No one was there – only the dark stillness of the deserted lumber yard, backed by the distant carnival sounds of the Guy Fawkes procession. Letting out a shivering gasp, Caroline attempted to recover some of the crafty intelligence for which she’d been congratulating herself only ten seconds earlier. She got to her feet, fighting back a wave of nausea, and tried to think things through. It seemed very unlikely that a lumber yard employee had stumbled across the pistol. The hiding place was too good. No, she’d been seen. Had a passer-by spotted her pushing back that fence-slat, or someone looking out of a window perhaps, and then come over to investigate after she’d left? Caroline couldn’t believe this. She’d made absolutely sure that there hadn’t been a soul around, every time she’d crept in there.
There was but one answer. She’d been tracked by a true expert, all the way from the pistol works. Only one person could possibly have done this – the Colonel’s watchman, Walter Noone.
Barely three minutes later, Caroline was on St Anne’s Street, running for the Holy Lamb. The stolen Navy was no longer under her shawl; she’d made a quick diversion on the boundaries of the Acre to drop it into a cesspit, where it had vanished with a soft, sucking plop. Her thoughts were of getting word to Martin; of collecting Amy and Katie and fleeing the city. The debt would have to remain unpaid. They had to run away, that instant, as far as they could. Amid this frantic worry came the first sharp pricks of resentment. She’d done all this reckless thievery for them – they’d better make sure she escaped Colonel Colt’s vengeance.
The streets of the Acre were braced for a storm. All the women apart from a few desperate whores had sought refuge indoors, and the only street sellers doing any business were those peddling strong drink. Gangs of men and boys were gathering on corners, smoking pipes and cheroots, listening closely to the sounds of the procession advancing along Millbank Street, now just a few roads over. The enemy was drawing near; a good number of them hefted sticks or metal bars in their hands, ready for battle. A black-robed priest was wandering among them, appealing in an educated English voice for calm, for Christian forbearance in the face of heretical provocation. Caroline heard an Irishman advise him to get well out of sight before the Proddies arrived.
As she came to the junction with Old Pye Street, a large labourer tried to step in her path, demanding that she prove her allegiance to Rome or face the consequences. She weaved around him without answering. A hand hooked in her elbow, yanking her back; and for a moment she thought that she might face a similar ordeal to that of the two Irish girls on the Vauxhall Bridge Road, only inflicted by Catholics rather than Protestants.
‘Stop that, ye bleedin’ eejit!’ said someone else. ‘I seen her before – she’s wi’ Pat Slattery!’
The hand withdrew immediately; there was even a muttered apology. Caroline hurried onwards.
Like many of the Acre’s shops and inns, the Holy Lamb was locked up against the night, its windows boarded over. Light shone between the planks, though; Caroline rushed to the stone stoop, feeling as if she were pursued by slavering hounds, ready to pound on the door with her fist and demand admittance. She was checked, however, by a truly brutal burst of shouting from inside.
It was Slattery. ‘Damn them all to hell!’ he yelled. ‘God help me, I will go out there and I will shoot them down! I swear it on Molly’s honour, on the honour of all bleedin’ Ireland!’
There was the sound of chairs being knocked over as men grappled with one another. Caroline glanced behind her; the tumbledown alleyway was empty but for a few shambling drunks, their shoulders hunched in the cold.
‘You’ll do no such thing!’ This was Martin. ‘We’ve got to stay put!’
‘If they make to attack Catholic Irish, I bleedin’ will, I tell you!’
‘Think for a moment, Pat. If you fire off a Colt revolver in the Acre tonight, the Yankees’ll be sure to hear of it afore the morrow. They’ll seal up their factory tighter than the bleedin’ quod. Caro won’t be able to lift any more guns. And then where will Molly’s scheme be, eh?’
Caroline’s brow furrowed. What was this – who was Molly, and what did the stolen guns have to do with her? In fact, why did the Irishmen still have the Colts at all? Why had they not already passed them on to their creditor? She moved closer to the window.
‘What in blazes would you know about Molly’s scheme, Martin Rea?’ Slattery replied with biting scorn. ‘It ain’t your concern no longer. You just need to make sure we get our bleedin’ guns.’
This brought forth a growl of agreement from the rest of those gathered in the Lamb. Martin had been beaten down. Caroline was taken aback by the contempt in their voices. Some kind of quarrel had plainly taken place – a serious one.
‘We’ve waited too long now,’ Slattery continued. ‘It was going so damn well, and now nothing. What’s the reason for this delay? Why has that Saxon bitch grown so bleedin’ slow?’
‘Trouble at the works,’ Martin replied. ‘Spies and so forth. She’ll come through. You can’t expect her to –’
‘I saw him t’other day, ye know,’ Slattery interrupted, his anger reaching a new ferocity. ‘I bleedin’ well saw him, Lord John Russell, the shrivelled little cunt, hobbling into that stinking Parliament like a little hunchback. I saw the man that passed a death sentence on Catholic Ireland and thought nothing of it at all. He has to die, my brothers. He has to die, and soon. We’ll get our guns, our holy dozen, and we’ll end him on the steps of that Parliament o’ theirs. For our lost ones, for Molly Maguire, we’ll bleedin’ well end him.’
Caroline sat down on the stoop, her head falling into her hands, staring disbelievingly at the ground. What a miserable fool she was. She’d swallowed that lying story about the debt almost without question. Those Irishmen in there were planning a bloody murder, and someone important from the sound of it. This was an entirely different order of wrongdoing. If she was captured and connected with them, identified as someone who’d aided them, she could go to the gallows. She didn’t give any consideration to their motives. The crazed talk of Catholic Ireland, their ‘lost ones’, and this woman Molly Maguire meant nothing to her. All that mattered now was finding her sister and niece and making good their escape before Walter Noone arrived with the police.
Without Martin, however, it was impossible. Shortly after Michael’s death he’d taken his wife and daughter out of Crocodile Court in order to escape an official quarantine imposed on account of the cholera. Caroline had welcomed this at first, but soon came to realise that he did not plan to settle them anywhere else. They went from room to room, all over London, staying nowhere for more than a couple of weeks. The sisters would only see each other when Amy called at Caroline’s boarding house. She’d thought this strange, perhaps another manifestation of Martin’s grief – although now she understood that it was rather the behaviour of a man preparing to make a quick, clean break. Right then, at any rate, she had not the faintest idea where Amy and Katie might be.
A deadening numbness began to spread through her. In a single dreadful hour she’d lost everything. Those she’d been in league with had revealed themselves to be villains of the most deceitful kind, plotting murder with guns she’d got for them – and one of their number stood between her and all that remained of her family. She was surely being hunted by Colonel Colt’s men, and could never again return to her home or her place of employment without falling into their hands. Her few possessions, including her clothes and spare pair of boots, were gone for good. She had no money, and no friends who she could trust not to fetch the police on her when they learnt what she’d been doing.
An unexpected sob surged up Caroline’s throat, bursting loudly through her lips like a sneeze. There was movement inside the Lamb, and a moment later a bolt drew back. She took to her heels at once, running as fast as she could, making it to the end of the alley before the door opened. A man shouted her name, Jack Coffee it sounded like, begging her to stop. She didn’t care; lifting the front of her skirts, sh
e headed off into the Acre.
There was one last person she could try.
Keeping to the shadows of Bessborough Place, Caroline made a hasty survey of the Colt works. It felt odd to look upon the deserted yard, a place so familiar to her, that she would surely never set foot in again. The factory still seemed to be running, despite the lack of operatives. Lights were burning in the engine room and some of the upper windows. This was a good sign; the person she sought might well be inside, attending to the Colonel. Questions continued to itch away at her, however, like so many angry flea bites. What if he wasn’t in there? What if she waited and waited for nothing? Or if he left with Colt, on his way to some fancy gathering – would she then give chase, and pursue them into Belgravia or Mayfair, trailing behind that glaring yellow carriage in the stupid hope of somehow catching the secretary’s eye?
Caroline had no answers. Her situation had the simplicity of absolute desperation. The choice was this or a leap from the nearest bridge. She made for Ponsonby Street, intending to hide herself among the mismatched huts and outbuildings that were scattered along the wharf, from where she’d be able to keep a close watch on the factory door.
Mr Lowry was standing opposite the Spread Eagle, just thirty yards down the riverbank. She stopped dead, dazed for a moment by her good fortune. It looked as if he’d been there for some time, maintaining a vigil outside the tavern, and was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice her approach. She took his coat cuff between thumb and forefinger and gave it a tug.
He turned with alarming abruptness, lifting a hand as if to shove her away. Sight of her stopped him at once. ‘Miss Knox, thank God!’ he exclaimed. ‘You are in trouble, I fear – terrible trouble!’
Glancing around them, Mr Lowry steered Caroline away from the merry windows of the Spread Eagle, down the side of a wooden rope-shed. ‘I am certain that Walter Noone is after your brother-in-law,’ he said urgently. ‘He will surely be coming for you as well before very long.’
There was a new disquiet in the secretary; his light-hearted charm was quite gone, as if fine varnish had been stripped away to expose the raw wood beneath. She’d been preparing a full confession, and was ready to tell him about the guns in the cellar, the Irishmen’s murderous plot – how she’d been lied to, manipulated, and made to give him up. This had to happen, she’d thought, if she was to have a chance of regaining his trust.
Mr Lowry wouldn’t hear it, though, cutting in before she’d said half a dozen words. ‘There’s simply no time for this. We have to get you away from here as quickly as possible, or you will be caught.’
Caroline leaned back heavily against the side of the shed, realising all of a sudden how very tired she was. ‘Do you have any notion of what I’ve done, Mr Lowry?’
His eyes narrowed slightly. ‘I saw you in the Westminster rookery with those Irishmen. I’d say you were stealing.’
She stared at him. He’d known since the summer – for months. ‘Why – why didn’t you tell anyone, then? Any of the Yankees?’
‘It was plain to me that you were involved against your will.’ Mr Lowry looked away from her, a little embarrassed. ‘I – I suppose I wanted to find a way to untangle you from Rea and his accomplices – to rescue you before Noone found out. But I was too slow, too hesitant. And now it’s too late.’ He sighed ruefully. ‘I’ve been trying to get away from the Colonel all day to deliver a warning to you. I considered going to your lodgings at Millbank, but it seemed too likely that Noone would have someone posted there. Waiting outside this inn was all I could think to do, in the slight hope that you still visited it. And here you are, thank the Lord.’
A blush rose in Caroline’s cheeks as she listened to this; she felt herself smiling even as new tears stung her eyes. This man alone had placed her before everything else, before his own concerns even, despite the cruel treatment he had received from her – and for which he still had yet to receive a proper explanation. Amid all the trickery and treachery, it seemed that she had stumbled undeservedly across a true friend.
‘Oh, they lied to me, Mr Lowry,’ she said, starting to weep, ‘how they lied to me. They used my sister against me, and her children…’
‘Miss Knox, I promise that I will hear all of this later, gladly, but we must leave. If you are willing, I propose that you come back to my rooms in Holborn.’ He hesitated. ‘I would never normally suggest such a thing, of course, but I don’t believe that Noone would think to look for you there. My building is a busy one, and large – no one will pay you any mind. And first thing in the morning I will withdraw a sum of money from my bank, enough to take you from this city and set you up elsewhere.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re being very good to me, Mr Lowry, but I can’t possibly think of leaving London without my sister and her daughter. They are caught up in this too. I don’t know where they might be. I must find them and take them with me.’
The secretary consulted his watch in the light from the Spread Eagle’s windows. ‘Very well, Miss Knox, but we must leave now. The last eastbound boat will be docking shortly. We will locate them tomorrow, I promise you, but we must go.’
He held out a hand and together they went back out onto Ponsonby Street, hurrying along the riverside road to Pimlico Pier. Caroline heard the clanging of a bell out on the water, and the thrashing of paddle-wheels; a small passenger steamer was pulling in, sounding its bell, two blue signal lights blazing and smoking upon its prow. The gates opened and a handful of passengers walked across the raised wooden platform to the boat’s gangplank. Mr Lowry bought their tickets at the booth; she kept herself out of sight as best she could.
They stood in the centre of the vessel, next to the chugging chimney block. Gratefully, Caroline closed her eyes. The steamer rocked beneath her feet as it nosed back out into the main current of the river, and a bank of freezing winter wind swept across the deck. Soon afterwards the sounds of the boat and the curt exchanges of its sailors gained a dull, metallic echo; they were passing beneath the iron arches of Vauxhall Bridge, leaving the Colt works behind them as they headed steadily downriver. For now, at least, she was safe. She tightened her grip on Mr Lowry’s hand, feeling the warmth of his palm through his calfskin glove. He turned slightly, protecting her from the wind; she laid her face softly against his upper arm, her tears soaking into the sleeve of his coat.
8
Martin and Jack returned to the Lamb. Slattery and the others were on the stoop, smoking their pipes. Their numbers had grown, Slattery having gathered in a couple of new recruits from the huge reserve of aggrieved Irishmen living in the Acre. Martin hadn’t learnt their names and didn’t care to. He knew very well that they’d been taken on to replace him.
‘Well?’ Slattery demanded as they approached. ‘Who was it?’
‘Me sister-in-law, I think,’ Martin replied. ‘Hard to see, though. She was gone by the time we reached the alley’s end. We hunted about a bit, but there’s just too many out tonight.’
‘It were Caro,’ asserted Jack, ‘for certain. Saw her with me own eyes, so I did.’
‘Oh, you saw her, did you, Jack Coffee,’ Slattery sneered, ‘you who makes his pennies smashing bleedin’ murphies against his bonce all evening long! Was it the Virgin Mary Herself came down from Heaven and pointed the girl out to you, Jack? Or just a couple o’ the bleedin’ angels?’
Jack’s performances at Rosie McGehan’s theatre had become a sore point between the Mollys. Several of them, Slattery included, had recently got six months’ navvy work on the Parliament site, as part of a push to finish off the great entrance tower at the southern end. Slattery was well pleased by this, believing that it would allow them to get familiar with both the layout of the building and the details of Lord John’s routine – and thus deduce the best time and place to strike at him. Toiling away in the cold rain to run up the palace of their tyrants was a price worth paying, in Slattery’s view, for such knowledge. He wanted to get as many of them on the site as possible;
but Jack, wedded to the boards it seemed, had so far resisted, earning him frequent jibes and gestures of contempt.
‘She’ll have heard about the plan for Russell,’ Martin said through the laughter. ‘This could prove a problem, Pat.’
‘I don’t for the life o’ me see why.’
‘She’ll stop helping us. She was doing it for Amy. She won’t want any part of the scheme for Lord John.’
Slattery wasn’t worried. ‘Ah, the Saxon bitch is ours, Martin, and for as long as we bleedin’ want her. What she’s done already would damn her in the eyes o’ the law, and she knows it. And if she does try to buck the bridle, well, we’ll just have to think up a way to hush her back down.’
There was more laughter from the gang standing around him. Martin understood his meaning clearly enough. If Caroline had stolen from Colt to save Amy from an imaginary threat, she could surely be made to keep at it to save her from a real one – one that Pat Slattery would have no qualms about supplying.
‘If yous so much as think about hurting me family,’ he stated simply, ‘I’ll knock yous stone bleedin’ dead.’
This only increased their mirth. ‘Would you now?’ Slattery hooted. ‘Would you indeed? Well, it’s good to know that there are still some things that put some blood in your pizzle, Martin! Shame that Molly’s justice ain’t bleedin’ one of them, eh?’
Martin moved towards him. ‘I mean it.’
Slattery took a drag on his pipe, squinting nastily in the dark lane. ‘How can you turn away from your people, Martin Rea? How the devil is it done?’ He blew out his smoke. ‘I lost less than you in the Hunger, for certain I did, but I would sooner cut off me bleedin’ hand than lie down in the manner that you have.’
This exchange would have ended with them fighting in the mud had a great cheer, hundreds upon hundreds of voices, not rolled across the rookery from the direction of Parliament, rattling windows with its tremendous volume. It was the type of rousing shout usually stirred up by some singular public spectacle – the appearance of a monarch or a murderer’s final drop from the Newgate scaffold.
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