Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

‘Whoever killed him believed that Jackman was Captain Paine.’ Pyke stood up and waited for Hancock to do likewise. When Hancock offered no response, he added, ‘Who found him?’

‘A couple of the navvies came to our safe house earlier today and told us about it.’

Pyke nodded. ‘I’m guessing this was left here during the day.’

‘For everyone to look at,’ Hancock, said trying to hold back his tears. ‘Apparently one of the navvies demanded that someone take it down and he was beaten by the ganger with a truncheon.’

Hundreds of navvies would have seen it. Gore would have wanted it that way. This was meant to be a warning, after all.

‘What were you trying to do here?’

‘Who, me?’

‘The Wat Tyler Brigade.’

Hancock stared down at his boots. ‘Next week, Jackman was going to tell the world that more ’n three-quarters of the navvies working on the Birmingham railway had sworn their oaths and they were going to call a strike demanding more money and better working conditions. Once that news had broken, Jackman was going to announce that the navvies working on the Great Western, the Grand Northern and the Brighton and Greenwich lines had joined the strike as well: one big union joining the navvy men together up and down the whole country.’

‘And that’s what you’ve all been working to do, these past few months? Gather signatures and give the navvies reassurance, moral support…’ Pyke already knew that Jackman and his crew had been agitating among the navvies but, even so, he was taken aback by the scale of their plans: what they had been able to do and how close they had come to achieving their ambitions.

‘And money,’ Hancock said, quickly, looking down at the mud, perhaps realising he’d said too much.

‘That’s where my wife, Emily, came in, I presume.’ He paused, and added, ‘With her money.’

Hancock shuffled awkwardly from leg to leg. ‘It’s been an expensive business, sir, travelling the length of the country. We also promised the navvy men money to keep ’em in food and ale while they striked.’

‘Lucky for you my wife has deep pockets.’

But Hancock shook his head, apparently angered by this insinuation. ‘No, sir, that weren’t it at all. Not at all.’

‘Then how was it?’

‘We weren’t taking money from her pocket like you just said. She wanted to give it, sir.’

Pyke shook his head, irritated. He didn’t want to be having this conversation with a stranger.

‘You still don’t understand, sir. All of this was her idea. All of it. She weren’t just a little rich girl giving us her money.’ There were tears in his eyes now.

Pyke’s legs buckled. The shock was palpable. But Hancock hadn’t finished, not by a long chalk. He dug his hands into his pockets and said, in the same frightened tone, ‘You see, she’s Captain Paine, sir. She has been from the very beginning. Not Jackman or no one else. It’s always been Mrs Emily.’ Hancock had finished his speech but he couldn’t bring himself to look at Pyke.

For a few moments Pyke wandered around in the shadow of the crucifix in a daze, the news he had been given too overwhelming to take in. Emily was Captain Paine. Still the idea refused to sink in. Was it possible? He took a few gulps of cold air and tried to focus his mind.

‘The arson attack on the Granby Street terraces?’ Pyke racked his brains for other snippets of information.

Hancock nodded. ‘That was Mrs Emily. Some of us helped clear out the houses, though.’

‘And the fire at the warehouse near Birmingham?’

‘That was us, too.’

‘Emily picked up a bruise,’ Pyke started, still too dazed to think clearly.

‘We were ambushed by a couple of watchmen and had to fight our way out of the warehouse.’

Not knowing whether to feel angry or proud, Pyke looked at the half-naked figure of Jackman, hanging from the crucifix. No, he felt stupid. That was it. He felt stupid and betrayed. How could he not have noticed? And how could she not have told him? Didn’t she trust him enough? But as the sheer shock of Hancock’s hammer blows started to wear off, Pyke found himself thinking about other, even less palatable possibilities. If Jackman had been nailed to two planks of wood for his part in this business, what might lie in store for Emily, especially since, if Hancock was to be believed, she had orchestrated the whole thing? That possibility made him feel sick, and he tried to reassure himself, perversely, with the thought that Cumberland had arranged her kidnapping and she would be safe in his protection for as long as he believed that Pyke had Conroy’s letters. The fact that the duke had snatched her, rather than someone else, might be what kept her alive, he thought, savouring the irony. His pregnant wife. And Felix. He couldn’t forget about his frail little son.

‘So what will happen now?’ Pyke asked, staring up at Jackman’s hollow, bloated face.

Hancock looked at him and shrugged. ‘I’d like it if you could help me take this thing down and bury Jackman’s body.’

‘I meant with the plans to get the navvies to swear their oaths and call a strike?’

‘Word of this will have spread as far as Birmingham by first thing in the morning. Do you really think anyone will want to strike now?’

Pyke put his hands around the foot of the crucifix to see how deeply the stake had been driven into the ground. ‘In which case Jackman will have lost his life for nothing.’

‘Not for nothing, sir. He died a hero, a martyr, and by the time we’re finished, folk up and down the coun’ry will know his name and his sacrifice.’

‘And Emily?’ Pyke’s mouth was still dry and his head dizzy. ‘You have any news about her?’

Hancock stopped trying to loosen the crucifix and looked over at Pyke. ‘She told us she was giving it all up for you and your son. Because it’s what you wanted.’ His tone was cold and accusatory. ‘These last few weeks had taken it out of her. She said that once the strike was announced, she was going to withdraw from her role: spend more time with you.’

‘That might have been her intention, but she was abducted five days ago, together with our son.’

Later, after they had taken Jackman down from the cross and buried him, using a pick and spade Hancock had brought with him, Pyke followed the radical back up the side of the ravine, but one question, more than any other, dominated his thoughts.

Did Gore know that Emily was Captain Paine?

It was a ten-minute walk from the top of the Hampstead Road to Godfrey’s apartment in Camden Town, and once there Pyke proceeded to tell his uncle everything he had found out.

When he had finished, Godfrey poured them both a glass of claret and asked him how or whether this new revelation affected the search for Emily and Felix. Pyke told him about the ransom demand he’d received from the Duke of Cumberland and said that the safest place for Emily and Felix right now was in the duke’s care.

‘But Gore now knows that she’s been abducted,’ Godfrey said. ‘Perhaps he’ll be looking for her, too.’

Pyke conceded the point and again kicked himself for having taken Gore into his confidence.

‘I heard back from this fellow I’d asked to look into Bellows’s recent activities in the property market.’

‘And?’

‘It seems the chief magistrate started to buy up derelict buildings along the New Road at the beginning of last year. He now owns ten or so properties, all within spitting distance of Euston Square.’ There was a spark in Godfrey’s eye. He’d already reached the same conclusion as Pyke.

‘The terminus of the Birmingham railway.’

‘Exactly, dear boy. But if you remember, at the time, the plan was for the railway to terminate just around the corner from here, not down the hill in Euston. The buildings nearest to the proposed station were snapped up by developers. The plan was to turn them into a railway hotel and boarding houses.’