Andrew Pepper - Bloody Winter

The soldier nodded, his expression pale, haunted. ‘Captain said he was a criminal.’

Pyke shook his head. ‘Not true. My guess is that he’d been paid a few coins to go to that cabin and pick up a purse. Just his bad luck he was Irish.’

He now understood what had happened. Someone had planted the rent book on the dead man, directing them to Irish Row and the shoe and coat belonging to William Hancock. Clearly this person had wanted them to suspect an Irish mob.

Considine nodded. ‘That’s what this big fellow told me after he’d tracked me down in Brecon.’

Pyke described John Johns and asked whether this was the man who’d found him.

‘That’s right,’ Considine said, surprised he had been able to identify Johns so quickly.

‘And he persuaded you to come back to Merthyr?’

‘He told me he’d been in my shoes once.’ The young soldier wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘Said he knew how it felt, to kill a civilian in cold blood, made me see what I’d done. He said that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself ’less I tried to put things right.’

Pyke thought about Johns and his friendship with the radicals. He would have known the second letter — directing them to the quarry — hadn’t been sent by the real kidnappers and he’d always had his suspicions that one of the marksmen was a trained soldier.

‘Do you know where that man is now?’

‘Now?’ The soldier shook his head. ‘I just met him once, that time he came to Brecon.’

‘There were two of you up the mountain that day.’

‘That’s right. Me and Captain Kent.’

It took Pyke a moment to place the name. He was the man who’d imposed martial law in Merthyr. ‘Was he the one who gave the orders?’

The soldier nodded. ‘He’ll deny it, of course. He’ll claim I deserted because of what I did, the affair.’

‘Depends who asks.’

‘You don’t understand,’ the soldier said, openly showing his fear for the first time. ‘He won’t stop looking for me and when he finds me, he’ll kill me.’

‘Let me worry about him.’

Considine shot him a puzzled look. ‘Why? What do you intend to do?’

‘That’s my business.’ Pyke kept his expression blank. ‘Kent’s now in Merthyr with your regiment. Apparently he’s taking his orders from a man called Josiah Webb.’

Considine frowned. ‘Only one person Kent ever took orders from.’

Pyke had expected the soldier to jump at the mention of Webb’s name but he hadn’t. ‘Let me guess. Sir Clancy Smyth?’

The young soldier looked at him, still puzzled. ‘Never heard of him.’

Pyke felt his world tilt on its axis and suddenly he saw it; saw what he’d been missing, saw who had killed William Hancock and why. It was all so obvious.

‘Hancock,’ Considine said, ‘Zephaniah Hancock.’

TUESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY 1847

Dundrum, Co. Tipperary

The rain was falling as sleet and there were no stars or moonlight to guide Knox, but he knew the track well, knew it as he knew everything else in Dundrum. He fought back another wave of anger. Usually the walk from the church to Quarry Field might have taken him half an hour but Knox covered the distance in ten minutes, running more than walking, impervious to the sleet and cold.

He didn’t knock. He just opened the door and stumbled into the front room, red-faced and out of breath. His mother was knitting by the fire, a woollen shawl draped over her knees. His father appeared from the bedroom, wearing trousers held up by braces, and an old vest. There was no sign of his brothers.

‘What is it, Michael?’ His mother could see his expression, see that all was not fine.

‘I have two words to say to you, Mam. John Johns.’ Knox saw her flinch as if he had struck her.

She put her hand to her mouth and gasped. Knox’s father remained rooted to the spot, unable to say anything.

‘Born eighteen hundred and six. March the tenth. You would have been eighteen at the time.’

She stared at him, the edifice of her life beginning to crumble around her.

‘This would have been before you married him.’ Knox pointed at his father.

‘Michael, please…’ His mother’s voice sounded weak, alien.

‘Perhaps this was before you even knew him. But he wasn’t the father, was he? Otherwise there would be no reason to leave his name off the birth certificate.’

‘No good will come of this, Michael. Please, I beg you, don’t take this any farther,’ she muttered, her hands trembling.

‘No, Mother, I will not leave it. You’ll tell me the truth. What I’ve been doing these last few weeks, why my life has been destroyed.’

Sarah Knox began to weep.

‘Moore’s the father, isn’t he?’ The words filled Knox with revulsion, the thought of his mother, his own flesh and blood, lying with that man.

‘Oh, dear Lord.’ His mother gasped for air.

‘Did he force himself on you? Was that it?’ Knox waited, light-headed, dizzy. ‘No, that couldn’t have been it. You wouldn’t have stayed in his service for forty years. He wouldn’t have let you.’

‘He’s not the monster you think he is…’

Knox grabbed his mother by the shoulders and shook her, more violently than he’d wanted to. ‘That man paid some thugs to destroy our home, giving us no time to clear out our possessions, taking to it with crowbars and sledgehammers.’

Disturbed from his sleep, Peter stumbled bleary-eyed into the room and scurried over to where their mother was sitting. Instinctively she opened her arms and allowed the lad to nestle against her.

‘If not for me, son, then for Peter’s sake. Please. Just let sleeping dogs lie. I’ll tell you all you want to know in time. But not now, not like this.’

Without knowing what he was doing, Knox slapped her around the cheek, once, the noise echoing around the small room. ‘Our child, your grandson, is desperately ill with a fever he picked up after we’d been driven from our home.’ He stared at her, then at his hand, unable to comprehend what he’d done.

Peter was wailing in her arms, sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.

‘Little James is ill?’ She had been trying to console Peter but all of a sudden she looked up at Knox through bloodshot eyes.

‘I want to hear you say it, Mother. Tell me to my face. John Johns is Moore’s son. Your son.’

She bowed her head and nodded.

Knox never thought the day would come when he hated his mother but in that instant he felt nothing but contempt for her; contempt for the life she’d built, a life built on lies.

‘Yes, Michael, he’s our son,’ she whispered, not looking at her husband, who hadn’t uttered a word. ‘There. Are you satisfied?’

Our son. Hers and Moore’s.

‘I’ve lost everything, Mother. My position, my home, maybe even my child. You could have helped. You could’ve said something. But you just let it happen.’

Peter had calmed down a little but she still wouldn’t look at Knox, wouldn’t meet his eyes.

‘And if I’d told you, what do you think Moore would have done? That he wouldn’t have tried to evict us? And how long do you think your brother would have lasted, living hand to mouth, sleeping rough?’

This took the sting out of Knox’s anger but it didn’t dissolve it completely. ‘He asked for me, Mother, for me. Because he knew he could lord it over me. Knew you would keep me in line. He asked for me because he thought I was weak, pathetic, that I’d roll over and let him get away with it, just like this family’s been doing for the last forty years.’

Tears were flowing down his mother’s cheeks again and Knox began to feel a pang of sympathy for her. ‘You don’t think I’m proud of myself? That I don’t hate myself for turning my back on you? What I did, I did for your brother’s sake alone. But every night I went to bed and prayed for you, Michael, prayed that God would keep you safe.’