The Darkest Walk of Crime (13 page)

Expecting to see a manservant,
Mendick was surprised at the elegant appearance of the man who stood there.
Over six foot tall, he was between forty and fifty years old, with long dark
hair swept back from a high forehead, and a frilled white shirt that surely
belonged to an earlier era.

As Armstrong stepped hunched
from the coach the tall man moved forward to meet him, one hand extended in
greeting. Although they were some distance away, the still night air carried
their words quite clearly.

“Mr Armstrong! I am delighted
you could come!”

“Sir Robert! I am glad that you
sent for me!”

Sliding into a shadowed fold of
ground, Mendick repeated the name. Sir Robert? In this part of the world, that
could only be Sir Robert Trafford, but he was one of the old school, a noted
Tory and utterly unlikely to have any dealings with the Chartists. Why was he
meeting Josiah Armstrong in a lodge house? Mendick shook his head; it made no
sense at all.

As Peter huddled in the driver’s
seat, Mendick crawled past the carriage, hoping to find an open window or some
other means of access to the house. He would dearly love to listen to any
conversation between Trafford and Armstrong, to see why two men with vastly
opposing views were meeting with such cordiality. He swore as he came closer;
for all the Gothic pretensions of this lodge, Sir Robert seemed to have it
perfectly secure, with barred windows and a back door that was locked and
bolted.

There was a sudden flare of
light in a downstairs room, and he ducked down, keeping his head beneath the
level of the sill, trying to listen to any conversation inside. He heard the
low rumble of a man’s voice, punctured by a short, explosive laugh, and then
Armstrong crossed to the window and looked out. Only a few inches below,
Mendick could clearly hear every word.

“It’s good to have a man with
your influence on our side, Sir Robert.”

His companion came to the
window. A full head and a half taller than Armstrong and as straight as a
lancer, he spoke with the unmistakable confidence of the upper class,

“Something needs to be done
about the suffering of the industrial workers, Armstrong. I only wish that
these damned Whigs had not allowed things to get so bad.”

Mendick looked up. The two men
stood side by side, staring into the dark. Both held a glass in their hand.

“I have always said that the
Tories and the workers are natural allies,” Trafford said. “I have always been
on the best of terms with my tenants; dammit, man, where would the estate be
without them, eh?”

“Indeed, Sir Robert,” Armstrong
agreed. “It is the industrialists who are exploiting the workers, with their
lust for profit and more profit.”

“Damned upstarts.” Trafford
seemed to detest the rising middle classes more than he supported the exploited
workers. “But together we can put them in their place, eh?”

“With your help, Sir Robert, we
can curb their power and make the country a better place.” Armstrong spoke
carefully.

“And how much help do you
expect, exactly?”

Even from outside the window,
Mendick could sense the hesitation in Armstrong’s pause. However powerful the
man was amongst his peers, he still had sense enough to defer to a member of
the ruling class.

“We need arms, Sir Robert. We
have men enough but we lack weapons, and the Whigs . . .”

“Blackguard scoundrels!”
Trafford’s voice contained venom equal to anything Mendick had heard from
Armstrong. “How many weapons do you wish?”

“We need as many as possible,
Sir Robert.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”
Trafford sounded suddenly bored. “And now, if you would be so kind, I have
personal matters to see to.”

Keeping low, Mendick hurried to
the front of the house, intending to resume his place on the luggage step, but
Peter had parked with the horses facing down the gravel drive, and the back of
the coach was in full view of the front door. It was impossible for him to
climb on board. He cursed as Armstrong and Trafford came out together, speaking
quietly as Armstrong boarded the coach, and then Peter flicked the reins. The
coach began to move slowly over the gravel roadway with the lamplight bouncing
from the shrubbery and Trafford standing watching with his glass in his hand
and a small smile on his long face.

Mendick sighed and shifted into
the long loping stride that would carry him to Chartertown. The distance was
irrelevant compared to the startling intelligence that he had discovered. Sir
Robert Trafford, the arch Tory, was supporting the Chartists against the
Whigs.  He knew he could not yet return to London; nobody would believe the
connection until he gathered some tangible evidence. In the meantime he had to
remain with the Chartists.

*

“On your feet, lad!” Mendick
glared as a man staggered and fell, but he knew that it was weakness of the
flesh, not the spirit, that caused the stumble. He looked over his command
again, seeing them with new eyes. Even in his youth, not sixteen years ago, the
standard of recruits for the army had been higher; the men had been taller,
broader and fitter than these products of an industrial society. Most of the
volunteers were under average height, some were actually misshapen from a
childhood spent crouched in unnatural positions in mills or factories; others
were racked with coughs or so thin it seemed a gust of wind would blow them
away.

If these fifty men were a fair
representation of the might of the Chartists, then God help Monaghan. The
correlation, of course, was also correct; if this was the best that Britain
could produce, then God help the nation if there was another war. In their
constant quest for profit, the factory owners had brought terrible harm to the
people of Britain. Once again Mendick wondered if he were fighting on the right
side in supporting the establishment with their zeal for industrialisation,
rather than the Chartists with their Land Plan and desire for human dignity.

Hardening his heart and voice,
he played the part of the drill sergeant, blasting the volunteers towards a
standard of perfection he knew they could never attain.

“Get those feet up, you idle
blackguards! You’re moving so slowly I can see the dead lice falling from you!”

The volunteers responded with
astonishing urgency. Rather than resenting his verbal assaults, they showed a
willingness curbed only by their physical weakness. Within a week Mendick had
his little band at the level of army recruits of a month’s standing. Within two
weeks they could march as smartly as most line regiments, within three they
could advance in open order and he was teaching them how to skirmish and scout.

He trained them in the driving
rain, when every step plashed through muddy puddles. He trained them in the
whispering snow, when the background trees were ghostly beautiful but the
volunteers’ hands were red raw with cold. He trained them on the frosty days
when his breath froze against his whiskers and every sound was magnified in the
brisk air. And all the time he hoped for news from London.

He had sent a second pigeon
south with news about Trafford’s Chartist connection, and every evening he
disappeared into the woods for a walk, promising Peter that he would be back
within an hour. He fed his remaining pigeon, looked in vain for a reply from
Scotland Yard and upon his return always found Peter waiting anxiously for him.

Mendick had grown used to
sharing the cottage with the prize-fighter. They spoke little but played cards
each evening, with more equable results.

“Peter, I’m going to take some
of the men on a night exercise.”

“Mr Armstrong won’t like that.”
Peter sounded alarmed.

“So we won’t tell him,” Mendick
said and manufactured a grin, “or even better, you can come with us and keep an
eye on me in case I find a public house and get bung-eyed, or lose the men in
the dark, or run and tell a peeler all about this army that I’ve been
training.”

“No, I won’t do that.” Peter
shook his head. “I know you’ll come back.”

“I always do.” He had guessed
that Peter would prefer not to enter the night-dark woods. He held out his
hand. “You’re a good man, Peter, and a fellow Chartist.”

Peter took his hand with the
edge of his fingers, his face confused.

“Fellow Chartist.”

*

The volunteers stood at
attention in the damp gloom of the December afternoon. A persistent drizzle
soaked them while the trees behind them cowered in shivering misery.

“Right, lads,” Mendick said
softly, “it is nearly Christmas and we are surviving on starvation rations.
That does not seem right for the vanguard of the new utopia, so I think it is
time to do something about it.” He enjoyed the surge of interest. “We’re going to
combine our training with a spot of Christmas preparation. Tonight some of us
are engaging in a very valuable military procedure. We call it foraging, when
we rake the countryside for food,” he cheered them with a grin, “and anything
else we can get our hands on.” He had expected the resulting laugh and waited
until it subsided.

“I’ve been watching you, and I
know you now. I know the smart and the quick, the best at drill and those who
are ready to employ sly little tricks to get off work.”

This time the laugh was a little
uneasy as the men looked at one other, wondering what he was about to say next.

“Right. I want Preston, Eccles
and Duffy.”

He selected the most devious of
his men and the ones least likely to have any scruples. Foraging was far more a
matter of individual initiative than drill and discipline.

“The rest of you are dismissed;
report as normal tomorrow morning.”

Even as he hefted the canvas bag
into which he had packed a few useful items, he wondered about the legality of
his movements. He, who had vowed to obey the laws that kept him on the side of
respectability, was now not just bending those laws, but smashing them into
splinters. He shook his head, grinned encouragingly to his chosen men and
marched them into the darkness.

It was strangely nostalgic to
lead a small patrol again, and if Lancashire was certainly not China, the local
gamekeepers were probably more efficient than the Chinese army had proved to
be.

“Keep close, lads, keep quiet
and remember what I’ve taught you.” He led them through the winter woodland and
halted just outside Trafford land.

“I know this place,” Eccles said
quietly, more relaxed that Mendick had ever seen him. “I used to go poaching
here as a lad.”

“So let’s go poaching again,”
Mendick said, “but I want food for fifty men.”

“That’s a tall order.” Eccles
sounded doubtful as his nervousness quickly returned. “Sir Robert is careful of
his property. There’s mantraps and spring guns all over the place, and as many
keepers as we have soldiers.” He shook his head. ”Bastard.”

The policeman in Mendick began to
ponder. A man who put so much effort into security must have something to
protect, or something to hide, which made this trip into Trafford land doubly
interesting.

“Let’s see what we can find.”

“If you’d given me warning,”
Eccles said, “I’d have made some traps and caught us some rabbits.”

“You can have time off tomorrow
to make them,” Mendick promised. “In the meantime, you can guide us in.”

Eccles grew in confidence as he
negotiated the outskirts of Trafford’s land. Using brushwood as protection
against the jagged glass, he slipped over the boundary wall with ease and
slithered across the bough of a tree to descend the trunk.

“Sir Robert is careful always to
lop the lower branches from any tree close to the wall,” he explained, “just in
case of men like me.” His grin showed white in the gloom. “But there are always
ways in.”

Trafford’s trees were spaced
out, with an occasional exotic rhododendron set between native plants.

“Careful!” Eccles stretched out
his hand. “Watch your feet here.” He pointed downward, where metal gleamed
through the leaf litter. Bending down, he brushed carefully with his hand to
reveal a metal plate. “Man trap,” he said, pointing to the saw-toothed jaws
that were intended to slam shut on the leg of its victim. “Step on that and
you’re crippled even before the beak sends you to Van Diemen’s Land.”

As so often before during the
last few weeks, Mendick wondered about his loyalties. Obviously the law of the
land had to be maintained or there would be anarchy, but to allow landowners to
employ such brutal devices simply to defend their game against hungry people
seemed positively immoral. Trafford may be a supporter of the Chartists, but
where his property was concerned he continued to act like the most selfish
member of the upper class.

“Watch for spring guns too,”
Eccles warned. “The landowners rig trip wires attached to a blunderbuss or
something similar. If you’re lucky you’ll only get peppered with bird shot, but
a blast of
that
in your belly is bad enough.”

Preston swore foully while Duffy
vowed vengeance on any gamekeeper that crossed his path. They eyed the mantrap
with loathing and moved ever slower as they neared Trafford Hall.

“There won’t be much game near
the building,” Eccles warned, but Mendick shook his head. “We’re not after
game,” he said. “We won’t ever find enough to feed the five thousand . . .”

“But there’s only fifty of us,”
Preston said, but Duffy nudged him and explained the Biblical reference.

“So we’re going into the house
itself,” Mendick said.

Duffy nodded his approval, but
Eccles, more knowledgeable about the law, warned of the consequences:

“If we go into the house it’s
called house-breaking, Sergeant; it might mean the rope.”

“What do you think they’ll do
when they find you drilling and planning a revolution?”