That drew a puzzled expression. ‘I’m not disappointed by you.’
‘But?’
‘You paint me as this saintly prig.’
‘Because you’re always talking about your work.’ He waited for a moment. ‘Not about what you want, what you desire. .’
Outside on the street, a coach came to halt.
‘You don’t think I desire you?’ Emily said, in part distracted by the sound of someone approaching the front door.
Moments later, they were interrupted by a knock on the door. Jo peered into the room. She said that Lord Edmonton’s coachman was downstairs in the hall, demanding that Emily, on her father’s explicit orders, accompany him back to Hambledon.
‘But it’s so late. .’ Emily looked at Pyke, frowning.
‘The coachman is quite insistent. Apparently your father is demanding your presence,’ Jo said, with a shrug. ‘Perhaps you could talk to him yourself?’
‘Of course.’ As Emily gathered her shawl and bonnet, she turned to Pyke and said, ‘I shall have to travel to Hambledon tonight. If I refused, it would cause more trouble than it’s worth.’ She shrugged apologetically.
‘Do you think it might have something to do with the robbery?’
‘It might.’ She began to tie her bonnet. ‘But my father is notorious for his temperamental behaviour. I am guessing he just wants someone to listen to his rants.’
She picked up her gloves and turned to face him. Her smile was forced. ‘I’m sorry I have to leave. .’
‘And I am sorry for some of my intemperate remarks.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s just. .’
‘Yes?’ Her eyes lit up with hope.
But he could not bring himself to say what he imagined that she wanted to hear. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Oh.’ She seemed disappointed but sought to conceal this by pulling her shawl tightly around her shoulders. ‘You shall stay here tonight, of course. There is a bed on the upper floor but you might find it more hospitable on the sofa.’
‘When will I see you again?’
From the doorway, she turned around. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’ Her tone was formal, perhaps because Jo was waiting for her on the landing.
‘Emily. .’
Her expression seemed both annoyed and expectant.
‘Yes?’
Pyke swallowed his disconcertion. ‘I hope that your father doesn’t suspect you.’
‘I hope so too.’ And she was gone.
Pyke watched her leave from the drawing-room window and settled down on the sofa. Jo had already laid out a blanket and a pillow for him. He had not planned to stay the night in Edmonton’s house — in spite of Emily’s insistence, he did not think it was entirely safe for him to do so — but the long trip to Portsmouth and the exertions of the robbery had taken their toll, and as soon as he laid his head on one of the pillows and pulled the blanket over him, tiredness overcame him. He remembered thinking that he should rouse Jo and ask her whether she had indeed followed him to the Blue Dog tavern and warned him of Flynn’s presence, but as his face burrowed down into the soft pillow, such thoughts ebbed away and, before he knew it, he had slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.
TWENTY-ONE
The following afternoon, Pyke met Townsend at the Red Lion inn in Highgate and there they hired a private coach and driver to take them around a collection of villages located within Edmonton’s two-thousand-acre estate, just to the north of the outer fringes of the metropolis. It was only late September but already there was an autumnal chill in the air; the leaves had turned from green to gold and many had already fallen on to muddy ground. The overcast skies did little to lift the melancholy air that seemed to hang over the villages they visited, places made up of little more than a few shacks, a church and a solitary public house. They had passed through the suburbs and were now deep in the countryside. The fields were busy with labourers bringing in the last of the harvest, the rickyards and barns were brimming with flax, and the narrow tracks were choked with wagons and carts.
Townsend had arranged for them to be accompanied by James Canning, a shoemaker, and Jack Saville, a straw-plait merchant from Bedfordshire. Both men had made a name for themselves in radical circles and both were known, or known of, by at least someone in the different village inns. In each place, they heard a variation of the same story: Edmonton was a corrupt landlord who charged his tenant farmers an exorbitant rent, which meant that the farmers had no choice but to squeeze as much work as possible from their labourers, for an insulting wage that did not even cover their basic subsistence.
Townsend had informed Canning and Saville that Pyke was an acquaintance of Hunt and was exploring the possibilities of forming links between metropolitan and rural political activists.
The villagers were hostile to outsiders, and spoke to them only because they knew, or had heard of, Canning and Saville. Ale lubricated their tongues, though, and most willingly and bitterly complained of Edmonton’s high-handed manner and greedy ways. Once they had finished with him, they started in on other targets: the combination of low wages and a reduction in their Poor Law allowances, which meant that most could not afford to feed their children; the increased use of threshing machines rather than their own labour to break corn in the quiet winter months; the terrible harvest and the bleak prospect for the upcoming winter; the poor weather; and the business of tithing, which meant that a tenth of their meagre income went directly to the Anglican Church.
In one village, Pyke listened while an elderly cabinetmaker told him about the untimely death of the local Member of Parliament.
‘Means Lord Edm’nton will ’ave to choose himself a new man.’ He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jacket. ‘This is the rottenest borough of the lot. Folk ’ere can only vote what got a chimney and an ’arth, and Lord Edm’nton owns all of the cottages with chimneys and ’arths. ’Less you vote the way he says, he throws you out.’
Another said, ‘He’ll sell the seat to the ’ighest bidder.’
Still another said, ‘I ’eard he’s already found his man. I also ’eard the other chap’s death may not have been an accident.’
‘Poppycock,’ the cabinetmaker said. ‘I ’eard he died of an ’eart attack.’
‘Drowned, he did.’
They talked this way for a further half-hour without openly condemning Edmonton, and Pyke found his patience beginning to wane.
It was only in the last place they called into that something happened to elicit Pyke’s attention.
Pyke thought himself to be immune to stories of other people’s suffering, but there was something about the old man’s broken-down manner, his hobbling gait, weather-beaten hands and watery eyes, which he could not dismiss.
The old man had, until very recently, lived with his heavily pregnant daughter and son-in-law in a small thatched cottage built on common land which had subsequently been appropriated by Edmonton. His family had lived in the cottage for two hundred years, or so the old man reckoned, but since they did not own the land, they weren’t entitled to any compensation when Edmonton decided that he needed the cottage for other purposes. At the previous election, the old man hadn’t bothered to vote, in spite of the fact that, since he resided in a property that boasted a hearth, he was one of the few who was entitled to do so. With another election looming, Edmonton’s emissary had informed the old man that his master required someone more reliable in the property. The old man and his family had been evicted a month before his daughter was due to give birth. Two days later, the daughter had gone into premature labour. Both mother and child had perished. A week later, the son-in-law had taken his own life.
With each sentence, the old man had to pause and collect himself, as if the memories were so painful to him he could hardly bear to relive them.
‘There was a time when rich folk liked to frighten poor folk with the idea that Boney and the French were coming and used fear to steal all the land.’ The old man grabbed Pyke’s sleeve. ‘Tell me that time’s gone
, mister.’
Outside, a wagon passed by and Pyke heard the flattened chink of milk cans.
Without missing a beat, the old man fixed his stare on Pyke. ‘You’ll make him pay, won’t you?’
Pyke removed his sleeve from the old man’s surprisingly firm grip. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said, eventually.
The old man nodded sadly, as though he understood what Pyke was telling him. ‘You don’t, I’ll kill ’im myself.’
Later that night, Pyke and Townsend visited ten farms on Edmonton’s estate. Carrying burning torches with them on horseback, they rode along narrow tracks using the moonlight to guide them, and set light to rickyards, barns and outhouses brimming with recently harvested crops. As they did so, Pyke thought about the old man’s determination to see that Edmonton was properly punished. Part of him wanted to believe that destroying property on land owned by Edmonton constituted some kind of payback for the grievances suffered by the old man, but he knew that his affinity with such people had long since passed and that his actions, then as now, were motivated by less selfless inclinations.
Still, the damage looked impressive and briefly Pyke wondered whether the old man might hear of, or even witness, the fires and think that his plea for action had somehow been answered. For if anyone had thought to position themselves at the epicentre of the paths they had taken between the various farms, they would have witnessed a night sky that shone so fiercely under the orange glare of burning hay that they might have believed themselves transported to Hell.
The following night Pyke made arrangements to sleep in a draughty old church in Saffron Hill. Godfrey knew the rector and, without indicating who Pyke was or what he had done, had persuaded him to allow Pyke to make a bed out of one of the pews. In the light of the attention that was still being paid to him in the newspapers and the extent of the reward being offered for information leading to his arrest, it was now far too dangerous for him to return to the Old Cock tavern.
When Godfrey arrived, a little after ten o’clock, carrying blankets and a bottle of gin, he was out of breath and sweating. After assuring Pyke that he had not been followed, Godfrey recounted that there had been alleged sightings of Pyke right across the city from the Ratcliffe highway in the east to Battersea Fields in the west. He explained that a man who apparently resembled Pyke had been lynched outside the Plough inn, around the corner from his own gin palace. Godfrey told him the gin palace had been further ransacked by fortune hunters who had heard a rumour that Pyke may have been hiding there.
‘Did you bring my laudanum?’ Pyke asked, while digesting these developments.
Reluctantly, Godfrey produced the small bottle from his coat pocket.
‘Are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into?’ His uncle’s expression suggested both concern and discomfort. ‘You do know the farmers lost everything. Barns, equipment, the entire harvest. I fancy this was the point. I mean, they won’t be able to pay Edmonton what they owe him in rent.’
‘Is that my problem?’ Pyke stood up and walked to the end of the pew.
‘What of the ordinary men and women who’ll go hungry this winter because there isn’t enough food to go around?’
It was dark inside the church, but not so dark that Pyke could not see the expression on Godfrey’s face.
‘People are starving right now because Edmonton is squeezing every last penny from them.’ Pyke dug his hands into his pockets to keep them warm.
‘And he’ll continue to squeeze and eventually someone will bite back and then he’ll squeeze even harder, and more and more people will be hurt in the process.’ Godfrey seemed puzzled. ‘Is that what you want?’
Pyke did not meet his stare. ‘Did I ask you to find out whatever you could about a man called Jimmy Swift?’
‘Three times. You described him for me, too.’ Godfrey shook his head and waited for a moment. ‘I don’t know what to say. . I just. .’ He stared at Pyke awkwardly. ‘I’m just worried about you, that’s all.’
Pyke reached down and picked up the bottle of gin. He opened it and took a swig. ‘Thank you for bringing this and the blankets.’
The serrated edge of the blade cut into Polly Masters’ leathery throat and drew a few droplets of blood. Standing behind her, Pyke locked his left arm around her neck.
It was a dank, windowless room. The walls had been stained black with coal dust and on the ceiling there were large circular smudges from where candles had been left to burn. Close-up, Polly Masters’ skin smelled of camphor and rancid mutton. Barely twitching, she muttered, ‘That you, Pyke?’
‘Who else did you tell about Mary Johnson?’ He repeated the question he had just asked.
‘I don’t ever show my feelings, Pyke, but when I heard they was gonna kill you, I did a little jig,’ she whispered hoarsely.
‘Someone tracked Mary and her boyfriend Gerald down to an inn in Isleworth. This person strangled them and dumped the bodies on Hounslow Heath.’
‘I din’t tell no one ’bout Mary.’
Pyke pressed the blade deeper into her neck. More blood bubbled up from the wound. ‘No one else, apart from you, knew where they were hiding.’
‘I swear, I din’t tell a soul.’ Her tone remained defiant.
‘Mary Johnson was a nice girl who didn’t deserve to die. I don’t care whether you liked or hated her. I know you’re a greedy woman and you would have sold her out in the blink of an eye. But I want to hear it from you. I want to know who you told about Mary’s whereabouts. I want a name or I want a description.’
Polly Masters tried to wriggle free from his armlock but couldn’t manage it. Eventually she exhaled loudly and croaked, ‘You’re a marked man, Pyke. Downstairs, there must be close to a hundred men who’d kill each other for the chance to pummel you with their bare knuckles and collect the reward what’s been offered. There’s men givin’ out handbills with your likeness across the whole city. All I have to do is scream. .’
‘And I’d slit your throat and leave you to bleed to death on the floor like a slaughtered pig,’ Pyke said, jabbing the knife even deeper into her flesh. ‘Like you said, I’m a marked man. I don’t have anything left to lose.’
Her bruised lip quivered with anticipation.
‘Tell me the truth this time,’ he said, slowly. ‘Did someone come here asking about Mary Johnson?’
‘No.’
‘Polly, I want the truth. Did a man with a brown mole on his chin come here asking for Mary?’
‘No.’
‘One last time. Did you tell anyone where Mary Johnson was hiding?’
‘Fuck you, Pyke.’ Polly Masters was crying now. ‘You’re a monster. Fuck you, fuck you and fuck you again.’
Later, as Pyke wandered through the mud-crusted alleyways and cobbled streets around Covent Garden, comfortable in his disguise, he thought about Polly’s defiance and decided she had probably been telling him the truth. But just because Swift had not found out about Mary Johnson from Polly Masters did not mean he hadn’t strangled her. No one else apart from Pyke had known which guest house she had been staying at.
So how had they found her? How had Swift found her? Pyke sensed that the answer was staring him in the face but he still couldn’t work it out.
It was raining and mud clung to his boots, weighing them down as he walked. Ignoring the outstretched hands of a sooty-faced beggar and walking past an old man who was chewing on a bar of soap in order to simulate having a fit, he tried to arrange his thoughts.
Pyke liked the grimy anonymity the city afforded him but knew he belonged neither to the world that Polly Masters inhabited — that grubby, hand-to-mouth existence he’d known for much of his early life — nor to Emily’s comfortable world, where propriety and social mores determined what was and wasn’t permissible. Pyke wasn’t naive or rich enough to romanticise the poverty he had once known, but nor was he blind to the suffocating aspect of privilege that seemed to characterise Emily’s circle of acquaintances. It was a curse and a
blessing, being able to move between different worlds without feeling a sense of belonging. This adaptability was an advantage, but in his darker moments he wondered whether the loneliness he often felt would be a permanent condition.
Emily came from aristocratic stock and it was folly to contemplate a different life with her. Nonetheless, he felt drawn to her in a way that assumed, perhaps foolishly, that such desires were reciprocal. Part of him wanted to give in to his yearnings, but he was also aware of the dangers this course of action posed. Like it or not, he couldn’t get Emily out of his mind. In his pocket, he ran his fingers over the bottle of laudanum to check it was still there.
‘Hello, Sir Richard.’ Pyke stepped into the light being emitted from candles resting on the mantelpiece. Above the fireplace, on the wall, was a portrait of Sir Henry Fielding.
Fox stopped writing a letter, and looked up at Pyke, suddenly ashen-faced. The quill fell from his trembling ink-stained fingers. He started to say something but the words wouldn’t form on his tongue. ‘My God,’ he finally managed. ‘It is you.’ He looked older and frailer than Pyke remembered. He had lost some weight, too, and the skin seemed to hang off his face and neck. Fox stood up, grimaced a little, pulled down his frock-coat, and shuffled around his desk to greet him. Pyke wasn’t sure whether the old man wanted to hug him or shake his hand. In the end, they managed an awkward mix of the two. ‘You are alive,’ Fox said, not wanting to let go of his arm.
Pyke disentangled himself from Fox’s embrace. ‘So it would seem.’
‘I had given up hope,’ Fox said, guardedly.
‘I wasn’t aware you were hopeful.’ He stared at the old man. ‘But I see you’ve been keeping up with recent developments. ’ He pointed at the newspapers laid out on Fox’s desk.
‘I heard you were in the capital, of course, but I didn’t know whether to believe the stories or not.’ Fox’s expression was polite and opaque. ‘Was that you? The robbery?’
‘I came back to take care of some unfinished business.’
The Last Days of Newgate pm-1 Page 27