Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

‘But you think it’s all right that I’m compelled to watch as you hang off Captain Paine’s every word?’

‘Captain Paine?’ She threw her chin up into the air. ‘Whoever said that Julian was Captain Paine?’

‘Well, isn’t he?’

‘Whether he is or isn’t is not the point.’ She stood up and hurried across the room to the bed. ‘Anyway, why are you so interested in this Captain Paine all of a sudden?’

Pyke knelt down in front of the fire he’d tried to start and prodded it with a poker.

‘Times have changed. Your ability to turn self-interest into a virtue is no longer as convincing as it was when you were poor.’

‘And now I have a little money in my pocket, am I supposed to become a different person? More like you, perhaps?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Emily sat up in the bed and stared at him, visibly angry now.

‘It’s easy for you to dismiss the importance of money because you’ve never been without it.’

That silenced her for a few moments. ‘Once upon a time,’ she started, ‘you used to steal from men like my father.’

‘And now I’ve turned into him? Is that what you mean?’ This time it was his turn to show his irritation.

‘You needn’t worry about that,’ Emily said, laughing. ‘You’ll never be my father.’

‘But?’

‘But you once had aspirations beyond merely wanting to be rich.’

‘For you, money has always been a means to an end.’ Pyke looked at her, shaking his head. ‘Why don’t you think the same applies to me?’

‘It does. I know.’ Emily sank back into her pillow, sighing. ‘But what if those who most need your help are no longer those closest to you?’

Pyke left the fire alone and perched on the side of the bed, starting to take off his boots. ‘There are always going to be people who need your help. Where do you draw the line?’

‘For me, there isn’t any line.’

He kicked off his boots and started to unbutton his shirt. ‘In which case people will always take advantage of you.’

‘So?’

‘So what if someone like Jackman is just using you for your money?’

Emily pulled the blanket up around her body and watched him undress for a short while. ‘It isn’t about him or me, or even you. It’s about something bigger, Pyke. Haven’t you grasped that by now?’

Pyke finished undressing in silence and joined Emily under the sheets. ‘I thought you handled that pistol quite well,’ he said, quietly.

‘Only quite well?’

‘For a moment I thought you were going to shoot me.’

‘I could have put one straight through your heart,’ she said, playfully tapping his chest.

‘You wouldn’t have found it there.’

In the glow of the candle, he saw the faint trace of a smile on her face. ‘It’s bigger than you give it credit for.’

‘A heart of gold, eh?’

She gave him a playful frown.

‘Copper, then.’

‘Brass.’ Emily kissed him gently on the mouth. ‘It’s harder to shoot a hole in brass than copper.’

‘So now I’m just a suit of armour to you?’

‘Not just that.’ She reached down and touched him.

‘It would seem I’ve got a reputation to live up to.’

‘Or down to.’

He began to laugh. ‘Her ladyship would deign to have her way with a commoner then?’

‘Is that what you are? A commoner?’

‘A commoner, with very immediate needs.’ Pyke straddled her and started to pull up her nightshirt.

‘Then allow me to minister to the needy.’ She blew out the candle and kissed him on the mouth.

Four whiskered men, all wearing tall-crowned top hats and black Macintosh coats, held lanterns aloft and formed a barricade across the sodden track. Above them, the sky was black and filled with a patchwork of heavy, swirling clouds. Rain had begun to fall shortly after they had departed Cambridge, where Morris had left him to make the onward journey to Huntingdon using a short-stop stagecoach. Now, two hours later, the surface of the road had become an unrecognisable river of mud. The driver had climbed down from his seat and was engaged in a heated conversation with the leader of the group, who had a rifle slung over his shoulder and was demanding that all the male passengers present themselves outside the carriage for inspection. In fact, this meant just Pyke and a nervous undertaker travelling on to King’s Lynn. When the undertaker was allowed to retake his place in the carriage, Pyke stood alone in front of the man, wet gusts of wind buffeting the tail of his coat. Water dripped from the curled tip of the man’s vein-riddled nose and the smell of gin on his breath was overpowering. Pyke was asked about his business in Huntingdon and when he refused to give an answer, the man took a step towards him and asked him whether he was a radical. Pyke absorbed the heat of his stare and the stink of his breath and explained that he was travelling on to Newark and hoped to break his journey in Huntingdon.

That seemed to confuse the man slightly. ‘You sure you ain’t a radical?’

‘I wasn’t the last time you asked, but if you leave me standing out here in the rain for too much longer I might turn into one.’

‘How about a journalist? Are you a journalist? We hate journalists almost as much as we hate radicals.’

‘Afraid of what they might write about your dreary little town?’

The man’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘This is a good town, with fine, upstanding people. It’s others have brought their troubles to us.’

‘I’ve no interest in you or your town but if I catch a fever from standing out here in the rain I might take an interest.’

He let Pyke return to the coach with a curt nod and soon they were crossing over the River Ouse using the old bridge, the town appearing before them and a torrent of water gushing beneath them.

Before they had parted ways in Cambridge, Morris had told him again that he was less concerned about radicals than about Rockingham’s attempts to thwart the progress of the Grand Northern beyond Cambridge and across his land. Apparently Rockingham enjoyed a great deal of support in Huntingdon, where the next phase of the construction work was about to begin because livelihoods like blacksmithing and innkeeping would be hit hard by the railway.

Pyke had told Morris to wait for him in his private carriage on the crossroads just to the south of Huntingdon at approximately eight the following evening. If he happened to make enemies in the town, Pyke didn’t want to draw the older man into any possible repercussions.

Inside the stagecoach, a matronly woman said, with breathy excitement, ‘I fancy the business with those men must have been related to the discovery of a headless body a few days ago.’

Directly across from her, the undertaker nodded. ‘I heard there was a madman on the loose from an asylum near Cambridge. Either that, or one of the four horsemen of the acropolis,’ he muttered, with a conspiratorial nod. ‘I’ve dealt with bodies my whole life and I’ll wager you don’t know how much sweat it would take to hack through someone’s neck with a knife.’

‘Please, sir, I’d remind you there are ladies present,’ the woman who’d started the conversation said, looking at Pyke for support.

‘If someone knew what they were doing,’ Pyke said, ‘a few swings of a sharp axe ought to do it.’

‘Aye, I suppose it would.’ The undertaker scratched his chin. ‘But so would a saw with a good blade.’

The matronly woman huffed but took no further part in the conversation.

When they finally pulled into the coaching yard, the carriage was surrounded by grooms and pot-boys wearing black aprons, offering to carry their bags to one of the inn’s rooms. Stretching his limbs, Pyke watched as the grooms led the tired horses across to the stables on the far side of the yard, where they would be fed and rested.