He sometimes rested during the heat of the day, and travelled early in the morning and late at night. His shoes were well-worn by the time he reached Sheffield. There he hoped to fall in with other men intending to go to Manchester for the great meeting, for only two days remained and he feared he could not reach Manchester in time.
In Sheffield he learnt, however, that the Manchester officials had suppressed the meeting, and declared it illegal, and so, much disheartened, he went to sleep hidden away under the portico of a church, very tired and not knowing what to do or where to go.
But with the new day came heartening intelligence: a new meeting was planned for the 16th, which left him ample time to reach Manchester.
The bearer of this excellent information was a man Charles happened to meet in a grimy workingman’s tavern, near a factory that was belching coal smoke into the air.
The stranger’s accent proclaimed him to be a native of the North. He had a thick head of straw-coloured hair which reminded Charles of thatch on a farmhouse roof, and one of his eyes had a disconcerting habit of roaming off in a different direction than the other. He insisted upon paying for Charles’s breakfast, learned his name, the name of his master, and questioned him closely about his journey and his reasons for making it. In truth, Charles was mostly on the road for the adventure, for the joy of leaving a job he detested, and out of admiration for a much-loved elder brother. Of politics he thought little and knew less, but his new companion was much better informed. Walker spoke with warmth against the government, against toiling like a slave for starvation wages, of justice and freedom, and Charles began to be truly interested in the objects of the meeting.
Benjamin, for so the man named himself, offered to travel together with Charles, and help him find his brother. Charles readily joined with him—they would be sure of arriving at Manchester in time, and what a surprise it would be for Sam!
* * * * * * *
Fanny, meanwhile, reached the village of Stockport, near Manchester, on the evening of her third day and took a room at the White Lion Inn for the night, intending to travel into Manchester in the morning. She had met with no success in overtaking her brother on the journey and moreover, she discovered that inn-keepers were extraordinarily uninterested in recalling whether they had seen a boy who looked like a thousand other boys.
The owner of the White Lion rebuffed her enquiries in the same fashion, though when she extracted some monies and asked for a room, his manner improved. He could only offer her a shared room with some other another single lady, a teacher at a girl’s school. She was leaving Manchester in the morning, she was arriving, which perplexed and alarmed him.
“You should know there is a lot of talk about this gathering tomorrow, miss. The working men have been drilling like soldiers in the fields and commons all around these parts for weeks. We have often had trouble in the past—riots, burning, looting. There’s a set of radicals in Manchester, Miss, and they’ve set about agitating the common folk and making them restless and dissatisfied. With so many people gathering tomorrow, there’s bound to be trouble, as there has been before. I would advise you to be very cautious in town tomorrow.”
“But surely the authorities will keep good order?,” Fanny returned.
“There isn’t but a handful of constables in all of Manchester,” returned the inn-keeper, pitying her ignorance. “There is nobody to ‘keep order,’ which is why my militia company has been called up. I joined the Cheshire company when it looked like Napoleon might pay us a visit. Instead I am obliged to watch over a parcel of bug-eyed revolutionaries. Hallelujah! Nobody will have to work, and chicken and ale for all!”
Fanny went up to her room anxious for the following morning, but she anticipated a restless night and not merely because she shared her bed with a snoring schoolmistress.
She drifted in and out of troubled dreams, and shortly after dawn, the rhythmic sounds of her bedpartner were augmented by other strange noises she could not identify. The strange sound drew her from the bed and she pulled open the curtains. The trees were dark silhouettes against a faint sunrise. She thought she heard singing—perhaps some unusual bird? But there were high voices, low voices, and she then caught some snatches of words.
These were not birds.
Fanny strained to see in the pale light of morning. She thought she could discern some movement beyond the courtyard of the inn, like a great undulating mass. The strangeness and novelty briefly gave her some alarm, until she was able to identify a shape here, a sound there—there was the outline of a flag carried on a tall staff, there was the creak of a waggon, there, visible through the darkness, was a white bonnet on a girl’s head—
The road before her was entirely filled with people—shifting and moving, talking and singing.
She realised they must be a group of local labourers assembling to walk to Manchester for the great meeting.
Having never seen so many persons gathered together in one place, and never at such an hour, Fanny was more curious than alarmed. She decided to dress quickly and descend, so as to have a better view of the unusual sight. Her bed-fellow had barely stirred by the time Fanny was washed and dressed and slipped out of the room.
Fanny had intended to hire a driver and cart to get into town, but as the road was filled with people; the thought of taking a horse in the midst of that shifting multitude now appeared to her to
