Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

Pyke peered over the wall. Gore’s chubby face glowed in the half-light. ‘You want me to show him compassion?’

Gore peered up at him, seemingly confused. ‘ Yes.’

‘The same compassion you showed Mary, the old woman in Huntingdon that you had Trotter rape and murder, or the navvies who died in that river, or Freddie Sutton and his wife or Johnny Evans or Julian Jackman, who you had crucified, or my own Emily, who you had slaughtered just because her political views offended you.’

‘Views are one thing. Actions are quite another. I couldn’t just allow her to do as she was doing.’ Gore waited for a moment, to gather his breath. ‘ She understood we were fighting a war. Every man and woman to the death. She fell on the battlefield so that good men like you and me might escape the ignominy of having our heads cut off and stuck on to poles.’

In that moment, Pyke hated Gore as much as it was possible to hate any man, but rather than act on it immediately, he picked up the mason’s board and carefully spread a layer of mortar on top of the bricks. ‘Don’t ever think you can speak for me.’ If he shut his eyes, he could see Emily smiling at him. He felt another wave of grief swell up inside him.

‘You were entirely comfortable with her political beliefs and allegiances?’

‘I respected her right to express them,’ Pyke said, placing a brick on to the layer of mortar. He could even taste his animosity towards Gore at the back of his throat.

‘But they never brought you into conflict?’

‘I loved my wife. And now she’s dead.’ He took another brick and placed it next to the one he had just laid. With each brick, the wall became a little higher. It was slow, painstaking work.

Pyke had added another three rows to the wall when Gore spoke again. Now Pyke couldn’t see him over the wall. ‘When I was young, I used to read about figures like Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin. I used to scour the pages of the old Newgate calendars. They were my heroes. I loved their bravery, their wit, their boldness. When I was older, I learned that Sheppard was nothing but a housebreaker and Turpin a common horse thief. The rest of it, the derring-do, noble deeds and courage in the face of adversity, was just a fiction. I remember feeling cheated at first but it taught me a valuable lesson too. The idea that a solitary man can bring an order as civilised and magnificent as ours to its knees is a nonsense.’

‘Then why go after my wife? I’m guessing you knew she was Captain Paine, and not Jackman.’

‘Really?’ The surprise in Gore’s voice sounded genuine. ‘No, I didn’t know it, but Sir Henry here always took that whole thing more seriously than I did. I wasn’t worried about a few sporadic arson attacks. But it’s true to say your wife’s money, coupled with the Wat Tyler Brigade’s ruthlessness, concerned me greatly. Do you imagine I wanted my workers swearing oaths to a union and striking to demand higher wages? That would have hit me in the pocket and the bad publicity a strike might have generated would’ve sent our share price plummeting.’

‘You turn my stomach, Gore. That you could do what you did just to further line your own pocket.’ Pyke felt his bitterness and grief engulf him.

‘I couldn’t let everything I’d worked for slip away. You, of all people, should be able to understand that.’

‘The old woman you paid Trotter to beat and kill in Huntingdon. I saw her body. I’ll carry an image of it to my grave. She was nearly seventy and he beat her and tortured her and raped her, and for what? To try and provoke the navvies into a fight so you could cut them down.’

Pyke pasted another layer of mortar on top of the bricks: the gap between the ceiling and the top of the wall was now just a few feet. He wanted it to be finished; he could hardly bear to be in the same physical space as Gore.

‘What are you doing, Pyke? C’mon, man, we can still thrash out some sort of deal here, can’t we? I still have money. If you’ll stop building that damned wall for a moment and we can talk like gentlemen

…’ Gore’s disembodied voice echoed around the chamber. ‘If not for me, do it for Sir Henry here. He’s in a terrible state. No man should have to go through what he’s had to go through.’

‘I liked you, Gore. I know you wanted me to like you. That was the whole point of the deception. But I did genuinely like you. And look where it’s got us.’ Pyke laid one of the bricks carefully on top of the fresh mortar. Aside from the hatred, he felt used and humiliated.

‘I liked you, too. I still do. I respect you. What you’ve been able to do. But all this nonsense can’t be allowed to continue for much longer. I know you don’t intend to leave us down here. That would be too monstrous. You’ve been waiting for my former friends to abandon me and now that’s happened. Please, Pyke. I can give you anything you want. Anything at all. Any amount of money you ask for.’ Pyke noted the first trace of panic in Gore’s voice with a certain grim satisfaction.

‘Can you give me my wife back?’ When Gore didn’t answer him, Pyke laid another brick and added, ‘How does it feel to know people you’ve supported and backed for years, men you’ve counted as your friends, have abandoned you in your last hours of life; have not just abandoned you but have conspired to hand you over to me on a silver platter? That can’t be a pleasant thought.’ He felt a sadistic pleasure in what he was doing and despised himself for it.

A few minutes later he had added another layer of bricks to the wall. The gap was down to a few inches.

‘You may have bankrupted your old bank but that’s as far as they’ll allow this to go, Pyke. You’ll never bring down the system. Gore’s will endure and very soon men and women will be able to travel from London to Birmingham in less than eight hours for just a few shillings. Imagine that. Eight hours. The world will never be the same again.’ Gore was yelling now, his voice echoing around the enclosed chamber. ‘And when it’s finished that railway will be a monument… to me.’

Pyke added another row of bricks and then another until he had only one more row to build before the tomb was complete. He smeared a thick paste of mortar on top of the wall and took his time placing each brick, forcing some of the mortar into the gaps at the sides and between the top of the bricks and the stone ceiling. It was demanding work and he was sweating by the time he had just one final brick to slot into place. He was standing on tiptoe on the top rung of a wooden ladder and had to strain to get as close to the small hole as possible. ‘“What’s called the splendour of the throne is nothing more than the corruption of the state; it’s made up of a band of parasites living in luxurious indolence.” I found that written in Emily’s diary. It’s a quote from Paine’s The Rights of Man.’

Gore tried to say something but once Pyke had forced the final brick into its place, he couldn’t tell what it was. He smeared the rest of the mortar across the join between the bricks and the ceiling, climbed down the ladder and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. The candle in the lantern had almost burnt down and Pyke guessed he had only another five minutes at best before the light went out. Gore was screaming now but they were too far down in the belly of the old building for his cries to disturb Felix. Pyke gathered up his tools, picked up the lantern and started off along the narrow passageway, having to duck his head slightly because the ceiling was so low. By the time he had passed through the first door and bolted it, Gore’s screams had evaporated into the air, and just as Pyke made it to the top of the stairs, the flame in his lantern flickered and died.