The Revenge of Captain Paine (50 page)

Milly did as she was told and Pyke counted with her, ‘One, two, three ...’, her face reddening as she did so. ‘Six, seven, eight, nine,
ten
.’ Her eyes opened and she gasped for breath.

Before she’d had time to think, Pyke asked, ‘What did you see?’

‘Dog.’ The word tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop it. For a moment they looked at each other, trying to come to terms with what had just happened. Her voice had sounded like a tiny croak.

‘What kind of a dog, Milly?’

She looked away and pursed her lips.

‘A big dog, Milly? Was it a big dog with a light brown coat and a black face? The dog you drew in the picture?’ He had tried to conceal his excitement but hadn’t done a good enough job because she looked at him, startled, and then folded her arms.

‘Was there a dog in the room the night your parents were killed, Milly?’

When Milly didn’t answer him, Pyke grabbed her shoulder and jerked her towards him, harder than he perhaps should have, hard enough to make her gasp. But something inside him had snapped and he couldn’t stop himself from shaking her and demanding to know about the dog, until her sobs became screams and it wasn’t until Pyke put his arms around her, whispered that everything would be all right and stroked her matted hair, that her wails started to ebb.

‘It was a big brown dog with a black face and it saw me hiding under the table but even though it growled and sniffed, it didn’t give me away. The gemmen never even saw me.’ Milly spoke in halting sentences between the sobs.

He hugged her tiny, trembling body and whispered that everything would be all right.

‘I heard ’em shout, Ma and Pa, but there weren’t nuffin’ I could do. I tried to help but my legs and arms wouldn’t move. I sat under that table while it happened, listening to their screams, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even open my mouth ...’ She began to wail again, this time pausing only for breath. Pyke held her tightly and tried to mop her sweat-stained brow. ‘Let it out, let it all out,’ he whispered, as her wailing intensified. He heard footsteps outside the door.

Finally, when the sobs had started to subside, Pyke called out, ‘Royce, would you step into the room.’

Annoyed that Pyke had heard him, and knew it was him, the elderly butler shuffled into the nursery holding a lantern and muttered, ‘I heard the girl crying and wondered if I might be of assistance.’

‘That’s good of you, Royce. Actually there is something you could do.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Tell Jennings to prepare the carriage. I’ll need to be at the Swan with Two Necks tomorrow morning at six.’

‘At six, sir? In the
morning
?’ Royce frowned and shook his head. ‘Jennings will be asleep by now. I’m not sure it’s possible ...’

‘Then wake the lazy codger up and tell him to have the carriage waiting for me at half-past four or I’ll come and find him and pummel him to a pulp.’

For a moment Royce stared at him open mouthed, unable to hide his shock that he’d been spoken to in this manner, but then his training and a lifetime of subordination took over, the outrage in his eyes glazed over and his composure returned. ‘Very good, sir. Will there be anything else, sir?’

‘Yes, dress Milly here and make sure she’s ready to leave at four thirty on the dot.’ Pyke looked at the girl, who was clinging to him and sniffing. ‘We’re going to try and find your sister Kate. Do you remember Kate?’

‘Kate?’ Milly’s eyes widened and her expression seemed to lift. He had given her hope and he hated himself for it.

‘It’s a long journey, Milly, and you’ll need to be strong for it. If Royce here brings you some food, will you eat it?’

Even before Milly had nodded, Pyke called the butler back into the room and told him to bring her some supper. This time Royce didn’t offer any protest.

TWENTY-EIGHT

There were two coaches departing for Ramsgate the following morning, the faster mail coach at six o’clock and the other, run by a different company, half an hour later at six thirty. Pyke had hoped to secure two inside seats on the six o’clock coach but was told by a bored clerk that the mail coach was already full. Not content with this answer, Pyke went looking for the stand where the mail coach was due to depart from and saw only at the very last moment that Sir John Conroy was waiting to catch the same coach. Pulling Milly, who was staring in wonderment at the horses and giant painted carriages, behind a group of passengers waiting to board another coach, he stole another glance, to make sure his eyes hadn’t deceived him, and cursed. If, as seemed most likely, Conroy was returning to Ramsgate to rejoin the royal party, his task had suddenly become much more difficult. Pyke needed to talk with one of the princess’s ladies-in-waiting, Helen Milner-Gibson, the name he had been given by Freddie Sutton before his death, without threat of running into the comptroller. Above all, Pyke didn’t want Conroy to know he’d visited the south coast.

The six o’clock mail coach departed on time. Pyke watched it leave the yard, Sir John Conroy sitting next to the window reading a newspaper. But the half-six coach that they had been forced to take didn’t leave until nearer seven, after Pyke had taken the driver and young groom to one side and offered them an inducement of ten pounds if they managed to beat the mail-coach to Ramsgate.

‘Beat the mail coach?’ The driver had stared at Pyke, as though he were a madman. ‘They’ve got eight horses to our six and a faster carriage.’

‘But they’re carrying more passengers and more luggage,’ Pyke had said. ‘And if you get me to Ramsgate before the mail coach, I’ll give you fifty pounds, not ten.’

That swung it. The coach pulled out of the yard just a few minutes later, without a couple of the passengers who had been dawdling in the waiting area.

Not including the two of them, there were five passengers inside the coach sitting opposite each other and another four riding on the roof, together with the luggage. To his immense relief, no one seemed to want to talk inside the coach - it was too early and too cold - and very soon they had all settled into their thoughts, Milly staring in wonder out of the window, making the occasional remark, but on the whole too preoccupied to want to speak. They crossed the Thames using London Bridge and clattered along the Old Kent Road at an amble, there being too much traffic and too many people to go any quicker, but once they had passed through Deptford and climbed up the steep hill into Blackheath, the driver and groom chivvied the horses from a canter to a gallop, so that even those inside the carriage had to keep hold of their hats.

The journey as far as Rochester took a little over four hours and as their carriage pulled into the inn and was surrounded by a swarm of vendors, ostlers and pot-boys, the mail coach was just departing. The driver and groom hurried the feeding and watering of the horses and chivvied the passengers back into, and on top of, the coach and they were on their way within twenty minutes. Out on the open road, they quickly urged the horses into a gallop and very soon all that could be heard inside the carriage was the clattering of the wheels and the clanking of the brass-and-steel harness. About an hour into the journey one of the passengers, a middle-aged woman, professed to feeling unwell and asked the driver to stop for a while, but her request was turned down. Rather the carriage continued along the newly macadamised road at a very brisk pace, and by the time they reached the town of Sittingbourne, the mail coach hadn’t yet left the inn’s yard. While the grooms attended to the horses, Pyke took the opportunity to loosen one of the fastenings on the harness. At one point he had to duck under the window that Conroy was looking out of but he didn’t think the comptroller had seen him. This time they had to change horses, and when they finally pulled out of the yard, they were still half an hour behind the mail coach. Milly sat by the window, still rapt at the sight and sound of open fields, and from time to time she would ask questions about things that he knew nothing about: why cows slept standing up, what made the rain, the difference between wheat and barley. It was odd, to hear her talk with such confidence, and Pyke wondered what might happen to her if they couldn’t find Kate, her sister.

By the time they had pulled into Canterbury, a little after two o’clock in the afternoon, the town dominated by the soaring Norman cathedral, the mail coach was nowhere to be seen, and while the rest of the passengers stretched their legs and took their lunch, as well as some brandy and water, Pyke asked the driver and groom where the rival coach might be, whether it had already started back on the road. Shaking his head, the driver assured him that the mail coach stopped at a different inn and, after he had harried the passengers back into and on to the carriage, they had soon left the old cathedral town behind them. For the final leg of the journey, Pyke had insisted on swapping places with the groom and, having convinced Milly that she would be all right without him inside the carriage, he had taken his seat next to the driver. As the horses pounded the road, straining in their harnesses to go faster, the open land passing by them on either side as a blur, the driver cracking his whip to further encourage them, it was hard not to feel exhilaration at the mixture of speed and fresh air. Behind him Pyke could hear those travelling up on the roof chatting nervously about the prospect of the carriage overturning or coming off the road.

Half an hour after they had left Canterbury, he spotted the mail coach on the road ahead of them and, having pointed it out to the driver, he borrowed the whip and cracked it over the backs of the already straining horses. The coach ahead of them was both newer and faster, especially as it was pulled by eight horses rather than six, but it was carrying at least four more passengers in addition to the sacks of mail, and as such they were able to make up a little ground. But at some point the driver of the mail coach realised that they were closing, the gap no more than a few hundred yards, and urged his own horses to go faster, and soon the final leg of the journey had turned into a full-blown race, one that the passengers riding outside the carriage embraced without question, egging the driver and horses on. Over the next mile or so they closed the gap to less than a hundred yards, close enough to see the faces of those travelling on top of the mail coach, but after that the gap between them remained constant and Pyke realised that if they were going to catch or pass the mail coach they would have to lose some weight. Without saying anything to the driver, he clambered back to where the four passengers were sitting and the luggage was stowed and asked for their help. The plan, he whispered so the driver wouldn’t hear him, was to discard the luggage, piece by piece, off the back of the coach. He paid them a half-crown each and said they could keep their own cases. Then he rejoined the driver at the front of the coach. The gradual loss of weight helped a little and though their horses were beginning to tire, they closed the gap still further, until the mail coach was perhaps only ten or twenty yards ahead of them. At this point, Pyke relieved the driver of the reins and urged the six horses to go faster, looking ahead of them for a suitable place to try to pass the mail coach. It came in the form of a long, wide, straight section of the road. Taking his chance, he steered the coach out on to the other side of the road and lashed the horses’ backs with the whip, shouting and urging them on. Above the rattle of the harness and the sound of hoofs and wheels clattering in unison across the ground, the cheers of support from the other passengers and the bray of the driver’s horn took them alongside the mail coach just as the road ahead of them fell away sharply to the right. At the last moment, Pyke (who had pulled his cloak up around his neck to try to conceal his identity) saw a hay wagon moving slowly towards them in the other direction. They had pulled ahead of the mail coach by a nose and rather than trying to slow down Pyke cracked the whip even harder and went for the fast-closing gap, moving across the mail coach’s line. This drew enraged shouts from the driver of the mail coach but Pyke held his line and continued to race for the gap and then, within the space of a few seconds, it was over. Afterwards, Pyke wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, whether their wheels might have touched or whether the mail coach had struck something in the road and one of the wheels had come loose, but the result was the same: the mail coach skidded off the road, careening into a field and finally toppling over and overturning, the harness snapping loose and freeing the eight horses, which cantered on for a few hundred yards, eventually coming to a halt in the middle of the field. The driver of their coach wanted to stop to make sure no one was hurt but Pyke assured him the best thing they could do was make it to Ramsgate as quickly as possible and send another carriage out to pick up the passengers. It would give the mail coach’s driver time to cool down, too. Despite the fifty pounds he would earn, the driver appeared anxious about the repercussions and insisted that Pyke return to his berth inside the carriage.

Pyke willingly agreed and spent the final hour of the journey chatting with Milly. By the time they had started the slow, tortuous descent into the small port of Ramsgate, the afternoon light was starting to fade and it was almost dark when the weary horses trudged into the coaching yard. Pyke settled his debt with the driver and led Milly to an inn across the road, before any of the passengers realised their cases had been thrown from the roof of the carriage.

Despite the pleasant setting between two chalk cliffs, Ramsgate was a dismal little town and Pyke was glad to be staying only for a night. Having left Milly in their room and assuring her he would return within an hour, he hailed a coachman from a stand in front of the inn and instructed the driver to take him to the Albion hotel. It was a clear, chilly evening and away from the smog of the city the air smelled fresh and the sky was filled with seagulls circling above the returning fishing boats. At the front desk, Pyke asked the hotel’s porters to pass a message to Helen Milner-Gibson and returned to the carriage. He had to wait only a few minutes before the bonneted figure of the princess’s lady-in-waiting emerged from the hotel.