The Revenge of Captain Paine (53 page)

That precipitated a sharp intake of breath. ‘You won’t hurt him, will you?’

‘Try to be strong and resolute, but don’t let Conroy know that you know anything. His own belief in your ignorance will be your strength. You mightn’t have the power at the moment to deal with him or your mother but when you become queen, that’s the time to take action. Until then, just remember this: keep your friends close but your enemies closer.’

‘Do you have to go?’ she asked, with a pout.

‘I do have a question I’d like to put to you, if you don’t mind.’

‘Oh?’

‘Might it be possible for someone with, let’s say, the right connections to steal your royal seal and thereby pass off a letter they’d written as one of yours?’

The young princess sat up in her bed, intrigued now. ‘I always keep my seal close at hand but I suppose it’s always possible that someone could steal it. Why do you ask?’

Pyke removed the ransom note he’d received apparently from the duke. He hadn’t wanted to involve the princess in the unsavoury business of the abduction but it suddenly struck him that she might recognise the handwriting.

Victoria took the note and, to help her read it, Pyke took out a box of matches and struck one against the wooden floor. It flared into light and he held it up to the note as the princess studied it.

‘Well?’

The match had died, once again returning the room to near-darkness.

‘Your wife and child are being held for a ransom?’ The horror in her voice was unmistakable.

‘Do you know whether the handwriting is Conroy’s?’

‘No, it’s not his.’

Pyke exhaled, not sure whether he was relieved or disappointed.

‘But I think I might recognise it.’ The princess was frowning. ‘I can’t think how or where from, though.’

‘His private secretary, perhaps?’

‘No, that wouldn’t be it. His writing is much harder to read.’

‘Please. It’s very important . . .’

‘I can see that, sir. I just can’t recall ...’ She closed her eyes and tried to will an answer from her mind.

Pyke wondered whether a sudden, hard slap to her face might jog her memory, but she would probably scream. He checked his watch. The sun would be rising soon and he needed to wake Milly and Kate and get them all to the mail coach before it left for the capital at six.

‘But you think it might be someone in Conroy’s employ?’

‘Possibly.’ The princess looked up at him sorrowfully. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been of more help.’

Pyke assured her that she had been a great help and prepared himself to depart. As he did so, the princess said, ‘But you really think Conroy might have been the one who’s kidnapped your wife and child?’ She almost seemed to shudder at the possibility.

‘I don’t know. It’s possible.’

‘And this letter that’s referred to in the ransom note? If you don’t mind me asking, what is it?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ Pyke said, bluntly.

‘Of course you can tell me.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Pyke bowed his head. ‘But did you notice the seal at the bottom of the note?’ Lighting a second match, he let her have another look at it.

She studied it carefully, her frown deepening. ‘That would seem to be my uncle’s seal.’

‘Would it be possible for someone else to have sent the letter?’

‘You mean, for someone to have stolen my uncle’s seal?’

Pyke nodded.

The princess thought about it for a few moments and shrugged. ‘One tends to keep one’s seal well guarded for obvious reasons. But it wouldn’t be impossible for a servant, let’s say, to purloin it.’ She sat up further in the bed. ‘You suspect Conroy, don’t you?’

‘I suspect everyone until they prove themselves innocent. ’

‘Even me?’

Laughing, Pyke turned towards the door.

But the princess called him back. ‘You’ve made a powerful impression on me, Mr Pyke. I feel much better knowing what I now know, and I’m very grateful for the news you brought me. I’m also appalled by the prospect that Conroy might have had something to do with the letter you showed me and I’m desperately sorry for your predicament.’ She looked across at him, a pained expression on her face.

‘But?’

‘But whether I like it or not, Conroy is an integral part of this household and any misdeed that he may or may not have committed will necessarily tarnish the reputation of Kensington itself. That would have very serious repercussions. What I’m labouring to say is that while I despise Conroy perhaps more than any person alive, if something were to happen to him, if some terrible calamity were to befall him, I might decide you’re not as well meaning as I think you are. Is that understood?’

Their eyes met. Pyke smiled to himself. His initial impression had been wrong. Felix would have to do a lot of growing up before he was anything like this formidable person.

Then making an exaggerated bow, Pyke knelt down in front of her and bowed his head. ‘Your majesty.’ That made her squeal with delight and once again she was a sixteen-year-old girl.

 
Pyke travelled back to London with Kate and Milly Sutton and put them up in a hotel in Leicester Square until the matter with Conroy was resolved. From there, he took a hackney cab back to his Islington town house, where he rested for a while, washed and changed his clothes. It was almost midnight by the time he met Townsend in the taproom of the Old Red Lion. The three-mile walk from Islington had woken him up but Pyke felt anything but relaxed. He looked around the crowded room at the costermongers dressed in long shooting jackets and the petty thieves in their dirty smock-frocks. The tiled floor was damp with butcher’s sawdust and the air was laced with the scent of sweat, cheap tobacco and gin.

‘I could only round up eleven men at such short notice,’ Townsend explained, ‘but the rifles weren’t a problem. I managed to lay my hands on half a dozen Baker’s rifles, with enough ammunition to start a small war.’

‘Just eleven?’ It wouldn’t be enough. But to properly seal off the whole field, he would have needed a hundred men.

‘You’re not going to be happy with the ones you’ve got, either.’

‘Why?’

‘Follow me.’

Townsend was right. They were a motley bunch, a ragbag mixture of ex-soldiers, retired Bow Street Runners and petty criminals. More worryingly, from his point of view, they were halfway to being drunk. Pyke could see it in their glassy, bloodshot stares and smell it on their breath. Having cleared it first with the landlord, he ordered them outside into the yard at the back of the building. It was a cold night and the men quickly started to grumble.

‘Do you want the ten pounds I’m offering to pay you?’

They looked at one another, perplexed, and then at him. A few of them mumbled their assent.

‘Then strip.’

Their bewildered looks hardened into recalcitrant stares; a few of them shook their heads.

The landlord appeared carrying two metal pails full of water and behind him were two potboys, each with a single pail. They left the pails in the yard and disappeared back into the building.

‘I said strip.’

Some of the men realised he was being serious and grudgingly started to remove their boots and socks. A few stood there, their arms folded, not moving, and one man in particular, a brutish fellow with a prison-cropped head and a scar running down one side of his face, muttered, ‘I ain’t taking my clothes off for no one.’ The others stopped what they were doing to see how Pyke would respond.

‘Then you can leave now.’ Pyke met his stare. ‘You’re no longer wanted.’

Arms still folded, he sniffed and looked around him. Perhaps he felt safe among his fellow mercenaries. ‘I gave up another job to be here. I still expect to be paid.’ He had a knife in his belt, Pyke noted, wondering how quickly he would be able to retrieve it.

‘Strip or leave.’

The man’s calloused fingers brushed against the handle of the knife. He took another step forward. ‘I ain’t going nowhere till I’ve been paid.’

Murmurs of approval buoyed the man, who doubtless believed the tide of opinion was turning in his favour.

‘The rest of you, strip.’

Some continued to do as they had been told but others seemed to take heart from the man’s refusal and stopped removing their clothing.

‘This is your final warning: strip now or leave.’ Pyke kept his voice hard and firm.

‘No.’

In one fluent action, Pyke removed his pistol and shot the man in the middle of his chest, watching, without sentiment, as he fell to the ground, clutching his wound.

‘Anyone else?’ Pyke wiped saliva from his mouth with the sleeve of his coat and glanced across at Townsend, whose expression was unreadable.

The remaining ten had removed their clothes by the time Pyke had counted to thirty. Taking one bucket at a time, he threw the icy water over their naked, shivering bodies. ‘I need you all sober. Is that understood?’ Water dripping from their whiskers, they nodded their assent, hardly daring to look down at the pool of blood spreading out beneath the dead man. ‘Now dry off, put your clothes back on and meet me at the coffee house across the street. I’ll buy everyone dinner and explain why I’ve gathered you together and what I want you to do.’

After they had rubbed themselves down and started to put on their clothes, Pyke checked his fob-watch. It was almost one o’clock, which meant he had less than five hours to turn them into a viable force.

As they shuffled out of the yard, he turned to Townsend, who was doubled up next to the wall, coughing up phlegm and blood.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Am I all right?’ Townsend laughed bitterly and pulled down his shirt. There was a large, black tumour bulging out of his neck.

Pyke had to look away. ‘My God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know . . .’

‘That’s because you never asked.’ Townsend pulled down his collar to cover the growth. ‘I went to see a physician last week. He told me there was nothing he could do. He also reckoned I’d be dead by the end of the year.’

‘You didn’t say anything . . .’

‘And you didn’t notice how thin I am, how pale I look?’

Pyke stared down at his boots, not knowing what else to say.

Townsend kicked the dead body in front of him and looked up at Pyke. ‘I’ve never been able to work you out. You despise poor folk almost as much as rich ones. You seem to think you can take on the world on your own terms and do it without help from anyone else.’

‘I need
your
help.’

‘But deep down, you despise me, too. Because I remind you of who you were and where you came from.’

Pyke stared at him, momentarily lost for words. ‘Where’s all this come from?’ he managed finally.

‘I’m no longer frightened of you, Pyke.’ Townsend rubbed the lump on his neck. ‘I’m not afraid of anything any more.’

‘Even dying?’

That drew a jaundiced laugh. ‘Right now dying is the best thing that could happen to me.’ Whatever had brought on this outburst soon dissipated and he added, in an almost pleasant tone, ‘I talked to Bentley at the jeweller’s shop yesterday. He thinks you might’ve got a bite.’

‘A diamond-encrusted solid gold pocket watch, more than a hundred years old, with a
champlevé
face?’

‘The seller’s bringing it to him next week. Tuesday or Wednesday.’

‘Find out which one it is. And get an exact time,’ Pyke said. ‘I want to be there to meet him.’

THIRTY

The field at Smithfield, almost five acres in size, was deserted as Pyke surveyed it from his vantage point on the roof of a tenement building. It was four in the morning and the first glimpses of dawn wouldn’t come for at least another hour, perhaps two now that winter was upon them. On Mondays and Fridays, when the main livestock market took place, the field would, by now, have started to fill with sheep and cattle herded from their grazing pastures by drove-boys and their dogs, but because it was Sunday, the whole place was still eerily quiet, and briefly Pyke wondered whether Cumberland or indeed Conroy had wanted it to be this way. From a tactical point of view, there were many, many things about the location which concerned Pyke. For a start, its sheer size meant that it was all but impossible to seal it off and police its dark corners, just as it was hard to determine which street or alley the kidnapper or kidnappers would approach the field from and use to try to escape. A force of a hundred might have been adequate for this task, not ten sullen, ill-disciplined mercenaries. A man could instantly lose himself in the warren of alleys and courts surrounding Smithfield. And there was little chance of successfully pursuing someone on foot through its narrow windy lanes.

Alone up on the roof, Pyke thought about Emily and Felix and sought, in vain, to convince himself that he’d made every effort to ensure their safety. Earlier he had taken some laudanum to settle his stomach but the drug had had little noticeable impact. It still felt as if he was swallowing shards of glass. Climbing back into the garret at the top of the building, he tried to ignore the stink of ripe animal flesh that filled the room - the cellar had once been used as a slaughterhouse - and checked his fob-watch. The hands had hardly moved since he had last looked. Back at the window, Pyke saw what looked like an old man scavenging for scraps in the middle of the field, but within a few moments two of his men had appeared from the shadows, rifles slung over their shoulders, and dragged him from the field.

Afterwards, everything went quiet again. There was nothing left for him to do but wait.

 
An hour later, he left the building by the front door and stepped out into the field, staring up at the dark, starless sky. There were no sounds at all, not even the barking of a dog or the crowing of an early-rising cockerel. Soon the first glimpses of light would be visible to the east and then it would all happen, Pyke thought, trying to keep his nerves under control. The ransom demand had simply said ‘
Sunday. Smithfield at dawn
’. It was freezing, and Pyke pulled his greatcoat around him and dug his hands into his pockets. Sleet had started to fall and Pyke moved around quickly to keep warm, having a final word with each of the men before returning to his original position in the middle of the field. Though it was surrounded on all sides by buildings, no candles were burning in any of the windows and even the old hospital, on the north side of the field, looked to be deserted. On another day, Pyke might have appreciated the stark beauty and solitude of the scene, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Were Emily and Felix close at hand? And who would actually oversee the planned exchange, the letters in return for Emily and Felix? A dog barked and he jumped, startled by the sudden noise. He checked to see that both pistols were in his belt and ready to fire. A cockerel began to crow and Pyke surveyed the field, gulping down cold air. It was almost time.