Chapter 23: Just Desserts

A week after the wedding I asked Molly March if she would like to be adopted by me and Caroline. If she agreed it would take place in March when, according to her reckoning, she would be fifteen years of age. Molly gazed at me with those luminous violet eyes and I saw tears form. "Shall I be your daughter then, Master Jack?" The wonderment in her voice caused me to swallow the lump forming in my throat.

"Yes, but I would no longer be Master Jack but father, and Caroline would be your mother."
She burst into giggles. "I couldn't call you 'Father', or Lady Caroline 'Mother'." She frowned in thought. "Nor could I call you Jack or her Caroline, as that is what your friends call you." A huge smile then spread across her face. "But I could call you Eli and her Adelaide. In that way I wouldn't be disrespectful, as no one but me would call you by those names. They would be daughter-names." Her face clouded, and I knew what she was about to say, but chose to misinterpret.

"What about Domina?" She asked.

"Well, I suppose you could continue to call her Domina."
This time she laughed out loud. "I know you purposely misunderstood me. Shall you adopt Domina as well?"
I confess I never gave a thought about adopting Domina, but knowing how close the two were I should have. "I see no reason why she shouldn't become your sister," I said, and was instantly overwhelmed by Molly kissing me. My face became wet with her tears of joy, and also with mine.
During this show of affectation Caroline entered the room. "I take it Molly has agreed to be adopted?" Then she too was assailed by Molly, who covered her face with kisses and tears in equal measure. We regained our breath and composure, and then I told Caroline Domina was also to be adopted. Once more my face was covered in kisses, this time by my wife.
Caroline called Domina into the room and asked her if she would like to be Molly's sister.

Domina looked from Caroline to Molly, and then beamed a huge smile. "Yes please, missus."

"And would you like to be Major Greenaway's and my daughter?"
This time she looked only at Caroline. "Couldn't I just be your daughter, missus?"
Caroline sighed. "No, Domina. I am Major Greenaway's wife, so you would also be his daughter." She hugged Domina to her. "I know you are fearful of all white men, but not all are like those in Bermuda, and Major Greenaway is a good man. Do you think I would marry a bad man?" Domina shook her head but still kept her eyes down and averted from me.

"Look at Molly." Caroline said, her voice soft and gentle. "You know she loves Master Jack, would she love him if he behaved like those white men in Bermuda?"

"No missus; Molly knows a good man from a bad man." Domina lifted her eyes and turned them on me. It was the first time she had maintained eye contact with me for longer than a few seconds.

"I would be honoured to be your daughter, Major Greenaway." She spoke in the lilting accent of Bermuda.

"As it will be my privilege to have you as my daughter, Domina." Without any bidding she came and kissed me softly on my lips, leaving me with a faint taste of cinnamon.

Molly linked arms with Domina, and the two girls left the room to go laughing and chattering up the stairs to the nursery to see their brother-to-be.

"What was all that about?" I asked Caroline. She explained that Domina had been brutally used and abused from an early age by a cruel and degenerate white man, the overseer of the plantation where she had been born. She eventually ran away from the plantation, and then lived a precarious existence on the streets of Hamilton, the capital of the island.

"From a young age she learned how heartless, lecherous and evil, men can be, especially white men in positions of authority over young women and girls." Caroline's voice was tinged with anger and sadness. "A few months after my arrival in Bermuda I found her huddled under a tree near my house. Never had I seen such abject distress and fear in a young girl's eyes. I took her home, and she has remained by my side w ever since. When John-Jarvis was born she became his nursemaid, without any order from me, and has been the best I ever knew."

"Well, she is certainly developing in to an enchanting young lady, as is Molly. Perhaps I should engage Emma Bovary as a chaperone for them? In a year or two those two girls will attract men like bees to nectar, and even the most demure of girls might be tempted along the primrose path."
Caroline gave a snort of laughter. "There will be no need of a chaperone. Neither of those girls will be tempted, for they have already found their true love."

Her remark puzzled me.
"There's never been any boy around either of them, so how both girls could meet their life partner if..." Then realisation dawned. "Oh!"

"Those two love one another as truly and deeply as you and I love each other." Caroline said, a sweet and tender expression on her face. "Both girls suffered debasement at the hand of males, and when they met they recognised the hurt in each other and healed that hurt with love." She sniffed tearfully. "It is beautiful to see them together, and I'm delighted they are both to be adopted. We will be able to shield them from the hostility 'civilized' society will show them should it suspect they are 'different'."

The New Year of 1820 came in with storm and tempest. Tiles blew off the barn on the Ashford estate, and trees ripped up all over the county.
Caroline and I were oblivious to the tempest outside as we made tempestuous love in our bedroom, throughout the night of December 31st of 1819 to midday of January the 1st of 1820.
From the first moment of our marriage it had been one wondrous day after another. The times spent together before our marriage were only a slight taste of the absolute joy and bliss we enjoyed now it was legal for us to fully express our love, lust, appetite and infatuation for each other. I awoke each morning and thanked God for what He had bestowed on me.
The New Year also brought the death of King George III. Although locked away for the past ten years or more while his corpulent son, also George, ruled as Prince Regent, Mad King George had been on the throne for almost sixty years. Not many people alive today could remember his predecessor. George III died on 29th January 1820, but it was two days later before the news reached Bearsted.

In February, actually it was St Valentine's Day, Caroline and I visited London with Domina and Molly; John-Jarvis was now of an age when he could be left for a day or two with the under-nursemaid at Bearsted. While the girls shopped at milliners and dressmakers I called on John Stafford at Scotland Yard.
I hoped for news of Becky, and of the whereabouts of Sigismund von Metzendorf and Silas Maddox, and knowledge to what extent White Lady – Satan's Breath – was being sold or used on the continent.

"Your sister seems to have retreated into obscurity. She is not staying with the Shelleys, or with any other of her compatriots. At least not those we keep tabs on." Stafford said. "She is probably hard at work crafting another novel, and no doubt will contact the Shelleys when she is ready to publish." He tried not to grin when he said. "I doubt she will be in contact with My Lord Byron again."
I sighed, it would appear Becky's collaboration with Mary Shelley was either at an end or had never began.
"There is still no information on the whereabouts of Maddox," Stafford contined, "but von Metzendorf was reported to be in the Balkans some months ago ... he tends to stay clear of areas where the authorities keep an eye out for him and his lecherous cronies. The east is less well scrutinised, which suits the dark deeds those fellows get up to. As for White Lady usage, there was a report from an informant in Italy of some new, highly effective, aphrodisiac being used in the high class brothels of Rome and Naples, but the report did not include any description of this magic potion, or what it consisted of ... probably the usual snake oil."
John finished the glass of 'medicinal' Madeira he held. "However there is something here in London you may be able to help us with. One of my men is undercover with a group of radicals whose leader may well be 'Cato'. If you could confirm that suspicion then we can arrest the group and charge them with orchestrating the Peterloo Massacre, which will take some of the political pressure off Lord Sidmouth."
I was dubious of getting involved with MI5 or MI6 again, but as John Stafford would keep me informed on the whereabouts of Becky, and von Metzendorf and Maddox when discovered, I supposed it was the least I could do.
I arranged to meet his undercover man the next day in the Cheshire Cheese tavern in Fleet Street, and then went and tried to explain to my wife of less than three months why I would not be returning to the matrimonial bed for a week or so.
I must say she took it rather well, although she warned me, on pain of death, not to spend any time at my brother's house.

I met the MI6 man in the tavern as planned, and was not greatly impressed by what I saw of him. He seemed the worse for wear with drink, a state which I didn't think seemly for a government employee to be in at ten of the morning, except for a politician of course. He said he was to meet Cato in Paternoster Row and hand over a batch of pamphlets which Cato had wanted printed. I glanced at one of the pamphlets which, if found upon my person, would get me transported for seven years. No wonder the MI6 man was inebriated.
When he left the tavern I followed him, at a distance, to Paternoster Row. Stafford's man passed the bundle of pamphlets to a man wearing a hat with the brim pulled low over his face and an all-enveloping cloak. I could not get a good sight of the cloaked man from my vantage point on the steps of St Paul's so carefully followed him when he left. Fortuitously he went into a pie shop in Cheapside, and I loitered outside until he exited with his steaming hot pie. I saw him full face and recognised Cato, who was too interested in eating his pie to notice me.

John Stafford was ecstatic to obtain proper identification of the man I knew as Cato.

"Capital, capital. His name is Arthur Thistlewood, who is the leading light in the radical group known as the Spencean Philanthropists, a damned silly name for a bunch of radicals, revolutionaries and republicans. The man once served as a commissioned officer in His Majesty's army before he went to the bad."
I was surprised to learn Cato had been in the army as I took him for a parson or university don. It shows how appearance can be deceptive. Instead of the mild man of learning and intellect I imagined him to be, Cato, or Thistlewood to give him proper name, was a man of action, and known to be impetuous and hot headed.

"The rest of his accomplices are spread about all over London, and we will need a stratagem to bring them all under one roof to be captured. Give me a day or two and there will be further work for you." John clapped me on my back. "With luck we will arrest him and his men, and then charge them with fomenting the events which culminated in the terrible loss of life in Manchester. My Lords Sidmouth and Liverpool will have good reason to thank us for that."
I stayed the night with the Slades, mindful of Caroline's warning, and in any case I was in no fit state to ward off a predatory Minnie, as for the past three months Caroline had made nightly, and daily, demands on me – I'm happy to admit.

Four days later, I stood shivering in the doorway of a butcher's shop in John Street, just off Edgeware Road, among a group of equally frozen and bored Bow Street Runners. We were watching a house in Cato Street rented to a member of Thistlewood's group. I supposed Thistlewood gave himself the sobriquet of 'Cato' as reference to the place where most of the meetings of the Spencean Philanthropists took place.
Other Bow Street Runners, and a magistrate, also watched and waited, but in the warmer and far more congenial atmosphere of a tavern across the road from the house in Cato Street. We all awaited the arrival of a platoon of soldiers from the 2nd Foot Guards who, with the dozen or so Runners assembled, were to burst in on the group and arrest them.
The Home Office, in the person of John Stafford, had constructed an ingenious scheme which would not only gather the members of the Spencean Philanthropists in one place but also incite them to carry out an act of treason. Stafford's man within the group, Edwards, had risen to be Thistlewood's second in command. He suggested to Thistlewood that the group should exploit the political situation which had arisen due to the death of King George III, by killing the prime minister, Lord Liverpool, togther with all the cabinet ministers of the present government.
John Stafford, whose fertile mind and devious nature had fabricated 'Edward's suggestion', went as far as having an article placed in the London newspapers about a supposed dinner party, which was to be held on the 23rd Febuary for the entire cabimet, at Lord Harroby's residence in Grovesnor Square. Edwards put forward a plan to Thistlewood which would have the Spencean Philanthropists, armed with swords, pistols, and grenades, descend on the dinner party and slaughter them all. Thistlewood readily agreed to the proposal, hoping the murderous act would trigger a massive uprising, leading to the overthrow of both government and Monarchy. This would then be followed by the establishment of a 'Committee of Public Safety' to oversee a radical revolution, similar to the French Revolution.
Edwards reported to Stafford that his comrades were ready and willing to follow 'his' plan, and the trap was set.

It was past 7 pm and we had been watching, waiting, and freezing, for nearly four hours. All the Spencean Philanthropists members had arrived, and if the promised military assistance didn't soon materialise the gang would be off to the supposed dinner party at Lord Harrowby's house in Grosvenor Square, and that would be that – the birds would fly when they discovered Lord Harrowby's house empty and dark.
One of the Bow Street Runners who had been snug and warm in the Cato Street Tavern came over to the group of us shivering in the doorway.

"Magistrate Birnie has decided not to wait any longer for the military but to arrest the miscreants ourselves." The Runners regarded each other nervously. They only carried cudgels, and the Cato Street conspirators were reputed to be armed with pistols, swords and knives. One burly Runner spoke up belligerently. "Damn you all for cowards. I'll lead the charge." And off he trotted toward the house in Cato Street.
We had little option but to follow, and as we reached the tavern several more Runners, and the magistrate Birnie, joined us. I admit I hung back from the front – I was not an officer of the law and had no powers of arrest, nor did I possess a cudgel, or even my trusty skean dhu, which I lost when in Manchester and had not yet replaced.
Richard Smithers, the burly, belligerent, brave but reckless Runner, burst through the front door and dashed up the stairs to the room where the conspirators were gathered. By the time I reached the room he was dead, struck down by Thistlewood's sword. The rest of the gang tried to escape but were overpowered and arrested. All were charged with treason, which if found guilty would then face the most barbaric of any method of judicial killing – that of being hanged, drawn, and quartered.
Thistlewood and four other members of the Spencean Philanthropists were executed on May Day 1820. To the disgust of many Tories they did not suffer the medieval punishment meted out to traitors but were merely hanged and then decapitated. Five other members had their death sentences commuted to transportation for life.

I did not attend the public executions. I returned to Bearsted and swore nothing would induce me to ever set foot in Scotland Yard again. The whole episode of the Cato Street Conspiracy, as it became known, had been orchestrated to tarnish and besmirch the campaign for parliamentary reform and justify the government's enactment of the repressive Six Acts. It also attempted to place the blame for the deaths in Manchester on the actions of the Spencean Philanthropists, and by implication on all those who advocated reform, rather than on the ineptitude of the local authorities. In fact the government's failure to address the problems of the working population of the north, and the calls for reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws, led to the mass meeting at St Peter's Field.
So who would you suggest held the most culpability for the Peterloo Massacre?