His Last Fire Read Free

my own hand. I desired to raise an alarm. I wished the spectators might fall upon me.’
    Addington sceptical, sharp-nosed:
    â€˜Do you belong to the Corresponding Society?’
    â€˜Surely it was proscribed, sir?’
    â€˜It is I who ask the questions, Captain. I am examining you . Do you belong to the Corresponding Society?’
    â€˜I belong to a club of odd fellows and a benefit society. Mrs Mason’s my place, not the Bell.’
    He pressed his hand to his heart.
    â€˜A s God is witness, I had no accomplices.’
    You’ll not take anyone else. My friends. Companions. Together we’ve skewered the court, razed Buckingham House, rammed a catapotium down parliament’s throat!
    But this was my design alone. Prune the tree of Liberty: a log is as good as a king. I boasted, they cheered.
    They let him sit to await witnesses who came by the dozen. Wakelin, foppish and sly. Yes, he’d sold Hadfield two pistols. Coke, Harley, Baldwin and Pyke, dear fellows, swearing to his good character. Recalling the evil effects of drink. Shopmates, grimy with silver, testifying to his fine work were it not for the beer. Adjutant and captain from the 15 th Light telling of his bravery, how beloved of the regiment, how fierce in his cups. His cut brow frowned.
    They wish to help me, but I’ll not be held a blear-eyed drunkard.
    Mrs Nancy Mason, stately and only a little soiled, strong hands before her, proclaimed her honesty, her knowledge that Captain Hadfield rarely drank more than a jug, that drink never made him incapable. But he would complain of pains in the head.
    Oh, how often have I wormed my throbbing skull between your earth-warm breasts, Nancy. Soothed by you. Soothed.
    â€˜Not the drink, sir. The wounds do drive him hollow.’
    â€˜Hollow, Mrs Mason?’
    â€˜He do tell of his head empty and hollow save for the pains. I believe it was the reason they put him in the strait waistcoat when he visited his regiment last year. But he were only bellowing from the cuts. They soon let him out.
    â€˜Though I swear he did speak with a madman last Tuesday, sir. Truelock, cobbler at Islington.’
    Good woman! Your wit was ever bright. No fiz-gig, you. That way you’ll absolve me and release me when the smoke clears, the fire dies down. I’d not mind a spell in Dr Simmons’s madhouse.
    Truelock, small, fingers too clean for a fully employed cobbler, fixed an inner gaze on Jesus, soon to visit this world. Yes, he’d spoken to Hadfield and convinced him beyond doubt of the speedy return of Our Saviour. Soon, coming soon, with the birth of the new century.
    Chins, curls, cravats consulted. ‘Deranged’, ‘insane’, ‘lunatic’ tottered to and fro among them.
    Hadfield, hearing, winked wildly at the impassive Truelock.
    For that is how I must play it. Confirm Nancy’s ‘honesty’ and give them the story they seek. Conspiracy and drunkenness won’t do; a madman will.
    Pyke and I saw Garrick play Hamlet, years back. ‘The play’s the thing’: we bandied that about in the Red Lion. What better place than Drury Lane, I said. Lights, splendour, populace to watch.
    Still, Hamlet wanted to catch the king’s conscience not kill him. Why didn’t Harley pull me up on that? He’s our pedant. And when Hamlet did think to kill Claudius it was alone in the dark, not in the glare of a full Theatre Royal.
    But no, that’s not it. The place was right. I was perfectly positioned in the pit, pistol primed, resolve fortified by friends, cock warmed by Nancy’s certain touch. It was my conscience that was caught, sharpened by starving paupers crying for bread in Spitalfields this February. Thrown frost-ruined potatoes by liveried lackeys while the court guzzled beefsteak and creams.
    Why then? Why did I miss?
    Sitting in the three-shillings, unsuspecting clerks on either side, chatter, instruments tuning, I was calm – not