The Flight of Sarah Battle Read Free Page A

baby.’
    Sam scowled, would have locked her in his office, but he wanted no scandal. And that damned sister. Good for nothing.
    â€˜I’ll go with her, Sam. I’ll see she’s unharmed,’ Newton offered and hurried her out before Sam could stop them.
    The day palled. With Newton gone there was no diversion from the strangely silent room where everyone listened. They drank of course, smoked, chewed, spat; but sat, clamped, askew.
    Surges of violence, like days of battering gales, became a background. On the whole they seemed distant, sometimes moving nearer, but not too close. The massive boom of the burning distillery ceased. Then came a new noise to Sarah’s ears: Smack! Snap! Mid-chew, mid-puff, diners and smokers stopped at the crack of muskets, a different kind of shout, of orders issued.
    Eyes widened in alarm, messages flashed from face to face. Shoulders hunched as if ashamed. Without Newton there to explain, to draw what he heard, she guessed. The men with the rolled-up sleeves and bludgeons, the ones who’d set the gaol alight, who’d capered on the roof, who’d stolen things from shops and houses, attacked fire engines, were being shot by soldiers. Shot and killed. She’d never seen anyone killed. Not seen anyone dead, though once a chair-mender was stabbed with his own knife by a rival and when she walked past later, there was blood on the street.
    She looked towards the door each time it opened.
    â€˜Shot some on Blackfriar’s Bridge,’ somebody reported. ‘They were setting the toll houses on fire. Militia are drawing chains across the streets now.’
    Sam sent Sarah to bed. There was no refusing her father; it was already late. She took Newton’s sketchbook to give him tomorrow. She’d have to wait till the morning to see Charlotte and the baby safe. Through her half-open window countless fires glowed and flickered, doubled in the panes. Musket shots and screams sank into the distance. The smell of summer burning was different from winter fires. She shut the casement. There were no figures jerking and hallooing on rooftops.
    *
    The sound of violence moved out of hearing of Change Alley. For two days shopkeepers wouldn’t open and people lurked indoors, the streets given over to soldiers and armed volunteers. Looters and thieves hauled away more spoils, shots were exchanged south of the river but destruction was done.
    London was ravaged. Buildings blinded, smashed and blackened, hundreds killed by musket balls, bayonets, not a few from falling masonry, burning spirits, glass-severed arteries, too many gulps of neat gin. Among those shot were Anne Battle and Benjamin Newton, mistaken for rioters as they rushed across Poultry to rescue Charlotte and the baby, their bodies hauled into St Mildred’s Church before the second round.
    When they told him, Sam Battle scowled, snarled, just as he’d done before she left.
    â€˜ Told her not to go,’ became his refrain for months after.
    Sarah cried aloud and was taken into the kitchen where Mrs Trunkett, the cook, near smothered her in apron and panic. They sent her off to school once it was clear the riots were over and there the lessons continued as though nothing had happened.
    In the coffee house the customers treated her with caution as if she might bite, with embarrassment as though it were their fault her mother was dead. She rejected their pity. At night she mourned into her pillow, realising before long that her greater loss was Newton. For most of Sarah’s twelve years Anne had been too busy to do more than occasionally cast an eye on her daughter from the other side of the room. Ben Newton had drawn for her, laughed with her. They’d conspired. She had no other friend.
    She tried to imagine him dead and couldn’t. She turned the pages of his sketchbook, to find that what made her smile made her cry at the same time. Would she never laugh again? She told herself it was