Dark Remains: A Maggie Power Adventure (Maggie Power #1)

Chapter 31 - The Power Papers

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.