Andrew Pepper - The Last Days of Newgate

Pyke poured a few drops of laudanum into his gin. Godfrey watched him carefully but said nothing. The room was empty, but Pyke wore his black cap low over his face, nonetheless. It was difficult, becoming accustomed to his status as prey. Each time he left his garret it felt as though a phalanx of police constables might be waiting around the next corner to ambush him. But he also knew that the real threat to his liberty came not from the police but from snitches who might hear of his return and happen upon him by chance.

‘Don’t worry, m’boy. After the last time, I made certain that I wasn’t followed,’ Godfrey said, glancing nervously at the door.

‘You think that’s why they released you?’

‘Perhaps they heard you were back in the vicinity.’ Godfrey shrugged. ‘I know for a fact there’s two of ’em watching the shop and two outside my apartment. I’d say it’s a safe bet that someone in a position of authority would like to see you swing from the scaffold.’

Pyke wondered whether these men were police constables and whether they’d been dispatched by Peel.

‘No one knows I’m here. Apart from Villums.’ Pyke had also told Emily but did not mention her.

‘And you trust him?’

‘Not really. But I’m paying him well. Too well. And he hasn’t seen a penny of it, as yet.’

‘I won’t ask what your plans are, but just be careful, will you?’ A glint appeared in Godfrey’s eyes. ‘I don’t want to have to rescue you from Newgate for a second time.’

Pyke was about to speak when he noticed someone he recognised on the other side of the room. His first instinct was to bolt. Godfrey noticed his reaction and turned around, saying, ‘What is it?’ He sounded breathless and afraid. Standing on the threshold of the parlour room, wearing a simple brown dress and white bonnet, was Emily Blackwood. Despite her efforts to dress in a manner appropriate to her surroundings, she looked as out of place as a peacock in a pit full of snakes.

Her anxiety seemed to lift as soon as she saw them; she gathered up her dress and hurried across the room to greet Pyke. He introduced her to his uncle, who was delighted to make her acquaintance, and when the pot boy came to take her drinks order, she surprised both of them by asking for a pint of porter. This delighted Godfrey even more. For a while they talked about his imprisonment.

‘I was in Coldbath Fields rather than Newgate, my dear, but generally I found everything to be most agreeable. The food, which was brought to me from a bakeshop, was quite acceptable, under the circumstances, and the pot boy kept me in plentiful supplies of ale and claret.’

Emily had sufficient good sense not to try to patronise Godfrey or act in a deliberately pious manner, but Pyke could tell she was bothered by some of the stories he was telling.

‘Perhaps if you were poorer or without connections your stay might not have been as agreeable?’

‘On the contrary, my dear. The common lags seemed to be having a whale of a time. On occasion, it was hard to tell the difference between the ward and a tavern.’

‘I think the question Emily is seeking to ask is whether it is appropriate for convicts to behave in such a manner.’

Emily glared at him. ‘I can speak perfectly well for myself, thank you.’ Then her smile returned as she turned to Godfrey. ‘Isn’t it desirable that the prison is run well enough to ensure that prisoners’ clothes are occasionally fumigated, that the genuinely sick have the chance to consult a doctor, and that the child thief is separated from the adult murderer?’

Godfrey clapped his hands together. ‘Well said, my dear. Well said, indeed. What have you to say to that, eh?’ He looked across at Pyke and grinned.

‘I would simply point out that in the new Millbank prison, where everyone has their own cell, suicides have tripled, scurvy and dysentery are rife and that, very recently, prisoners rioted, and even hung the warder’s pet cat, just so they could be transferred to one of the hulks.’

‘A good point,’ Godfrey said, scratching his chin in mock contemplation. ‘My dear?’

‘You could perhaps inform your nephew that all the evidence indicates individual cells arrest the moral infection of the young by the old.’

‘Moral infection?’ Godfrey said, frowning. ‘Sounds like something that I might be responsible for spreading.’

‘I’ve heard it can make you go blind,’ Pyke said.

‘Now you’re both mocking me.’ She looked at them, with a smile on her face.

‘Not at all, my dear. I think the point you make is an excellent one.’

Pyke stared at her, waiting. It was true that he enjoyed their verbal sparring and that they both had sufficient intelligence to discuss highfalutin subjects, but he also wanted to fuck her with an urgency and intensity that even he found surprising. ‘In the end, I think we do what we do because we want to. Whether that’s robbing a blind man or helping him across the street.’

Emily thought about this for a moment. ‘And what would you do? Rob the blind man or assist him?’

‘You really need to ask?’

She regarded him across the table with an amused stare. ‘It’s funny, Pyke. For all your cynicism, you have a peculiarly romanticised vision of yourself.’

‘I am a romantic now?’

‘You see yourself as a dying breed. There’s a certain romanticism in that.’

‘Wonderful,’ Godfrey said, raising his empty glass in mock celebration. ‘She’s as sharp as a tack.’ He turned to Emily. ‘Pyke is, indeed, a dying breed. I’m sure he hasn’t told you of the time when he, single-handedly, pursued a rogue kidnapper who had snatched the young daughter of a landed aristocrat across open country for two days and two nights.’

‘That was a long time ago.’

Emily seemed at once amused and intrigued. ‘If such bravery and selflessness were ever made public, your reputation would be ruined.’

Pyke shrugged. ‘I was well paid.’

Emily studied his reaction. ‘What became of the daughter? ’

‘Oh, she was shaken up but came through the ordeal with flying colours.’ Godfrey scratched his chin. ‘If I’m not mistaken, I heard the other day she’s due to marry a man who will one day inherit the earl of Norfolk’s title and estate.’

‘And the kidnapper?’

Godfrey’s expression darkened. Briefly he shared a look with Pyke. Neither of them said a word.

Later, when Godfrey had disappeared to talk to an acquaintance in another room, Emily said, ‘I’m sorry if I sounded too serious in front of your uncle. But you talk about my work as though it were both frivolous and pointless.’ She seemed bewildered. ‘Is it wrong I care about something other than myself?’

At the table next to them, three blackguards had taken note of Emily and were eyeing her, and whispering to one another, in a manner that made Pyke uncomfortable.

‘On the contrary, it is admirable,’ he said, keeping an eye on the men. ‘But am I to assume that the opposite applies to me?’

‘If it did,’ Emily said, gently, ‘then it would seem odd that you have occupied your time in the last six months in the manner you have done.’

He stared into her languid brown eyes and felt a flush of sexual anxiety spill through him.

One of the ruffians at a nearby table stood up and brushed against Emily; the other two sniggered into their ale pots. Emily did her best to ignore them.

‘You seem concerned,’ she said, reaching out to touch his hand. ‘Is it my presence here that’s upsetting you?’

‘Why should it upset me?’ He glanced across at the three men, who were making lewd gestures to one another and laughing.

‘What? You can mix freely in my world, but I’m to be barred from entering yours?’