crowd did not pay half a shilling each to watch the bear growl his few lines, though. They came for the ratting, bare-knuckle fights or a bout of wrestling. The bear sniffed the fetid air, saturated with the combined stench of cheap gin and unwashed clothes. The crowd gathered on the bear’s side of the room visibly parted and shrank into the room’s darker recesses, affording the bear a clear view of the ring.
Without giving it a second thought, the bear shuffled on all fours, ignoring the silent and evidently petrified crowd, and hauled itself over the ring’s waist-high wooden wall, with more aplomb than might have been expected from a beast that weighed fifty stone. By that time, the giant’s grip around the dwarf’s neck had slackened enough for some of the dwarf’s colour to return to his cheeks. For a few seconds, the bear and the giant wrestler stood rooted to their positions, no more than ten feet apart, each silently contemplating the other. Later, Pyke was not sure how it had started: whether the bear had attacked without provocation, or someone from the audience had thrown an object at the animal, but the result was the same. Ignoring the dwarf, who was slumped on the ground gulping for air, the bear launched itself at the stricken giant, who, in an instant, was transformed into a taller version of the dwarf he had just been strangling.
Almost at once, someone from the crowd cheered, either mistaking what was happening for part of the fight or simply enjoying the sight of the helpless giant being mauled by the powerful bear. These cheers produced a counter-response, this time in support of the giant, either out of patriotic duty, because the giant was dressed as the duke of Wellington, or because they had money staked on the outcome of the fight. Soon, there was bedlam. Villums himself was trapped by the baying mob on the far side of the room and was screaming at Pyke to take action - more to protect his tavern’s already dubious reputation than to save the giant. The bear was tearing flesh from the giant’s flayed torso when Pyke returned from Villums’s garret carrying a flintock blunderbuss with a long brass cannon barrel loaded with powder and ball shot.
From a distance of fifteen yards, Pyke rested the butt of the blunderbuss against his shoulder and took aim at the bear, but before he could pull the trigger someone knocked him from behind and the projectile exploded out of the barrel of the blunderbuss; instead of hitting the bear as planned, it struck the recovering dwarf squarely in the belly, lifting him clean off his feet and almost cutting him in two. People tried to flee the room, but Pyke took his time and reloaded the weapon. The first shot hit the bear in the chest; the second shot blew off the entire right side of its head. Bone, cartilage, tissue, blood, chunks of fur and even an eyeball splattered those who had not managed to leave the room. The bear seemed not to have been affected by the double blast at first, aside from the obvious loss of body parts. On all fours, it surveyed the carnage: the mauled giant, the dwarf’s twitching corpse and the vast carpet of blood and intestines that covered the floor of the ring. It tried to open its mouth but, as it did so, its will to live finally leaked from its gargantuan frame, and it collapsed on to the floor with a thud. The remaining audience, such as it was, turned and watched the gruesome spectacle. As soon as the bear had stopped moving, one of them broke into applause. Others joined in. No one seemed to know whether the applause was for the bear, the dwarf or the giant, but since the giant was the only one of them left alive, he presumed it must be for him and hauled himself to his feet to receive the accolades. A flap of skin the size of a large book hung down from his bleeding neck.
Once he had put the blunderbuss down, no one seemed to be interested in Pyke, just as no one appeared to have recognised him. But without his unkempt hair and bushy sideburns, this was to be expected.
‘I dunno whether to thank you or strangle you,’ Villums said later, while Pyke inspected his new outfit in the mirror. He had discarded his labourer’s clothes and changed into formal attire. ‘You don’t think it was too much of a risk, coming back to your old haunts?’
In addition to running a sizeable gambling operation in the Old Cock tavern, Villums fenced stolen property. Pyke had employed his services in this latter capacity on more than a few occasions. He would not have described him as a friend but he trusted Villums as much as he did anyone, and he was paying handsomely for the garret that Villums provided for him.
‘Perhaps, but then again, I don’t have a choice.’ Pyke shrugged. He knew as well as anyone that he was only one step, or mishap, away from being recognised and arrested. ‘And I can blend in here just as well as anywhere.’
‘Can I ask you a question, Pyke?’
They were in Villums’s parlour, drinking gin from pewter tankards. Pyke was preparing to go out for the evening.
‘In all the time I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you act like you’re scared or express any kind of remorse or nothing. ’ Villums looked puzzled. ‘Don’t you feel bad for the dwarf?’
‘I feel worse for the bear,’ Pyke said, allowing his gaze to settle on Villums. ‘Are you trying to tell me the dwarf would have been spared if the bear hadn’t interrupted the fight?’
Villums shrugged. ‘The magistrates will have to investigate, write a report. They’ll want paying, too. Then there’s the dwarf’s family. They’ll certainly want something.’
Pyke gulped back his gin. ‘I’ll need a loan, as well.’
‘How much?’ Villums stared at him, suspiciously.
‘Twenty or thirty ought to cover it.’ Pyke gazed at Villums, waiting.
‘Pounds?’ The older man had to loosen the collar around his bulbous neck. ‘You’re dressed up like a toff, to go to the opera, and you want to borrow money off a poor man like me? Look at these rags.’ He tugged at his tatty frock-coat.
‘You know I’m good for the money.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Villums sighed. ‘But you’ll have to make yourself scarce tonight. The place’ll be crawling with police. Don’t worry. No one’ll say a word to ’em and I’ll tell ’em I fired the blunderbuss.’
‘Thank you,’ Pyke said. ‘I suppose there’s no word about Godfrey?’
‘Didn’t you hear the news? He’s out. They let him go about a week ago. Dropped the charges.’ Villums scratched his vein-riddled nose and wiped his cheeks. ‘Very coincidental, I know. You don’t reckon someone knows you’re back in London?’
The thought had already crossed Pyke’s mind. ‘If so, they’ll be watching Godfrey’s shop and apartment.’
‘Since they were sworn in at Coram’s Foundling Hospital, they’re fuckin’ everywhere, Peel’s blue devils. Everywhere that’s poor, anyway.’
‘There’s a reward, you know, for my capture. Quite a generous one, I believe.’ Pyke watched Villums’s reaction.
‘A hundred pounds, I’m told. But as poor and desperate as people are, no one will dare collect the reward till they’ve seen you swing.’
‘How reassuring,’ Pyke said, without smiling. ‘Maybe you could pass word to Godfrey that I’m staying here.’
‘You sure that’s a wise idea?’
Pyke shrugged and thought about what Villums had said about not feeling remorse. ‘Do people think I’m a monster?’
‘You really give a damn what people think?’ Villums asked. ‘Back there in the gaming room, you didn’t stand to gain a thing by killing the bear. If you were as self-interested as men sometimes claim you are, then why didn’t you sit back, do nothing and watch the bear maul the duke?’
From his seat in the fifth row of the stalls, Pyke looked through a pair of hired binoculars at the figures in the grandest box of the Theatre Royal. The bell had just sounded and a man appeared on stage announcing that the performance of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia would commence shortly. Along with the rest of the audience, he watched as Emily Blackwood glided elegantly into the box and arranged herself before carefully taking her seat. She wore a delicate pale-pink crepe dress with thin gauze sleeves that showed just enough of her slender arms; her hair was elaborately tied up, drawing attention to the diamond necklace that was just visible, silhouetted against the milky whiteness of her skin.
It thrilled him to see that she was so obviously trading on her looks for the purposes of the evening - a charity event from which all the money collected during the interval would be donated to her society of women. On their first meeting, he had made the mistake of assuming that her reputation as a do-gooder and her exquisite skills as a pianist marked her as a particular type of woman. Now, as he watched her greet others in the box and noticed the effect she was having on them, especially the men, he felt a pang of jealousy and admiration for the way that she was using her beauty.
