The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [80]
‘Maybe I should go to the bank right now and have it out with your friend,’ Pyke said, still sizing her up.
‘And what would ye want to go and do a thing like that for? Getting poor hard-working folk into trouble,’ she said, finally putting the watch back on the dresser. ‘Now, back to what I was sayin’. Your money’s not in the room which means you’re carrying it around with ye.’ She smiled, disarmingly. ‘Am I right?’
‘If you were, would I tell you?’
‘Walkin’ the streets with a whole pile of money? Tell me one gentl’man who’d be stupid enough to do that.’ She laughed at her own joke. ‘Then again, tell me one gentl’man who’d willingly stay in a dump like this.’ Then she was offering him her hand. ‘Name’s Megan, nice to make your acquaintance.’
Pyke took it, surprised at the firmness of her shake, and said, ‘Francis Hawkes.’
‘So what brings ye to our fair town, Mr Hawkes? And don’t be tellin’ me you’re here to see the marchin’.’
‘I take it you don’t approve,’ he said, pointing at the red ribbon she wore on her cuff.
‘Ye mean this?’ She motioned at the ribbon and laughed.
‘What’s so amusing?’
‘You heard of this fella Pastorini?’ Pyke shook his head. Megan went on, ‘Ribbonmen reckoned your man’s prophesies said the Protestant faith would be destroyed under orders of the Lord Almighty on the twenty-first of November 1825.’
‘What happened?’
‘It rained.’
Pyke smiled. ‘Is that why you wear the ribbon?’
Megan shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m hopin’ he just messed up the date.’
‘Meanwhile it’s still raining,’ he said, brushing water from his coat.
‘So you’re not here for the marchin’,’ she said, cocking her head flirtatiously to one side.
Instinctively he decided to jettison part of his cover. ‘To everyone else, I’m the eldest son of Robert Hawkes, owner of the Hawkes cotton mill in Lancashire.’
She seemed amused by this. ‘And to me?’
‘I’m just someone looking for a way to meet John Arnold.’
‘Why didn’t ye say that sooner?’ she said, shaking her head mischievously.
This time, Pyke scrutinised her face carefully for signs of lying. ‘You know him?’
‘Of him.’ She shrugged, as though it wasn’t important. ‘I worked for a while in the big house in Ballynafeigh, the family’s grand new residence. I never cared for the place myself, ugly-looking building, pretendin’ to be something it ain’t. All its pretensions, mind, it didn’t have running water, so it were my job to fetch and carry water from a well. It’s how I came to get these manly-looking arms.’ She flexed her muscles, only half joking, for him to see.
‘Tell me about Arnold,’ Pyke said, becoming impatient.
‘What’s to tell?’
‘Well, for a start, what do you know about him?’
Megan held his gaze for a while. ‘Well, there are these meetings in front of the Custom House. Every Sunday, after church, folk head there, like they’re the best thing to happen in the whole week. Not the likes of me, you’ll understand, but other folk. Protestant folk. Gather there dressed in their Sunday best and watch with gleaming eyes as men less respectable than Cooke scalp and burn effigies of the Pope. Arnold, in particular, likes to put on a performance.’
‘A rabble-rouser and a businessman.’ Pyke waited for a moment. ‘As the latter, he seems canny enough.’
Megan looked away. ‘Aye, he’s a canny one, that’s for sure.’
‘Not to be underestimated?’
‘What’s your real business with him, Mr Hawkes?’ This time her expression seemed graver.
‘He’s invited me to a card game tomorrow night.’
Megan nodded, as though she was aware of such an event. ‘Aye, at the Royal.’ She looked him up and down. ‘Ye turn up lookin’ like that, they’ll eat you alive.’
Pyke assimilated this new information without giving anything away.
‘Arnold is a fella who started out life with next to nothing. He likes to surround himself with tough labourin’ types, to remind everyone else where he’s come from, he’s no pushover. He likes to hurt folk, too, or likes to watch as other folk do the hurtin’. There are those in the Royal who might take against a well-dressed Englishman.’ Megan shrugged. ‘Unless