Gallows Thief

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘You obviously didn’t like her?’ Sandman observed.

  Lord Christopher blushed again. ‘I hardly knew her,’ he said uncomfortably, ‘but what was there to like? The woman had no religion, few manners and scarce any education.’

  ‘Did your father – does your father,’ Sandman amended himself, ‘care for such things as religion, manners or education?’

  Lord Christopher frowned as though he did not understand the question, then nodded. ‘You have understood him precisely,’ he said. ‘My father cares nothing for God, for letters or for courtesy. He hates me, Sandman, and do you know why? Because the estate is entailed onto me. His own father did that, his very own father!’ Lord Christopher tapped the table to emphasise his point. Sandman said nothing, but he understood that an entailed estate implied a great insult to the present Earl of Avebury for it meant that his father, Lord Christopher’s grandfather, had so mistrusted his own son that he had made certain he could not inherit the family fortune. Instead it was placed in the hands of trustees and, though the present earl could live off the estate’s income, the capital and the land and investments would all be held in trust until he died, when they would pass to Lord Christopher. ‘He hates me,’ Lord Christopher went on, ‘not only because of the entail, but because I have expressed a wish to take holy orders.’

  ‘A wish?’ Sandman asked.

  ‘It is not a step to b-be taken lightly,’ Lord Christopher said sternly.

  ‘Indeed not,’ Sandman said.

  ‘And my father knows that when he dies and the family fortune passes to me that it will be used in God’s service. That annoys him.’

  The conversation, Sandman thought, had passed a long way from Lord Christopher’s assertion that his father had committed the murder. ‘It is, I understand,’ he said carefully, ‘a considerable fortune?’

  ‘Very considerable,’ Lord Christopher said evenly.

  Sandman leant back. Gales of laughter gusted about the taproom which was crowded now, though folk instinctively avoided the booth where Sandman and Lord Christopher talked so earnestly. Lord Alexander was staring with doglike devotion at Sally, oblivious of the other men trying to catch her attention. Sandman looked back to the diminutive Lord Christopher. ‘Your stepmother,’ he said, ‘had a considerable household in Mount Street. What happened to those servants?’

  Lord Christopher blinked rapidly as if the question surprised him. ‘I have no conception.’

  ‘Would they have gone to your father’s estate?’

  ‘They might.’ Lord Christopher sounded dubious. ‘Why do you ask?’

  Sandman shrugged, as if the questions he was asking were of no great importance, though the truth was that he disliked Lord Christopher and he also knew that dislike was as irrational and unfair as his distaste for Charles Corday. Lord Christopher, like Corday, lacked what, for want of a better word, Sandman thought of as manliness. He doubted that Lord Christopher was a pixie, as Sally would put it, indeed the glances he kept throwing towards Sally suggested the opposite, but there was a petulant weakness in him. Sandman could imagine this small, learned man as a clergyman obsessed with his congregation’s pettiest sins, and his distaste for Lord Christopher meant he had no wish to prolong this conversation so instead of admitting to Meg’s existence he just said that he would like to discover from the servants what had happened on the day of the Countess’s murder.

  ‘If they’re loyal to my father,’ Lord Christopher said, ‘they will tell you nothing.’

  ‘Why should that loyalty make them dumb?’

  ‘Because he killed her!’ Lord Christopher cried too loudly, and immediately blushed when he saw he had attracted the attention of folk at other tables. ‘Or at least he c-caused her to be killed. He has gout, he no longer walks far, but he has men who are loyal to him, men who do his bidding, evil men.’ He shuddered. ‘You must tell the Home Secretary that Corday is innocent.’

  ‘I doubt it will make any difference if I do,’ Sandman said.

  ‘No? Why? In God’s name, why?’

  ‘Lord Sidmouth takes the view that Corday has already been found guilty,’ Sandman explained, ‘so to change that verdict I need either to produce the true murderer, with a confession, or else adduce proof of Corday’s innocence that is incontrovertible. Opinion, alas, does not suffice.’

  Lord Christopher gazed at Sandman in silence for a few heartbeats. ‘You must?’

  ‘Of course I must.’

  ‘Dear God!’ Lord Christopher seemed astonished and leant back, looking faint. ‘So you have five days to find the real killer?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘So the boy is doomed, is he not?’

  Sandman feared Corday was doomed, but he would not admit it. Not yet. For there were still five days left to find the truth and thus to steal a soul from Newgate’s scaffold.

  At half past four in the morning a pair of lamps glimmered feebly from the windows of the yard of the George Inn. Dawn was touching the roofs with a wan gleam. A caped coachman yawned hugely, then flicked his whip at a snarling terrier that slunk out of the way of the massive coachhouse doors that were dragged open to reveal a gleaming dark-blue mail coach. The vehicle, bright with new varnish and with its doors, windows, harness pole and splinter bar picked out in scarlet, was manhandled onto the yard’s cobbles where a boy lit its two oil lanterns and a half-dozen men heaved the mail bags into its boot. The eight horses, high-stepping and frisky, their breath misting the night air, were led from the stables. The two coachmen, both in the Royal Mail’s blue and red livery and both armed with blunderbusses and pistols, locked the boot and then watched as the team was harnessed. ‘One minute!’ a voice shouted, and Sandman drank the scalding coffee that the inn had provided for the mail’s passengers. The lead coachman yawned again, then clambered up to the box. ‘All aboard!’

  There were four passengers. Sandman and a middle-aged clergyman took the front seat with their backs to the horses, while an elderly couple sat opposite them and so close that their knees could not help touching Sandman’s. Mail coaches were light and cramped, but twice as fast as the larger stage coaches. There was a squeal of hinges as the inn yard’s gates were dragged open, then the carriage swayed as the coachmen whipped the team out into Tothill Street. The sound of the thirty-two hooves echoed sharp from houses and the wheels cracked and rumbled as the coach gathered speed, but Sandman was fast asleep again by the time it reached Knightsbridge.

  He woke at about six o’clock to find the coach was rattling along at a fine pace, swaying and lurching through a landscape of small fields and scattered coverts. The clergyman had a notebook on his lap, half-moon spectacles on his nose and a watch in his hand. He was peering through the windows on either side, searching for milestones, and saw that Sandman had woken.

  ‘A fraction over nine miles an hour!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Indeed!’ Another milestone passed and the clergyman began working out sums on the page of his notebook. ‘Ten and carry three, that’s half again, minus sixteen, carry two. Well, I never! Certainly nine and a quarter! I once travelled at an average velocity of eleven miles an hour, but that was in eighteen-o-four and it was a very dry summer. Very dry, and the roads were smooth—’ the coach hit a rut and lurched violently, throwing the clergyman against Sandman’s shoulder –‘very smooth indeed,’ he said, then peered through the window again. The elderly man clutched a valise to his chest and looked terrified, as though Sandman or the clergyman might prove to be a thief, though in truth highwaymen like Sally’s brother were a much greater danger. Not this morning, though, for Sandman saw that two robin redbreasts were riding escort. The redbreasts were the Horse Patrol, all retired cavalrymen who, uniformed in blue coats over red waistcoats and armed with pistols and sabres, guarded the roads close to London. The two patrolmen kept the coach company until it clattered through a village and there the pair peeled away towards a tavern where, despite the early hour, a couple of men in long smocks
were already sitting in the porch and drinking ale.

  Sandman gazed fixedly out of the window, revelling in being out of London. The air seemed so remarkably clean. There was no pervading stench of coal smoke and horse dung, just the morning sunlight on summer leaves and the sparkle of a stream twisting beneath willows and alders beside a field of grazing cattle who looked up as the coachman sounded the horn. They were still close to London and the landscape was flat, but well drained. Good hunting country, Sandman thought, and imagined pursuing a fox beside this road. He felt his dream horse gather itself and leap a hedge, heard the huntsman’s horn and the hounds giving tongue.

  ‘Going far?’ The clergyman interrupted his reverie.

  ‘Marlborough.’

  ‘Fine town, fine town.’ The clergyman, an archdeacon, had abandoned his computations about the coach’s speed and now rambled on about visiting his sister in Hungerford. Sandman made polite responses, but still kept looking out of the window. The fields were near harvest and the heads of rye, barley and wheat were heavy. The land was becoming hillier now, but the rattling, swaying and jolting coach kept up its fine pace and spewed a tail of dust that whitened the hedgerows. The horn warned folk of its approach and children waved as the eight horses thundered past. A blacksmith, leather apron blackened by fire, stood in his doorway. A woman shook her fist when her flock of geese scattered from the coach’s noise, a child whirled a rattle in a vain attempt to drive predatory jays from rows of pea plants, then the sound of the trace chains and hooves and clattering wheels was echoing back from the seemingly endless wall of a great estate.

  The Earl of Avebury, Sandman decided, would probably live in just such a walled estate, a great swathe of aristocratic country cut off by bricks, gamekeepers and watchmen. Suppose the Earl refused to see him? His lordship was said to be a recluse and the further west Sandman went the more he feared he would be summarily ejected from the estate, but that was a risk he would have to take. He forgot his fears as the coach lurched into a street of modern brick houses, the horn sounded urgently and Sandman realised they had come to the village of Reading where the coach swung into an inn yard to find the new horses waiting.

  ‘Less than two minutes, gentlemen!’ The two coachmen swung down from their box and, because the day was getting warmer, took off their triple-caped coats. ‘Less than two minutes and we don’t wait for laggards, milords.’

  Sandman and the archdeacon had a companionable piss in the corner of the inn yard, then they each gulped down a cup of lukewarm tea as the new horses were harnessed and the old team, white with sweat, were led to the water trough. A sack of mail had been pulled from the boot and another took its place before the two coachmen scrambled up to their leather-cushioned perch. ‘Time, gentlemen! Time!’

  ‘One minute and forty-five seconds!’ a man called from the inn door. ‘Well done, Josh! Well done, Tim!’

  The horn sounded, the fresh horses pricked back their ears and Sandman slammed the coach door and was thrown into the rear seat as the vehicle lurched forward. The elderly couple had left the coach, their place taken by a middle-aged woman who, within a mile, was vomiting from the offside window. ‘You must forgive me,’ she gasped.

  ‘It is a motion mighty like a ship, ma’am,’ the archdeacon observed, and took a silver flask from his pocket. ‘Brandy might help?’

  ‘Oh, Lord above!’ the woman wailed in horrified refusal, then craned and retched through the window again.

  ‘The springs are soft,’ the archdeacon pointed out.

  ‘And the road’s very bumpy,’ Sandman added.

  ‘Especially at eight and a half miles an hour.’ The archdeacon was busy with watch and pencil again, struggling gainfully to make legible figures despite the jolting. ‘It always takes time to settle a new team and speed, which we lack, smooths a road.’

  Sandman’s spirits rose as each mile passed. He was happy, he suddenly realised, but quite why, he was not sure. Perhaps, he thought, it was because his life had purpose again, a serious purpose, or perhaps it was because he had seen Eleanor and nothing about her demeanour, he had decided, betrayed an imminent marriage to Lord Eagleton.

  Lord Alexander Pleydell had hinted as much the previous evening, most of which he had spent worshipping at Sally Hood’s shrine, though Sally herself had seemed distracted by her memories of Sergeant Berrigan. Not that Lord Alexander had noticed. He, like Lord Christopher Carne, was struck dumb by Sally, so dumb that for most of the evening the two aristocrats had merely gaped at her, sometimes stammering a commonplace until at last Sandman had taken Lord Alexander into the back parlour. ‘I want to talk to you,’ he had said.

  ‘I want to continue my conversation with Miss Hood,’ Lord Alexander had complained pettishly, worried that his friend Kit was being given untrammelled access to Sally.

  ‘And so you shall,’ Sandman assured him, ‘but talk to me first. What do you know about the Marquess of Skavadale?’

  ‘Heir to the Dukedom of Ripon,’ Lord Alexander had said immediately, ‘from one of the old Catholic families of England. Not a clever man, and it’s rumoured the family has monetary troubles. They were once very rich, exceedingly so, with estates in Cumberland, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Hertfordshire, Kent and Sussex, but father and son are both gamblers so the rumours may well be true. He was a reasonable bat at Eton, but can’t bowl. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Lord Robin Holloway?’

  ‘Youngest son of the Marquess of Bleasby and a thoroughly nasty boy who takes after his father. Has plenty of money, no brains and he killed a man in a duel last year. No cricketer, I fear.’

  ‘Did he fight the duel with swords or pistols?’

  ‘Swords, as it happened. It was fought in France. Are you going to make enquiries about the whole of the aristocracy?’

  ‘Lord Eagleton?’

  ‘A fop, but a useful left hand batsman who sometimes plays for Viscount Barchester’s team, but is otherwise utterly undistinguished. A bore indeed, despite being a passable cricketer.’

  ‘The sort of man who might appeal to Eleanor?’

  Alexander stared at Sandman in astonishment. ‘Don’t be absurd, Rider,’ he said, lighting another pipe. ‘She wouldn’t stand him for two minutes!’ He frowned as if trying to remember something, but whatever it was did not come to mind.

  ‘Your friend Lord Christopher,’ Sandman had said, ‘is convinced his father committed the murder.’

  ‘Or had someone else commit it,’ Alexander said. ‘It seems likely. Kit sought me out when he heard you were investigating the matter and I applaud him for doing so. He, like me, is avid that no injustice should occur next Monday. Now, do you think I might go back to my conversation with Miss Hood?’

  ‘Tell me what you know about the Seraphim Club first.’

  ‘I have never heard of it, but it sounds like an association of high-minded clergymen.’

  ‘It isn’t, believe me. Is there any significance in the word seraphim?’

  Lord Alexander had sighed. ‘The seraphim, Rider, are reckoned to be the highest order of angels. The credulous believe there to be nine such orders; seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels and, at the very bottom, mere common angels. This is not, I hasten to assure you, the creed of the Church of England. The word seraphim is thought to derive from a Hebrew word meaning serpent, the association is obscure yet suggestive. In the singular it is a seraph, a glorious creature that has a bite like fire. It is also believed that the seraphim are the patrons of love. Why they should be such I have no idea, but so it is said, just as it is claimed that the cherubim are patrons of knowledge. I momentarily forget what the other orders do. Have I satisfied your curiosity or do you wish this lecture to continue?’

  ‘The seraphim are angels of love and poison?’

  ‘A crude, but apt summary,’ Lord Alexander had said grandly, then insisted they go back to the taproom where he had again been struck dumb by Sally’s presence. He stayed till past midnight,
became drunk and verbose, then left with Lord Christopher, who had drunk little and had to support his friend, who staggered from the Wheatsheaf declaring his undying love for Sally in a voice slurred by brandy.

  Sally had frowned as Lord Alexander’s coach had left. ‘Why did he call me stupid?’

  ‘He didn’t,’ Sandman had said, ‘he just said you were the stupor mundi, the wonder of the world.’

  ‘Bloody hell, what’s the matter with him?’

  ‘He’s frightened of your beauty,’ Sandman had said, and she had liked that and Sandman had gone to bed wondering how he would ever wake in time to catch the mail coach, yet here he was, rattling through as glorious a summer’s day as any a man could dream of.

  The road ran alongside a canal and Sandman admired the narrow painted barges that were hauled by great horses with ribboned manes and brass-hung harnesses. A child bowled a hoop along the towpath, ducks paddled, God was in His heaven and it took a keen eye to see that all was not quite as well as it looked. The thatch of many roofs was threadbare and in every village there were two or three cottages that had collapsed and were now overgrown with bindweed. There were too many tramps on the roads, too many beggars by the churchyards, and Sandman knew a good number of them had been redcoats, riflemen or sailors. There was hardship here, hardship among plenty, the hardship of rising prices and too few jobs, and hidden behind the cottages and the ancient churches and the heavy elm trees were parish workhouses that were filled with refugees from the bread riots that had flared in England’s bigger cities, yet still it was all so heartbreakingly beautiful. The foxgloves made thickets of scarlet beneath the pink roses in the hedgerows. Sandman could not take his eyes from the view. He had not been in London a full month, yet already it seemed too long.

  At noon the coach swung across a stone bridge and clattered up a brief hill into the great wide main street of Marlborough, with its twin churches and capacious inns. A small crowd was waiting for the mail and Sandman pushed through the folk and out under the tavern’s arch. A carrier’s cart was plodding eastwards and Sandman asked the man where he might find the Earl of Avebury’s estate. Carne Manor was not far, the carrier said, just over the river and up the hill and on the edge of Savernake. A half-hour’s walk, he thought, and Sandman, hunger gnawing at his belly, walked south towards the deep trees of Savernake Forest.