Gallows Thief

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘I’m putting together a gentlemen’s eleven to play against Hampshire at the end of the month,’ Lord Alexander said, ‘and I rather hoped you’d want to play.’

  ‘I’d like that, yes. Would the game be in Hampshire?’ Sandman asked the question anxiously, for he did not particularly want to go near Winchester and his mother’s querulous demands.

  ‘Here, in London,’ Lord Alexander said, ‘at Thomas Lord’s ground.’

  Sandman grimaced. ‘That wretched hillside?’

  ‘It’s a perfectly good ground,’ Lord Alexander said huffily, ‘a slight slope, maybe? And I’ve already wagered fifty guineas on the game, which is why I’d like you to play. I shall go higher if you’re in my team.’

  Sandman groaned. ‘Money’s ruining the game, Alexander.’

  ‘Which is why those of us who oppose corruption must be energetic in our patronage of the game,’ Lord Alexander insisted. ‘So will you play?’

  ‘I’m very out of practice,’ Sandman warned his friend.

  ‘Then get into practice,’ Lord Alexander said testily, lighting another pipe. He frowned at Sandman. ‘You look depressingly glum. Don’t you enjoy the theatre?’

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘Then look as if you do!’ Lord Alexander polished the lens of his opera glasses on the tails of his coat. ‘Do you think Miss Hood would enjoy cricket?’

  ‘I can’t imagine her playing it, somehow.’

  ‘Don’t be so grotesquely absurd, Rider, I mean as a spectator.’

  ‘You must ask her, Alexander,’ Sandman said. He leant over the edge of the box to look down into the stalls, where a claque from the Wheatsheaf were readying themselves to cheer Sally. A pair of whores were working their way around the edge of the pit and one of them, seeing him peer down, mimed that she would come up to the box. Sandman hastily shook his head and pulled back out of sight. ‘Suppose she’s dead,’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘Miss Hood? Dead? Why should she be?’ Lord Alexander looked very worried. ‘Was she ill? You should have told me!’

  ‘I’m talking about the maidservant. Meg.’

  ‘Oh, her,’ Lord Alexander said absently, then frowned at his pipe. ‘Do you recall those Spanish cigars that were all the rage when you were fighting against the forces of enlightenment in Spain?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘You can’t get them anywhere, and I did like them.’

  ‘Try Pettigrews in Old Bond Street,’ Sandman said, sounding annoyed that his friend had ignored his concerns about Meg.

  ‘I’ve tried. They have none. And I did like them.’

  ‘I know someone who’s thinking of importing them,’ Sandman said, remembering Sergeant Berrigan.

  ‘Let me know if they do,’ Lord Alexander blew smoke towards the gilded cherubs on the ceiling. ‘Are your friends in the Seraphim Club aware that you are pursuing Meg?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So they have no cause to find and kill her. And if they had wished to kill her at the time of the Countess’s murder, supposing that they did, indeed, perform that wicked deed, then they would have left her body with her mistress’s corpse so that Corday could be convicted of both murders. Which suggests, does it not, that the girl is alive? It occurs to me, Rider, that your duties as an Investigator demand a great deal of logical deduction, which is why you are such a poor choice for the post. Still, you may always consult me.’

  ‘You’re very kind, Alexander.’

  ‘I try to be, dear boy.’ Lord Alexander, pleased with himself, beamed. ‘I do try to be.’

  A cheer sounded as boys went round the theatre extinguishing the lamps. The musicians gave a last tentative squeak, then waited for the conductor’s baton to fall. Some of the audience in the pit began to whistle as a demand for the curtains to part. Most of the scene-shifting was done by sailors, men accustomed to ropes and heights, and, just as at sea, some of the signals were given by whistles and the audience’s whistling betrayed their impatience, but the curtain stayed obstinately shut. More lamps were extinguished, then the big reflective lanterns at the edges of the stage were unmasked, the drummer gave a portentous roll and a player in a swathing cloak leapt from between the curtains to recite the prologue on the stage’s wide apron:

  ‘In Africa, so far from home,

  A little lad was wont to roam.

  Aladdin was our hero’s name …’

  He got no further before the audience drowned him in a cacophony of shouting, hissing and whistling. ‘Show us the girl’s pins!’ a man yelled from the box next to Sandman. ‘Show us her gams!’

  ‘I think Vestris’s supporters are here!’ Lord Alexander shouted in Sandman’s ear.

  Mister Spofforth was looking ever more anxious. The newspaper writers were beginning to pay attention now that the crowd was in full cry, but the musicians, who had heard it all before, began to play and that slightly calmed the audience, who gave a cheer as the prologue was abandoned and the heavy scarlet curtains parted to reveal a glade in Africa. Oak trees and yellow roses framed an idol that guarded the entrance to a cave where a dozen white-skinned natives were sleeping. Sally was one of the natives, who were inexplicably dressed in white stockings, black velvet jackets and very short tartan skirts. Lord Alexander bellowed a cheer as the twelve girls got to their feet and began dancing. The Wheatsheaf’s customers in the pit also cheered loudly and Vestris’s supporters, assuming that the cheers came from Spofforth’s paid claque, began to jeer. ‘Bring on the girl!’ the man in the next box demanded. A plum arced onto the stage to splatter against the idol, which looked suspiciously like a Red Indian’s totem pole. Mister Spofforth was making helpless gestures to calm an audience that was determined to make mayhem, or at least the half who had been rented by Vestris’s supporters were, while the other half, paid by Mister Spofforth, were too cowed to fight back. Some of the crowd had rattles that filled the high gilded hall with a crackling and echoing din. ‘It’s going to be very nasty!’ Lord Alexander said with relish. ‘Oh, this is splendid!’

  The theatre’s management must have believed that the sight of Miss Sacharissa Lasorda would calm the tumult, for the girl was pushed prematurely onto the stage. Mister Spofforth stood and began to applaud as she staggered out of the wings and his claque took their cue and cheered so lustily that they actually drowned the catcalls for a while. Miss Lasorda, who played the Sultan of Africa’s daughter, was dark-haired and certainly pretty, but whether her legs deserved to be as famous as Vestris’s was still a mystery, for she was wearing a long skirt embroidered with crescent moons, camels and scimitars. She seemed momentarily alarmed to find herself on stage, but then bowed to her supporters before beginning to dance.

  ‘Show us your gams!’ the man in the next box shouted.

  ‘Skirt off! Skirt off! Skirt off!’ the crowd in the stalls began to chant, and a shower of plums and apples hurtled onto the stage. ‘Skirt off! Skirt off! Skirt off!’ Mister Spofforth was still making calming gestures with his hands, but that only made him a target and he ducked as a well-aimed volley of fruit spattered his box.

  Lord Alexander had tears of joy running down his cheeks. ‘I do so like the theatre,’ he said, ‘dear sweet God, I do so love it. This must have cost that young fool two thousand pounds at the very least!’

  Sandman did not hear what his friend had said and so leant towards him. ‘What?’ he asked.

  He heard something smack into the wall at the back of the box and saw, in the shadows there, a puff of dust. It was only then that he realised a shot had been fired in the theatre and astonished, he gaped up to see a patch of smoke in the dim heights of an upper gallery box. A rifle, he thought. It had a different sound from a musket. He remembered the greenjackets at Waterloo, remembered the distinctive sound of their weapons, and then he realised someone had just shot at him and he was so shocked that he did not move for a few seconds. Instead he stared up at the spreading smoke and realised that the audience was going silent. Some had heard the shot over t
he raucous din of rattles, whistles and shouts, while others could smell the reeking powder smoke, then someone screamed in the upper gallery. Miss Lasorda stared upwards, mouth open.

  Sandman snatched open the door to the box and saw two men running up the stairs with pistols in their hands. He slammed the door. ‘Meet me in the Wheatsheaf,’ he told Lord Alexander, and he swung his legs over the box’s balustrade, paused a second, then jumped. He landed heavily, turning his left ankle and almost falling. The audience cheered, thinking Sandman’s leap was part of the entertainment, but then some in the stalls began to scream for they could see the two men in Lord Alexander’s box and they could see the pistols.

  ‘Captain!’ Sally shouted, and pointed to the wings.

  Sandman stumbled. There was a pain in his ankle, a terrible pain that made him stagger towards the idol guarding the cave mouth. He turned to see the two men in the box, both pointing their pistols but neither dared fire onto the stage which was crowded with dancers. Then one of the men threw a leg over the box’s gilded lip and Sandman limped into the wings where a man dressed as a harlequin and another with a blackened face, a tall crown and a magic lamp waited. Sandman pushed between them, staggered through a tangle of ropes, then down some stairs and, at the bottom, turned into a passage. He did not think his left ankle was broken, but he must have twisted it and every step was an agony. He stopped in the passage, his heart beating, and flattened himself against the wall. He heard the screams from the dancers on stage, then the pounding of feet down wooden stairs, and a second later a man came round the corner and Sandman tripped him, then stamped hard on the back of his neck. The man grunted and Sandman took the pistol out of his suddenly feeble hand. He turned the man over. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, but the man merely spat up at Sandman, who struck him with the pistol barrel, then fished in the man’s pockets to find a handful of cartridges. He stood, wincing from the pain in his left leg, then limped down the passage to the stage door. More footsteps sounded behind him and he turned, pistol raised, but it was Sally running towards him with her street clothes bundled in a cloak.

  ‘You all right?’ she asked him.

  ‘Twisted my ankle.’

  ‘Bleeding ruckus back there,’ Sally said, ‘there’s more fruit on the bloody deck than there is in the market.’

  ‘Deck?’ he asked.

  ‘Stage,’ she explained shortly, then pulled open the door.

  ‘You should go back,’ Sandman said.

  ‘I should do a lot of bleeding things, but I don’t,’ Sally said, ‘so come on.’ She tugged him out into the street. A man whistled at the sight of her long legs in the white stockings and she snarled at him to fake away off, then draped the cloak about her shoulders. ‘Lean on me,’ she told Sandman, who was limping and grunting from pain. ‘You’re in a bad bleeding way, ain’t you?’

  ‘Sprained ankle,’ Sandman said. ‘I don’t think it’s broken.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because it isn’t grating with every step.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Sally said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Someone shot at me; a rifle.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Sandman said. The Seraphim Club? That seemed most likely, especially after Sandman had turned down their vast bribe, but that did not explain Jack Hood’s assertion that there was a price on Sandman’s head. Why would the Seraphim Club pay criminals to do what they or their servants were more than capable of doing? ‘I really don’t know,’ he said, puzzled and frightened.

  They had come from the rear of the theatre and now walked or, in Sandman’s case, hobbled under the piazza of the Covent Garden market. The summer evening meant it was still light, though the shadows were long across the cobbles that were littered with the remnants of vegetables and squashed fruit. A rat slithered across Sandman’s path. He constantly glanced behind, but he could see no obvious enemies. No sign of Sergeant Berrigan or anyone in a black and yellow livery. No sign of Lord Robin Holloway or the Marquess of Skavadale. ‘They’ll be expecting me to go back to the Wheatsheaf,’ he told Sally.

  ‘They won’t know which bleeding door you’re going in, though, will they?’ Sally said, ‘and once you’re inside you’re bleeding safe, Captain, because there ain’t a man there who won’t protect you.’ She turned in sudden alarm as hurried footsteps sounded behind, but it was only a child running from an irate man accusing the boy of being a pickpocket. Flower sellers were arranging their baskets on the pavement, ready for the crowds to come from the two nearby theatres. Whistles and rattles sounded. ‘Bleeding charlies on their way to the spell,’ Sally said, meaning that the constables from Bow Street were converging on the Covent Garden Theatre. She frowned at the pistol in Sandman’s hand. ‘Hide that stick. Don’t want a charlie scurfing you.’

  Sandman pushed the gun into a pocket. ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be at the theatre?’

  ‘They ain’t ever going to get that bleeding circus started again, not that it ever did get started, did it? Dead before it was born. No, Miss Sacharissa’s little night of fame got the jump, didn’t it? Mind you, her name ain’t Sacharissa Lasorda.’

  ‘I never thought it was.’

  ‘Flossie, she’s called, and she used to be the pal of a fire-eater at Astleys. Must be thirty if she’s a day, and last I heard she was earning her bunce in an academy.’

  ‘She was a schoolteacher?’ Sandman asked, sounding surprised, for few women chose that profession and Miss Lasorda, or whatever she was called, did not look like a teacher.

  Sally laughed so much she had to support herself by leaning on Sandman. ‘Lord, I love you, Captain,’ she said, still laughing. ‘An academy ain’t for learning. At least not letters. It’s a brothel!’

  ‘Oh,’ Sandman said.

  ‘Not far now,’ Sally said as they approached the Drury Lane Theatre, from which a burst of applause sounded. ‘How’s your ankle?’

  ‘I think I can walk,’ Sandman said.

  ‘Try,’ Sally encouraged him, then watched as Sandman hobbled a few steps. ‘You don’t want to take that boot off tonight,’ she said. ‘Your ankle’s going to swell something horrible if you do.’ She walked on ahead and opened the Wheatsheaf’s front door. Sandman half expected to see a man waiting there with a pistol, but the doorway was empty.

  ‘We don’t want to be looking over our shoulders all night,’ Sandman said, ‘so I’m going to see if the back parlour’s free.’ He led Sally across the crowded taproom where the landlord was holding court at a table. ‘Is the back parlour free?’ Sandman asked him.

  Jenks nodded. ‘The gentleman said you’d be back, Captain, and he kept it for you. And there’s a letter for you as well, brought by a slavey.’

  ‘A footman,’ Sally translated for Sandman, ‘and what gentleman reserved the back slum?’

  ‘It must be Lord Alexander,’ Sandman explained, ‘because he wanted you and me to have dinner with him.’ He took the letter from Mister Jenks and smiled at Sally. ‘You don’t mind Alexander’s company?’

  ‘Mind Lord Alexander? He’ll just gawp at me like a Billingsgate cod, won’t he?’

  ‘How fickle your affection is, Miss Hood,’ Sandman said, and received a blow on the shoulder as a reward.

  ‘Well he does!’ Sally said, and gave a cruelly accurate imitation of Lord Alexander’s goggling devotion. ‘Poor old cripple,’ she said sympathetically, then glanced down at her short tartan skirt under the cloak. ‘I’d better change into something decent or else his eyes will pop right out.’

  Sandman pretended to be heart-broken. ‘I rather like that Scottish skirt.’

  ‘And I thought you was a gentleman, Captain,’ Sally said, then laughed and ran up the stairs as Sandman shouldered open the back parlour door and, with great relief, sank into a chair. It was dark in the room because the shutters were closed and the candles extinguished, so he leant forward and pulled the nearest shutter open and saw that it was not Lord Alexander who had reserved the ba
ck parlour, but another gentleman altogether, though perhaps Sergeant Berrigan was not truly a gentleman.

  The Sergeant was lounging on the settle, but now raised his pistol and aimed it at Sandman’s forehead. ‘They want you dead, Captain,’ he said, ‘they want you dead. So they sent me because when you want a dirty job done neatly, you send a soldier. Ain’t that the truth? You send a soldier.’

  So they had sent Sam Berrigan.

  Sandman knew he should do something fast. Throw himself forward? But his ankle was throbbing and he knew he could never move quicker than Berrigan who was fit, tough and experienced. He thought of pulling out the pistol he had taken from his attacker in the theatre, but by the time he dragged it from his pocket Berrigan would already have fired, so instead Sandman decided he would just keep the Sergeant talking until Sally arrived and could raise the alarm. He lifted his left foot and rested it on a chair. ‘I sprained it,’ he told Berrigan, ‘jumping onto the stage.’

  ‘Stage?’

  ‘At Miss Hood’s performance. Someone tried to kill me.’

  ‘Not us, Captain,’ Berrigan said.

  ‘Someone with a rifle.’

  ‘Lot of those left from the wars,’ Berrigan said. ‘You can pick up a used Baker for seven or eight shillings. So someone other than the Seraphim Club wants you dead, eh?’

  Sandman stared at the Sergeant. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t the Seraphim Club?’

  ‘They sent me, Captain, only me,’ Berrigan said, ‘and I wasn’t at the theatre.’

  Sandman stared at him, wondering who in God’s name had put a price on his head. ‘It must be a great relief being dishonest,’ he said.

  Berrigan grinned. ‘Relief?’

  ‘No one trying to kill you, no scruples about accepting thousands of guineas? I’d say it was a relief. My problem, Sergeant, is that I so feared being like my father that I set out to behave in an utterly dissimilar manner. I set out to be consciously virtuous. It was exceedingly tedious of me and it annoyed him hugely. I suppose that’s why I did it.’