The Devil's Acre (30 page)

Sam was caught in the cloud of powder-smoke, and a mighty sneeze ripped through him, nearly doubling him over. As he recovered, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief, he heard a visitor being announced – Lord John Russell, no less, another senior member of Lord Aberdeen’s cabinet. Sam had courted this fellow in the past, back when he’d been prime minister, yet his advances had met with complete indifference. Russell’s current position – Leader of the House – was a useless one as far as Sam was concerned, and he resolved to leave. He’d had his fill of these John Bull politicians for one night, quite frankly, and desired only the peace and solitude of his rooms.

Palmerston passed the smoking revolver to a lackey, proclaiming the experience great fun. Rubbing his hands together, he turned to meet his latest caller. Russell had been brought straight through from the hall and was still in top hat and greatcoat. His face was fine-boned, aristocratic, almost feminine; Palmerston looked like a positive brute beside him, which was no mean feat. He, too, was old and strikingly small, but wizened rather than bandy, and brooding where his colleague was brash. It emerged that he’d come straight from Parliament, and was there to discuss what was described only as ‘reform’. Looking to the revolver, he said that he’d heard the gunfire out on Carlton Gardens, and had simply assumed that Palmerston had taken to using firearms on his beleaguered servants – ‘as it is surely the next natural step’.

The Home Secretary introduced Sam with great fanfare, going on to provide an enthused, rose-hued description of an afternoon-long discussion of production methods and pricing that had culminated in a little practical demonstration.

‘All fascinating,
fascinating
stuff, Russell,’ he boomed. ‘The shape of the future, I tell you.’

Russell nodded, feigning a casual interest, plainly suspicious. These two were seasoned political operators and had clearly been sparring against one another for years. Deciding to leave them to it, Sam bade them both a curt goodnight, saying that the next day was set to be a damnably busy one. Palmerston didn’t try to convince him to stay longer, but his farewell was warm; somewhat warmer, in fact, than their
inconclusive meeting seemed to warrant. Sam strode back through the house in a state of whiskey-blasted irascibility, feeling as if he’d just been played for a fool, paraded like a chieftain from a savage land.

Footsteps trotted up behind him, and a hand was laid on his forearm on its backward swing. It was Street. ‘A word, Colonel,’ he said quickly.

Sam didn’t stop. ‘My time is
valuable,
Mr Street – I have told you that before, haven’t I? What the devil was all that about? Kansas?
Slavery,
for God’s sake? I don’t like being manipulated. I won’t damn well stand for it. There are plenty of other nations that want my arms. Why, the Emperor of France is –’
Steady now, Samuel,
warned a cool, sober voice from somewhere inside him;
watch your goddamn tongue.
‘The simple truth of it is that I don’t have the leisure to stand about and be gulled by old Jeremy Diddler in there, with his curious hair and his ivory teeth and his miserable goddamn condescension! And so good night to you, Mr Street!’

Reaching the front door some seconds before the startled footman, Sam was forced to wait while his hat was fetched. Street seized the opportunity, delivering his argument with the speed and precision of a master chef slicing up an onion.

‘He is using you, yes, but generous recompense will come. He was showing you – and Lord Russell there – that he is your
friend.
Lord Palmerston will not be in the Home Office forever, Colonel. He has greater things in mind. The government is desperately weak, and all this prevarication and delay over Russia is only making it look weaker. Our political opponents are too scattered and irresolute to mount any kind of challenge. It is a good time for a strong figure – a popular figure, who has shown nerve and decisiveness from the start.’ The hat arrived; Street managed to meet Sam’s eye as he pulled it on. ‘And Colonel, it is an exceedingly good time to have such a figure as your friend.’

Sam scowled and stepped outside. ‘We’ll see about
that,
Mr Street, won’t we,’ he said, and raised his arm to summon to his coachman.

The Exchequer on Bridge Street was the sort of inexpensive chop-house you could be done with in less than a quarter-hour. It was heaving with parliamentary types, aides, clerks and newspapermen for the most part. Circular tables were arranged across the main room like lilies on a pond, the parties dining upon them seated so closely together that they seemed in many places to overlap. Edward immediately felt rather out of his element, but was glad of the Exchequer’s warmth after the chill fog that drifted about New Palace Yard. He removed his gloves and peered around in the low gaslight; spotting Saul Graff’s stooped shoulders away in a corner booth, he signalled his intentions to the head waiter and started to edge over to his friend.

One word hung above the tables, shaping itself from the diners’ cigar smoke in letters three feet high:
Sinope.
An Ottoman harbour on the Black Sea, it had been the site of the first major clash between Russia and Turkey, reported in the British press that morning. A Turkish flotilla carrying reinforcements and supplies had been sheltering there when a surprise attack was launched by a Russian squadron sailing out from Sebastopol. The Turkish ships had been blown to timber in under an hour, almost without resistance, and fires had spread to the shore; thousands of sailors and townspeople were believed to have perished. The mood in the Exchequer was one of condemnation, of outrage at a dastardly attack by the Tsar’s men – and anticipation of
British action, especially as a fleet under Admiral Dundas was ready and waiting at Constantinople.

Opposite Graff sat the Honourable Simon Bannan, his friend’s employer, hunched over a spread of newspapers with a monocle jammed in his right eye and a black beer bottle at his elbow. The radical MP was a solid block of a man with a short-cropped grey beard and an air of common sense affronted. The member for Limerick and a minor official on the Board of Trade, he’d been convinced to join Aberdeen’s coalition by Sir William Molesworth, leader of the radicals aligned to the Prime Minister, on the promise of wide-ranging political reform. Although proudly Irish, Bannan took care to distance himself from the outspoken nationalism of the Commons’ so-called ‘Irish Brigade’. He took no open stance on the Home Rule question and seldom made an issue of his religion, even sitting stoically through Lord John Russell’s frequent anti-Catholic statements in the House.

‘The problem with radicals,’ Graff had once said, ‘and Irish radicals in particular, is that they are an army of captains. Any sense of a unified cause is soon sacrificed to personal glory. But not with Mr Bannan – he’s prepared to put every other matter aside to bring about the betterment of the system at large. Dash it all, he even had no qualms about employing
me,
an Israelite not five years from his baptismal font, as his confidential aide.’

Edward sat himself next to Saul, who introduced him to Mr Bannan. The Honourable Member didn’t so much as look up from his papers.

‘They are calling it a massacre,’ he declared in a clipped, educated brogue. ‘Two nations are at war. Their navies fight a battle, one wins a decisive victory over the other – and they call it a massacre. People
die in war.
Did they honestly not realise that this was the case when they were calling for it so enthusiastically?’

‘An easy enough thing to overlook, I suppose,’ murmured Saul.

‘It’s all too clear what will happen now, Mr Graff. Pam and his supporters will call the affair a stain on British honour
or some other canting nonsense – urge that Dundas steam into the Black Sea straight away to protect poor Turkey from further attack. They have a sanguinary incident to cite, and they won’t stop citing it. You just watch.’ Bannan sighed, turning the page. His brow twitched in Edward’s direction. ‘So you are the Colt fellow. Mr Graff tells me that you have interesting news concerning your master.’

‘Indeed I have, sir.’ Edward took off his hat. ‘Last week the Colonel was received at Carlton Gardens. He was granted a lengthy personal audience with the Home Secretary. Lawrence Street was present also, and there was talk of business – well, they were dancing around it, at any rate. Some manner of understanding is certainly in place.’

This got Bannan’s attention. He shifted back on his bench, taking out his monocle, frowning in thought.

Saul’s expression was quizzical. ‘Seems a damned strange connection for Pam to be making at this point, don’t it? I mean, he can certainly be of great help to Colt, but what’s in it for him?’

‘Oh, it’s an arrangement of mutual benefit,’ Bannan said. ‘We can be quite sure of
that.
It is subtle, a small part of a larger plan – an eye-catching component of Lord Palmerston’s continued machinations.’ He nodded out at the customers of the Exchequer. ‘Word will go around that the two of them have spoken, that they are on friendly terms. Pam’ll make sure it seeps out somehow. It will add to the public’s impression that he is the only one in the cabinet thinking about what the British Army will need if we go to war. The contrast between him and the Prime Minister will seem greater than ever. Pam is scoping out resources, they will say – trying to find ways to give our brave soldiers an edge over the Russian Bear.’

‘But why on earth is Lord Palmerston so set on waging war?’ Edward asked.

The Honourable Member began to fold away his newspapers. ‘It plays well in the street, Mr Lowry – Christ Almighty, in this place too. Stout-hearted Britons all, rallying behind plucky Pam! Public opinion has a rare power, y’see, and our noble lord has become a dab hand at harnessing it.
This business at Sinope will have him positively jumping with joy – even as he prepares to deliver his denunciation and yet another call to arms.’

There was bitterness in his voice. Edward had heard of Bannan’s own clashes with Palmerston in the House – his efforts to argue against war on economic grounds, in terms of the disruption to trade. Pam had rebuffed this scornfully, of course, with yet more discoursing on the obligations of British honour.

‘He wishes to make the Aberdeen ministry, a government
he
serves in, look as ridiculous and ineffectual as he can. They call for reform, for an extension of the franchise backed by every other member of the cabinet – and Lord Palmerston alone blocks it. They want negotiation with Russia, and a peaceful end to the ructions in the East – and he calls at every opportunity for belligerent acts that will surely carry us to war.’

‘Pam seeks the fall of the government, Edward,’ Saul chimed in. ‘He makes himself a faulty support, then deliberately gives the edifice a shake. He wants Aberdeen to undergo a humiliating collapse.’

‘His ultimate aim,’ Bannan continued, ‘is to make himself the only option for Prime Minister. He wants the Queen, who has never tried to disguise her deep dislike for him, to be forced to ask that he form a government. He’s engineering things so that she will have no other choice. That’s where all this is heading, and it’s quite typical of the man that he sees a war as a price worth paying to bring it about. He knows that a major conflict would soon finish off Aberdeen, and that there would be a great call for Pam, the mighty warrior-bulldog, to replace him.’

Bannan rubbed his eyes, squeezing thumb and forefinger in towards the bridge of his nose; Saul had told Edward that they were having a frantically busy week, with debates and divisions running on until three or four in the morning.

‘To Lord Palmerston, y’see, as a childless aristocrat, war is an entirely abstract exercise. What difference to him if armies are sent to die in the East? Who does he know who might feasibly have to march before the Russian guns?’
The politician stared at his beer bottle. ‘Whereas I have a son in the 18th Royal Irish, a captain. He will certainly go to war should Pam’s play for the top office take us that far. For me, for the boy’s mother and his wife, the prospect is very real.’ He picked up the bottle and swigged straight from the neck.

‘My cousin is a subaltern in the 44th East Essex,’ Edward volunteered, reeling a little from all this worrying analysis. ‘He too looks likely to be sent.’

A waiter arrived at the table with two plates of food – mutton chops with a slice of bread and a mound of steaming greens. Saul asked Edward if he would order; he declined, saying that he could not stay long. Bannan, meanwhile, was considering Colt’s London secretary like a magistrate trying to get the measure of a suspect in the dock. Once the waiter had departed, he leaned forward to ask a question.

‘Why exactly have you come to me, Mr Lowry? Why are you telling me about your employer’s affairs?’

‘Mr Graff is an old friend, sir. I owe him my position at Colt. We had an arrangement that I would inform him of the Colonel’s activities in relation to the government – so that I could properly understand them myself, as much as anything.’

‘And are you still comfortable with your position at this gun company now that the storm of war is drifting over us – and your employer is on such good terms with the minister doing everything he can to ensure that it breaks?’

Edward hesitated. ‘It is business only,’ he replied, reaching for the standard answer. ‘Someone must supply arms, and the Colonel’s are the best to be had.’

Bannan was unconvinced. ‘You believe that, do you? All deliberation stops there?’

The secretary looked out into the busy chop-house, thinking of the doubts he had accrued over the past months; of Arthur preparing to go to war and the dreadful anxieties this had provoked within his family; of the serving girl’s bloody slippers and the naked terror in her eyes; of the Navy revolver beneath his bed, hidden away like a black secret. It was difficult to answer with any conviction, so he did not try.

The Honourable Member took hold of his knife and fork and started sawing at his meat with sudden appetite. ‘Mr Lowry, you must be aware that by coming to me you are effectively turning traitor. In my opposition to Lord Palmerston I might well use what you’ve told me about his preferential treatment of your Colonel – over, say, our own British gun-makers – to come at him. Colt might even end up losing the government custom he desires so much.’ Bannan chewed and swallowed, then looked over at him. ‘That factory of his could be forced to close. Mr Graff here might be obliged to find you a new position.’

‘I understand this, Mr Bannan.’

Edward found that he could contemplate his act of betrayal with absolute equanimity. Besides, he didn’t think it likely that the factory would shut down – the Colonel would never allow himself to be beaten with such ease. His hope was rather that any efforts made by Mr Bannan to investigate Colt’s understanding with Lord Palmerston would create a valuable diversion. It might encourage further assaults from the likes of Adams, who would surely be alarmed by the connection between his American rival and the Home Secretary; it would certainly require Noone to make the safeguarding of the works his priority, ahead of his ongoing hunt for Caroline Knox, thus buying her some more time to locate her sister and make her escape from London.

He stood, putting on his hat, nodding to Saul as he prepared to leave. ‘A good evening to you, sir,’ he said to Bannan. ‘You will hear from me again.’

Caroline left the crowd sheltering beneath the pediment of St Martin’s and hurried down the steps towards him. They met on the pavement and without exchanging so much as a glance headed away from the tangled traffic of Trafalgar Square towards the Strand. She wore the clothes he’d bought for her a couple of weeks previously: smart yet plain, calculated to make her seem like a governess or a respectable young wife. Together they were utterly unexceptional, and they passed through the rainy streets without drawing any notice. She curled her hand around his upper arm, stroking
the inside softly with her thumb. This small intimacy made him catch his breath; a foolish smile sprang onto his face and would not be removed.

The long, straight Strand was sunk in a smothering fog that reduced the light of its gas-lamps to a feeble glimmer. Vehicles and other pedestrians, moving slowly enough, seemed to charge from the murk; they stayed close to the shop windows, following the bright row of mullions and plate-glass as if it marked out the only pathway carved across a barren moor. Many of these windows were decorated for Christmas, displaying colourful placards conveying messages of festive cheer, garlands of holly, great pyramids of nuts or oranges and model nativity scenes. Walking past them on that wet winter’s evening, Edward felt happier than he’d thought possible. The situation was absolutely insane, of course, crack-brained beyond belief. He was harbouring a criminal, someone who had stolen from his employer, the same employer he’d just betrayed all over again with Mr Bannan. There were people after her, dangerous men indeed. He was risking everything – his prospects, his liberty, even his safety. Yet how could any of this concern him?
She
was on his arm, Caroline Knox, pulling herself as close to him as she could. They would manage somehow.

Then she said, ‘Amy’s still here.’

Edward glanced down at her, his foolish smile fading; the silhouette of a wooden Gabriel was reflected in her wide, excited eyes. ‘Is that so?’

Caroline nodded. ‘I found someone who thinks they saw her up at the apple market, day before yesterday. She’s still here, Edward, in London – and with Katie too.’

He didn’t know how to react to this news. It was deeply pleasing to see her so hopeful, and he was glad that she might be reunited with the sister and niece for whom she plainly cared so much. Several weeks of searching had yielded nothing; both of them had started to think that it was futile, that Amy had left the city, never to be seen again. But this happiness was paired with a dull panic, a rising cramp in his chest and throat as something from which he had been deliberately averting his gaze was dragged unavoidably before him.
If she finds them, he thought, they will flee London together. She will leave me.

Back at his rooms on that first night, they’d shivered together in his dark, cluttered parlour, sharing a tea-cup of brandy as he tried to coax the fire to life. Sitting cross-legged on the hearth, Edward had watched the warmth break slowly across her tear-tracked skin. She’d sighed after her first sip of liquor, a sound full of gratitude and relief; and he’d felt a powerful urge to touch her face, to lay his fingers upon those two even moles on her cheek. He’d forced his attention back to the struggling fire. Only a low scoundrel would seek to take advantage of this circumstance. He was no such person.