The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [119]
‘There was a time when rich folk liked to frighten poor folk with the idea that Boney and the French were coming and used fear to steal all the land.’ The old man grabbed Pyke’s sleeve. ‘Tell me that time’s gone, mister.’
Outside, a wagon passed by and Pyke heard the flattened chink of milk cans.
Without missing a beat, the old man fixed his stare on Pyke. ‘You’ll make him pay, won’t you?’
Pyke removed his sleeve from the old man’s surprisingly firm grip. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said, eventually.
The old man nodded sadly, as though he understood what Pyke was telling him. ‘You don’t, I’ll kill ’im myself.’
Later that night, Pyke and Townsend visited ten farms on Edmonton’s estate. Carrying burning torches with them on horseback, they rode along narrow tracks using the moonlight to guide them, and set light to rickyards, barns and outhouses brimming with recently harvested crops. As they did so, Pyke thought about the old man’s determination to see that Edmonton was properly punished. Part of him wanted to believe that destroying property on land owned by Edmonton constituted some kind of payback for the grievances suffered by the old man, but he knew that his affinity with such people had long since passed and that his actions, then as now, were motivated by less selfless inclinations.
Still, the damage looked impressive and briefly Pyke wondered whether the old man might hear of, or even witness, the fires and think that his plea for action had somehow been answered. For if anyone had thought to position themselves at the epicentre of the paths they had taken between the various farms, they would have witnessed a night sky that shone so fiercely under the orange glare of burning hay that they might have believed themselves transported to Hell.
The following night Pyke made arrangements to sleep in a draughty old church in Saffron Hill. Godfrey knew the rector and, without indicating who Pyke was or what he had done, had persuaded him to allow Pyke to make a bed out of one of the pews. In the light of the attention that was still being paid to him in the newspapers and the extent of the reward being offered for information leading to his arrest, it was now far too dangerous for him to return to the Old Cock tavern.
When Godfrey arrived, a little after ten o’clock, carrying blankets and a bottle of gin, he was out of breath and sweating. After assuring Pyke that he had not been followed, Godfrey recounted that there had been alleged sightings of Pyke right across the city from the Ratcliffe highway in the east to Battersea Fields in the west. He explained that a man who apparently resembled Pyke had been lynched outside the Plough inn, around the corner from his own gin palace. Godfrey told him the gin palace had been further ransacked by fortune hunters who had heard a rumour that Pyke may have been hiding there.
‘Did you bring my laudanum?’ Pyke asked, while digesting these developments.
Reluctantly, Godfrey produced the small bottle from his coat pocket.
‘Are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into?’ His uncle’s expression suggested both concern and discomfort. ‘You do know the farmers lost everything. Barns, equipment, the entire harvest. I fancy this was the point. I mean, they won’t be able to pay Edmonton what they owe him in rent.’
‘Is that my problem?’ Pyke stood up and walked to the end of the pew.
‘What of the ordinary men and women who’ll go hungry this winter because there isn’t enough food to go around?’
It was dark inside the church, but not so dark that Pyke could not see the expression on Godfrey’s face.
‘People are starving right now because Edmonton is squeezing every last penny from them.’ Pyke dug his hands into his pockets to keep them warm.
‘And he’ll continue to squeeze and eventually someone will bite back and then he’ll squeeze even harder, and more and more people will be hurt in the process.’ Godfrey seemed puzzled. ‘Is that what you want?’