Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

For the first time, Pyke noted with satisfaction, Jackman looked genuinely angry. Blood rose in his neck. ‘And if we do nothing, the company gets exactly what it wants. A nice, pliant workforce.’ He nodded contemptuously in Pyke’s direction. ‘By his own admission, he’s a company man. He just wants to smooth things over until the work has started.’

Red drummed his fingers on the makeshift table while he considered what to do. ‘The thing is, Pyke, if we don’t do a thing, then Mary’s death goes unpunished. You see what I mean?’ He waited for a moment, choosing his words. ‘I went to see the magistrate yesterday to report what had happened.’ His voice shook a little. ‘The man told me to my face not to waste his time. To my face. You reckon we can turn the other cheek, not do a thing?’

Pyke glanced across at the radical. ‘But it remains true that if the magistrate turns his militia and weapons on you, Jackman can exploit your likely injuries for propagandist purposes. He doesn’t care about your well-being any more than I do.’

This time Pyke had pushed the radical too far and, without warning, Jackman took a swing at him. But it was a wild punch and Pyke easily ducked under it, leaving himself with time to take aim and land a clean blow on the radical’s jaw. He put a little extra into the punch and felt a jolt of pleasure when Jackman went down.

Aroused by the disturbance, other men poured into the shanty and it took a blast of Red’s musket to restore some semblance of calm.

‘I’ve thought about what you said.’ Red looked at Pyke and rubbed his chin. His stare was empty of sentiment. ‘I’ve made my decision. We bury Mary and we march on the town.’

Cheers quickly spread through the camp. Gingerly climbing to his feet, Jackman nursed his cut lip. Only Red and Pyke seemed unmoved by what had happened, and when the furore abated the navvy turned to him and whispered, ‘You may well be right but we don’t have a choice.’

Later, when Pyke shut his eyes and pictured Mary’s battered corpse, it was hard to disagree with Red’s logic.

It was fully dark by the time they left the camp and the sky was still laden with black clouds. It started to rain as they approached the bridge, a fine spray at first and then larger droplets of water buffeted their faces. A squally wind blew gold leaves from the branches and, deprived of sunlight, Huntingdon once again became a drab market town, grey smoke billowing out of red-brick chimneys. There were thirty-seven of them, including Pyke and Jackman, and their makeshift weaponry was no match for what Pyke had seen outside the town’s watch-house.

They crossed the ancient bridge unopposed and marched three or four abreast up the deserted High Street, as anxious faces appeared and disappeared from behind drawn curtains. As they approached the Fountain inn, some of their number began to rattle their sticks and chant threats but, on closer inspection, both the inn itself and the adjoining taproom seemed deserted — certainly all the doors were locked and there were no signs of life anywhere inside the building.

It was raining harder and wet gusts of wind pummelled their unprotected faces. At the head of the mob, a breakaway group had decided to head for the square, and when they turned the corner into it, they were confronted by a row of well-armed men lined up to block their progress. The navvies were so obviously outnumbered it was a surprise that some chose to attack, but the whole crew was quickly forced back with brickbats and pick handles.

Pyke couldn’t see what was happening at the front of the melee but he could hear the grunts and screams as blunt objects rained down on their heads, bones cracking under the onslaught. A gleeful townsman split open one of the navvy’s heads with repeated swings of a brickbat, and just behind Pyke another navvy was pushed to the ground and kicked over and over in the stomach and head. On that occasion Pyke charged the lynch mob and managed to chase them off with a few lunges of his knife, long enough to pick up the stricken man and retreat with the rest of them towards the bridge. Some ran and others walked, turning only to check on the whereabouts of their pursuers. Pyke had lost sight of Jackman and Red but the man Pyke had rescued had recovered sufficiently to walk without help, even though he didn’t appear to know where he was or what had just happened.

Ahead of them the bridge was just about visible through the driving rain. Some of the townsmen were still pursuing them along the High Street, the sound of musket or rifle fire and the whiff of blast powder filling the damp air. From the size of their group, Pyke guessed that about half of the navvies had been left somewhere behind them, including perhaps Jackman, but he saw Red somewhere near the front, urging his wounded troops to retreat a little faster. It wasn’t until they were halfway across the bridge that Pyke saw the men lined up on the other side of the bridge, the Godmanchester side, where they’d hoped to find sanctuary: townsmen carrying torches and sticks and waiting to ambush them.

Others had seen them, too, and they came to a halt in the middle of the bridge, caught between two advancing groups of townsmen. What happened next would live for a long time in Pyke’s mind: the sounds of brickbats and pick handles raining down on their heads, cries of pain and anguish, blood splattered across his face, and splashes as terrified navvies jumped into the fast-moving river below to escape the onslaught. Later, he would be able to think back on what happened with greater clarity and determine what mistakes had been made and whether more could have been done to save those drowning men. But in the first moments on the bridge, he came as close to experiencing what a soldier might go through during an ambush as he would ever come, fighting to preserve one’s life rather than win a victory.

One of the townsmen came at him swinging a pick handle. If he’d connected, the blow might have split Pyke’s head open. Instead, he swayed out of the way, punched the man in the face and disarmed him of the stick. Turning it on someone else, he drove it hard into his attacker’s stomach and watched as the man fell to his knees coughing up bile.

When they had finally broken through the ranks of the townsmen, who were tired of their victory, and made it back to the camp, Red embraced Pyke with both arms and whispered in his ear that he was a good man. Red’s clothes were torn and muddy and his face was bruised purple from the blows he’d received at the hands of the townsmen. Pyke’s injuries were slight in comparison. Others also offered their grateful thanks. From somewhere a horse was produced, its reins thrust into Pyke’s hands. ‘We need someone to tell folk what happened here tonight,’ Red said, his voice bristling with emotion. ‘We need someone to tell our story.’

Pyke checked his watch. It was barely seven o’clock. He still had time to make it to the rendezvous point with Morris by eight.

He looked out for the young radical but didn’t see Jackman among the walking wounded.

Pyke had ridden a few hundred yards along the muddy track from Godmanchester when he saw them, a row of men in tall-crowned top hats carrying torches and blockading the road. The lashing rain and squally wind made it hard to tell how many of them he was facing. A clap of thunder shook the ground and a fork of lightning lit up the sky. He saw them better in the afterglow of the lightning. At first he thought the men had been placed there in order to protect the town from recriminatory attacks by the navvies. But when he pulled on the reins, dug his heels into the horse’s midriff and tried to encourage the mare to turn around, this fallacy was exposed. A rifle shot exploded like the crack of a slaver’s whip, closely followed by a second and a third shot. They weren’t trying to stop or arrest the navvies. It was an assassination party and he was their target. Pressing his own horse into a gallop, Pyke lowered his head and held on to the beast as it clipped along the track. He didn’t see the other men, advancing from the direction of the camp, until it was almost too late. They, too, had fanned out across the track, their rifles aimed at him. Pyke jerked on the reins and brought the snorting mare to a standstill, looking in both directions as the armed men closed in on him.