The Devil’s Acre

The secretary cocked the hammer with his thumb. There was a locking noise in the body of the gun, a sound like the passage of gears rotating towards a decisive, irreversible conclusion. Edward ran his tongue quickly over his top lip. The trigger was tense now, the catch on a coiled spring; he settled it into the first joint of his index finger. He could feel the pulse of his blood against the tempered iron. A cold bead of sweat rolled down his neck. Shutting one eye, taking aim as best he could, he squeezed.

The Navy jolted back against his hand, sending a tremor up his entire arm. The report was deafening, double the volume of every other weapon on the range, with a solid slam to it that was a world away from the weak fizz and pop of Mr Marchant’s ageing rifles. Edward did not dare to lower the pistol, in case he dropped it or discharged a bullet into the floor, nor did he attempt to see whether he had hit the large circular target that was mounted before him. Instead, pulling back the hammer, he fired again, and again, until the cylinder was empty and the pressure of his finger produced only impotent clicks. The six shots had gone off impossibly fast, more rapidly than the eye could blink, and without the slightest hint of a misfire; the staggering advantage of the Colt revolver had been ably displayed. Mr Marchant and his customers were completely silent, stunned by the close succession of blasts. As the haze of gunpowder smoke drifted aside, Edward saw that a couple of black dots had even been punched in the outer rings of the target.

‘There we have it,’ said the Colonel, stepping forward and slapping him on the shoulder. ‘He ain’t exactly a great marksman, is he, but did you see the speed at which he got those bullets off? Could you feel the raw power behind the shots?’ There was a general mutter of agreement. Colt caught Marchant’s eye and nodded towards the bench. At one end, the second Navy from the presentation set lay in its case. ‘That there six-shooter,’ he pronounced, ‘entirely virgin and unfired, is now the property of Marchant’s Shooting Gallery, with the compliments of its inventor. Which of you fine gentlemen, I wonder, will be the first to shoot six straight bull’s-eyes with it?’

The move towards the pistol could only be described as a clamour. Marchant made it first, luckily for him, grabbing the Navy from the case and holding it in the air, shouting for order as he did so. Colt looked on with grave satisfaction, loudly imparting the address of his London sales office and some of his current prices.

Edward stood fixed to the spot, his feather-light guts fluttering around inside him. He brought the Navy down, breathing hard. He’d passed the Colonel’s unexpected test. Firing the revolver – reaching out across such a distance and delivering a series of impossibly swift, piercing blows – had been a truly astonishing experience, filling him with an excitement so pure it was almost not to be trusted. The sense of destructive strength as he’d worked through those six shots was dizzying, invigorating; yet also numbing somehow, laced with blackness, utterly devoid of reason. Edward found that he wanted both to set the pistol down for good and reload it immediately for another try.

‘Nice work, Mr Lowry,’ Colt said with an approving nod. ‘Orders’ll be the certain result of this little display, from both Marchant and a few of his wealthier regulars. Not worth much in the grand scheme, but it keeps people talking.’ He took a last slug from the crystal decanter and then dropped it carelessly on the floor. ‘Come, we must be off. We have to unearth that sottish stick-insect Alfie Richards from wherever he’s buried himself and start putting together a show for Mr Kossuth. Right this minute.’

Edward looked at the weapon in his hand. A thin line of smoke still twisted from the cylinder. Dazed and a little disappointed, he started towards the crowd at the bench, intending to give it to Mr Marchant.

Colt stopped him. ‘I want you to keep that there pistol, Mr Lowry.’

‘Pardon me, Colonel?’

‘I want you to keep it, I said. Hang it on the wall, take it to ranges, show it off to your sweethearts.’ The gun-maker slapped his shoulder again. ‘Consider it a gift.’

‘Lawrence Street is his name. He’s in the Commons – a Whig, I should think. D’you know him at all, Saul? Chilly little cove with white-blond whiskers – wears eye-glasses.’

Saul Graff did not answer for almost a minute. He sucked on the cigar Edward had given him, absently pushing a last morsel of devilled kidney around his plate with his fork; then he cast a look around the low brick cavern in which they sat. The Cider Cellars on Maiden Lane, chosen largely for its proximity to the Hungerford Bridge Pier and the steamer to Pimlico, was occupied by the usual early evening crowd, an eclectic assortment of literary, governmental and legal types. It was formidably noisy, a close, smoky basement in which the drinkers and diners were packed together like figs in a drum. Their table was in one of the cellar’s furthermost corners, tucked away in a small alcove beneath a candle-blackened archway. Edward leaned back against the wall behind him, feeling the thudding, grinding vibrations of the early evening traffic up on the Strand.

‘This is exactly what I imagined might occur in that factory,’ Saul said at last, grinding the cigar out in a pool of congealing gravy. ‘Manoeuvring. Offers of interested friendship. Back-room deals. And I should have guessed that it would come from the likes of Street. What a blasted idiot I am!’

Edward sipped his sherry. ‘So you do know of him.’

Saul loosened his necktie, sitting back in his chair. A rather thin, large-eyed creature, dressed as always in a dark costume a little like an undertaker’s, he had a dense black moustache and a light manner that he used to hide the deeper analytical workings of his mind. ‘I do, Edward, yes. Of course I do. He’s a whip on the Liberal side, and something of a tin-pot Machiavelli. Should Lawrence Street come knocking upon your door, there’s a fair chance it’ll be to do with an intrigue of some kind. They say that his first loyalty is to Lord Palmerston – who in turn places great value in Street’s endeavours.’ He gave Edward a meaningful look. ‘Your Colonel has caught an interesting eye there, and no mistake.’

So there it was: the link with Lajos Kossuth. The famously brazen Lord Palmerston had been the Hungarian’s most prominent supporter during his previous visit to England, even going so far as to invite Kossuth to Broadlands, his country seat. This was done in open defiance of the Queen’s wishes, leading her to seek his dismissal as Foreign Secretary; only fear of public outcry at the removal of an enduringly popular minister had prevented this. Two governments had fallen since then – events in which Palmerston had not been uninvolved – and he was presently Home Secretary in the coalition cabinet of the Earl of Aberdeen. It was rumoured, however, that he took little interest in his duties there, occupying himself instead with plotting and the careful undermining of his rivals – thus making his current ministry as weak, compromised and ineffectual as every other part of Aberdeen’s administration.

‘Are you implying that Street is courting Colonel Colt on Lord Palmerston’s orders, Saul?’

Graff smiled slyly, knitting his eyebrows into dark diagonals. ‘Perhaps. Involvement with an arms manufacturer would be well outside Pam’s official jurisdiction as Home Secretary – but then, he’s not exactly known for respecting such boundaries. Still sticks his nose into the affairs of Clarendon’s Foreign Office without any hesitation whatsoever, from what I hear. The old dog’s far more concerned with the goings-on there than in his own department. They say he’s making a proper nuisance of himself over this unfortunate business between Russia and Turkey – insisting that our navy intervene and so forth. It’s hard to see quite what his angle would be in this affair, though…’ Saul became lost in strategic musings, poking at the softened wax around the rim of their candle with his forefinger.

Edward finished his drink. He did not have much longer. ‘What might your man make of it all?’

Snapped from his meditations, Saul blinked; then he laughed. ‘The Honourable Mr Bannan is a committed radical, my friend. He has dedicated his political life to securing the vote for the many thousands of our working men presently denied their rightful voice in the Commons. Our noble Home Secretary is an implacable and very powerful enemy to this particular cause. Mr Bannan therefore welcomes any information I can bring him that may pertain to Lord Palmerston’s latest piece of scheming. And this – Lawrence Street seeming to make introductions for the Yankee gun-maker Samuel Colt – will certainly get his attention.’ He pushed away his plate. ‘You have my thanks, Edward. I wasn’t sure, in truth, if you would be prepared to talk with me about matters such as these. It was never my intention that you should become my eyes in the Colt factory, or anything of that nature.’

Edward smiled thinly at this flagrant falsehood. ‘I’ve told you this, Saul, because I’m seeking an explanation myself. I’m coming to learn that Colonel Colt explains his actions only up to a point. If I’m to get on in his firm then I feel that I should at least be able to make an informed guess about the rest.’

Saul laughed again. ‘My word, how well you’re taking to this new world of yours! Such ambition, such initiative! You, old friend, are a natural man of business.’ He raised his glass in an amiable salute. ‘I am happy to oblige, and look forward to any future exchanges of information – mutually beneficial and entirely innocent, of course – that we two might make.’ After drinking down the remainder of his sherry, Saul hesitated, leaned in a little closer and asked, ‘What of the women?’

Edward rolled his eyes. The question did not surprise him. In contradiction to his rather cerebral appearance, Graff had always been a keen and active admirer of the fairer sex. Back when both men had been junior clerks at Carver & Weight’s, before Saul left for his current career as a parliamentary aide, Edward would regularly be recruited for pursuits over great stretches of London, after a group of dressmakers or governesses or even gay women who’d caught his friend’s undiscriminating, ever-vigilant eye.

He looked impatiently at his pocket watch. ‘The factory girls, you mean?’

‘Several dozen, are there not? Under your very roof?’

‘I believe the number is close to that. Most are rather ugly and unkempt, as you’d expect.’

‘But not all, eh?’ Saul was grinning. ‘You blasted rogue, Lowry.’

With a small grimace, Edward relented, telling of how he had walked Miss Knox home a couple of nights previously. He kept his description fairly brief. It did not seem necessary to mention that he’d found himself thinking of her several times since; that he’d taken to imagining her hand slipping around his side, pulling him closer, and her head tilting back to receive his kiss. He was a little embarrassed by this, in all honesty – by the fact that despite all his professional poise he could be so easily affected by a pretty face and an engaging manner.

‘And have you sought her out since?’

Edward shook his head. The meeting he was due to attend at the factory that night – with the American staff, after the operatives had been discharged – would be the secretary’s first stop in Pimlico in nearly a week. Lajos Kossuth’s crowded calendar of engagements had obliged the Colt Company to agree to conduct his tour of the works the very next Tuesday, only four days after the conversation with Street at the Hotel de Provence. Edward’s every waking hour since had been spent bound to the Colonel, under the somewhat haphazard stewardship of Alfred Richards, travelling between the offices of various publications, buying drinks and meals for Richards’s extensive circle of acquaintances and generally doing anything the press agent or gun-maker could think of to secure some last-minute coverage of the Hungarian’s visit in the newspapers. Edward had thus been denied all opportunity to arrange a second encounter with Miss Knox. This was both a frustration and a relief. He wanted to see her again, very much; but he was acutely aware that a dalliance with a drill operator might well hinder his ascent to the Colt Company’s upper reaches. On balance, it was best left alone.

Saul was visibly disappointed by this lack of progress. ‘Edward, did you learn nothing while we were together at Carver’s? It never pays to linger. You must be bold, my friend. This is a factory girl, for God’s sake, not some curate’s daughter who requires a ring on her finger before she’ll even take your hand. You must act.’

Edward rose from the table, tempted to point out that Saul’s pursuits had almost invariably ended in some form of humiliation for them – and that his friend had met the woman to whom he was currently engaged through the exertions of his mother. Instead, he simply ducked out under the blackened arch, directing a sardonic, sidelong look at Graff as he went.

‘I must catch a steamer to the factory,’ he said. ‘The Hungarian is due at ten tomorrow, and there’s a good deal still to arrange. But I thank you sincerely, Saul, for your interest.’ He nodded towards their plates. ‘I’ll let you stand for this one.’

Colonel Colt, clad in a powder-blue Yankee coat, stormed before the bandstand that had been erected over the factory’s water trough and threw his arms in the air, urging the dozen musicians perched upon it to play louder. They tried their best to obey the gun-maker’s impatient command, blowing hard on flutes and coronets and banging away at drums, but this still wasn’t enough to drown out the party of protesters that had gathered outside the Ponsonby Street gate. These people were singing a hymn – the Lord’s Prayer set to a rather turgid tune – and held aloft placards on which they had painted biblical passages. The largest read: The Righteous One takes note of the house of the wicked, and brings the wicked to ruin. At their head was a pale, majestic lady in a costly emerald-green dress and a black shawl and bonnet. Watching from across the yard, Edward realised that this must be Lady Wardell, the committed enemy of Colt that Lawrence Street had spoken of. Those around her had the upright deportment and sober clothing of city Evangelicals, the kind that one might see taking aristocratic Sabbath breakers to task on Rotten Row or performing missionary work within London’s foulest rookeries. Their hymn ended, and one among them, a man of the cloth from the look of him, started to rail against the evils of the weapons trade in a deep, imposing voice. He appealed to the Colt operatives to leave the American’s clutches and seek decent Christian labour instead.

‘The Apostle Matthew teaches us to love our enemies, not destroy them with revolving pistols!’ he cried. ‘To bless those who curse us, to do good to those who hate us, and to pray for those who persecute us, that we might be the sons of our Father in Heaven! My brothers and sisters, you must turn yourselves away from this infernal factory and the instruments of death it will produce!’

Edward stood with Alfred Richards in front of the factory block’s sliding door, beneath a hastily painted banner that proclaimed ‘Col. Colt Welcomes Kossuth’, and pictured the Old Glory, the Union Jack and the gaudy flag of the short-lived Hungarian Republic intertwined in everlasting friendship. Beside them was the American staff, plainly uncomfortable in coats and neckties, swapping obscene remarks about Lady Wardell and her protesters. Half a dozen newspapermen, all loose stitching, scuffed elbows and four-day beards, were positioned a little further towards the gate, their notebooks at the ready. The main body of the London workforce, numbering around one hundred and fifty, had spread itself across the yard before the warehouse, bunching around the bandstand, chattering loudly. Instructed by Gage Stickney to clean themselves off in the factory washroom before coming outside, they presented a slightly less grubby aspect than usual, but this wasn’t saying too much.

It looked, in all, like the setting for some kind of popular ceremony. The visit of Lajos Kossuth was being made to serve as the public unveiling of the factory – the event that would announce Colt’s arrival in London to the world. Despite the unruly workers, the Colonel’s evident peevishness and the disruptive efforts of those at the gate, Edward was growing excited. This, he thought, is the proper start of it.

Richards wore a frock-coat the colour of old Madeira with a ruffled shirt, and appeared surprisingly well. There was still something tarnished and moth-eaten about him, though, as if he was a rather neglected stuffed peacock instead of the actual living bird. Glancing over at the demonstration he let out a theatrical groan. ‘It would seem that we are this week’s cause,’ he declared, his nasal voice dripping with contempt. ‘How confoundedly tiresome.’

As the street sermon continued, intruding upon the jaunty music of Colt’s band, the tolerance of the assembled workers was soon used up. They started to heckle, telling the sermoniser to get himself back to church or shut his trap. When this did not deter him they started up a steady barrage of mud, dung and stones. A direct hit to the forehead with a jagged pebble effectively ended the lesson; the preacher stepped back unsteadily among his companions, accepting a handkerchief from Lady Wardell herself with which to staunch the blood that trickled across his face.

Even before this unexpected protest had commenced the morning had not been going smoothly. From the moment it had opened the factory had been alive with talk of a second beating, this time of three English operatives from the shaping machines. It had occurred on Lupus Street, significantly closer to the Colt premises, and limbs had been broken; one of the victims was said to be so badly hurt that he would not be able to return to the works. The general reaction to this news had been fearful, but some among the Americans were angry. Walter Noone, in particular, had been positively incensed, taking the attack as a personal insult. He’d insisted on a private conversation with the Colonel in the factory office, during which he’d no doubt laid out the case for immediate vengeful action. It was fair to assume that this hadn’t gone as he’d hoped, however, as he’d emerged from the office even more enraged than he’d gone in. Right then, in the minutes before Kossuth’s arrival, the watchman was marching intently along the perimeter of the factory, drawing nervous glances from protesters and Colt workers alike. His weathered, inexpressive features were visibly straining, like a door about to break open before some great force pushing against it from within.

‘So, Mr Lowry,’ said Richards, chuckling at the smart cessation of the sermon, ‘I understand that you were present when this little visit was conceived.’

‘I was, Mr Richards.’

The press agent grunted cynically. ‘He does very well indeed, this Mr Kossuth, for such a wretched failure. Forced to abdicate, driven into penniless exile, sent trailing around the globe like a bloody mendicant – yet still hailed as a living saint by the plebeian million wherever he damn well pokes his head up.’ He crossed his arms, leaning back against the sliding door. ‘Really rather depressing, is it not?’

Edward was attempting to refute this assessment when he was interrupted by a loud clatter of hooves over on Ponsonby Street, and the sudden flash of yellow panelling. The Colt barouche, sent to collect Kossuth from his Clerkenwell boarding house some hours earlier, cut swiftly past Lady Wardell’s party and drove across to the bandstand to hearty cheers; on cue, the musicians struck up a brisk version of ‘Hail Columbia’. Colonel Colt strode over to take his place before his men. He turned to Edward and muttered that Mr Kossuth was to be presented with a pair of their finest Hartford Navys if he took to the stand and addressed the factory.

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