proposed here? Do you not understand what is being laid before us?’
But James would not listen. ‘I have been speaking with people also, Charles. Yesterday afternoon I met Richard Cracknell, the Crimean correspondent from the London Courier. He shared a number of disturbing confidences with me.’
Norton snorted, remembering the officers’ conversation in the farmhouse. ‘Ah yes, the Irishman from the Courier. I have heard all about him.’
His son-in-law coughed again, and removed his spectacles so that he could wipe his eyes. ‘No, Charles, I seriously doubt that you have. Mr Cracknell had come down to the harbour specifically to warn travellers such as ourselves about Boyce. He said that the Colonel has been trying to recruit men from outside the military for several weeks, to serve his own crooked ends.’ He tried to put the spectacles back on his face, and only just managed it without poking himself in the eye. Norton realised that for all his vociferousness, James was desperately weak. ‘Your Colonel is guilty of heinous crimes indeed. At Inkerman, he led his regiment to an entirely avoidable disaster through his own incompetence: this is a matter of military record. But he has also engaged in looting, Charles, and has had men killed, his own men, to cover up his robberies.’ He started to cough. ‘There is–is a–a painting…’
James was prevented from talking any further by a severe cramp, which seized his midriff and bent him over almost double. His spectacles dropped from his nose, chinking against the stones below.
For a moment, Norton stood very still, absorbing what he had heard. James knew about the painting in the crate–knew more than he did, in fact, about the murderous means by which his new partner had supposedly obtained it. His estimation of the deal itself was startlingly accurate as well, tearing away the comfortable net of self-delusion Norton had spun around himself. The truth of Boyce’s venture could no longer be denied. It was corrupt–criminal, even.
He looked steadily at James’ shivering, shuddering back, and suddenly he knew that his son-in-law was dying; one night in the festering filth of Balaclava was all it had taken for disease to claim him. None of Anthony James’ immense ambition or ability would ever amount to anything. His daughter would be made a widow at twenty-eight. And he, Charles Norton, would take the opportunity Colonel Boyce had offered and make himself one of the foremost labour-lords of Manchester.
‘A painting? In this place?’ He furrowed his brow with good-humoured scepticism. ‘What utter nonsense. That Irishman is an unhinged troublemaker, nothing more.’ He became solicitous. ‘You are weary, Anthony; weary and, I fear, a little credulous. Have you had any sleep, or anything to eat? I’m afraid that you might have caught something here, my lad–you need to go to bed. Come, we will find you a clean room. There must be one somewhere. On board one of these ships, if nowhere else.’ Norton crouched down and picked up the spectacles. They were smeared with black mud and the left lens was smashed. He gave them back to James, who now had a hand pressed blearily against his brow. ‘What would my Jemima say if I brought her husband home an invalid?’
Manchester
June 1857
1
Cregg had been waiting with Stewart on London Road for the better part of the afternoon. They passed a pint of gin between them, trying to keep their eyes on the modest doorway of the Model Lodging House.
This, Cregg knew, was his last chance. He’d seen enough coves go under to know well enough what was happening to him; he just didn’t seem to be able to muster the energy to bring a halt to it. His acts against the army, against that bleeder Wray, hadn’t brought him any real satisfaction or relief. Some days it even seemed like they had made things worse. His hand, his leg and his face all ached to high buggery, sometimes getting so bad that his insides twisted up and his eyes grew unreliable. There was one answer to all this and one answer only: the bottle.
His recollections of his time in Manchester were accordingly sparse–half-memories of dingy pot-houses and gin palaces, of dark alleys and rank, undrained courts, of squalid two-room houses and crumbling basements, all nestled in the shadows of pounding mills. There had been vomiting, a good deal of vomiting; some joyless fornication with a toothless whore not a day under fifty; and numerous clumsy attempts to position himself on floorboards already covered with