Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

In spite of the rain, the yard at the back of the Jolly Sailor public house on Tooley Street was teeming with people: smudge-faced dockers with their unkempt whiskers and crushed billycock caps, market traders dressed in velveteen coats, silk neckerchiefs and beaver-knapped hats, prostitutes wearing heavy cotton print dresses and brightly coloured ribbons in their lace bonnets, and farm labourers in soiled smock-frocks, all attracted by the likelihood of seeing someone or something’s blood spilled. The air around them was thick with the stink from the nearby tanneries, and though it was dark, the plumes of black smoke that belched out of the chimneys of the Barclay’s brewery were just visible in the night sky.

For the time being Pyke had lost sight of Bolter — he had disappeared into one of the stables adjoining the yard — but Rockingham was standing across from him, his small, quick eyes focused on the gladiatorial ring. The ring was no larger than a good-sized pig pen and was surrounded by a waist-high wooden fence. A generous covering of straw had been laid over the mud. Pyke had no idea what kind of sport they had all come to witness, whether it would involve dogs, cocks, bears, rats or bulls, but the betting was furious and the mood expectant.

The bull was first to appear, a hulking brute of a creature with long, pointed horns and hoofs that clattered against the cobblestones as four burly men dragged it, head first, towards the ring. Pyke couldn’t tell whether the beast was terrified or angry but its nostrils were flayed and raw. Once the snorting bull had been shoved into the ring, a path was cleared and the first dog appeared, a squat bulldog slavering at the end of its leash, held by a man wearing braided kerseymere. Bolter was next, the giant mastiff straining on his leash in a similarly demented fashion, closely followed by what looked like a Great Dane as large as a pony, its fur peppered with bite marks. The three owners conferred with one another for a few moments, before, to the roar of the crowd, the dogs were released into the ring, where the bull waited.

It was raining heavily and despite the thick covering of straw the bull was having difficulties manoeuvring on the cobbles, giving an advantage to the dogs. But it was the bull who attacked first, its head down and horns ready as it charged first at the Great Dane, which nimbly skipped out of the way, and then at the bulldog, which only just managed to avoid being mauled. Meanwhile Copper, Bolter’s mastiff, had circled around the back and lunged with its powerful jaws at the bull’s hind legs, ripping out some flesh and ligament before retreating backwards just as the enraged beast spun around and tried to impale him on the end of its horn. The other two dogs followed the mastiff’s lead and pounced on the bull from behind, the bulldog tearing a strip of skin from its back and drawing first blood and the Great Dane going for the beast’s injured hind leg. Shrieking with pain or anger or both, the bull spun around in a second and speared the Great Dane with one of its horns, a cheer from the crowd drowning out the groans, the bull lifting the giant dog up into the air on its horn, shaking its head and hurling the limp, stricken hound into the mob standing on the other side of the ring. The flying beast narrowly missed Rockingham but his face was splattered, along with others standing by the rail, with the dog’s blood and entrails, as the animal itself flattened ten or fifteen men, as though they were no more substantial than a few skittles.

For a moment Pyke watched Rockingham rather than the contest. He might have expected the country landowner to be appalled by what had just happened and uneasy at being among such a rough crowd. But though specks of blood peppered the older man’s face, he couldn’t tear his eyes off the carnage in the ring, his caked lips glistening with his own saliva — and Pyke remembered the unblinking way in which he had shot his own horse.

A gutsy cheer erupted around the ring as the tawny mastiff clawed its way up on to the bull’s back and sunk its jaws into flesh, while the snarling bulldog attacked one of its front legs. The bull’s hind legs kicked viciously upwards, sending the mastiff crashing back to the ground, apparently uninjured, but the bulldog had managed to lock its teeth around the bull’s leg and crunched down until its jaw touched bone. Pyke was certain that the bull’s shrieks could be heard as far away as Rotherhithe, making a mockery of the law passed by Parliament banning blood sports in public places. Tottering on one good front leg, the bull turned on the bulldog but couldn’t keep its footing and toppled over on to the straw. It hit the ground with a thud that shuddered the foundations of the pub and which Pyke could feel in his stomach. Then the two remaining beasts were on top of it, the scent of blood thick in their nostrils. But the bull wasn’t finished yet and managed to haul itself up on to its three good legs, one of its hind legs kicking the bulldog in its jaw and sending the stunned dog to ground. Turning around, the bull charged and the stricken dog couldn’t limp out of the way, and while most of the gathered mob had to look away at the moment when the bull’s hoofs punctured the bulldog’s chest, Rockingham’s eyes glistened with evident delight.

Now the odds had shifted firmly in the bull’s favour, a fact that was underscored by a glimpse of Bolter’s anxious face. The two beasts circled one another warily, the bull still only able to use three of its legs. The mastiff seemed much less sure of itself, now its companions lay dead, and the bull perhaps sensed this, lowering its head and charging at the dog. Copper just managed to get out of the way, but in the charge the bull’s horns had become skewered in one of the wooden posts and, as violently as the bull shook its neck, its horns wouldn’t come free. No one knew what to do; no one apart from Bolter’s mastiff, which doubled back on the bull, now it was incapacitated, and attacked its hind legs with a flash of teeth. What followed sickened Pyke to the pit of his stomach. Sensing the kill, the mastiff tore apart the hind end of the paralysed creature, blood and entrails dripping from its jaws. But it wasn’t a quick death and no one came to the bull’s rescue. Instead, as the mastiff tugged at the dying beast’s insides, the faces of those closest to the ring seemed to reflect the ugliness of what they were watching. Rockingham’s expression was especially disturbing: it was as if he was experiencing some kind of sexual thrill from the sight of the carnage. It took the mastiff a further ten minutes to finally slay the bull, by which time the bookmakers had already paid out to those who had bet on the dogs and some of the crowd had started to drift back into the pub.

Farther along Tooley Street, Pyke found a small grocer’s store that sold bottles of laudanum and imbibed most of the tincture to settle his stomach. He had not taken laudanum in a while and its effect was almost instantaneous, a numbing calm spreading throughout his body.

When he returned to the Jolly Sailor, it took him a few minutes to find Bolter and Rockingham. They were alone in the games room playing billiards. The dog was nowhere to be seen.

In his time as a Bow Street Runner, Pyke had been knifed, garrotted, shot, kicked and assaulted with everything from a cudgel to a machete. He had killed people, too, and even though he didn’t consider himself to be violent by nature, he had done so seemingly without a burden on his conscience. But at times he would lie awake, listening to the trees outside the window swaying in the wind, and think about his ex-mistress, Lizzie, who had been slain in the bed while he slept next to her, and about the men, for they were all men, whose lives he had cut short, and wonder whether he wasn’t drawn to blood and violence like a moth to a candle.