Blossom of War

by May Woodward

  ‘Yes, I remember now you mention it…’

  He stared at the woman. The wind had tugged an untidy ringlet free from her hood.

  A moment ago, he had pictured those itsy-bitsy girly bosoms torn and bleeding. But he couldn’t… couldn’t grope this woman as he had the gagging mill-sluts in three sordid, soughing minutes beneath an Ancoats canal bridge. Or just tumble in the bracken.

  Why? Because she’d been in the asylum once – chased butterflies, wore yesteryear’s fashions, was still living in 1854… and he had scruples over that? No… Because it would undo all he had worked for. To get Eardingstowe. Destroy Dickon and all his kin. Pay back every crime the Somerlees had done since the world was young. And mistress Clemence was still worth more to him whole.

  ‘Look! It’s starting to get dark and we hadn’t noticed, we’ve been so busy reminiscing, Aubrey. The quire’s setting out.’ Clemence indicated inland, away from the headland. In the distance, a mass of bobbing lantern-lights could be seen gathering.

  Michael peered over his shoulder. Fluty toots and trombone honks could be heard playing The Boar’s Head Carol. Hedgers, drovers, carters, cowmen, keepers, ploughmen and the landlord of the White Swan who made up the bucolic orchestra would soon be trudging in procession along the lane towards the village.

  ‘They’ll be calling at each homestead, and finish up at Eardingstowe,’ Clemence said. ‘You should be there for the welcome in the great hall, Aubrey.’

  ‘I wish you were coming, Clemmie…’

  ‘Aubrey, I haven’t set foot in Eardingstowe for over ten years! You know how Dickon and Mathy feel about me. A room at the White Swan is the closest I may go.’

  With a creak of leather glove, he reached up to stroke her cheek.

  Lizzy’s first glimpse of Cotton City came as her train crested the moors to the east.

  It made her think of Sebastopol after the sack – brooding beneath a cloud of smoke. Mill chimneys looked like prehistoric beasts bathing in the steamy marsh – gangling necks popping up here, there, near and far; the bellowing noises they made could be male chimneys’ mating calls to females.

  A carbuncle on England’s fair, green face was Manchester. The Romans had abandoned it, sensible fellows, and no-one in their senses had settled here since – until the cotton-masters had moved in.

  The city’s back-ways were only just wide enough for a vehicle to pass; and a sleety blizzard was blowing, which made progress still more hazardous.

  From behind the window blind, the shocked passenger peeped out. People lived in these leaning shacks? Of course, they did. Their toil made the lucre which bought Richard his silk ties, waistcoats, braces and gold-tipped canes.

  The façade of Carswell’s Mill when they reached it couldn’t have been much less in length than that of Buckingham Palace or Apsley House. Three storeys of oblong window after window after window. Bricks stained from fire. Major source of her brother’s and nephew’s prosperity these fifty years.

  It sounded as if it was in ulcerated agony as a thousand power-looms whirred inside its belly. Its oesophagus was a two-hundred-foot-high chimney puking out sickness into the snowstorm. Any bird which ventured to fly over Manchester would go down in avian history as intrepid an explorer as Dr Livingstone. No volcano could aspire to this in its ash-cloud dreams.

  Lysithea dropped the blind, and kept it drawn. She did not care to attract attention. Her carriage was plain black and unmarked.

  ‘Drive on please,’ Lysithea called to the coachman in a shuddering voice. ‘I want St Brigid’s Church.’

  ‘I’m guessin’ you’re an Anglican, My Lady,’ the elderly, stooped man said with a chuckle as he led his guest into his parlour. ‘So, I’ll be giving you tea not whiskey to drink.’

  Father Cassidy shuffled back in with a pot of tea.

  Lysithea sat opposite as he poured. She’d have offered to do it; but her sore hands were even less reliable than his dithering ones.

  She took a look around instead. A crucifix hung on one wall. In one niche, a statue of Christ was pointing to an exposed heart. And there was a framed, rather gruesome print of some martyr or other, pricked with more arrows than were necessary surely to kill him.

  She studied the Man of God’s vigorous, aged face.

  ‘You’ve been in charge of St Brigid’s parish for many years, Father Cassidy?’

  ‘Aye, My Lady – a quarter of a century. Since I first come to Manchester during the famine.’

  ‘I wonder… could you think back to 1857 for me? You married a couple named Thady Horan and Michael McFarland.’

  Lysithea was not really hopeful. The fellow must have joined hundreds of couples in matrimony.

  But no, Father Cassidy was settling into his armchair with his cup of tea, and nodding.

  ‘Aye! I knew Mickey well, and his family. He worked at yer mill over yonder – Carswell’s.’

  Lysithea’s heartbeat began to race.

  ‘Was he a regular worshipper here? Is that how you knew him?’

  ‘Faith, not he!’ the priest chuckled. ‘Rarely come for mass or confession. Come to read my newspapers, so he did, and learn about money things, if you can swallow the irony – Our Lord whipped the moneylenders out of the temple, if you recall!’

  ‘Money things?’

  ‘Aye. The stock market, things like that.’

  Lysithea nodded to herself. She took out an envelope from her reticule.

  ‘This is a photograph, Father. It was taken recently at a royal drawing-room at Marlborough House. Take a look at the gentleman in the centre of the group. The lady whose hand he is kissing is the Princess of Wales, Alexandra of Denmark. The elderly lady also vying for his attention is the Countess of Beaconsfield, Mary Anne Disraeli, wife of the Tory leader.’

  Incredulity spread across the clergyman’s face.

  ‘Holy Jesus, it can’t be!’

  ‘Is that Michael McFarland, Father?’

  ‘Aye! Though he’s years older, of course, since I last saw him.’

  Lysithea took the photograph back. She stared at the familiar face in the picture.

  ‘He’s been passing himself off as my nephew, Aubrey Somerlee, who we believed perished in the Crimea. Perhaps you read about the recent court case?’

  ‘Aye, I did. But I never thought of Mickey! There was a good reason why I did not.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Lysithea.

  ‘Aye!’ Father Cassidy crossed himself. ‘Yer Ladyship, I thought he was dead, I did! Well, that was what I heard…’ He shook his head to gather his wits.

  ‘Thady and Mickey left town after they wed. I knew no more of them. Until we heard Mickey had gone to Americay during the war, joined the Irish Brigade, and fought for the Union against the Rebs. We heard he was killed at Gettysburg.

  ‘Wouldn’t you know now! The night I heard of his death, I warned the Lord in me prayers to watch out, ‘cos he’d cheat his way out of hell where he belongs, that one, playing card-tricks on Old Nick!

  ‘Ah, so he’s been to Marlborough House now? Puttin’ poison in the Prince of Wales’s dishes no doubt!’

  ‘What do you mean, Father? Is he a Fenian?’

  Father Cassidy gave her a wary look. Lysithea urged him to go on.

  ‘If you’ll forgive me now, I’d say the McFarlands hate the Somerlees more than the English.’ He paused again. ‘Well, the McFarlands come from a village named Kilara, see. The Somerlees are landlords there.’

  ‘My God…’ Lysithea breathed. Suddenly, the voice of her dead brother came echoing down the years.

  O’Briens? Not paid rent for six months – out! Flanagans? Not paid for four – out! McFarlands… they’re the worst of the lot, damn their hides! Turf them out, out, out! And get tenants in their place who can pay, damn it! What’s that you say? Well, I don’t believe they are starving! Just their excuse to
swindle their landlord, that’s what it is!

  ‘Mickey and his family were thrown out of their cottage,’ Father Cassidy went on. ‘I think it was at the time of the famine. Mickey talked about it so much. A festering obsession, it was. Wouldn’t listen to reason. Swore he’d get even with the Somerlees, somehow, someday.

  ‘T’was the reason he come to Manchester in the first place. Because someone had told him the Somerlees owned a mill here. He had a firewood round – used to trudge the alleys hawkin’ his bundles, sure he’d one day knock on a door and find the Somerlees behind it. My Lady? Are ye all right?’

  Lysithea buried her face in shaking hands.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “SMOKY MOUNTAIN”

  GOLD MINE FRAUD EXPOSED

  The newspaper print swam before Michael’s eyes.

  “Thousands of investors are today facing huge losses after a massive and audacious financial fraud… Some facing bankruptcy…

  “The so-called “Smoky Mountain” has been exposed as a hoax…

  “Decent people bought shares in good faith in what they believed was a sound venture, a profitable gold mine in South Africa… But it now emerges that no such mine has ever existed…

  “Many of the duped are members of some of our noblest titled families… Marlborough House spokesperson refusing to comment on rumours the Prince of Wales has lost money in the scam…

  “Police confirmed they wish to question the Baronet of Eardingstowe, Sir Richard Somerlee, M.P…

  “Meanwhile, who is the mysterious ‘Sir Roger Cormorant’…?

  Michael laid the newspaper down.

  His mind slipped back over the years. A torrential autumn day in 1849. That’s probably when it all began – the day the Somerlee agent came a-calling to evict Michael and his family. Two years his ma had been dead, then. Of the famine-fever. Not even a wake for Bridey McFarland. No-one left to do the burying in the mud.

  Michael had left Kilara along the Limerick road. His bare feet dangling from the rear of Seamus McFarland’s cart. Nothing but a hood to keep out the rain. It had seemed to Michael that flames had shrivelled up every one of Kilara’s hundred hillside streams and watercourses.

  He’d not have done all this without Will. Faith, he still called to mind the first time he saw him back in Manchester. Will Kidney, the most notorious swindler and all-round conman in the East End. On the run from three police forces, it was said. Michael was just one of many awed moons in orbit around the gas giant as he told his stories in the Cotton Tree pub.

  ‘So Lanegan don’t believe Fogarty’s been to Americay and come back, of course. “Speak some Yankee lingo, then, Fogarty!” Lanegan says. “Okay,” Fogarty replies. “Ο’Kay?” says Lanegan. “You’ve seen Paddy O’Kay in America, then? Still owes me a farthing, so he does!”’

  ‘How do you run a betting lay, then?’ Michael had asked when he’d at last got the great man alone. Kidney was older than Michael by about twenty years.

  ‘I had me what’s called a list shop.’ Will’s voice was languorous. ‘Classy premises. Discreet back room with a girl or two. Gents what came in placed their bets with me. I offered better odds, see, than they’d get at the racecourse. Then I had me a few cronies in the racing world. They’d be nobbling the favourite. And I’d be tipping the high and mighty.

  ‘But I had to leave the Smoke. Too hot down there for me, it was. So, I set me feet on the road to see where they’d take me – and find meself in Manchester.’

  ‘How did you get the English nobs to trust you?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Well, my dear fellow, they supposed I was one of their own – a gentleman, sir!’

  ‘Where’d you come by that plummy accent?’ Michael laughed.

  ‘I could teach you if you want. I knew a priest in the Old Country what had his learning at some lah-di-dah school in England. I just practised talkin’ like him.’

  ‘Faith, what we learn from priests! It was Father Cassidy taught me what I know about the stock market. Listen—’ Michael slipped into deep and grave thought. ‘Could you do somethin’ similar with stocks and shares?’

  Will Kidney gazed at him, impressed.

  ‘Aye… You could run a lay on the stock market.’

  ‘What I was thinking,’ Michael said, ‘is a fancy company what don’t really exist, selling shares in somethin’… diamonds… oil… anythin’ really. A fairyland out there in the golden sands. Everyone buys your shares. You get rich. But they’ve bought naught but dreams and empty air.’

  ‘Aye!’ Kidney said. ‘You’d have to be quick, though. Investors’d be looking to see their returns before you’ve finished selling to your other clients – and gettin’ impatient!’

  ‘How about this,’ said Michael. ‘Let’s say my first investor is Mr Smith. I then sell shares to Mr Jones. I pay Mr Smith with some of the money I take from Mr Jones, and as far as Mr Smith’s concerned – it’s returns on his investment! Then I pay Mr Jones with some of the money what Mr Wilson invests.’

  Kidney nodded.

  ‘Take more than theory to make it work, though.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Ah, you don’t think city investors are going to buy shares from an Irish yahoo from the slums of Manchester? Why, sir,’ Will went back into his drawl, ‘they deal with gentlemen, sir. One of their own whom they can trust… went to the right school. And it’s not only your investors you’ve to fool. It’s your brokers too. And they’re a canny lot.’

  ‘Could you, with your fancy English voice, convince ‘em?’

  ‘By Jove, sir, I should surely like to try! What have I to lose? Only another seven years in an Aussie swamp!’

  ‘I was in the Working Men’s Institute. They have a library there. There’s a book called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by a man named Mackay.’ A smile crept across Michael’s face. ‘Now, your one smart man, you see, ain’t likely to fall for a lay on his own. He’s too clever. Knows a fraud when he sees one. But if all his friends and foes believe it’s real, so does he. And they all go charging in. Like the Light Brigade. The madness of crowds.’

  Kidney lit his pipe, deep in thought.

  ‘You’re wantin’ to do this real bad, ain’t you, lad?’

  ‘Aye. I’m real excited, Will. But I need you in with me.’

  ‘You’ll need false statements to convince your investors. And company reports for your brokers.’

  ‘Aye. I know.’

  ‘And you’re looking to me now, I take it?’ Kidney exhaled a few puffs of smoke. ‘Well, I did a bit of screeving work – forging wills, that kind of thing. Grander scale, this… Makes a bit more sense, though, than that hare-brained scheme of yours to impersonate the Vamoosing Hussar! I mean – supposing the real Aubrey comes home while you’re at dinner with the family? Ah, nonsense it is! Do somethin’ else with your life, Mickey McFarland!’

  But Mickey never had. The idea had grown and grown and become a monster. It was as if he’d nurtured a tiddy bud until it grew into a humungous, blood-redheaded hibiscus blocking out all sunlight.

  He called to mind the miniature paintings of Somerlees and their lovely house on display in Carswell’s Mill butty shop where the mill-hands took their lunch-breaks. That was when the thought had first come to him. The missing cornet’s hair had been blacky-brown, his eyes bright blue… just like Michael’s. And if Aubrey was a younger brother of the present baronet and a soldier in the Crimean War, he must be around Mickey’s age…

  Michael would need to learn to ride a horse. Bit difficult to convince anyone he was a cavalryman otherwise. And just knowing Aubrey Somerlee had been born on the twenty-whatever of March, and Sir So-and-so Somerlee had been King Knut’s lifeguard would not be enough, no. No! The argot, or notions, used by Winchester schoolboys might not be difficult to find out – but what about the closet words Aubrey
had had with his siblings, pranks he’d played on the gardener, what he’d said to his messmates on the eve of the cavalry charge…?

  And then Michael had come to hear the rumours about Cassandra Somerlee… the mad aunt in the attic…

  An old bat in a nuthouse would chatter… and chatter… Aubrey’s pets, his toys, his young loves and wet dreams. Nanny’s birthday. What kind of cakes they had for tea while the Irish were starving. Anecdotes only the family could know. Like the time Flitcroft tripped over the dog while serving dinner and spilled the cauliflower cheese over the Countess of Portland. All Michael had needed was access to Dwellan House…

  ‘And then I guess I had my own dollops of Irish luck, Will,’ he finished his reminisce. ‘Lucky it was that Sparkle was no longer with them. No-one would have been harder to convince I was Aubrey!’

  He raised his eyes to the man who was facing him across the beer-sloshed boards of a dockside tavern table. Close by, a pianist was playing, and a band of sailors was singing Stormalong.

  ‘Faith, and where is Sir Roger Cormorant now?’

  ‘Sir Roger Cormorant’s vanished into the vapour of Smoky Mountain,’ said Will. An oil lamp was dangling from the roof beam. In its light, the old scar on the man’s cheek looked like a silvery tapeworm. ‘Just like I’ll be doing next ship out of port.’

  ‘A genius you are, Will Kidney.’

  ‘I’ve the luck of the Irish, Mickey, is all. ‘Twas lucky I found a screever who had a printing press. He’d forged banknotes with it. And lucky, too, that the Carlton Club was hiring casual staff, and I had me the opportunity to leave Sir Dickon his substitute copies of The Times.

  ‘Sir Dickon’s networking worked, as I knew it would,’ Kidney said. ‘Each one passing the word, secret-like, onto his own particular pals – and Smoky Mountain’s fame spread! The Duke o’ Westminster! The Duke o’ Sutherland! Duke of Argyll! Mr Disraeli! Princess Vicky’s husband, the Prussian Crown Prince, had a flutter too. And the Czar’s brother, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich. Hundreds and hundreds of ‘em.