Andrew Pepper - The Last Days of Newgate

While he ate his breakfast, an undistinguished meat pie, he watched as an older man wrapped a leather grip around one end of a four-foot brickbat. Alongside him, soldiers, shopkeepers and ruffians mixed uneasily on the narrow pavements. The cobbled street was awash with manure. From hand-held barrows, vendors sold fruit and fresh fish.

At the end of Barrack Street, Pyke turned on to Durham Place and the neighbourhood deteriorated further. Pigs, sheep and goats roamed freely in and out of brick terraces, whose makeshift windows were constructed from hessian sacks. Underfoot, the track itself was flooded with human effluvia and water that had broken the banks of the nearby river. The whole area seemed to be ripe for a cholera epidemic. From gloomy doorways, men and women dressed in ragged clothes stared at him without smiling and talked to one another in hushed voices.

The previous night, Megan had told him Sandy Row was so called because, at one time, the tidal waters of the Lagan had met the fresh waters of the Blackstaff to form a small sandy cove where mill workers had once washed their clothes. In the cold light of day, however, it was hard to detect any such cove. The area surrounding the river was boggy: an unclaimed scrub of land between two warring communities. A few slovenly thatched cottages hovered in the shadows of the giant linen mill. Farther back along the road, a group of mill workers attacked an unarmed coal carrier. A soldier looked on without interest, making no effort to intervene, even when the coal carrier fell to the ground clutching his knife-wounded belly.

Ahead of him, on the other side of the bridge, he could see more terraced houses. A crowd had gathered outside one of the terraces and someone was addressing them from a first-floor window. Pyke could not hear what was being said, but many in the crowd were supporting orange banners, fringed with gold lace. He decided to hold back, to allow the mob to disperse or go about its business. Eventually, after much whooping and pistol-firing, the crowd began to shuffle off in the opposite direction. At his feet, even the small dog seemed chastened by the whiff of violence.

On the other side of the river, he stopped a woman and asked whether this was Sandy Row. ‘Depends on who’s askin’,’ she said, with ill-concealed suspicion. Pyke enquired whether she knew which one the Magennis house was, but she ignored the question and disappeared into her front room. Others were similarly obstructive. It was only when the dog befriended a young girl that his luck turned. While the girl patted the dog’s head, and the dog wagged its little tail, she said, ‘Second house on the right, before the road takes youse up to Grimshaw’s mill.’ Pyke thanked her and handed her a shilling coin.

The house the young girl had identified was typically bleak. It was a small edifice with soiled walls. Its windows were sealed up with paper. The door was open and Pyke stepped into the hallway. ‘Hello?’ He dug into his pocket and felt the reassuring touch of the pistol. It took him a few moments to readjust to the darkness. In front of him, the staircase rose precariously to the upper floor; all the balustrades had been used for firewood. He entered the front room. There, a barefooted old woman tended to a young baby. In the back room, Pyke heard the clink of pots, and a voice shout, ‘Who is it?’ A younger woman, wearing a dirty cotton dress, joined them at the front door. She formed a protective barrier in front of the baby.

‘I was looking for Davy.’

‘An’ who are ye?’ the old woman said, staring at him through grizzled eyes. Her white hair was tied up in a bonnet. In her arms, the baby was crying.

‘A friend,’ he said, without conviction.

‘Oh aye, sure ye are.’

Finding her voice, the young woman said, ‘Aye, the big man’s gone, mister.’ She was a small woman with pale, freckled skin and curly red hair.

‘Ann,’ the older woman snapped.

‘Wha’? We don’t know where he’s away to, Mam.’

‘But he was here?’

‘Aye,’ the older woman said, still suspicious. ‘Left about a week ago, so he did.’

‘Why did he leave?’

The old woman studied him carefully. ‘Ask a lot of questions, don’t ye?’

‘I think he might be in danger.’

The young woman shrugged. ‘Big man just said something about the grim reaper comin’ for him.’ She looked across at her mother. ‘Mind, he’d been in an odd way, the whole time he was stayin’ here. Wouldn’t sleep inside. Said he was happy with the yard out back. He didn’t show much interest in food and no interest in going to work, even though da fixed him up with a job in the mill. See, my da and his are brothers. Didn’t know what Davy did with his days until one of the lasses followed him to the church on Fisherwick Place.’

‘A church? What was he doing in a church?’ Pyke asked, certain now the women were telling the truth.

‘Prayin’,’ the older woman said, staring at him. ‘What else do ye do in a church?’ When Pyke didn’t answer, she continued, ‘Davy done something wrong, then?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘You’re not here to shake him by the hand, are ye?’

‘Davy say anything about his time in London?’

This time it was the older woman’s turn to frown. ‘The big man was in London?’

‘He went there to find his brother, Stephen.’

Briefly the two women exchanged looks but neither of them said a word.

As he watched their reactions, he thought about the two brothers, Stephen and Davy, and the nature of their relationship. Was it possible that Davy could have killed his own brother? And how, if at all, did that profit Tilling, and therefore Peel?

Pyke felt he had overlooked something that might bring the whole affair into focus.

‘We’re just poor workin’ folk, mister, but we’re honest and God-fearing, so we are. The men are out there marchin’ ’cos we’re proud to be Protestant but none of us care much for violence, and that’s the truth. It ain’t our fault the papists want to drive us from our homes and run us off the island.’

Focusing his attention on the younger woman, Pyke asked, ‘Was Stephen your cousin?’

Before her mother could intervene, the woman had nodded. She was shaking a little.

‘You do know that Stephen was murdered? And that he had just had a baby himself? Look at your own baby. Could you imagine doing that? Throttling its tiny throat with your bare hands. .’

The older woman stepped in between them, to shield her daughter from Pyke. ‘I think you should be leavin’.’

‘You know whereabouts Davy might have gone?’

The old woman crossed her arms and stared at him. ‘Who shall I tell the menfolk was askin’ after the big man?’

It was a clear night with a full moon and from his vantage point on the far side of the Ormeau bridge the town might have looked almost peaceful, silhouetted against the dark shadows of the hills, had it not been for the numerous fires, whose reflections shimmered brightly on the glassy surface of the river. He was too far removed from the town to hear the sound of clashing rioters but occasional gunpowder blasts and musket shots skimmed across the water and illuminated the night sky. Pyke was glad of the disturbances because they distracted soldiers and police from their search for him. That said, earlier in the day he had taken no satisfaction from what he had seen: a mob of young Catholic men carrying muskets and pitchforks, rampaging down a narrow residential street and sacking the houses, regardless of who was inside them, dragging mattresses out and setting light to them.

Behind him, in the opposite direction, he turned his attention back to the imposing, Tudor-style house in the far distance, with its faux-crenellated walls and grand spires, and then to the stables, which were much closer, a few hundred yards across well-maintained grounds.