Sharpe's Prey

by Bernard Cornwell

  “I was raised in Yorkshire,” Sharpe lied. “Maybe you were up there once?”

  “I don’t travel to foreign places.” Hocking let go of Sharpe’s hand and stood. “Joe here will show you where to wait, but if I was you, Major, I’d watch the dogs for a while.”

  Joe was one of the two young men and he jerked his head to show that Sharpe should follow him through the tavern’s back door. Sharpe knew what to expect there, for when Beaky Malone had been alive Sharpe had helped in that back room which was little more than a long and gloomy shed raised above the yards of three houses. It stank of animals. There were storerooms at either end of the shed, but most of the space had been converted into a makeshift arena of banked wooden benches that enclosed a pit twelve feet in diameter. The pit’s floor was sand and was surrounded by a barrier of planks.

  “It’s in there,” Joe said, indicating one of the storerooms. “It ain’t luxury, but there’s a bed.”

  “I’ll wait out here,” Sharpe said.

  “When the dogs are done,” Joe explained, “wait in the room.”

  Sharpe climbed to the topmost bench where he sat close under the roof beams. Six oil lamps hung above the pit, which was spattered with blood. The shed stank of it, and of gin, tobacco and meat pies. There must have been a hundred men on the benches and a handful of women. Some of the spectators watched Sharpe as he climbed the steps. He did not fit in here and the silver buttons of his uniform coat made them nervous. All uniforms unsettled these folk, and spectators made room for him on the bench just as a tall man with a hooked nose climbed over the plank barrier. “The next bout, ladies and gentlemen,” the man bellowed, “is between Priscilla, a two-year-old bitch, and Nobleman, a dog of three years. Priscilla is by way of being the property of Mister Philip Machin”-the name provoked a huge cheer-“while Nobleman,” the man went on when there was silence, “was bred by Mister Roger Collis. You may place your wagers, gentlemen and ladies, and I do bids you all good fortune.”

  A boy climbed to Sharpe’s bench, wanting to take his money, but Sharpe waved the lad away. Jem Hocking had appeared on a lower bench now and the wagers were being carried to his clerk. Another man, as thin as the ringmaster, threaded his way up the crowded benches to sit beside Sharpe. He looked about thirty, had hooded eyes, long hair and a flamboyant red handkerchief knotted about his skinny neck. He slid a knife from inside a boot and began cleaning his fingernails. “Lumpy wants to know who the hell you are, Colonel,” he said.

  “Who’s Lumpy?” Sharpe asked.

  “Him.” The thin man nodded at the ringmaster.

  “Beaky’s son?”

  The man gave Sharpe a very suspicious look. “How would you know that, Colonel?”

  “Because he looks like Beaky,” Sharpe said, “and you’re Dan Pierce. Your mother lived in Shadwell and she only had one leg, but that never stopped her whoring, did it?” The knife was suddenly just beneath Sharpe’s ribs, its point pricking his skin. Sharpe turned and looked at Pierce. “You’d kill an old friend, Dan?”

  Pierce stared at Sharpe. “You’re not... “ he began, then checked. The knife was still in Sharpe’s side. “No,” Pierce said, not trusting his suspicions.

  Sharpe grinned. “You and me, Dan? We used to run errands for Beaky.” He turned and looked at the ring where the dog and the bitch were being paraded. The bitch was excited, straining at the leash as she was led about the ring. “She looks lively,” Sharpe said.

  “A lovely little killer,” Pierce declared, “quick as a fish, she is.”

  “But too lively,” Sharpe said. “She’ll waste effort.”

  “You’re Dick Sharpe, aren’t you?” The knife vanished.

  “Jem doesn’t know who I am,” Sharpe said, “and I want it to stay that way.”

  “I’ll not tell the bastard. Is it really you?”

  Sharpe nodded.

  “An officer?”

  Sharpe nodded again.

  Pierce laughed. “Bloody hell. England’s run out of gentlemen?”

  Sharpe smiled. “That’s about it, Dan. Have you got money on the bitch?”

  “The dog,” Pierce said. “He’s good and steady.” He stared at Sharpe. “You really are Dick Sharpe.”

  “I really am,” Sharpe said, though it had been twenty years since he had last been in this rat pit. Beaky Malone had always prophesied that Sharpe would end up on the gallows, but somehow he had survived. He had run from London, gone to Yorkshire, murdered, joined the army to escape the law and there found a home. He had been promoted until, one hot day on a dusty battlefield in India, he had become an officer. Sharpe had come from this gutter and earned the King’s commission and now he was going back. The army did not want him, so he would say goodbye to the army, but first he needed money.

  He watched as the timekeeper held up a great turnip watch. A coin had been tossed and the bitch was to fight first. The dog was lifted out of the ring and two cages were handed across the planks. A small boy unlatched the cages, tipped them, then vaulted the planks.

  Thirty-six rats scuttled about the sand.

  “Are you up and ready?” the ringmaster shouted. The crowd cheered.

  “Five seconds!” the timekeeper, a drunken schoolmaster, called, then peered at his watch. “Now!”

  The bitch was released and Sharpe and Pierce leaned forward. The bitch was good. The first two rats died before the others even realized a predator was among them. She nipped them by the neck, shook them vigorously and dropped them promptly, but then her excitement overtook her and she wasted valuable seconds snapping at three or four rats in turn. “Shake them!” her owner bawled, his voice lost in the crowd’s cheers. She ran into a knot of the rats and started working again, ignoring the beasts that attacked her, but then she would not let go of a large black victim.

  “Drop it! Dead ‘un!” her owner screamed. “Drop it! Drop it, you bastard bitch! It’s a dead ‘un!”

  “She’s too young,” Pierce said. “I told Phil to give her another six months. Let her practice, I said, but he wouldn’t listen. Cloth ears, that’s his problem.” He stared at Sharpe. “I can’t believe it. Dick Sharpe a bloody jack pudding.” He meant officer, for a jack pudding was a motley fool from the fairground, a clown dressed in fake finery and with donkey’s ears pinned to his hair. “Hocking didn’t recognize you?”

  “I don’t want him to either.”

  “I won’t tell the bastard,” Pierce said, then settled back to watch the bitch hunt the last few rats. The sand was speckled with fresh blood. A few of the rats were merely crippled and those who had wagered on the bitch were shouting at her to finish them off. “I thought when I first saw her,” Pierce said, “that she’d hunt like her mother did. Christ, but that bitch was a cold-hearted killer. But this one’s too young. She’ll get better.” He watched her kill a rat that had been particularly elusive. She shook it hard, spraying blood onto the customers closest to the barrier. “It ain’t the teeth that kills ‘em,” Pierce said, “but the shaking.”

  “I know.”

  “Course you do, ‘course you do.” Pierce watched as the boy climbed into the ring and shoved the bloodied rats into a sack. “Lumpy’s still trying to sell the corpses,” he said. “You’d think someone would want to eat them. Nothing wrong with rat pie, especially if you don’t know what it is. But he can’t sell ‘em.” He looked down at Jem Hocking. “Is there to be trouble?”

  “Would you mind?”

  Pierce picked at a tooth with a long fingernail. “No,” he said curtly, “and Lumpy will be pleased. He wants to run the book here, but Hocking won’t let him.”

  “Won’t let him?”

  “Hocking owns the place now,” Pierce said. “He owns every house in the street, the bastard.” Two more cages had been tipped into the arena and the new rats, black and slick, scampered about the ring as a roar from the crowd greeted the dog. It was held above the skittering sand for a second, then dropped and began to fight. It went about its business efficiently an
d Pierce grinned. “Jem’s going to lose his shirt on this one.”

  The bitch had been good and quick, but the dog was old and experienced. It killed swiftly and the crowd’s cheers got louder. Most, it seemed, had bet on the dog and the pleasure of winning was doubled by the knowledge that Jem Hocking was about to lose. Except that Jem Hocking was not a man to lose. The dog had killed about twenty of the rats when suddenly a spectator on the front bench leaned forward and vomited over the barrier and the dog immediately ran to gobble up the half-digested meat pie. The owner screamed at it, the crowd jeered and Hocking’s face showed nothing.

  “Bastard,” Pierce said.

  “Old trick that,” Sharpe said, leaning back. He fingered his saber’s hilt. He did not like the weapon’s curved blade which was too light to do real damage, but it was the official weapon of Rifle officers. He would have preferred one of the basket-hilted broadswords that the Scots carried into battle, but regulations were regulations and the greenjackets had insisted he equip himself properly. A sword or saber, they said, was merely decorative and an officer who was forced to use one in battle had already failed so it did not matter that the light cavalry saber was unhandy, but Sharpe had used enough swords in battle and he had never failed. Go into a breach, he had told Colonel Beckwith, and you’ll be glad enough of a butchering sword, but the Colonel had shaken his head. “It is not the business of Rifle officers to be in the breach,” he had said. “Our job is to be outside, killing from a distance. That is why we have rifles, not muskets.” Not that any of it mattered to Sharpe now. He would make his money, resign his commission, sell the saber and forget the Rifles.

  Lumpy closed the entertainment by announcing that the next evening would be a mixture of cockfighting and badger-baiting. They would be Essex badgers, he boasted, as though Essex gave the animals special fighting skills, though in truth it was simply the closest source to Wapping. The crowd streamed out and Sharpe went back to the storeroom. Dan Pierce went with him. “I wouldn’t stay, Dan,” Sharpe said. “Likely to be trouble.”

  “Trouble for you, Dick,” Pierce tried to warn his old friend. “He’s never on his own.”

  “I’ll be all right. You can buy me an ale afterward.”

  Pierce left and Sharpe went into the stinking room. The badgers were all in wire cages stacked against one wall while the rest of the room was occupied by a table on which a dim oil lamp burned, and by an incongruous bed that was plump with sheets, blankets and pillows. Lumpy’s girls, the ones who sold gin and hot pies, used the room for their other business, but it would suit Sharpe perfectly. He put his pack and greatcoat on the table, then unsheathed the saber which he placed on the badger cages with the hilt toward him. The beasts, pungent and sullen, stirred behind their wire.

  He waited, listening to the sounds fading in the shed. A year ago he had been living in a house with eight rooms that he and Grace had rented close to Shorncliffe. He had fitted in with the battalion well enough then, for Grace had charmed the other officers, but why should he have ever thought it could last? It had been like a dream. Except Grace’s brothers and their lawyers kept intruding on the dream, demanding she leave Sharpe, even offering her money if she did the decent thing, and other lawyers had tied up her dead husband’s will in a tangle of words, delay and obfuscation. Get her out of your head, he told himself, but she would not leave and when the footsteps sounded outside the storeroom Sharpe’s sight was blurred with tears. He brushed his eyes as the door opened.

  Jem Hocking came in with the girl, leaving the door ajar with the two young men just outside. The child was thin, frightened, red-haired and pale. She glanced at Sharpe then began to cry silently. “This is Emily,” Jem Hocking said, tugging the girl’s hand. “The nice man wants to play games with you, ain’t that right, Major?”

  Sharpe nodded. The anger he was feeling was so huge that he did not trust himself to speak.

  “I don’t want her hurt bad,” Hocking said. He had a face the color of beefsteak and a nose erupting with broken veins. “I want her back in one piece. Now, Major, the money?” He patted the satchel that was hanging from his shoulder. “Ten pounds.”

  “In the pack,” Sharpe said, nodding at the table, “just open the top flap.” Hocking turned to the table and Sharpe edged the door closed with his shoulder as he moved to Emily’s side. He picked her up and placed her on the bed, then whipped the blanket up over her head. She cried aloud as she was smothered in woollen darkness and Hocking turned as Sharpe pulled the saber off the cage tops. Hocking opened his mouth, but the blade was already against his throat. “Not a word,” Sharpe said. He shot the door bolt. “All your money, Jem. Put the satchel on the table and empty your pockets into it.”

  Jem Hocking, despite the saber at his throat, did not look alarmed. “You’re mad,” he said calmly.

  “Money, Jem, on the table.”

  Jem Hocking shook his head in puzzlement. This was his kingdom and it did not seem possible that anyone would dare challenge him. He took a deep breath, plainly intending to call for help, but the saber’s tip was suddenly hard in the flesh of his neck, drawing a trickle of blood.

  “On the table, Jem,” Sharpe said, the softness of his voice belying the anger in his soul.

  Hocking still did not obey. He frowned instead. “Do I know you?”

  “No,” Sharpe said.

  “You ain’t getting a penny of mine, son,” Hocking said.

  Sharpe twisted the blade. Hocking stepped back, but Sharpe kept the saber in his neck. He had only broken Hocking’s skin, nothing more, but he pushed a little harder and twisted again. “Money,” he said, “on the table.”

  “Daft as a pudding, boy,” Hocking said. “You ain’t going anywhere, not now. I’ve got lads out there and they’ll cut you into tatters.”

  “Money,” Sharpe said, and reinforced the demand by whipping the saber’s tip twice across Hocking’s face to leave long thin cuts in his cheeks and nose. Hocking looked astonished. He touched a finger to his cheek and seemed not to believe the blood he saw.

  There was a knock on the door. “Mister Hocking?” a voice called.

  “We’re just settling the money,” Sharpe shouted, “aren’t we, Jem? On the table or I’ll bloody fillet you.”

  “You ain’t an officer, are you? You dress up, don’t you, but you picked the wrong man this time, son.”

  “I’m an officer,” Sharpe said, and drew blood from Hocking’s neck. “A real officer,” he added. “Now empty your pockets.”

  Hocking dropped the satchel on the table, then thrust a hand into his greatcoat pocket. Sharpe waited to hear the chink of coins, but there was no such sound and so, as Hocking brought his hand out of the pocket, Sharpe slashed down hard with the saber. He slit the ball of Hocking’s thumb, then slashed the blade again and Hocking, who had been drawing a small pistol from his coat pocket, let the weapon go to clutch at his wounded fingers. The pistol fell to the floor.

  “Empty your damned pockets,” Sharpe said.

  Hocking hesitated, wondering whether to call for help, but there was an implacability about Sharpe that suggested he had best humor him. He flinched as he used his wounded right hand to pull coins from his pocket. The door rattled as someone tried the latch. “Wait!” Sharpe called. He saw gold coins among the silver and copper. “Keep going, Jem,” he said.

  “You’re a dead man,” Hocking grumbled, but found more cash that he piled on the table. “That’s all,” he said.

  “Back against the cages, you bastard,” Sharpe said and prodded Hocking toward the badgers. Then, still holding the saber in his right hand, Sharpe forced handfuls of the coins into the satchel. He could not look closely at the money, for he needed to watch Hocking, but he reckoned there was at least eighteen or nineteen pounds there.

  The click saved Sharpe. It came from behind him and he recognized the sound of a pistol being cocked and he stepped to one side and risked a quick glance to see that there was a hole in the wooden wall. Lumpy’s peephole,
no doubt, and one of the young men outside must have seen what was happening and Sharpe stepped to the bed just as a pistol flamed through the hole to mist the room with smoke. Emily screamed from beneath her blanket and Jem Hocking snatched a badger cage and hurled it at Sharpe.

  The cage bounced heavily off Sharpe’s shoulder. Hocking was scrabbling for the pistol when Sharpe kicked him in the face, then slashed the saber across his head. Hocking sprawled by the table. Sharpe snatched up the small pistol and fired it at the wall beside the peephole. The timber splintered, but no shout sounded on the far side. Then he knelt on Hocking’s belly and held the saber against the big man’s throat. “You do know me,” Sharpe said. “You bloody do know me.”

  He had not intended to reveal his name. He had told himself he would rob Hocking, but now, smelling the gun smoke, he knew he had always wanted to kill the bastard. No, he had wanted more. He had wanted to see Hocking’s face when the man learned that one of his children had come back, but come back as a jack pudding. Sharpe smiled, and for the first time there was fear on Hocking’s face. “I really am an officer, Jem, and my name’s Sharpe. Dick Sharpe.” He saw the disbelief on Hocking’s face. Disbelief, astonishment and fear. That was reward enough. Hocking stared, wide-eyed, recognizing Sharpe and, at the same time, unable to comprehend that one of his boys was now an officer. Then the incomprehension turned to terror for he understood that the boy wanted revenge. “You bastard,” Sharpe said, “you goddamned piece of shit.” The anger was livid now. “Remember whipping me?” he asked. “Whipping me till the blood ran? I remember, Jem. That’s why I came back.”

  “Listen, lad.”

  “Don’t you bloody lad me,” Sharpe said. “I’m grown now, Jem. I’m a soldier, Jem, an officer, and I’ve learned to kill.”

  “No!”

  “Yes,” Sharpe said, and the bitterness was unassuageable now, drenching him, consuming him, and the years of pain and misery were driving his right arm as he sawed the blade hard and fast across Hocking’s throat. Hocking’s last shout was abruptly cut short as a fountain of blood sprang up. The big man heaved, but Sharpe was snarling and still slicing down with the blade, cutting through muscle and gullet and a flood of blood until the steel juddered against the bone. Hocking’s breath bubbled at his opened neck as Sharpe stood and stabbed the saber down so hard that the blade flexed as its tip drove into the back of Hocking’s skull. “One in the eye, Jem,” Sharpe snarled, “you bastard.” The door shook as the men outside tried to force the bolt from its seating. Sharpe kicked the door. “We ain’t done,” he shouted.