Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

It was just a short step from the cathedral to his uncle’s shop in St Paul’s Yard and Pyke decided to take refuge there, rather than attempt to run the gauntlet of the massed ranks of police constables who would doubtless be summoned to the cathedral and would soon be looking for the priest’s assassin. In the deserted yard, a squally wind had whipped the sodden pages of a discarded newspaper into the air. Digging his shaking hands into his pockets, Pyke thought of the priest who had been killed for no other reason than that of being in the wrong place and wondered what kind of human being would kill a man of the cloth without pausing for thought, as though the act of taking a life were akin to having a piss or discarding a half-eaten pie. He also thought about the threat that had been made against Emily and decided that, having seen his uncle, he would return to Hambledon to make sure she was safe.

The stone steps that led down to Godfrey’s basement shop were wet from the rain and at the bottom Pyke was surprised to see that the door was ajar. Godfrey liked to complain bitterly about the ill effects of the cold weather. It wasn’t just raining, though. A fog had rolled up the river from the east and made it difficult to see the top of Wren’s dome, even though the cathedral was just a few yards away.

Peering through the door, Pyke shouted out his uncle’s name, his eyes straining to see through the darkness.

He heard Godfrey’s cry before he saw the state of the shop; even in the dim light produced by half a dozen candles, the chaos was evident. Books had been torn apart, piles of manuscripts had been riffled through and strewn on the floor, and bundles of letters had been cut open and discarded.

At the back of the shop, two men wearing tailored swallow-tailed coats over knee-length breeches and wellington boots had pinned Godfrey against the wall. With knife in his hand, Pyke steadied himself and took aim, sending the weapon corkscrewing through the air. The blade tore into one of the men’s flesh, embedding itself deep into the leg. The wounded man screamed in agony and fell to the floor, giving Pyke time to move carefully through the shop. The other man looked up, visibly startled. He wasn’t physically favoured, by any stretch of the imagination, but his quick, darting movements and powerful forearms made him someone to be reckoned with. But Pyke didn’t stop to take stock of the situation and assess the threat posed by the two men. Rather he sprinted through the shop and threw himself at the larger man, driving him backwards into the wall and winding him in the process. He landed a clean blow on his jaw and watched as he collapsed.

Godfrey had slumped to the floor and was wheezing like an injured hog, clutching his chest. Pyke knelt beside him and asked whether he was all right. Godfrey tried to whisper a few words but they wouldn’t form on his tongue.

But the two attackers hadn’t finished with him. The larger man, the uninjured one, had retrieved a broken table leg and was advancing towards him, swinging it wildly in the air like a machete. The first swing missed Pyke’s cheek by a whisker but the follow-up swipe caught him a little off balance and gave his attacker enough time to push past him and run for the door.

Rather than setting after him in pursuit, Pyke decided to concentrate his efforts on apprehending his companion, who, by this stage, had managed to haul himself up on to his legs and hobble to the back of the shop, where a door opened out on to a small court. In the doorway, and just in time, Pyke saw the glint of a gun barrel and fell to the ground before a blast of powder sent ball-shot fizzing over his head.

Pyke moved after the wounded man with more caution. Outside in the courtyard, he followed the trail of blood along a high-walled alleyway, catching sight of the man as he turned the corner into another alleyway, which led to Ludgate Hill. The injured man was moving slowly but Pyke opted to keep his distance, in case the pistol contained another shot.

Ludgate Hill was deserted apart from a street sweeper and a costermonger pulling his barrow by hand. From the entrance to the alleyway, Pyke looked across the street and saw what the wounded man clearly hadn’t: a two-wheeled phaeton pulled by a couple of strapping mares bearing down on him out of the swirling fog. The driver saw the man too late to change his course but tried to pull on the horses’ reins. For his part, the wounded man saw what was about to happen and held up the palms of his hands, a final, pitiful act of defiance before he was trampled under the hoofs of the terrified horses, run over by the wheels of the carriage and impaled on the axle, which had snapped in two as a result of the collision.

First at the scene of the accident, Pyke checked to see that the driver of the phaeton would live and then turned his attention to the dead man, who, minutes earlier, had tried to attack Godfrey in his shop. Pulling the knife from the man’s leg, Pyke wiped the blade on what seemed to be an expensive coat and briefly rummaged through his pockets. The only thing of interest that he found was a brass cravat pin supporting some kind of military coat of arms. The police would have to deal with yet another dead body, Pyke thought grimly as he wandered back to Godfrey’s shop. Two in a night, both within a few hundred yards of each other. Perhaps they would try to connect the two. Perhaps they were connected, he mused.

Back in the shop, his uncle was sprawled out on the floor. He wasn’t moving and when Pyke tried to rouse him, he groaned slightly and clutched his chest, wincing with evident pain. ‘It’s my heart, dear boy,’ he wheezed. ‘I don’t know if I’ll make it.’ His eyelids fluttered and closed.

But Godfrey did not pass away that night or, indeed, the following day, and by the next evening he had rallied sufficiently to take a few sips of water and two mouthfuls of bread. Pyke had paid for a room in St Bartholomew’s, and also for Sir Henry Halford, the well-respected royal physician, to attend to him around the clock. Pyke hardly slept at all on the first night and remained with his uncle throughout the following day. Emily visited in the evening with victuals and they sat across from one another, each holding one of Godfrey’s withered hands, their thoughts drowned out by the terrified grunts and squeals of animals being herded into the market outside.

‘You know, it was Godfrey who taught me how to read,’ Pyke said, on the second night.

Emily smiled warmly and took Pyke’s other hand in hers.

Pyke looked at her but his mind was elsewhere. The previous night it had struck him, maybe for the first time, that his uncle might die, and he realised how unprepared he was for this eventuality. ‘I still remember the first thing he ever read to me.’

‘Yes?’ Emily looked up at him.

‘ The Life and Times of Sawney Beane.’

‘Who’s that?’ One side of her face was lit up by the candlelight.

‘Sawney Beane.’ He met her gaze across the bed. ‘He robbed people and ate their flesh.’

That drew a knowing smile. ‘And how old were you at the time?’

‘A little older than Felix.’

‘I was going to say it hasn’t done you any harm.’

Pyke smiled. ‘Godfrey always reckoned you could do more damage than good by trying to shield young minds from the less palatable aspects of life.’

Emily regarded him with a thoughtful expression. ‘It sounds very different from our son’s upbringing.’

Pyke reached out and stroked his uncle on the forehead. ‘I’m just saying he never felt the need to censor. Good, bad, gruesome, uplifting. He read them all and let me come to my own conclusions.’

Pyke watched her from the other side of the bed. It was at moments such as these, he mused, that you realised what people meant to you. He had experienced a similar blind panic when Emily had almost died while giving birth to Felix. She had lost consciousness for a few days and Pyke had remained at her bedside for the entire time, trying to keep her alive with the strength of his will.