by Jane Feather
“Frank!” She leaned over the rail, peering down at the small figure huddling on a step. “Where have you been? We’ve been so worried about you.”
Frank stood up, but he was ready to run, a small animal sniffing the wind, his eyes sharp, frightened, watching her every move. “You goin’ to ’and me over to the beak?”
“No,” she said. “Come on up here. No one’s going to hurt you, I promise.”
Frank, however, remained where he was. “I jest comes to tell you to write that thing on yer door. I ’eard ’em talkin’. They’re goin’ to burn any ’ouse that doesn’t ’ave it.”
“Who did you hear?”
“Men in the tavern. I was ’idin’ under the table … catchin’ scraps. I ’eard what they said. So you do it, Miss Tavi.”
Before she could say anything eke, he’d gone in one swift, darting movement, up the area steps and off along the street as if all the devils in hell were after him.
“Is that Frank, my lady?” Griffin, who had just opened the door, stared up the street at the flying figure.
“Yes.” Octavia stepped into the hall, frowning. “There’s mischief afoot, Griffin. Frank says we should paint ’No Popery’ on the door if we’re not to be burned in our beds. He carne to warn us. Interesting, don’t you think?”
“Maybe so, ma’am. But why did he run off, in that case?”
“He’s still afraid. It takes a long time to gentle such a wounded little creature,” she said. “But I think we should take his advice, Griffin.”
“Aye, ma’am. There’s tales abroad … rumors … scare-mongering probably, but it’s best not to take chances.”
“No, I agree.” She went to the stairs.
“Oh, by the way, my lady. Lord Wyndham was here earlier. He seemed convinced he’d lost something in the small salon last night.” Griffin spoke without expression, his eyes fixed on a copper plate bearing visiting cards.
“Oh? What was it he lost?” Octavia inquired with an air of indifference.
“He wouldn’t say, my lady. But he had two footmen and the parlor maid turning the room upside down.”
“Did he find it?”
“I don’t believe so, ma’am. He was not best pleased when he departed.”
“How strange,” Octavia said carelessly. “But I daresay, whatever it is will turn up when the room is cleaned.”
She continued on her way upstairs. It was to be hoped that Philip would not confront her with his loss. He had no possible reason for suspecting she might have purloined the ring and every reason for avoiding her.
“Octavia, dear child, I’m feeling in need of a little company.” Oliver’s voice greeted her as she passed his apartments. “I find myself sadly dull today.”
“Then I will come and keep you company, Papa,” she said.
“Why in the world are you dressed in widow’s weeds?” her father exclaimed, taking in her appearance. “Has something happened to Warwick?”
His voice was sharp, and Octavia was glad of her veil, reflecting as she’d often done that it was almost impossible to be sure what Oliver saw and what he didn’t. What he guessed and what he chose to ignore.
“Of course not, Papa. But something’s amiss in the streets. Lord George Gordon has held his meeting, and the people are marching on Westminster.”
“Oh, are they, indeed!” His eyes lit up and he was immediately diverted. “Then come and tell me all about it.”
“I’ll just take off my cloak.”
She went into her own apartments, deciding that devoting her attention to her father for the rest of the day would be a welcome and peaceful diversion. She would tell Griffin to deny her to all callers and retreat into the hermitage of her childhood.
But there were no callers that day, only news from the streets brought by terrified servants and messengers. The mob, some twenty thousand strong, had presented their petition at St. Stephen’s at Westminster. Parliament by a vote of 192 to 6 refused to receive the petition and turned away Lord George and his petitioners.
Throughout the evening and into the night, the city resounded to the sounds of the mob as they raced in large troops on an orgy of destruction. Fires burned against the midnight sky as they torched the houses of ministers and ambassadors and anyone they considered a friend of Catholics.
Twice a mob surged down Dover Street, and Octavia and her father watched from the roof as they waved their burning brands and hurled stones and staves at the windows across the street. Their own house had the talisman upon its door, and the mob passed them by.
At dawn the sound of a pitched battle came from over the roofs from the direction of the Strand. The shrieking of the mob was joined to the roar of soldiers as the military charged with bayonets and horses. The mob came streaming back down Dover Street chasing the soldiers, who fought step by step as they dragged a handful of prisoners they’d arrested to the Old Bailey and Newgate.
“May heaven preserve us,” Oliver muttered. “What people do to each other in the name of the living God!”
He turned back to the trap door leading down from the roof into the attic. “I’m for my bed, child. For a few hours, at least.”
“I’ll stay awhile.” She huddled into her cloak, aware of the group of servants behind her, like herself awed and horrified witnesses of the mayhem below.
But a hush seemed to fall over the city as dawn broke and the night’s madness and blood-letting gave way to exhaustion. The air was still pungent with smoke, a thick haze hanging over the roofs, when Octavia followed her father’s example and went to bed. Her last waking thought was of Rupert.
Did they know in Newgate what was happening in the city? There would be no regular visitors through the little wicket gate. But they would hear the noise. And they would see the arrested rioters brought in. They must surely know, and he would know why she hadn’t come to him again. He would know that she hadn’t abandoned him just because of this morning.
It started again as evening fell. The hideous screams and shouts, the crash of broken glass, the bright flames, the drink-suffused, maddened faces storming through the streets.
“Where are the soldiers?” Octavia asked, almost in a whisper.
After that early display there was no sign of any opposition to the rioters. Unimpeded, they went about their orgy of destruction, firing the houses of suspected papists and their supporters, dragging priceless books, furniture, draperies, linen, into the streets and making bonfires, dancing black-faced in the eerie light of the flames, broaching at every stop the casks of wine and kegs of beer they raided from the taverns as they went.
“Probably can’t find the right person with the authority to order them out,” Oliver said with a kind of grim satisfaction. Anarchy pleased him. It had historical precedents that had always fascinated him, and seeing such scenes enacted before his eyes was an empirical treat for the scholar.
Extraordinarily, his explanation seemed to be the only possibility. The mob continued its orgy for four days without let or hindrance, while sensible citizens painted the talisman on their doors and stayed inside and trembled.
Chapter 25
It was on the evening of the eighth of June when Griffin entered the salon. “There’s a man come to the kitchen, my lady. He said he must see you immediately.” His face was stiff, his voice outraged.
“Eh, get out of my road, man.” Ben’s voice came from behind the butler, his hands pushing him ungently aside. “Miss, a word wi’ you.”
Griffin’s chagrined expression told Octavia exactly what had happened in the kitchen. The butler had tried and failed to stop this unseemly visitor, and he didn’t dare to try again.
“It’s all right, Griffin. This man is known to Lord Warwick,” she said soothingly, although her heart fluttered wildly and she could feel the pulse in her temple pounding.
Griffin bowed himself out but left the door ajar. Ben closed it. He came over to Octavia, his eyes shining. His face was blackened with soot, his clothes torn.
/> “The mob’s all set to fire Newgate,” he said. “Set free them folk the military arrested that first day. There’s a group of us reckon we’ll see who else we can set free.”
Octavia was on her feet in one bound. “You think they can do it? Fire the jail? It’s all iron and brick.”
“If you’d seen what I’ve seen these last days, miss, you’d not question the power of fire,” Ben said somberly. “But I jest wanted to tell ye what we’re about. Thought it might cheer ye a mite.”
“Oh, Ben!” To his astonishment and distinct unease, Octavia flung her arms around him and kissed his sooty cheek with heartfelt fervor. “Wait here just a minute, and I’ll be ready to come with you.”
“Eh, no, miss. This business isn’t fer the likes of you!” Ben exclaimed in alarm.
“Pshaw!” Octavia scoffed. “Neither is taking to the king’s highway, Ben, and I’ve done that. And a deal of other things too that make this business very fit for me. Wait here. I’ll be no more than five minutes.”
She’d whisked herself out of the room before he could think of anything else to say, leaving him to pace the salon, pulling at his chin and wondering how Nick would react to his mistress’s involvement.
In less than five minutes she was back, dressed in the bright-orange tavern-wench’s costume, the scarlet kerchief around her head, the rough wooden pattens on her feet.
“Come on. I’m probably not dirty enough, but I’ll find something to smear on my face and hands as we go.”
“Lord love us,” Ben muttered. “What’ll Bessie say when she sees ye like that?”
“Bessie’s here?”
“Aye, a’course. We all are.”
“Yes, you would be,” Octavia replied, leading the way to a side door. “And what of the new stable boy and Morris?”
There was an edge to her voice as she unlocked the door, and Ben flushed darkly. “Ye’ve no need to worry about them, miss. They’ll not be troublin’ anyone again.”
There was a finality to his voice that made Octavia’s scalp crawl, even though she thought she would cheerfully have driven a sword through both of the men who had betrayed Rupert.
Out in the street all was quiet. But then she saw the shadows in the corners. Shadows that materialized into the familiar faces of the Royal Oak. Lord Nick’s friends had come for him. Bessie separated herself from the rest.
“You comin’?” But she sounded approving rather than otherwise and, when Octavia merely nodded, nodded herself and turned back to the group. “Let’s be on wi’ it.”
The streets felt quite different from a few days ago, when Octavia had hurried back from Holborn, frightened of falling foul of the crowd. Or perhaps, she thought, it was because she was different. Dressed as she was, surrounded by the folk from the Royal Oak, she blended into the street scene, became a part of the mob instead of an outsider and potential victim. And from down below, as a part of it, the scene looked different, less frightening than when she’d watched from the roof, a distant spectator. And yet she knew the mood of the crowd was both frightening and very dangerous.
All around her were faces suffused with drink, wild-eyed with the heady lunacy of riotous anarchy. They burned and destroyed everything that came into their path, no longer needing the excuse of manifest Catholic sympathy in the owners and occupants of the properties they razed. Octavia was swept along, trying to keep herself in the middle of the group of familiar faces.
At Charing Cross a massive crowd of several hundred came sweeping into the intersection to join with Octavia’s own mob.
“To Newgate … to Newgate” was on every tongue. They carried sledge hammers, staves, flagons of turpentine, and rags soaked in rosin as they roared toward Holborn.
Octavia, to her horror and astonishment, found herself infected with the crowd’s wildness. She heard her own voice yelling in unison, her arm pumping emphatically in the air as the mass of humanity pounded over the cobbles and paving stones, making the ground shake, a behemoth set on destruction. And nowhere did they encounter an obstacle to their progress. It was as if the authorities had abandoned the city to its rioting populace.
The crowd came to a stop outside the great barred gate of Newgate and the stone facade of the Old Bailey. They stood rows deep, packed shoulder to shoulder, faces glistening in the light of torches held aloft.
Octavia pushed and wriggled her way to the front, no longer needing the protection of familiar faces, her mind as one with the mob’s: to get into the prison; to break down that massive, iron-bound gate.
All around her were the contorted, savage faces of the city’s underclass, people for whom Newgate was the loathed symbol of their wretched existence, the most dreaded lodging, and the start of the final journey to Tyburn.
The Keeper of the jail appeared on the roof of his house as the mob roared for him.
Octavia fell silent, thinking how slight and insubstantial Mr. Akerman looked up on the roof, flanked by his staff. What could he possibly hope to do to stop such an unstoppable mob?
Defying the odds, Akerman refused to accede to the crowd’s bellowed demand that he open the gates and surrender the jail. Octavia shivered as a cold breath of reality pierced the mad euphoria of the march. The Keeper was the representative of the city magistrates. He embodied the authority of the king. Surely, now, the government would summon the militia?
But Akerman and his cohorts disappeared from the roof. The crowd roared, surged toward the gate. Someone attacked the great gate with a sledge hammer, and then the frenzy began.
They flew at the massive stone walls of the prison, swinging crow bars in a paroxysm of energy. They broke into the Keeper’s house, and as Octavia watched mesmerized, horrified—yet fascinated—they stripped the house of everything that would burn. Furniture, books, pieces of paneling, floorboards, linens. They made a massive bonfire before the gates and hurled turpentine over the pile. Rosin-soaked rags were ignited and thrust into the bonfire.
The flames crackled, leaped into the air, took hold, became a raging blaze as the crowd fanned the flames, constantly feeding the fire with anything that would burn. Snatching burning brands from the bonfire, they flung them over the walls, onto the roofs of the wards, and into the yards behind.
The crowd was so densely packed around the fire at the gates that Octavia couldn’t have fought her way free, even if she’d wished to. She gazed in the same fascinated paralysis as the flames licked at the iron bands, the massive bolts and bars of the door. The faces around her glowed red in the crimson light from hell. Bloodshot eyes stared without any sense of human awareness at the fire’s progress, and when the wood finally caught, the roar of triumph could be heard clear across London.
Within the jail Rupert heard the roar rising above the general level of cacophony that had startled him an hour before. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air, and he could see in the press-yard below his window a flaming brand that had been tossed over the wall. Tongues of fire licked across the cobbles toward a wooden platform in the center of the yard.
Amy had been full of stories of the riots during the last few days when the prison had been locked up tight; the prisoners, both those who were untried and those already convicted and sentenced, were kept confined in their wards and cells, the internal gates barred to the yards. But nothing the little laundress had described had prepared Rupert for this assault.
He leaned his elbows on the broad windowsill and stared toward the narrow passage leading to the gate. He could see nothing clearly, and as the fire in the yard below caught the base of the wooden platform, he began to wonder if he was about to be burned to death.
Clearly, some of his fellow inmates had the same fear. Shouts and banging now came from other parts of the prison as prisoners shook the barred gates of the wards, bellowing for information. A woman was screaming from somewhere in the wing to Rupert’s left.
Rupert moved back from the window. He was barefoot, wearing only his britches and shirt, and swiftly he pulled on his s
tockings and boots. He fastened his belt at his waist and thrust his arms into his riding coat. If opportunity was about to knock on his prison door, it would not find him unprepared. Then he returned to the window.
He still could see nothing of the gate itself, but the roaring of the crowd had become even wilder, with a frenzied edge of excitement.
Rupert couldn’t see what was happening, but outside, Octavia, her cheeks scorching with the power of the blaze, watched as the gate slipped from one of its top hinges and hung sideways, revealing a narrow gap at the top.
As the crowd continued to pile more fuel onto the fire, the gate began to slip slowly, dragged down by its own weight. For one breathless second there was utter silence as it settled into the pile of ash and glowing embers at its base, before it very, very slowly toppled.
Octavia shielded her face from the heat with her hands as she was thrust forward with the mad, bellowing throng, almost ploughing through the fire itself, scrambling over the burning, broken spars of the gate into the dark, narrow passage beyond that led directly to the press-yard.
Octavia was practically air-borne as the tide of humanity swept her through the passage and out into the yard. She was yelling with them, waving her arms, screaming her jubilation, and as the crowd eddied in the yard, unsure which way to take first, she found her feet and darted across to the building that housed Rupert.
Standing below, she cupped her hands and bellowed; then she saw him at the window and she began to dance, a wild tarantella with her orange skirts flying and her loosened hair whipping around her face, flinging her arms wide in an all-encompassing embrace.
“Come on, sweeting. Enough dancing … the gate,” Rupert murmured, his heart in his mouth as he waited for this extraordinary scene to be wiped away with a wizard’s wand. Any minute would surely bring the soldiers to avenge this violation of one of authority’s most sacred institutions.
But even as he murmured to himself in an agony of suspense, Octavia darted to the gate of the state side, disappearing from his line of sight.
