Remember remember, p.35
Remember, Remember, page 35
‘Brilliant!’ Nick agrees. He nods his head vigorously.
Encouraged, Delphine continues. ‘And regarding emancipation. What if Jules returns to Parliament with the protestors after the explosion, to lead the clean-up effort? What if we become so visible that, were any of the Kings’ Friends to survive, they daren’t push their plans forward to overturn Vincent’s ruling.’
Nick stands and paces the room. He smiles at his bookshelves as if they have prepared him for this moment. ‘Yes. And when the new Commons sit for the first time, I’ll make a big show of the protesters’ services. How invaluable those communities are to the nation, how all our citizens – including the Negro – should be raised up in respect. I can also press the issue with the Foreign Trade Committee.’
Delphine brightens. ‘Foreign Trade Committee? Does this mean you won the place?’
‘Of course!’ Nick beams. ‘That pimple-nosed Lang boy was never going to beat me to it, was he?’
Delphine feels a glow of pride in her friend. Nick won this victory on his own merit – which means more than he’ll ever know.
‘That will be very helpful for our cause,’ she says. ‘You can use your influence there to reward those who’ve rebuilt the country, both on English soil and in the colonies. Every trade guild will be granted a voice. Every slave of the Empire will have their freedom restored.’
‘And at last, the Bill of Rights Society can fulfil its purpose! We shall cite Mansfield’s ruling as the start.’ Nick’s enthusiasm subsides. ‘What of Mansfield? Is he one of the people you intend to save?’
The concern on Nick’s face tugs at Delphine’s heart. ‘He is. The evening before the Opening, Colin will send a group of smugglers to pile up an apparent traffic accident outside his home in Hampstead. When Colin scoped out his estate he said there is only one exit. They’ll make it impossible for him to leave through no fault of his own.’
‘Right,’ Nick says. ‘Well. If that’s all there is…’ All there is, as if they’ve just decided who to invite for dinner. ‘There is one more thing I wanted to say.’
Delphine doesn’t like Nick’s tone. She braces herself. ‘Yes?’
Nick looks out at the scene below the window, at the frost settling on the cobblestones. ‘I wanted to say thank you. For… putting up with me.’
‘Nick…’
‘I know I’m not the easiest man to get along with. I have very strong opinions and they often drive people away.’ His lip quirks, and he turns his face away from her. ‘When Vincent and I became friends – for arguably, he was my only friend besides my fellow reformers – I cherished it. And then, through Vincent’s bravery and yours, one friend became two. But I have not always been a good friend to you, or a deserving one. Though I’m still trying to forgive you for keeping your plot from me, I think I understand why you did so. I shudder when I reflect on the person I was seven months ago. But I’m glad that you put up with me. I’m glad to be improving. To be the person I’ve become since knowing you.’
Mist coats Delphine’s eyes. ‘A true optimist, Mister Lyons.’
‘I suppose so, yes.’ He sniffs and wipes a knuckle under his nose. ‘If that’s the case, we’d better get back to discussing how to reconstruct the government.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies – it is the first law of nature.
—M. DE VOLTAIRE
Evening descends over Cold Bath Street and, as they are annotating one of Nick’s maps of Westminster in the drawbrary, Pearl gives Delphine a wistful smile. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘There’s something I want to show you on the roof, if you can manage?’
Bundled up in two of Nick’s winter coats and a few extra shirts, they hurry out of the apartment and clamber up the stairs. By the third floor, Delphine’s thighs burn, and the cuts on her ankles are close to splitting back open, but she walks through the pain. She’s intrigued to see what Pearl has planned.
Pearl props open the door at the top of the stairs with a weight, and leads Delphine to the flattest part of the roof.
Stars peek out from behind the clouds over the city. Before the roof’s iron railings, Pearl has laid out a wicker box on a thick rug, held down by six flickering hurricane lanterns. The winter chill turns Delphine’s breath into fog, but she smiles as she shivers.
‘You did all this?’
‘I had the idea; Hetty made the wine, of course.’ She curls her smallest finger around Delphine’s own. Delphine squeezes it, surprised by how easily she and Pearl fit together now.
Once, when Pearl touched her, it felt like dark magic. A force so thrilling, so enchanting, that Delphine hardly cared she was in danger. Now, the power between them feels natural. And it flows both ways.
From the basket, Pearl reveals a hot jug of negus wine and pours some into two crystal goblets. With a flourish, she tops it with a slice of orange and a lump of cracked nutmeg, and they settle on the rug. In the light of the lanterns, Pearl’s grey eyes shine like the moon. ‘Hetty insisted. She says it’ll settle your stomach.’
‘God save Hetty,’ Delphine says, inhaling the spices. They clink glasses and sip the hot wine. ‘What’s all this for?’
Pearl shifts closer so their arms are touching. ‘I thought a picnic would be nice. But also, and only if you want to…’ She reaches into the basket again to pull out two long table candles, a sheet of parchment and a length of charcoal. ‘Bela once told me that when you’ve suffered a loss, this can help. You write down the thing or person you’ve lost, then you burn the paper. She said it makes it that little bit easier to accept what’s happened, and that people often feel better afterwards. I wondered if you’d like to try it?’
Delphine’s gaze softens. ‘That’s a nice idea. Give them here.’
Pearl’s cheeks flush with relief, and she squeezes Delphine’s hand before handing her the parchment and charcoal. Delphine puts her wine down, and takes a moment to remember. There are so many losses she could write down. The ones closest to her: her parents, Vincent. Those lost at the vigil, in the smugglers’ den. Every soul lost in transit between the African and American coasts – one for every two who make it to the farther shore. The lives lost every day to wars and workhouses and empty bellies.
But she doesn’t choose any of them, not at first. The first thing Delphine writes on her parchment is moments.
‘Moments?’ Pearl asks.
‘Moments,’ Delphine says, lifting the parchment to the flame. The ashes float out over the city, each fragment a reminder of every birthday she ever celebrated with Vincent, every long dinner she enjoyed with her parents, the silent togetherness she used to share with Pearl. The moments she has lost because she had been too busy fighting to enjoy them.
She relaxes as the end of the parchment burns, because though she has missed so much, though she can never reclaim those losses, there’s less bitterness. As those last fragments disappear, what’s left is acceptance and hope. ‘For the moments I should have cherished.’
Pearl chews her bottom lip. ‘My turn,’ she says, taking the parchment and scribbling four letters: love. ‘For the mistakes I’ve made. With us.’
The way she’s looking into Delphine’s eyes, with a quiet and kind sadness – a look that Delphine used to believe was pity – makes her want to look away.
She doesn’t.
‘Mistakes we’ve made,’ Delphine counters.
‘We all make mistakes,’ Pearl agrees. ‘With us, I made the biggest ones. But there were some problems we could never have worked through together, because we’d not solved them alone.’
‘That’s true. But when we were a couple…’ Delphine pauses. It’s the first time she’s acknowledged out loud that they were a couple. ‘I did always have my walls up.’
‘Those walls kept you safe,’ Pearl says. ‘They still might need to sometimes—’
‘I don’t want to live behind a wall anymore,’ Delphine interjects. ‘I’d got so used to it being here, I forgot I can take it down, or even check if it’s safe to look over the top.’ Vincent’s letter told her to live without shame, but they are only words. It’s up to her to figure out how. ‘I didn’t know us loving each other was wrong until you told me it was a sin. It’s like everything I am is the opposite of what I should be. Even though I can never be anything else.’ She clears her throat. ‘Try as I might.’
‘I understand,’ Pearl says. ‘But Delphine, I didn’t fall in love with you hoping you would become someone else. I fell in love with you because of who you are, everything that is you. When we planned to run away together, I wasn’t ready to be the partner you needed. Two months ago, I wasn’t ready to be the friend you needed, either. But these last weeks with you, seeing the woman you’ve become. The person I’ve become…’
Delphine looks to the stars as a well of emotion builds in her. Part of her mind is telling her not to allow the tears to fall. But it’s a part she no longer needs.
‘I can’t change what has happened in our past,’ Pearl continues. ‘I can’t replace what I took from you, but I will forever be sorry that I took it. For saying I loved you without seeing the consequences. For not hearing you when you tried to tell me. For covering up my shame by pushing you away. If you want to, and only if you want to, I’d like to try to be better.’
‘You’re already doing better,’ Delphine says. For as long as the journey is that they’ll need to go on before Pearl can win back her trust, before they can decide what they want to be to each other in the future, Pearl’s already come so far without her – steps that she had to take without Delphine. ‘I think who we are right now is the culmination of everything we needed to be to survive, but I don’t think it’s all we can be.’
Pearl sniffs. ‘I need to learn that the decisions I make for myself impact other people, too.’
‘That sounds hard,’ Delphine says, wiping away one of Pearl’s tears.
‘It does, doesn’t it?’ Pearl agrees.
‘And I need to learn that letting you in is a strength. When you ask me what I need, I should tell you.’
‘Incredibly difficult.’ Pearl laughs, in that husky way that is always inflected with mischief, even as the tears still glisten in her eyes and leans closer.
‘I’m sure it will be.’ Delphine takes Pearl’s free hand. In the other, Pearl is still gripping the love piece of parchment. ‘But I do vow this.’
‘A vow?’ Pearl smirks. ‘How serious.’
‘Shush. I am being serious.’ She grins and shuffles closer to Pearl. ‘I vow to trust you,’ she says, setting the parchment alight.
‘I vow to accept your choices,’ Pearl replies, gripping her hand tighter.
Then, in half a heartbeat, Delphine closes the gap between them. Her lips are on Pearl’s and she tastes like a memory; like cinnamon and stolen chances and spiced wine. For a moment, there’s the same jolt in her stomach she had at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. But this isn’t a kiss of youth, all awkward angles and fumbling fingers. This kiss is urgent, assured, everything.
Delphine’s heart swells with longing, with forgiveness.
It will be hard, wherever these feelings may take them. There’s much that needs to be said, so much to learn and unlearn and learn again. But as Delphine kisses Pearl as her fingers trace the softness of her cheek, the mole-marked hollow of her collar bone, the full familiarity of her hips, Delphine decides that this – whatever this is – it is worth every difficult conversation, and the potential for heartbreak. Because as Delphine kisses Pearl, over and over, until their lips are swollen and their arms are covered in goosebumps, it feels vital, like breath, like connection.
As Delphine kisses Pearl, as the heat ripples from their bodies on this cold December night, as the last remnants of ash circle around them, Delphine chooses to try. Because here on this roof, for the first time in a very, very long time, she is happy.
Their love was unlikely, but not impossible. Delphine’s favourite odds.
Chapter Forty
Great Preparations have been made by both the Friends of the Opposition and those of the Administration for the Opening of Parliament tomorrow; it is believed that the Popular Questions being debated across the nation will be included in the King’s speech: the New Freedoms reported this year by the Press, the nature of English Slavery, the disputes in the Americas and His Majesty’s proposed Marriage Act.
—IPSWICH JOURNAL
‘Why have we stopped?’ Delphine says, pulling Nick’s watch from her pocket for the sixteenth time since leaving Cold Bath Street. Forty-five minutes to go.
Jules slides the carriage curtain open to pop his head into their compartment. ‘More traffic, but it seems to be clearing.’
The carriage pulls off again, the horses blowing out impatient breaths as they resume clopping over the cobblestones. It seems they’re as anxious to reach their destination as Delphine is. The traffic is Colin’s fault, though, so she can’t complain too much. To protect passers-by on the streets outside Westminster from the explosion, after smuggling the last barrel of gunpowder into Parliament, he sneaked into the yeoman’s building dressed as a redcoat, and pinched the wooden blockades which now stand around Westminster, diverting carriages and pedestrians away from the blast zone. Still, she hadn’t expected fourteen panels of wood to cause such significant delays. It’s taken almost an hour to travel two miles.
An equally anxious Nick has spent the journey sitting opposite her, fiddling with his silk handkerchief, tying and untying knots and twisting it tightly around two fingers.
Bela sighs next to him. ‘Is he always so…’ She gestures vaguely in Nick’s direction. ‘Wriggly?’
‘Always,’ Pearl says, straightening her brunette wig. ‘He never could sit still.’ She leans over and rests a hand on her cousin’s bobbing knee. ‘Once more with the plan, go on…’
Nick grips the handkerchief, balls it up, then stretches it out as he speaks. ‘Once we leave the carriage, Delphine and I enter Westminster through the Privy Garden with the rest of the Members and assistants. The King and his party should arrive a little later, around a quarter past eleven, fifteen minutes before his speech. The Master of Robes will take him to prepare for the ceremony while his brothers position themselves in the hall. We sneak up to my office.’
‘No sneaking,’ Pearl corrects, as soothingly as she can. ‘It’s your office. You can go there whenever you like.’
‘Ha, yes, of course.’ Nick forces a laugh and rubs his stomach.
‘Is he well?’ Bela says, arching an eyebrow at Delphine. ‘He didn’t…?’
‘Nick, you didn’t drink any of the port at dinner last night, did you?’ Delphine re-fortified the wine with a healthy number of blackberry leaves before Bela served it to the unwitting nineteen MPs dining with Nick at last night’s Beef Steak Club. MPs like Edmund Burke and George Savile. It’s tradition that the club members toast with port to beef and liberty after every meal. Today, the only liberty they’ll hope for is from the chamber pot.
Nick draws a hip flask from his pocket. ‘I didn’t.’ He swigs. ‘Nerves, only nerves.’
Delphine and Nick have spent hours every day this week reviewing the list of people they should save. They’d condemned a Bristol MP despite his advocacy to further worker’s rights, because he was an even more vocal supporter of the slave trade. They questioned if having a plantation-owning relative could make someone guilty by association – not necessarily, because that would include Nick. Is abstaining from a vote on extending Catholic rights as bad as voting against them? Had they ever spoken against the state of relations in India? Or America? Were they a known abuser of power? Were they cruel or violent? Charity had helped with that one – plenty of MPs had been featured in her rebuff to Harris’s annual prostitute review, which was published last week and has caused quite the stir in the newspapers. Some of the men named have committed the most heinous assaults on women.
But even after all this deliberation, the process has been draining.
It’s impossible to know if they’ve made the right decisions.
But in the end they agreed on forty-five MPs, a dozen members of the Lords and thirty-seven members of the clergy.
They tried to lower the bar, but still couldn’t find anyone else. ‘While Delphine and I wait for the King’s procession,’ Nick continues, ‘after Black Rod runs between the Houses—’
‘I’ll be making sure the waterman’s docked the decoy ship in the right place,’ Pearl cuts in.
The decoy ship – or scapeboat, as Nick’s termed it – is the vessel they’ll be pinning the explosion on. With England on the cusp of war with Spain over the Falklands, the army is already storing gunpowder in and around Parliament. It would surprise no one if a ship laden with powder (or barrels of something that looked like it) were on the Thames this morning.
And, if an unfortunate (non-existent) waterman were to drop his tobacco match into one of said barrels… And if Colin and Jules both happened to see the whole thing, because they were on Westminster Bridge at the time of the explosion, staging protests with the miners and abolitionists… That highly credible explanation would spread fast.
‘And when you get out,’ says Pearl, ‘I’ll be waiting for you both by the river. The getaway boat will be the—’
‘Third on the right,’ Delphine says, finishing the sentence in unison with Pearl. She glances at the watch – thirty-nine minutes to go.
‘This is as far as I can take you,’ Colin says from the driver’s seat. ‘They’re not letting carriages go further. So either our barricades are still up, or they’re trying to keep the square clean of horse shit before the King gets here.’
The Cornishman steps off the carriage and opens the passenger door with a flourish. ‘Ladies, gentlemen and gemstone, your destination awaits.’
