The Courteous Cad (28 page)

“Yes, sir,” the servant replied with a bow. “At once, sir.”

“Warring, you have done your duty. Return to the mill and ensure that it is kept secure. I shall not have Luddites destroying my worsted looms as they did the stocking machines in Nottingham.”

“Aye, sir. Good day, sir.”

William watched him go. He knew Richard Warring was referred to as Dick the Devil, a man who would rather administer a beating than give instruction. While the brute’s report had been of benefit, William now had more than enough reason to dismiss him for insubordination. Had Warring and the other overlookers followed their master’s orders to the letter, the workers certainly would have expected the reforms to benefit them. If they had believed that a school would be started and the workday shortened, surely they would not have dreamed up this half-cocked scheme to march with the Manchester cotton mill workers.

And what of Warring’s mention of Polly, the spinner who had been absent, yet recently had returned to the mill? Polly Watson. Surely it could not be . . .

“Randolph, Olivia,” he addressed the two remaining in the room. “I go to Manchester at once. If the workers marched through the night, they may be in the city already.”

“You have my full support,” Randolph said. “I would accompany you, but the lambing season has begun.”

“It is no matter,” William told him. “I shall return shortly. Pray for me, if you will.”

Olivia’s eyebrows lifted. “We shall, dear William. Of course!”

Taking some solace in her glad smile, he made his farewells and left the dining room.

“Miss Watson, wake up! ’Tis time to march!” The urgency in Bettie’s voice roused Prudence from uneasy slumber. Like the other worsted mill laborers who had walked to Manchester from Otley, she had slept the remainder of the night on a rough wool blanket. And she had rested poorly—roused often by carousers bent on making the rally an opportunity to drink too much, by groups of men bursting into song, by babies crying, by her own troubled heart.

“Drink this,” Bettie ordered, handing Prudence a mug of hot water sprinkled with a few tea leaves. “Mr. Walker says the rain is just over the hill and coming at us quickly. We must roll up our blankets and hurry to St. Peter’s Fields.”

With a sigh of despair, Prudence sat up and took a sip of the weak brew. Frowning at its bitter taste, she set the mug aside and began tucking wayward curls into her muslin mobcap. During the night, a pale gray mist had rolled across the moors, blanketing the gathered crowd in a cool and murky cloak. As she stood, the first droplets began to fall.

“At least I may take some hope that this rain will put an end to the march,” Prudence told Bettie as she rolled her blanket. “How long did I talk at the meeting yesterday? It felt like hours—and all for naught.”

“Take no worry about it, Miss Watson,” Bettie said. “No one wanted to listen to warnings of disaster while setting out on a journey of hope.”

Prudence shook her head. From the moment she had arrived back in Otley two days before, she had done her best to discourage people from joining the march to Manchester. Though the worsted mill workers had seemed pleased at her return, she soon realized they would not heed her admonitions.

She had warned them that the authorities in Manchester would never permit the moving assembly of such a great crowd. The journey from Manchester to London was long, she reminded the mill workers, and they could not carry enough food and water to sustain them. The cold and damp would likely cause sickness, she pointed out more than once. People already weakened by hunger and exhaustion might even perish during such a difficult expedition. But all her cautions fell on deaf ears.

Bettie felt that she must join the marchers to avoid the shame of failing to support her friends, and Walker would not let her go without his protection. Prudence decided she had no choice but to go too and continue in her effort to turn back the surging tide of dissenters.

“No one along the way will welcome us,” she muttered. “Certainly we shall be neither fed nor sheltered. Why would people risk supporting a mob marching to London with petitions for the king?”

A deep voice entered the conversation. “It is not the lack of encouragement and help that worries me.” Walker joined the women in rolling blankets. He had slept at some distance from them, but now he helped gather up the few supplies they had brought. “I fear some might join the march who are not reformers. Among us there may already be men bent on evil.”

“I hold John Johnson, John Bagguley, and Samuel Drummond to blame in this,” Prudence said, naming the three men who had rallied the opposition to the Gag Acts and organized the Manchester march. “I fear they have led us like lambs to the slaughter.”

The planners had urged protesters to carry wool or cotton blankets with them on the journey—as a symbol of their craft as well as a means of keeping warm. Whispered from man to woman to child, the journey had quickly come to be known as the March of the Blanketeers.

“I wonder now if the mill owners may have anticipated this undertaking,” Walker was saying. “Perhaps they hired false supporters to bring the marchers and their cause into disgrace.”

“What mischief could they do that has not been done already?” Prudence asked. “The mills are abandoned, the fields are trampled, the roadways are spread with vagabonds, and soon the town of Manchester will swarm with people bent on a reckless quest.”

“If scoundrels planted in the crowd begin to plunder cottages and farms along the road, the punishment and disgrace will fall on all of us.”

Prudence clutched her blanket to her empty stomach as she joined the others on the muddy track. “If immorality and wickedness ensue, it will hardly matter who is at fault, for we shall all be denounced as robbers and miscreants. I should not be the least surprised if an armed force comes to cut us down or take us prisoner. Oh, what can I say to stop this nightmare? I am beyond despair.”

“You should go back, Miss Watson,” Bettie told her gently. “Go back to Otley and take refuge at the great manor house. Neither you nor Mr. Sherbourne can stop the march now, but he would welcome you into his home and put you back to your rightful place.”

“What is my rightful place, Bettie? I am the one who caused this folly. I have no choice but to walk alongside these people and keep trying to dissuade them from their foolhardy crusade.”

“No offense, Miss Watson,” the small woman offered, “but your place is with them that God saw fit to make well-off and easy. Leave us be. We’ll take our grievances to the king, and if any good comes of it, we’ll rejoice. If not, we can only pray that Mr. Sherbourne will hire us back at his mill. Let that be your mission, madam, if you must have one. Soften his heart to us.”

“That task would be ten times more difficult than stopping this march.” Prudence paused, reflecting on the past before bringing herself to speak again. “Mr. Sherbourne, I have learned, has no heart.”

At that, all in the group fell silent. Slogging through the mud, Prudence heard only the sound of shoes sucking and sloshing. Rain that had begun as a mist and then a dribble soon fell in sheets. Prudence draped her blanket over her shoulders for protection, but the wool quickly grew so heavy with water that she could barely put one foot in front of the other.

“We approach Manchester,” Walker said at length, pointing to the left of the roadway at a steepled building and the outlined roofs of a small town. “There is the church. You can see houses along Windmill Street and Peter Street. St. Peter’s Fields lie just beyond.”

“Dear God, help us,” Prudence prayed aloud as she witnessed the mass of people coming from every direction to gather in the open meadow. The rain had eased, and the size of the multitude stunned her. “How many can there be?”

“Five thousand at least,” Walker muttered. “Perhaps closer to ten. The men reported to me last night that Johnson has told the weavers if the leaders can get them as far as Birmingham, all their aims will be accomplished. By then, Johnson said, the crowd will be grown to a hundred thousand, and it will be impossible for anyone to resist them.”

“Blanketeers!” someone cried out from a distance. “Begin the March of the Blanketeers!”

“Hail the Blanketeers!” Another voice took up the cry. Soon the chant swelled across the field. “The March of the Blanketeers! The March of the Blanketeers! Begin the March of the Blanketeers!”

“Look,” Bettie said. “They’ve set up a platform near that horse chestnut tree. Who is talking?”

“’Tis Samuel Drummond,” an elderly, gap-toothed man told Walker’s group as they pressed closer in an attempt to hear the discourse over the patter of rain. “Drummond says we’re to behave with decorum. Whatever that is!”

“
Decorum
means respectability,” Prudence informed him. “Good manners. Mr. Drummond is urging us to be polite.”

His attention riveted to the speaker on the dais, the man paid her little heed. But in a moment, he turned to address Walker. “Johnson was arrested yesterday. Did ye know?”

Walker shook his head. “What became of him?”

“Tossed into gaol.”

“Are the other leaders here?”

“John Bagguley stands just there beneath the tree. Afore Drummond spoke, Bagguley warned that if any of us causes trouble, he’ll be handed over to the magistrates.”

“Exactly as it should be,” Prudence tried again. “Indeed, the best thing would be for everyone to go home and put this nonsense out of—”

A cry cut short her words as uniformed men on horseback rode through the crowd, dismounted, and swarmed onto the platform. At once Prudence recognized their uniform of red coats, white trousers, and plumed black helmets.

“It is the King’s Dragoon Guards!” she told the others.

Within moments the dragoons had apprehended Drummond and Bagguley. With the crowd shouting and hissing at them, the soldiers seized the most aggressive among the throng and dragged them away.

Amid the chaos, a magistrate in a wig and black robe mounted the stage and opened a large book. Protected by armed dragoons, he began to read.

“‘The Riot Act,’” he called out. “‘An act for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectual punishing the rioters.’”

“What’s he talking about?” the gap-toothed man asked Prudence. “I don’t take no meaning from it.”

But the magistrate continued: “‘Our sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King!’”

Prudence strained to hear through the grumbling of the crowd and the drumming of rain. “‘Unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together . . . ,’” the magistrate cried out. “Offenders therein shall be adjudged felons . . . shall suffer death . . . without benefit of clergy.’”

“He is reading the Riot Act,” Prudence told the others. “Any group of more than twelve people unlawfully assembled is to disperse or face punitive action.”

“Disperse?” Bettie asked. “What is that?”

“Twelve?” the other man said. “We’ve got more than that here, don’t we?”

Prudence shook her head in frustration. “Indeed there are many more than twelve. I assure you—”

Her words were drowned as another cry arose. “Begin the march! Blanketeers—march!”

At that, the crowd heaved and swelled, moving like molten honey across the field in the direction of Lancashire Hill and the town of Stockport. Swept along with the mass, Prudence saw Bettie stumble and go down. As Prudence screamed for Walker, she realized she had lost sight of him.

While she struggled to keep her own footing in the thick mud, the dragoons waded into the marchers with sabres drawn and muskets at the ready. Shrieks of terror rose. A bolt of lightning flashed across the gray sky. Thunder boomed over the moors, echoing and drowning the cries of mayhem in the crowd.

Pushed along, Prudence searched for a way through the panicked throng. Behind her, a shot rang out. Another sounded nearby. The scent of black powder drifted in the air. Horses whinnied and sabres hissed. People began to run—as much to begin the march as to escape the dragoons. Gasping for air, Prudence could do nothing but move forward with the surge.

Now the rain rushed down in chilly cascades. A woman running near Prudence slipped in the mud and tumbled onto the road. Prudence reached for the woman but missed the open hand as the crowd pushed her onward.

Forever, it seemed, she ran. Up Lancashire Hill and down again toward Stockport. Now the clot of people loosened and began to break apart. But a scream from the rear sent them into a mad dash once again.

“Dragoons! Dragoons! Run for your lives!”

Prudence picked up the pace again. Looking over her shoulder, she saw a white horse bearing down. The soldier’s eyes fastened on her. His saber cut through the rain as he dismounted. A hand grasped her shoulder, an arm hooked around her waist. She cried out as he dragged her across the muddy road and out onto the wet bracken.

Brushing rain from her eyes, she struggled to stand. But a dark cloak fell across her face, blocking the light. Screaming for help, she fought and scratched the dragoon as he bundled the cloak around her head. Then he rolled her into the cloak so tightly that her arms could no longer move. She felt herself heaved into the air and tossed across something so hard it crushed every last breath from her lungs.