The Sparks Fly Upward (47 page)

And they might have done; the respect for veterans of Valmy, the first glorious victory of the rabble that made up the Republican army, softened their faces into the envying sentimentality of those who hadn't been there. But at that moment an officer on a horse with a plume in his hat came riding up from the region of the Palais de Justice with another guardsman at his stirrup. ‘What's going on here?'

Almost apologetically, the first guardsman told Ffoulkes, ‘Got to have your papers, citizen.'

He wasn't the fool she was; he'd brought his knapsack with him. He grumbled as he delved into it.

The office leaned down from his horse to snatch the document out of his hand. He looked at it. ‘Collet.' He put his other hand inside his frogged jacket and brought out another paper to consult it. ‘Collet, Collet.'

And then she knew and he knew. Blanchard had provided his papers, as he'd provided all The League's papers.

Their eyes met. Andrew smiled.

The officer on the horse was a youngster; suddenly, he became younger from amazement as if, looking through a lottery list of prize-winning numbers, he'd found his ticket on it. ‘
Collet
.' He looked up with disbelief. ‘
We've got the bloody Englishman.
'

‘Run,' Ffoulkes said gently. He threw himself sideways, wrapping his arms round the officer's knee to pull him off his horse. Immediately, he disappeared under a meleé of guardsman.

Philippa later remembered trying to scalp one of the guards by pulling his head backwards by his hair but thought she must have lost sense for a minute afterwards from the shock of what, to judge from the state of her left eye, was a hefty punch in the face.

Her next memory was of her own shadow stumbling ahead of leveled pikes with the sun of a glorious morning at her back, her hands tied, Ffoulkes being dragged along somewhere behind her, and a pedlar turning his head away as he waited for them to pass before setting up his pitch on the bridge.

Chapter Fifteen

HAD it not been out of season with Covent Garden and Drury Lane shut for the summer, those two great theaters might have used their power to persuade the Lord Chamberlain that The Duke's was putting on an illicit play after all and thereby enforced its closure. Both begrudged any success not their own

As it was,
Oroonoko
was the only drama in Town. Better than that, it was a production not to be missed by anyone with pretensions to art. Better even than that, it promoted a good cause; one could watch it with a clear conscience. From the second night onwards, it played to full houses that, had it been bigger, could have been even fuller. It did not matter that the
haute monde
had left London for the leafy provinces. In order to see this play, it came back in road-blocking coachloads.

Gentleman's Magazine
wrote: ‘Sir Michael Murrough's performance has lit a flame that will not be extinguished in our lifetime.'

The Ladies' Diary
thought: ‘The play's power to delineate the passions, to move to pity, as well as the high quality of style and diction, must have particular appeal to our fair sex.'

Protests by the Society for the Abolition of Slavery that it was not authorizing the production were ignored. The public assumed it was; play and cause became synonymous. Cowper's
The Negro's Complaint
became
Oroonoko's Complaint
and was printed and sold in the thousands. Hairdressers catered for a craze for ‘the Imoinda style.' Fancy dress balls were sprinkled with Oroonokos, Imoindas and Widow Lackitts—these last invariably men. A magistrate reading the Riot Act to a crowd protesting against press gangs was yelled at. ‘You're no better than the governor in
Oroonoko
.'

 

 

JOHN Beasley was buried in the dusty little cemetery of Saint Dionis near his birthplace in Lime Street. A ferocious atheist, he'd once said he wanted to lie in unconsecrated ground but Makepeace was too distressed to arrange that, even if it had been possible, which she didn't think it was. ‘It's better than Chelsea,' she apologized to his spirit. ‘You always hated the countryside.'

Anyway, the Reverend Deedes would have balked at one of Makepeace's friends in his local churchyard, let alone a man who had written his own epitaph as:

 

The priest at Saint Dionis wasn't happy about that, either. ‘Reason' was becoming a dirty word, tarnished with the patina of Revolution. His archdeacon wouldn't like it, he said. However, the sum Makepeace was prepared to pay for the repair of his one-hundred-year-old roof quietened his objections and, presumably, those of his archdeacon.

It was one of the few overcast days of the summer but retaining a clammy heat. The priest, not having known the deceased and suspecting the worst, conducted an unornamented service while eyeing his congregation with suspicion. This was small; but what Beasley's friends lacked in number they made up in devotion. Two undoubted prostitutes wept throughout, so did a printer in multicolored clothing and a tasseled cap. As Mr Lucey said, sobbing, ‘The dear boy wouldn't recognize me in black, would he, Jamie?'

There were no relatives; either he had none or they'd disowned him.

There were a couple of shifty-looking, ink-stained representatives from Grub Street, a black man in livery who shouted ‘
Hallelujah
' a lot, the barmaid from his favorite drinking hole, the Pen and Goose, and a bailiff who turned up for old times' sake, telling Makepeace, ‘He were a pleasure to arrest, so he were. Always inquired after the family.'

The grand friends, Goldsmith, Dr Johnson, Reynolds, were all dead and as he'd aged Beasley had grown too cantankerous to make more like them. In any case, Makepeace thought, the independent-minded society to which they'd all belonged had died with them. England's gates were closing against men of free thought; they were unpatriotic.

The odd thing is
, she thought,
only England could have produced them.

Gripping Sanders's arm, she followed the coffin into the graveyard, a small and more friendly place than the church's classical Wren interior. The East End had nestled up to surround it with the back of shops and businesses. From an overlooking ground floor window came the smell of ink and the thump of a printing press that must, she thought, make the man they were burying feel more at home.

As the deceased's oldest friend and, anyway, the giver of the funeral meats now being set out at the Pen and Goose, she was given the right to drop the first clod.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
She'd never felt more lonely in her life.

Sanders sprinkled his bit of earth and stepped back to join her. ‘Got us into some scrapes, that little bugger.'

‘Got us out of them, too,' she said.

‘That he did. Never could scare him off, could they?'

It was a more fitting epitaph than Beasley's own, although—and this comforted her—he had indeed died easily. ‘Went in his afternoon nap,' Hildy had said.

It was typical of him, Makepeace thought, that the only smooth path he'd ever taken had been death's.

The others departed for the Pen and Goose, and Sanders waited for her at the gate while she said good-bye.

A large shape loomed up beside her.

‘I thought you were at the theater,' she said.

‘Ah, well, Aaron's putting 'em through their paces to see they don't get slack. He said you'd absolved him from attending the funeral.'

‘Aaron never liked him much.'

‘I'm sorry I never knew him.'

‘Not many people did. Only enough to kill him with their stinking prisons.' She turned away and they walked towards the gate. ‘Will you come to the wake?'

‘No, I've been summoned. I've some people to see—they sent a message to the theater.'

Always these mysterious people
, she thought. ‘Who are they?'

‘Me other employers, ye might say.'

They went out together into Backchurch Street, Sanders following them at what Makepeace felt was an unnecessarily discreet distance.
Did he suspect? Probably.

Murrough said, ‘You're the keeper of the purse, missus, how long d'ye reckon the play will run?'

‘Forever, according to the bookings.' Most productions rarely had a repertory run of more than six nights but since The Duke's company had no repertoire neither was there any reason to limit
Oroonoko
's availability to a greedy public.

He nodded. ‘Now, if I have to go away ...'

She panicked. ‘Where would you go? Why? When would you go?'

‘If, I'm saying.
If
I have to go ...'

‘You can't,' she said. ‘We . . . we'd lose money.'

‘There speaks me little counting house.' He looked around; they were approaching Fenchurch Street. He spotted another churchyard and hurried her into it, sitting her down on a tomb and standing over her. ‘I'm sorry to be telling you on this sad day,' he said, ‘but I've been sent for and if I have to go it'll be quick with maybe no time to explain. Listen ...'

‘Are you in trouble?'

His little eyes almost disappeared as he smiled. ‘No, for once. Or not with the law at any rate, not yet. Listen ...'

‘It's Ireland, isn't it,' she said, dully. ‘You're going to do something terrible for Ireland.'

‘Will ye
listen
?' He blew out his cheeks and sat down beside her. ‘Very well, it's Ireland. And it's France. And the two of them together. My masters set a low score by my acting and think higher of me as a go-between ...'

‘Don't go,' she pleaded, ‘I've lost two to France already.'

‘Are you listening to me?'

‘Yes.'

‘Aaron can play Oroonoko.'

‘
Aaron
?'

‘Ach, he's not a bad actor, not of my caliber of course, but not bad at all. He's well again and he's stamping to do it, which is worse for his health than not doing it at all. And the wonder of
Oroonoko
is you can play him with a limp or one arm or any other deformity slavers inflict in their wickedness. Missus, I want you to retire.'

‘What?' She stared at him but for once he was serious.

‘Look at yourself. You've suffered enough grief lately to choke a horse. You've worked your little arse thin making a working miracle out of that barn of a theater, which is running itself now. So I'm thinking it's time you took a holiday ...'

He's going to ask me to go with him
.

But he wasn't.

‘This Babbs Cove of yours,' he said, ‘Aaron tells me its air is balmy, its sands are yellow and the smugglers guard you like a tent-pot of bacon. Go there. Take Jacques with you.'

‘Jacques?' She felt she was being swished back and forth under a waterfall of words that became more Irish the more intent they became.

‘I'm uneasy for the lad,' he said. ‘My informants tell me things don't go well for his father, nor for Danton, neither. It's not that so much, though, it's . . . I don't like the way Blanchard shows an interest in him.'

‘He's showing an interest in all of us,' she said, bitterly. Since opening night, Blanchard had been an almost constant presence in the theater. He hadn't merely attended every performance, he came early, slipping in the moment the stage door opened to the staff and cast, sometimes with Félicie, sometimes alone. Turn a corner backstage and he was there. Enter a dressing room and there he was, talking, joking, flattering, asking questions.

The actors accepted him as just another high-born devotee relishing a sniff of greasepaint. But while Félicie was undoubtedly stagestruck, Blanchard's enthusiasm went deeper. Makepeace suspected him of intending to wrest The Duke's away from her now that it had proved a going concern.

‘I don't like the man,' she said, ‘but ...'

‘I tell you, who he reminds me of,' Murrough said, ‘Danny O'Halloran.'

‘Who's Danny O'Halloran when he's home?'

‘Lovely fella. There was never a wittier man nor one you'd be happier to take home to mother than our Danny. A good member of our branch of the United Irishman, so he was. Attended every meeting, listened to all our revolutionary little plans, even contributed some of his own as I remember—until he sold us all out to the English. ' He looked down at her. ‘Most of us are still in prison thanks to Mr O'Halloran, and me only getting away with a change of name and your brother's help, God love him.'

On the far side of the churchyard, a man was cutting the grass, scattering butterflies into the air with every swing of his scythe.

Murrough got up and raised Makepeace to her feet. ‘Go to Babbs Cove.'

‘Why Babbs Cove?' she protested. ‘My family's in the north.'

‘Some of it's in France,' he said. ‘If I can fetch it home, I will. And I imagine Babbs Cove is where we'll make for.' Suddenly, he kissed her. ‘Wait for me now, Mrs Hedley, because if I go, I'm coming back.'

He walked her to Fenchurch Street, shook her hand warmly and turned right. Her way was left.