Gallows Thief

by Bernard Cornwell

  The beggar scrambled away from Sandman’s temper and just then the green door opened and a black pageboy of thirteen or fourteen recoiled from Sandman’s savage face. He must have thought the face meant trouble for he tried to close the door, but Sandman managed to put his boot in the way. Behind the boy was a short elegant hallway, then a narrow staircase. ‘Is this Sir George Phillips’s studio?’ Sandman asked.

  The pageboy, who was wearing a shabby livery and a wig in desperate need of powdering, heaved on the door, but could not prevail against Sandman’s much greater strength. ‘If you ain’t got an appointment,’ the boy said, ‘then you ain’t welcome.’

  ‘I have got an appointment.’

  ‘You have?’ The surprised boy let go of the door, making Sandman stumble as it suddenly swung open. ‘You have?’ the boy asked again.

  ‘I have an appointment,’ Sandman said grandly, ‘from Viscount Sidmouth.’

  ‘Who is it, Sammy?’ a voice boomed from upstairs.

  ‘He says he’s from Viscount Sidmouth.’

  ‘Then let him up! Let him up! We are not too proud to paint politicians. We just charge the bastards more.’

  ‘Take your coat, sir?’ Sammy asked, giving Sandman a perfunctory bow.

  ‘I’ll keep it.’ Sandman edged into the hallway which was tiny, but nevertheless decorated in a fashionable striped wallpaper and hung with a small chandelier. Sir George’s rich patrons were to be welcomed by a liveried page and a carpeted entrance, but as Sandman climbed the stairs the elegance was tainted by the reek of turpentine and the room at the top, which was supposed to be as elegant as the hallway, had been conquered by untidiness. The room was a salon where Sir George could show his finished paintings and entice would-be subjects to pay for their portraits, but it had become a dumping place for half-finished work, for palettes of crusted paint, for an abandoned game pie that had mould on its pastry, for old brushes, rags and a pile of men’s and women’s clothes. A second flight of stairs went to the top floor and Sammy indicated that Sandman should go on up. ‘You want coffee, sir?’ he asked, going to a curtained doorway that evidently hid a kitchen. ‘Or tea?’

  ‘Tea would be kind.’

  The ceiling had been knocked out of the top floor to open the long room to the rafters of the attic, then skylights had been put in the roof so that Sandman seemed to be climbing into the light. Rain pattered on the tiles and enough dripped through to need catchment buckets that had been placed all about the studio. A black pot-bellied stove dominated the room’s centre, though now it did nothing except serve as a table for a bottle of wine and a glass. Next to the stove an easel supported a massive canvas while a naval officer posed with a sailor and a woman on a platform at the farther end. The woman screamed when Sandman appeared, then snatched up a drab cloth that covered a tea chest on which the naval officer was sitting.

  It was Sally Hood. Sandman, his wet hat in his right hand, bowed to her. She was holding a trident and wearing a brass helmet and very little else. Actually, Sandman realised, she was wearing nothing else, though her hips and thighs were mostly screened by an oval wooden shield on which a union flag had been hastily drawn in charcoal. She was, Sandman realised, Britannia. ‘You are feasting your eyes,’ the man beside the easel said, ‘on Miss Hood’s tits. And why not? As tits go, they are splendid, quintessence of bubby.’

  ‘Captain,’ Sally acknowledged Sandman in a small voice.

  ‘Your servant, Miss Hood,’ Sandman said, bowing again.

  ‘Good Lord Almighty!’ the painter said. ‘Have you come to see me or Sally?’ He was an enormous man, fat as a hogshead, with great jowls, a bloated nose and a belly that distended a paint-smeared shirt decorated with ruffles. His white hair was bound by a tight cap of the kind that used to be worn beneath wigs.

  ‘Sir George?’ Sandman asked.

  ‘At your service, sir.’ Sir George attempted a bow, but was so fat he could only manage a slight bend at what passed for his waist, but he made a pretty gesture with the brush in his hand, sweeping it as though it were a folded fan. ‘You are welcome,’ he said, ‘so long as you seek a commission. I charge eight hundred guineas for a full length, six hundred from the waist up, and I don’t do heads unless I’m starving and I ain’t been starving since ’ninety-nine. Viscount Sidmouth sent you?’

  ‘He doesn’t wish to be painted, Sir George.’

  ‘Then you can bugger off!’ the painter said. Sandman ignored the suggestion, instead looking about the studio which was a riot of plaster statues, curtains, discarded rags and half-finished canvases. ‘Oh, make yourself at home here, do,’ Sir George snarled, then shouted down the stairs. ‘Sammy, you black bastard, where’s the tea?’

  ‘Brewing!’ Sammy called back.

  ‘Hurry it!’ Sir George threw down his palette and brush. Two youths were flanking him, both painting waves on the canvas and Sandman guessed they were his apprentices. The canvas itself was vast, at least ten feet wide, and it showed a solitary rock in a sunlit sea on which a half-painted fleet was afloat. An admiral was seated on the rock’s summit where he was flanked by a good-looking young man dressed as a sailor and by Sally Hood undressed as Britannia. Quite why the admiral, the sailor and the goddess should have been so marooned on their isolated rock was not clear and Sandman did not like to ask, but then he noticed that the officer who was posing as the admiral could not have been a day over eighteen yet he was wearing a gold-encrusted uniform on which shone two jewelled stars. That puzzled Sandman for a heartbeat, then he saw that the boy’s empty right sleeve was pinned to his coat’s breast. ‘The real Nelson is dead,’ Sir George had been following Sandman’s eyes and thus deducing his train of thought, ‘so we make do as best we can with young Master Corbett there, and do you know what is the tragedy of young Master Corbett’s life? It is that his back is turned to Britannia, thus he must sit there for hours every day in the knowledge that one of the ripest pairs of naked tits in all London are just two feet behind his left ear and he can’t see them. Ha! And for God’s sake, Sally, stop hiding.’

  ‘You ain’t painting,’ Sally said, ‘so I can cover up.’ She had dropped the grey cloth that turned the tea chest into a rock and was instead wearing her street coat.

  Sir George picked up his brush. ‘I’m painting now,’ he snarled.

  ‘I’m cold,’ Sally complained.

  ‘Too grand suddenly to show us your bubbies, are you?’ Sir George snarled, then looked at Sandman. ‘Has she told you about her lord? The one who’s sweet on her? We’ll soon all be bowing and scraping to her, won’t we? Yes, your ladyship, show us your tits, your ladyship.’ He laughed, and the apprentices all grinned.

  ‘She hasn’t lied to you,’ Sandman said. ‘His lordship exists, I know him, he is indeed enamoured of Miss Hood, and he is very rich. More than rich enough to commission a dozen portraits from you, Sir George.’

  Sally gave him a look of pure gratitude while Sir George, discomfited, dabbed the brush into the paint on his palette. ‘So who the devil are you?’ he demanded of Sandman. ‘Besides being an envoy of Sidmouth’s?’

  ‘My name is Captain Rider Sandman.’

  ‘Navy, army, fencibles, yeomanry or is the captaincy a fiction? Most ranks are these days.’

  ‘I was in the army,’ Sandman said.

  ‘You can uncover,’ Sir George explained to Sally, ‘because the captain was a soldier which means he’s seen more tits than I have.’

  ‘He ain’t seen mine,’ Sally said, clutching the coat to her bosom.

  ‘How do you know her?’ Sir George asked Sandman in a suspicious tone.

  ‘We lodge in the same tavern, Sir George.’

  Sir George snorted. ‘Then either she lives higher in the world than she deserves, or you live lower. Drop the coat, you stupid bitch.’

  ‘I’m embarrassed,’ Sally confessed, reddening.

  ‘He’s seen worse than you naked,’ Sir George commented sourly, then stepped back to survey his painting. ‘“The Apotheosis
of Lord Nelson”, would you believe? And you are wondering, are you not, why I don’t have the little bugger in an eyepatch? Are you not wondering that?’

  ‘No,’ Sandman said.

  ‘Because he never wore an eyepatch, that’s why. Never! I painted him twice from life. He sometimes wore a green eyeshade, but never a patch, so he won’t have one in this masterpiece commissioned by their Lordships of the Admiralty. They couldn’t stand the little bugger when he was alive, now they want him up on their wall. But what they really want to suspend on their panelling, Captain Sandman, is Sally Hood’s tits. Sammy, you black bastard! What in God’s name are you bloody doing down there? Growing the bloody tea leaves? Bring me some brandy!’ He glared at Sandman. ‘So what do you want of me, Captain?’

  ‘To talk about Charles Corday.’

  ‘Oh, Good Christ alive,’ Sir George blasphemed, and stared belligerently at Sandman. ‘Charles Corday?’ He said the name very portentously. ‘You mean grubby little Charlie Cruttwell?’

  ‘Who now calls himself Corday, yes.’

  ‘Doesn’t bloody matter what he calls himself,’ Sir George said, ‘they’re still going to stretch his skinny neck next Monday. I thought I might go and watch. It ain’t every day a man sees one of his own apprentices hanged, more’s the pity.’ He cuffed one of the youths who was laboriously painting in the white-flecked waves, then scowled at his three models. ‘Sally, for God’s sake, your tits are my money. Now, pose as you’re paid to!’

  Sandman courteously turned his back as she dropped the coat. ‘The Home Secretary,’ he said, ‘has asked me to investigate Corday’s case.’

  Sir George laughed. ‘His mother’s been bleating to the Queen, is that it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lucky little Charlie that he has such a mother. You want to know whether he did it?’

  ‘He tells me he didn’t.’

  ‘Of course he tells you that,’ Sir George said scornfully. ‘He’s hardly likely to offer you a confession, is he? But oddly enough he’s probably telling the truth. At least about the rape.’

  ‘He didn’t rape her?’

  ‘He might have done,’ Sir George was making delicate little dabs with the brush which were magically bringing Sally’s face alive under the helmet. ‘He might have done, but it would have been against his nature.’ Sir George gave Sandman a sly glance. ‘Our Monsieur Corday, Captain, is a sodomite.’ He laughed at Sandman’s expression. ‘They’ll hang you for being one of those, so it don’t make much difference to Charlie whether he’s guilty or innocent of murder, do it? He’s certainly guilty of sodomy so he thoroughly deserves to hang. They all do. Nasty little buggers. I’d hang them all and not by the neck either.’

  Sammy, minus his livery coat and wig, brought up a tray on which were some ill-assorted cups, a pot of tea and a bottle of brandy. The boy poured tea for Sir George and Sandman, but only Sir George received a glass of brandy. ‘You’ll get your tea in a minute,’ Sir George told his three models, ‘when I’m ready.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sandman asked him.

  ‘About them getting their tea? Or about Charlie being a sodomite? Of course I’m bloody sure. You could unpeel Sally and a dozen like her right down to the raw and he wouldn’t bother to look, but he was always trying to get his paws on young Sammy here, wasn’t he, Sammy?’

  ‘I told him to fake away off,’ Sammy said.

  ‘Good for you, Samuel!’ Sir George said. He put down his brush and gulped the brandy. ‘And you are wondering, Captain, are you not, why I would allow a filthy sodomite into this temple of art? I shall tell you. Because Charlie was good. Oh, he was good.’ He poured more brandy, drank half of it, then returned to the canvas. ‘He drew beautifully, Captain, drew like the young Raphael. He was a joy to watch. He had the gift, which is more than I can say for this pair of butcher boys.’ He cuffed the second apprentice. ‘No, Charlie was good. He could paint as well as draw, which meant I could trust him with flesh, not just draperies. In another year or two he’d have been off on his own. The picture of the Countess? It’s there if you want to see how good he was.’ He gestured to some unframed canvases that were stacked against a table that was littered with jars, paste, knives, pestles and oil flasks. ‘Find it, Barney,’ Sir George ordered one of his apprentices. ‘It’s all his work, Captain,’ Sir George went on, ‘because it ain’t got to the point where it needs my talent.’

  ‘He couldn’t have finished it himself?’ Sandman asked. He sipped the tea, which was an excellent blend of gunpowder and green.

  Sir George laughed. ‘What did he tell you, Captain? No, let me guess. Charlie told you that I wasn’t up to it, didn’t he? He said I was drunk, so he had to paint her ladyship. Is that what he told you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sandman admitted.

  Sir George was amused. ‘The lying little bastard. He deserves to hang for that.’

  ‘So why did you let him paint the Countess?’

  ‘Think about it,’ Sir George said. ‘Sally, shoulders back, head up, nipples out, that’s my girl. You’re Britannia, you rule the bleeding waves, you’re not some bloody Brighton whore drooping on a boulder.’

  ‘Why?’ Sandman persisted.

  ‘Because, Captain,’ Sir George paused to make a stroke with the brush, ‘because we were gammoning the lady. We were painting her in a frock, but once the canvas got back here we were going to make her naked. That’s what the Earl wanted and that’s what Charlie would have done. But when a man asks a painter to depict his wife naked, and a remarkable number do, then you can be certain that the resulting portrait will not be displayed. Does a man hang such a painting in his morning room for the titillation of his friends? He does not. Does he show it in his London house for the edification of society? He does not. He hangs it in his dressing room or in his study where none but himself can see it. And what use is that to me? If I paint a picture, Captain, I want all London gaping at it. I want them queueing up those stairs begging me to paint one just like it for themselves and that means there ain’t no money in society tits. I paint the profitable pictures, Charlie was taking care of the boudoir portraits.’ He stepped back and frowned at the young man posing as a sailor. ‘You’re holding that oar all wrong, Johnny. Maybe I should have you naked. As Neptune.’ He turned and leered at Sandman. ‘Why didn’t I think of that before? You’d make a good Neptune, Captain. Fine figure you’ve got. You could oblige me by stripping naked and standing opposite Sally? We’ll give you a triton shell to hold, erect. I’ve got a triton shell somewhere, I used it for the Apotheosis of the Earl St Vincent.’

  ‘What do you pay?’ Sandman asked.

  ‘Five shillings a day.’ Sir George had been surprised by the response.

  ‘You don’t pay me that!’ Sally protested.

  ‘Because you’re a bloody woman!’ Sir George snapped, then looked at Sandman. ‘Well?’

  ‘No,’ Sandman said, then went very still. The apprentice had been turning over the canvases and Sandman now stopped him. ‘Let me see that one,’ he said, pointing to a full-length portrait.

  The apprentice pulled it from the stack and propped it on a chair so that the light from a skylight fell on the canvas, which showed a young woman sitting at a table with her head cocked in what was almost but not quite a belligerent fashion. Her right hand was resting on a pile of books while her left held an hourglass. Her red hair was piled high to reveal a long and slender neck that was circled by sapphires. She was wearing a dress of silver and blue with white lace at the neck and wrists. Her eyes stared boldly out of the canvas and added to the suggestion of belligerence, which was softened by the mere suspicion that she was about to smile.

  ‘Now that,’ Sir George said reverently, ‘is a very clever young lady. And be careful with it, Barney, it’s going for varnishing this afternoon. You like it, Captain?’

  ‘It’s—’ Sandman paused, wanting a word that would flatter Sir George, ‘it’s wonderful,’ he said lamely.

  ‘It is indeed,’ Sir G
eorge said enthusiastically, stepping away from Nelson’s half-finished apotheosis to admire the young woman whose red hair was brushed away from a forehead that was high and broad, whose nose was straight and long and whose mouth was generous and wide, and who had been painted in a lavish sitting room beneath a wall of ancestral portraits which suggested she came from a family of great antiquity, though in truth her father was the son of an apothecary and her mother a parson’s daughter who was considered to have married beneath herself. ‘Miss Eleanor Forrest,’ Sir George said. ‘Her nose is too long, her chin too sharp, her eyes more widely spaced than convention would allow to be beautiful, her hair is lamentably red and her mouth is too lavish, yet the effect is extraordinary, is it not?’

  ‘It is,’ Sandman said fervently.

  ‘Yet of all the young woman’s attributes,’ Sir George had entirely dropped his bantering manner and was speaking with real warmth, ‘it is her intelligence I most admire. I fear she is to be wasted in marriage.’

  ‘She is?’ Sandman had to struggle to keep his voice from betraying his feelings.

  ‘The last I heard,’ Sir George returned to Nelson, ‘she was spoken of as the future Lady Eagleton. Indeed I believe the portrait is a gift for him, yet Miss Eleanor is much too clever to be married to a fool like Eagleton.’ Sir George snorted. ‘Wasted.’

  ‘Eagleton?’ Sandman felt as though a cold hand had gripped his heart. Had that been the import of the message Lord Alexander had forgotten? That Eleanor was engaged to Lord Eagleton?

  ‘Lord Eagleton, heir to the Earl of Bridport and a bore. A bore, Captain, a bore and I detest bores. Is Sally Hood really to be a lady? Good God incarnate, England has gone to the weasels. Stick ’em out, darling, they ain’t noble yet and they’re what the Admiralty is paying for. Barney, find the Countess.’

  The apprentice hunted on through the canvases. The wind gusted, making the rafters creak. Sammy emptied two of the buckets into which rain was leaking, chucking them out of the back window and provoking a roar of protest from below. Sandman stared out of the front windows, looking past the awning of Gray’s jewellery shop into Sackville Street. Was Eleanor really to marry? He had not seen her in over six months and it was very possible. Her mother, at least, was in a hurry to have Eleanor walk to an altar, preferably an aristocratic altar, for Eleanor was twenty-five now and would soon be reckoned a shelved spinster. Damn it, Sandman thought, but forget her. ‘This is it, sir.’ Barney, the apprentice, interrupted his thoughts. He propped an unfinished portrait over Eleanor’s picture. ‘The Countess of Avebury, sir.’