Sedition (34 page)

“Wholly unsuitable,” Drigg chips in. “We could try and get it proscribed?”

Frogmorton shakes his head. “No need. It’ll go out of fashion soon enough.” The men nod.

“I think I will have a pipe,” Frogmorton says. “You, Drigg?”

“Why not.”

Pipes are brought. A clerk from Frogmorton’s office appears to consult Frogmorton over an account that does not tally. Frogmorton and Drigg lean over it. Brass leans back and thinks of his new squeeze—a perky London miss. He has had enough of foreigners.

“So Harriet’s to be Mrs. Thomas Buller?” Drigg says when the account has been dissected and the miscalculation identified.

“She is,” says Frogmorton, and shrugs. “His father has interests in India: indigo, salt, cotton, that kind of thing.” He sucks at his pipe. He starts to say “It won’t be a bad match” but realizes the tactlessness just in time. There will no matches at all for the others. He says, “We should help Sawney out. I don’t know what got into him. It’s hardly his fault everything went wrong.”

Mr. Drigg and Mr. Brass agree. They will set up a fund. They may not like Sawneyford, but he is one of them. The fund will be generous. It does not need to be. Though Sawneyford nurses Alathea assiduously and with all due propriety, her wish to die is too strong, even for the laudanum. In a month she is gone. Sawneyford sells his City businesses and leaves without a word, vanishing into the fog of revolution and war to float or sink, as fate decrees.

The men linger long in the V & B, and even as they discuss the fund for Sawneyford and his daughter, in the hold of the
Maidenhead
, newly slipped from the Port of London, the hangman is working his passage to the New World. With not even one hanging from the November treason trials (treason in itself), he has thrown in the rope and will try his luck in America. The first job given him by the ship’s captain is to lash down a pianoforte, bought in London for a New York family of musical girls. His familiarity with knots is turning out an advantage.

In the hold is a veiled girl, waiting for him to finish. Annie boarded early. She already knows she will find no utopia in the New World since the Pantisocratics cannot get themselves past Bristol. Nevertheless, she will make the voyage. Throughout the entire crossing, she never leaves this pianoforte. At first she cannot bear to play Bach, then she cannot bear to play anything else. The dreadful storms of the Atlantic are welcome. The pianoforte groans while Annie howls, clutching Alathea’s ring.

Disembarking in New York, she grips her veil and does not speak. It is left to the captain to explain her attachment to the pianoforte as best he can, which, since he has no idea of Annie’s story, is no explanation. The mother of the New York girls, making far too prosaic an assumption about the wedding ring on the chain, senses tragedy. She takes pity and a risk. She invites Annie to their home. There Annie remains, silent for the most part and nearly always veiled, until people no longer ask where she came from and must content themselves with the one thing they do know about her: that she belongs to the pianoforte that she plays for the greater part of every day. The family come to believe that Annie blesses them through her music, and through their unquestioning, continued welcome, Annie believes they bless her, so far as blessing is possible.

Annie’s heart never heals. Music is just enough to keep her sane. When she dies—a sudden stroke—the New York family bury her in their own plot, her veil secured, her secrets intact, the wedding ring still on its chain around her neck. At her funeral, at her own request, the aria from the fourth part of Bach’s
Clavier Übung
is played. Her tombstone is plain and the inscription simple. It reads
Annie 1777–1843
, and underneath,
Pianist
.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

K
ATHARINE
G
RANT
was born into a family described by Lord Burghley, treasurer to Elizabeth I, as of “more than usual perversity” for clinging to their Catholic faith—an act, during the Reformation, of blatant sedition. In 1746 her five-times-great uncle, Francis Towneley, supported Bonnie Prince Charlie and, as a result, was the last person in the UK to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.

Katharine grew up on the edge of the Lancashire moors with five sisters and one brother. Sometimes using family stories, she has written nine novels for children and young adults. She has also written regularly for most newspapers in Scotland and is currently the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Glasgow.
Sedition
is her first novel for adults.

S
EDITION
. Copyright © 2014 by Katharine Grant. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.henryholt.com

Cover image © Cleveland Museum of Art

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Grant, Katharine, 1958–

     
Sedition: a novel / Katharine Grant.

               
pages         cm.

     
ISBN 978-0-8050-9992-8 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-8050-9993-5 (electronic book)

     1.  Fathers and daughters—Fiction.   2.  Marriage—Fiction.   3.  Piano teachers—Fiction.   4.  London (England)—History—18th century—Fiction.   I.  Title.

         
PR6107.R369S44 2014

         
823'.92—dc23                                    2013031100

First U.S. Edition: April 2014

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.