Remember remember, p.19
Remember, Remember, page 19
Chapter Twenty
There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.
—BARON DE MONTESQUIEU
Delphine wakes with the dawn. The unlocked boatman’s hut she sheltered in overnight kept out the worst of the cold, but she was thankful she still had her shawl and could wrap herself in its woolly warmth. The scattered dreams she’d snatched looked the same as her waking thoughts. All are of justice. Yesterday, she’d been weighed down by grief and expectation. Today, it’s only her mud-caked skirts that hold her back.
Fear carried her the two miles from Westminster to London Bridge. She hadn’t intended to sleep there, only to avoid any lingering soldiers on her way back to the bawdy house. But as the cold and the delirium from her head wound set in, her priorities changed from returning home to finding shelter.
Her damp clothes begin to dry on her journey to the Temple of Exoticies, the numbness within her replaced by a flurry of unanswered questions. She needs to know if Marion and the others made it back safely.
London’s bare streets are beautiful as the early sun creeps along the rooftops. Chamber pots have yet to be emptied, and the rain has washed much of yesterday’s filth away. Despite last night’s chaos, the city around her seems at peace.
For the forty-minute walk across London, a new rhyme of her invention plays in Delphine’s mind.
Remember, remember the fifth of November;
the gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason why
the gunpowder treason
should ever have been stopped.
It leads her to question: how far would she go to change things?
Maybe Delphine should seek a fresh start in Philadelphia. Her attempts to change things on this side of the Atlantic have been thwarted repeatedly. Perhaps she is trying to change the wrong thing, focusing on the law and the system, not the people living within it. Maybe it is too late for her to improve her lot in life, but she can equip the next generation for a better one. Yet the thought of leaving her friends – the closest people she has now to a family – ushers a weariness into her bones. As she continues down the row of Palladian-columned shop fronts along Piccadilly, the weariness spreads, the wound on the back of her head throbbing with each step.
She must look unkempt and even more out of place in the prestigious St James’s parish than usual. She puts a hand to her hair to check for fresh blood and winces. The wound is dry, but she does not feel well at all. A passing washerwoman clutches her laundry basket tighter to her hip and crosses the street, giving her a wide berth.
Through bleary eyes, Delphine recognises the trio of bookshops up ahead. She frequented them all during Vincent’s trial, but there’s only one she feels safe enough to go into and rest. As her vision swims and her breath shallows, Delphine pushes Hatchards’s jet-black door open. The bell tinkles, and the tinny sound echoes for far longer than it should. Delphine sways as a middle-aged bookseller emerges at the top of the staircase, holding a scalpel and leather book spine as if he’d been operating on it. He jogs down to greet her. Delphine replies by swooning into his arms.
With an astonished grunt, they both collapse to the floor. His binding and scalpel fly across the room, as does Delphine’s shawl.
After a stunned moment, the bookseller says, ‘Can’t say I’ve been greeted like that before.’ He blinks down at her, motionless in his aproned lap. ‘Do you need a chair, Miss… St Joseph, isn’t it? A doctor? A biscuit?’
‘Just a second,’ Delphine says, shuffling from his lap to the floor, which to her surprise and gratitude is spotless. She rests her cheek on the hardwood and doesn’t say anything until the trio of gentlemen before her merge back into one. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she says, considering his suggestions. ‘A chair, please.’
Without another word, the man stands, scouts around for his items, then disappears back up the steps to his workshop. Meanwhile, she pulls herself into a sitting position and leans gingerly against a row of clothbound myths and legends. She almost wishes she had fallen unconscious to save her from this embarrassment.
When the bookseller returns, he has a cushioned stool in one hand and a plate of biscuits in the other. ‘I hope these might make up for the lack of a physician,’ he says, helping her up before passing her the golden tower of shortbread.
She bites into one of the buttery biscuits, and it crumbles between her teeth. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll be honest, Miss St Joseph, I was not expecting my first customer of the day to have partaken in last night’s antics. I presume that is why you are… unwell?’ He picks up her blood-stained shawl from the floor between finger and thumb, and passes it back to her. ‘It’s the talk of the town, you know.’
‘What are they saying?’ she says, the wooziness returning now in the pit of her stomach. She’d forgotten how fast word spreads along the Thames.
‘That it was a riot like any other. Though not many make it to the steps of Parliament.’ He tilts his head, a double chin forming as he tucks it close to his neck. ‘So, well done you.’
Delphine smiles in recognition of his support. But beneath it, her anger still simmers. Nothing had gone to plan yesterday, certainly nothing to be congratulated for. She’d not heeded Nick’s warning, and now, things will inevitably get worse. She sighs and is rubbing at her temples when the shop bell rings again, this time short and crisp. A pale woman in a paisley dress strolls in with an eager-faced young boy. ‘Mister Walvin?’ the woman calls out.
‘I’m afraid I’m needed over there,’ the bookseller says. ‘Unless… was there a book you wanted for Mister Lyons? Or a recommendation for yourself, perhaps?’
Not yet ready to stand and face the outside world again, Delphine chooses a distraction. ‘Maybe something about teaching?’
‘Ha! Alas, teaching is something you do, not something you read about.’ Mister Walvin’s gaze darts between the new customers and Delphine, and he bids the former wait a moment longer, which makes Delphine smile but elicits an audible huff from the boy. Offering Delphine his arm, the bookseller helps her to her feet and leads her carefully towards the back of the store. ‘I fancied myself a teacher once,’ he says. ‘History, if you can believe it.’
‘What stopped you?’ she asks.
The boy moans, ‘What’s taking so long?’ and his mother hastily shushes him.
‘An avid lack of patience for children,’ he says wryly, stopping in front of a case with dozens of crimson spines. ‘But the minds of the future should be moulded by the past, don’t you think? Maybe then they’ll be less inclined to repeat our mistakes.’ His voice drops low as he mutters, ‘I wonder what the 1770—79 edition will say about last night.’
Before Delphine can ask him anything more, he excuses himself to serve the mother and child. ‘Feel free to hide here for as long you need.’
Alone at the back of the shop, Delphine lingers on the bookseller’s words as she scans the red-bound books before her. They are somewhat intimidating to her eye, all entitled ‘State Histories’ and at least a palm’s width in thickness. Each volume holds a decade’s history in a series that stretches back two hundred years. The man is right, of course – people should learn about the past to inform their future. Should she teach, then?
Just as Nick told her, she is a quick study. And since she began working with him, she has learned how men perceive the world. She can recite Montesquieu and Locke’s views on liberty, and quote Kant and Rousseau’s thoughts on justice; she sees their influence when she examines old trials, reads laws, and looks for precedents. With every underlined paragraph and dog-eared page, her mind has slowly been reshaping itself. Making sense of the differences between her world and the words on the page.
She understands why Nick loves to read. There’s solace in finding parts of yourself in the words of another. It provides comfort for some and courage for others. For Delphine, it has uncovered a new truth.
Ideals are words without action. Laws alone don’t guarantee change. Vincent’s trial and last night showed her that.
Philosophy and politics cannot keep her safe, nor can they do the same for others. Her stomach twists at the memory of Nick helping Vincent find the least risky way to sit in court. It will never be enough to teach children how to avoid hatred, to watch for signs of rage and to elude violence.
She will not teach children in Philadelphia how to be good slaves. She’d never been a good one herself.
There’s a seed of an idea she’s searching for, one planted around a hundred and fifty years ago. Delphine starts with 1620—29, learns of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s acquittal after killing a keeper with a crossbow, of the Lord Chancellor being impeached for taking bribes, of a tribe of Algonquian Indians destroying an English settlement after the English burned down their own. Another war with Spain. But no gunpowder plot.
Back another decade, she opens the volume for 1610—19 and learns of women burned and hanged for witchcraft, of trading posts set up on the West Coast of Africa, but no gunpowder plot.
In 1600—1609, Delphine turns through the heavy pages until she reaches November 1605. And there is the seed: so tiny, so muddied by darkness that the chance of it growing successfully is too small to imagine. It has been inside her for a while, fed by every impulse that has driven her to rebel.
Little rebellions can only go so far. It is not enough to keep snatching at false victories in this unfair, losing game. She’s done fighting against guns with her wits alone. She’s done waiting for Nick or another well-meaning white man to save her.
It is a ridiculous thought. An impossible one born of disappointment, desperation and disillusionment. To think of treason is enough to be punished for it. To be tortured, hanged, drawn and quartered or, for a woman, to be burned at the stake.
But she keeps reading. Turning the pages of ‘State Histories’, Delphine reads about Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby, their plot and its downfall. Their plan was seemingly futile, but came so close to success. Formed over a year by a dozen or so men, all of whom had been subjected to varying degrees of injustice by the state. Apparently, they dug a tunnel from a rented house to an underground chamber beneath the House of Lords, where they stored thirty-six barrels of gunpowder. No evidence of the tunnel was ever found.
Having walked Westminster’s halls for months now, she would not be surprised to find that other tunnels and secret entry points exist there. That loose wall panel she found in the Commons Library, for example. What would the Catholics have used that for if they knew about it? And could it be used for a second attempt, now?
What am I doing? She shivers, imaginary flames licking at her skin. But still, the thoughts do not stop. A born planner, Delphine allows herself to think of the how and when.
The House is out of session until mid-December. To act now, to set fire to an empty building, would change nothing. They would simply rebuild it and move on. No lessons learned; no new laws passed – just more of the same injustice. To start again, like the conspirators of the past, she would need all the Empire’s influential figures to be gathered there. Could she erase them in a single moment, as swift as blotting out a sentence on paper?
Fawkes chose the State Opening. And that is only five weeks away. The King and nobility will all be there, along with the highest-ranked members of the Church, Parliament and the Judiciary, ambassadors and diplomats and members of the trading companies.
A chance to establish tabula rasa while staining herself with blood.
It is as abhorrent as it is darkly thrilling. Only a thought, but a thought that’s fast transforming in her mind, into something stomach-twistingly unconscionable.
Unsettling. Unforgivable. Unrelenting.
Her heart knows the why, the vagaries of how. But most of all, there are the what-ifs:
What if there is another, peaceful way to change the system? Or what if she carried out the plot and somehow succeeded – would she be able to live with herself? Or what if she failed, and things got worse than ever?
But what if she does nothing?
Slavery may be illegal on English shores, but a hundred thousand souls are still traded by the British each year. That’s almost a million between today and her thirtieth year. A million lives. And what if things get worse? What if the trade companies grow greedier? What if the violence against Black people in England intensifies, and more are killed? What if, what if, what if?
From reading about the Catholic plot, she already sees the similarities between their causes – their lack of representation, voice, and freedom. It has been a hundred and forty years since that failed plot, and still, a Catholic man – a white man – may not hold land or vote. Even now, priests are captured and imprisoned. What hope is there for Delphine, then? For Black men and women and countless others?
Though Fawkes and Catesby were trying to change the country, not bring down a whole empire, their plan still involved great risk. It cost them their lives. But it almost worked.
Catesby, the plot’s originator, said this: Let us give an attempt, and where it faileth, pass no further.
But what if she can pass further? What if she can learn from their mistakes? She might allow this dark spark of an idea to burn a little while longer. She needn’t tell anyone about it; should her conscience overwhelm her, she can simply snuff it out. A snuffed spark can do no harm.
So, what if?
Taking risks gave Delphine her freedom. It has enabled her to achieve the impossible before.
What if she could fix this broken system by taking her biggest risk yet?
What if, armed with an impossible idea from the past, Delphine can fix everything?
Chapter Twenty-One
The passion of fear, like pride and envy, hath slain its thousands
—PRINCE HALL
c. 1735-1807, enslaved c. 1746-1770
‘Did you get hit over the head with a bayonet?’ Marion screeches, almost spilling her tea across the kitchen table. She flings her hands up. ‘You know what they’d do to you, to us?’
Marion’s reaction doesn’t surprise her. Three days ago, if someone had asked Delphine to join a conspiracy to bring down an empire, she’d have thought they’d been hit with a bayonet too.
And since it would not help her case to remind Marion that she had been hit over the head, she decides to keep that fact to herself.
Working at the countertop at the other end of the room, Delphine chooses her next words carefully. She’s far enough from Marion that her scolding drink wouldn’t reach her if the bawd threw it, but the ceramic cup might.
These last few days, Delphine has thought long and hard. While tending to Marion’s and the girls’ injuries – which, thankfully, were as mild and easy to treat as her own – she memorised every page on the gunpowder plot in her newly acquired copy of ‘State Histories’. She has looked at every alternative path too, of course: she could lead protests, which will be ignored or answered with bullets; campaign for reforms, which will only paper over cracks or do nothing and let her anger rot her away from the inside. Two innocent protesters were killed by soldiers on Monday night, both of whom were Black: a forty-two-year-old carpenter named William Frett and a twenty-four-year-old seamstress named Maud Donovan. Delphine did not meet either of them, but every time their names return to haunt her, she returns to her final option: she could try and end the British Empire. But she cannot do it alone.
The tides of the Empire are changing. There is the crisis in the Falklands. The increasingly frequent clashes between the English forces and settlers in America. Vincent’s ruling. After his release from prison in January, Nick’s fellow radical MP, John Wilkes, published a damning criticism of the King’s underhanded influence on government, simultaneously condemning Parliament’s nepotism and self-serving agenda. A year ago, the newspapers were banned from publishing parliamentary debates, but the press has fought for transparency, and the public has echoed its demands. Now, they publish stories of corruption, stagnated reform and controversy almost every day.
The desire is there.
The British Empire at its tipping point. All she needs to do is push.
And for that, Delphine needs gunpowder. She needs Marion’s smugglers, for someone to tell her if this is even possible before she takes it any further. Marion’s the only person she knows with the connections to make it happen. She’s the only person she trusts enough to give voice to her plot.
‘You know what I’ve learned these last six months?’ Delphine says. She stops grinding the white willow bark in the mortar in front of her – its powder, when soaked, will make a poultice to lessen the inflammation around Marion’s blood bruise. She’d been pushed into an empty trader’s stall in the commotion, the skin over her rib cage caught on a wooden post.
‘Every time a tragedy occurs, they create a new law, or some man publishes a pamphlet condemning tyrannical governments.’ Delphine laughs to herself. ‘Six months ago, I’d never even heard the word tyrannical. Yet aren’t we the ones who’ve experienced tyranny the most?’
‘Everyone’s got troubles.’ Marion tuts and bats Delphine’s words away. ‘And yet, you nuh see the white women ruffling dem skirt. Or white men sharpening fi dem swords.’
‘But they have,’ Delphine says. On Wednesday, she returned to Hatchards and, aided by Mister Walvin’s recommendations, learned about Britain’s rich history of political and civil unrest.
How had she never known before yesterday that an English King had lost his head?
‘The people have gone to war with the King twice in the last century!’ Delphine says. ‘They thought the crown had too much power, so they gave it to the government. But what’s changed? There’s still no power for the majority who cannot read. No vote for those without land to their name or members between their legs. No time for us to think, because we are too busy working harder and harder to counter each increase in the price of bread. If you’d just let me speak to the smugglers, see if it’s possible, then—’
