A Taste for Nightshade by Martine Bailey Read Free Book Online Page A

my youth. But always there was the shadow circling above us, of discovery, and retribution at my father’s hand. These were the extent of my worries when I turned sixteen. All such innocence ended on the night of May the 5th, 1786.
    We were woken by a great hammering at the door long after midnight. Through the wall I heard the commands of strange men, and my father’s voice, at first angry, then high-pitched with alarm. He was arrested and taken to Lancaster jail, which made me at once recall the ink-black prints of the
Carceri
. There were no machines of torture at Lancaster, but it was wet and cold and crowded, and my father was thrown in a lock-up with scores of other wretches. By eavesdropping, I heard that Father had at last performed his act of courage. A riot had erupted in a nearby town, the poor whipped up by hunger to riot for bread. The signal for revolt had been the raising of a halfpenny loaf upon a stick, streaked with ochre and knotted with black crêpe, and the emblem: ‘Here Be Bleeding Famine Drest in Mourning Black’. Though the corn merchants were forced to lower their price, the leaders were arrested. Inflamed by their execution, Father printed a hundred penny pamphlets on the dangerous subject of Liberty. All Englishmen must rise at once, he proclaimed, to overthrow King and parliament.
    Poor Mother took to her bed and would not leave it, turning her face to the wall and refusing all food. Shame killed her faster than starvation. I was alone with her, holding her weightless hand as her spirit slipped gratefully from this world to the next. I kissed her dry lips, and, not knowing what else to do, cut a long tress of her thin grey hair. Later, I wove those strands into a crucifix, using bobbins and weights, as a lace-maker braids yarn. Set in silver like an amulet, that cross was most precious to me, keeping my mother’s presence close.
    Father was imprisoned for only ten weeks before a magistrate acquitted him. But in that short time, ruin struck us down like a tempest. When Father came home with a ragged beard and incurious eyes, he was a broken puppet of his former self. He had lost his printer’s licence, and so ceased his trade. Thanks only to a number of stealthy arrangements: to sell the business to another printer, and to come to an agreement with a local landlord, were we saved from being turned out of Palatine House.
    Yet more ill fortune was to come. Where we might have looked to neighbours, they shied away from us in whispering groups, and then a band of Brabantist Elders came to our door. I listened from the hallway to a voice I recognised as John Francis’s father
    â€˜To riot is not our way, as you well know, Moore. Nor must the law be broken. Our duty is to wait for signs, and pray,’
    I knew from the stiffening of my father’s broad back that he was roused. ‘Aye, and rake over your dusty dreams like broody hens! Aye, and wait for your God to dole out bread to starving men. How long do you wait – until they drop in their graves? You may well look shamed. You would expel me, is that it? Have you not heard Tom Paine say, were we not corrupted by governments, then man might be friends with man? You would expel me for that, would you, brother?’
    I thought his defence well spoken, and admired him for one entire afternoon. Then, at supper time, he returned from the Bush tavern, staggering up the path, blinking and purplish from a surfeit of drink. Unfortunately, John Francis appeared from the back of the house at that self-same moment. My father was sharp-eyed when drunk, and caught him in his bloodshot gaze.
    â€˜Still tryin’ to sponge off my daughter, Rawdon?’ Next, he glared at me. ‘It’s not you he wants, it’s your prospects,’ he shouted. I turned to go inside, but he hailed me. ‘Listen, you! Listen when I speak, you cloth-headed child.’
    â€˜Please go,’ I muttered to John Francis.