But his hesitation seemed to have been anticipated by Oswald Hackett, who began to speak with heavy emphasis about arrangements he’d made with certain special constables. These fellows had no idea what Hackett might be planning – Hackett had given only vague and mendacious hints that he and Luis were themselves agents of the government – but they’d agreed to work with Hackett, giving him the nod to identify certain ringleaders, foreign agitators and other troublemakers.
And Hackett gazed steadily at Luis as he spoke of those friends among the constables. His unspoken message could not have been clearer: Run away, my lad, and these constables of mine will be down on you like a Lambeth rat on a bit of mouldy cheese.
Luis saw, then, that he had no choice; he would have to go through with this farcical operation, striving to keep his own head intact in the process, and see what came of it next.
As it happened, on the morning of the great assembly it rained hard enough to drown more than a Lambeth rat, and spirits were thoroughly flattened.
A throng did turn up on the common at Kennington, but there was no million here as the Chartists had hoped for, there were mere thousands, ten thousand at most, Luis guessed. As well as the police they were faced by special constables guarding the bridges to the city, among them a goodly number of the rich and ministers of the government, Hackett said, volunteering in order to protect their own wealth and what they saw as the virtues of a constitution which needed no hasty reform, thank you. In the end the only outcome was the presentation of a comically inflated petition to the House of Commons – that, and a few scuffles and arrests. Luis thought the coffee-stall holders did a brisker business than the constables.
But still, in the midst of this relatively blood-free uprising, Hackett went to work with a will, and Luis had no choice but to follow him.
The plan was simple. A constable would point out a troublemaker. Luis would Waltz to dexter or sinister, approach the suspect’s position through the silence of the forest, spin back and grab him bodily – or occasionally her – lift him off his feet and Waltz one way or the other, and just dump the bewildered wretch amid the trees. No matter how hard they struggled when taken, the victims were always utterly baffled by their transition from one noisy world to the sylvan silence of another, and more often than not crippled by nausea too. Then it was a case of walk away a few yards and hop back into the melee; and, just in case anybody had seen the Great Elusivo pop mysteriously out of existence, Luis took care not to come back to the same spot and reinforce the impression.
At the end of the assembly, Hackett had told Luis, these temporary exiles would be rounded up from the forest, returned to Mother England and delivered into the arms of the constables.
‘And,’ Luis had said, ‘if they blab about their experiences, about us—’
‘Who to, the constables? Who’s to believe an agitator spouting a lot of nonsense about trees and bogs in the middle of London? Especially if it’s in French or German. Or even Gaelic – ha!’
‘And if they come to some kind of harm—’
‘What, if they get run down by a boar or swiped by a bear? Or, perhaps, the very act of being Waltzed over might kill ’em; some of my family legends hint at that possibility. Well, if so, nobody will grieve. Or even know. We’ll leave ’em to a godless grave widdershins, and au revoir.’
In the end the work proved easy enough. Luis could look after himself in a fight, and the exertions of his illusion act had built up his bodily strength. The only cost to him was a few digs in the ribs, a kick on the shin, and one beauty of a black eye. Many of those identified for transportation were indeed foreign agitators, mostly French, and Luis was surprised at the extent to which the English movement had been infiltrated. He wondered if Hackett might after all have a point in his windy and unlikely scheme, if it all worked out so easily as this.
At one point, as he stood over yet another dizzy, nauseated Frenchie spewing out words faster than he spilled his guts – and, comically, wondering why his shoes were falling apart, their sole nails having been left behind in London (Luis himself always wore sewn-leather slippers) – Luis, taking a breather, caught the eye of another young man standing over his own doubled-up agitator. The man, tall, sinewy, grinned and waved. ‘Mine’s a Scotsman, would you believe? Pining for the Bonnie Prince. But earlier I grabbed a big Irish lad and I hoped it was Feargus O’Connor himself, but that mastermind of the Chartists eludes us …’
Until that moment Luis hadn’t known that he and Hackett weren’t alone here, working this crowd. But of course Hackett would recruit others – and of course he would keep it all a secret even from his allies, clutched close to his own chest.
Luis recovered his composure and called back, ‘Mine’s a French.’
‘So I hear. Coarser language than you’ll hear in the Marseilles docks, I’d warrant. Rather jolly fun, this, isn’t it? Well, back to the grindstone; those agitators won’t apprehend themselves – be seeing you!’ He winked neatly out of existence.
So it was back to work for Luis too. At the end of the day he made off without incident.
And, to his blank astonishment, Oswald showed up that evening at Luis’s theatre, and said that they had an appointment with royalty.
18