Martin tried to deny this but it was no use; he’d said no more than three angry words before Slattery interrupted.
‘Aye, Thady, I believe you’re right. He’s too afeared for his Saxon wife and the child still living.’ He patted at his face as if searching for a bruise. ‘Ah, Christ above, I knew this would occur. You were the best among us once, Martin, honest to God. I should’ve damn well stopped it, and now it’s too bleedin’ late.’
Curtly, Martin told Slattery that he was not his master, nor had he ever been; that he did as he pleased and no attempt to halt his marriage to Amy Knox would have had any chance of success. And furthermore, he said, he was loyal to Ireland, and to Molly Maguire, and would not hear it claimed otherwise.
Slattery wasn’t listening. ‘Your union with that Saxon woman put clear distance between us, and each child you had with her only added to it. And just look at what’s happened now. Your boy is dead, finished by one of the plagues of this hellish Saxon city, and all at once you no longer have the heart for Molly’s toil.’
Martin knew then what was coming. He stayed quiet, crossing his arms, staring up at the blank, boarded windows of the Manticore.
‘You’re doing a deal better with the guns, I s’pose,’ Slattery continued, ‘along wi’ that vicious bitch o’ yours, the sister-in-law. What is it, three pistols now? Who’s got ‘em?’
‘I have,’ said Owen. ‘They’re safe, Pat.’
Slattery nodded, strolling back over to the other Mollys. ‘Here’s how it will be, Mart. You get us the rest o’ the dozen, wi’ bullets and powder and whatever else these Yankee contraptions need. And then we’ll let you go.’
There was a short, significant silence. Martin could feel their grins through the darkness; behind him, Jack cleared his throat, shifting about uneasily.
‘What d’ye mean?’
‘Get us the guns,’ Slattery repeated slowly, ‘and we’re through wi’ you. We don’t need you for the job itself. We don’t bleedin’ want you, chum, if truth be told. Molly Maguire don’t want you. Not for this.’
A week earlier, Martin would have protested this ruling with all his might, and demanded the chance to demonstrate his commitment in various hot-headed ways. Now, though, he thought only of flight, of doing as Amy had begged him to back in the park: of going to Mr Quill and asking him to arrange a transfer to the Colt works in Hartford. Slattery was right, it seemed. He’d lost his heart for their task.
‘You’ve a month, Mart, before the Saxon parliament opens again and Lord John returns to London. After that, if we’ve got what we need, you can take your little Saxon brood off wherever you damn well please.’
With that he led the Mollys back into the Manticore. The tavern door opened, throwing a shaft of warm light across the street, allowing Martin to see the contemptuous glances being cast at him by those filing through it – those he had so recently counted as his brothers. And there she was, Molly Maguire, slipping from the deep shadows around the vinegar yard to go in with them, drifting ghost-like along the tavern wall, quickening her step to reach Pat Slattery’s side. She was cackling to herself as she went, a cruel, rattling sound, unlike anything he had heard from her before; his casting-out seemed to amuse her.
The door closed again, restoring the street’s darkness. Martin stumbled over to the brewery gates, leaning against them, sliding down until he was sitting on the ground. Gingerly, he touched the lump on the back of his head. It had grown to the size of a half-walnut, and was even sorer than before. His headache was getting worse as well, curling slowly around the top of his spine, squeezing the wakefulness out of him; he felt as if he could sleep where he sat, out in the rain. At that moment he was thinking not of Slattery, nor of Molly’s scheme, nor even of his wife and daughter and departed son, but of the work that awaited him in the coming morning. He was expected in Colonel Colt’s engine room at seven o’clock sharp. The new Yankee engineer, Mr Ballou, was a stickler for punctuality, and both he and Mr Quill would expect the usual long day of intelligent labour. How could he, so battered, dazed and exhausted, possibly hope to supply it?
Jack had remained outside, and was standing in the centre of the lane, regarding him uncertainly. ‘Are ye going back in, Mart?’ he asked. ‘To watch the ratters?’
‘I don’t think they’d have me, pal.’
‘I ain’t neither.’ Jack looked off towards the light outside the railway yard. ‘Got to get me to Rosie McGehan’s for ten, so I have.’
‘What, she has you smashing murphies on the Sabbath?’
‘Aye, she’s a tough mistress, that one.’ Jack paused, kicking at a loose cobble. There was something he wanted to say. ‘You are doing a good thing, Mart, whatever Pat might think. You must see to your family. Too much has been lost already.’
‘Aye, Jack,’ Martin replied warily, ‘it surely has.’
Jack was satisfied; he’d spoken his mind. ‘Shall we walk back to the bridge, then?’
Martin nodded. Jack extended a hand, heaving him to his feet, and together they started along the street.
Word reached the engine room shortly after noon – Walter Noone had rooted out some more villains who’d hidden themselves among the workforce. Following some questioning in an empty chamber of the warehouse, their source reported, the watchman was about to expel them from the works. Martin’s first thought upon hearing this was of Caroline. A cold cramp twitching in his stomach, he set down the spare piston ring he’d been cleaning and climbed up onto the workbench beneath the room’s single narrow window, set high into the yard-facing wall.
The moment for the expulsion had been chosen carefully. The yard was full of operatives taking their dinner break with the usual clamour; all fell silent, however, as the front door to the warehouse opened and two men were pushed through it into the sunlight. Both were bleeding from the nose and mouth, their eyes closing fast under the weight of bright, bulging bruises. One of them was sobbing, cradling a shattered hand in the crook of his arm. Noone and a couple of his henchmen came behind, clad in their dark army-style uniforms, shoving the pair towards the main gate. Martin breathed a short, hard sigh of relief. There was no sign of his sister-in-law. She had not been caught, thank God. There was hope; they could still get the guns.
The straight-backed watchman looked over at the engine-room window, seeming to spot him there – and promptly reached out to seize the collars of his prisoners, bringing the little procession to a halt. ‘How ‘bout it then, Mr Quill?’ he shouted, his stony features somehow expressing livid amusement. ‘How ‘bout it, sir?’
Martin realised that the chief engineer had got up onto the table beside him and was peering out through an adjacent pane. He’d been so lost in his fears for Caroline that he hadn’t even noticed.
‘Spies, these two, from the workshop of none other than Robert Adams,’ Noone went on, speaking with mocking clarity. ‘Here to jot down the details of the Colonel’s machines and then wreak as much mischief upon them as they could. So please, Mr Quill – have I your permission to continue? Does their removal from the Colt Company meet with your approval?’
This was a crude reprisal for Quill’s intervention in Martin’s own case, which had obviously left a nick in Noone’s pride. The stocky engineer was scowling, muttering oaths against the cracked, sooty glass of the window. His point made, the watchman slapped each of his captives about the head, prompting them to continue their shambling progress towards Ponsonby Street.
Martin jumped back down to the engine-room floor, sat on his stool and tried to return his attention to the piston ring. Despite his staggering fatigue, he’d lain awake throughout the previous night, turning the situation over in his mind. He’d considered fleeing with his family – going to Mr Quill and requesting an immediate transfer to Hartford, as Amy had begged him to – but soon saw that it would be futile. To leave London now was to make the Molly Maguires his sworn enemies. He honestly did not want this; and besides, he knew only too well what the consequences would be. Th
e Hunger had scattered the Mollys far and wide. They were certainly in America, and in numbers. Were he to make it across the Atlantic, there’d surely be a gang of knife-wielding Tipperary boyos waiting for him on the docks at New York.
The simplest way out of it all, he’d concluded, was to go along with what Slattery had proposed; and at dawn he’d left Crocodile Court determined to double the tally of stolen Colts before the day was over. He’d cornered Caroline at the Bessborough Place gate, demanding to know the source of her mysterious revolvers so that he could lend his hand to their removal. She’d refused to tell him, saying that something was afoot – that Noone had got wind of wrongdoing and had every department of the works under a close watch. There was still little love lost between them; Martin knew that she even blamed him in part for Michael’s death, in fact, as it was due to him that the boy’s short, fragile life had been spent amid the disease-ridden squalor of the Devil’s Acre. He was sure that he’d detected a trace of pity in her, though, somewhere behind the knot of her frown, and this had irritated him enormously. She’d plainly thought that he, veteran of a hundred dangerous adventures, wasn’t fit for a simple piece of burglary. He’d tried again, growing angry, repeating the lie about the debt, yet she would not budge – and now he saw that she’d been entirely in the right. Noone and his men would surely be at their most alert after an incident such as this, making any irregular movement about the works nigh-on impossible. Caroline was showing herself to be quite the thief; she had a clear instinct for it. Martin was honestly not surprised.
Mr Quill clambered down after him, shaking his head. ‘What the devil is it with that fellow, eh, Mart? Why does he have to be such a confounded jackass?’
‘I take it,’ said Mr Ballou from over by the engine, raising his voice over its constant clank and hiss, ‘that this Robert Adams is a rival gun-maker.’
Loren Ballou, ‘Lou’ to every Yankee in the works, was a neat, pale man, bearded and bespectacled, almost professorial in his manner despite his engineer’s corduroys and leather apron. His accent was slightly different from the other Americans, softer somehow; Mr Quill had told Martin that he hailed from Kentucky rather than New York or Connecticut, and had cut his teeth laying the Kentuckian railroad. Now, though, he bore the lofty rank of general overseer, and was said to possess a complete knowledge of the Colt industrial process rivalled only by the Colonel himself. The Yankees certainly deferred to him on all matters. Even Mr Quill, better qualified perhaps on the specific workings of the London steam engine, listened very closely to Lou Ballou and allowed him to work alongside them in the engine room without a whisper of complaint. Their diligence had also increased markedly; drinks in the Spread Eagle had almost become a thing of the past.
Mr Quill leaned against the table, crossing his serpent-covered forearms. ‘Robert Adams, Lou, is an Englishman based on the other side of the city, who sees the Colonel as the very nemesis of his trade. He makes this double-action five-shooter, y’see – a distinctly inferior device, if truth be told, but he hopes that the John Bull government will take it on for patriotic reasons. Things got rather hot between Colt and Adams back in the spring. There were a few rows in the streets hereabouts – nasty business. We did our part, didn’t we, Mart?’
Martin said nothing. His head felt empty; his eyes were burning. He concentrated on the steel ring in his hands, rotating it slowly, looking for imperfections.
Mr Quill chuckled on regardless. ‘Anyways, the Colonel didn’t put up with it for, as I’m sure you can imagine. Noone put the whip-hand to ‘em and they soon backed off.’ He sighed, picking up a spanner from the table. ‘But here they are having another try, and with a rather more sly tactic than beatings and suchlike. I’ll wager they’ve heard about your arrival, Lou, and the great things that we three are bringing about in here. They know that Colt production is ready to soar up to the heavens, leaving them behind in a world of trouble!’
Ballou took this in impassively. He was never particularly impressed by Mr Quill’s efforts to include Martin in their engineering accomplishments. ‘I suppose that fighting off a determined rival will keep Mr Noone happy, at least,’ he mused. ‘It wouldn’t do for the poor fellow to get bored.’ The general overseer had known of Noone before he came to Pimlico. From what Martin could gather, the watchman’s hiring had caused serious division among Colt’s senior staff members back in Hartford. Why he could not discover; it was clear, though, that Ballou had been one of those who’d opposed the appointment. ‘D’you think he’s sent word to Jamie of this revived threat?’
‘Aha, no,’ Mr Quill replied, ‘I think the Colonel’s brother has some pressing personal matters to worry about of late. Besides, simply reaching him has become pretty difficult.’
The two Americans shared a laugh. Stories were going around of how James Colt had disgraced himself with the wife of a military figure he was supposed to be charming on behalf of the company. What exactly he had done was unknown, but it was bad enough to force a rapid retreat to a distant corner of the English countryside. There was a bitter edge to Quill and Ballou’s amusement; like many among the American staff, they were starting to feel that the London factory was a rudderless ship, drifting aimlessly, failing to avail itself of some real opportunities. War with Russia had not arrived, but the word was being printed in every newspaper and journal in letters three inches high on an almost daily basis. This feverish climate, they said, was one in which a gun-maker could thrive. Yet there they sat, stagnating by the Thames, taking only small private orders; their enemies were resurgent, and showing new levels of deviousness; and their supposed captain was nowhere to be seen.
A flat clang made Martin jump and rock back on his stool. The piston ring had slipped from his grasp onto the brick floor. Some time had passed; he realised that he’d fallen asleep, and had been seeing Michael in his dreams, those little legs kicking up in the air – feeling the infant’s pink fingers close so gently around his thumb. Mr Quill and Mr Ballou now stood together before the engine. The general overseer was examining the condenser; the chief engineer, alerted by the sound, was looking over at him. Martin bent down to retrieve the dropped ring, but it seemed to blur before him, blending in with the bricks. His eyes were brimming with tears. Hurriedly, he wiped them away; but more welled up immediately, one escaping the stroke of his sleeve and rolling across his face.
A hand was laid upon his shoulder. Mr Quill had come to his side. ‘We’re stepping out for a minute or two, Lou, me and Mart. Nothing to worry about.’
Ballou glanced around impatiently. ‘But I may need your help, Ben, with the –’
‘Damn it, Lou,’ Quill snapped, ‘I’ll be gone a moment only. You can manage until then, I’m sure.’
Soon afterwards Martin was sitting against the factory wall in the still, dead heat of the afternoon, leaning against his knees and weeping hard, a hot, salty mixture of tears and snot running around his mouth and dripping off his chin. Mr Quill was beside him on the cobbles, one of his tattooed arms wrapped around Martin’s shoulders, puffing stoically on his pipe.
‘The first month is blackest torture, Mart,’ he said. ‘I’ll not lie to you. It’s like madness. After my Jenny was taken – scarlet fever, it was, at the age of three – I lost the winter of forty-two completely. Can’t say where I was or what the hell I did. But when I did finally return home, my wife was gone, bless her, and my house sold on to a taxidermist named Bowley.’ A curl of white smoke wound from the corner of his mouth. ‘That’s what first put me on the steamers, matter o’ fact.’
Taking in a breath, Martin pulled up his shirt front and mopped his streaming face with it. ‘I can’t sleep, Mr Quill. I ain’t had a bleedin’ wink for days.’
The engineer nodded, as if this was to be expected. ‘When was your last square meal?’
Martin couldn’t say. He remembered something about whitebait, but they hadn’t done that in the end, had they? He shook his head. ‘My baby boy died because of me. Because of this bleedin�
�� city, the filthy air, all the – the muck and the bleedin’ dirt. I let him be born here, and by God I let him perish here.’ He was growing restless once again. ‘I’ve got to get us out.’
Mr Quill tightened his embrace. ‘You are not to blame, you hear me? Christ, Mart, if only you knew – I thought the very same things myself, my friend, the very same things, but it just ain’t so. Some souls are too pure for this Earth. Almighty God has to gather ‘em in early.’
Martin’s brow darkened; he shrugged the engineer off. ‘Why does He choose to put them here in the first instance then, Mr Quill? Michael was but seven months old. What the devil does God get from putting us through this? My wife, my poor bleedin’ wife can barely stand, she –’ He stopped. This was unfair of him; he adopted a calmer tone. ‘I’m sorry, I – I don’t know why I…’
Mr Quill, who had coloured slightly, waved his apology away. ‘You’re angry, Mart – I understand, believe me I do.’ He knocked his pipe out against the wall and tucked it in his apron’s front pocket. ‘But look, you must think on this. One day not so far from now we’ll leave this place, you and I, and your wife and little daughter as well, and we’ll go over to America. All we need to do is really make our mark in this blasted factory and I’m certain the Colonel will agree to it. Another year, say – two at the most.’
Martin wiped his stinging eyes. This glorious escape to Connecticut could never come to pass. Even if the Mollys’ plan went off perfectly, his involvement in it was sure to be detected. The safest place for the Rea family would be Ireland – Roscommon, most probably, with all its old miseries.
Quill could see that Martin hadn’t gained any comfort from his words. ‘You’re wondering how the hell we’re going to get anything done in this here pistol works when our manager is hiding away somewhere, and we make guns just so they can be stacked up in the goddamn stock room. Well, Mart, take heart – all of that is about to change. Word arrived this morning. We’ve been instructed to keep it to ourselves, but I can’t see the harm in you knowing.’ He hesitated, casting a quick glance about him. ‘It’s happening at long last. Colonel Colt is coming back to London.’
The Devil's Acre Page 23
