The Revenge of Captain Paine (8 page)

 
‘That was bloody marvellous,’ Godfrey said, before drinking his third straight gin in a row. ‘But why didn’t someone arrest us as Bellows was demanding?’

Pyke took a sip of beer. ‘Bellows can rant and rave but men like Pierce have long memories.’

The glint in Godfrey’s eyes indicated he understood. ‘A warrant will be issued for our arrest, though.’

‘Perhaps,’ Pyke said. ‘But my guess is that, when he’s calmed down, Bellows will realise he’s lost this one. He’ll absent himself from the case, citing personal reasons. It’ll go to another court and the same process will start all over again. We caught them out this time; next time they’ll be ready for us and if you can’t produce this witness, they’ll throw everything they’ve got at you.’

Godfrey nodded, suddenly downcast. ‘Kate Sutton was a kitchen hand who worked at Kensington Palace.’

‘Was?’

‘I made discreet enquiries about her at the palace. I was told she’d left her post for personal reasons but she didn’t leave a forwarding address.’

‘You don’t know where she’s gone?’

‘No.’>

Pyke sat forward and rested his elbows on the table. ‘Did she approach you or did you seek her out?’

‘The former, m’boy. She came to me, accompanied by a noxious, money-grabbing specimen called Johnny. I presumed they were copulating. They were both clear about the money they wanted. I’d say they were well suited to one another in that respect. We must have haggled for over an hour.’

‘And did you give them anything?’

His uncle clenched his jaw. ‘Fifty pounds.’ He must have seen Pyke’s face but he added, in a defensive tone, ‘It was a good story. Apparently she walked in on Conroy and the duchess. He was fucking her in the arse.’

Pyke couldn’t help but smile. ‘I didn’t read that in the piece I saw.’

Godfrey broke into a mischievous grin. ‘Even I have standards, dear boy.’

‘And you don’t have any idea where she might be now?’

Godfrey shook his head. ‘I paid a visit to her family’s home in Spitalfields. The father pestered me for money. The mother hardly said a word.’

‘But they didn’t know where their daughter was?’

His uncle shook his head and stared down at his empty glass. ‘I’m not very good at this kind of thing. Perhaps you could visit her family and ask them some questions? If they don’t know where she is, they might know of someone who does.’

Nodding, Pyke checked his watch again. ‘You could do something for me in return.’

‘Anything, dear boy.’ His uncle’s smile revealed his stained, mossy teeth. ‘Within reason, of course.’

‘I’d like you to come with me to a meeting of radicals in the east end. Emily has been involved in setting it up.’

‘If I must,’ Godfrey said, with a dismissive yawn. ‘I know I publish things for the poor to read, but actually spending time in their company is not my idea of an enjoyable evening.’

 
In Emily’s position, it would have been easy to romanticise the working poor and turn them into exotic creatures waiting to be pitied and helped. In fact her view was much more complex, forged by a mixture of guilt, moral zeal and sympathy. Some middle-class charities sought to distance themselves from the people they were trying to help, finding the poor to be obnoxious, dirty, violent and blasphemous in a way they hadn’t expected or counted upon. Emily suffered no such illusions. A year earlier, while organising an event at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in aid of the Spitalfield weavers, she’d travelled to the East End, where her carriage had been attacked. Two rampsmen robbed her of her rings and forced her to strip naked. No one had come to her rescue, doubtless enjoying the sight of a wealthy woman receiving her comeuppance at the hands of two ruffians. Later, after Pyke had tracked down the two rampsmen and retrieved the rings they’d stolen from her, he had asked whether the incident had shaken her commitment to her work. She had given him a puzzled look, as though the question were an irrelevant one, and told him she didn’t blame the men for what they had done.

That was the thing about Emily.

Just when Pyke thought he had her figured out, she’d act in a way that made him alter his opinion of her. She wasn’t a social chameleon, like Marguerite, a flibbertigibbet who changed her skin to suit her own desires. Rather, Emily was led by her convictions, and these changed according to circumstances over which she had no control. Two years earlier she had split from Elizabeth Fry’s society of women, middle-class do-gooders and busybodies concerned primarily with temperance and for whom prison visits constituted the limits of their horizons. As a free agent, she’d used her financial independence to fund individuals agitating for workplace reform and to promote communitarian ideas borrowed from Robert Owen, the socialist. Recently she had turned her attention to the burgeoning trade union movement and had helped to organise and broker a meeting to find common ground between moderates and radicals who were agitating for wider disruption.

Pyke had expected that Emily’s commitment to her work would have waned after the birth of their son but, strangely, it had intensified. In fact, he often felt that her zeal for her work had increased in direct proportion to his success as a banker: the more money he drew from the bank, the less she seemed to need or even ask for. He sometimes wondered whether her apparent selflessness - wilfully ignoring her own needs - was in fact another form of selfishness, a way of validating her own difference. He’d put this to her once and received a scornful reply.

The meeting was held in an upstairs room of the Standard of Liberty at one end of Brick Lane. As a Bow Street Runner, Pyke had once pursued a child rapist to the building across the street from the Standard. The man had made for the cellar, maybe hoping Pyke wouldn’t follow him, but had lost his footing on the stairs and had fallen into a cess pool. Pyke could still remember the scene: the rapist floundering in the dark, viscous liquid, his arms and head covered in thick soil. Pyke had neither come to his rescue nor precipitated his death. At the time he hadn’t known whether he had done the right thing, whether he’d robbed the mother of the injured child of the justice she and her child deserved, but when he had told her what had happened, she had thanked him and broken down in tears. The neighbourhood had not significantly changed in the intervening years: on the same side of the road as the Standard of Liberty, he counted a tavern, two ginneries, a brothel, a couple of pawnshops and a lodging house where donkeys and sheep roamed freely in and out of the door.

The meeting had already begun by the time they arrived, and having persuaded two men on the door that they weren’t police spies, Pyke and his uncle took their seats at the back of the cramped room, just as the gathered men were applauding heartily. He saw Emily on the stage: she had clearly just addressed the meeting and had spoken well, for there was a jovial, enthusiastic atmosphere in the room. Some of the mob whistled their appreciation, at which Emily gave a mock curtsy. This drew further laughter. Pyke looked at his uncle and shrugged. He had no idea that Emily actually spoke at these meetings, and now that he had missed her speech he kicked himself for arriving late and wondered what she had said to the men. They seemed to have treated whatever it was with a degree of seriousness, or at least hadn’t barracked her with a deluge of sexual innuendos. Emily bowed again and climbed down from the stage. Her place was taken by a white-haired speaker who didn’t engage the audience in the same manner that Emily seemed to have done.

‘That’s James Munroe,’ Godfrey whispered. ‘He’s a moderate voice together with chaps like Lovett and Cleave. They’re part of the national trade union movement. On the whole, they’re a respectable but tiresome bunch; the type that wash their faces, clean their teeth and fuck their wives in the dark.’

Pyke had once seen the renowned radical ‘Orator’ Hunt, who had died earlier in the year, whip up a crowd of working men into a frenzy with his plain-speaking approach. By comparison, Munroe’s speech carried all the charge of a gobbet of rotting meat.

‘We all know Peel and the Tories hate us but the present Liberal government has done nothing for us, will do nothing for us in the future and never wanted to do anything for us in the first place.’ Pausing to receive the polite applause of the men packed into the room, Munroe nodded his head, seemingly pleased with his lacklustre performance.

Pyke felt like asking him whether anyone in the room believed that a government elected only by propertied voters would
ever
act in the interests of the working man.

‘What we need, friends, is a wage that reflects the work we do. Today, more than ever, workmen do not receive a price for their labour that allows them to provide for their families. The devil-capitalist who has risen from our ranks and who lusts after money has become our enemy; he sits in his mansion revelling in his abundance while hard-working men are ground into the earth. These grubby money-mongers prey on our labour, require it to fill their pockets, exploit it and encourage others to exploit it, turn greed into a virtue, and in so doing make us not into slaves but machines, brethren of the very tools we use to do our work.’

This time the applause was more muted. Munroe seemed puzzled, unable to work out why he was not receiving more wholehearted support from the rambunctious mob.

From his vantage point at the back of the room, Pyke studied the gathered crowd, mostly shoemakers and tailors, he supposed, with a handful of labourers. The latter wore grubby shooting jackets and torn velveteen coats while the former were dressed in either smockfrocks or monkey jackets. He saw Emily right at the front of the room, having an animated talk with a young man sitting next to her. They looked to be sharing some kind of joke.

‘Do you see Emily there? Who’s she talking to?’

Godfrey put on his spectacles. ‘
Ah
, that’s a chap called Julian Jackman.’

‘Why do you say it like that?’

Up on the platform Munroe was trying to explain the merits of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union.

‘His mob is a different kettle of fish altogether. They might be a ragbag mixture of types but at least they’ve got some balls. They talk a good game but they’re interested in the ordinary man, too.’ Godfrey hesitated, his expression clouding over. ‘In the current climate, I’d say that
any
association with Jackman and his lot is not going to be conducive to Emily’s good health, though.’

Pyke felt the skin tighten across his cheek. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ At that moment, his view of Emily and Jackman was obscured by someone sitting a few rows ahead of him.

‘As far as I’ve heard, there’s going to be a big clampdown on radical activity,’ Godfrey whispered, ‘and when it comes, the authorities won’t concern themselves with someone’s rank or station.’

‘And has this information come from someone inside the government?’ he asked, thinking about Peel’s interest in Jackman.

‘They’re willing to tolerate the unions up to a point. But what they do not want is every Tom, Dick and Harry joining these organisations. Look around you, Pyke. Folk are rightfully angry. Reform hasn’t changed a damned thing and they’re disillusioned. That’s why this figure Captain Paine has become something of a hero to them.’

‘What do you know about him?’

‘Who, Captain Paine?’

Pyke nodded.

‘No more than anyone else.’

On the platform Munroe was starting to build towards a conclusion but there were already rumblings of discontent from the floor.

‘Do you think he’s flesh and blood?’

‘You mean, do I think he’s one man rather than an amalgam of people using the same name?’

‘That’s part of it,’ Pyke whispered. ‘But I was also wondering whether you’d heard the rumour that Jackman is Captain Paine?’

‘Who did you hear that from?’ The way Godfrey said it showed he was prepared to entertain the possibility.

Pyke ignored the question.

‘Look, Pyke, whether Captain Paine is a fiction or not, he’s someone the poor can cheer for. They see someone who acts rather than postulates. That’s what makes him such a threat.’ Godfrey hesitated, perhaps deciding whether to say what was on his mind. ‘But there was something else . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘This chap Jackman is rumoured to be something of a ladies’ man. Apparently he’s hung like a donkey.’

Pyke turned to his uncle. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

Up on the platform Munroe was winding up his speech with an attack on vulgarity and drunkenness. ‘Let us put into practice our democratic principles,’ he shouted, his eyes fixed on something over their heads, ‘by seeking the company of sober-minded, virtuous individuals.’ Unsurprisingly, given that most of the people were drinking ale provided by the owner, this drew the first outward signs of dissent. Someone shouted, ‘Give the man a drink,’ and then added, ‘Sit down, you old windbag.’ This got the most raucous cheer of the evening. Then someone began chanting ‘Captain Paine’ and others followed, and soon everyone in the room had joined in, the chanting easily drowning out the end of Munroe’s speech.

Someone jostled them from behind and at first Pyke put it down to an expression of high spirits. He heard some further mutterings and then someone threw some beer over the back of Godfrey’s coat. Laughter ensued and it was only then Pyke realised they were being targeted because of their clothing: because someone had decided they didn’t belong in such a gathering on account of Godfrey’s blue double-breasted jacket and Pyke’s knee-length cutaway coat.

Emily had climbed back on to the platform, together with Julian Jackman. Emily waited for the room to quieten before she said, in a deep, confident voice that surprised Pyke, ‘And that’s why you shouldn’t allow us respectable, bourgeois types anywhere near these meetings.’

It was a direct rebuke to Munroe and it got the biggest cheer of the night.