a coffee shop and somewhere to shelter think how different it would be.’
The suggestion annoyed him. She had no sense of decorum at all. Couldn’t she see what presumption it was for a child of her age to be telling him how to run the firm? ‘We have more than enough to do these days selling papers in the shops,’ he said. And the expression on his face brooked no further discussion.
Caroline grimaced at Euphemia when her father wasn’t looking, but she changed the subject. ‘I wonder what Will is doing now,’ she said.
On Birmingham station the policemen were mustering two by two with a military swagger. In the half-light of the early evening, they looked more like an army than ever. An army come to do battle in a foreign city, Will thought, as he climbed stiffly out of his carriage, for Birmingham was certainly a very different town from any other he had visited.
The air smelt of smoke and sulphur, the brickwork was a harsh, coarse red like raw meat, and the station bristled with steam hissing and whistles screaming, nasal voices shouting and metallic echoes clanging up into the high ceiling. He noticed that his fellow passengers were rushing out of the building, as if they too were excited and fearful, just as he was. Something is going to happen, he thought, and he led Tom through the massive Doric columns at the entrance to the station and set off into the dark streets to find Deritend and the Golden Lion.
Deritend was no distance away and the Golden Lion was easy to find, being an old half-timbered building standing very noticeably at one end of the High Street, not far from the church. It was very dark inside despite a plentiful use of candles, and the bar was awash with spilt ale, but the landlord was friendly and told Will at once that the Chartists were meeting at the Bull Ring that very evening. ‘They been banned by the magistrates, sir, so ’tis said, but they don’t take no notice.’
Will decided to go to the Bull Ring at once. ‘My man will deal with the luggage,’ he instructed, feeling rather grand. ‘I shall need a cold supper when I return.’
‘Beggin’ yer pardon, Mr Will sir,’ Tom said, following as his master walked away from the counter, and speaking quietly so as not to embarrass him, ‘only Mr John gave me strict instructions I was ter stay by yer.’
‘Oh did he?’ Will said, annoyed that his father was treating him like a baby, but touched by Tom’s tact, and really quite glad of his company. ‘Well, in that case you’d better come too, I suppose. I will wait ten minutes while you see to the luggage. Only ten mind.’
‘An’ besides,’ Tom grinned, ‘it’ud be a bit of a lark ter see them Chartists mesself, seein’ I’ve read all about ’em in the Northern Star.’
So to the Bull Ring it was, charged with impatience and a churning, mounting excitement, following the landlord’s directions and Tom’s knowledge of the place, down Deritend High Street into the Digbeth, which was loud with smithies and garish with fires and sparks, and so on towards a dark bulk looming across the skyline that Tom said was St Martin’s church.
‘The Bull Ring’s a sort a’ square, slopes up in front a’ the church yard, sort ‘a triangular like,’ he explained. ‘They use it fer horse fairs an’ cattle markets an’ meetings an’ such, bein’ it’s the only square of any consequence hereabouts. There ain’t another the length and breadth a’ the city.’
Even if he’d had no directions at all Will could have found the meeting, for the roar of voices could be heard even above the clang of the smithies, urging him onwards most powerfully. They walked round the side of the church and found themselves facing such a close-packed crowd it was almost impossible to push their way into it. Men were herded into the triangular space like penned beasts, shoulder to shoulder and haunch to haunch. Many of them had brought rush-torches with them and the darkness was restless with moving lights, and hot with flame and sweat and excitement. An army, Will thought, looking at the angry faces all round him, seamed and dark-eyed and gilded by sweat and lamplight, an army waiting for battle.
‘Over ‘ere, sir,’ Tom was calling, elbowing his way through the mass, towards the low wall that surrounded the churchyard. ‘There’s a man a-speechifyin’ in the Shambles, look.’
Will glanced at the line of low buildings on the left-hand side of the ring, and saw that a man was standing above the crowd, his head on a level with the guttering. He was a stocky man with a thick set of whiskers, and he was dressed like a sea captain, in a sailor’s bluejacket and a dark hat with a badge of some kind on the rim.
‘Never you mind “man”,’ a dark face corrected Tom from the other side of the wall. ‘That there is Doctor Taylor.’
‘Stow your noise,’ another face said. ‘I wants to hear un.’
But Doctor Taylor had no intention of being unheard. His voice was stentorian, booming across the ring, the captain addressing his crew.
‘Comrades!’ he shouted. ‘Citizens! True-born Englishmen! We demonstrate our right as true-born Englishmen to meet here in the Bull Ring as our fathers and forefathers have done before us. The magistrates had the presumption to declare this meeting illegal, the gall to impose a ban upon our activities. Upon our activities as true-born Englishmen. So much for their ban! So much for their authority! We have gathered here, as we have every right to do. By our presence here tonight we prove their ban illegal, immoral and unworkable.’
The crowd gave him a deep-throated cheer. ‘We’ll show ‘em, lad!’ they called. ‘They’ll not ban us! Tha’s right! We’ve a right to our meetings!’
Dr Taylor waved his arms at them, as though he were conducting their cheers. ‘I urge you, comrades,’ he called. ‘Mr Peel’s new government may reject our demands, just though they most certainly are, they may reject them and they may reject us, in the same high-handed manner as the old government would have done. If that is to be the case, I say we should stand up to them. We should never take it tamely. Never, never! We must fight like true-born Englishmen, that’s what I say to you.’
‘Aye!’ the crowd growled. ‘Aye! We should. He’s right an’ all. That’s the way.’
‘If we cannot obtain justice by any other means,’ Dr Taylor went on, ‘we must take up arms to defend our rights. Yes, comrades, we must take up arms, as the people of Paris did before us, as the people of the American colonies did before us, as all good men and true have done throughout the ages. We must take up arms.’
And this time the roar of approval was a battle cry. Hats were tossed and torches brandished and there were gilded fists punching the air. ‘Huzzah! Huzzah!’ And the church clocks began to strike the hour, seven, eight, nine, as if they too were giving tongue to some universal determination.
They mean it, Will thought, thrilled by the orator and full of admiration for the crowd, as the sounds echoed and rolled in the enclosed space of the ring. Oh, I wouldn’t have missed this for worlds.
But the clocks were silent now and the cheering had changed, its note deepening alarmingly with muddled yelps of warning
and instruction. ‘Give way! Look out! Stand firm there!’
‘It’s the Bobbies!’ Tom said, climbing onto the wall for a better view.
In the excitement of Dr Taylor’s speech Will had forgotten the policemen. ‘Where?’ he said, leaping up onto the wall, foreboding knotting in his chest like a hard clenched fist.
It was hard to see anything in the crush, but at the top of the incline the rushlights were parting to right and left and there was a solid, moving mass of darkness in between them. As he watched, a dark uniform climbed onto the hidden rostrum and standing above the crowds began to read from a white paper.
‘Our sovereign lady, the Queen Victoria, charges and commands all persons being assembled immediately to disperse themselves and peaceably depart to their habitation or to their lawful business …’
He was reading the Riot Act. If the crowd didn’t disperse at once, everyone in it could be arrested.
‘He can’t do this,’ Will called to Tom. ‘There’s no riot.’
‘There will be now,’ a man shouted back to him.
‘Aye!’ another man called. ‘Build a barricade, boys!’
There was a confusion of movement around the rostrum and in the massed light of the torches Will could see that someone was being arrested and that the Bobbies were striding into the crowd, truncheons thwacking. There was no sign of Doctor Taylor, but another man was clambering above the crowd, yelling at the top of his voice, ‘Treachery! Teachery! Stand firm! We have every right to meet here. This is an outrage!’ before gloved hands pulled him down. And as he disappeared, Will was knocked from his perch too, caught off-balance by a sudden rush of dark bodies, running pell-mell into the churchyard. Then there was a frantic scramble of bent backs and grabbing hands, pulling at the stones of the wall, loosening them, lifting them, piling the large ones into a barricade, hurling the small ones into heaps behind them.
Will was jammed among the boots and bodies, and drunk with recklessness. To be part of this, he thought, piling stones like everyone else. Part of it. In the middle of a battle, part of this great army, fighting for freedom, for the right to meet in the Bull Ring, the right to petition and protect, the right to vote. Men were hurtling across the broken walls, leaping the stones, shouting defiance, and in the Bull Ring itself they were punching like prize fighters.
Dr Taylor arrived behind the wall, panting with his exertions, his whiskers powdered with brick dust, and seconds later, a man they called MacDouall tumbled over the barricade head first, yelling that the police were close behind him. Their arrival was the signal for the fusillade to begin. It seemed to Will that the air was instantly full of flying stones and jagged bits of brick, and that within seconds the missiles were being thrown back at them and twice as hard.
He had no idea how long the battle raged. He stayed behind the barricade, gathering stones, too busy even to wonder where Tom had got to, too thrilled to be afraid, while the warm night air ricocheted with roars and thuds, and his nostrils filled with the stink and heat of conflict. The clocks struck the hour, but the hour had no meaning. There was no time, only passionate anger and an overwhelming excitement.
And then without any warning, a sharp blow caught him on the temple and he went down like a felled ox, as darkness yawned in upon him, swallowed him, held him, and spat him out in a confusion of feet and stinking trousers. There was a pale hand being trodden on close to his face, and somebody was hauling him up by the collar of his jacket. He croaked for breath as the cloth tightened, slithering to his feet, grabbing the air for balance.
Dr Taylor was striding about among the bricks and stones calling, ‘Don’t throw, comrades. I beg you. The penalty for riot …’ But his voice came and went like the sound of sea in a shell. Throw? Will thought, still bemused, and then his legs began to shake and he sat down on a pile of stones and put his head in his hands.
‘My stars!’ Tom’s voice said above him. ‘That was a close call an’ no mistake. You all right, Mr Will sir?’
‘Right as rain,’ Will said at once, but there was blood dripping through his fingers onto the stone.
‘We’ll cut back ter the Golden Lion,’ Tom said. ‘Needs a plaster does that.’
‘No,’ Will said, staunching the blood with his handkerchief. ‘Can’t desert the field, Tom.’
But the field was deserting him. There were truncheons rapidly approaching through the melee in the Bull Ring, and taut faces running before them shouting, ‘Run! Run! They’ve called out the military! Run! For God’s sake!’ Lights were flickering out all over the square with an acrid smell of snuffed wick and burnt straw; bodies were scattering to left and right in the noisy darkness. Most of the fighters in the churchyard were already scrabbling away over the stones, and somebody was shouting ‘You’re under arrest!’
‘Run!’ Tom hissed. ‘This way.’
So although running was out of the question, they limped away from the battle, along a street full of retiring warriors still hot with fury.
‘What a thing to have seen!’ Will said as he recovered. ‘What a thing!’ Now he knew what his mother must have felt on the field of Peterloo. ‘To call out the soldiers, Tom. It’s a disgrace!’
‘White of egg that wants,’ Tom said, ‘ter stop the bleedin’. We’ll get it bound up the minute we’re back.’
That was the opinion of the landlord’s wife, who came up to Will’s room with hot water and clean lint and a little white of egg in a flat dish and grumbled all the time she was cleaning the wound. ‘What a way for people to go on, Mr Easter. I’m sure I don’t know what the world’s a-coming to. If a nice young man like you, sir, can’t come to Birmingham without having his poor head broke for him, then I really don’t know.’
But Will was hardly aware of his injury. He was burning with eagerness to write his report. It took him until nearly four in the morning to get all his impressions onto paper, and as there didn’t seem to be much point in going to bed at such an hour, he wrote out a careful copy of the finished article and walked down to the Post Office to send it to London on the early morning mail.
Then he decided that he would have breakfast at the nearest inn and spend the morning in the Easter warehouse, just to show willing.
The nearest inn was a place called the Hen and Chicks and to his great delight it turned out to be full of Chartists and bristling with rumour.
There had been twenty-seven arrests and scores of injuries. Mr Feargus O’Connor was in town, staying with Mr Smith the pawnbroker, and the two of them had gone to Warwick Goal to stand surety for Dr Taylor. And a new pamphlet had been printed early that morning, entitled ‘Resolutions unamimously agreed to by the General Convention’. Several of the men gathered in the back parlour already had a copy and were happy to let Will read it. It was inflammatory stuff.
‘This convention,’ it said, ‘is of the opinion that a wanton, flagrant, and unjust outrage has been made upon the people of Birmingham, by a bloodthirsty and unconstitutional force from London, who seek to keep the people in social and political degradation. That the people of Birmingham are the best judges of their own right to meet in the Bull Ring or elsewhere, have their own feelings to consult respecting the outrage given, and are the best judges of their own power and resources to obtain justice. And that the summary and despotic arrest of Dr Taylor, our respected colleague, affords another convincing proof of the absence of all justice in England, and clearly shows that there is no security for life, liberty and property, till people have some control over the laws they are forced to obey.’
‘My hat!’ Will said. ‘This’ll put the cat among the pigeons.’
‘Aye,’ the nearest man growled. ‘It needs to.’
‘What will you do now?’ Will asked.
‘We shall be back in the Bull Ring at seven this evening,’ the man said grimly.
‘You intend to meet there again?’
‘Aye, we do.’
And they did. For the next four nights there were angry gatherings between the H
igh Cross and the Shambles, although the Riot Act was read and the police called every time, and around midnight the military showed a presence too. Will soon learned to live on very little sleep, for he stayed with the demonstrators every night until they finally dispersed and he was in the warehouse at seven o’clock every morning. It was a peculiarly disjointed way to live and the oddest thing about it was that the Easter warehouse was the most peaceful place in the city.
It was built behind the railway station and although it covered several acres of land and was extremely busy, particularly first thing in the morning when all the London papers arrived, it was also extremely well organized.
Despite his present lack of interest in the affairs of the firm Will had to admire his uncle’s system for distributing the news by rail. Teams of porters delivered the papers to the backs of their allotted shelves while at the same time the newsboys gathered their carefully up-dated local orders from the front, pushing their trolleys along the lines until they reached the packing tables and a second team of porters who were to rush the completed bundles back to the railway. The operation was presided over by a small, briskly efficient gentleman called Mr Warner, who said he was more than happy to explain it all to Mr Will Easter, and volunteered the information that all the shops in the city were doing a brisk trade, particularly in sales of the Northern Star.
But Will’s heart was with the Chartists, and when the Morning Chronicle arrived on Saturday with his article fully and prominently printed, he was so proud he didn’t know what to say.
The Times’ reporter arrived that afternoon, followed by six or seven others, and soon they had set up a journalists’ club in the Hen and Chicks where they met every evening to drink brandy and talk over the day’s events.
It was a great disappointment to Will when the Chartist meetings were finally disbanded. He’d been in Birmingham for more than a week; he’d made new friends; he’d been accepted as a fully fledged member of his chosen profession; his wound was healed, his enthusiasm fired, his mind made up.
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