Death of a Radical

by Rebecca Jenkins

  Up by the market cross a fife and drum were heard and then the ringing of a hand-bell. The press heaved and shifted as a haphazard procession pushed its way past the pens. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of something bright standing out against the winter colors of the scene. A woman dressed in a striking costume chevroned in bands of lemon and black had just emerged from the Queen’s Head. The sweeping black brim of the hat turned to reveal the unmistakable profile of Miss Lonsdale. A liveried footman stood beside her at the rail of a bath chair. The chair contained a hunched, frail-looking being swaddled in an Indian shawl. So the fairs had drawn out Lady Catherine, Sir Thomas’s close relative and companion at Oakdene Hall. The old lady rarely left the Hall in winter. There was a white and tan terrier at her feet. The creature carried a walking stick that protruded at least a foot either side of its mouth. It trotted before its mistress’s chair mowing a path through the crowd with an absurd air of self-importance.

  The procession approached. Thaddaeus Bone led the way with the white staff of his office as Borough Constable. By his side walked a young boy carrying a brass hand-bell. They were followed by a group of constables dressed in the ill-fitting jackets of their ancestors, bearing ancient halberds from the town armory. Then came an irregular gap that swelled and narrowed in relation to the perseverance of the fifteen jurymen of the Borough Court who trailed after them. They grouped by habit in their various degrees. The publican, Jasper Bedlington, walking alongside Mr. McKenzie, the shopkeeper, and Captain Adams keeping company with Mr. Bedford, the mill owner. The magistrates brought up the rear wearing the expressions of public men doing their duty. It felt strange to recognize so many faces. He could attach histories and connections to nearly every participant. It was almost as if he were a settled man. The thought made him uneasy. He filled his lungs with chill air.

  The boy rang his bell with enthusiasm and Constable Bone proclaimed the rules of the fair. The officials processed down the narrow channel between the stalls to repeat the proclamation at the farthest boundary and then marched back up to the marketplace and dispersed. The Easter Fairs had begun.

  He should pay his respects to Lady Catherine. Jarrett abandoned his perch and plunged into the crowd. He spied Miss Lonsdale’s yellow and black further down Cripplegate. The old lady was no longer with her. Miss Henrietta was bending over a stall in company with her odd acquaintance, Miss Lippett. He stopped, concealed amid the customers pressed round a hot sausage stand.

  Miss Lippett was hesitating over a particularly offensive pottery cherub with bulbous cheeks. For all he found the woman uncongenial, he would not have suspected a gentlewoman of such appalling taste. He wondered what could have led Miss Lonsdale to make such a tiresome friend. As he considered the question, a farmer’s daughter with the vacant, milksop look of a sentimental print of a milkmaid dropped her handkerchief in the path of some young men. Jarrett recognized faces from the Red Angel song club. He watched as Miss Lippett’s singing servant sprang forward. His employer’s expression as the man returned the scrap of cloth to the girl was a sight to behold. Could it be that the absurd spinster cherished a penchant for her sturdy serving man?

  He had almost made up his mind to step out of cover when Charles came into view. He was laboring to push Lady Catherine up the steep incline in her chair as the old lady emphasized something with an expressive twist of her mittened hand. Jarrett could see Charles was quite out of breath. Miss Lonsdale turned to greet the pair. Something snagged in his chest at the warmth of her expression.

  “Why Mr. Jarrett, I thought it were you. I were hoping to catch a word …”

  Mr. Hilton of High Top barred his way. Bulky and beaming, the farmer settled his weight with the air of a man expecting to bide. Jarrett’s eyes flicked left and right. The queue at the sausage stall blocked his escape—it would be undignified to push them aside like ninepins. At his back he was pinned by a trio of goodwives catching up on a winter’s worth of news. There was nothing for it—he was cornered.

  If cattle could speak they would no doubt converse in the manner of Mr. Hilton. His philosophy was of a domestic nature, resting on his deep appreciation of the simple necessities of life.

  “Now I took a fancy to a piece of fish,” he declared, clearly convinced that others would find his choice of supper as interesting as he. “You know how it is, Mr. Jarrett. My dear said, Husband, if it is fish you want it is fish you shall have, though I have to send our Margaret ten miles for it …”

  A gap opened in the press before the sausage stand.

  “The Marquess of Earewith expects me. Forgive me—” he said in a rush. Darting through the narrowing chink, the duke’s agent made his escape.

  “As to the eating of fish, I’m as happy with a bit of bacon or a beef stew meself,” said a voice in his left ear.

  “Duffin! So you’re here. Trouble?”

  “Won’t be long, I reckon. Heelanders should be kicking off soon. Better than a play, t’fairs.”

  “Any idea where?”

  Duffin jerked his head in the direction of the marketplace. Jarrett saw Lieutenant Roberts, waist high above the crowd on the back of his black mare.

  “As pretty as a picture!” the stallkeeper wheedled, holding up a handful of colored ribbons against her customer’s dark hair.

  “But which might go best with peach satin?” Miss Bedford’s expression was serious.

  “Peach now—would you be thinking more yellow or pink?”

  Barely an hour previously Favian would have scoffed at the very idea that he could be content to watch anyone expend so much effort on the choice of a ribbon. Now he was transfixed. The little moue she made when she considered; the enchanting attitude she took as she held the ribbons against her hair to see the effect in the stallholder’s mirror. He stamped his icy feet. It was a good deal colder here than it had been down in London but it was a small price to pay. Since he had come north, he had become a different being. His eyes wandered over the market, gloriously content.

  He stiffened. Across by the tollbooth he saw Lieutenant Roberts. He was up on his high horse again, looking down. A familiar figure stood by the mare’s shoulder—Raif! Favian shook his head to dislodge the ghost of a corrupt smell. Why should he remember that now?

  The last time they’d met Raif had not known him. A twelvemonth since, when Charles first brought him back, they had thought he would die of his wounds. Favian’s mother had written him so in a letter that had brought him all the way to Ravensworth, praying with every mile to the God he did not know that Raif should not die. He had barely recognized the restless, sweating feeble being lying in that darkened room. Across the barrens of his own sickness it had been Raif Jarrett—constant, all enduring—who had given him the courage to hope in-better things. Looking down at the lost soul in that bed he had felt cheated. Now the doubt that blossomed that day seemed a portent. In his boyish idolatry he had made a hero, as wise as he was fair in form—something impossible. He could see that now. It had been a shock, of course, to see his boyhood idol exposed as a mere agent of others, but he was the better for it, he told himself. He glanced at the girl beside him, her head bent over the rainbow of ribbons. In the past days he had taken steps of significance in his life. He had a purpose all his own.

  “What do you think?” Miss Bedford held out her choices for inspection.

  “I think they are nearly as pretty as you,” he said gallantly. He paid for the ribbons feeling exhilarated and a little light-headed.

  Up ahead he spotted Dickon moving through the crowd, head and shoulders above the rest. A lad with a mess of light hair that stood up like a dandelion clock around his head was approaching from the opposite direction. Favian tucked Miss Bedford’s gloved hand more securely under his arm.

  “Eh up!” Dickon acknowledged the lad with a slight toss of the head.

  Without a word the newcomer grabbed Harry Aitken’s hat off his head.

  “Give it him back!” Jo’s hand darted out, missing it
s object by a whisker. The newcomer tossed the hat to Dickon, who danced back kicking up his heels like a pugilist in the ring.

  “Need to do better than that,” he taunted. With a casual flick of the wrist he sent the hat spinning. It sailed through the air in a graceful arc to be caught by Sim Cullen who, clutching the prize to his chest, darted through the crowd as swift as a deer. Harry hallooed and raced after him, the others at his heels.

  Jarrett’s attention was drawn by a joyous shout. He swung up onto the stone balustrade of the tollbooth to get a better view. A collection of youths were weaving in and out of the passers-by. It took him a moment to see that they were playing a game—like a football match without teams and a hat for a ball. The atmosphere was good-humored—the various players vying with one another in their exuberant displays.

  The current possessor of the hat found a pen blocking his path. He vaulted over the rail and crossed the press of cattle, stepping from back to back. Bounding from a convenient barrel he threw in an effortless somersault for all as if he were a Chinese acrobat at Vauxhall Gardens. The pack descending on him, he threw the hat over to a confederate who caught it in a springing turn. As he landed he snatched a kiss from a pretty girl, to the evident delight of the passers-by who stopped to watch. Jarrett spied Favian on the far side of the street. He had a girl on his arm. He was hurrying her off toward the Queen’s Head. Jarrett smiled at the boy’s protective air. What a dark horse Grub was turning out to be.

  Harry Aitken’s hat traveled high above the press of heads, gliding on the air beneath its brim. Dickon sprang out of the crowd and caught it again in one neat movement. He came to earth, colliding with a passer-by, sending him sprawling into a group of visiting miners from up the Dale. Dickon rolled round them with a shouted apology and was off again. The heelanders’ expressions were stormy. Forged by heavy work under and over the ground, they were furnished with as much muscle as you could decently pack into a man. One clenched his fists and a townsman hit him. The group disappeared in a pack of weavers. The sounds of fists meeting flesh and bone, grunts of effort and yelps of pain rose as decent folk scattered.

  By decree of the Borough Court, should any argument at the fair come to violence the constable and his assistants were to arrest the culprits, confining them in the tollbooth lock-up until payment was made of a deposit to ensure future good behavior. In anticipation of such occurrences, on fair days Constable Thaddaeus provided himself with three sturdy fellows, mature men like him, who had been scrappers in their youth and had solidified into something formidable. Jarrett watched this group making their way toward the dense patch of humanity that seethed with staccato blows and grunts. There were others ahead of them. Lieutenant Roberts was pushing his fretful mare through the crowd and his men, distinguished by their coats, were suddenly visible gathering from their different posts.

  Jarrett jostled against the tide of folk moving away. Ahead of him soldiers reached the fight. For a moment it flared up; then, just as quickly, Jarrett felt the energy dissipate. He was about to break through the dense crowd when a familiar flash of blue caught his attention. Just for an instant he saw the tow-headed youth with the blue neckerchief from the Red Angel—the one that had been sitting listening so intently to his companion in the alcove at the back. He was half twisted about, his face turned to the seat of the fight and his body facing away, as if he were caught between fascination and the desire to flee. The expression on his face was striking—part eager astonishment, part fearful; a vignette from some old master’s painting of the Last Judgment. A substantial matron carrying a large basket collided with Jarrett and he almost lost his balance. When he recovered his footing the youth with the blue neckerchief had moved on.

  Constable Thaddaeus and his men stood grouped to one side as the fair-goers flowed past, affecting a studious indifference now that the action was over. Lieutenant Roberts sat on his horse at the center of a clearing. His men held between them a couple of miners and a man with a shaved head and a gray wig hanging half-out of his pocket. The latter seemed drunk. He leaned away from the restraining hand on his coat.

  “I’ll have ya!” he yelled, arms flailing.

  It seemed a poor catch, given all the drama.

  “Take them down to the barracks,” the lieutenant commanded, all business. “Lock ’em in the storehouse and post a guard.”

  Thaddaeus Bone advanced with square shoulders and a stubborn look. “We puts them in the town lock-up,” he stated. “These men are my charge by rights.” The lieutenant looked down briefly from the heights of his saddle.

  “Colonel Ison’s orders,” he snapped. “You four, bring them. The rest of you, resume positions. This won’t be the last of it.” He rode off, using his mare’s superior bulk to push aside the constable’s men.

  Thaddaeus Bone turned to the duke’s agent as if he had seen him for the first time.

  “Has he the right, Mr. Jarrett?” the constable demanded. “Brawlers in the market go before the Pie Powder court. That’s the way it’s done—always has been.”

  “I’ll find the colonel and see what it’s all about. They won’t be taken out of town,” the agent reassured him. Jarrett felt a hand on his arm. Charles had appeared at his side.

  “The colonel wants us. Something’s happened,” he said in a low voice.

  “Where is he?”

  “Bedford’s.”

  A sulky housemaid received them. The interior of the house was still against the noise of the fair outside. The maid led them to a half-open door, tapped on it and slipped away. Jarrett pushed the door open to reveal the edge of a mirror-polished mahogany dining table and the vicar, Mr. Prattman, standing at the window beside Sir Thomas. They were watching the soldiers march their prisoners down to the warehouse that served as barracks.

  “Isn’t that Bedford’s new coachman?” The vicar frowned. “Not another drinker,” he murmured sadly.

  “Last one burned himself to death in a stupor,” Sir Thomas supplied, addressing Lord Charles with the mournful expression of an inveterate gossip. “Bedford’s unlucky in his choice of people.”

  “My lord!” Colonel Ison hurried up with a chubby man in a rust-brown suit in tow. He introduced the stranger briefly as Mr. Kelso, a visiting magistrate from Richmond.

  “And our host?” inquired Charles, looking about the room.

  “Bedford?” the colonel responded impatiently, as if the whereabouts of the householder were an irrelevance. “Had business. It is I who have called you here. See this!” He held out a dirty scrap of paper toward Lord Charles and shot a triumphant look at Jarrett. “I said there was no time for complacency!”

  “Oh, I am afraid I am not your man, colonel.” Charles clasped his hands behind his back with a frank, open smile. “Raif is the one you want.”

  “Mr. Jarrett.” The colonel, frowning, thrust his paper toward the agent, a dull red flushing the apple of his cheeks. Jarrett took the scrap. Turning it to the light he deciphered a message scratched in foul ink.

  “At the great trybunal Day even justices shal be juged. Onest Men eat swil and you grow fat Have a Care the hogs rise in jugement aganst you and you shal surley go to hell. Imaginative penmanship.” He turned the scrap over. “No direction. Where … ?”

  “It was found on the seat of my carriage!”

  “I see.” Jarrett made an effort not to meet Charles’s eye for fear he might laugh. He tried for diplomacy. “A few ill-spelled words, colonel, even ones so shocking …” Charles made an involuntary noise in his throat. Colonel Ison’s color deepened to puce.

  “When do you suppose it was done?” his lordship asked hurriedly. “Was your carriage unattended? Surely someone must have seen the perpetrator?”

  “The carriage was parked up in Bedlington’s yard. I had barely been gone ten minutes. My coachman heard the disturbance in the marketplace outside and went with the rest out into the street to look. He found the paper in the carriage on his return. He swears he was not gone long.”


  “And you’re sure of your man?” asked Mr. Kelso.

  “No question about him! Been with me for years.” It seemed there were some among the lower sort the colonel trusted.

  “Well, this is very troubling …” Charles began. Colonel Ison interrupted him.

  “It is more than that, my lord! As I have been trying to tell his Grace’s man here …” The colonel extended his lips in a thin line. “I do not sound the alarm on a personal whim,” he said between his teeth.

  “But who among us has perceived any material signs of disaffection?” protested Jarrett. “I have heard not a whisper—in town nor up the Dale.”

  “Of course not! These villains have a serious purpose. They have been gathering for some time.” Colonel Ison drew out a letter from his pocket and shook it, shoulder high. “I tried to warn you, Mr. Jarrett—but I see I must be more particular. I have been warned, sir, of meetings. Meetings where …” He straightened the pages and holding them at a distance to focus, read out: “An orator in a mask harangues the people and reads letters from distant societies by the light of a candle and immediately burns them.”

  Jarrett leaned forward, intrigued. From what he could see the words ran square across the page. There seemed to be no salutation. The paper was covered in a pains-taking hand fitted between ruled pencil lines.

  “What is the source of this information, colonel?”

  The colonel tucked away his letter with the furtive gesture of a greedy child hiding his sweets.

  “I am not at liberty to say—my word should suffice,” he said haughtily. “There is documented evidence of the administration of unlawful and secret oaths …”