They had travelled from Hambledon — the three of them. The girl, Milly, had been sick in the night and was resting in bed. She still hadn’t uttered a word. If anything, the storm had worsened overnight: the easterly winds had picked up and the rain fell from an overcast sky like spears. It was only as they reached the city that the rain began to ease and the winds lighten, but when Pyke instructed the driver to pull over on Cornhill and told Emily and Felix he had to pick up something from the bank, he still had to run across the street to avoid getting soaked.
Five minutes later, he was crossing the road to rejoin Emily and Felix when he saw a carriage parked behind them. Through the open window the cadaverous face of Sir Horsley Rockingham was just about visible. Closer inspection confirmed this. Diverting his path, Pyke approached the stationary vehicle with caution. As he neared the window, he heard a dog barking and saw that Rockingham was accompanied by Jake Bolter. Pyke came alongside the carriage and peered inside. Rockingham and Bolter both smiled. Pyke was no longer concerned about the rain, which had petered out into a drizzle.
‘Have you been following me?’
Rockingham sat forward, his pale face slick with perspiration. ‘Not so pleasant, is it, eh, boy? When the shoe’s on the other foot.’
Pyke glanced over at Bolter who was patting his mastiff on the head. ‘Is that some kind of threat?’
‘You reckon you can slander me in my own neighbourhood and actually get away with it?’
Pyke met his stare. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But it struck him that he didn’t even know what Godfrey had written on the handbills he’d dispatched up to Huntingdon and Newmarket.
‘Still, the embarrassment is inconsequential compared to what I’ve got planned for you and your family, boy.’
Pyke held his stare. ‘Did you just threaten my family?’
Rockingham receded a little but remained unapologetic. ‘No more than you did to me.’
‘You come anywhere near my wife or my son and I’ll beat you to death with my bare hands.’
‘See?’ Bolter said, to Rockingham. ‘You’ve rattled him. I told you.’
Rockingham just smirked.
Ignoring him, Pyke turned to Bolter. ‘I know you once roomed at a former crimping house near Cowgate with Jimmy Trotter. Trotter was spotted leaving the scene where an old woman was raped and murdered in Huntingdon: the incident that started the violence in the town. Trotter also killed and beheaded an actor called Johnny and dumped his body in a river outside Huntingdon. I believe you were involved,’ he said, turning his attention back to Rockingham, ‘and acting under this man’s instruction. I also believe you planned the murder of Edward James Morris between you, with the ultimate aim of curtailing the progress of the Grand Northern Railway across your land.’
Pyke didn’t know what kind of a reaction he might provoke. At best, he expected mild indifference and resolute silence. He certainly didn’t expect the older man to turn to Bolter and give him a hard stare. That was it. Afterwards, Bolter banged on the roof of the carriage and the driver took up the reins. The carriage rolled forward and, as it did so, he saw the two men exchange heated words: words that made him wonder about the veracity of the scenario he’d just painted.
Thankfully, when he returned to his own carriage, Emily didn’t ask him who he’d been talking to. He felt himself relax.
The rain had now stopped falling and the pavements had begun to fill up. From the cocoon of their carriage, they were protected from the filth and din of the street, but while, for Pyke, it represented a humdrum scene, the vast, stinking city going about its everyday business, to the uninitiated, like Felix, who had never seen so many people of every class and hue, let alone giant advertising boards, omnibuses creaking under the weight of their passengers, hurdy-gurdy men, organ-grinders with their pet monkeys and buildings so tall and imposing they cast the entire street into shadow, there was almost too much to take in. He sat there in awed silence, his face pressed up against the glass, devouring the sheer spectacle of it. Pyke pointed to a giant board advertising a show that featured giraffes and a dancing bear, and Felix rolled his eyes in fear and amazement. These were creatures that until now had come alive only in the pages of books. He wanted to go and see the animal show until another board proclaimed the wonders of a ten-foot man, and then Felix wanted to see that show instead. Promising to take him on another occasion, Pyke noticed a board advertising Groat’s ‘All-New Retail Emporium’ on the Strand, and wondered whether this had closed its doors. He thought, too, about his own action regarding one of the overseers and compared it with what had been achieved by Captain Paine — and without any loss of life. Groat wouldn’t trade again, Pyke mused, but there were plenty of men like him, just as there were bankers like Gore, and indeed himself, queuing up to lend them money. He wanted to say something to Emily but didn’t want to acknowledge that she had been right. The moment slipped by, unnoticed by her or Felix. Squeezing her hand, he thought about the house and whether she would hate it as much as he feared she might.
They had rattled along Cheapside and, passing St Paul’s on their left, crossed over on to Newgate Street. Pyke put his arm around Felix’s shoulder and wiped the steam from the glass so they could see more clearly. This was the part of the city he had grown up in and he wanted to point out some of its landmarks. But as they clattered past the buckling, squalid buildings and grubby alleyways, he couldn’t think of anything that might interest his son. They passed the place where he had once tended to a dying man, his belly carved open by a hunting knife, while on the other side of the street, in the Black Boar, through a morass of drinkers, he had shot dead a man wanted for killing his own wife. Farther along the street was the ancient prison where he had once been held, awaiting the noose, and from where he’d escaped with Emily’s help, and a few hundred yards along Giltspur Street was the ginnery he’d once owned, where his former mistress had been killed in her sleep. It was near there, too, that as a boy barely older than Felix he had watched helplessly as his own father had been trampled to death under the feet of a terrified mob. These were his landmarks, Pyke mused, and he wanted to share them with his son: he wanted to point to the spot where his father had fallen and say, ‘This is where my childhood ended, at the age of eight.’ But he held his tongue and thought instead about the very different life Felix now led, one where his every need was catered for and his every whim indulged. What kind of man would his son grow up to be?
Just past the junction, their carriage came to a halt and Pyke pulled down the glass and poked his head through the window. Ahead, the street was blocked by a procession of long-horned Spanish cattle heading in the direction of Smithfield. Two young drove-boys, aided by a couple of sheepdogs, were trying to herd the beasts on to one side of the broad thoroughfare, so that traffic could pass on the other side, but their attempts to push and prod the frightened cattle seemed to have the opposite effect, because a breakaway group had split from the main herd and had fanned out across the entire road.
‘Where are the moo-cows going?’ Felix asked.
‘I don’t know. To the slaughterhouse, I suppose,’ Pyke said, not really thinking about his answer.
‘What’s a slaughterhouse?’
‘It’s a place where cows go before they go to heaven,’ Emily interrupted, giving him a sharp stare.
‘Oh.’ Felix continued to look at the cattle.
‘When they arrive, they’re knifed and flayed with a sharp cleaver. Their skins and hides are cut from their bodies and put to one side for the tanners and then the fleshy parts of their bodies, the rump, the loin, the legs and the hindquarters, are sliced up into chunks and finally the rest of the beast, the glands, bones, brains, bladder and hoofs, is scooped up and thrown into a big vat of boiling water.’
Emily stared at him aghast. ‘ Pyke.’ The sharpness of her tone frightened Felix, whose face had turned white. She would blame him if the boy started to weep, Pyke thought, angry at himself that he’d br
oken the harmony of the moment, even before they’d reached the new house.
Opening the door, he climbed down from the carriage and shouted at the drovers to do their job.
Someone moved behind him, on top of the carriage, but Pyke presumed it was the driver. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a metallic glint as the double-barrelled pistol swung towards him.
The first blast whistled past his head with a sudden whoosh of air, a giant sucking noise, the spent ball-shot peppering the cobblestones. The second blast came even closer, part of the shot ripping his frock-coat at the shoulder. If the masked man had aimed a little lower, Pyke thought grimly, he would now be dead.
Falling to the ground, he looked up at the roof; his would-be assassin had disappeared. Pyke was still on the ground when the vehicle started to roll forward. He realised that the masked man was at the helm, urging the horses to go faster.
Panic tore through Pyke’s stomach. He was on his feet in a matter of seconds and took off after the speeding carriage.
It had started to rain again, the darkening skies suddenly opening, and ahead of him the vehicle appeared as indistinct as the figures in a Turner painting. He tried to run harder. But now the procession of Spanish cattle had come to his rescue. The carriage had been forced to slow down, almost to a standstill, allowing Pyke the chance to close some ground. It was still moving too quickly for Emily and Felix to jump, though, and doing so into a herd of terrified long-horned cattle was all but suicidal. Now only a hundred yards away, Pyke could see that the masked man was attempting to steer a path directly through the stampeding animals. If he had been the target, Pyke thought to himself as he ran, then why didn’t the gunman abandon the vehicle and make his escape on foot? It would surely be easier to lose himself in the rabbit warren of alleyways and courts that criss-crossed the neighbourhood.
Ahead, some of the cattle broke away from the herd and swarmed around the stricken carriage, one of the horses rearing up on its hind legs and nearly toppling it in the process. His arms pumping like pistons on a steam engine, Pyke narrowed the gap to less than fifty yards and started to push his way through the scattered herd, ignoring the fact that one sudden turn of the head could impale him on a set of horns and kill him in a few seconds. The masked man had seen that Pyke was closing and lashed the backs of the two horses with the whip, spurring them on, in spite of the obstacles they faced. The carriage had almost cleared the herd and Pyke knew that if he didn’t make up the ground now, his chances of catching it up were slim. On an empty street, a well-oiled carriage pulled by a couple of powerful mares would be out of his range in a matter of seconds. He could not let this happen. Ignoring a sharp pain in his abdomen and realising too late that one of the cattle’s horns had sliced his stomach, he made a last, desperate lunge for the rear axle of the carriage as it cleared the last of the cows and bolted forward, just out of his reach.
Pyke saw Emily and Felix through the rear window of the vehicle as he fell to the ground.
PART III
The Quality of Rage
TWENTY-TWO
Amid gusts of wind that nearly picked them up off their feet and rain that lashed the deserted farmyard, turning the already sodden ground into a filthy sponge of mud and faeces, Pyke climbed down from the carriage and waited for Townsend. The November air smelled of wet leaves and a sulphurous fug produced by gases that bubbled up through the mud. With Townsend’s help, Pyke pulled Sir Horsley Rockingham out of the carriage and together they dragged him, trussed and gagged, by his arms and dumped him next to a feeding trough. They had set upon Rockingham as he conducted one of his post-dinner tours of his stables and transported him, by carriage, to a farmyard less than a mile from the edge of his estate. The farmer’s acquiescence had already been bought. It was dark, with no moonlight to guide them, the sky thick with brooding clouds. The yard was quiet apart from some giant hogs that squealed and snorted in a nearby sty. To Pyke, the hogs resembled grotesque wild creatures rather than farm-reared animals.
Bending over the wizened landowner, Pyke removed his gag and waited for a few moments. Rockingham looked up at him, bewildered, as though he had no idea what had happened. His eyes were empty, the colour of dishwater, and a strand of saliva hung from his unshaven chin.
‘I’m only going to ask this question once,’ Pyke said, kneeling over the older man. ‘What have you done with my wife and child?’
Rockingham stared at him, uncomprehending.
‘I said, where are my wife and child?’ Pyke wiped the raindrops from his face and eyes. His greatcoat was already sodden.
‘Your wife and child?’ Rockingham repeated, as though the words made no sense to him.
Pyke hauled him up by the neck, as though he were a rag doll, and forced his head down into the gruel-like liquid in the trough. Counting to five, he pulled his head up and held it just above the slime, while he spat, ‘If I have to, old man, I’ll search every building on your estate and I’ll turn your nice Queen Anne mansion upside down, too.’
The hog’s gruel seemed to have brought Rockingham around because his eyes suddenly looked more focused, as though he understood what was happening to him and indeed who Pyke was. He strained his wrists, which had been bound behind his back by bailing wire, but couldn’t free them. The scum from the trough dripped from his face. ‘I don’t know a thing about your wife and child,’ he whispered, trying to catch his breath.
‘So why did you threaten them?’ Pyke said, close enough to the landowner’s face to lick it.
At the time Pyke interpreted Rockingham’s silence as an admission of culpability, but later he couldn’t help but think that his glazed face held little more than an expression of bewilderment. Even in his damp clothes, he could feel himself sweat. He could smell himself, too. Thrusting the older man’s acorn-like head under the viscous water, he held it there for a little longer.
Rockingham was sick as soon as his head cleared the slime, a string of bile traced with blood hanging from his lips. Lumps of the gruel-like water hung from his mouth and cheeks.
From behind, Pyke heard Townsend mutter, ‘He won’t be able to take much more of this.’
But Pyke continued to hold Rockingham’s head over the trough. ‘Tell me how you know Jake Bolter.’
‘What’s Bolter got to do with anything?’
‘Just answer the question.’
‘He used to serve in the Thirty-first. I hold occasional dinners and a ball in my home for the regiment.’
‘And did you meet Jimmy Trotter through him?’
‘Trotter?’
‘The man with a glass eye.’
‘I don’t know such a man.’ He tried to clear his throat.
Pyke dunked Rockingham’s head into the hog’s gruel once again but this time, when he pulled it clear of the liquid, the old man’s entire body began to spasm and a froth of blood and saliva started to seep from his mouth. Pyke dropped him on to the ground and tried to revive him, at first with a hard slap to the face and then with a few pumps on his chest. His body stopped convulsing and he must have died shortly afterwards because there was silence. In the yard, the only noises were the grunting and squealing of the hogs and the pitter-patter of rain. Pyke stood up and drew the sleeve of his coat over his mouth, staring down at Rockingham’s limp form. Another wave of anger and self-hatred washed over him.
‘ What? ’ Pyke said, turning around to look at Townsend, who hadn’t spoken a word. ‘He must have had a heart seizure. There was nothing I could have done.’
Townsend stood there, his arms folded. His clothes were soaking and rain dripped from his chin.
Pyke bent down and quickly stripped the old man naked. Then he scooped the body up in his arms and carried it across to the sty. The landowner couldn’t have weighed more than six stone, but it still took a monumental effort to lift him up over the chest-high fence and drop him into the sty. At first the reluctant beasts didn’t know what to do with the body. A few of them prodded the naked corpse with their
snouts and jostled with one another to get the best vantage point. It wasn’t until one of them tasted a trace of blood on the old man’s mouth that the feeding frenzy began in earnest, but when it did it was a truly sickening sight. In ankle-deep filth, Rockingham’s arms and then his legs disappeared under a melee of trotters, and soon all that could be heard was a few quiet grunts as the creatures ripped into the old man’s flesh and crunched his bones. Before too long there was nothing left.
‘Tell the farmer we’re done and meet me in the carriage.’ Pyke stared up into the dark skies at the rain. ‘I want to be back in London by daybreak.’ The driver would have to be paid off, as well.
The odour of death had seeped into his fingers, clothes, skin and hair until it was all Pyke could taste, all he could smell. He had shot and, doubtless, killed the dragoon outside Huntingdon, but he hadn’t tasted death in such a visceral way for a long time and had forgotten the unpleasantness of the feeling: knowing he had taken everything the old man had, and everything he would ever have. Pyke had killed him, plain and simple, and whether he deserved to die was beside the point. He could save the self-justifications and regret for later. An image of his son wouldn’t leave his mind, and Pyke felt a gnawing emptiness building within him. It felt as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff, about to hurl himself to his own death. More than anything else he craved the reassurance of laudanum.
‘Do you still think he was responsible?’ Townsend asked, quietly. They had been travelling through the storm for almost two hours, and if anything the rain had intensified. The inside of the carriage smelled of mouldy hay and drying clothes.
Pyke gave him an empty look. ‘You heard him. He didn’t seem to know anything about it.’
Townsend put his legs up on the seat opposite. ‘Tell me again why you thought it might have been him.’ He tried to adjust his position, wincing as though in pain.
The Revenge of Captain Paine pm-2 Page 31
