His Last Fire Read Free Page A

even drops of hot wax on my neck made me flinch. The king arrived. I rose. Levelled. Imagined the bullet entering his jacket, waistcoat, shirt, skin, muscle, heart.
    Then saw the snowy-wigged, pink-cheeked face. Gibbous eyes smiling with incomprehension. Madness flitting behind them. How could I shoot such a one?
    He rose and shouted: ‘God knows of the dreams I’ve had. I received a great commission in my sleep, gentlemen. I know I’m to be a martyr. I was persecuted by the French and I’m to be persecuted again. I have not yet suffered sufficiently.’
    Addington spoke: ‘Religiously insane. Take him and Truelock to Cold-bath-fields. I’ll write a report for The Times : Attempt on the life of the King. His Majesty safe. Madman apprehended.’

F LASK B ETWEEN THE L IPS
    â€˜M aria. Maria! Come immediately!’
    Brighthelmstone, 1788. The benefits of sea-water.
    During the day Robert carried her to the bathing machine. Most nights she sat up, watching the moonlit sea, listening to waves pounding the garden wall, her beautiful profile framed by a half-open window. The sea inspired her, she said. She wrote reams of poems, distracting herself from pain, humiliation.
    That night she’d heard the knocking of a boat against the wall.
    â€˜Come, Maria! Come!’ The table held pens, paper, letters, laudanum. I tucked a fallen blanket under her lifeless legs and we watched two fishermen beach the boat. From it they carried a man, laid him gently on the stones, wrapped a sail around him, pushed the boat out and rowed away.
    â€˜A murder!’ she said.
    â€˜Hush, Mama. Calm yourself.’
    The men returned, dragging sticks and branches from the boat and built a fire. She sucked in her breath.
    â€˜Immolation!’
    Not so. In the moon’s brightness we watched them sit their limp friend up, hold out his hands to the flames, pat his cheeks, push a flask between his lips, fan the heat towards him.
    She called to Robert, who came from his loft, tousled, blear-eyed, pulling on his great coat. We saw him run into the garden, spring over the side wall onto the beach as the men rowed off. All he could do was confirm death in the embers’ light.
    But no one took away the body. No one identified it, buried it. For days bathers came and went, some on their way to the hot and cold baths – hygea devota . They stared, threw up their hands, pressed kerchiefs against their faces or walked past, self-absorbed.
    She couldn’t bear it, she said. Abandoned, unclaimed, she saw the dead sailor as herself, discarded by the world, unjustly treated. When she heard that he could not be buried because he ‘didn’t belong to the parish’, Robert posted up her proposal for a subscription to raise money for burial. When this failed she sent him with a little money to local fishermen who dragged the rotting body to the cliff and covered it with stones. Uncommitted. Unprayed-for.
    I remember it. The cold night, spark-shadowed bulk, hopeless acts of revival, the furtive retreat. More, I remember her declarations of tragedy, gestures of indignation, performance of melancholy. The nib scraping new poems onto backs of envelopes.
    â€˜Maria, Maria, come quickly!’
    Bath was worse, without the virtue of salt breezes. She could not sleep at night after a day of immersion in intolerable heat – how we sweated in our brown linen jackets and petticoats in the sulphurous steam, pushing away the useless floating bowls of pomander – and the water in the Pump Room disgusting to drink. Nor was it better out of the water in the crowds of ogling, hobbling sick. Each day we spent hours on her dress, her hair, in case she should be recognised.
    â€˜I need not remind you that Royal Heads have turned, Maria. I shall not lose my looks though I have lost the use of my legs. You may not understand, since you cause no heads to turn, but can at least imagine .’
    â€˜Maria!’ Here in