Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

In his recent visit to Hambledon, Cumberland had told Pyke that he was about to leave for the Continent. But why had he decided to make this journey if the prospect of laying his hands on Conroy’s letters loomed on his immediate horizon? And another more worrying question niggled at Pyke’s mind. Why had it taken Cumberland a full five days since the abduction to issue the ransom demand? Why hadn’t he delivered it the morning after the kidnapping?

With these questions foremost in his thoughts, Pyke crossed the city in a hackney carriage and asked the driver to wait while he got out on the New Road just past Euston Square. It was nearly dark and the air was bitingly cold. This was where Peel had said Sir Henry Bellows had bought a number of properties in the past year. Digging his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat, he crossed the road, narrowly avoiding an omnibus weighed down with passengers, inside and out, and started to walk towards a deserted construction site a few hundred yards farther along the thoroughfare. Pyke had read about the arch that was under construction. The Grand Doric portico was being built to mark the terminus of the London-to-Birmingham railway. Gore’s railway. Pyke felt a sudden queasiness in his stomach. Was it a coincidence that Bellows had bought land and properties in the vicinity of the London terminus of the Birmingham railway? For that matter, could he take Peel’s word at face value? Was it true that Bellows had made these investments in the first place, and if so why had Peel wanted Pyke to know about them? Was there, as Gore had seemed to suggest, some kind of bad blood between him and the Tory leader?

Number forty-four Berkeley Square was like an ice house when Pyke unlocked the door, but he had to wait only a few minutes before a hackney carriage dropped Townsend off. Pyke suggested they walk briskly around the square to keep warm, rather than trying to get comfortable in the house. Townsend agreed, but after just a few paces he seemed a little breathless. Pyke asked him whether he was all right. ‘I’m just coming down with a chill,’ Townsend assured him.

As they walked Pyke said, ‘Have you put that personal advertisement in The Times yet?’

‘This has been running all week.’ Townsend took out a copy of the newspaper and directed Pyke’s attention to a box about halfway up the front page on the left-hand side. It read: ‘ Wanted: rare and valuable gold watches from the last century for collectors. Top prices paid. Bentley’s Jewellers, thirty-seven, the Strand.’

Pyke handed it back to Townsend. ‘Any responses?’

‘None that would interest you. At least not yet.’

Pyke nodded. It would have to do for now. ‘I want you to gather twenty men, or as many as you can round up at short notice, and have them assemble in the Old Red Lion near Smithfield on Saturday night.’

‘What kind of men?’

‘The kind who know how to fire a rifle and won’t ask too many questions, so long as the price is right.’

‘And how right will the price be?’ Townsend stopped and turned to face Pyke.

‘Ten pounds a man,’ Pyke said, without thinking about it. ‘But I need men who’ve fired a rifle before. Ex-soldiers, if possible. And I need you to keep them sober for me.’

Townsend whistled. ‘Ten pounds ought to do it.’ He blew into his hands and said, ‘There was someone looking for you earlier. A young fellow, William something. I didn’t catch his surname. He said he had news about a man called Jackman.’

Pyke’s throat tightened. ‘Did he say where I could find him?’

‘He told me to tell you he’d be drinking at the Queen’s Head in Battle Bridge until about nine.’

It was a miserable night: very dark, very cold and very muddy, and a blanket of fog had fallen on the capital. Even the occasional gas lamp did little to illuminate the street and make it easy to see where they were going. They left the road and cut through some carpet-beating grounds and vegetable patches left derelict by the building work, as Pyke followed William Hancock down a steep, treacherous path into the giant man-made ravine created by the railway construction work. As Hancock explained, when it was completed, a vast, stationary steam engine would pull the trains up the steep hill from the railway’s terminus at Euston Square to join up with the railway line at Camden Town. In fact, Hancock had said little to him in the pub: only that he had been instructed to show Pyke something. He wouldn’t say what it was and he seemed nervous, on edge. Now, half an hour later, Pyke wondered about the wisdom of following a man he’d never met before into the bowels of a deserted construction site. Their descent was slow-going, not helped by the ankle-deep mud and the dense wall of fog that made it hard to see more than a few yards in front. After perhaps fifteen minutes of painstaking progress, on their hands and backsides at times, the ground levelled out and he guessed they must have reached the floor of the construction site. He looked back up the slope but couldn’t see a thing. The fog was at its thickest at the very bottom of the ravine, a swirling, freezing blanket of white that made it hard for Pyke to see his own hands, let alone follow Hancock. They stayed close to each other and Hancock skilfully negotiated a path through piles of brick rubble and lengths of iron rails. Finally they came to a halt by a tall stack of wooden sleepers, Hancock turning to him and whispering, ‘Jackman told me to find you, if something happened to him.’ In the fog and the darkness, Pyke couldn’t properly see his expression but his voice sounded feathery and nervous.

‘And has something happened?’ Pyke looked around and saw an earth mound and a half-built brick wall.

‘You could say that.’ Hancock laughed bitterly and pointed at something behind Pyke. ‘If and when it clears…’

Pyke spun around but couldn’t see anything for a few moments, just a blanket of dense fog. He was expecting the worst, though, his heart thumping, his mouth parched of moisture. Still, in spite of his preparedness, he had to blink twice when the fog did finally clear. His legs buckled and bile tickled his throat. For there in front of him, rising above them in the night sky, was a makeshift crucifix, and affixed to it, with nails that had been hammered through his hands and ankles, was the figure of Julian Jackman. The fog rolled back across the ravine floor, temporarily obscuring the wooden cross, but when it next cleared, Pyke had positioned himself almost directly under the crucifix and stared up at Jackman’s contorted face. Pyke couldn’t tell how recently the radical had died but his blood, which had dripped on to the cross, had now dried. If they’d bound Jackman’s hands and ankles to the crucifix with rope and hammered the nails in while he’d still been alive, Pyke could only imagine the terrible pain the radical must have suffered. Certainly his face was almost unrecognisable: his hair matted to his face with sweat and his eyes, as large as walnuts, almost bulging out of their sockets. The man’s neck was corded with veins, too. In the end, Pyke had to look away, and it was only then he saw the plaque, nailed clumsily to the foot of the cross. Crouching down, he had a closer look. The words ‘ Swinish multitude: know thy place and stay there ’ had been scratched on to a piece of wood and underneath had been added ‘ Captain Paine, RIP ’.

‘What’s that?’ Hancock asked, bending down next to him.

For a few moments, Pyke was too nonplussed to speak. The dawning realisation of what Jackman’s corpse meant and who, doubtless, had ordered the crucifixion struck him with the force of a cannonball. There could be no other explanation. The killing was a warning to the navvies. Know thy place. Later William Hancock would confirm what Pyke had already surmised: that Jackman and the Wat Tyler Brigade had been agitating amongst the navvies on the Birmingham railway. But in those first seconds it was instinct which led Pyke’s thoughts in a particular direction. The bloodied corpse was a warning. To whom? The navvies. And from whom? The only possible answer was the owners of the Birmingham railway. The men who would stand to lose most if Jackman’s agitation mutated into strikes and other actions. And who was the chairman and largest shareholder of the Birmingham railway? All roads came back to Gore. Rage, humiliation and consternation assaulted Pyke in equal measure. Gore wasn’t the potential ally he had imagined. Over and over, Pyke kept returning to the same question. How could he have been so stupid and so blind? The events in Huntingdon had just been a distraction. The real fight had been over unionising the navvies working on the Birmingham railway. Gore’s railway. Gore, who had overseen a bloody campaign of retribution and punishment while simultaneously presenting himself to Pyke as a fair-minded, kindly soul. A champion of English liberty and a defender of the right to free speech. It was all a sham. And Pyke had believed him. It was this which galled him the most.