‘Who’s everyone?’
‘All the strikers from a few years ago – the tailors, the shoemakers, the weavers. They’re all striking again. And there’s more – there are dock workers, factory employees, gasworks stokers – I mean, really, everyone. Look.’ She shook the telegram. ‘Look. It’ll be in all the papers tomorrow.’
Robin squinted at the missive in the dim light, trying to comprehend what this meant.
A hundred miles away, white British factory workers were crowding Westminster Hall to protest a war in a country they’d never stepped foot in.
Was Anthony right? Had they forged the most unlikely of alliances? Theirs was not the first of the antisilver revolts of that decade, only the most dramatic. The Rebecca Riots in Wales, the Bull Ring Riots in Birmingham, and the Chartist uprisings in Sheffield and Bradford just earlier that year had all tried and failed to halt the silver industrial revolution. The papers had made them out to be isolated outbursts of discontent. But it was clear now that they were all connected, all caught in the same web of coercion and exploitation. What was happening to the Lancashire spinners had happened to Indian weavers first. Sweating, exhausted textile workers in silver-gilded British factories spun cotton picked by slaves in America. Everywhere the silver industrial revolution had wrought poverty, inequality, and suffering, while the only ones who benefited were those in power at the heart of the Empire. And the grand accomplishment of the imperial project was to take only a little from so many places; to fragment and distribute the suffering so that at no point did it ever become too much for the entire community to bear. Until it did.
And if the oppressed came together, if they rallied around a common cause – here, now, was one of the impossible pivot points Griffin had spoken of so often. Here was their chance to push history off its course.
The first ceasefire offer came in from London an hour later: RESUME BABEL SERVICES. FULL AMNESTY EVEN FOR SWIFT AND DESGRAVES STOP. OTHERWISE PRISON STOP.
‘Those are very bad terms,’ said Yusuf.
‘They’re absurd terms,’ said Professor Chakravarti. ‘How ought we to respond?’
‘I think we don’t,’ said Victoire. ‘I think we let them sweat, that we just keep pushing them to the edge.’
‘But that’s dangerous,’ said Professor Craft. ‘They’ve opened up space for a dialogue, haven’t they? We can’t know how long it’ll stay open. Suppose we ignore them and it closes—’
‘There’s something else,’ Robin said sharply.
They watched the telegraph machine tap away in fearful, silent apprehension as Victoire took it down. ‘ARMY ON ITS WAY STOP,’ she read. ‘STAND DOWN STOP.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Juliana.
‘But what good does that do them?’ Robin asked. ‘They can’t get through the wards—’
‘We have to assume they can,’ Professor Chakravarti said grimly. ‘At least, that they will. We have to assume Jerome’s helping them.’
This set off a round of frightened babbling.
‘We’ve got to talk to them,’ said Professor Craft. ‘We’ll lose the window of negotiation—’
Said Ibrahim, ‘Suppose they put us all in prison, though—’
‘Not if we surrender—’ Juliana began.
And Victoire, firm, vehement: ‘We can’t surrender. We’ll have gained nothing—’
‘Hold on.’ Robin raised his voice over the din. ‘No – this threat, the Army – it all means it’s working, don’t you see? It means they’re scared. On the first day they still thought they could order us around. But they’ve felt the consequences now. They’re terrified. Which means if we can just hold on for a bit, if we can just keep this up, we’ll win.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
What say you, then,
To times, when half the city shall break out
Full of one passion, vengeance, rage, or fear?
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, The Prelude
The next morning they awoke to find that a set of barricades had mysteriously sprung up around the tower overnight. Great, tottering obstructions blocked up every major street leading towards Babel – High Street, Broad Street, Cornmarket. Was this the Army’s work? They wondered. But it all seemed too slapdash, too haphazard to be an Army operation. The barricades were made of everyday materials – upturned carts, sand-filled barrels, fallen streetlamps, iron grillwork ripped away from the fences round Oxford’s parks, and the stone rubble that had been gathering at every street corner as evidence of the city’s slow deterioration. And what benefit did the Army obtain by fencing in their own streets?
They asked Ibrahim, who’d been on watch shift, what he’d seen. But Ibrahim had fallen asleep. ‘I woke up a little before dawn,’ he said defensively. ‘By then they were already in place.’
Professor Chakravarti came rushing up from the lobby. ‘There’s a man outside who wants to talk to you two.’ He nodded to Robin and Victoire.
‘What man?’ asked Victoire. ‘Why us?’
‘Unclear,’ said Professor Chakravarti. ‘But he was quite adamant he speaks to whoever’s in charge. And this whole thing is your circus, isn’t it?’
They descended to the lobby together. From the window they saw a tall, broad-shouldered, bearded man waiting on the steps. He didn’t appear to be armed, nor particularly hostile, but his presence was baffling nonetheless.
He’d seen this man before, Robin realized. He wasn’t carrying his sign, but he stood the same way he always had during the mill workers’ protests: fists clenched, chin up, glaring determinedly at the tower as if he could topple it with his mind.
‘For heaven’s sake.’ Professor Craft peeked out of the window. ‘It’s one of those madmen. Don’t go out there, he’ll attack you.’
But Robin was already pulling on his coat. ‘No, he won’t.’ He had a suspicion of what was happening, and though he was afraid to hope just yet, his heart raced with excitement. ‘I think he’s here to help.’
When they opened the door,* the man courteously backed away, arms held high to show he had no weapon.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Robin. ‘I’ve seen you out here before.’
‘Abel.’ The man’s voice was very deep; solid, like building stone. ‘Abel Goodfellow.’
‘You threw an egg at me,’ accused Victoire. ‘That was you, last February—’
‘Yes, but it was only an egg,’ said Abel. ‘Nothing personal.’
Robin gestured to the barricades. The nearest one obstructed nearly the whole width of High Street, cutting off the main entrance to the tower. ‘This is your work?’
Abel smiled. It was an odd sight, through that beard; it made him look briefly like a gleeful little boy. ‘Do you like them?’
‘I’m not sure what the point is,’ said Victoire.
‘The Army’s on their way, haven’t you heard?’
‘And I don’t see how this stops them,’ said Victoire. ‘Unless you’re telling me you’ve also brought an army to man those walls.’
‘It’ll do a better job warding off troops than you think,’ said Abel. ‘It’s not just about the walls – though they’ll hold, you’ll see. It’s psychological. The barricades create the impression that there’s a real resistance going on, while the Army currently thinks they’ll be marching on the tower unopposed. And it emboldens our protestors – it creates a safe haven, a place to retreat.’
‘And what are you out here protesting?’ Victoire asked cautiously.
‘The silver industrial revolution, of course.’ Abel held up a crinkled, waterlogged pamphlet. One of theirs. ‘Turns out we’re on the same side.’