The Darkest Walk of Crime (6 page)

“When I get the promotion to
sergeant,” he had promised as she made a paper frame for the picture, “I will
take you to a real artist and have a proper portrait painted.”

She had laughed, telling him
that she was quite satisfied with his attempt, but he could tell that she was
secretly pleased with the thought of being an artist’s model. That dream had
died along with her, and now he was left only with the silhouette, which,
although imperfect, was the best likeness he had. He smiled across the room to
her.

“Say goodbye to your man in
uniform,” he told her, for the rules stated that a police officer must wear his
uniform at all times, on and off duty, and he could never break a rule.

He stripped slowly, removing the
issue shirt and the heavy trousers and watching himself in the oval mirror that
had been Emma’s pride and joy. He remembered her standing there in her favourite
cream dress, twirling slowly to admire herself and smiling at him over her
shoulder. He remembered the echo of her laughter and the way her eyes had
crinkled at the corners whenever she saw him coming.

He remembered . . . no. He must
not; it was time for duty, not self-gratification. Mendick
blocked the
images and instead saw himself in the glass. He watched as the policeman, the
very guardian of respectability, slowly disappeared and somebody else took his
place. For an instant he saw a naked man standing there, just tall enough to
edge into the police force, too slim to be muscular, with a scar to remind him
of the wound that had nearly cost him his life and hair as black as Lucifer,
and then he hauled on the moleskin trousers and the image altered.

“God save us, Emma, for nobody
else ever will.”

The shirt was next, surprisingly
soft against his skin, and finally he pulled the fustian jacket over his
shoulders. An impoverished working man stared back at him. He eased on the
boots, working his feet against the harsh leather, knowing that the heels would
rub his skin and the soles would raise blisters, but not caring. And there he
was, a budding Chartist, eager to wage political war on the British state and
already hating the image he presented.

Lifting the packet of documents,
Mendick removed a single foolscap sheet. It had the name
Kersall Moor,
Manchester
,
the date
2
^nd
December 1847
and the words
Chartist Rally:
infiltrate and join the
cause
. Just that: simple instructions that
could put him in as much danger as his military service ever had. Sighing, he
crushed up the paper and threw it on the dead embers of the fire. He swore
softly and took a last look into the room and its poignant memories.

He shrugged; what did it matter
if he was wearing a fustian jacket, a police uniform or the scarlet jacket of
the queen? Physical Force Chartists? They did not even count beside the loss of
his wife.

“Good bye, Emma,” he said to the
silhouette, “I’ll be back to see you as soon as I can.”

He softly closed the door behind
him then strode to the railway train that would take him north.

Kersall Moor, Manchester:
December 1847

“Brothers and sisters! 
Signatories of the People’s Charter!” Standing in the back of the open wagon,
the speaker lifted his hands to encompass every member of the multitude that
spread across Kersall Moor. “I thank you all for coming here at this time of
desperation.”

The crowd applauded, drumming
their feet in rising excitement, and the speaker waited until the noise
subsided. He was obviously an experienced orator, able to judge the temper of
any crowd and manipulate them to follow his lead.

“However,” he said, and his
altered tone alerted his audience that he was about to impart some serious
information. “However, does Her Majesty’s government know about our lives in
the north? Does Her Majesty’s government know about the sufferings of the
people that they fail to represent? Does Her Majesty know about the mothers and
children who exist in conditions worse than those of slaves in America?” The
speaker paused, allowing the tension to grow as his audience waited for a
reply. He lowered his voice so that they had to strain to listen. “More
importantly, does she care?”

The crowd roared again, some
shaking their fists in the air as they yelled, “No! No!” and added their own
opinions to those of William Monaghan, the speaker.

“It’s the first time that I’ve
heard him speak.” The woman standing next to Mendick leaned closer, raising her
mouth to his ear. “He’s very good.” She was about medium height, but in the
half-light he could not make out her features.

“He’s all that and more,”
Mendick agreed. “He’s just the man to lead the fight.” He raised his voice in
strong support, damning Queen Victoria and all that she stood for until the woman
hushed him into quiet.

“There’s no need for such strong
language,” she reproved, softening the barb by adding with a small smile,
“however much I agree with your sentiments.”

“But, brothers and sisters.”
Monaghan held up his hand for silence as he spoke again. “Brothers and sisters,
is it the fault of the Queen? Is Her Majesty to blame for her ignorance?” He
waited, smiling at the buzz of confusion that rose from the crowd. Above them,
the bright skies offered an illusion of hope, while below, sprawling along the
banks of the Irwell River, sat the dark mass of Manchester, cotton capital of
the world.

Mendick thrust a stubby pipe
into his mouth and scanned the city. Save for the impressive commercial centre
at its heart and the arterial roads that reached to the middle class suburbs,
Manchester and its attendant towns seemed to be entirely composed of squalid
terraces of red-brick buildings; tall factory chimneys vied with the occasional
church spire or steeple to thrust their mingled message of commerce and
Christianity to the Lord.

“Is Her Majesty to blame?”
Monaghan repeated. “I tell you that she is not.” Monaghan spoke the words
softly, but repeated them louder, “I tell you that Her Majesty is led astray by
those who should be her most truthful advisors. By whom? By the nobility, by
the gentry, by the clergy, by the factory masters, by all those who have the
vote and the power to elect representatives who sit in Parliament and decide
our future for us while we languish in poverty and suffer under oppression!” He
raised his voice with every word, so by the end of his speech he was shouting,
raising the ferocity of the crowd.

Mendick cheered with the rest,
raising his hat, clapping one hand against the latest edition of the
Northern
Star
and glancing at the woman who remained by his side. She seemed to
share his enthusiasm, holding on to her hat with her right hand while she held
up her left.

“In short,” Monaghan lowered his
voice again, and the crowd quietened to listen, “in short, Her Majesty is led
astray by the very people who deny us the rights
they
enjoy, even as
they press us ever further into the mire of degradation!” He shook his head in
obvious despair. “We ask for the franchise and what do they offer us? They
offer us a repeal of the Corn Laws. Why?”

There was no reply as the crowd
waited for the answer they already knew.

“Why?” Monaghan repeated, “I’ll
tell you why! Is it so we can afford to eat bread? No! No, and a hundred times
no! The Whigs did not repeal the Corn Laws to make our lives easier; they
repealed the Corn Laws so they could keep our wages down! If bread is cheaper,
they can pay us less for more work!”

This time the howls were
deafening, ringing around the gathering. Mendick gauged the crowd to be in the
hundreds, composed mainly of undersized working people who stared desperately
at Monaghan as if his words would generate jobs to transport them from their
present dreadful poverty to a place of warmth and security.

“Quite right!” The woman clapped
her hands vigorously, removing her threadbare but carefully washed gloves to be
better heard. “Is he not quite right? Isn’t he just speaking the truth that we
all know?” She looked earnestly into Mendick’s face.

“He is,” he agreed.

“The more we protest,” Monaghan
continued, “the more the government will fear us, and the more they will seek
to grind us down. What can they do?” He waited for a response, and smiled when
one or two of the more foolish gave him the required answer.

“Nothing!” they yelled, “they
can do nothing against the people!”

“Oh yes, they can,” Monaghan
retorted, sobering the crowd he had so successfully stirred. “They can use the
army, as they did at St Peter's Field, not so very far from here, as they did
with the Scottish Radicals at Bonnybridge, as they did at Newport in Wales only
eight years since and in the Potteries but five years back. But I tell you this
. . .” he held up a finger to command the silence that descended upon the
gathering. “I tell you this. When they do so, and they will, they will; when
they do, that moment will
live in history
. The moment when the first gun
is fired among the working men of England will be succeeded by a short but
awful pause, and the future history of this country will be written in
characters red with human gore!”

From the height of their anger,
the crowd subsided. While many of the men and women were dressed in their
ragged best, others were bare-footed or wore wooden clogs with threadbare
trousers and collarless shirts. Many of the men sported the fustian jacket that
was the mark of the respectable worker, people proud of their contribution to
society, willing to work and hoping for work. These men were no raging
revolutionaries but unfortunates suffering from unemployment and the hopeless
frustration that came from enforced idleness and the inability to even voice
their anger through the ballot box.

There were men who had given
their last scrap of bread to their family days before, women whose babies
sucked on breasts empty of milk, seventh-year apprentices who stared at a
jobless future, desperate wives and broken husbands. Most people in the crowd
looked to Monaghan for hope. In return he had offered them defiance and a
target for their anger while warning them of the possible consequence of their
actions.

“He’s clever,” Mendick said. “He’s
treating us like adults, not leading us like children.”

“We have the choice,” the woman
sounded eager, “to remain mute and suffer, or fight for a better life and
chance the swinging sabres of the yeomanry.”

Mendick looked at her; she was
obviously intelligent and calmly accepted that the government would use the
army to put down any dissent. “And does that not concern you?”

“It should concern us all,” the
woman told him, “being subject to a power that treats its own people with such
contempt.”

“I cannot argue with that,” he
said, trying to hide his surprise at finding such an articulate woman at a
Chartist rally.

“So,” Monaghan was speaking
again, “only by making ourselves heard will our concerns be addressed. We
demand the six points of the Charter. Suffrage for all men over twenty-one;
equal constituencies; payment for MPs . . .”

The woman stiffened and raised
her voice,

“Pray excuse me, Mr Monaghan,
but why should the Charter be only for
men
over twenty-one? It should be
for universal suffrage.” As she stepped forward to be more easily seen, those
nearest turned towards her, while those further back tried to hush her into
silence. “Have you not listened to the words of Reginald Richardson and Ernest
Jones? Male suffrage would still deny large numbers of adults full
participation in the country; why should women not have the vote?”

Momentarily taken aback, Monaghan
stared as the woman continued:

“Why should women not have the
vote? I can read and write as well as you, if not better. And I can work with my
hands, when there is work available. I can reason as well as any man yet born.”
When she smiled, raising her eyes to Monaghan, Mendick realised that she was a
truly attractive woman, although he could not pinpoint why. “So is there a
reason that I cannot have the vote? Am I so inferior?”

Raising both hands to still the
clamorous curiosity of the crowd, Monaghan leaned forward to address the woman.

“I do not believe that there is
anything inferior about you,” he told her seriously. “And I do not believe there
is anything inferior about any woman. You are the equal to any man; if a woman
can be queen, if a woman has to pay taxes, if a woman is subject to the same
laws and penalties, if a woman adds to the wealth of the nation by her labour,
then yes, she is well worthy of the vote.” He waited until the renewed hubbub
subsided. “However, we may persuade the government to grant men suffrage, but
they will not yet agree to women.”

“So let us make them agree!”

The woman raised her voice and
accepted Monaghan’s hand to haul herself onto the back of the wagon that acted
as a platform for his speech.

“We have tried reason; we have
tried petitions; we have tried patience, surely now we can use stronger
methods? Surely it is time for physical force?”

It had been neatly done, Mendick
grudgingly acknowledged. The woman's interruption had strengthened Monaghan's
position. Now the appeal of the Charter had been widened to include women as
well as men, and it was the woman, the supposedly gentler of the two sexes, who
was appealing for force. Women might follow her simply because she was female,
and men would be ashamed to hold back where women were not afraid to tread.

“May I be so bold as to address
your audience, Mr Monaghan?” The woman gave a half curtsey.

Now she was in full view,
Mendick saw the patches on her immaculately clean dress and the odd button on
her boot which had been replaced with an imperfect match, yet these details did
not detract from her undeniable magnetism. It was not the curve of her mouth or
the attraction of her disproportionately large eyes, but something indefinable,
as if she were greater than the sum of all her parts.