The Flight of Sarah Battle

by Alix Nathan

  He turns his buzzing blue eyes on Sarah and suddenly she sees how huge his hands and feet are, long and broad. As if he should be wielding a mattock in a field, not a pen at a desk. When he speaks he’s sometimes a Scot, sometimes an American. He disconcerts her.

  ‘I have worked all my life: I cannot sit at home.’

  ‘Robert, Sarah has great understanding. I know this perfectly, for once we were over our sea-sickness, we talked to each other every day for eight weeks.’ He moves next to her, discreetly strokes the back of her neck.

  ‘Och, and your marriage survived! I admire you.’

  They look at each other as he speaks. Their ‘marriage’ will never be mere survival.

  ‘She has great ability. Don’t mind my saying this, my dearest! I’ve watched her in Battle’s enough times, managing scores of customers, unfazed. But she was wasted there, I strongly believe. She will find a new way in this new world.’

  ‘Can you teach?’ Robert asks, overriding Sarah’s embarrassment. ‘There’s a charity school, begun in ‘94, at the Second Presbyterian church where I worship.’

  ‘I have some education but I’ve never taught. I’m not sure I’d be good at it. I’ll try if need be.’

  ‘Well then, here’s another idea. See what you think. There’s a great appetite for guides among book-buyers these days. Of course almanacs and bibles are still the most popular books, the bread and butter of the business, but there’s no doubt small, informative volumes that fit into a pocket are in demand. I’m bringing some out. Every Man’s Pocket Guide to the Law, for instance. Every Man’s Pocket Guide to Travel. Every Man’s Pocket Guide to Books;or Building your own Library. I’m writing that one myself. Mrs Cranch. May I call you Sarah? Sarah, I’d be glad if you could write Every Man’s Guide to the Coffee House in London and Philadelphia. Would you do that, eh? I reckon there’d be a real interest. Your book could even help establish more coffee houses here. As it is we have not enough of them, and rather too many squalid taverns.’

  *

  ‘What luck!’ Tom says to her that night. They keep each other warm in the freezing room, laugh at the sound of husks and straw crackling beneath them.

  ‘What do you say to stealing out to the stable and spending the night in the hay loft?’ Tom says. ‘Hay makes its own heat and it’s much softer than straw.’

  But it’s too cold to get out of bed. Dobson is jovial but mean with fuel. Lush ice leaves flourish inside the window.

  Nor will he provide soap. ‘The English do always demand soap,’ he says. ‘You have a towel: rub off the dirt with that.’

  ‘What do you think of Robert?’ Tom asks her.

  ‘I like him well enough. How could I not when he’s offering us work just like that! But do you think he really wants me to write the guide? I’m not sure that I trust him.’

  ‘Of course he does! He’s plain speaking, says what he means. A frank Scot, that’s what I like about him. Dear Baldwyn. We have him to thank. I shall write to him immediately, not least so that he will put Cranch’s up for sale with all that’s in it. Then I shall have capital to put into Wilson’s business.’

  ‘Will you become partners?’

  ‘We could, though I mustn’t act too fast. Are you ambitious for me, Sarah?’

  ‘Of course I am, my darling.’

  ‘To be cautious goes right against my inclination. But I must let him suggest it. We may agree on many things: he’s a republican after all, though he wasn’t happy that I might be a Jacobin. He’s also a respectable Presbyterian and I’m not. I don’t know how significant that may be yet. Partners must agree a great deal.

  ‘But dearest Sarah, look out, for I am ambitious for you. Once you’ve written your Guide, who knows what else you may turn your pen to! I won’t have you running home with pies all wrapped in cloths for me, like you did for Wintrige.’

  ‘You won’t have it!’ She laughs too loudly: his face falls. She kisses his brow. ‘I’m teasing you. I think you really do believe in women. I’ve never met a man who thinks as you do.’

  ‘If any country will let its women shine it’s this one. Surely! It was too bad the Corresponding Society was nothing but men.’

  ‘There were plenty of women at the big meetings.’

  ‘Yes, but not on the committees, not in the debates. Not writing pamphlets. We’ll write something together. We’ll write a book together!’

  They know no bounds.

  *

  Robert has a further proposition. One evening he invites them to his house in Zane Street where he lives alone, his wife having died three years earlier in the yellow fever epidemic of ‘93.

  ‘I am lonely here. Martha cooks and washes for me but the house is too empty. I should like it greatly if you would live on the upper floor. It’s unfurnished, so you must buy yourselves some sticks of furniture. I’ll need rent but you can pay me in arrears.’

  Sarah says, ‘It is a good offer, Robert. I’d like it and I should think Tom would. Yes?’

  ‘Yes, an excellent idea.’

  ‘Let me loan you a few dollars today as an advance against production of pamphlets and the book. You’ll be wanting a few more clothes no doubt, though we’ve only two tailors to choose from here. Try Watson’s, off Water Street.’

  ‘I don’t intend to abandon my scarlet neckerchief,’ says Tom.

  ‘Och Lord, no! How would anyone recognise you else, eh? Now, until you’ve bought a bed, you should move to Moore’s hotel. Much nearer here than the Bell.’

  In Robert’s house they will share the services of Martha, who can certainly cook for three as easily as for one, he says. Indeed, she’ll probably prefer to do so.

  That same evening Martha is visiting her sisters somewhere in the city and has left a chicken pie and a baked pudding.

  ‘There are apples in this pudding,’ Sarah says, ‘but something else I don’t recognise.’

  ‘Crookneck,’ Robert explains. ‘Winter squash. It’s my favourite dish, for enough of it reminds me of home and yet it tastes of Pennsylvania too. Whoever heard of crookneck squash in Scotland, eh? Martha knows what I like.’

  The men smoke and make their way through a bottle of peach brandy. Robert quizzes them about London.

  ‘It’s Pitt’s terror,’ Tom says. ‘The government fears the people, not just in London but all over the country, especially in the cities.’

  ‘I read the Tricolour was raised on the Tower.’ Robert puffs and drinks, puffs and drinks.

  ‘That was nothing. The chaplain’s son! No doubt he got a thrashing, nothing worse.’

  ‘Poor boy,’ says Sarah. ‘Yet the people will never turn to blood like in Paris. I’m sure of it. They meet in huge numbers and cheer and weep and listen in silence. Thousands of people. I was there. I’ll never forget that silence in St George’s Fields.’

  Robert stares at her as she speaks. It makes her uneasy.

  ‘It’s reasonable that you should think so, my dearest,’ Tom says quietly. ‘But I’ll tell you what I heard the night of the attack on the King’s coach when he went to open Parliament.’

  ‘I read something of that,’ says Robert. ‘Were you there, eh? Vast mobs, according to the report.’

  ‘Not in the crowd, but I have friends who were and they told me about it, the hissing, hooting, groaning. Down with George! No King! No Pitt! No War! Peace, Peace. Bread! Bread!’

  ‘Did someone fire a gun?’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. It may have been a marble thrown or a pebble. But the carriage was damaged and a door forced open.’ He’s standing now, holds them with his telling.

  ‘That night a man in a green coat claimed to have seized the King by the collar. I was in the Green Dragon, Moorfield and heard him speak of it. I don’t believe he made it up. After the supposed shot, the King ducked onto the floor of the coach, you see. Just as the man would pull him out, collar in both hands, guards rode up and he made his escape as fast as he could.

  ‘Now, think of this. What would
have happened if the man in green had succeeded in dragging the King out onto the ground? The monarch would have been trampled to death and his ministers with him. George the Last! The British Republic might have begun last year!’

  He sits and they all shift on their hard chairs, thinking. Sarah stares into the fire.

  ‘What happened to the man in green?’ she asks.

  ‘Nothing that I know of. There was a reward of one thousand pounds that no one ever claimed. If he’d any sense he took the first boat out of the country.’

  ‘Well, over here, my friends,’ Robert says, ‘we got rid of the King as you know. Without any trampling; without removing a hair from his neck! That task is done, thank the Lord. Let’s drink a toast, eh!’

  ‘To the Republic of America!’ says Tom, leaping to his feet. They raise their glasses.

  ‘But,’ continues Robert, ‘there’s work to do yet on our democracy.’

  ‘Then, here’s to democracy!’ Tom holds up his glass.

  Robert raises his: ‘Universal suffrage! A vote for all men.’

  ‘Universal suffrage!’ Tom and Sarah say together. Tom adds: ‘A vote for all men and women,’ and winks at Sarah.

  ‘Och, women have not the head for it. They should do what’s natural to their sex.’

  ‘Let’s not debate it now, Robert. Here’s to democracy!’

  *

  Moore’s hotel is a four-storey, weather-boarded house built of logs, the entrance outside at the top of a wooden staircase. Bigger, warmer than the Bell.

  Tom says: ‘Warmth is good, but I think I miss the husks.’

  Later Sarah asks him if he thinks Martha is Robert’s slave. ‘We still haven’t seen her, Tom.’

  They’re lying in bed, reluctant to get up.

  ‘Pennsylvania abolished slavery years ago, in 1780. Now there are bonded servants. That may be what she is.’

  ‘Like those we saw outside the coffee house, waiting to be sold, you mean? We’ve seen plenty of black men and boys holding horses in the street, carrying loads, pushing barrows. Weren’t they slaves?’

  ‘May be, or bonded servants.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘I think bonded servants are freed at twenty-one, or is it twenty-eight? They’re still the property of their masters under the bond of course.’

  ‘To be bought and sold.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll ask Robert about Martha, though it may rile him. We don’t even know if she’s a black woman, Sarah.’

  ‘I suspect it from the way he spoke about her. And I think she’s something more than just a servant, too.’

  ‘What makes you think so? There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.’ He leans on his elbow.

  ‘Macbeth! I’ve read it, Tom. But I disagree with that. King Duncan died because he failed to fathom Macbeth’s mind.’

  ‘By God, yes. Still, how does one do it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Intuition I think, not art. There’s something about Robert that makes me hesitate.’

  ‘You mean women being too weak-headed to vote?’

  ‘Not just that. Something doesn’t fit.’

  ‘Isn’t it because his hands and feet are so huge? He trod on my toes the other day! Oh, I should learn to be suspicious. I take everyone as he presents himself: it’s a failing in me. Yet I saw there was more to you than your high colour and pretty face, didn’t I? And you didn’t detect old Wintrige’s wicked ways.’

  ‘How stupid I was! Why didn’t I see what he was like? Yet I was troubled by his look: thought his mouth resembled a frog’s.’

  ‘I like frogs!’

  ‘You see, he disgusted me so much I tried not to think about him. But in any case nothing stays perfect for long, Tom.’

  ‘You’re wrong. Some things do. I will have it so!’

  ‘I would have it so, too.’

  But she thinks of Newton: her first love destroyed.

  *

  Robert introduces them to the Indian Queen where men of republican inclination meet to debate and fortify themselves. The Indian Queen is a much bigger tavern that the Bell, with two kitchens and large rooms on the first floor for private meetings. As they arrive, doves flutter in and out of their cote in the apex of the roof. Inside, the air is ripe with pipe and cigar fumes.

  ‘We began as a society,’ Robert tells them, ‘perhaps not unlike your Corresponding Society, but with more hope. Much more. Now, with the formation of the Democratic Republicans, we have eased our rules and absorbed ourselves into that party. Sit in tonight as visitors; see what you think of us, eh?’

  ‘We welcome two friends of Robert Wilson,’ announces Daniel Eckfeldt, the chairman of the meeting, in a German accent. A large man, grey hair carefully combed over his forehead, his rough-cut bones belie kindliness. ‘They flee the British despotism that they may live in liberty in our city.’ Applause.

  ‘Tonight we have urgent business. The election presses us. It is for us to ensure the defeat of the Federalists.’ Loud cheer of agreement. ‘Have you explained already to your friends, Robert?’

  ‘Federalists are like Tories,’ Robert says, taking the opportunity to address the room, ‘aristocrats; some of us call them monocrats. They do their damnedest to climb back into bed with those pirates the British and claim all the while that we republicans do nothing but sharpen our guillotines.’ Roar of delight and thumping of tables at this description.

  The chairman takes over. ‘Here is the plan. We shall hand out thirty thousand tickets all over Pennsylvania upon which it is written with pen the names of all the fifteen electors. You know printed tickets in the election are not allowed. This will require many agents to take each a bundle of tickets and disperse them to households. And first we shall write the tickets!’

  Sarah knows Tom is thinking of the Corresponding Society, comparing these cheerful Americans to his fellows in London, who moved on in fear from one tavern to another as the landlords fell foul of magistrates, or as volunteer militia harassed them. Of discussions and pipe smoke, of fighting a war with pamphlets, tracts and strong feeling against corrupt government and well-paid spies, like her own husband. The shame of that revelation! Tom had helped assuage her sense of guilt. Told her of the hopes and beliefs of the artisan radicals like those she’d encountered in St George’s Fields. Of the stalwarts Hadfield, Harley and Pyke. Told it against the creak of ship timbers and constant blast of sea and wind.

  She’d drunk in his words like life-giving nectar.

  It’s the first of many occasions at the Indian Queen. The core of the Democratic Republicans’ belief is the equal rights of man. They want freedom of speech, of press, of assembly; freedom to criticise the government, to demand explanation from it. They are deists, Unitarians, a few atheists, Quakers, Presbyterians. Handfuls of Irishmen, Frenchmen, Scots. Americans with Dutch and German names. Men born in and fled from England. Balding, thick-haired, pale faced, ruddy-nosed, united by sober dress and well-washed linen stocks, by degrees of wealth, determined mouths.

  They discuss everything: the existence of God, the inevitable degeneration of all governments into despotism; universal suffrage, the laughable English Constitution, how to fund education, the moral character of the labouring class, whether slavery causes vice.

  Tom takes an extreme line on equality, especially in the face of reasonableness. Someone accuses him of being a Leveller and he proudly agrees.

  ‘You Democratic Republicans suffer the disease of moderation,’ he tells them one evening. His tone is friendly while yet the vigour of his speech demands they attend. ‘You promote equality but you will not carry it through. What will you do with property; what will you do with land? You can destroy poverty and injustice with one stroke if you abolish ownership and distribute all land.’

  ‘Even Tom Paine pulls back from that,’ Willet Folwell, a Quaker, speaks up. ‘Have you read Agrarian Justice, my friend? Paine tells us that we can rectify the violation of humankind’s natural rights by taxin
g estates.’

  ‘Most certainly I have read it,’ Tom replies, ‘and believe the great man has not gone far enough. All land, rivers, lakes, forests, mines, houses, all must be bought back. If you continuously tax the rich they will resent it. We shall not resort to guillotines. Must not. Let us pay out the landowners and return everything to the people to be administered in a beautiful New Republic!’ Those caught by his enthusiasm applaud.

  He’s standing, flushed with fervour in which Sarah, too, feels a part. His ideas fly so freely!

  ‘And how will you administer it?’ asks Folwell.

  ‘The Republic will consist of parishes. All land and buildings in each will belong to all those who live in each parish.’

  ‘But how will that be administered?’

  ‘By elected men and women in each parish.’

  ‘Our friend would carry through the righting of inequality to the bitter end.’ This from a stout man sitting at the side of the room, tapping his foot with impatience. ‘Why stop at redistributing land?’

  ‘Because that is where the greatest injustices thrive,’ Tom retorts.

  ‘Probably our friend owns no land, so he is untroubled.’ Murmurs of agreement. ‘But once we’ve dealt out land and houses and streams and ponds and all the rest, what else counts as property? Will our friend agree to the distribution of his chattels, for instance?

  ‘Will everyone’s chattels belong to everyone in the parish? And his wife. Will he agree to share his wife?’

  There’s a silence. A thin, garbled splutter from Eckfeldt. People stare at the man and turn away.

  ‘I’m sure no one will expect me to respond to that,’ says Tom. ‘The speaker is evidently a lawyer!’ Muted laughter.

  On their way home Tom asks Robert what he knows about the questioner.

  ‘He’s British.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘Recently moved here. Arrived all of a sudden. And you guessed correctly: he’s a lawyer somewhere on Second. Not far from the shop, I’m afraid. Leopard, he’s called. A memorable name. William Leopard.’

  *

  The rooms on the second floor of Zane Street are not large but there are four of them: space indeed. Robert’s house is one of two in plain Georgian style and spanking brick with green-painted shutters to each window and three steps up to the front door. He himself occupies the first floor; the three of them eat together and spend evenings in an uncomfortable living room on the ground floor.