The Girl in the Mask (23 page)

A huge crowd was assembled in the square behind the abbey. There were shouts, loud voices chanting and the sound of things breaking. A bonfire burned brightly on one side of the square, lighting the scene. I stopped, lingering in the shadows, getting my bearings.

Most of the crowd seemed to be gathered around the Quakers’ Meeting House at the bottom of the square. They were throwing missiles: as I watched, a glass bottle smashed against the stone wall of the house, spraying glass and liquid everywhere. The crowd surged forward excitedly, and men started hammering on the large front doors of the meeting house.

‘Come out, you dissenter scum!’ voices were shouting. ‘Or we’ll burn the building down!’

A chant of ‘Long live the High Church!’ was taken up in the square. For a few moments every voice was in unison, and then the voices disintegrated into a formless mass of shouting and abuse once more. I realized this was a riot like the ones I’d read about in the papers. The unrest had spread to Bath just as Mr Charleton had warned.

Looking up at the windows of the building, I saw a face pressed against the window. It was a young face, just a child, full of fear. A shout went up as others in the square saw it. The face disappeared quickly and only a moment later, there was another smash, and the window where it had been shattered under a rain of bricks and stones.

I shuddered. What had only a moment before been an exciting scene, was now an ugly confrontation. It seemed likely that innocent people were going to be hurt. The crowd were battering at the door, throwing their weight against it. Someone smashed a downstairs window and tried to climb in, but was repulsed fiercely from inside the building. He fell back into the crowd clutching his shoulder.

There was an angry surge in the crowd and a volley of missiles and abuse in response to this. I watched the crowd, convinced there was someone I knew beside the injured man. I stared hard. It was difficult to recognize anyone in the flickering torch and firelight that lit the square, but that hair, that set of shoulders … surely that was Bill? What was he doing in the riot?

I began to push forward, trying to reach him. The mood of the crowd was vicious now. Shouting and chanting, they were piling firewood and broken furniture in front of the door. A man stood over it with a flaming torch, ready to set light to it. I pushed harder, trying to slip through the tightly-packed mass of protesters. I was jostled, pushed this way and that, my feet trodden on and my jacket pulled. Someone barged me from one side so hard I nearly went down, clutching at someone’s arm, desperately trying to stay upright. The man shook me off, but I was up again and moving slowly forward.

The fire at the door was crackling now, the smoke from the wood curling up the stone front of the building. ‘Bill!’ I yelled. My voice was lost in the shouts of the mob. A small gap opened to my right, and I bent and wriggled through. Now I could see it was indeed Bill. He was no longer shouting and jeering with the rest of the crowd. Instead he was kneeling as it surged and shouted around him, trying to tend the man who had been wounded. I reached his side at last and grasped his arm. At first he didn’t notice me in the press. ‘Bill,’ I shouted into his ear, shaking his arm. He started and looked round at me.

‘It’s me, Sophia!’ I said in his ear. His look of puzzlement quickly turned to surprise and then relief.

‘Help me!’ he pleaded. ‘They’ve all gone mad!’

Between us, we helped the injured man to his feet, trying not to hurt his bleeding shoulder. We supported him as Bill tried to push through the crowd, to escape the press of excited, enraged bodies that surrounded us. Once they realized we were moving away from the action, they parted to let us through, surging in to fill the space we left as we passed.

We struggled on, the weight of the man leaning on us growing heavier with every step, until we reached the south wall of the abbey. Then Bill stopped, lowered the man to the ground and pulled aside his coat to look at the injury. The shirt beneath the coat was soaked with bright, wet blood. The man was barely conscious, his head lolling. ‘He needs a hospital,’ I said at once.

‘I got no money,’ said Bill. ‘Neither does he.’

‘Is he a friend of yours?’ I asked, scowling. ‘What sort of company have you got into that you thought it was a good idea to attack a church?’

‘He’s Tom. He works with me is all,’ said Bill defensively, pulling his own coat off, stripping off his shirt and folding it to a pad so that he could press it to the wound. ‘And there was no plan to attack the church. Just to protest. It got out of hand.’

‘You’re telling me,’ I said. The ugly scene continued behind us; the racket almost drowning our voices. ‘Let’s get him to the hospital before he dies,’ I shouted. ‘I can pay.’ Bill looked doubtfully at me and then nodded. He knew my family were wealthy. He didn’t need to know I only had access to that money because I’d stolen it. I had a feeling he wouldn’t approve of my behaviour, nor of Jenny’s part in the robbery.

‘I thought of you as strict and law-abiding,’ I told him as we bent to pick up the injured man once more. ‘What on earth were you doing as part of a Jacobite mob?’

‘It’s people like them in there that took the throne from the rightful king!’ Bill said. ‘I support the Stuart heir. I never meant no harm though.’

‘I don’t know anything about kings and rightful heirs, and I don’t care,’ I said. ‘But just look at them! Howling and beating at the Meeting House, their humanity entirely gone! If they get that child, they’ll tear him limb from limb.’

I wasn’t sure what made me suddenly so passionate, unless it was the immediate danger, the naked hate in the voices and faces of the mob. Perhaps also the memory of Mr Charleton’s warnings of blood in the streets: the violence of the mob had brought the truth of his words home to me.

‘I can see that,’ said Bill, throwing an uncomfortable glance at the crowd. ‘But just because some of ’em behaved bad, don’t make the cause wrong.’

I had no chance to reply. A crowd of official-looking men came pouring into the abbey square. We were pushed aside in the sudden rush and had trouble keeping Tom from being knocked to the ground.

‘Magistrates and constables,’ yelled Bill to me. Shouts for order were rising above the yells and jeers. The men pushed forward to the door, the crowd scattering around them, and raked the fire away from it. The flames were beaten out with sacks, and a group of officials began remonstrating with the ringleaders. There were angry shouts, protests, and some skirmishes, as the rougher element of the mob tried to continue the riot. A fight broke out and one of the magistrates was knocked to the ground. There was a cheer from the crowd, but it was short-lived. The man responsible was quickly overcome. Other men were arrested too. The crowd began to melt away, breaking up and resolving slowly into human beings again.

With Tom hanging, a dead weight, between us, we walked away from the scene. As we struggled along, I saw Mr Charleton. At the same moment he caught sight of me and our eyes locked. There was no friendly acknowledgement from him, no greeting. I realized what he was thinking: here I was, in the thick of a riot, helping a young man who’d been involved. Mr Charleton’s eyes were hard and he looked disappointed. He turned away without coming close enough for me to explain.

It shouldn’t have mattered to me in the least what he thought of me. Why should I care? I knew the truth. But somehow it mattered a great deal. I wanted to run after him and tell him the riot had none of my support. But Tom’s weight on my shoulders, the blood still oozing from the wound in his shoulder prevented me. I staggered on, feeling as though my arm was being wrenched from my shoulder.

The hospital was noisy and crowded with the sick. A few had been hurt in the riot, most had other complaints. I left Bill with Tom in a long queue, waiting to see a doctor and ran home through the streets to fetch enough money to pay for whatever treatment was needed. The coins jingling in my pocket, I ran back to the hospital, an idea forming in my mind. I found Bill slumped on a bench in a hallway, looking exhausted. ‘Tom’s being tended,’ he said when he saw me. I nodded and handed over some coins. ‘Thank you,’ said Bill uncomfortably.

‘There’s something I have to do,’ I said. ‘I can’t tell you what in case it doesn’t work out. Will you wait here for me? I might be a little while.’

It wasn’t far to the inns and taverns near the abbey where Jenny had her patch. A few determined drinkers and gamblers lingered, but the disturbance had driven most inhabitants to the safety of their lodgings. I decided Jenny must have called it a night too; the atmosphere in the city was sullen and edgy. Reluctantly, I made for the city walls, climbed over and set out for Jenny’s cottage. Clouds had come up, making the darkness dense. I wasted time losing my way in the woods and coming out at the wrong place. I had to cast about to find Jenny’s village, locating it at last by the glimmer of lamps through the alehouse window.

I approached the cottage cautiously, afraid of running into Jenny’s father. But luck favoured me. The door was ajar, and candlelight showed me Jenny at the table. When I whispered her name, she jumped and hurriedly swept coins from the table into her hand. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded fiercely once she’d seen who it was. ‘You shouldn’t come here.’

‘I know. But Bill is at the hospital. I thought you might want to see him.’

Jenny clutched at my coat sleeve in alarm. ‘He’s hurt?’ she cried.

‘No! I’m sorry to have frightened you,’ I reassured her at once. ‘A friend of his is hurt. I just thought … it would be neutral ground. It will be so complicated to set up a meeting, so I came to fetch you now while Bill is waiting.’

‘Give me a moment,’ said Jenny. She vanished into the darkness of the cottage a few minutes later. She had combed her hair and exchanged her coat and breeches for a plain gown, less shabby than any I’d seen her in up to now. Without another word, Jenny led the way back to the city, over the wall and across the city to the hospital. When we reached the entrance, she hung back, suddenly nervous, letting me take the lead.

Bill stood awkwardly in the entrance hall waiting for me, his eyes drooping with tiredness. When he saw his sister by my side, he gasped. ‘Jenny?’ he asked dazed.

In a second they were in each other’s arms. Bill wept unashamedly and clung to his sister. Jenny pretended not to cry, wiping her eyes when she thought we weren’t looking, her voice gruff as she replied to the flood of jumbled questions Bill asked her.

I stood a little to one side, moved by their reunion. Then I went quietly into the hospital, to enquire after the well-being of the patient.

I was tired as we left morning prayers the following day. It had been a long night, and I’d had too little sleep even for me. My father, Aunt Amelia, and I walked the short distance to the Grove to join the promenade. Outwardly we were in harmony; a happy family reunited after my father’s absence. Below the surface, bad feeling, anger, and resentment seethed.

Father was furious with my aunt. He’d condemned her inability to chaperone me adequately. She’d thrown the blame on me, complaining of my lack of conduct. The only thing that had calmed my father somewhat, the only mitigating circumstance in his eyes, was my aunt’s assurance that Mr Charleton still showed a decided partiality for me. ‘He’s danced with her at every ball,’ she’d cried tearfully. ‘He’s walked with her in the gardens and even escorted her home!’

‘Do you think his intentions are serious?’ my father had asked, still frowning. ‘Does he have money for marriage?’

‘I dare not say! He cannot address himself to me or to her, you know. But perhaps now that you have returned … ’

I knew that far from proposing for my hand, Mr Charleton was likely to cut me entirely after last night. What would my father say then? Would he finally give this scheme up? I tried to tell myself that if falling out with Mr Charleton allowed me to go home, then it was a price worth paying. But he’d been kind to me, and often surprisingly perceptive. His ill-opinion troubled me and had kept me awake during the few hours I’d spent in my bed last night.

The Grove was crowded; excited chatter all around us. The talk was all about the riot in the city. Everyone had seen the smashed windows and blackened doors of the Meeting House and many had heard the disturbance. As I walked beside my father, I heard snatches of conversation from all sides: ‘A regular mob … the High Church … show that imposter … damned false king … ’ My head spun with it and the memory of the scenes of the night before. It was being treated as a topic for gossip. It was being discussed eagerly; almost gleefully.
That’s not how it was
, I wanted to shout.
I was there. It was brutal, ugly. Vicious
.

I closed my eyes briefly. When I opened them, Mr Charleton was right in front of me. His face showed no emotion, either pleasure or otherwise, at the sight of me. I caught my breath, wanting to explain what had happened last night. But there were no words to convince him that I was innocent of any involvement. Besides, my father was beside me, watching us both.