Gallows Thief

by Bernard Cornwell

  Another beauty, Sandman thought. The painting was hardly begun, yet it was strangely effective. The canvas had been sized, then a charcoal drawing made of a woman reclining on a bed that was surmounted by a tent of peaked material. Corday had then painted in patches of the wallpaper, the material of the bed’s tent, the bedspread, the carpet, and the woman’s face. He had lightly painted the hair, making it seem wild as though the Countess was in a country wind rather than her London bedroom, and though the rest of the canvas was hardly touched by any other colour, yet somehow it was still breathtaking and full of life.

  ‘Oh, he could paint, our Charlie, he could paint.’ Sir George, wiping his hands with a rag, had come to look at the picture. His voice was reverent and his eyes betrayed a mixture of admiration and jealousy. ‘He’s a clever little devil, ain’t he?’

  ‘Is it a good likeness?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Sir George nodded, ‘indeed yes. She was a beauty, Captain, a woman who could make heads turn, but that’s all she was. She was out of the gutter, Captain. She was what our Sally is. She was an opera dancer.’

  ‘I’m an actress,’ Sally insisted hotly.

  ‘An actress, an opera dancer, a whore, they’re all the same,’ Sir George growled, ‘and Avebury was a fool to have married her. He should have kept her as his mistress, but never married her.’

  ‘This tea’s bloody cold,’ Sally complained. She had left the dais and discarded her helmet.

  ‘Go and have some dinner, child,’ Sir George said grandly, ‘but be back here by two of the clock. Have you finished, Captain?’

  Sandman nodded. He was staring at the Countess’s picture. Her dress had been very lightly sketched, presumably because it was doomed to be obliterated, but her face, as striking as it was alluring, was almost completed. ‘You said, did you not,’ he asked, ‘that the Earl of Avebury commissioned the portrait?’

  ‘I did say so,’ Sir George agreed, ‘and he did.’

  ‘Yet I heard that he and his wife were estranged?’ Sandman said.

  ‘So I understand,’ Sir George said airily, then gave a wicked laugh. ‘He was certainly cuckolded. Her ladyship had a reputation, Captain, and it didn’t involve feeding the poor and comforting the afflicted.’ He was pulling on an old-fashioned coat, all wide cuffs, broad collars and gilt buttons. ‘Sammy,’ he shouted down the stairs, ‘I’ll eat the game pie up here! And some of that salmagundi if it ain’t mouldy. And you can open another of the ’nine clarets.’ He lumbered to the window and scowled at the rain fighting against the smoke of a thousand chimneys.

  ‘Why would a man estranged from his wife spend a fortune on her portrait?’ Sandman asked.

  ‘The ways of the world, Captain,’ Sir George said portentously, ‘are a mystery even unto me. How the hell would I know?’ Sir George turned from the window. ‘You’d have to ask his cuckolded lordship. I believe he lives near Marlborough, though he’s reputed to be a recluse so I suspect you’d be wasting your journey. On the other hand, perhaps it isn’t a mystery. Maybe he wanted revenge on her? Hanging her naked tits on his wall would be a kind of revenge, would it not?’

  ‘Would it?’

  Sir George chuckled. ‘There is none so conscious of their high estate as an ennobled whore, Captain, so why not remind the bitch of what brought her the title? Tits, sir, tits. If it had not been for her good tits and long legs she’d still be charging ten shillings a night. But did little Charlie the sodomite kill her? I doubt it, Captain, I doubt it very much, but nor do I care very much. Little Charlie was getting too big for his boots, so I won’t mourn to see him twitching at the end of a rope. Ah!’ He rubbed his hands as his servant climbed the stairs with a heavy tray. ‘Dinner! Good day to you, Captain, I trust I have been of service.’

  Sandman was not sure Sir George had been of any service, unless increasing Sandman’s confusion was of use, but Sir George was done with him now and Sandman was dismissed.

  So he left. And the rain fell harder.

  ‘That fat bastard never offers us dinner!’ Sally Hood complained. She was sitting opposite Sandman in a tavern on Piccadilly where, inspired by Sir George Phillips’s dinner, they shared a bowl of salmagundi: a cold mixture of cooked meats, anchovies, hard-boiled eggs and onions. ‘He guzzles himself, he does,’ Sally went on, ‘and we’re supposed to bleeding starve.’ She tore a piece of bread from the loaf, poured more oil into the bowl then smiled shyly at Sandman. ‘I was so embarrassed when you walked in.’

  ‘No need to be,’ Sandman said. On his way out of Sir George’s studio he had invited Sally to join him and they had run through the rain and taken shelter in the Three Ships where he had paid for the salmagundi and a big jug of ale with some of the money advanced to him by the Home Office.

  Sally shook salt into the bowl, then stirred the mixture vigorously. ‘You won’t tell anyone?’ she asked very earnestly.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I know it ain’t actressing,’ she said, ‘and I don’t like that fat bastard staring at me all day, but it’s rhino, isn’t it?’

  ‘Rhino?’

  ‘Money.’

  ‘It’s rhino,’ Sandman agreed.

  ‘And I shouldn’t have said anything about your friend,’ Sally said, ‘because I felt such a fool.’

  ‘You mean Lord Alexander?’

  ‘I am a fool, aren’t I?’ She grinned at him.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I am,’ she said fervently, ‘but I don’t want to be doing this forever. I’m twenty-two now and I’ll have to find something soon, won’t I? And I wouldn’t mind meeting a real lord.’

  ‘You want to marry?’

  She nodded, shrugged, then speared half a boiled egg. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I mean when life’s good, it’s very good. Two years ago I never seemed not to be working. I was a witch’s servant girl in a play about some Scottish king,’ she wrinkled her face trying to think of the name, then shook her head, ‘bastard, he was, then I was a dancing girl in a pageant about some black king what got himself killed in India and he was another bastard, but these last two or three months? Nothing! There’s not even work at Vauxhall Gardens!’

  ‘What did you do there?’

  Sally closed her eyes as she thought. ‘Tabbel,’ she said, ‘tabbler?’

  ‘Tableaux vivants?’

  ‘That’s it! I was a goddess for three months last summer. I was up a tree, playing a harp and the rhino wasn’t bad. Then I got a turn in Astley’s with the dancing horses and that kept me through the winter, but there’s nothing now, not even down the Strand!’ She meant the newer theatres that offered more music and dancing than the two older theatres in Drury Lane and Covent Garden. ‘But I’ve got a private show coming up,’ she added, sniffing at the prospect.

  ‘Private?’ Sandman asked.

  ‘A rich cove wants his girl to be an actress, see? So he hires the theatre when it’s out of season and he pays us to sing and dance and he pays an audience to cheer and he pays the scribblers to write her up in the papers as the next Vestris. You want to come? It’s Thursday night at Covent Garden, and it’s only the one night so it ain’t going to pay any bills, is it?’

  ‘If I can I’ll come,’ Sandman promised.

  ‘What I need,’ Sally said, ‘is to join a company, and I could if I was willing to be a frow. You know what that is? Of course you do. And that fat bastard,’ she jerked her head, meaning Sir George Phillips, ‘he thinks I’m a frow, but I’m not!’

  ‘I never supposed you were.’

  ‘Then you’re the only bloody man who didn’t.’ She grinned at him. ‘Well, you and my brother. Jack would kill anyone who said I was a frow.’

  ‘Good for Jack,’ Sandman said. ‘I rather like your brother.’

  ‘Everyone likes Jack,’ Sally said.

  ‘Not that I really know him, of course,’ Sandman said, ‘but he seems friendly.’ Sally’s brother, on the few occasions Sandman had encountered him, had seemed a confident, easy-mannere
d man. He was popular, presiding over a generous table in the Wheatsheaf’s taproom and he was strikingly handsome, attracting a succession of young women. He was also mysterious for no one in the tavern would say exactly what he did for a living, though undoubtedly the living was reasonably good for he and Sally rented two large rooms on the Wheatsheaf’s first floor. ‘What does your brother do?’ Sandman asked Sally now and, in return, received a very strange look. ‘No, really,’ he said, ‘what does he do? It’s just that he keeps odd hours.’

  ‘You don’t know who he is?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘He’s Robin Hood,’ Sally said, then laughed when she saw Sandman’s face. ‘That’s my Jack, Captain,’ she said, ‘Robin Hood.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ Sandman said. Robin Hood was the nickname of a highwayman who was wanted by every magistrate in London. The reward for him was well over a hundred pounds and it was constantly rising.

  Sally shrugged. ‘He’s a daft one, really. I keep telling him he’ll end up doing Jemmy Botting’s hornpipe, but he won’t listen. And he looks after me. Well up to a point, he does, but it’s always feast or famine with Jack and when he’s in cash he gives it to his ladies. But he’s good to me, he is, and he wouldn’t let no one touch me.’ She frowned. ‘You won’t tell anyone?’

  ‘Of course I won’t!’

  ‘I mean everyone in the ’sheaf knows who he is, but none of them would tell on him.’

  ‘Nor would I,’ Sandman assured her.

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ Sally said, then grinned. ‘So what about you? What do you want out of life?’

  Sandman, surprised to be asked, thought for a moment. ‘I suppose I want my old life back.’

  ‘War? Being a soldier?’ She sounded disapproving.

  ‘No. Just the luxury of not worrying about where the next shilling comes from.’

  Sally laughed. ‘We all want that.’ She poured more oil and vinegar into the bowl and stirred it. ‘So you had money, did you?’

  ‘My father did. He was a very rich man, but then he made some bad investments, he borrowed too much money, he gambled and he failed. So he forged some notes and presented them at the Bank of …’

  ‘Notes?’ Sally did not understand.

  ‘Instructions to pay money,’ Sandman explained, ‘and of course it was a stupid thing to do, but I suppose he was desperate. He wanted to raise some money then flee to France, but the forgeries were detected and he faced arrest. They would have hanged him, except that he blew his brains out before the constables arrived.’

  ‘Gawd,’ Sally said, staring at him.

  ‘So my mother lost everything. She now lives in Winchester with my younger sister and I try to keep them alive. I pay the rent, look after the bills, that sort of thing.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Why don’t they work?’ Sally asked truculently.

  ‘They’re not used to the idea,’ Sandman said, and Sally echoed the words, though not quite aloud. She just mouthed it and Sandman laughed. ‘This all happened just over a year ago,’ he went on, ‘and I’d already left the army by then. I was going to get married. We’d chosen a house in Oxfordshire, but of course she couldn’t marry me when I became penniless.’

  ‘Why not?’ Sally demanded.

  ‘Because her mother wouldn’t let her marry a pauper.’

  ‘Because she was poor as well?’ Sally asked.

  ‘On the contrary,’ Sandman said, ‘her father had promised to settle six thousand a year on her. My father had promised me more, but once he went bankrupt, of course …’ Sandman shrugged, not bothering to finish the sentence.

  Sally was staring at him wide-eyed. ‘Six thousand?’ she asked. ‘Pounds?’ She merely breathed the last word, unable to comprehend such wealth.

  ‘Pounds,’ Sandman confirmed.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ It was sufficient to persuade her to stop eating for a while, then she remembered her hunger and dug in again. ‘Go on,’ she encouraged him.

  ‘So I stayed with my mother and sister for a while, but that really wasn’t practicable. There was no work for me in Winchester, so I came to London last month.’

  Sally thought this was amusing. ‘Never really worked in your life before, eh?’

  ‘I was a good soldier,’ Sandman said mildly.

  ‘I suppose that is work,’ Sally allowed grudgingly, ‘of a sort.’ She chased a chicken leg round the bowl. ‘But what do you want to do?’

  Sandman gazed up at the smoke-stained ceiling. ‘Just work,’ he said vaguely. ‘I’m not trained for anything. I’m not a lawyer, not a priest. I taught in Winchester College for two terms,’ he paused, shuddering at the memory, ‘so I thought I’d try the London merchants. They hire men to supervise estates, you see. Tobacco estates and sugar plantations.’

  ‘Abroad?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Sandman said gently, and he had indeed been offered such work on a sugar estate in Barbados, but the knowledge that the appointment would necessitate the supervision of slaves had forced him to refuse. His mother had scoffed at his refusal, calling him weak-willed, but Sandman was content with his choice.

  ‘But you don’t need to go abroad now,’ Sally said, ‘not if you’re working for the Home Secretary.’

  ‘I fear it is very temporary employment.’

  ‘Thieving people off the gallows? That ain’t temporary! Full bloody time if you ask me.’ She stripped the meat from the chicken bone with her teeth. ‘But are you going to get Charlie out of the King’s Head Inn?’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Met him once,’ she said, her mouth full of chicken, ‘and fat Sir George is right. He’s a pixie.’

  ‘A pixie? Never mind, I think I know. And you think he’s innocent?’

  ‘Of course he’s bloody innocent,’ she said forcefully.

  ‘He was found guilty,’ Sandman pointed out gently.

  ‘In the Old Bailey sessions? Who was the judge?’

  ‘Sir John Silvester,’ Sandman said.

  ‘Bloody hell! Black Jack?’ Sally was scathing. ‘He’s a bastard. I tell you, Captain, there are dozens of innocent souls in their graves because of Black Jack. And Charlie is innocent. Has to be. He’s a pixie, isn’t he? He wouldn’t know what to do with a woman, let alone rape one! And whoever killed her gave her a right walloping and Charlie ain’t got the meat on his bones to do that kind of damage. Well, you’ve seen him, ain’t you? Does he look like he could have slit her throat? What does it say there?’ She pointed to the penny broadsheet that Sandman had taken from his pocket and smoothed on the table. At the top of the sheet was an ill-printed picture of a hanging which purported to be the imminent execution of Charles Corday and showed a hooded man standing in a cart beneath the gallows. ‘They always use that picture,’ Sally said, ‘I wish they’d find a new one. They don’t even use a cart any more. Fake off, culley!’ The last three words were snapped at a well-dressed man who had approached her, bowed and was about to speak. He backed away with alarm on his face. ‘I know what he wants,’ Sally explained to Sandman.

  Sandman had looked alarmed at her outburst, but now laughed and then looked back at the broadsheet. ‘According to this,’ he said, ‘the Countess was naked when she was found. Naked and bloody.’

  ‘She were stabbed, weren’t she?’

  ‘It says Corday’s knife was in her throat.’

  ‘He couldn’t have stabbed her with that,’ Sally said dismissively, ‘it ain’t sharp. It’s a, I don’t know, what do you call it? It’s for mixing paint up, it ain’t for chivving.’

  ‘Chivving?’

  ‘Cutting.’

  ‘So it’s a palette knife,’ Sandman said, ‘but it says here she was stabbed twelve times in the …’ He hesitated.

  ‘In the tits,’ Sally said. ‘They always say that if it’s a woman. Never get stabbed anywhere else. Always in the bubbies.’ She shook her head. ‘That don’t sound like a pixie to me. Why would he strip her, let alone kill her? You want any more of t
his?’ She pushed the bowl towards him.

  ‘No, please. You have it.’

  ‘I could eat a bloody horse.’ She pushed her plate aside and simply put the bowl in front of her. ‘No,’ she said after a moment’s reflection, ‘he didn’t do it, did he?’ She stopped again, frowning, and Sandman sensed she was debating whether to tell him something and he had the sense to keep quiet. She looked up at him, as if judging whether she really liked him or not, then she shrugged. ‘He bleeding lied to you,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Corday?’

  ‘No! Sir George! He lied. I heard him tell you the Earl wanted the painting, but he didn’t.’

  ‘He didn’t?’

  ‘They was talking about it yesterday,’ Sally said earnestly, ‘him and a friend, only he thinks I don’t listen. I just stand there catching cold and he talks like I wasn’t anything except a pair of tits.’ She poured herself more ale. ‘It wasn’t the Earl who ordered the painting. Sir George told his friend, he did, then he looked at me and he said, “You’re not hearing this, Sally Hood.” He actually said that!’

  ‘Did he say who did commission the painting?’

  Sally nodded. ‘It was a club what ordered the painting, only he’d be mad if he knew I’d told you ’cos he’s scared to death of the bastards.’

  ‘A club commissioned it?’

  ‘Like a gentlemen’s club. Like Boodle’s or White’s, only it ain’t them, it’s got a funny name. The Semaphore Club? No, that ain’t right. Sema? Serra? I don’t know. Something to do with angels.’

  ‘Angels?’

  ‘Angels,’ Sally confirmed. ‘Semaphore? Something like that.’