Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

MAY 1840

The rope mat did little to protect Pyke from the hardness of the stone floor, and the blanket afforded him no warmth, but somehow he had slept. At first light, he opened his eyes and looked around at the other figures in the ward. No one was moving. Sitting up, he rubbed his eyes and looked at the weak sunlight streaming through the barred window. He waited, to see whether he could hear birdsong — a blackbird perhaps or better still a thrush — but the only noise was the rough snoring of his fellow inmates. Casting aside the blanket, he stood up and stretched. He had slept in his clothes, as everyone did. This was the only time of the day Pyke enjoyed; aside from the sessions on the treadmill, which he had come to appreciate — the chance to push himself to the limits of his endurance. It was quiet now, peaceful even. Soon the wardsman would wake the others up and make his rounds, shuffling from prisoner to prisoner, looking for new ways to make money from them. The lad from the bake-house would arrive shortly after nine and at ten they would be allowed outside into the yard. At midday they would be given the chance to buy their lunch and at two they would take turns on the treadmill. This had been Pyke’s existence for nine months and there were times when he’d forgotten about the world beyond the four walls of the prison. But at this time in the morning, before anyone else had stirred, before the jabber of tiresome conversation and the rattle of chains filled the long, narrow ward, his head was clear enough that he could remember Emily’s smile and the way his son, Felix, had looked at him the last time they had been together. In the hard times, these were the things he held on to, the things that mattered.

Later that morning, Pyke was walking in the yard, staring up at the granite walls and the inward-facing iron spikes at the very top, when a turnkey approached him and told him he had a visitor.

‘Now?’ Pyke cupped his hands over his eyes to protect them from the glare of the sun. He tried not to show the turnkey that he was concerned.

‘A peeler.’

Pyke wondered why a policeman should be visiting him after all this time. He had done many things in his life; perhaps some other wrong was about to catch up with him. Pyke followed the turnkey through a heavy oak door, bound with iron and studded with nails, along a passageway and down some steps into the press-room, where Fitzroy Tilling was pacing back and forth. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, about the same age as Pyke, with raven-coloured hair, swept back off his high forehead, olive skin and piercing bug-like eyes.

‘So you’re a policeman now?’ The last time Pyke had seen Tilling, about a year earlier, he had still been in the service of Sir Robert Peel, leader of the Tory party. In fact, he had served Peel in one capacity or another for the previous twenty-five years, first of all in Ireland, when Peel had been stationed there, and then back in London.

Pyke had known Tilling for more than ten of those years, and while he couldn’t lay his hand on his heart and say he really knew the man well, they had become something more than acquaintances and less than friends in that time, particularly after Emily’s death almost five years ago. They had met up for the occasional dinner, and while they’d never openly pried into each other’s private lives, there had been, Pyke thought, a mutual if unacknowledged recognition that they were more alike than different: two middle-aged men who, if they had made different choices, might have been friends.

‘Deputy commissioner.’ Tilling hesitated. ‘Sir Robert wanted me to spread my wings a little.’

‘I suppose congratulations are in order, then.’ Pyke met Tilling’s stare.

Tilling reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘This is a magistrate’s warrant authorising your immediate release.’

Pyke continued to stare at him. ‘And what have I done to deserve such good fortune?’ By his calculation, he had only another month and a half to serve. Or rather, a bond that he’d taken out when he had money was due to expire then, at which point he’d be able to clear sufficient debts to secure his release.

‘I need your help.’

Pyke let a short silence build between them. ‘What kind of help?’

Even with the benefit of hindsight, Pyke didn’t know exactly when it had all started to go wrong. Perhaps it was as simple as Emily’s death. Perhaps that fateful day at Smithfield when a crippled exrifleman had cut his wife down had been the moment it had all begun to fall apart. Perhaps Pyke still blamed himself for not having done more to ensure her safety, though it was true she’d been killed because of her crusading work for the nascent trade union movement. And she had always done whatever she had wanted to, irrespective of his fears for her safety.

But it was also perhaps too easy to blame everything on Emily’s death. There had been many happy times after she’d died; times when it looked as though he and Felix might pull through with only a few scars to show for it. If anything, Felix had adapted to their new situation better than Pyke had, and after a while, he barely mentioned Emily’s name. Pyke had tried to learn from his son, but he’d found it a good deal harder to move on. He didn’t know whether it was fair or appropriate to blame himself for Emily’s death but, in one sense, this didn’t matter. He was alive and she wasn’t. This simple truth never failed to impress itself on him, especially in the early hours when sleep was beyond him. Emily’s premature death had, however, made him utterly determined to realise her wishes for their son — that Felix be given the chance to adopt her late father’s title and claim Hambledon Hall as his own. So when one of Emily’s distant cousins had returned from America to stake his claim on the family estate, Pyke had hired the best legal counsel to defend Felix’s birthright; and when the case was referred to the High Court of Chancery, he had not only retained the services of this counsel but also hired other lawyers to further their chances. In total, the case had lasted almost three years, and by the time the Lord High Chancellor had ruled finally in favour of Emily’s cousin, Pyke had sacrificed a large chunk of his fortune, trying to hold on to a house and an estate he had never liked when Emily was alive.

Afterwards, Pyke had taken to speculating on the stock market with a recklessness that had astonished even him. No ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme had been too outlandish, too much of a risk. In under a year he’d squandered fifty thousand pounds for very little return, but by this point he had ceased to care. Much later, when he reflected upon his behaviour, it struck him that his actions might have been wilfully self-destructive. For much of his adult life, Pyke had laboured under the assumption that money protected you from the rank unpleasantness of existence, but in the end his considerable wealth had failed to prevent Emily’s death. More disturbingly, his pursuit of money may even have contributed to it.

So when the debts he’d accrued on the stock market and elsewhere had finally come home to roost, it had almost been a relief to have been sentenced to a year in prison. At the time, he had been numb to everything; to losing his fortune, even to losing his son.