The Devil's Acre (36 page)

Noone positioned himself over the poor fellow, drawing back a fist. There was a strange tenderness to his manner, like that of a knacker preparing to deliver the death-blow to a horse lying mortally wounded in the street. He planted a single, swift punch on the side of his prisoner’s forehead, slamming him to the floor. Edward flinched, almost losing hold of his notebook.

The watchman glanced at Colt. ‘The numbskull’s been coming out with this nonsense all night,’ he explained. ‘Molly this and Molly that. I reckon it’s some kind of paddy cult – hence the get-up.’

The Colonel wasn’t interested. ‘You’ve failed me here, Mr Noone, letting these bastards hurt me like this. I don’t know what kind of a game you’re playing out there in the rookery, but it’s been distracting you from your rightful duties. Didn’t you know something like this was coming? Lord Almighty, man, what the devil do I pay you for?’

Noone straightened up. His face was impassive – unrepentant. ‘My thinking was that they were coming to steal guns. They wrong-footed me, Colonel, I’ll confess it. Me and my boys were over in the warehouse. We came over quick as we could, but like I said, these motherfuckers weren’t wasting no time. The mischief was done afore we could even push back the factory door.’

For all its candour, this account left Colt distinctly unimpressed. He fell to considering the mess of frantic footprints still smeared across the sooty floor. ‘By thunder,’ he said at last, ‘this couldn’t have happened at a worse moment. It’ll
surely take some superfine bluster to block this hole. How long to fix it, Mr Quill, would you say?’

The engineer was examining the boiler. ‘A week,’ he mumbled, his voice reverberating inside the split copper cylinder, ‘if I can get the parts.’

‘Too long,’ Colt stated. ‘Y’hear me? That’s just
too goddamn long.’
He took out a letter from inside his fawn travelling jacket – the same one he’d been reading with such interest in the carriage – and brandished it at his employees like an arrest warrant. ‘This here’s a request from a big bravo of the London press, one of the great pens of this country. He wants to come and take a tour the day after tomorrow. This could be a prime spot of ballyhoo and I ain’t going to tell him that it can’t be done.’ The Colonel put a hand to his brow for a second. ‘All right then. We ain’t finished yet. You get a new boiler in, Mr Quill. That’s your first job right there. Spare no expense. Get it so the pistons move and it looks like everything is well. We’ll see if we can’t work this one through. Is Ballou still sick?’

‘He made it in a few days back, Colonel,’ Quill informed him. ‘We ain’t seen him since, though.’

Colt cursed, stuffing the letter into an outside pocket. A small part poked out; Edward squinted at it, wondering who this ‘great pen’ could possibly be. The handwriting was certainly elaborate, and the missive was several pages long – rather longer than one might expect for a simple request for a visit. The Colonel’s latest admirer was evidently someone with a fondness for composition.

Noone was giving his employer a hard, dead-eyed stare. ‘This ain’t my fault,’ he said slowly. ‘You give me these tasks, finding your missing guns and the like, and then you tie my hands so I can barely do a goddamn thing. You take my –’

‘Here’s what I need from you, Mr Noone,’ Colt interrupted. ‘I need a
safe goddamn gun works.
You hear me? Everything else –
everything else
– is second to that.’

The Colonel started back towards the forging shop, ordering the insensible prisoner be taken to the police and handed over as a thief and vandal. Noone began to protest but Colt cut him off.

‘You take him to the police this instant and you keep it quiet. The less people know about this the better. Discretion and safety, Mr Noone – those are your only concerns from now on.’ The gun-maker strode from the engine room, rolling his shoulders as if trying to shake off his disgust with the whole affair. ‘Up to the office, Mr Lowry,’ he snarled as he passed. ‘We got some letters to write.’

Caroline was sitting close to the fire, still in her bonnet and shawl, drying them before the flames. Rain was falling in the darkness outside; she’d clearly arrived back in Edward’s rooms minutes before he had. He removed his hat and coat and walked over to her chair. She rose into his arms, kissed him softly, and laid her cold, smooth cheek against his. For several minutes they stood together, not moving, listening to the rain and the sounds of traffic in the street below. I shall remember this moment always, he told himself; yet even then she seemed to be slipping from him somehow, like a length of fine silk running away through his embrace, his efforts to hold onto it merely hastening its departure.

‘The Irishmen have acted,’ he said.

They sat down and he told her everything that had happened. She listened with calm acceptance, showing emotion only when he described the man who had been caught.

‘Jack,’ she murmured sadly. ‘Oh, why’d it have to be him?’

Edward had some idea of what Caroline was doing out in the city. She’d told him about her conversation with Amy in Newgate market, and had revealed that she’d since come close to discovering the location of the Irish gang’s den. He’d asked her what she intended to do if she found it. She’d grown vague, evasive even, saying that she’d watch them all for a while, learning their habits so that she could pick the best time to pull Amy and the child to safety. Edward had pleaded with her to reconsider. She wouldn’t, of course, and rejected any offers of assistance that he made. His suggestion that the police might be alerted anonymously had been met with utter horror – the certain result of this, she’d
claimed, would be both parents sent to gaol and their daughter locked up in a prison nursery or consigned to the workhouse. He’d come to believe that she didn’t trust him to make the correct decisions. She wanted his affections and the shelter of his rooms, but little else. For the first time he’d started to wonder if he was being used.

‘What are the Americans doing now?’ Caroline asked. ‘Are they out hunting for the others?’

Edward sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘The Colonel is not disposed to do anything like that,’ he replied. ‘His only concern at this point is safeguarding his interests. He wants it all kept as quiet as possible so the government don’t lose confidence in him and he can make the right impression on this latest important visitor, whoever he might be.’ He recalled the brusque conversation in the engine room. ‘Noone is set to act, though. He’s been made to look foolish and he wants to punish those responsible. Colt ordered him to leave it well alone, but I don’t believe he’ll obey.’

‘I must do something soon, then,’ she said.

Suddenly agitated by this show of resolve, Edward moved forward and took her hands in his. ‘These are dangerous men, Caroline. This business is quite sure to end badly. Please, I beg you – you cannot let yourself get drawn in any further.’

She would not listen. Sitting there in the red lambency of the coals, blinking down at the hearth, she was so achingly beautiful that it almost hurt him to look at her. ‘I – I just couldn’t live with it if I left them to their fate. It would haunt me always, Edward, don’t you see?’

They sat in silence, Edward’s exasperation mounting until he could contain it no more. He turned away from her with a low groan and started to rise from his chair; but her hand snaked quickly up his forearm, fastening around his elbow, pulling him back. She edged closer, tilting her face to kiss his ear.

‘I do care for you,’ she whispered. ‘Never think for a moment that I don’t. You saved me.’

For a moment he considered resisting her, getting to his feet, perhaps storming out through the door and heading
into the rainy metropolis. It was impossible, though – inconceivable. He simply couldn’t do it. He felt her breath on his neck, her fingers on his cheek, turning his head gently towards hers; then their lips met, and for that night at least his fears were forgotten.

Martin watched Rosie McGehan’s theatre from the shadows of a crumbling doorway. The late bill had concluded some fifteen minutes earlier and a dozen of the most drunken patrons still milled beneath the row of gas jets that lit up the penny gaff’s weather-warped frontage. An ale-fuelled dispute between a group of carters, Dublin lads from the sound of it, was turning ugly; some pallid whores hovered on the fringes, hoping to catch the victors while their blood was up.

As Martin looked on, a solitary figure approached from the direction of Millbank, a stout fellow with a familiar, rolling gait, dressed in rough seaman’s clothes. He glanced at the ‘McGehan’s’ sign before switching his attention towards the brawling carters, puffing a little irritably on a clay pipe. The moment had arrived. Martin prised himself from his alcove and limped across the broken paving stones. Every step was difficult. His arm remained excruciatingly sore and all but impossible to move. He still managed to get right up behind his man without being seen, though – close enough to catch a whiff of engine grease, and see the serpent’s tongue curling across the back of his hand.

‘Mr Quill,’ he said.

The engineer started, turning with a curse. ‘Mart,’ he gasped, pushing his cap back on his head. ‘Jesus Christ, you rattled me there.’ Quill’s first unthinking reaction upon seeing his assistant after three months of unexplained absence was
one of relief. He breathed out hard, his shoulders relaxing, and he almost broke into a smile; then he remembered everything that had occurred and his round face creased with angry bafflement. ‘What the blazing hell is this? What was your meaning, leaving me such a note? Dragging me all the way out into this wretched quarter?’

Martin made himself think of Amy and Katie, of escape from London and Pat Slattery’s boys – to keep his mind away from the alleyway behind them where he’d been told to lead this harmless, unsuspecting man so that the Mollys could claim him as their hostage. ‘This here’s me home, Mr Quill, for better or worse. An old friend o’ mine used to do a turn in that there theatre, in fact.’

Quill wasn’t listening. ‘What have you been playing at, Martin? Why the devil d’you leave me like you did?’

Facing the chief engineer again was proving far harder than Martin had imagined. ‘It’d take a good while to explain.’

‘You look awful. By God, I’ve seen corpses with more colour to ‘em. Have you been ill – were you injured?’ Quill noticed the stiff arm hanging uselessly at Martin’s side; the inert fingers sticky with blood protruding from the end of his sleeve. ‘Why, that’s a serious wound right there. That’s –’ He stopped dead, his bushy eyebrows knitting together. ‘Lord Almighty, you’re the one they shot. I heard ‘em boasting that they clipped one of the micks as he made his way over the wall. It was you.’ The engineer lifted a wide hand to his mouth, laying the palm flat across his lips. He seemed close to tears. ‘Sweet Jesus.’

There was no point in denying it. ‘I’m sorry that it went the way it did, Mr Quill,’ Martin said. ‘Truly I am.’

Quill burst towards him with a choked bellow, shoving Martin back, striking near the injury he’d been so concerned for a few seconds earlier. ‘You got any notion how goddamn
stupid
this makes me look?’ he yelled. ‘That son of a bitch Noone’s been saying for months that you’re rotten, that you’re a spy for our enemies, that I’ve been royally chumped by my liking for you – and fuck it all if he weren’t goddamn
right!’

Bent almost double, his arm fizzing with pain, Martin felt
a sour lump of sick working itself into the passage of this throat. ‘Holy Mary, Mr Quill,’ he muttered, trying to gulp it down, ‘I am
sorry,
d’ye hear? I didn’t mean for things to go like this. How many times can I tell you?’

The stocky American stood over him; Martin wondered if he was to be given a beating. ‘Colt is working me like a dog,’ he said. ‘He’s charged me, Martin,
me alone,
with cleaning up what you and your friends did. Two days I got, to make it right. I just left the damn factory a quarter-hour ago, and I’ll be back there before sun-up. There’s some great celebrity paying us a visit, a book-writer or newspaperman or something, and it’ll be my goddamn hide if the Colonel don’t have a decent show for him.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘You’ve fucked me, Mart, good and proper!’

Trembling a little, Martin wiped his streaming eyes looked around. The quarrelling carters had departed. A couple of whores were patrolling slowly to and fro, watching them without much curiosity, but otherwise the street was empty. ‘There was good reason behind what we did,’ he retorted. ‘We suffered in Ireland, Mr Quill – you cannot begin to imagine how we suffered. The British Government, all these lords in their fine coats and top hats, they doomed us to starvation. They did it on purpose, and our people died in their thousands. We was going to take revenge for this terrible crime. That was our goal.’ He gripped his immobile left hand, rubbing the fingers. ‘We had good bleedin’ reason, d’ye hear?’

Quill had never heard Martin speak like this before, and there was nothing he could meet it with. It was completely beyond him. His fury petering out, he sat upon the theatre’s step. ‘I had such plans for us, Mart,’ he said, his voice weighed down by disappointment. ‘You and your family rescued from this miserable place. Us in business together, over in America. Seems ridiculous now, don’t it? What a goddamn
fool
I am.’

Molly Maguire was lurking somewhere near the alley’s mouth, mewling impatiently; she wanted Ben Quill delivered to her.
Get out of here,
he longed to say to the man sitting in front of him;
run to Pimlico, and don’t look back.
‘You are a
good man, Mr Quill. You showed me kindness that I won’t soon forget.’

Quill’s manner hardened. He angled his head, refusing to look at Martin directly. ‘What exactly did you call me out here for?’ he asked curtly. ‘I got a load to do thanks to your little gang.’

Martin readied himself for the next lie. He thought of Amy’s smile; her soft whispers as they lay entwined. ‘I have the gun,’ he said. ‘The missing Navy – the one that was stolen last winter. Colt wants it back, don’t he? I’m leaving London, going back to Ireland most likely. Thought I’d give it you afore I left.’

The engineer snorted, climbing to his feet. ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a thief,’ he growled, ‘a base goddamn plotter.’

‘D’ye want it or no?’

Quill spat in the gutter. ‘Yesterday’s news, that is, but I suppose it might redeem me some – in Walt Noone’s eyes, anyways.’ He glared at Martin. ‘Let me have it then. After that we’re done, you and me, y’hear? We’re
done.’

Martin nodded towards the alley. ‘Down there.’

They set off, Quill following him around the corner of the ramshackle theatre, away from the glare of its gas-jets. It was like walking into a cave – into a demon’s clammy lair. The lane was lined with dingy shops, all shut up for the night; the only light came from a scattering of lanterns and candles set in dirty front windows. An animal stench of fresh mess and raw flesh washed out from a skinner’s yard just back from the alley’s entrance. Someone was still inside, sharpening knives on a wheel. Martin could see cages stacked against a wall, cats and dogs crammed into containers barely large enough to hold them. A few whined or yowled, but most were past all protest. At the back hung the skins, stretched on racks; and out in the alley, piled in a glistening, hideous heap, were the day’s flayed bodies, left to be claimed as meat by whichever soul was desperate enough to want it.

The Mollys appeared further along the lane, a row of dark shapes moving rapidly through the gloom. They fell into a line, walking rapidly. This would be quick and simple. No
one around here would interfere. Martin doubted that a policeman came this way more than once a month, and certainly not after dusk. The dairy was only a short dash away, on the edge of the clearances. He might not even need to be worked over first.

‘All right, Martin,’ said Quill, ‘where is it?’

‘Up ahead. Not much further.’

The engineer was growing suspicious; all trust between them was gone. Martin looked at the approaching Mollys. One of them met his gaze, his face caught momentarily in a weak pool of light, and Martin saw not a man but a gruesome ghoul, a walking corpse with hollow eyes, the bones standing from its fleshless cheeks. They wore Molly’s marks. This was to be a serious job. Her laughter gathered in the air like the rustling of dead leaves and they began to run, rushing past Martin and onto Mr Quill.

‘No,’
he shouted, reaching out with his good arm to push them away. ‘No, this ain’t what we – ‘ He was knocked aside, and told harshly to stay the hell out of it.

Quill was trying to give some account of himself, but against five Molly Maguires, all of them seasoned street-fighters, it was hopeless. ‘Martin,’ came his stifled cry as they broke him down, ‘help me, for God’s sake!’

Martin dived in again, ignoring his throbbing arm, making a grab for Slattery’s collar. ‘Leave off, damn you! We’ve got to get him to the bleedin’ dairy!’

This earned him a blow to his bullet wound that pulled the earth from under his boots, tipping him into a black chasm. He landed squarely on the skinner’s heap, the animals’ limbs crunching beneath his weight. The bodies were slippery and warm; one of them, not yet dead, quivered horribly. With a grunt of revulsion, he twisted away into the middle of the lane. From there, on his front, he could see Ben Quill sprawled in the mud, utterly defeated. Slattery was at the engineer’s side. He took out the Navy, the one Martin had promised Quill, checking the cylinder before slowly drawing back the hammer.

‘For Ireland, brothers,’ he said. ‘For Molly Maguire.’

The shot filled the alley from end to end like a dazzling
flash of lightning, leaving no echo behind it. Quill’s back arched as the ball punched through him, his fingers twitching in a final spasm before falling still. The dogs in the skinner’s yard yelped madly; there were startled exclamations from within the shut-up shops, then the sounds of latches sliding back and windows swinging open. Amid this commotion Martin could hear Molly Maguire, cackling and clapping her hands in delight. He looked over his shoulder, his vision starting to blur as pain overwhelmed him. She was tucked up in the eaves of Rosie McGehan’s, leering down at them like a giant, spindly bat. She’d got her first real taste of blood in a good long time, and she was happy indeed.

‘Pa,’ Katie declared firmly, patting her father’s cheek with her tiny moist palm, and then giving his ear a tug. ‘Pa-pa-pa.’

Martin opened his eyes. His head was lying in Amy’s lap, across her thighs. She was fashioning a daisy from a piece of scrap paper, showing it to her daughter as she did so and talking to her softly. He felt as hollow and weightless as a corn-husk. Everything was edged with white light, a glowing trim like that given to the Holy Family in pictures. For a moment he was completely at peace; he could almost believe that they were away in a warm summer meadow, just the three of them, many hundreds of miles from the Devil’s Acre.

‘You have me heart, Amy Knox,’ he murmured.

She smiled, folding over a petal. ‘I know it.’

Martin tried to swallow. His throat was dry and there was a tart, cloying taste in his mouth. Someone had been pouring gin into him. Perhaps as a result, his wounded arm did not hurt at all; he had to glance down, in fact, to make sure that it was still attached to his body. Above him was a lattice of cobwebbed rafters and the high side of a cattle stall. Straw was tickling his ankles. They were in the dairy.

The night’s events crashed back abruptly into his mind like a slide of rocks through a flimsy rooftop: the skinner’s heap, the pistol’s blast, poor Ben Quill’s last convulsion. He
groaned and tried to sit up but he seemed to be lashed in place.

‘How did I get back here?’ he asked.

Amy’s expression grew dark. ‘They brought you in about an hour ago,’ she whispered, setting aside the paper flower. ‘Said you was knocked down by one of Colt’s men. Then they all went straight back out. Only Thady’s here right now. I think he’s been told to watch us – to make sure we don’t leave.’ She looked off to the right, out of the stall, checking that their guard wasn’t listening. ‘What happened tonight, Mart?’

Martin hesitated, sorrow and guilt flooding through him, scarcely able to believe what he was about to say. ‘They killed Mr Quill. Shot him dead in front of me.’

Amy caught her breath, her legs tensing beneath his head. ‘But – but why?’

‘To do for Colt. To make sure that his engine won’t get repaired, that he’ll be embarrassed and forced to close his works. It won’t work.’ Martin put his right hand over his face. ‘He has died because of me, Amy. Slattery fired the gun but I’m to blame. I used my friendship wi’ him to bring about his murder, and Almighty God will surely see me burn in hell for it.’

‘No!’ Amy’s anger overtook her shock. ‘You weren’t given no
choice,
Martin! How was you to know what was in that villain’s mind?’

He lifted his forefinger to her cheek, placing it against the flushed skin. ‘It were plain enough, though, weren’t it? Any fool could have seen that they weren’t just going to take the poor sod prisoner. I was a right idiot, girl, and Mr Quill paid the price.’

‘You did it for us. You did it so we’d be safe – free from all this.’

Martin stayed quiet for a minute. Quill’s killing had shown that they would never be permitted to put the Molly Maguires behind them. On top of everything else, Slattery had proved himself a hardened liar. He’d taken their righteous mission and turned it into something truly evil. Martin knew that he’d never be released from his debt – that he’d be forced
to take part in ever more dangerous and bloody actions until one or both of them was destroyed. He was damned if he was going to wait around for that day to arrive.

Katie crouched down beside him, scared by her parents’ desperate manner, burying her head in the crook of his neck and throwing her arm across his chest. Shifting a little in the straw, Martin put his hand on her back and began to rub it gently.