by Diana Norman
A hand came to rest on her shoulder. ‘I don’t know any forgers, either,’ he said. ‘I wish I did.’
A sob came up from her chest. I was right to accept him.
He sat down opposite her again. ‘I shall speak to Blanchard,’ he said. ‘But if he is telling the truth and no counterfeit papers can be produced immediately, there’s little for us to do but leave the fate of your friend in God’s hands. Isn’t that so?’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘Philippa?’
She looked up. ‘Yes, Stephen?’
He’s reassessed me, she thought. His face was as loving as ever but there was disappointment there; he had metaphorically shouldered her—she’d become a burden, more interesting, perhaps, but a burden that he must either bear or lighten.
‘Philippa, if eventually we do get those papers and send them off to France and Condorcet comes to England, that must be the end of it. Consorting with an atheist is something I could not endure my wife to do. You see that?’
She nodded. She saw that.
‘Then I’ll pay for the letter’s stamp.’ He clasped her hand and pulled her to her feet. ‘Shall we go and shout at the bandsmen until they play a minuet for us?’
She walked out of the room with her hand on his arm.
Chapter Three
THE toasts were still in process—the French had taken them over. Glasses had been raised to His Majesty King George III.
To King Louis XVII in whatever darkness and filth the revolutionary canaille had cast the poor little boy.
To the remaining Bourbons.
To Andrew and Félicie, with gratitude for their hospitality.
To Makepeace, happy birthday.
To the emigré regiments aimlessly crumbling on the banks of the Rhine as they waited for the rest of the world to take up arms against the Revolution.
To whomsoever, whatsoever would enable them to keep on downing Lord Ffoulkes’s champagne in the warmth and reminiscent brilliance of Lord Ffoulkes’s house for a bit longer.
‘We are now on the Empress of Russia,’ Makepeace said distinctly as Philippa and Heilbron joined her.
She’d been disappointed in her little Marquis who, maudlin with homesickness and liquor, had got up on a chair to declaim a poem to his dead King:
‘Son trône est usurpé mais sa vertu lui reste
La mort, O ma patrie, à toi seule est funest ...’
There’d been several verses.
A weeping abbé clutched Makepeace’s arm for mental and physical support. ‘What did these generous masters do that the French people so cruelly massacre them every day on altars dressed by regicides?’
‘They didn’t feed ’em,’ Makepeace snapped.
Quickly, Heilbron signaled to a footman to fetch their cloaks. ‘Philippa, if you’ll take your mother into the hall, I’ll go and have a word with Blanchard. Where’s Deedes?’
Philippa ushered Makepeace and a reluctant Jenny towards the door. ‘Are we going home? I’m booked for another waltz,’ Jenny said.
‘Ma’s getting ugly,’ Philippa told her.
They stood behind one of the marble pillars to shelter themselves from the cold admitted by the open front doors. Outside in the square a gathering of local vagrants stood around flaming tar barrels and toasted in ale ‘Good old Ffoulksy who don’t never forget us.’
The three women acknowledged the bow of a departing young Frenchman who was taking his pregnant wife home. At the steps he shouted for his carriage: ‘James, James,’ and tutted, ‘Where is the man?’ He helped his wife down to the street and disappeared into the night with her, still shouting.
‘That’s a naughty coachman,’ Jenny said.
‘There isn’t a coach,’ Philippa explained.
‘Oh? Oh. Poor things. Can’t we ask Sanders to take them home? The lady shouldn’t have to walk in her condition.’
‘Tried that once,’ Makepeace said. ‘Humiliated ’em. Stiff-necked buggers, all of them.’
Reverend Deedes joined them, still put out by the waltzing. ‘And I fear we have lost Lord Malthrop. Lord Admiral Rodney intervened in our discussion and told him that he’d never heard of any negro being ill-treated in the West Indies.’
Philippa found Andrew Ffoulkes beside her. ‘You didn’t tell me,’ he said; he was looking at her oddly.
‘Tell you what?’
‘Heilbron. I came on him talking to Blanchard—he says you and he are engaged.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You didn’t tell me.’
She smiled. ‘You’ve had other matters to concern you.’
‘Well, but . . .’ He recovered himself. ‘As your godfather . . . What about it, missus, isn’t she supposed to get her godfather’s permission? Anyway, he’s a fine fellow.’
Heilbron had come up and Lord Ffoulkes pumped his hand. ‘My congratulations, sir. You have plucked the finest rose in England’s garden.’
‘That’s my opinion as well, sir.’
It was awful. The footman was taking an age with their cloaks, the good-byes took another. At the bottom of the steps Heilbron bade her good night and kissed her hand. For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her on the lips but he leaned close so that he could whisper: ‘Blanchard has convinced me he is telling the truth about the forger. I fear there is nothing to do but wait.’ She was aware of Andrew standing above them in the doorway. Both men remained where they were while the closed carriage that was to take her, Jenny, Makepeace and Reverend Deedes back to Chelsea circled the square and headed for Piccadilly.
Damn you. Did you imagine I was always going to be an old maid? An elderly spinster aunt to your children?
She just hadn’t thought he would be so . . . so disturbed.
On the journey back, the silence of his companions was filled by the Reverend Deedes’s opinion of the ball and the intransigence of the great men who had resisted his and Heilbron’s arguments against slavery. His hearers were as devoted to abolition as he was but he continued to address them as if they, as well as the noble lords, needed persuasion.
After a while, Makepeace reached into the rack where she kept a loaded pistol—on quiet nights highwaymen sometimes abandoned their usual haunt in Kensington to attack the homegoers of Chelsea. She laid it meaningfully across her knee but it didn’t stop him.
The Watch was out in the village. As Sanders brought the carriage to a halt outside Deedes’s house, bobbing lanterns came up to it.
‘We’re after fugitives from Lunnon, Mr Deedes. Evenin’ Mrs Hedley, Miss Hedley, young mistress.’
‘What fugitives, Pocock?’
‘Don’t rightly know, ma’am. Two of ’em. Wanted bad, seems. There’s the government’s own constables here to gee us up.’
Pocock was pushed aside and another lantern was held up at the carriage interior while its owner inspected their faces. Deedes reached for the door handle to let himself out. ‘As you can see, fellow, there are no fugitives in here. Are these men dangerous? Will the ladies be safe to go on? Had I not better accompany them home?’
‘No need,’ Makepeace said quickly.
The government lantern bearer swung his light once more from Mr Deedes and Makepeace and decided the man was more in need of protection. ‘They’ll be all right. I see their driver’s armed. Where d’you live, ma’am?’
‘Reach House. Along the river.’
‘We’ll follow you down, then. Reckon they’ll make for the Thames but they ain’t violent, not so’s I’ve heard.’
‘What have they done?’
‘Sedition,’ the man said, shortly. He shouted at Sanders: ‘Drive on, but go slow.’ They heard his saddle creak as he climbed onto his horse.
The carriage turned away and the village smells of horse manure, thatch and the Bun Shop, where Mrs Hand was already mixing her dough, were overwhelmed by that of the Thames, sweeter here than farther down and always better at high tide than any other time. Jenny let down her window and sniffed joyfully at th
e bitter, misty air. ‘Oh, Ma, waltzes and fugitives in one night. This is life.’
Makepeace was reflective. ‘Sedition,’ she said.
Philippa asked, ‘Do you think it’s John Beasley, Ma?’
‘I do. Where else does he run when he’s in trouble?’
Jenny turned. ‘Mr Beasley? I remember him. Oh dear, will he bring the law on us?’
‘Probably,’ Makepeace said, bitterly. ‘I’ll give him sedition.’
John Beasley, printer, publisher, anarchist and thorn in the flesh of both Tory and Whig governments, had been a frequent visitor to her house and its mine in the days when Makepeace and Andra had lived in the northeast but his friendship with Makepeace went back to the time of her first marriage—a choppy relationship that had nevertheless withstood the years.
‘He wanted Sally and me to raise the school against Miss Hard-castle, ’ Jenny recollected, with awe. ‘He said she was teaching us old wives’ tales and should be ducked for garbling history.’
‘He would,’ Makepeace said.
‘It may not be him,’ said Philippa.
But, more than likely, it was; else why should a fugitive from London make for the Thames at Chelsea when he had all the city’s docks to get away in? And Beasley was a publisher of Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man, which Prime Minister Pitt, alarmed that England might go the way of France, had recently caused to be proclaimed seditious. Already, at Beasley’s request, Makepeace had allowed her smugglers to take a group of his friends to France—all of them political offenders escaping imprisonment . . .
And will do again, Philippa thought, watching Makepeace’s shape square its shoulders in the darkness. Does she know how dangerous it is?
Not only was the law coming down heavily against dissent but the savagery of the Terror had fuelled the ordinary Englishman’s old antagonism against France. The very word ‘reform’ now suggested nasty, violent and, above all, foreign revolution so that, ironically, those who mouthed it were having their homes burned down while magistrates stood by and watched.
Only two nights ago a mob had broken the windows of a house in Cheyne Walk that belonged to a certain Mr Scott, writer of mild pamphlets advocating universal suffrage. Watching from the safety of their gatehouse, the women had listened to the crack of glass and the howls of ‘No Popery’ from the attackers.
‘What’s Popery got to do with it?’ Jenny had asked, bewildered.
‘I think they’re unaware the Revolution abolished it,’ Philippa told her.
Compared with some riots, that one had been restrained, the rioters having been dispersed by the cold more quickly than by the Watch. The Scott family had been frightened, no more. But if it were known that one of Mr Pitt’s despised ‘Jacobins’ was taking refuge in Makepeace’s house . . .
Why does it happen to her? Philippa wondered at a woman who’d been born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. She certainly didn’t seek it, merely waded unseeingly into it. Her original problem in Boston, which had led to all the rest, had only occurred because she’d dragged Philippa’s father from the harbor whence American rioters had thrown him for being English and, therefore, a representative of their oppressors.
That act of humanity had cost her a home and a country and gained her a husband, none of which had been looked for, as had none of the other predicaments into which she had become entangled and, eventually, triumphed over.
It occurred to Philippa, belatedly, that these things happened because her mother was a victim, not of fate, but of her own character. Another woman might have lacked the courage and capability to fish Sir Philip Dapifer out of Boston Harbor, might not have survived the mental and economic devastation of his later death, might not have had the business acumen to exploit the luck which had subsequently provided her with a piece of ground containing coal. Another woman would not have resorted to using Devonian smugglers to ferry abroad escaping Americans for whom she was sorry, nor would another woman have found those same smugglers so congenial that she joined them in their enterprise.
It’s her breadth of friendship, Philippa decided. Makepeace was blind to class and liked or disliked people according to their character. Middle-class ladies were careful to restrict their acquaintances to people of their own status and outlook; they would shun someone as gauche and incendiary as John Beasley, refusing to recognize his innate kindness and loyalty. The fact that, so far, they didn’t also shun Makepeace was because she was rich and now accepted by a society above their own, among the headstrong, titled families of England where another eccentric more or less passed unnoticed.
But Ma’s not eccentric, Philippa thought, she’s just . . . wider than anyone else.
And here we go again. It would not occur to her to be cautious, either on her own behalf, or mine, or Jenny’s. If the hunted man out there in the cold is John Beasley, she will take him in. She may take him in even if it isn’t. What would Stephen say?
There was no censure in any of this; Philippa’s own shoulders had become as square as her mother’s. Uncle John Beasley’s right to publish a democratic opinion not only went without saying, it didn’t even need deliberation. But it was a nuisance that it might get them all hanged.
Makepeace reached up and opened the flap in the carriage front that allowed communication with the driver. ‘How many horsemen behind us, Sanders?’
‘Four.’ Sanders was keeping his voice low. ‘Missus?’
‘Yes?’
‘Are they after who I think they’re after?’
‘Maybe.’
They could hear his hiss of resignation over the noise of the churning carriage wheels; Sanders and Beasley were well acquainted.
It was cold to have the windows down but Philippa and Jenny peered out of the one facing the river while Makepeace kept watch on the landward side. Despite the advance of London, this was still deep country. Once they’d passed Chelsea Hospital and the red brick terrace of Cheyne Walk, they were among reeds, meadows and copses interrupted here and there by the drives to large, aloof houses. ‘Plenty of places to hide,’ said Jenny.
‘He’ll keep to the road,’ Makepeace said. ‘He’s no countryman, our Beasley.’
There was a moon, the mist giving its light the texture of gauze so that objects were indistinct except when lit to the front by the carriage lamps and, to the rear, by the horsemen’s poled lanterns, both sending a wavering, passing light on the erratic levee, picking out mooring posts, flashing on water and boats upturned like stranded seals on the slipways.
On Makepeace’s side a badger that had been trotting along the side of the road turned away from the sudden glare, showing a disgruntled, striped backside as it disappeared into undergrowth.
They began to breathe more easily. Reach House was just ahead. If that was where the fugitives were making for, they were either already there or would turn up when the lawmen had gone.
Makepeace had chosen somewhere to live that was secluded and had no reminders of the past yet would allow Philippa access to London society. She was never happy unless she overlooked water, so she’d picked a house in an area once favored by distinguished men and women who had also valued the river, good air and privacy. Philippa’s researches into the history of this part of Chelsea had uncovered both Anne of Cleves and Katherine Parr managing to survive their marriages to Henry VIII nearby. ‘Though I fear Sir Thomas More—his house is to our north—was less fortunate,’ she’d told her mother.
‘What’s happened to him, then?’ Anything that occurred before the Mayflower set off for the New World fell through Makepeace’s grasp of history.
The house was understaffed by the standards of the locality since Makepeace only wanted servants around her that she knew and liked and, in any case, preferred to wait on herself much of the time—a preference that might prove a blessing tonight. Apart from the vegetable garden and frontage, the grounds had none of the manicured neatness of its neighbors and its park was returning to wilderness.
Philippa loved it.
It was a kind house; she liked to imagine that Cleves, Parr and More, walking by the riverside, had watched workmen building it for the then Marquis of Berkeley. True, the men hadn’t built it very well because its middle had fallen down, leaving only one tower, but its replacement by bowed, Queen Anne rose-colored brick gave the house an architectural irregularity that added an apparent contentment, like a plump wife and tall husband posing together for a portrait.
Joining Makepeace at the right-hand window, she saw the flat, slated roof of their gatehouse a little way off between the trees, a remnant of the old house where Sanders and Hildy now occupied the apartment above its narrow arch.
The carriage jerked suddenly as Sanders pulled the horses from a trot to a walk. Makepeace reached for the flap. ‘What is it, Sanders?’
‘Spotted ’em, missus. Two figures, just nipped inside our archway.’
There was no outcry from the horsemen behind them; only Sanders had seen what he’d seen. But from the gatehouse to the house lay a carriageway circling a large lawn, all of it open. If the constables followed them in, the fugitives would be caught in their lights as well as those from the front windows of the house.
Philippa met her mother’s eyes. ‘Block the archway,’ she murmured.
Makepeace nodded. ‘Stop in the archway, Sanders. Block it.’
‘Right y’are, missus.’
There was no time to consult, they were turning in, had stopped. ‘Open your door,’ Makepeace said, opening hers until its jamb scraped the gatehouse wall. ‘You two get out your side, Jenny stand, Pippy get ’em in.’ She leaned from the angled window and raised her voice. ‘Safe home now, lads, thank you.’
‘Reckon us’ll see you up to the house,’ the leading constable said.
Philippa pushed Jenny out. ‘Stay there.’ Jenny’s skirts would cover the gap between the carriage door and the ground should any of the lawmen dismount and be in a position to look through it. She flattened herself, squeezed past and came out onto the drive.
