The Devil’s Acre

3

Bolted down in its brick cradle, the engine was like a captive whale exhausted after a long struggle with the harpoon, emitting great sighs of white steam and the occasional high-pitched ping. It had been idling for the past two hours, but was still scalding hot; Martin heard Mr Quill curse as he brushed against the shining side of its copper boiler. The time was almost upon them. He looked over at Pat, Jack and the rest. They were hefting their shovels, ready to work. The warmth and closeness of that engine room was something devilish, and it was filthy too, grease, sweat and coal-dust mingling on every face and pair of arms to form a slick second skin. Darkness had fallen outside, and the factory lamps were lit. To Martin’s right, through the short passageway that led from the engine room to the forging shop, he could see a shadowy row of drop-hammers, standing before their clay ovens like so many giant corkscrews. The mass of operatives had been gone now for over an hour, and away from the wheezes of the engine the building was quiet. Martin had stayed on, as he did every night. Mr Quill welcomed this diligence, and he was pledged to do whatever was necessary to secure the chief engineer’s trust.

This campaign, in truth, was already pretty well advanced. Martin had been appointed as Mr Quill’s assistant on the basis of his easy aptitude with the drop-hammer – something that had taken him quite by surprise, as he’d never so much as touched a forging machine before being taken on at Colt. Quill had told him that he had a natural knack for machine-work, and would not hear his protestations of ignorance.

‘Learning is over-rated, Mart,’ he’d said in his Yankee burr. ‘Diligence is what’s required, in the first instance – diligence in the service of a willing spirit. We’ll soon have you up to speed.’

The foremost task before them was the engine, and it was a pressing one. Colonel Colt himself would come by regularly to see how they were progressing, and remind Mr Quill in strikingly straightforward language that the whole London enterprise was dependent upon his success. The engineer had talked Martin through the contraption’s main fault: the stroke was wrong for the diameter of the driving cylinder, he’d explained, which set the pulleys out of true and prevented the machinery from working anywhere close to as well as it could. Remarkably, Martin found that he could not only follow what he was being told, but apply it usefully to his labours. Mr Quill soon pronounced him invaluable, and took to asking his opinion as well as issuing instructions. They’d worked on the engine side by side, cursing the inept English makers who’d put the damned thing together.

A critical point had been reached, and Mr Quill had asked him to form a team of stout-hearted bravoes who would stay on after hours with them to help with some final modifications. Martin had promptly nominated the half-dozen of his bonded brothers who’d secured themselves a place in the American factory. At first, Pat Slattery hadn’t been best pleased. His view of their task at Colt was a determinedly simple one.

‘Why the hell,’ he’d spat, ‘should I give one o’ these Yankee bastards a second’s more dominion over me than he already damn well has?’

But Martin had reasoned with him, arguing that the more they learnt about the place, and the more trust they could earn from the Yankees, the better their chances would be. Eventually, even Pat had to admit the sense in this. The Irishmen had stepped forward as one, and started tightening pistons and adjusting valves under Mr Quill’s kindly, unsuspecting direction.

The chief engineer emerged from behind the engine, a large wrench in his hands. He was grinning fiercely, his hair sticking up like a crazy pagan crown, his leather apron stretched tight over his round belly. The black grease on his forearms almost obscured the chequered snakes that had been tattooed there, twisting down from his elbows. After giving Martin an assured wink, he turned towards Mr Stickney, the giant of a foreman, who lingered out in the foundry passage.

‘We’re just about ready here, Gage,’ he boomed. ‘Are the machines prepared?’

‘Sure are, Ben,’ Stickney replied. ‘Set your micks to work. I’ll head upstairs.’

Mr Quill gave Stickney a cheerful salute and opened the boiler hatch. Taking up his own shovel, he joined Martin and the others beside the fuel bin. Together they stoked the engine, the coal hissing off their shovels onto the wallowing fire within. Once it was up and roaring again, Mr Quill slammed the hatch shut and turned his attention to the engine’s valves. Slowly, the pistons stirred, gears and pulleys started to move, and the revolver factory creaked into life around them. Straight away Martin noticed that there was a new pace to the engine, a regular smoothness that had not been there that afternoon. The engineer and his assistant smiled at each other. The labour of the past week was paying off.

‘Sounds pretty goddamn good, don’t she,’ cried Mr Quill.

Soon the engine was really pounding along, the driving cylinder above them humming as it spun. For a minute or two the men took their ease, lulled into a strange kind of peace by the engine’s thunder; then Mr Stickney reappeared, lumbering through the shadowy forging shop. There was a part in his hand, a pistol frame from the looks of it. Mr Quill went forth to meet him, and a detailed examination began. Both men had been with Colonel Colt for many years, and knew his arms inside out. Their verdict was a good one.

‘By God, Gage,’ exclaimed Mr Quill, holding the part up, ‘this is damn near perfect. You couldn’t hope for a cleaner bit of shaping than that – the drag is quite gone. I do believe that this here frame is ready to be jointed. The Colonel’ll be cock-a-hoop when he hears.’ He looked around. ‘Christ Almighty, I’ve half a mind to fetch him here right now!’

With sudden boyish excitement, Colt’s chief engineer rushed back past the boiler and clanged his wrench repeatedly against one of the engine’s sturdy wrought-iron supports, letting out a triumphant huzzah. The Irishmen joined in, taking off their grubby cloth caps and tossing them upwards so that they slapped against the chamber’s low ceiling.

Pat Slattery, however, did not cheer. He sought out Martin’s eye and held it, his thoughts stamped clearly on his thin, hawkish face. The Irish in that room were all brothers, united by a sacred oath; and Slattery, the closest they had to a leader, never lost sight of their purpose. This was a moment for their mistress and namesake – the maiden Molly Maguire. Who she was, or who she had once been, no one could say for certain, but it didn’t matter. Molly was their mothers and daughters, and everyone else they’d lost in the Hunger; the blighted fields and the famished animals; the dismal workhouses and the mass graves. She was the Holy Virgin’s dark-hearted sister, watching over them always with her teeth bared.

Back in Roscommon, it was their pledge to Molly Maguire that had sent them out against the landlords and land-agents and bailiffs, fighting those who sought to evict them from their homes and starve their families, her families, from existence. It was Molly who’d set them rioting in streets from Boyle to Tipperary, smashing windows, breaking limbs, burning barns and worse besides. The others spoke of her often, of their loyalty to her; she was as real to them as the saints and angels, and every bit as beloved. For Martin, though, it went beyond this. He didn’t know if it was lunacy or some form of sickness in his soul, but from time to time – when his heart beat fast and thick and his brain ached – Molly Maguire would come to call on him. He could see her right then, in fact, moving through the Colt engine room, slipping in among the men gathered there like a current of cold air. She was holding aloft loose handfuls of her dusty copper locks, singing one of the old songs in that scratched whistle of a voice; he saw the awful whiteness of her skin, and the way that tattered gown allowed a glimpse of the ribs standing out so painfully beneath.

The first of these visitations had occurred in the spring of 1847, just after he’d collected his youngest sister’s body from the Athlone workhouse. As he’d sat slumped beneath a tree, half-mad from the poteen he’d drunk, Molly had slid across the borders of his vision like a figure from a dark, dreaming vale, beyond all wakeful reason; yet even through his stupor he’d known at once that she was there to protect and encourage him. From then on, when he was out doing her work with his brothers, he would sometimes sense her flitting around nearby, and hear her voice whispering in his ear. On the night when they’d broken into the manor house of Major Denis Mahon, who Slattery had proceeded to beat to death with a threshing flail, she’d laughed and trilled with joyful approval. This act, the righteous slaying of the worst of their oppressors, had been celebrated throughout Catholic Roscommon – but it had forced all suspected Molly Maguires to flee the county or risk the gallows.

Martin, Slattery, their friend Jack Coffee and a couple of others had travelled to London, trying to fashion new lives for themselves among the impossible numbers of Irish who’d also been forced to start over in the heaving rookeries of the city. The Mollys had thus established an outpost of sorts in Westminster, in the dank lanes of the Devil’s Acre. A series of cockeyed plans had been devised, spoiled and abandoned. Years had passed. Molly Maguire herself had stayed well away, and Martin had started to think that she was done with him. He’d begun portering at Covent Garden; he’d even found a wife. Then Colonel Colt had settled just up the river in Pimlico, and back Molly came, rising once again to the shallows of Martin’s mind. As always, she wanted vengeance for the suffering of Ireland; and now, at last, there was a way for her faithful lads to get it for her.

‘Lord John,’ Slattery had declared on that first night, after they’d all made it through the Yankees’ quizzing and were employees of the Colt Company. ‘Lord John Russell. He’s our mark, brothers. He’s the one what must die at the first bleedin’ opportunity. There are others, o’ course there are. Clarendon, that was viceroy; that damned Labouchere as well. But it’s the Prime Minister, him that was in charge, who must fall ahead o’ the rest.’ He’d struck his callused fist against the tavern table. ‘It’s Lord John that would not give sufficient aid to a famine-stricken people, for fear that it might prove a burden to England. That stopped the public works, the railways and suchlike, which would have given many thousands o’ Irishmen an honest living wage, and presented them instead with a charity soup so thin it wouldn’t sustain a bleedin’ farm cat.’ His voice had begun to buckle, his rage twisting him up into a bitter ball. ‘That could not overcome his bigot’s hatred of the Catholic Irish even as he was given the power of life and death over us – that chose to let us die!’

The Molly Maguires had nodded, a couple growling their agreement.

‘I’ve a name for you, brothers,’ Slattery had continued. ‘Daniel M’Naghten. Ten years ago this brave Celt went after Sir Robert Peel with a pair of flintlock pistols. He chose poorly – the man he shot was only Peel’s private secretary, and he was brought down by the crushers before he could load another bullet. Well, thanks to the Yankee Colt, this sad result can be avoided by us. We’ll be sure of our man – sure of his much-deserved death. And we’ll fight our way out as well. All we need are a couple o’ dozen of these repeating arms.’

Now, just over a fortnight later, the Mollys were gathered in Colonel Colt’s engine room, being led by Mr Quill in a second cheer, and a third, as he kept on banging away with his wrench. After a minute or so of this, Stickney intervened. Martin thought him a bad-tempered bastard, and a bully as well; he frowned a little at the sound of the foreman’s voice.

‘Calm yourself, Ben, for God’s sake,’ he shouted over the engine, stopping Quill’s arm as it was being raised for yet another blow. ‘We’re still some distance from our best. We could be getting thirty-five horses from this thing, and it’s giving us eighteen at the very most.’

Mr Quill, red-cheeked and exuberant, regarded the foreman with something close to pity. ‘Gage, if there were another seasoned Colt engineer within a thousand miles of where we’re standing then, yes, I confess that it might be possible to wring some more life out of this here contraption. But look around you, friend! The London factory is working! We can make a goddamn gun!’

‘Full production’s a good way off,’ Stickney countered. ‘A distant prospect.’

Mr Quill would hear no more. ‘The Colonel wants a London revolver, as soon as it can be made, and we’ve put this within reach. Sure, our work ain’t done, Gage, but when is it ever?’

Having said this, the chief engineer threw open the valves, releasing a deafening flood of steam from the charging engine. With Martin’s help he set about disengaging the pulleys from the cylinder. Once this was complete and the engine had finished its steady, rhythmic deceleration, he proposed that the company head off for a celebratory drink in the Eagle. The sulking Mr Stickney declined, saying he had letters to write and stalking away into the factory. The Mollys agreed readily enough, though, Pat included. Together, they headed for the washroom, recently established in the warehouse across the yard.

Mr Noone was standing outside the factory’s sliding door, smoking a cigar. He looked at first glance like a soldier, a grizzled cove with a private, unfriendly air about him. Mr Quill, open-hearted as always, invited the watchman to come along with them, but after taking a glance at the engineer’s companions he refused. This was to be expected. Whereas most of the American mechanics and overseers viewed the London recruits with varying degrees of contempt or indifference, Noone saw them as nothing less than the enemy, seeming to believe that the single greatest threat to the factory under his guard came from within. Martin thought this uncommonly quick. He was pretty certain that Noone had nothing on him and his brothers, but he’d spread the word that the watchman was someone the Mollys should keep a close eye on.

Mr Quill continued on towards the warehouse, peeling off his filthy apron. ‘Another time, p’raps,’ he muttered.

The Spread Eagle stood not twenty yards from the river’s edge, on one of the few stretches of solid embankment that the City Corporation had seen fit to construct. It was a working man’s tavern, drawing custom from the Colt factory, the Pimlico gasworks and every other site of industry along the Lambeth Reach. However, the main body of regulars came from one place only: the vast construction yard of Thomas Cubitt, the man who was building up Pimlico from nothing, street by street and square by square. These masons, labourers and joiners had put up the Eagle itself not two years previously. Now they stood about the bar and slouched in the booths, smoking, joking and arguing as they took their refreshment. This tavern was very different to the flash houses and tumbledown gambling dens that the Mollys frequented back in the Devil’s Acre, and Martin liked it all the more for this. He savoured the newness of the place, the evenness of its construction, from the gleaming brass of the pumps and fittings to the smooth, level surface of the bar. As yet it was untouched by the London rot that crawled out of the Thames and seeped slowly into everything. You could still smell the river, of course – a window had not been made that could shut that out – but amid the welcome odours of tobacco, honest sweat and fresh beer, it was easily endured.

His brothers didn’t agree, and drifted away after only a drink or two, to Mr Quill’s very vocal disappointment. Martin remained, though, thinking that his being on the right side of the chief engineer could well prove a boon to Molly’s cause. Amy wouldn’t like this one bit – she’d be worn out and cross, the babies would be screaming, and strife would surely be waiting for him when he returned to the Devil’s Acre – but for now, Molly Maguire had to come first. He stayed where he was, leaning across the bar to order another pot of dog’s-nose for him and Mr Quill. The two men drank deep, shivering a little at the keen edge the gin gave the beer, and refilled their pipes.

‘You’ll do well at Colt, Mart,’ said Mr Quill wisely, putting a match to his bowl and then passing it to Martin. ‘I feel it – Christ, I guarantee it.’

This was said at least once a day, and often more. Martin assumed a humble smile. ‘Ah, I’m nothin’ much.’

Mr Quill shook his head, puffing out smoke. ‘You have a fine mind – an engineering mind. I see it. The Colonel sees it.’ He took the pipe from his mouth and pointed at Martin with its well-chewed stem. ‘Many of those let in through Colt’s doors in the past weeks will be with us for a few months only. But you’re with us for the duration, Mart. I can tell.’

Turning around, Martin swallowed more of his drink and took a hard drag on his pipe. ‘I do feel my confidence growing some, Mr Quill, I will admit.’

Quill raised his arm, the sleeve of his canvas jacket pulling back; for an instant Martin could see the diamond-shaped head of a serpent etched on the underside of the engineer’s wrist, its forked tongue licking at his palm. Then he brought his hand down emphatically against the bar’s top.

‘Exactly,’ he declared. ‘That’s it exactly. Confidence. All else will follow, Mart. Take my case. I started out in the engine room of a Collins steamer, criss-crossing the goddamn Atlantic three times a month. Now I’m one of Colonel Colt’s senior engineers, making upwards of five dollars a day. This is what an ordinary fellow can achieve if he puts his mind to it.’

Martin nodded. ‘Aye, I see it, Mr Quill, honest I do. This post I have with you, well…’ He let his voice trail off. ‘It is far beyond anything else that a Roscommon lad such as meself might hope for in this wretched Saxon city.’

There was sympathy in Quill’s round, ruddy face as he sucked reflectively on his pipe. ‘Well, Mart, there are no such barriers in America. None of these stale old hatreds. It’s a land where a man can live without fear of intrusion or interference. It’s the place for men like us, and by God, once the government of this mouldy old country has finally seen sense and made us both rich, I shall show it to you.’ He grinned, slapped Martin on the shoulder and then drank down a good deal of his dog’s-nose in one pull.

Martin smiled as well. This here was a decent man. It made him regret the deception he was working, but he knew that there was no other way. He had to do right by Molly Maguire. He had to get her some justice.

There was a loud peal of laughter from around the corner of the Eagle’s L-shaped saloon, followed by a burst of song. Martin looked over; squeezed into a snug at the tavern’s rear was a large group of factory workers, men and women, several of whom he recognised from the Colt works.

‘You’re certain that we’ll succeed here in London then, Mr Quill?’ he asked.

The chief engineer put his empty tankard on the bar indicating to the pot-boy that he would have it refilled. ‘Sam Colt has been plying his trade for a good long while, Mart. He has the greatest bodies in Washington tame as little white mice. Government men, soldiers, lawyers even – he conquers ‘em all in the end. He can’t fail here. These Bulls that seek to compete with him, or to confound his purposes, are in for an unpleasant surprise.’ Quill sized up his new measure of dog’s-nose and took another mighty gulp; he drinks harder than a bloody Irishman, Martin thought. ‘Did I ever tell you how he broke the back of Eli Whitney?’

Martin had heard this tale before, twice in fact. It was one of Mr Quill’s favourites. He shook his head, though, and settled down to listen to how the Colonel, after years of savage rivalry and manoeuvring, drove the Massachusetts Arms Company (of which poor Eli was the proprietor) out of the revolver business altogether. Long before the story’s dramatic courtroom conclusion, however, someone called his name. He recognised the voice; it was Caroline, Amy’s younger sister. She was walking towards them from the snug. Martin noticed that she was wearing the plain garments of a factory operative. The last he’d heard she was a chambermaid in a smart house in Islington, the residence of an important gent in the City. Something had changed.

Martin and Caroline had never been particularly friendly. He knew that she didn’t much like her sister being married to an Irishman, and living off in the Devil’s Acre. Amy and her had been close when they were small, there only being a year between them. The two girls looked alike, it had to be said, sharing the same broad cheekbones and pretty, slightly crooked mouth. Amy’s hair was darker, though, and her eyes larger, and her thoughtful manner was replaced in Caroline by an argumentative, trouble-making curiosity that Martin found difficult to warm to. He asked her what she was doing in the Eagle, keeping his tone pleasant, knowing as he spoke what her answer would be.

‘Why, Mart, I am an employee of Colonel Colt,’ she replied, flashing Mr Quill a bright, saucy smile. ‘I daresay I’ve been under his roof for almost as long as you have, though of course I ain’t yet reached the same level of favour. I’m in here now with some of my new pals from the machine floor, enlarging our acquaintance, as they say.’

Somewhat reluctantly, Martin introduced her to Mr Quill, explaining their connection. He beamed back at her, utterly charmed. She already knew exactly who the chief engineer was, and had a series of questions lined up about her employer which it pleased him enormously to answer. After a minute, he turned to the bar to buy them all new drinks.

‘Will you have some dog’s-nose, Caroline?’

‘Just gin for me, sir, if you please,’ she said with a mock-curtsey. ‘You may leave out the ale.’

Martin felt a pang of irritation. ‘How did you know of the factory, then?’ he asked. ‘How did you know that the Colonel was hiring?’

She moved in a little closer, angling her hip towards Mr Quill as she took her glass of gin from his hand; the two moles on her cheek, distinct marks a neat inch apart, stood out like an adder-bite against the liquor-flushed skin. ‘My sister told me that you were thinking of joining, Martin.’ She hesitated. ‘Along with some of your friends, them coves what was in here earlier, Pat Slattery and the rest. I’d just lost my position – through no fault of my own, Mr Quill, I assure you – so I thought I’d try gun-making for myself. I find that I rather like it.’

‘It’s fine work indeed for a strong, smart girl,’ said Mr Quill approvingly, ‘until a good husband comes along, at least.’ He removed his worn sailor’s cap, exposing his unruly thatch of hair. ‘Don’t suppose you’d consider the chief engineer, Caroline, scoundrelly old wretch tho’ he be?’

Martin made a show of joining in their free, boozy laughter, just managing to hide his annoyance at the thought of this infernally nosy girl having placed herself within the gun factory. Molly’s work could still be done, of course, but his sister-in-law’s presence was something else he’d now have to take into consideration.

Caroline knew not to outstay her welcome. After exchanging a couple more playful remarks with Mr Quill, she polished off her gin, bade them a good night and went back to the snug. The engineer watched her go before drinking down his dog’s-nose and ordering them both another.

‘So,’ he said when the drinks had arrived, ‘you’re married to an Englishwoman.’

Martin’s self-control left him. He would not be rebuked or teased for this now, and certainly not by Ben Quill – a Yankee, for Christ’s sake. ‘Mother o’ God,’ he snapped, ‘can a man control the workings of his heart? He cannot, Mr Quill – he cannot.’ Surprised by this outburst, by the honesty in his voice, he quickly lifted up his pot again, hiding himself behind it as he took a long swallow.