Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

It was an act designed to insult and shock but he let it pass without acknowledging it. Still, Pyke felt his long-held prejudices against the aristocracy rise up inside him like a knotted ball.

‘I’m guessing it was that old fool Morris who sent you here.’ Rockingham belched loudly. ‘Just imagine it, giving up your title to join the ranks of the plebeians. What right-thinking Englishman would contemplate such a prospect?’

‘If a right-thinking Englishman would fuck a Negro woman and then, nine months later, strangle his own progeny in front of her, Morris might be better described as wrong-thinking.’

Rockingham regarded him coldly. ‘I’d be very careful how you address me, boy.’

‘If it was up to me, I’d make sure the railway cut through the middle of this house and then I’d build a station in the great hall.’

That drew a leering smile. ‘You’re actually quite an amusing sort.’ He looked at Pyke, as though inspecting a slab of meat. ‘Whatever Morris is paying you, I’ll double it.’

‘To do what?’

‘Tempted, eh?’ Rockingham grinned, blood rising in his wan cheeks. ‘To leave me in peace so I can finish my lunch.’

‘I’m waiting for you to tell me how a headless corpse came to be dumped in the river flowing directly through your land.’

This seemed to take Rockingham by surprise. ‘It didn’t have anything to do with me.’

‘But it was found in the river just downstream from the edge of your estate.’

‘So?’

‘So it implies that you were somehow involved.’

‘Did the magistrate tell you that?’

When Pyke declined to answer, Rockingham’s mood seemed to improve. ‘I didn’t think so.’ But it suggested that he wasn’t as certain of Yellowplush’s support as Pyke might have expected.

‘It was just coincidence, then?’

‘Dammit, boy, if I’d killed a man or paid someone else to do it, why would I have cut off his head and thrown him into a river near my own land?’

A moment passed between them. More on a whim than anything else, Pyke said, ‘So what are you trying to hide?’

‘Hide?’ Rockingham spluttered, unable to contain his rage. ‘I’m not trying to hide a damned thing.’

‘It doesn’t look that way from where I’m standing.’

Rockingham wiped spittle from his chin and waited until he was calm. ‘It’s time you left. This conversation is finished.’

‘The young girl I saw outside in the paddock, riding one of your chestnut horses. Is she your daughter or granddaughter?’

Rockingham’s outrage was confined to his trembling hand. ‘I won’t be talked to in such an outrageous manner in my own house, sir.’

‘If you make any further attempts to impede the construction of the railway across your land, I’ll smear the bloodied carcass of her favourite animal across the marbled floor of the entrance hall while she watches.’

‘Are you threatening my family?’ Rockingham asked, still trying to adjust himself to the shock.

Unbuttoning his trousers, Pyke relieved himself on the remains of Rockingham’s steak while the old man looked on in horror.

‘Do you really think you can come into my home and insult me?’ Rockingham’s eyes glowed with humiliation. ‘I have powerful friends, in London as well as Huntingdon, and I won’t stand for your impertinence. You hear me, boy? I’d watch your back if I were you.’

As he reached the front steps, Pyke looked up and saw two figures approaching the house across the lawn. The young woman with the blonde hair carried a riding hat. Her companion, a smartly dressed young man, walked by her side. He was leading the chestnut gelding.

In the morning sunlight, the whiteness of their clothes set against the manicured green lawn might have made for a pleasant sight and their happy demeanour, reinforced by the fact they were walking so close together, implied a blossoming romance. But Pyke could not bring himself to acknowledge them or their happiness. Perhaps they had no idea that their idyll had been purchased with the crack of a slaver’s whip, but their innocence was not something he wished to contemplate.

Rockingham had followed Pyke outside, however, and approached him as he was preparing to leave. He called over the young couple, took the reins of the horse from the man and, without making any introductions or acknowledging Pyke’s presence, asked them to leave.

‘He’s a beautiful animal, isn’t he?’ Rockingham said, gently stroking the animal’s head. ‘But in a race at Newmarket last week he missed his footing and was beaten into third place.’

Pyke didn’t see the pistol in the ex-slaver’s shaking hand until it was too late. The first blast caught the startled beast between the eyes and the second hit him in the neck as he stumbled, the hind legs buckling first. On the ground, the stricken animal quivered and snorted in front of them, and then died.

‘Perhaps now you know what kind of man you’re dealing with,’ Rockingham said, staring down at the slain animal without sentiment.

Hearing a noise from behind them, Pyke spun around and saw that Rockingham’s daughter had witnessed the scene from the top of the stone steps, but her expression was composed and her stare was empty, as though the shooting had not happened or she had failed to see it.

In daylight, and now that it was no longer raining, Huntingdon might have looked like a pretty market town with its Norman church, well-proportioned houses and lush meadows. In fact, for a few hours at least, the sun-dappled river, though it had broken its banks just past the old bridge, seemed almost peaceful. But it was also hard not to see the town in the light of its watch-house and jail, the workhouse that was being built, and the efforts of its inhabitants to arm themselves in the face of an enemy who had done them no wrong. Pyke had seen similar attitudes in other small provincial towns. Strangers were to be tolerated only if they did not stay, change was to be feared, tradition and superstition predominated, and men’s fears were easily played upon by those with the power. It wasn’t surprising that the coming of the railway had provoked unrest, especially as it threatened people’s livelihoods. But Pyke suspected that some people were whipping up generalised anxieties for their own selfish interests.

Situated on the Godmanchester side of the old bridge, the navvy encampment was set back from the muddy track and partly hidden by a tall hedge that circled the field.

‘Hey, fella, what do you want?’ From the other side of the gate, a man peered at him and scowled. He was holding what looked like a musket.

‘I want to talk to whoever’s in charge.’

‘Who are you?’

‘The name’s Pyke. I’ve been sent here by the chairman of the railway company in London.’

That drew an ironic laugh but the gate swung open and he was met on the other side by three burly men with muskets slung over their shoulders, wearing velveteen coats covered in mud.

‘We’ll need to search you,’ one of them muttered. ‘In light of the current situation, I expect you’ll understand.’

Pyke nodded but wondered what situation they were referring to. Did they know that the townsmen were already preparing for trouble?

Although it was afternoon, there was a chill in the air and darkness had begun to gnaw at the edges of the sky, while giant pillars of dark forbidding cloud massed on the horizon.

The word camp was perhaps too grand a description for what greeted Pyke. It was little more than a few canvas tarpaulins hoisted over low-lying tree branches and a single turf shanty built out of caked mud which sat on slightly higher ground away from the banks of the river. As he was led across the field, the stares of the navvies bore into him. He had to duck his head to enter the shanty and inside it took him a few moments to adjust to the gloom. One of the men introduced him as a company man from London. A fire burnt in a makeshift grate, the smoke drawn upwards by a small hole in the thatched roof.