Disraeli had protected the lying numbskull because Victoria doted upon the fellow, but it had cost the prime minister in public and political opinion.
It had been a pre-emptive war, an invasion under the guise of freeing the land from a despot, King Cetshwayo. Of course the fellow was a tyrant but he hardly presented a threat to the Western world, which was the other fictional reason for the offensive action. To invade another country at this juncture was not a good idea.
Not with the Russian bear growling in Afghanistan, which was another pretty kettle of fish. The Forward Policy to defend India’s borders by extending them as far as the Hindu Kush and bring a large part of the country under imperial rule had ended in military victory.
But defeating the tribesmen did not necessarily mean controlling them, as the First Afghan War had so painfully proved. Now there was a second, and once more the threat of local uprisings against the occupying army which presented an easy target to those who wore no uniform, struck from the shadows and then melted back into a sympathetic populace.
The cost of the conflict and, from Gladstone’s entrenched moral probity of opinion, the doubtful ethics involved, had unleashed some of the most excoriating oratory from the great Midlothian tree-feller.
‘Remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as that of your own!’
Gladstone had thundered thus in Dalkeith.
Indeed the man was thundering everywhere like an American stumping orator.
Also there was the small matter of six bad harvests in a row. Disraeli had not personally arranged the weather but politicians get blamed for everything.
The Queen did not seem totally convinced by his reading of the oracle, so he tried a recent witticism which had its roots in a dark wish.
‘Does Her Majesty know the difference between a misfortune and a calamity?’
‘I have had both in my life,’ was the response.
Oh dear. Not promising, never mind, press on regardless.
‘If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.’
A small smile. No more than that. Then, for the first time of that meeting, they looked squarely into each other’s eyes. A rare simplicity.
Victoria drew herself up in queenly stance to match his actor’s pose.
‘We must put our trust in God, Mr Disraeli,’ she asserted somewhat throatily. ‘He will command the field.’
‘He will indeed, madam.’
But Disraeli did not say what form this God might take. Or where He might strike. Like a serpent.
Certain words had been dropped in a certain quarter, as regards the Queen’s deep disquietude. Certain events might have been set in motion and, if need arose and these events assume an ominous turn, what would he know of it all?
His hands were clean. Especially under the nails.
7
I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery’s child
Her hair was long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild.
JOHN KEATS, ‘La belle dame sans merci’
McLevy on the saunter, Mulholland loping along at his side like an Irish setter.
This had once been the inspector’s favourite pursuit, a gentle perambulation through the streets of Leith to observe his charges, most of them doing their level best to avoid his eye.
The delvers, the nymphs and their pounces, the low and high thieves, the bolters, the pleaders, the sneaks, the climbers, the thimblers, the cardsharps, the young keelies with their shooting jackets, caps and fancy girls, the dollymops, shopgirls and maids who slipped out from their place of work to sell their favours, then last but not least, the
This was McLevy’s private appellation for the unfortunate carriers of the pox who gave many a man his Canongate breeks, so called because that particular quarter, despite the nearby sanctuary of Holyrood, had become a hotbed of venereal splendour.
He knew them all. They
Once he had heard an exasperated mother threaten her snottery son with the words, ‘If ye don’t do what ye’re tell’t to, I’ll get McLevy to come and throw ye in the jail, like he did yer father!’ He had become the bogey man, a myth in his own lifetime.
Recollection brought a smile to his face but it faded as he regarded the changing scene.
Constitution Street, down which he and the constable were wending their way towards the Old Docks where, with a bit of luck they would find Frank Brennan, was a handsome wide thoroughfare, thronged with carriages and, despite the present election fever, sober-suited and pious-minded pedestrians.
An example of the new respectable parish and there was more to come. The Leith Improvement Scheme was shortly to be enacted, a swathe from Great Junction Street would be cut through all the closes, narrow lanes and courts, ending at the Tolbooth Wynd.
His own subjects were being herded like animals farther and farther back into their lairs, cleansed from the main promenades, and he mourned their passing.
‘What joy can be found in a stiff collar and tight whalebone?’ he announced suddenly.
Mulholland had been casting a wary Protestant eye at the sole representative of Romanism in Leith, the Catholic chapel of Maris Stella, cruciformed, high-roofed, fetid, he was certain, with incense.
A black-clad priest emerged blinking into the light of day and waved over. McLevy waved back.
‘Father Callan. A decent enough soul,’ he opined.
‘You know him well, then?’
‘Sufficient. He keeps his own counsel. More’s the pity.’
There was a cryptic quality to that remark which hinted of past encounters but Mulholland let it lie. He was unsure of the inspector’s religious bent. The man did not worship at any
There was a rumour that his mother might have been Catholic, but, in that case, it would have been a miracle for McLevy to attain the rank of inspector. Mark you, come to think of it, miracles were exactly what the Pope sold to all and sundry. And what of indulgences? Plenary, partial, temporal or perpetual, all sold to the highest bidder.
Martin Luther had the right idea, nail rebellion on the chapel door and foreswear the Diet of Worms.
The constable was lost. ‘Ye’d have to come at me again with that, sir.’
‘Come at ye, I’ll come at ye all right.’ McLevy took a deep breath and changed tack. ‘Sookin’ up!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
The inspector glared at Mulholland in a sudden fury. ‘Ye were sookin’ up!’
‘I was not!’ came the injured response.
‘Ye were. To the lieutenant. Sook, sook!’
Mulholland indeed was plotting to ask for some time off in order to attend his Aunt Katie’s third marriage in Kerry, she was a terror for the altar that woman. He had no scruples about buttering up Roach to that end, but
