The Duchess War

“We speak our minds here, we do.”

Robert set the papers on the table. “Speaking your mind is only illegal if your words are intended to create disaffection with the government. Not with your masters; with the government.” At first, Robert had only wanted to try to make right what his father had destroyed. But the closer he’d looked, the more he’d found. He’d eventually gone through the records of those trials, and it was clear that the jury had not been correctly charged with the law. “You should never have been convicted simply for organizing a union.”

Finney looked at him, shaking his head. “As you say. But the masters get what the masters want. I don’t want to be involved any longer. I’ve my hands full with the Cooperative, I do.”

As if to emphasize this, the door to the tiny room opened. Two women stood in the doorframe. One, a thin elderly woman in a sagging brown gown had a sack of groceries. She shoved at a yellowing cap that was slipping from her head, and gestured to her companion. “I just don’t think it will work, is all I’m saying.”

Her companion was Miss Pursling. She seemed a picture of severity, her honey-brown hair pulled tightly up, with only a few tamed curls at her neck.

The two women were focused totally on one another.

“Mrs. Finney,” Miss Pursling was saying, “I’ve talked to every chemist in town. You’re my last hope.”

Mrs. Finney unwrapped her shovel. “But the Cooperative sells food. Not any of that other nonsense.”

“But the advertisement—”

“Miss Pursling, I do like you, but how can I bring this before the Board?”

Miss Pursling looked down. “You have no idea how the rest of the Commission will scold if I come back a failure.” She did meek well, her head bowed, her hands clasped in front of her. “Please.”

“Well.” Mrs. Finney set her shawl on the entry table. “I suppose. Maybe. I might say something.”

“Thank you,” Miss Pursling said. “Thank you.”

That was the moment when her husband intervened. “Mrs. Finney,” he called. “We have a guest. You’ll never believe what he is saying.”

The two women turned to Mr. Finney. Miss Pursling’s gaze fell on Robert. Her eyes widened and she took a step back.

“It’s a gentleman from London,” Mr. Finney said. “Mr. Blaisdell, my wife. And Miss Pursling. He’s a solicitor, I believe.”

Miss Pursling didn’t bat an eye at that. “A solicitor,” she repeated. “How curious, Mr. Blaisdell.”

“Merely a representative,” Robert returned.

“Mr. Blaisdell here is saying that there’s a fund that has established pensions for men who have devoted themselves to unions, who find themselves in poor straits for it.” Mr. Finney laughed.

Mrs. Finney simply frowned. “Well, then what could they want with us?” She looked around. “There’s only the two of this in this wide, big room, and we have meat on the table three times a week. We’re not poorly off.”

Robert blinked at this and looked around the room, trying to see it with her eyes. Not poorly off?

“They’ve offered me a pension!” Finney laughed. “Me! When the only service I did for Graydon Boots was to get everyone to turn out after Jimmy died of poisoning.”

Robert looked away. One of the overseer’s first cost-cutting mechanisms had been to replace the original boot-blacking with a formula that was less expensive—but far more dangerous for those who had to stand with their hands immersed in it on a daily basis. Money couldn’t make up for that, but he’d had to try.

“Yes,” Robert said. “And I’ve explained this isn’t for your work at Graydon Boots, but for your experience in organization.”

Finney simply shook his head sadly. “You’re a young lad. You wouldn’t understand. I learned my lesson, then, about keeping to my place. No more turning out. No more association with that sort of thing. Especially not now. I hear the Duke of Clermont’s in town.”

“He is,” Miss Pursling put in.

Finney spat on the ground. “It all started when he acquired Graydon Boots.” His hands, liver-spotted with age, trembled. “More hours worked for less pay. Then came the strike-breakers, the convictions. He’s a beast of a man, and I’ll never—”

“Nathan Finney,” Mrs. Finney interrupted, “that’s dangerous talk. You were taken from me once. Did you not learn to think before you speak?”

“No, no,” Robert said. “You needn’t hold your tongue on my account. I am quite in agreement.”

Miss Pursling took two steps into the room. “You are, sir?”

She clearly thought he was here on a whim.

He turned to her. “I’ve gone through the records of what Clermont did,” he said softly. “Is it so wrong to want to make matters right again?”

She turned her head away. “I question only your methods.” A trace of a frown flicked across her face. “Your motive…I do not yet understand.”

“But my motive is simple. I think privileges are wasted on the peers,” Robert replied. “They have the right to be tried in the House of Lords. Think, Mr. Finney, what that would have meant for you. The Lords would never have heard a case of criminal sedition based on the evidence presented against you. The law is too clear; they’d protect their own.”

“Too true, too true,” Finney echoed.

“I think,” Robert said, turning to Miss Pursling, “that if the Duke of Clermont, for instance, were to write handbills saying what Finney here had said back in ’58—now, he could speak the truth and nobody could stop him with threats of imprisonment based on a perversion of the law.”

Miss Pursling had tilted her head at him. “Could he?” she asked.

Finney nodded. “All too right, Mr. Blaisdell.”

“But peers use that privilege not to speak truth, but to suppress it. Think, Mr. Finney, what could you do with a seat in the House of Lords?”

“Me, sitting in the Lords?” Finney laughed. “I should like to see that.”

“So should I,” Robert said. “If I had a chance to be a part of this nation’s governance, I’d not waste it protecting my prerogatives and interests. No. I’d find every last way that the deck was stacked to allow people like Clermont to poison his workers, and to punish them for voicing complaint when he did so. And I’d eradicate them all.”