Andrew Pepper - The Last Days of Newgate

‘I take it you don’t approve,’ he said, pointing at the red ribbon she wore on her cuff.

‘Ye mean this?’ She motioned at the ribbon and laughed.

‘What’s so amusing?’

‘You heard of this fella Pastorini?’ Pyke shook his head. Megan went on, ‘Ribbonmen reckoned your man’s prophesies said the Protestant faith would be destroyed under orders of the Lord Almighty on the twenty-first of November 1825.’

‘What happened?’

‘It rained.’

Pyke smiled. ‘Is that why you wear the ribbon?’

Megan shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m hopin’ he just messed up the date.’

‘Meanwhile it’s still raining,’ he said, brushing water from his coat.

‘So you’re not here for the marchin’,’ she said, cocking her head flirtatiously to one side.

Instinctively he decided to jettison part of his cover. ‘To everyone else, I’m the eldest son of Robert Hawkes, owner of the Hawkes cotton mill in Lancashire.’

She seemed amused by this. ‘And to me?’

‘I’m just someone looking for a way to meet John Arnold.’

‘Why didn’t ye say that sooner?’ she said, shaking her head mischievously.

This time, Pyke scrutinised her face carefully for signs of lying. ‘You know him?’

‘Of him.’ She shrugged, as though it wasn’t important. ‘I worked for a while in the big house in Ballynafeigh, the family’s grand new residence. I never cared for the place myself, ugly-looking building, pretendin’ to be something it ain’t. All its pretensions, mind, it didn’t have running water, so it were my job to fetch and carry water from a well. It’s how I came to get these manly-looking arms.’ She flexed her muscles, only half joking, for him to see.

‘Tell me about Arnold,’ Pyke said, becoming impatient.

‘What’s to tell?’

‘Well, for a start, what do you know about him?’

Megan held his gaze for a while. ‘Well, there are these meetings in front of the Custom House. Every Sunday, after church, folk head there, like they’re the best thing to happen in the whole week. Not the likes of me, you’ll understand, but other folk. Protestant folk. Gather there dressed in their Sunday best and watch with gleaming eyes as men less respectable than Cooke scalp and burn effigies of the Pope. Arnold, in particular, likes to put on a performance.’

‘A rabble-rouser and a businessman.’ Pyke waited for a moment. ‘As the latter, he seems canny enough.’

Megan looked away. ‘Aye, he’s a canny one, that’s for sure.’

‘Not to be underestimated?’

‘What’s your real business with him, Mr Hawkes?’ This time her expression seemed graver.

‘He’s invited me to a card game tomorrow night.’

Megan nodded, as though she was aware of such an event. ‘Aye, at the Royal.’ She looked him up and down. ‘Ye turn up lookin’ like that, they’ll eat you alive.’

Pyke assimilated this new information without giving anything away.

‘Arnold is a fella who started out life with next to nothing. He likes to surround himself with tough labourin’ types, to remind everyone else where he’s come from, he’s no pushover. He likes to hurt folk, too, or likes to watch as other folk do the hurtin’. There are those in the Royal who might take against a well-dressed Englishman.’ Megan shrugged. ‘Unless he’s a friend a’ ye, I’d say that Arnold is maybe countin’ on that fact.’

Pyke took out his wallet and removed a five-pound note. ‘You want to earn some money?’

‘Thought you’d never ask,’ she said, grinning.

‘From what you’ve just told me, I’ll need a pistol.’ He already had a knife but it might not be sufficient.

‘A pistol.’ Her expression became serious. ‘What ye plannin’ to do?’

‘It’s for my own protection.’

‘But ye know how to use one, I’d wager.’ She came a little closer, and looked up at him, playfully holding his stare.

‘I’d know which way to point it.’

She cocked her head to one side. ‘How would the son of a mill owner know that?’

‘Shooting workers who step out of line.’

That drew a giggle. ‘An’ what would ye do with me, if I were to step out of line?’ She was now close enough so that he could smell the tobacco on her clothes.

He started to sigh. ‘I just need a gun, Megan.’

‘So?’ She made no attempt to move away. ‘What about what I might need?’

Outside smelled of rotting carcasses from the nearby tannery. Inside smelt of stale tobacco and turf. Pyke did not necessarily think the latter smell was any better than the former, but he was glad to get in from the driving rain.

As soon as he stepped into the taproom, Pyke became aware of the rancorous stares of those men — for they were, as he later realised, all men — who sat on wooden benches attached to the wall, clutching pots of black stout. To a man, they stopped whatever they had been doing and looked at him, silently assessing the threat that he posed. In the middle of the room, a man who had been playing the fiddle turned his instrument around and pointed it at Pyke’s head, as though it were a rifle. His teeth were bloody at their roots. Pyke reached into his coat pocket and ran the tip of his index finger across the sharp point of his knife. On the far wall, the wooden handles of an axe and a machete had been decoratively arranged to form a makeshift cross. Next to it was a lurid painting of King Billy riding a white horse.

The absence of women, and the resultant lack of sexual tension, made the violence even more palpable.

When he asked about the card game, there was no response. He repeated the question. Finally someone said, ‘Who wants ’a know?’ Before he could answer, another voice had said, ‘Where ye from, mister?’ Pyke told him Manchester. The same voice said, ‘That’s England, right?’ A ripple of noise spread throughout the room.

Standing in the doorway, Pyke was approached by a young man who looked as if his face had been mauled by a savage dog. He swayed slightly from side to side, as though drunk. Up close, his face was a thatch of coarse skin and scar tissue. Without much conviction, he took a lazy swing at Pyke’s chin and missed it by a good six inches, by which time Pyke had spun him around, twisted his arm, and was pressing the sharpened blade of his knife into the man’s neck. Calmly, he repeated his question about the card game and added that he had been invited by John Arnold. At once, an older man said, ‘You mighta said that earlier, steada stannin’ there with a face on ye.’

In the far doorway, Arnold appeared and carefully surveyed the scene. Pyke released the young man from his grip. For some reason, Arnold seemed disappointed. ‘I see you’ve met the welcoming party,’ he said, without any warmth.

Pyke pocketed his knife. Arnold met him in the centre of the room and held out his hand. Pyke made to shake it but Arnold withdrew it slightly and said, ‘The knife, if you don’t mind.’ Realising that he didn’t have any option, Pyke gave up the knife. Arnold smiled. ‘You come well armed for a businessman.’ Without hesitating, he whipped his arm down and sent the knife cartwheeling through the air until it lodged in the frame of the door, narrowly missing the head of a nonplussed drinker. The sound reverberated around the otherwise silent room. Arnold motioned for someone to search Pyke for further weapons, ‘just as a precaution’. Pyke acquiesced, if only because he had already lost his knife and Megan had not returned to the inn with the pistol he had requested. Stripped of his knife, he felt even more vulnerable. Arnold, though, seemed oblivious to his unease. Already out of the room, he said, ‘You’ll have to excuse our manners. I’m afraid we started without you.’