Dark Waters (9 page)

We were providing tea at home for a select group of mourners. I shepherded Elizabeth and her mother, with the Egan girls and the vicar, across Church Gate and the short distance to Cheapside, and saw them through the door into the hall. Then I doubled back to the churchyard where many were lingering after the funeral to talk and exchange news. I collared Luke Fidelis and insisted he come back with me for the funeral tea, as I had something I wanted to discuss with him afterwards.

With his handsome appearance Luke was an asset at any social gathering, just as long as he did not get himself into an argument. His intolerance of stupidity had made enemies of many stupid men, and his religious beliefs put him to windward of many prejudices. On the other hand silliness in females he did not mind at all, and they most certainly did not mind him. Coming and going with cups of tea and almond cake for our guests I saw that he was entertaining three sisters who clustered around him with their fans whirring and their ringlets bouncing up and down and threatening to break loose from their ribbons. When this siege was lifted by their parents removing them home, my friend fell into conversation with Mr Brighouse. By now the company had thinned to half a dozen lingerers and I could hear enough to understand that they were discussing the election. As I joined them the vicar was commenting sourly on the banqueting involved.

‘We cannot doubt that all this eating will lead to violence, Doctor,' the vicar was saying. ‘The blood of all the scourers and ruffians of the town will be excited by so much red meat. As an Hippocratic man, sir, you will understand the reasons for that, I suppose.'

‘I don't think red meat charges their blood, Vicar. More to the point is the liquor.'

‘No, Doctor, the main cause is the red meat, I am persuaded of it.'

‘But it is not those who banquet that riot. Your scourers are the non-voters, whom it would be a rank waste of money to stuff with red meat. They are men whipped up by the words of their puppet masters, stung into action by their own impotence and enraged by too much strong beer.'

‘Puppet masters? Impotence? I hardly think that smashing respectable law-abiding Christian windows can be classed as either puppetry or impotence.'

‘Those who do it are without property, Vicar. They cannot vote, and this is their only way of taking part in public affairs. They are dancing to another's tune, to be sure, but it gives them the illusion that they're powerful in themselves.'

Brighouse pulled a severe face.

‘I cannot agree. It sounds to me as if you approve of this criminal rampaging by the
mobile vulgus.
'

‘Approval and disapproval are not matters for medicine. That is for you, the clergy. On this question I merely remark that it's natural conduct.'

‘Yes, sir, it is indeed natural,' retorted Brighouse. ‘And that is why it should be put a stop to!'

*   *   *

‘A
Hippocratic
man, he called me!'

We had gone through into my office and Fidelis was laughing loudly about his exchange with the vicar. ‘The fellow should be crowned with laurel, plastered with rosettes and fed with carrots. He is a prize ass.'

‘You should hear him preach,' I said.

‘I would rather not. What is it you want to talk about?'

I unlocked the desk drawer in which I had left Destercore's paper. As Fidelis looked it over, I explained how I had come by it.

‘You remember the man, don't you?' I said. ‘He was having his breakfast at the Ferry when we went there on Monday.'

‘I do indeed. They're saying he's an agent from London charged with securing the election for Walpole's men.'

‘That is exactly what he is, and these lists are very much to the purpose, though I can't see exactly how. What do they mean? My wife's uncle Egan is there, though his name has been crossed through – see? Our good Denis has been keeping his list up to date.'

Fidelis had put the paper down on my desk and was leaning over it, running his finger systematically down the names.

‘You won't find yourself there,' I said.

He laughed.

‘No, and I can see why.'

‘Can you? The first names are all your co-religionists.'

‘They are voters, or at least possible voters – possible freemen. I have no property and cannot be a freeman and so I do not vote. I would say this is part of an attempt to identify the voters of this town.'

‘But the Catholics aren't voters at all,' I said, puzzled. ‘You Romans don't vote because you cannot take the oath.'

‘Yes, but some are freemen nevertheless. As the franchise here has always been that of the freemen, those must be included.'

There came a cough from the doorway to the outer office.

‘That's not strictly true, sir, what you just said.'

It was Furzey, coming into the room to place a sheaf of newly copied documents on my desk. I was not surprised at his eavesdropping for he had always operated on the plan that, in a good legal practice, the principal shares all intelligence with his clerk, willingly or not.

‘Furzey, how is it not true?' I said. ‘To my knowledge Dr Fidelis is right. Only freemen of Preston have ever voted.'

‘Yes, but that is only to
your
knowledge,' he replied complacently. ‘In this town, so some say, the right to vote was once possessed by all resident males with five, ten or twenty pounds of property – the amount having changed over the years. They say restricting the vote to freemen is quite a recent piece of cozenage, devised so that the corporation could ensure the outcome of an election – because, of course, the councilmen hand out the freedoms.'

‘But I don't see the utility of this particular list of resident men. An electorate of freemen is, after all, what we have now.'

Furzey wagged his finger, as he must have seen me do many a time in court.

‘But the old way has never been forgotten, sir, and may still be found to be the true legal way, if it is ever truly tested. The history of the Preston franchise was a great theme of my father's. He taught me to tell the difference between residents, householders and freemen. For fifty years and more, at the start of every contested election in Preston, one side or another has gone to Moot Hall and pored over the old charters to see where exactly the franchise lay. And I would not be surprised if Mr Denis Destercore is not readying himself to revive the argument again, for I think it may be his best chance of winning it for the Whigs. May I see the paper, sir?'

I handed it to him and he turned it once or twice in his hand, then passed it on to Fidelis.

‘Dr Fidelis,' he said in the voice of a man conferring a blessing, ‘you are quite right. It
is
a list of freeman voters – of the town on recto, and out of town on verso. I wonder if there is another list, on another piece of paper, for non-free residents such as yourself.'

‘As a householder?'

‘You are not one of those, sir. Does your wife cook your food exclusively on your own hearth, under your own chimney?'

‘No, Furzey, regrettably I have neither wife nor chimney to call my own.'

‘Then you are a resident but not a householder. Some have argued that the franchise belongs to householders, otherwise called potwallers, and some have claimed that it is conferred even more widely on six-month residents.'

He turned back to me.

‘May I return to my writing desk, sir? I have much to do.'

I let him go and shut the door behind him.

‘Your clerk really is a pearl of great price,' Fidelis laughed.

‘Yes,' I said, ‘and it's a price I pay daily. But let's go back to your point about what Destercore is up to.'

‘Well, I think his idea is a sound one. Maybe Destercore has many lists of voters, of which this one comprises only freemen. It must have been drawn up with the help of Reynolds, who has been more or less resident in town over the last months. And they identify the voters under various circumstances – for instance, whether the poll remains only with the freemen or, as Furzey's been telling us, might be extended to these potwallers of his, or indeed to all residents.'

‘But Roman Catholics can't vote anyway – they cannot take the oath. Why have a list of them at all?'

Fidelis reflected.

‘Remind me how the election oath is used.'

‘When a man comes before the returning officer to vote, he can be challenged to swear at length that King George is sovereign and the Pope is a rascal, or something like that. It is quite a convoluted form of words, I think.'

‘Good! That's the point. “He
can
be challenged.” It would take far too long for every voter to recite the oath. Only a selected few are challenged, and if you're a Whig you want to make sure that this few includes all Tory-voting Catholics. It is simply good election management to know who to challenge at the poll.'

‘Why am I on his list, then?'

‘Because of Elizabeth. They're playing safe in case you are one of us secretly.' He scanned the list of names. ‘Note the query your name attracts. And you are not the only one here who doesn't himself worship with us, yet has a Catholic wife, or other connection. Destercore simply cannot afford to risk letting any Tory vote go through, if he can stop it.'

‘Very well, though how Destercore knows I am voting Tory when I don't know myself is a mystery. But let's turn this over.'

I took the paper and laid it on the desk with the out-of-town names showing.

‘These men are classified here by place of origin.'

‘But what about these small dots placed against some of them? They must be significant, but I can't say how. Can you?'

I could not. Some secret form of classification, I suggested.

‘I wonder if they refer to men with particularly vehement opinions,' suggested Fidelis. ‘There's one against the name of Nick Oldswick – he'll never shift from his Toryism.'

‘He won't. He told me so the other night.'

‘And these others – where would you say they stood politically?'

‘Many are solid for the Tories, as far as I can see. My wife's uncle had certainly always been an unshakeable Tory.'

‘Right. So let's try the idea that they're men who can't be bought. Destercore'll have other lists of men who can easily be bought, and who might with difficulty be bought, and so on.'

‘So this is all in the name of efficiency.'

Fidelis put his finger on the thick ink line under which lay the name of
Antony Egan (innkpr).

‘And Egan's crossing-out tells us something more, does it not? The lists must have been compiled before Antony's death; that is, before Destercore arrived in town. Perhaps he brought them with him.'

‘It makes another point too,' I added. ‘The only thing that will reliably prevent these particular men's Tory votes is their sudden death.'

Chapter Seven

A
N ELECTION IS
a market in votes and, like any market, it brings visitors to town in hordes. Agents like Denis Destercore come from the distant south, with voters' lists and full purses, to invest their political masters' money, while freemen of Preston living in the countryside, or in the villages and towns round about, arrive eager to dispose their votes advantageously. This is the transaction at the heart of electoral business, but there is also a lot of activity in addition. Poor country people have the prospect of a few days of lucrative but honest employment as table servers, chambermaids, potboys, cooks and runners. And attracted too, like wasps to a jam pot, are bands of musicians and ballad sellers, hucksters, trinket peddlers and practitioners of legerdemain, like the one I had seen the previous day in front of the Moot Hall. Finally, but not least, are those who turn up just for the fun of it – for the opportunity to drink, sing, swagger, kiss girls, fist fight and in general throw off the traces, without having any notion of the Prime Minister, the Spanish war or the excise.

This is self-evidently not the time for a lone and very pretty young woman, such as Miss Lysistrata Plumb, to step down from the Wigan coach at the Red Lion Inn on Church Gate, and go looking for genteel accommodation for herself and the two boxes she brought with her. Yet this was exactly what had occurred at three o'clock that afternoon, shortly after which Miss Plumb was told by the innkeeper that his rooms were all occupied, most of them by three or more guests each, and that the same conditions would certainly obtain at the Bull, the White Bull, the Black Horse, the Golden Mitre, the Gamecock, and any of the other inns, unless a prior request for a bed had been received. Miss Plumb had made no such arrangements, but she refused to be deterred and set off to search for a room, leaving her boxes for later collection.

An hour and a half later she realized the innkeeper's pessimism had been justified. Miss Plumb had visited all the places he'd mentioned, and a few others, without success. Having been disappointed yet again at Porter's, she found herself standing on Fisher Gate, between Bryant's hosiery on one side of the street and Lorris the bookbinder's on the other, without a notion of where to go next. Her eyes were pricking with tears.

Just then she heard shouting from the direction of the Moot Hall. Turning to look up the slope of the street she saw a rout of young men, more than fifty of them, advancing down it, some carrying cudgels, others swinging lengths of chain. Hastily, every shopper and stroller in their way ducked into the nearest shop or tavern, where shutters and doors were quickly closed behind them – all, that is, except Lysistrata Plumb who, not knowing what to do, stayed rooted. Just a few seconds later, she was the only human being standing directly in the mob's path.

A tall man was leading this untidy phalanx, marching in front of them with his fist in the air and yelling slogans. It may seem strange, but the youths took hardly any notice of Lysistrata, despite her nicely formed figure and face, and her London clothes. They were like a river, flowing blind to any hindrance. Their intent was firmly fixed – to break up a meeting that somebody had heard was being held at Fisher Gate Bar – and, with their blood up to battle pitch, nothing they met was likely to interest them on the way. Gesturing and roaring like brutes, they goaded each other as they marched onwards until the terrified woman was overwhelmed. Jostled and shoved and bumped by the rioters, down she went under their boots and clogs. No sooner had they rolled over this minor obstacle than they broke into a run and careered away cheering and yelling towards the bar, as if nothing at all had happened.