The Butcher's Block

by Lucienne Boyce

  As soon as he could get away, Dan hurried towards the lights of London Bridge. Ridiculous the Patriots might be, but that did not mean they were not dangerous. He knew how easy it was for violence and anarchy to spread. He had been a boy when the Gordon Riots broke out, and like most people in the crowds, he had had no idea what issues lay behind the disturbances. People cried “No Popery!” as they attacked chapels; “No prisons!” as they stormed Newgate and released the murderers, rapists and thieves; “No tolls!” as they fired the toll houses on Blackfriars Bridge. There were a hundred causes, and no causes.

  For Dan and the rest of Weaver’s boys and girls the cause had been bellies full of food and drink, pockets full of loot. They had carried watches and silver plate, silk and lace, gold and jewels back to the old receiver’s filthy rooms, where he examined them with his eye glass. The stick he used for doling out beatings lay on the table beside him, motionless for once while he recorded their takings in his book. When he had finished he ordered the children out again with a few kicks and slaps to send them on their way.

  Dan had spent nights fighting his way into houses from Southwark to Holborn, clawing through his fellow-looters to grab what he could. For the first time he could remember, his bare feet knew the feel of carpet beneath them – and recorded the fact in many a filthy print. His hands left streaks of dirt on shawls, bedspreads and curtains, dimmed the polish on the bureaux and drawers he broke open.

  On the fourth night of the riots, mobs had attacked number four Bow Street, the home of Magistrate Sir John Fielding and the base for his Runners. They had made a bonfire with the furniture and burned files of intelligence reports gleaned from a network of informers, including the descriptions of wanted felons and conviction records. Dan had not been amongst the crowds in Covent Garden that night. Given how his life had turned out, it was just as well.

  And that was what Broomhall and his United Patriots were planning to unleash on London. Dan had all the information Sir Richard Ford needed – and more than enough to see the men responsible for Kean’s death hang. Swiftly, he made his way to Butcher Hall Lane and rapped on the door.

  “I need to speak to Sir William Addington and Sir Richard Ford now,” he said as soon as he was inside.

  “I think it’s time to bring the existence of the United Patriots to an end,” Sir William said when Dan had finished his report. “Don’t you, Sir Richard?”

  The other magistrate, who sat at the table with his chin resting on one hand, did not immediately reply. At last he lifted his head and said, “No.”

  “No? What more d’ye want, man? They’re amassing arms, setting up their own militia, planning to wreak havoc on the city. We’ve enough to hang them all twice over.”

  “Five kegs of gunpowder isn’t much to start a revolution on,” Sir Richard objected. “And according to Foster’s information, they won’t be making a move until they have secured French assistance.”

  Dan sighed. He could see where this was going.

  “But in the meantime they are expanding their arsenal and growing more dangerous by the day,” Sir William said. “We can’t afford to leave them unchecked.”

  “But that is what we must do, until we have drawn in the enemy agent.”

  “And what happens if they decide not to wait for him? We should at least issue a warning to potential targets, put the militia on stand-by, double the King’s guard.”

  “And alert them to the fact that we are on to them? No. We must let the game play out a little while longer.”

  “So you propose doing nothing?”

  “For the time being, yes.”

  So Dan went back to Southwark.

  Just after ten the next evening, Dan knocked on Warren’s door. It was opened by Upton, who pointed to the darkness at the back of the shop. “Up the stairs.”

  Dan made his way past the bins of tea and climbed the dark stairs to the landing. The doors were all closed, the rooms silent and dark. Another set of steps, more like a ladder, took him to the square of light shining from an open trapdoor. He poked his head through this and found himself in a long attic beneath the roof space looking at a tangle of Patriots’ legs. They were bunched together at the far end, chatting. Dan hauled himself up and joined them.

  After a few minutes Simmons lowered the trapdoor and called the men to attention. The poles were handed out. Simmons was the only man with a gun, which he wore ostentatiously in his belt as he ordered the men around. He warmed them up with some stretching and jumping exercises, then formed them into pairs. Dan’s partner was a young, double-chinned man called Isaac whose stomach bulged over the top of his breeches and who was in need of a wash. For an hour or so they paraded up and down the attic, trying not to hit their heads on the sloping roof, then Simmons let them have a break.

  They queued up for cups of weak beer from a tapped barrel in the corner. Simmons sent one of the younger men to take some to Upton, who was still on guard at the door. Dan sat on the floor next to Isaac and a short, barrel-chested Scotsman called MacGregor.

  Isaac took a huge slice of fruit cake out of his pocket and bit into it with yellow teeth. Still chewing, he joined in the toast to the coming revolution before they got down to the serious business of talking.

  Dan looked around the attic. “I thought there’d be more of us.”

  “There will be more,” Isaac said through a mouthful of cake. “There’s groups all around the country just waiting for us to get things started.”

  “The French prisoners in the hulks are going to break out any day now and join us,” said MacGregor.

  “And there’s half a dozen men o’ war ready to mutiny, sail up the Thames and turn their guns on Parliament,” added Isaac.

  “Sounds good,” Dan said. “I hope we’re going to be issued with more than wooden sticks when the time comes.”

  “The French are going to send us some guns,” Isaac said.

  “I’ll fight with my bare hands if necessary!” MacGregor declared. “And death to anyone who stands in my way.”

  “If everyone here’s of the same mind, we can’t lose,” Dan said.

  He had been wondering if Kean had got as far as drilling with the United Patriots, and if so what he had made of their training regime. Not much, he guessed. Maybe he could draw out his companions on the subject.

  “We’d be better off with an instructor who knew what he was doing,” he remarked. “Aren’t there any such in the United Patriots?”

  Isaac looked fearfully over his shoulder. “Mind you don’t let Simmons hear you say that. He’s touchy on the subject.”

  “He ought to be,” Dan said. “I’ve seen better soldiers in a toy box.”

  “Hush!” MacGregor said, though he was grinning. “There was a soldier put in charge for a while. Man called Scott. Mean devil, but knew what he was talking about. Put Simmons’s nose out of joint something wicked.” He chuckled at the memory.

  A professional soldier would have been a useful addition to the United Patriots, where military expertise was in short supply. That must have been how Kean, as Scott, got in with Broomhall.

  “We could do with him now,” Dan said. “Where is he?”

  MacGregor and Isaac looked at one another.

  “Up and left,” MacGregor said. “Or so they say.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means that one day he was strutting round at Citizen Broomhall’s side, and the next he had gone,” MacGregor answered. He drained his cup. “Looks like Citizen Simmons is ready for us. Better get on.”

  Isaac clambered to his feet. Simmons had set up a table at the top of the room. They gathered around while Simmons demonstrated loading and unloading his gun, carefully omitting the gunpowder stage.

  “Did you all get that?” he asked.

  Although they nodded, many seemed uncertain. Simmons sighed. “Here,” he s
aid, singling out Dan. “Let’s see how much you’ve taken in.”

  Dan took the pistol from him and moved the hammer to half cock. He picked up the powder flask and made a show of pouring powder down the barrel, following it with the ball wrapped in paper. He clicked the frizzen down, moved the trigger to full cock and swung round, pointing the pistol into the attic.

  “And bang,” he said.

  “So you know your way around a gun,” Simmons said. “Maybe you’ll be some use after all…All right. That’s enough for tonight.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The following evening Dan joined the Chambers family for dinner. Afterwards Mr Chambers went back to the shop, and when the girls had helped her clear the table, Mrs Chambers got ready to go out.

  “I’m off to visit Mrs Hope now,” she said, pulling on a pair of gloves. “I’ll be back before the shop shuts. Evelyn, there’s some ham for your father’s supper. Make sure he eats it.”

  “As if you care whether or not he gets his supper,” Evelyn muttered without looking up from the repair work she was doing to one of her little sister’s paper dolls. Lydia knelt on a chair next to her, anxiously watching her deft fingers glue the figure’s feet back on to the stick used to move it about.

  Mrs Chambers ignored her daughter’s sullen mumble. “And mind you put all those things away when you’ve finished with them. I don’t want to come back to a mess.” She pointed at the cardboard theatre the girls had arranged on the table.

  “Yes, Mother,” the two younger girls chorused meekly.

  As soon as their mother had gone, the middle girl, Sarah, cried, “Will you stay and watch our play, Mr Bright?”

  “I’m sure Mr Bright’s got better things to do, Sarah,” Evelyn said.

  “No, I’d like to see the play,” Dan said. “What’s it about?”

  “A lady who wants to marry a highwayman but her wicked uncle won’t let her and anyway he isn’t really a highwayman and he stops the uncle stealing all her jewels and then he marries her.”

  “Now you’ve told him all the story,” said Lydia.

  “No I haven’t.”

  “Yes, you have.”

  “I haven’t. Evie, tell her.”

  Evelyn laughingly rolled her eyes at Dan. “Now you see what you’ve let yourself in for. Lydia, here’s your highwayman. What are you going to call him?”

  “Dead Leg Jack.”

  “He hasn’t got a dead leg,” Sarah objected.

  “It’s just a pretend name. His real name is Lord Frederick Fotheringay.”

  “That’s enough,” Evelyn said. “Stop bickering and let’s get started.”

  The girls pulled the jerky curtain across, reopened it with a flourish and, kneeling on chairs on either side of the theatre, poked their characters on to the stage. Then they stopped to argue about what should happen next. After Evelyn had arbitrated on this dispute, the scene went reasonably well, although Lady Arbella’s habit of falling flat on her face every few minutes was a trifle distracting. (Sarah: “It should be Ar-A-bella.” Lydia: “No, it’s Arbella.”)

  Evelyn was a different girl with her mother out of the way. She threw herself into her little sisters’ game, and revealed a talent for storytelling which rivalled her mother’s in ingenuity and certainly surpassed it in wholesomeness. Mr Chambers popped in from the shop once or twice to see what all the noise was about. Looking at his daughters, he lost his vague, troubled look, his eyes softening into fond pride.

  When the play was done and Dan had duly applauded and cried “Bravo”, he left the girls packing their toys away and wandered out to the shop.

  “Quiet tonight?” he asked.

  Chambers, who was sitting behind the counter, looked up from his reading. “Yes, it’s usually busier on a Saturday.”

  He closed his magazine. Dan glanced at the cover of the London Corresponding Society’s Moral and Political Magazine.

  “What Mrs Chambers’s eye doesn’t see,” Chambers said.

  Dan, who knew that Mrs Chambers had gone to visit Broomhall, thought the indulgence of his own pleasure the least the old gentleman deserved.

  “It’s the last issue,” Chambers continued. “They couldn’t afford to publish it any more. Pity.”

  “It is,” said Dan, who had found the journal hard going and had not noticed its passing. “You still have a lot of friends in the London Corresponding Society, don’t you?”

  “Not really. I attended meetings in Bond Street, you see.”

  “But you know some of the men in Division Fourteen.”

  “I know Mr Broomhall and I’ve met one or two of his friends. And you, of course.”

  “I find it hard to remember everyone’s name. What’s Mr Broomhall’s friend called? The big, dark-haired fellow.”

  “I expect you mean Mr Metcalf.”

  “And is it Scott? The man with the scar?”

  “Mr Scott? I thought he’d left the district.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “He called here once or twice. Not a very sociable man. He bought some of Mrs Chambers’s books.”

  So Kean had had a taste for bawdy literature. Dan was just digesting the information when the door opened.

  “Well, well, talk of the devil!” Chambers cried. “We were just talking about you.”

  Metcalf gave Dan a suspicious look. “Were you?”

  “I was going to tell him how well you stood up for our liberties when we were attacked by the King and Country mob,” Dan said.

  “Tut, tut, a dreadful business,” Chambers said. “There seems to be no end to this ministry’s wickedness.”

  “There doesn’t,” Dan agreed. Metcalf shifted impatiently. “Sorry, Metcalf. You’ve obviously come to buy something. I’ll get out of the way.”

  Metcalf looked daggers at Dan. “I’m not here to buy. Mr Broomhall wants to see you. That is,” he glanced at Chambers, “he requests the pleasure of your company at a little supper he’s organised.”

  “Delighted to accept,” Dan said. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr Chambers.”

  “Yes, yes, goodnight, Mr Bright.”

  “So where are we going?” Dan asked Metcalf once they were in the street.

  “You’ll see.”

  Dan saw a few moments later. They were on Horsleydown outside Dawson’s corpse repository. Metcalf led Dan inside.

  “What is this place?” Dan asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  “Are you just going to say ‘you’ll see’ all night?”

  Metcalf curled his lip in a half grin, half sneer. “You’ll see.”

  They walked past the crates and into the room with the butcher’s block. Dawson and Simmons were waiting for them with the little pug-faced man, Capper. Metcalf offered Dan a brandy, which he refused. No one said anything.

  The door swung open and Broomhall appeared, glowing with good humour after his hour with Mrs Chambers.

  “I’ll have one of those,” he said, striding up to take his place behind the butcher’s block. He gulped some brandy. “And now to business.”

  “Ain’t no one else coming?” asked Capper.

  “No, it’s just us this evening,” Broomhall answered pleasantly. “Or, more specifically, just you, Capper.”

  Capper began to look uncomfortable. He glanced at Dawson and Simmons but their faces gave nothing away. Simmons stared back at him, cracking his knuckles.

  Capper wiped a hand across his mouth. “Is it a special job?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Broomhall said. “I hear you’ve come into an inheritance lately.”

  “I ain’t had no ’eritance. What gave you that idea?”

  “Forgive me. From the way you’ve been throwing your money around over the past fortnight, I thought you must have been remembered in someone’s will, perhaps for some act
of kindness or generosity.”

  Capper gave a sickly grin. “Not me, chief.”

  “Then you won it at cards?”

  Capper, whose breath had begun to wheeze through his flattened nose, said, “That’s it. Cards.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. It was cards.”

  “Not teeth?”

  “T…teeth?”

  “Teeth you stole from the storeroom here, and that were meant to be sold for the benefit of the cause. You do realise that when you took them you weren’t stealing from me, or from your fellows, but from the people, for whose liberation those funds were intended?”

  Capper, who seemed baffled by this argument, shook his head, then nodded. “I never took no teeth. Who says I did?”

  “The lady you beat up two nights ago.”

  “Lady? A common, lying, trumpery whore!”

  “Yes, I was giving her the benefit of the doubt. Still, even a whore seeks vengeance when she’s wronged.”

  Capper looked to Dawson for help, but the red-headed man ignored his silent appeal.

  “Whatever she’s told you is a lie. I never took no teeth.”

  “Come, come, Capper. The temptation was there, I understand that. The problem is that we can no longer trust you. You have betrayed the people. And that, my friend, is treason.” Broomhall reached into his pocket, took out a pistol and placed it on the block. “The penalty for treason is death.”

  Capper’s mouth fell open and a string of incoherent noises came from it.

  Dan tried to nudge his mind into action but he could not think clearly. This was not like watching a murder from behind a stack of crates. Broomhall was making him a party to it, testing his nerve. Dan could no more save Capper than he could have saved the sailor, not without risking his own life. He had to stand by and let it happen.

  No. He could not accept that. There must be something he could do, something he could say. But no clear course of action came to him.

  He realised that Broomhall was speaking again, flashing his big smile. “But I’m not going to kill you, Capper.”

  Capper sagged with relief, licked his white lips.