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