The Flight of Sarah Battle Read Free

Relief. Libraries of burning books and papers lit the streets, the distorted faces of the crowd; grand homes were sacked, furniture and wainscoting sought for a particularly fine blaze. Destruction became delight, looting the lust of the moment. Sam knew it would only take one known papist sympathiser to duck into Battle’s for the building to be attacked by the mob: its windows gouged like eyes, doors wrenched out like teeth, tables, settles, barrels heaped in a crackling pyre.
    News flew in. The crowds were on their way to Newgate, armed with the very labourers’ tools so recently used to build the huge new prison. You could hear bellowing as the keeper’s house was stormed and fired, for Newgate was not far.
    â€˜They’re freeing the prisoners!’ someone pushed through the drinkers, shouting and waving his arms. A cheer broke out at one end of the coffee house.
    â€˜Liberty! Freedom!’
    Yelling and cursing greeted this; fists shook.
    â€˜They’ll go for the other gaols. King’s Bench, Fleet, Clerkenwell. The soldiers do nothing.’
    â€˜Magistrates won’t give the order.’
    â€˜We want no massacres.’
    At which point a fight broke out. Sam Battle, purple with fury, hauled man off man and her mother hastened Sarah upstairs to bed. There, in fear and fascination, she saw the flames of Newgate lick the glowing clouds, smoke out-blacken the night. And back and forth, between the fires, figures of men dancing triumphantly on the roof.
    *
    Nothing was normal in London on Black Wednesday. In the coffee house men woke from under their coats on benches, raised their heads from tables: so many hadn’t dared go home the night before. Fire was re-lit under the coffee cauldron, water pumped, grounds measured and soon the smell disguised the night stink of bodies in unchanged clothes. Fortified, they crept away to worried wives, or joined spectators viewing the ruins of Newgate, watched Protestants plunder the Old Bailey Sessions-house.
    â€˜They’ve done it,’ Bullock said, returning in a sweat at midday. ‘King, Privy Council. Orders to shoot – without the Riot Act.’
    â€˜There’s gangs with iron bars,’ someone said.
    â€˜Going from house to house demanding money for the poor mob or the true religion.’
    Thynne glared at Bullock.
    For a while there was a lull. Waiters skimmed back and forth, silent water beetles. Sarah sat beside Newton, but he was pale and wouldn’t smile. Wouldn’t draw a thing.
    She pulled at his sleeve. He was missing an excellent scene between the emaciated, sharp-chinned Thynne and Bullock whose lumpy nose looked as if it awaited slicing in the kitchen with the rest of the vegetables. She plaited and unplaited the longest thrums from his pale green cuff. Could see that the coat had once been fine.
    Later there came a noise greater than any they’d heard yet. Not quite the same as Newgate though the engine wheels and yells were there; but ten times as loud.
    â€˜They’ve fired Langdale’s, Langdale’s distillery,’ shouted the latest messenger, his face sooted over. ‘The vats are going up, and most of the street with them.’
    â€˜They’d be better off drinking the stuff than igniting it. Lunatics.’
    â€˜You can be sure they’ll have drunk as much as they could first.’
    â€˜There’s pools burning in the street, they say.’
    Roaring, blazing alcohol, a lurid light flashing in, even to the dark end of Change Alley. Silenced them all. A roomful of hares, quivering, poised to run. In Sarah’s mind black shapes continuously jumped among flames.
    Her mother rushed in from the kitchen.
    â€˜Sam, I must go to Charlotte. See she’s safe.’
    â€˜Damn, no! You shan’t, Anne, it’s all afire out there.’
    â€˜I must. My own sister. She’s only in Poultry; it’s further on is the fire. I’ll bring her back with the