Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

Strangely this anxiety had not prevented him from becoming nostalgic about his own past. A few weeks earlier, he’d walked past the ginnery he had once owned around the corner from Smithfield Market and had been seized by a feeling of such intense desire to be back in his old room that he had tried to gain entrance to the building. Once inside, he had been set upon by a gang of thieves who used it as a flash house and who tried and failed to strip him of his possessions. Afterwards he had attended a charity ball organised by Emily to raise funds for another of her causes, and it had struck him that, as much as he despised the rookeries, despised their dirtiness, their stink of misery and despair and the smoke-blackened rooms where ten or more men and women slept head to toe on flimsy hessian sacks, despised the ubiquity of violence and the imminence of death, he felt more comfortable there than he did attending events alongside the great and the good of society.

There was a time in Pyke’s life when the Spitalfields weavers had been the blue-blood aristocrats of the artisan classes. The work had been secure and wage regulations had ensured that prices for their silk remained acceptable. More importantly the market for silk had been protected from foreign competition by government regulation. Indeed, as a child, Pyke could still remember visiting the homes of weavers and being astounded that they had gardens and summer houses. All that had changed when the government relaxed the ban on foreign imports, a move that flooded the market with cheap silk from France and Holland, and the combined effect of this and the influx of the sweaters who corralled women and children into slop shops and paid them pennies meant that the weavers had slipped from their position at the top of the working-class hierarchy to near the bottom.

Pyke had to ask a toothless old man for directions to the Sutton house, and when he eventually found it, the dwelling turned out to be no more than two small, windowless rooms on the ground floor of a cottage shared by a number of other weaving families. It was an airless morning, damp without being cold, and Pyke had to cover his mouth and nose with a handkerchief, to try to ward off the oppressive stink that clung to the entire neighbourhood.

The last thing he wanted to do was pick up a debilitating disease that he might pass on to his son.

Pyke pushed open the front door and stared into the room at an old man hunched over a loom. ‘Are you Kate’s father?’

Startled, the man looked up, two white eyes surrounded by skin that was so dirty it was hard to see him. Stepping into the room, Pyke saw it was lit by a solitary candle that three of them shared, the man and woman and a young girl. The man looked up from his loom and held up his hands to shield his eyes from the glare of the outside light. ‘Who wants to know?’

As his eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness, Pyke realised the man wasn’t nearly as old as he had initially thought. It was just that his skeletal figure and wan, sunken cheeks gave the impression of a much older person. He returned the handkerchief to his pocket.

‘It’s a gemmen,’ the man croaked to his wife, springing to his feet and ushering Pyke into the spotlessly tidy room.

‘I’m looking for your daughter Kate.’ Pyke glanced over at the little girl, who gave him a toothy smile. She couldn’t have been much older than Felix, he thought grimly, and already she had been put to work on a loom.

‘Here, take a seat, sir,’ the man said, offering Pyke the only chair in the room. ‘That’s a very fine coat, if I may say so. A very nice coat. Very expensive. Must have cost you a pretty penny.’

‘Do you know where your daughter is? Has she been in contact recently?’

‘Not for a while. Me and Missus Sutton are tryin’ not to show our worry in front of the littl’un.’ He came a little closer and whispered, ‘But it’s been mighty hard for all of us. That gal’s always been my favourite. And between you and me, she always helped us with a few shillings from her wages.’

‘My name’s Pyke. I’m trying to find your daughter for my uncle. He visited you a week ago.’

The man took hold of Pyke’s sleeve. ‘Is that your uncle, sir? The publishing man? A gemmen he was, too. Gave us a few coins.’

‘Do you have any idea where she might have gone?’

‘Hear that, Missus Sutton?’ he barked at his wife. ‘This gemmen’s gonna find our gal.’

‘Don’t be getting your hopes up, Freddie. You know as well as I do she’s been gone nearly two weeks now.’

‘Hush, woman. May wolves tear out your throat for speaking that way.’ He turned back to Pyke. ‘What was it you was asking?’

‘Have you any idea where your daughter might have gone? She left her job at the palace last week without giving a forwarding address.’

Freddie shook his head. ‘My gal wouldn’t have left that job, not if wild horses had been dragging her. Mrs Sutton’s cousin used to work in the palace, too, and she got our gal the job in the first place. Our Kate properly loved it. And it paid well, too. Enough to spare me a few groats at the end of the week.’

‘Was she in any kind of trouble, at least that you knew of?’

‘Our Kate?’ He shook his head vehemently. ‘Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.’ This didn’t match Godfrey’s description of her but Pyke let the opinion stand.

‘And she never talked about resigning her post and going elsewhere?’

‘Never once.’ Freddie folded his arms.

Pyke studied his proud, leathery face. ‘What about lovers?’

‘Lovers? My gal ain’t no cockish dell but she ain’t a biter, neither. There might have been a gemmen. Not one like you, as well dressed and all, but a friend who liked her well enough.’

‘Do you know his name? Where he lives?’

‘I might do,’ Freddie said, a disconcerting glint in his eye. ‘But I might also need something to jog my memory.’

‘Freddie, may the Lord forgive you, trying to profit when this gemmen just wants to find our gal,’ his wife scolded.

‘The way I see it,’ the man replied, looking at Pyke rather than at her, ‘he wants to find our gal for himself. He ain’t doing it out of the goodness of his heart, is he?’

Pyke took out his purse, picked out a sovereign and handed it to the man.

‘Gold. It’s gold, Missus Sutton. I ain’t see one of these in years. Gold.’ He seemed beside himself with excitement.

‘Kate’s friend?’

‘Ah, yes.’ His expression became serious. ‘Not a good sort. Johnny was his name. I always had him figgered as a bad apple. He wanted to be an actor and he expected our gal to keep him with her wages. I mean, that ain’t right, is it? Taking Darby from a gal.’

‘Do you know where I can find him?’

‘Not where he lives but I remember him talking about a penny gaff on New Cut. He tried to get me to go and see him act. I never did but he told me it was the farther one from the Waterloo Road.’

Pyke looked down and saw that the young girl was standing next to him, hugging his leg. He bent down and patted her on the head. She seemed transfixed by the two keys on the chain and he let her play with them for a while.

‘That’s Milly, my youngest. Clever gal she is. A real magpie.’

‘Is there anyone else Kate mentioned? An old friend? Someone she talked to at the palace?’

Freddie scratched his chin, straining to remember something. ‘There was someone else, come to think of it… another gal who worked at the palace, a proper lady, though…’

‘But let me guess,’ Pyke said, retrieving his purse. ‘Your memory requires further lubrication?’

‘See, Missus Sutton?’ Freddie said, turning to his wife. ‘I said this was a gemmen, didn’t I? As soon as I saw him, I said to myself this is not just a gemmen but a cock of the walk.’