Knox felt as if his innards had been scooped out. ‘Moore’s turned the whole of Cashel against us, Mam. No one will rent us a room, we’re finished. My only hope is to find out what Moore is afraid of and use it to get back what’s rightfully mine, what’s been taken from me. To do that, I need your help.’
‘I don’t know anything, Michael. I’m just a servant. I know my place, do as I’m told.’
‘And what about doing what’s right?’
His mother wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her dress. ‘This is no time for principle, son. Not now, while death is so close.’
The crowd at the counter of the New Forge in Dundrum village was two deep, men in their best clothes, fresh from the Sunday service. Some would know him, know who he was, but Knox no longer cared. These were the lucky ones, still in work, who could afford a mug or two of stout. In his civilian clothes, no one paid him much attention. Knox waited at one end of the counter for the landlord to notice him: the news of his dismissal wouldn’t have travelled this far.
His mind turned back to what had just taken place, the fight with his father and the argument with his mother. Knox had always felt different from his family. The ten-year age gap between him and Matthew didn’t help but it was more than that. His mother had always loved him with a fierceness he couldn’t quite comprehend — which was why her rejection of him was so bewildering. His father had always treated him with caution and, if he’d been drinking, with undisguised hostility. Knox could still recall a night when his father had returned from the pub. This would have been before Matthew was born, and Knox had been asleep in his mother’s arms. His father had woken him up and had taken a leather strap to him, hitting him over and over, stopping only when his mother jumped on his back and toppled him to the floor.
‘What can I do for you, Constable?’ The landlord stood there, arms folded across his apron.
Knox took out one of his precious shillings and placed it on the counter. ‘I wonder if you could tell me where I might find the Doran family. The mother, Maria, used to work up at the big house.’
Maria Doran had once been his mother’s closest confidante and, until her dismissal, had been the longest-serving member of the household after his mother. Knox didn’t know the reason for her dismissal — his mother had never talked about it — but as soon as it happened, no one ever mentioned Maria’s name again.
‘Done something wrong, has she?’
‘I just need to talk to her, that’s all.’
The landlord glanced down at the silver coin and licked his lips. ‘Only Dorans I know have a smallholding just north of Ponds Cross Roads, left-hand side.’
Nodding, Knox shunted the coin towards the landlord. ‘And I want to buy some food. A bird, if you have one.’ He saw the man’s expression. ‘I’m not interested in where it’s come from, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
They both knew that any bird the landlord might be able to procure had been poached from the Cornwallis estate.
‘I’ve got a partridge, plucked and ready, but it won’t be cheap.’
‘How much?’
‘Ten shillings.’
Knox took a deep breath. Before the famine, you could have picked up a bird for a tenth of that amount. ‘Eight.’
‘Only one I’ve got. I won’t let it go for less than ten.’
‘Throw in a bottle of porter?’ Knox got out his purse and rummaged around for the coins.
Maria Doran had aged in the two years since he’d last seen her, so much so that he might not have recognised her if they’d passed in the street. She was a few years younger than his mother but now looked ten or fifteen years older. Her daughter had been reluctant to let him into their one-room cabin but Maria had brushed away her objections. Now her children had been banished outside and been told not to disturb them. Maria Doran was sitting on the room’s only chair, as close to the fire as she could get.
‘You’re Sarah Knox’s boy, aren’t ye?’ Maria Doran had spoken to her daughter and son-in-law in Irish but addressed him in English. All of Cornwallis’s servants had to speak English. It was a condition of service.
Knox nodded. ‘Michael.’
‘Come closer, let me have a proper look at you.’
Knox did as he was asked, knelt down next to her, and let her run her bony fingers over his cheeks.
‘I remember ye. Always your mammy’s favourite.’
He decided to let the comment pass, tried not to think what his mother had said to him, what he’d said to her.
‘I don’t know whether you heard about the recent murder on the estate,’ he began. ‘A man in his forties, perhaps, stabbed in the stomach.’
‘She never spoke to me again, after Moore made his accusations.’ Maria Doran stared at him, reproachful.
Knox nodded. He had never before thought of his mother as flawed but now it was hard not to. Of course, he didn’t know the circumstances behind Maria’s dismissal but he was inclined to believe anything that showed Moore in a vindictive light.
‘I’m guessing they weren’t true.’
‘Oh, they were true, all right, I pilfered a little food, but no one stopped to ask why.’
They were silent for a while, both watching the fire glowing in the grate. ‘Just now, I asked about a murder on the estate…’
‘Now I’ve seen ye, satisfied my curiosity, you can get out of my sight.’
‘You want me to go?’
The old woman looked away. ‘Tell your mam I haven’t forgotten, haven’t forgiven either.’
‘Then you won’t be needing this.’ Knox held up the bird he’d been hiding in his coat. ‘Or this.’ He showed her the bottle of porter.
Maria Doran gasped and stared, open-mouthed, at the bird. He could sympathise. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten meat.
While the daughter prepared the bird, placing it on a spit over the open fire, with a pan underneath to catch the fat and juices, Maria Doran told Knox she hadn’t heard a thing about a murder and said she didn’t know why Asenath Moore would be so keen to cover up his association with a policeman from London. She was at a loss to help him, and she seemed to feel bad about it, now that Knox had provided such a feast for her and her family. They talked briefly about the people they knew, the ones who’d died. ‘The lucky ones,’ Maria called them.
‘Moore always treated your mammy different,’ she said, reminiscing. ‘Been with the family longer ’n anyone.’
Knox waited: he wanted to steer her away from the subject of his mother.
‘Can you think of anything at all that Moore would want to keep secret?’
The smell of the cooking bird had filled the room, making it hard to concentrate. He swallowed the juices in his mouth.
‘Man like that, done plenty of bad things, but nothing we got to hear about.’
It was dark outside now and the daughter and son-in-law had joined them at the fire. Knox uncorked the bottle of porter, took a gulp and passed it to the daughter. The sweet taste lingered in his mouth, the alcohol warming his stomach. An invitation to stay for supper, and overnight if needed, had already been offered and accepted.
‘Does anything stick out in your memory?’ Knox asked. ‘Something that made Moore angry, perhaps?’
The old woman laughed. ‘Moore was always angry.’ She took the bottle and drank a swig of the porter.
‘Mam tell you why he dismissed her?’ This time it was the daughter who’d spoken. She was plain and dumpy, her skin pitted with pockmarks.
As Knox turned to her, Maria Doran sat up. ‘Actually there was something, a long time ago.’
They both turned their attention back to Maria. ‘I was just a wee slip of a girl. Hard to believe, isn’t it?’ She took another gulp of the porter, then handed it to the son-in-law. ‘This would’ve been a month or so after I started.’
Knox felt the policeman in him return. ‘Do you remember the date?’
‘Spring, twenty-five. I’d just had this one,’ she said, gesturing at her daughter. ‘My mam was lookin’ after her.’