The Devil's Acre

by Matthew Plampin

  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.

  Soon afterwards, he’d prepared a bed for her before the fire, the most comfortable spot in the apartment by his reckoning, and made to retire. She’d stepped forward, though, halting him, thanking him again for what he had done for her and taking his hands in hers. A sense of sweet inevitability settled upon them; they suddenly stumbled into an embrace, knocking aside a footstool and a pile of periodicals. For some minutes they stood very still, trembling again even though the coal fire was now hissing away steadily. Booted footsteps thudded up and down the staircase outside. Then her lips were tingling against his neck, softly tracing a line from his collar to his ear. He ran a hand down her spine to the small of her back; one of her thighs, smooth and supple, slipped between his. Their kiss felt long deferred, granted to them at last as everything grew so perilously strange, and it held all of their fear and yearning and hunger for solace. He did not reach his bedroom that night, and had not reached it since.

  Early the next morning, they had shared their stories. He’d related the ordeal of the garrotting, which no longer seemed quite so serious. In turn, he’d learnt how she’d been drawn into the Irishmen’s scheme and made to disregard him – and had been incredulous at how closely it matched his imaginings. The plot to kill Lord John was alarming, but it had surely been foiled; the conspirators were scattered and their access to the factory shut off. Despite his ardour, he’d only half-believed her account of the guns in the cellar. It was simply too unlikely. Privately, he theorised that they were in fact leftover weapons from the American works, brought to London at the start of the year. This would explain the missing Tower of London proof marks. As to their massive numbers, Caroline had last been down there in pitch darkness. She could easily have been mistaken.

  It was difficult, however, to care very much about any of it. Every evening upon his return from the factory she was there, in his rooms, waiting; she would rise into his arms and kiss him; they would fall back down together on her makeshift bed and often stay there until morning, remembering to eat only when it was almost time for him to leave once more. He felt altered, as if he’d been opened up, liberated somehow; it was a sensation of such intoxicating freedom that he thought it might part him permanently from his senses. Yet despite all this, one worry was always present, huddled in a dark recess of his mind, tempering his joy just a little. And now, with this first solid piece of information on Amy’s whereabouts, it had to be addressed.

  Edward led her into the empty doorway of Coutts’s Bank. ‘Caroline, what is going to happen should you discover her?’

  She turned her head away; she knew what he was asking. ‘I have to find out if she’s all right. I have to.’

  ‘You mean that you’ll convince her to leave town with you. That you will both go as soon as it can be arranged.’

  ‘We ain’t safe in London while that Yankee’s here. You know that. Noone won’t give up on us.’

  He frowned, thinking how soon his modest savings could be withdrawn from his bank. ‘Then I shall come with you.’

  She looked back at him doubtfully. ‘Edward –’

  ‘Caroline, I would leave this instant if you asked it of me. I would go anywhere.’ I love you, he thought, more than anything else in the world.

  ‘You are a city creature,’ she said, smiling tenderly, laying a gloved hand against his cheek, ‘and don’t you try to say otherwise. London is your place.’

  Edward protested this passionately, desperately, knowing as he did so that he would never be able to convince her. There was a terrible buoyancy to their exchange, as if it was all some sort of joke that no amount of earnestness on his part could convince her to take seriously. She leaned in to kiss him, to hush him it felt like, bringing her face from shadow into the weak gaslight – and at once he saw her meaning. Perfect as it was, this could not last.

  The first sure sign that something was afoot came in the form of visits from the military. During the January of 1854 the Colonel conducted a veritable brigade of soldiers and sailors around his works. Their colourful uniforms became a common sight, threading their way through the lathes and drop-hammers and filing across the yard. Among them were some real high-ups; Lord Hardinge, commander-in-chief of the entire army, came to call one frozen Wednesday morning and chewed on a breakfast muffin as he studied the machines. Colt was entirely comfortable before these men, adopting a ringmaster’s swagger, holding forth on the many stunning victories won in Texas and Mexico by the armies that had carried his guns and the general indispensability of the six-shooter to any modern military force. His guests were led through every department, shown pistol parts at each stage of manufacture and invited to fire off the finished article in the proving room. All were deeply impressed, directing their aides to take copious notes and subjecting the Colonel to some close questioning. He took this in good grace, by his standards at least, and anyone ranking above major was presented with a pair of engraved London-made Navys before they left.

  On the surface of it, the reason for this rush of interest was obvious. Three days into the New Year, Admiral Dundas had been ordered to send a fleet into the Black Sea from Constantinople. Lord Palmerston, unsurprisingly, seemed to bear central responsibility for this development. Shortly after Edward’s meeting with Bannan and Graff, the Home Secretary had suddenly resigned from his post. The explanation given was a fundamental disagreement over Lord John’s latest reform proposals – but the widespread assumption was that it had been prompted by frustration over continued government inaction after the clash at Sinope. It did not last for much more than a week. After some frantic back-room appeasement, Palmerston was back in office; and a few days later Dundas had dispatched his warships to face down the Russian Navy.

  Edward had received a note from Saul the next morning. ‘Typically dramatic move from Pam,’ it had read. ‘He knows full well that Aberdeen would come to a total smash with him as an outsider – as a potential rival and agitator. So our conniving Home Secretary has forced a foreign policy decision! Our ships are on the front line in the Turkish war – peace is no longer possible! And a very happy New Year to you, my friend!!!’

  Faced with the definite prospect of Britain at war, and with his factory being lauded in the most influential circles, Colonel Colt grew yet more hard-nosed in his protection of his interests. He’d been away over Christmas, God only knew where, and had returned to find discontent among his American staff. A delegation of about a dozen men, led by Gage Stickney, was demanding higher wages – a representative share, they said, of what the Colonel was producing. Edward had not been able to understand this demand. He’d seen the sales figures and the stock-room tally – the Colonel’s wages were more than fair. Colt had been enraged by this piece of mutiny, as he’d termed it, but had appeared to consent, asking for ten days to calculate a fresh deal. Stickney, poor chump that he was, had agreed; and as soon as he’d left the room the Colonel instructed Edward to wire Connecticut for replacements, to set sail for London by the next Atlantic steamer. He then waited out the ten days, allowing the new workers to get as close as possible, before dismissing Stickney and all who’d stood with him.

  It was a cold-blooded stratagem, in both conception and execution. Not only had these Yankees been cut loose from their jobs and cast out of their lodgings, they were also thousands of miles from home. But the Colonel had no pity for them whatsoever. All he would give his former employees
was the address of the American consul in Liverpool, saying that this official would loan them the money for their passage if they didn’t have it. There had been a fair bit of cursing and shouting, and the watchman had been called to see them off. The replacements from Hartford had arrived a few days later.

  Among this party had been a new assistant for Mr Quill, an apprentice mechanic to take the place of Martin Rea. Lou Ballou had lapsed from his gastric upset into a deeper malady and was seldom seen about the works; Quill needed another pair of hands to keep the engine running smoothly. If he was glad of the help, though, he did not show it. Two months on, he was still in a state of wounded disbelief at Rea’s treachery. His habitual good cheer entirely gone, he shuffled around the engine room like a man who had just seen a close relation put to death. Edward considered approaching him, consoling him, perhaps telling him what he knew about the details of Rea’s plot; but he suspected that this might actually make matters worse and so kept his distance.

  Besides, the secretary had his own burden to bear. Caroline’s search for her sister continued. The sighting before Christmas had failed to yield results as yet, but she refused to be discouraged. Returning home to Red Lion Square, or arriving at any of the places they’d agreed to meet, became a daily trial for Edward. Each time he was convinced that she would not be there – that she’d have located her sister and be on a train rushing through the countryside, away from him forever. Her company brought him peace for an hour or two, and sometimes longer, as the prospect of disaster was delayed once again. But in the early dawn, while she lay sleeping by his side, the creeping ache of uncertainty would return.

  It occurred to him that if Colonel Colt were to be bankrupted, if he left England and took Walter Noone with him, then she’d be safe. She wouldn’t have to flee London. He’d never become a Colt manager, of course, but what the devil did that matter now? They would be together. With every bellicose development in the East, however, with every triumphant factory tour given to an army commander, the Colonel’s future in Britain seemed more and more secure. The situation Colt had been hoping for ever since he’d first decided to open a manufactory in Europe was coming to pass. He wasn’t going anywhere.