The Ballad of John Clare by Hugh Lupton

Author:Hugh Lupton
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781907650994
Publisher: Dedalus
Published: 2012-06-07T04:00:00+00:00

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“Have you seen them? There is such a display! Come!”

Mary steered John through the Fair.

“They have been brought, all chained and manacled, from Norman Cross, poor things. But John, they have made such carvings from wood and bone as you would not believe.”

They pushed through the milling crowd to a corner of the Fair he had not seen.

A great display had been made of the three French prisoners. They had shackles to their ankles that were joined to iron chains that were bolted to heavy iron balls. These in turn rested upon a tattered French flag that lay, mud-besmirched at the prisoners’ feet. They were sitting at a table with the Union Jack flapping on its pole over their cropped heads. To either side a soldier stood guard, dressed in the full regalia of the Northampton militia, with musket and sword at the ready.

The prisoners were dressed in old canvas shirts and trousers, with wooden clogs to their feet. The scene would have struck fear into the heart of any Boney-loving traitor, were it not for the friendly ease with which victors and vanquished shared their tobacco, and filled the air with sweet smoke.

The people of Peterborough were not so kindly disposed, and the babble of talk around the stall was thick with shouted insult, for there’s many have not come home from the French Wars. And Boneparte still struts his bold tyranny as cock-sure as ever you please.

But the prisoners took no notice of the crowd, they eyed the girls, whistled, waved, made faces and held up their wares to any that lingered. John and Mary pushed to the front of the crowd.

“Look John!”

The table was covered in wonders. There were woven flowers of straw and coloured wood. There were tiny ships of bone, fully rigged with cotton sails. There were carved eagles. There was a likeness of Peterborough Cathedral fashioned from different shaded woods. There were children’s toys: spinning tops, painted soldiers and chickens that pecked the ground when they were tilted forwards. There was a tiny guillotine with a blade that fell and chopped off a man’s head so that it rolled into a basket.

One of the soldiers waved his pipe in the direction of the table and shouted at the crowd:

“All the work of Frenchie prisoners. Roll up and see. Every item for sale.”

Mary pointed to a man and woman made of bone who stood facing each other on a little wooden platform. One of the prisoners picked it up by its handle. He looked at Mary and smiled:

“L’amour!”

Underneath the ground the figures stood upon, a wooden ball hung on two threads. As the prisoner swung it from side to side the little bone man bent forwards at the waist and kissed the woman, then, as the man straightened, the woman bent forward and kissed the man. Backwards and forwards they kissed and kissed again: click clack, click clack.

Mary laughed out loud with delight:

“Oh John, look!”

John took it and tried it himself. Again and again the little marionettes met lip to lip: click clack.

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