There were three men sitting on tree stumps around the fire and Pyke realised he already knew one of them, though it took him a few moments to work out how and where from.
Julian Jackman looked as surprised as Pyke but tried to conceal it behind the same easy smile he had deployed in their first meeting at the Brick Lane beer shop. This time, Pyke scrutinised his features more closely - his smooth complexion, his piercing green eyes and his thick, bushy hair - and realised, to his disappointment, that the radical was indeed attractive.
‘In what capacity are you here, Pyke? I take it not as your wife’s keeper?’
Pyke stepped forward as if to strike him and watched, with pleasure, as Jackman flinched slightly.
‘You know him, then?’ Perched on a tree stump, a navvy took off his white felt hat and scratched his carrot-coloured hair.
Jackman nodded. ‘I met him a few days ago in London. He’s married to Emily Blackwood, the campaigner. Maybe you’ve heard of her?’ It was odd to be described as Emily’s husband and Pyke wasn’t sure he liked it.
The redhead frowned. ‘Can we trust him?’
Jackman stood up. ‘I don’t know, Pyke. Can we trust you?’ Turning to the navvy, he added, ‘By profession, Pyke’s a banker.’
The navvy seemed amused. ‘A capitalist, eh? Is that right?’ He looked up at Pyke for the first time.
‘Who I am or what I do for a living doesn’t matter. What I’ve come here to tell you does matter.’
‘Well, sir, we tend to take folks as we find ’em.’ The navvy broke into a grin. ‘My name’s Red and this here is Billygoat.’ He pointed at the shaven-headed man next to him. ‘It seems you already know our friend from London so I won’t bother introducing him.’ He put on his felt cap and turned up the brim. ‘So what is it you’ve got to tell us?’
‘Did you know that the magistrate has been swearing in some of the townsmen as special constables and arming them with machetes and brickbats?’
Red scratched his stubble, digesting this news, but his expression remained calm. ‘And why d’you think we’d be interested to hear this?’
Pyke glanced across at Jackman. ‘They say to be forewarned is to be forearmed.’
‘Is that right?’ Red broke into a smile. ‘Is a gentleman banker such as yourself on our side now?’
‘I came here to investigate claims that a landowner has been conspiring to obstruct the progress of the railway across his land.’
‘Conspiring with whom?’
‘That’s what I’m here to find out.’
Red regarded him with interest but said nothing.
‘You mean to tell us that you haven’t been sent up here to keep an eye on radical activity?’ Jackman shot Pyke a sceptical look.
‘Personally I don’t give a damn whether you join a union or drink yourselves into an early grave.’ This time Pyke directed his remarks at Red.
‘And does the central committee of the Grand Northern Railway company feel the same way?’ Jackman asked, raising his eyebrows.
‘I don’t know.’ Pyke folded his arms. ‘I haven’t asked them.’
Red glanced over at the radical. ‘So you wouldn’t have any objections to us taking these oaths and then, say, striking for higher wages and better workin’ conditions?’
‘If that’s what you want to do, be my guest,’ Pyke said carefully. ‘Of course, if you took these oaths and declared a strike before other navvy crews had done likewise, it would put you in a weak position. That’s the thing about labouring jobs. There are always men willing to take your places.’
Red seemed to enjoy this remark. ‘I’d say you weren’t accustomed to the toils of being a navvy. Fact of the matter is, there ain’t too many folk are cut out for it.’ But Pyke could see that he had already considered this point.
‘Look,’ Pyke said, impatiently, ‘there are upwards of a hundred men waiting on the other side of the bridge with brickbats and pick handles and the magistrate seems to think you’re about to attack their town. My question is, where has he got that idea from?’
‘That would be because we are.’ Red’s expression was so calm that it took Pyke a few moments to comprehend what he’d said.
‘You’re going to attack the town?’
Jackman shot Red a worried look. ‘You think it’s wise to tell him about our plan?’
‘He ain’t going anywhere till we make our move, so what’s the difference?’
‘I still don’t understand,’ Pyke said, looking around the room. ‘Why attack a place that you know is very well defended? Why attack it at all?’
‘Come. I’ll show you.’ Red stood up and motioned for Pyke to follow him outside to the back of the shanty, where a body was laid out under a tarpaulin on a tatty hemp mat. It belonged to an old woman, and it looked as if she had been badly beaten before she died. Her neck was very much discoloured, as if her windpipe had been violently squeezed, and someone’s fingernails had clawed the skin over her trachea. Her breasts were purple with bruises and her face looked as if it had been attacked with a hammer. These injuries alone marked it as one of the most brutal beatings Pyke had ever witnessed, but this wasn’t even the worst of it: scarcely an inch of her body was free from contusions, but it was the marks around the old woman’s vagina which turned Pyke’s stomach and forced him to look away. He shared a brief look with Red. There didn’t seem to be any other conclusion that could be drawn. Before she had died the woman had been raped.
‘Our crew’s been together for a year. Mary joined us at the start; she’d cook and clean and help out around the camp. Two nights ago, she was washing some pots yonder when this thing happened.’ His expression darkened and he spat the words out. ‘Whoever did it must’ a clamped his brutish hand around her mouth ’cos none of us heard a thing. Billygoat found her later, down by the river, all wet and dead, stripped naked and lying there like a piece of meat.’ Red’s hands were clenched so tight his knuckles had turned white.
‘And you think someone in the town was responsible for this?’ Pyke could barely bring himself to look at the body.
Red grabbed hold of his wrist. ‘Apparently some fellow in the Fountain inn has been boastin’ about it. We got a description. One of the lads saw someone matchin’ this description loiterin’ on the night it happened.’
‘Can you describe him for me?’
‘A hairy brute of a man. Whiskers all over his face. Close up, they reckon he has a glass eye, too.’
In the fading afternoon light, Pyke bent over to inspect the old woman’s corpse, and it was only then he saw the marks on her breasts. Burn marks, exactly like the ones he’d found on the headless body.
‘Have you seen these?’ Pyke pointed at the round burn marks, trying to play down his excitement.
Nodding, Red rummaged around in his pocket. ‘He might have used this. It was found next to the body.’ There in his open palm was a half-smoked cigar.
‘Can I have a look?’
Red hesitated and then thought better of it and handed the cigar to him. Pyke held it up to the light and inspected it. There wasn’t much to identify the brand but a tobacconist might be able to tell him more. He asked the navvy whether he could keep it. Red shrugged and said he didn’t see why not but added there were plenty of folk who liked to smoke cigars. But Pyke was already turning something else over in his mind. Now two bodies had come to light, within a few miles of each other, both with burns marks likely caused by the hot ash of a cigar.
What connected them?
Back inside the shanty, he sat down on a tree stump and looked over at Jackman. ‘Can I make an observation?’ Before either Red or Jackman could speak, he added, ‘You know that Jackman wants you to attack the town. It’s in his interest. If you march through the High Street looking for a brawl, there’ll be some townsmen waiting for you. So when a few of your men get hurt, perhaps badly hurt, Jackman here can exploit the situation for his own political ends.’
For the first time, Pyke noted with satisfa
ction, Jackman looked genuinely angry. Blood rose in his neck. ‘And if we do nothing, the company gets exactly what it wants. A nice, pliant workforce.’ He nodded contemptuously in Pyke’s direction. ‘By his own admission, he’s a company man. He just wants to smooth things over until the work has started.’
Red drummed his fingers on the makeshift table while he considered what to do. ‘The thing is, Pyke, if we don’t do a thing, then Mary’s death goes unpunished. You see what I mean?’ He waited for a moment, choosing his words. ‘I went to see the magistrate yesterday to report what had happened.’ His voice shook a little. ‘The man told me to my face not to waste his time. To my face. You reckon we can turn the other cheek, not do a thing?’
Pyke glanced across at the radical. ‘But it remains true that if the magistrate turns his militia and weapons on you, Jackman can exploit your likely injuries for propagandist purposes. He doesn’t care about your well-being any more than I do.’
This time Pyke had pushed the radical too far and, without warning, Jackman took a swing at him. But it was a wild punch and Pyke easily ducked under it, leaving himself with time to take aim and land a clean blow on the radical’s jaw. He put a little extra into the punch and felt a jolt of pleasure when Jackman went down.
Aroused by the disturbance, other men poured into the shanty and it took a blast of Red’s musket to restore some semblance of calm.
‘I’ve thought about what you said.’ Red looked at Pyke and rubbed his chin. His stare was empty of sentiment. ‘I’ve made my decision. We bury Mary and we march on the town.’
Cheers quickly spread through the camp. Gingerly climbing to his feet, Jackman nursed his cut lip. Only Red and Pyke seemed unmoved by what had happened, and when the furore abated the navvy turned to him and whispered, ‘You may well be right but we don’t have a choice.’
Later, when Pyke shut his eyes and pictured Mary’s battered corpse, it was hard to disagree with Red’s logic.
It was fully dark by the time they left the camp and the sky was still laden with black clouds. It started to rain as they approached the bridge, a fine spray at first and then larger droplets of water buffeted their faces. A squally wind blew gold leaves from the branches and, deprived of sunlight, Huntingdon once again became a drab market town, grey smoke billowing out of red-brick chimneys. There were thirty-seven of them, including Pyke and Jackman, and their makeshift weaponry was no match for what Pyke had seen outside the town’s watch-house.
They crossed the ancient bridge unopposed and marched three or four abreast up the deserted High Street, as anxious faces appeared and disappeared from behind drawn curtains. As they approached the Fountain inn, some of their number began to rattle their sticks and chant threats but, on closer inspection, both the inn itself and the adjoining taproom seemed deserted - certainly all the doors were locked and there were no signs of life anywhere inside the building.
It was raining harder and wet gusts of wind pummelled their unprotected faces. At the head of the mob, a breakaway group had decided to head for the square, and when they turned the corner into it, they were confronted by a row of well-armed men lined up to block their progress. The navvies were so obviously outnumbered it was a surprise that some chose to attack, but the whole crew was quickly forced back with brickbats and pick handles.
Pyke couldn’t see what was happening at the front of the melee but he could hear the grunts and screams as blunt objects rained down on their heads, bones cracking under the onslaught. A gleeful townsman split open one of the navvy’s heads with repeated swings of a brickbat, and just behind Pyke another navvy was pushed to the ground and kicked over and over in the stomach and head. On that occasion Pyke charged the lynch mob and managed to chase them off with a few lunges of his knife, long enough to pick up the stricken man and retreat with the rest of them towards the bridge. Some ran and others walked, turning only to check on the whereabouts of their pursuers. Pyke had lost sight of Jackman and Red but the man Pyke had rescued had recovered sufficiently to walk without help, even though he didn’t appear to know where he was or what had just happened.
Ahead of them the bridge was just about visible through the driving rain. Some of the townsmen were still pursuing them along the High Street, the sound of musket or rifle fire and the whiff of blast powder filling the damp air. From the size of their group, Pyke guessed that about half of the navvies had been left somewhere behind them, including perhaps Jackman, but he saw Red somewhere near the front, urging his wounded troops to retreat a little faster. It wasn’t until they were halfway across the bridge that Pyke saw the men lined up on the other side of the bridge, the Godmanchester side, where they’d hoped to find sanctuary: townsmen carrying torches and sticks and waiting to ambush them.
Others had seen them, too, and they came to a halt in the middle of the bridge, caught between two advancing groups of townsmen. What happened next would live for a long time in Pyke’s mind: the sounds of brickbats and pick handles raining down on their heads, cries of pain and anguish, blood splattered across his face, and splashes as terrified navvies jumped into the fast-moving river below to escape the onslaught. Later, he would be able to think back on what happened with greater clarity and determine what mistakes had been made and whether more could have been done to save those drowning men. But in the first moments on the bridge, he came as close to experiencing what a soldier might go through during an ambush as he would ever come, fighting to preserve one’s life rather than win a victory.
One of the townsmen came at him swinging a pick handle. If he’d connected, the blow might have split Pyke’s head open. Instead, he swayed out of the way, punched the man in the face and disarmed him of the stick. Turning it on someone else, he drove it hard into his attacker’s stomach and watched as the man fell to his knees coughing up bile.
When they had finally broken through the ranks of the townsmen, who were tired of their victory, and made it back to the camp, Red embraced Pyke with both arms and whispered in his ear that he was a good man. Red’s clothes were torn and muddy and his face was bruised purple from the blows he’d received at the hands of the townsmen. Pyke’s injuries were slight in comparison. Others also offered their grateful thanks. From somewhere a horse was produced, its reins thrust into Pyke’s hands. ‘We need someone to tell folk what happened here tonight,’ Red said, his voice bristling with emotion. ‘We need someone to tell our story.’
Pyke checked his watch. It was barely seven o’clock. He still had time to make it to the rendezvous point with Morris by eight.
He looked out for the young radical but didn’t see Jackman among the walking wounded.
Pyke had ridden a few hundred yards along the muddy track from Godmanchester when he saw them, a row of men in tall-crowned top hats carrying torches and blockading the road. The lashing rain and squally wind made it hard to tell how many of them he was facing. A clap of thunder shook the ground and a fork of lightning lit up the sky. He saw them better in the afterglow of the lightning. At first he thought the men had been placed there in order to protect the town from recriminatory attacks by the navvies. But when he pulled on the reins, dug his heels into the horse’s midriff and tried to encourage the mare to turn around, this fallacy was exposed. A rifle shot exploded like the crack of a slaver’s whip, closely followed by a second and a third shot. They weren’t trying to stop or arrest the navvies. It was an assassination party and he was their target. Pressing his own horse into a gallop, Pyke lowered his head and held on to the beast as it clipped along the track. He didn’t see the other men, advancing from the direction of the camp, until it was almost too late. They, too, had fanned out across the track, their rifles aimed at him. Pyke jerked on the reins and brought the snorting mare to a standstill, looking in both directions as the armed men closed in on him.
For a moment, Pyke cursed his own stupidity. He had underestimated the threat posed by Yellowplush and Rockingham and had needlessly antagonised them for no gain other than to see them squir
m. Worse still, he had become complacent, allowing himself to believe that his old skills would somehow carry him through, ignoring the fact that he hadn’t fired a pistol in anger or ridden a horse in five years.
Kicking the horse in the ribs, he felt the beast surge forward and directed it from the track, the animal clearing the first ditch with an effortless leap, spewing up chunks of turf as it landed and throwing Pyke forward in the saddle. Ahead, through the rain, he saw a deeper ditch followed by a wooden fence. He didn’t have any choice but to try to clear these two obstacles and had set about preparing the jittery animal for the jump when one of its hind legs seemed to give way, either because it had been hit by a bullet or because it had sunk too far into the mud. When he tried to make the jump, the mare toppled forward and threw him out of the saddle, catapulting him across the grass until he landed on his back with a thud.
Pyke felt a sense of weary resignation as he lay unmoving on the damp turf, and an acknowledgement that he had overplayed his hand and lost more than he could afford to lose. They found him in a matter of seconds, three or four of them gathering around him like hunters. The smell of whisky on their breath was unmistakable. He thought of his son, who would now grow up without a father, and of Emily. One of them poked him with the barrel of his rifle, while another asked, ‘What do you want us to do with him?’ As a Bow Street Runner he had once enjoyed the full sanction of the law, but here he was less than a nuisance, a nonentity who was expendable precisely because no one knew who he was. Then he heard the same voice say, ‘Search and strip him.’ Another voice muttered, ‘Well, is it Cap’ain Paine or not?’ Pyke looked up and saw the glint of a shovel. ‘When you’ve done that, dig a deep hole, shoot him in the head and bury him.’ The voice belonged to Septimus Yellowplush.
The magistrate bent down to address him. This time he wasn’t wearing his wig and his bald head, as large as a pumpkin, glistened in the rain.
‘No one does what you did to me and gets away with it.’ He took aim and kicked Pyke on the side of his head with his boot.
The Revenge of Captain Paine Page 10
