The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [124]
In the other direction, the two figures, a prostitute and her pimp perhaps, were now strolling towards them with purpose.
‘You can’t marry this man,’ Pyke said bluntly.
Emily adjusted her bonnet. ‘Tell me where you’re staying and we can talk about this later. I’ll find an excuse to get out of Hambledon.’
Pyke told her about the church. ‘What about everything you said to me the other night about not wanting to marry at all ?’
‘I know.’ Her expression was pained. ‘It’s just not that straightforward.’
The prostitute and the pimp were only ten or fifteen yards away when the two police constables stopped at the end of the alley and looked towards them. Instinctively, Pyke pulled Emily towards him and pressed his lips against hers. It was an awkward kiss. The two police constables called out, either to them or to the pimp and the prostitute, and proceeded to walk briskly down the alleyway towards them. Pyke pulled Emily into an even closer embrace. Beyond them, the couple ran back down the alley in the opposite direction. The police constables passed them without comment.
Long after Emily had gathered up her skirt and hurried to her waiting carriage, Pyke could taste both the lingering sweetness of her kiss and her fear and reticence.
Later that afternoon, Pyke met Townsend in a country inn on the outskirts of Enfield. It was a bare room with whitewashed walls and sanded floors. Farm labourers dressed in smock-frocks sat around a large wooden table exchanging stories. A lurcher lay in front of the open fire. When they first entered the inn, conversations paused and heads turned towards them, but they were soon ignored. A pot boy brought them porter in pewter tankards from the adjoining taproom. Pyke asked about Goddard’s wife and how she had reacted to news of his death.
Townsend muttered that it had been terrible, having to inform her, but did not elaborate on this. As they drank, Pyke found himself wondering how much he could trust Townsend and whether he might be tempted to claim the reward that was being offered for Pyke’s capture in order to avenge Goddard’s death.
Townsend told him that a private militia acting under Edmonton’s orders had ransacked and closed down three village inns used regularly by the protesters. This had, in turn, provoked a series of counteractions. In one instance, a mob had attacked the village priest and dragged him through a duck pond. In another, a group of workers had used sledgehammers to destroy a threshing machine on a farm near Waltham Abbey. In the meantime, Canning and Saville had produced a clutch of handbills advertising a protest meeting and distributed them in the affected villages. The meeting was due to take place that evening on the land of a farmer who had long resented Edmonton’s exorbitant rents.
‘What about any news of this man Jimmy Swift?’ Pyke asked.
‘I’m afraid there’s nothing at all. No one seems to have heard of him or know anything about him.’
‘In spite of the reward?’ Pyke was incredulous. It was almost impossible for someone to disappear without trace.
‘There are people who claim they know where he is, of course, because of the reward, but as yet no one’s actually managed to identify him.’
Townsend gave him one of the handbills. It announced the date, time and place of the meeting and listed a series of grievances and unspectacular demands. At the bottom of the handbill was a quote: ‘The laws passed within the last fifty years present an unbroken and unparalleled series of endeavours to enrich and increase the power of the aristocracy and to impoverish the labouring people.’
If nothing else, such a quote would get under Edmonton’s skin.
‘And Edmonton’s likely to hear about this?’
‘Almost certainly,’ Townsend said, warily. ‘Given the number of handbills we’ve distributed.’
‘Edmonton won’t let an opportunity like this pass.’
‘It doesn’t seem likely,’ Townsend said, staring down into his tankard.
Pyke waited for a moment. ‘If you have a problem with what I’m doing, then say so.’
‘A lot