Chapter 31 - The Power Papers

They had been back in London nearly a week and had found refuge at a safe house within lodgings near Snow Hill. Maggie, Tom, Jack and her father were in one room and the two men who accompanied them on horseback to London in another room near by.

Most days her father left early in the morning and returned when it was near dark. Maggie was awoken at precisely the same time each morning by a light tapping upon the door - like some secret code - and would watch as her father rushed to finish his cup of tea, and left the room in the company of the two men who rescued them.

Without her father knowing, she would lie half-awake on the bed and study him as he left at first light. She doubted she would have recognise him if, unknown to her, he had passed her on a busy street a week or so beforehand. He was leaner and fitter now - his hair longer and unkempt, and a full beard covered a great proportion of his face. He dressed like a man of the lowest labouring classes, too: a far cry from the smartly dressed man who led important political meetings back home in Liverpool.

The excitement of being reunited with their father had vanished within a couple of days. In her mind at least, she envisioned leaving the city and going on long walks, visiting travelling fairs, as they engaged in long conversations and reminisces about their past lives, their time apart and, of course, their mother. But Power seemed to live every moment for the cause he was once more at the centre of, and seemed to spend little time grieving for his dead wife - even after Maggie and Tom had explained the lives they had been forced to lead after his transportation.

It wasn't she thought him unfeeling to the pain of that tragic event, but that he seemed to have other things on his mind. Rather than concentrate on that particular event for any length of time, he seemed busy planning for the future. Maybe it was because she had yet to tell him (and Tom for that matter) the whole truth about mother's death; the full and true circumstances of it, which still haunted her most nights. What was it exactly that kept her silent? she asked herself: the shame? The horror? The guilt for failing to act promptly and save her?

Power had forbidden the children to leave the room and saw to it they had enough food and water to get through the day.

Another prison, Maggie thought.

Just as the mud of the Thames had imprisoned them, as they scavenged day after day; just as they had been locked away from view in Charlie Deptford's hideout - to avoid capture; and just as they had been trapped by the Countess - in a large, open-air prison at Little Serrant. The latter of these was the worst, she reasoned, for there they had dared to imagine they were truly free.

Power told them their confinement was only a temporary measure before they returned to the north, where he explained, "great and momentous events" were happening. When he returned home, he would read to them from the newspapers, with great excitement about the "situation across the entire country." He spoke of how strike action had begun in earnest and spread country wide, and of how now at last, finally, the poorest workers were taking back what rightly belonged to them.

He never told them what his own involvement was, but Maggie read the pamphlets and leaflets left behind in their lodgings and had recognised her father's hand in their composition. "Now is the time for Physical Force!" began one poster. Maggie looked upon the flyers, billposters and leaflets scattered around the room, and one word contained in all of them always caught her eye: Freedom.

He also kept them updated about Whitmore, Beagle, the Countess and Sexton. From his reading and the information passed to him, all were in prison awaiting trial and Inspector Blake, of the newly formed detective division, was being celebrated for his investigation in the newspapers.

"Yet we must still be careful," he informed them one afternoon when he arrived home earlier than expected. "The police are searching for us all, and that includes you Jack. They want both of you to appear as a witnesses, to Mr Turner's murder," he informed Maggie and Tom. "Blake wishes the magistrate to reopen the case. But if I let you go now, I may never get to see you again. And besides, it may comprise my comrades and I."

Maggie stayed silent and hadn't said she wished to help Blake, and allow the courts see to it that Mr Turner received some sort of justice - another of the dead who held her to account, she thought.

She also sat and brooded upon the stories she heard Beagle and Whitmore tell Mr Turner about her father's escape from Van Diemen's Land. Could they really be true? And those police posters plastered across the city...

"Father," she began. "I don't know how to address this matter correctly."

"What's on your mind, my dear? Come tell me, and don't look so worried," he answered.

She looked over to the table and watched as Jack and Tom fell back into the game of cards they had been playing before Power had returned. She had spoken with her brother about whether she should ask Father what really occurred during his escape. Tom said he thought it best to leave that chapter of their father's life closed for the meantime.

As she was about to form her question, a tapping at the door disturbed her, and alerted all the other occupants of the room, too. It was not the usual morning knock, which informed her father it was time to leave. Power turned from the children and signalled for them to hide on the other side of the bed, as he walked towards the door.

"Yes, what is your business?" he asked in a voice trying to disguise his accent.

"I need to speak with your daughter, Mr Power," the voice replied.

"Who is this? You must have the wrong -"

"Father, I know that voice," Maggie whispered. She stood up from her hiding place and walked to her father. He tried to shush her but she was now next to him at the door. "It's Blake."

"Please, Mr Power, I merely wish to speak to your daughter. I have something here which belongs to you all."

"How many men have you brought, Blake?" asked Power in his usual voice.

"I am alone."

Maggie saw that her father was suspicious.

"This is personal, not police business," Blake continued.

Reluctantly, Power opened the door.

"How did you discover our whereabouts?" asked Power, as Blake entered the small lodgings.

"They gave me the rank of detective for a reason, Mr Power. I usually find my man. I see things, I have others see things for me too," he replied taking off his hat. "And in my experience, children don't usually enjoy being locked inside all day long, especially during such agreeable weather."

Power looked to his children, then to Jack, then back to Blake. "You came here all alone, to confront a desperate returnee from a prison colony...And, if you are to believe the newspapers, a deranged killer," he said with a sly grin appearing upon his face.

"I always feel safe when Maggie's around," replied Blake. "Besides I've read the account you sent to The Times, telling of your daring escape from Van Diemen's Land. And, I have to admit, I'm persuaded by your case."

"What? How? The letter was never published," said Power.

"And that is the reason why I'm here." Blake held out a package of brown paper tied with string.

"Our friend, Mr Whitmore, had in his possession a number of documents. He has been a keen collector of other people's lives it seems. And held a most extraordinary interest in the life of the Power family."

He held out the package and placed it on the table.

"There is a great deal of incriminating material in here, Mr Power. I've had to mark it down as police evidence and I need most of these papers to make a case against Whitmore and others."

He took a small knife from his pocket, gestured to Power it was for a non-violent cause, and cut the coarse string, allowing the brown paper to fall aside. Inside sat a bundle of documents tied with a pink ribbon. He untied the ribbon and took one of the documents out from the stack.

"Here, I think this belongs to you," said Blake as he passed to Power the letter he had written to The Times. Power opened it up and read it with astonishment.

"These documents were all found inside his office, which I searched last week. He must have got hold of your letter from Mr Ricketts, the man at the newspaper. Even so, I doubt they would have published it."

"Remarkable," said Maggie looking over the scattered pile of papers on the table.

"I realise there are a great many personal letters," Blake said to Maggie. "Forgive me, but I have read them for the sake of building a coherent story in our case against Mr Whitmore. I thought you'd like to check them over and see which of them you may wish to keep, after the trial of course. Whitmore obstructed justice on a great many occasion and I believe we have a good case."

Power read over his account of what happened during his escape from Van Diemen's Land, while Maggie and Thomas flicked through the various documents. Maggie had tears in her eyes as she found the letters written by her father from Van Diemen's Land and which, along with the other documents, she had carried in her makeshift bag for so long.

"Look," she said with a tearful smile, holding up their battered copy of The Pilgrim's Progress to show Thomas. Whitmore must have taken it the night he and Beagle murdered Turner, she thought.

"Look Thomas."

But Tom did not responded. He remained deep in concentration, reading a dirty and battered letter.

Suddenly he looked up from his reading and stared at Maggie. Tears soon followed the anger which swelled in his eyes. Maggie looked from him to the letter he was holding. "What is it, my little man? What's the matter?" she asked.

"My little man," he whispered back. "Is that why you never told me? Because I was little and not really a man?"

"What are you talking about, Thomas?"

He began reading from the letter: "Sadly now is the time when I must leave you to fend for yourselves. There is no other course of action left open and I must now say goodbye for the final time."

He paused and looked at Maggie.

"No Thomas, please don't read anymore." She looked to her father who was now following the children's discussion. Jack turned and sat on the bed looking to the window, feeling the growing tension between the two. Blake, meanwhile, walked to the door and quietly slipped from the room.

"Indeed, I have reached a most dreadful conclusion." Thomas continued reading. "These past days I've thought of nothing but your futures. Yet always I return to one unavoidable fact: I am dying and will be soon dead." Tom paused, and using his sleeved, wiped away the tears from his cheek.

"What is it, Thomas? Who is it from?" asked their father.

"Mother. It's from Mother," wept Maggie. "It's the note she left behind before she took her own life. Before she threw herself into the river." She turned to the pile of documents and took hold of a small notebook. "It's all here, what happened that night. It's all written down here," she said handing her father the journal she had begun writing at the Countess' home.

Power took the journal in his hand and opened it.

It was the first time she or Tom had ever witnessed their father cry, as he read through Maggie's account of his wife's final days.

"Your suffering has been the most abject of all," he said as he embraced the children after finishing his reading. "Oh, how I swear to make it up to you. I shall never leave your side again," he whispered as he held the two children tight.

Unnoticed, Jack moved towards the door behind them, looked to the family - finally united, albeit in grief - and, following Blake's example, slipped from the room.

***