Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

But Pyke wasn’t interested in Maginn’s stories or in helping Godfrey keep a muzzle on him. He had come to his uncle’s event only to spend some time with Felix, and now he surveyed the mass of faces for a sign of his son, hoping that this encounter would be better than the last one. Perhaps Felix would look him in the eye this time or maybe even allow Pyke to take him in his arms. That was all Pyke had wanted to do when Felix had shunned him at Godfrey’s apartment.

It was Jo who spotted him. When she touched his arm, Pyke spun around and found himself staring into her smiling face. Felix was holding her hand, as though his life depended on it. His hair had been brushed and he wore a clean shirt. Pyke bent down and ruffled his hair the way he used to, but Felix seemed to recoil from his touch. Pyke stood up, trying to conceal his hurt from Jo. She was wearing a plain cotton dress and a straw bonnet, tied under the chin with a piece of red ribbon.

‘We’ve been reading Ivanhoe together, haven’t we?’ Jo said, for Pyke’s benefit, while squeezing Felix’s hand. She raised her eyes to meet his. ‘He really is a demon of a reader.’

Pyke tried to think of something he could say about Scott’s book but nothing came to mind. ‘I’m sure it’s a good deal more uplifting than, Godfrey’s book.’

‘I’ve read that one, too,’ Felix piped up.

They both looked at him. ‘You’ve read Godfrey’s book?’ Pyke asked, appalled by the notion.

Felix stared at him, still gripping Jo’s hand. ‘At the end, I thought they should have hanged him by the neck for all he’d done.’

Pyke felt dizzy. Felix had read a book purporting to be an account of his life as a Bow Street Runner. Would the lad have known this? Not having read the book himself, Pyke didn’t know what claims it made, but knowing his uncle, he was quite sure it wouldn’t make for a comfortable read.

‘You understand that it’s all made up,’ he said, adopting what he hoped was a suitably stern tone.

‘Then why does it say it’s a true and candid confession?’ Felix replied defiantly.

Pyke glanced over at Jo for assistance but she gave him an apologetic shrug, as if this was the first she’d heard of it. ‘What I meant,’ he said carefully, ‘was that it’s not based on any one person’s real experiences.’

‘But weren’t you a Bow Street Runner?’

Pyke tried to hide his consternation — and anger — that his son was speaking to him in such a manner. ‘That’s beside the point, Felix.’

Thankfully their conversation was interrupted by Godfrey, who told Pyke he needed help. Maginn was steaming drunk and, even worse, he’d seemingly now taken against the book. Godfrey delivered this last piece of news in such a grave tone that Pyke felt he had no choice but to help. He told Felix they would resume their little chat in a moment.

‘I’ve already paid him a king’s ransom to be here and now he’s savaging my book to all and sundry,’ Godfrey said, as they made their way across to Maginn’s growing coterie.

Maginn was still in full flow. ‘This book is meretricious,’ he was saying, holding up a copy of Confessions, as though giving a sermon, ‘because it wilfully misleads its educated readers by purporting to tell the truth about low types. I say purporting because it never tells the whole truth, nor could it hope to because it is written by a morally suspect man about a dishonourable scamp who is equally devoid of moral purpose.’ His Cork brogue was unmistakable.

‘Can’t you stop him?’ Godfrey whispered to Pyke, a note of desperation in his voice.

‘What? Hit him over the head and drag him out of here by his feet?’

‘If you have to, dear boy. And make sure you hurt him in the process.’

Maginn had spotted Pyke and his uncle and he acknowledged them with a thunderous stare. ‘In the tap, the slop-shop and the ken, thieves and blackguards, and to this list we should add Bow Street Runners, might display occasional moments of boldness and courage, but this does not mean they should be the subject of literature, nor should we be dragooned into caring for their cut-throat sensibilities and self-serving justifications.’ He addressed this final remark to Pyke.

‘And yet you have written elsewhere,’ Pyke replied, ‘that all successfully drawn characters are necessarily a mixture of good and evil and what motivates wickedness can be the same thing that produces the noblest of actions.’

‘Ah, yes. But then I was writing about Hamlet or Lear, and you, sir, are far from being a noble prince or fallen king.’

‘Perhaps in your drunken state you failed to take proper notice of the preface, in which my uncle makes it clear that Confessions is a work of fiction and should be treated as such.’

‘Is that so?’ Maginn boomed, his voice thick with condescension. ‘And yet it describes a daring escape from Newgate prison; a feat, if I’m not mistaken, that you, sir, undertook with help from willing accomplices — or should I say lackeys.’

‘So?’ The skin tightened around Pyke’s throat at this reference to Godfrey and, indeed, Emily, who had assisted his escape.

Maginn waved over a pale young man and put his arms around him, as if to suggest they were friends. ‘Allow me to introduce Mr Peter Hunt. Perhaps the name is familiar to you, sir?’

‘Should it be?’ Pyke allowed his gaze to settle on the nervous young man whose rouged lips and powdered face made him seem grotesque rather than fashionable.

‘His father was the governor of Newgate prison on the night of your escape.’ This time Maginn’s smirk turned into a grimace. ‘We met earlier in a tavern and discovered we were both intending to grace this event with our presence.’ He had his arm clasped so tightly around the younger man’s shoulder that Hunt couldn’t move.

Pyke searched Hunt’s eyes but saw nothing: not fear or anxiety or hate. And the young man certainly had reason enough to hate him. Pyke looked around at his uncle and saw that he’d also grasped the precariousness of the situation. For if Hunt was carrying a weapon, a pistol perhaps, and chose to take it out, anything could happen.

‘What is it you want?’ Pyke addressed Hunt directly, but the younger man wouldn’t look up.

‘What does he want?’ Maginn’s roaring laugh could be heard throughout the shop. He held up his copy of Confessions. ‘In the lily-scented world you’ve created, sir, his father must still be alive because the escape is achieved through boldness and stealth — picking locks and scaling walls — rather than cold-blooded murder.’ The smirk on his face vanished as he rounded on Pyke. ‘For, in truth, didn’t you stab the governor in the neck with a dagger and then throw him out of a window?’

A ripple of astonished gasps spread quickly through the room. This was exactly the kind of thing people had come to hear. Pyke looked around, to check whether Felix was within earshot.

‘I was cleared of any wrongdoing by an official investigation and pardoned by order of the Home Secretary himself.’

But Maginn seemed more concerned by what he had read in Godfrey’s book. ‘ Ex parte truth-telling, the worst kind. One tells the whole truth or nothing.’

‘What is it you want?’ Pyke repeated, looking directly at Maginn. ‘I know for a fact you’ve already been paid well for attending this evening.’

‘What do I want?’ Maginn took out his purse and threw it dramatically to the floor. ‘I spit on your uncle’s thirty pieces of silver. I want satisfaction for young Hunt and for being led astray by this monstrosity.’ He was still brandishing a copy of Godfrey’s book.

‘What kind of satisfaction?’

‘Satisfaction.’ He removed his torn shooting jacket and started to roll up his sleeves.