Ings seized a short sword from the pile and swung it through the air, causing Brunt and Davidson to leap back with curses. “Damn your eyes, you’ll not dampen our spirits! We’ll take the house without a drop of our blood shed! Have you turned coward?”
“You wave that at me again and you’ll find out,” Silas informed him. “Put it down and listen, you fool. For God’s sake, even if you were to succeed, even with Sidmouth’s head in a bag, you’ll all swing for treason. Do you not see that?”
“And wouldn’t that be worth it?” Davidson demanded, his deep tones rolling out with a preacher’s cadence. “The deaths of tyrants? Vengeance for Peterloo? Is there any man among us who would rather live a craven than die a martyr?”
“You’ll die a martyr, and then the rest of us will be martyred with you. You think they’ll stand for a revolution like this? They’ll crack down harder,” Silas said. “You’ll be proving the Six Acts were needed and Sidmouth was right. They’ll make it worse.”
“It can’t get worse!” Brunt shouted, voice cracking. “We’re starving, we’re losing. This is our chance!”
“Come, Mason,” George Edwards said, his tone reasonable. “You’ve not been in the planning. You don’t have the spirit of it yet. It’s a God-given opportunity. And you’re a strong man, a fighter. You could make the difference for us. Vengeance for Peterloo!”
“Vengeance for Peterloo,” the other voices came in, fierce and intent and together.
“At least agree you’ll think about it,” Edwards urged. “We’ll hope to see you there. We’ll trust you to come. Say you’ll come. For us all, for Spence, for freedom.”
“Tom Spence wouldn’t have wanted this.” Silas looked around him, saw no weakening in any of the faces except Adams’s, and gave it up as a bad job. “I say you don’t have a chance, you’ll do naught here but harm to the cause, and you’re fools. If you want to be martyred fools, you do that. I’ve done with martyrdom.”
“You’ve lost your nerve,” Thistlewood said with contempt.
“Don’t turn on us now. Don’t betray us,” Edwards beseeched.
“I’m not an informer, curse you.”
“No, you’re part of this. Don’t you want to see the cabinet fall, and the king too?”
“Of course,” Silas said impatiently.
“Then you’ll wish us success in our work. And you’ll help us if you can. You’ll write the truth for people to read. If we fail, you can tell the world we were martyrs for their sake, urge them to throw off their chains and bring down the king!” Edwards gripped Silas’s forearm with sweaty hands. “You’ll stand by us, won’t you, Mason?”
“Aye, aye.” Silas wondered if he’d ever looked like that, face set in a fanatic’s wide-eyed grimace. “Aye, as you say. Death to all tyrants. I’m going.”
He turned his back on them all then and left, wondering what the devil to do.
Time was he’d have seized a pike and damned the gentry to hell. The Peterloo Massacre had been plain murder, and Silas would have had no hesitation in bringing summary justice to its architects or taking arms against tyranny. He did, however, balk at the prospect of being hanged, drawn, and quartered for a pointless act, and that much would be inevitable, even if they succeeded in taking a few lives.
What the devil would Dom say, if it came off? Call it mass murder, probably. A moot point, because Silas couldn’t believe it would happen. Ings and his fantasy of Castlereagh’s head in a bag—he’d never killed in his life. He’d fold. Thistlewood, who had been a soldier, was the only one Silas would trust to strike.
Well, it was not down to him. The Spenceans would act as they chose in the end, or as they dared, and there was damn all he could do about it but wait.
He spent the rest of the day looking for a room in Ludgate, because he couldn’t stay in Quex’s forever or even much longer, no matter how perfect that might be for Dom. They’d seen each other every night now, Thursday to Monday; they’d even had one whole night in a bed for two. It wasn’t worth the loss of Silas’s shop, but he’d happily endure burned hands again for such a prize.
The thought propelled him back to Quex’s and the little room. There was a pile of the day’s newspapers there and a couple of books Dom had left him: The Vampyre, which purported to be by Lord Byron and looked like a lot of nonsense, and The Bride of Lammermoor, by the anonymous author of Ivanhoe. He’d enjoyed Ivanhoe more for Robin of Locksley and the Jewess Rebecca than the knight hero and his bland, virtuous lady, but the author could spin a tale, and the medieval past seemed, at this moment, a more friendly place than the present.