Gallows Thief

by Bernard Cornwell

  He was hot. He had been carrying his coat, a garment that was not needed on this warm day though he had been grateful for it when he left the Wheatsheaf at dawn. He asked for more directions in a hamlet and was sent down a long lane that twisted between beech woods until he came to Carne Manor’s great brick wall, which he followed until he reached a lodge and a pair of cast iron gates hung from stone pillars surmounted with carved griffins. A gravel drive, thick with weeds, led from the locked gates. A bell hung by the lodge, but though Sandman tolled it a dozen times no one answered. Nor could he see anyone inside the estate. Either side of the drive was parkland, a sward of grass dotted by fine elms, beeches and oaks, but no cattle or deer grazed the grass that grew lank and was thick with cornflowers and poppies. Sandman gave the bell a last forlorn tug and, when its sound had faded into the warm afternoon, he stepped back and looked at the spikes on top of the gates. They looked formidable, so he went back up the lane until he came to a place where an elm, growing too close to the wall, had buckled the bricks. The tree’s proximity to the wall made it easy to climb. He paused a second on the mortared coping, then dropped down into the park. The grass was long enough to conceal a spring trap set against poachers and so he moved carefully until he reached the gravel drive and then turned towards the house that was hidden beyond some woods growing along the crest of a low hill.

  He walked slowly, half expecting a gamekeeper or some other servant to intercept him, but he saw no one as he followed the drive through a fine stand of beeches in the centre of which was an overgrown glade surrounding a mossy statue of a naked woman hoisting a biblical water jar onto her shoulder. Sandman walked on and, from the far side of the beeches, he could at last see Carne Manor a half-mile away. It was a fine stone building with a façade of three high gables on which ivy grew about mullioned windows. Stables, coach houses and a brick-walled kitchen garden lay to the west, while behind the house were terraced lawns dropping to a placid stream. He walked on down the long drive. It suddenly seemed a futile expedition, futile and expensive, for the Earl’s reputation as a recluse suggested that Sandman would most likely be greeted with a horsewhip.

  The sound of his steps seemed extraordinarily loud as he crossed the great sweep of gravel where carriages could turn in front of the house, though the weeds, grass and moss growing so thick among the stones suggested that few coaches ever did. Sandman climbed the entrance steps. Two glazed lanterns were mounted either side of the porch, though one had a glass pane missing and a bird’s nest was smothering its candle holder. He hauled on the bell chain and, when he heard no sound, pulled again and waited. The wooden door had gone grey with age and was stained with rust that had leaked from its decorative metal studs. Bees drifted into the shallow porch. A young cuckoo, looking uncannily like a hawk, flew across the drive. The afternoon was warm and Sandman wished he could abandon this search for a reclusive earl and just go down by the stream and sleep in the shade of some great tree.

  Then a harsh banging to his right made Sandman step back to see that a man was trying to open a leaded window in the room closest to the porch. The window was evidently jammed, for the man struck it so hard that Sandman was certain the leaded lights would smash, but then it jarred open and the man leant out. He was in late middle age, had a very pale face and unkempt hair, which suggested he had just woken from a deep sleep. ‘The house,’ he said testily, ‘is not open to visitors.’

  ‘I hadn’t supposed it was,’ Sandman said, though it had occurred to him to ask the housekeeper, if such a person had answered the door, for a view of the public rooms. Most great houses allowed such visits, but plainly the Earl of Avebury did not extend the courtesy. ‘Are you his lordship?’ he asked.

  ‘Do I look like him?’ the man answered in an irritated tone.

  ‘I have business with his lordship,’ Sandman explained.

  ‘Business? Business?’ The man spoke as though he had never heard of such a thing, and then a look of alarm crossed his pale features. ‘Are you a lawyer?’

  ‘It is delicate business,’ Sandman said emphatically, suggesting it was none of the servant’s, ‘and my name,’ he added, ‘is Captain Sandman.’ It was a mere courtesy to provide his name and a reproof because he had not been asked for it.

  The man gazed at him for a heartbeat, then retreated inside. Sandman waited. The bees buzzed by the ivy and house martins swerved above the weed-strewn gravel, but the servant did not return and Sandman, piqued, hauled on the bell-pull again.

  A window on the other side of the porch was forced open and the same servant appeared there. ‘A captain of what?’ he demanded peremptorily.

  ‘The 52nd Foot,’ Sandman answered, and the servant vanished for a second time.

  ‘His lordship wishes to know,’ the servant reappeared at the first window, ‘whether you were with the 52nd at Waterloo.’

  ‘I was,’ Sandman said.

  The servant went back inside, there was another pause and then Sandman heard bolts being shot on the far side of the door, which eventually creaked open, and the servant offered a sketchy bow. ‘We don’t get visitors,’ he said. ‘Your coat and hat, sir? Sandman, you said?’

  ‘Captain Sandman.’

  ‘Of the 52nd Foot indeed, sir, this way, sir.’

  The front door opened onto a hall panelled in a dark wood where a fine white-painted stairway twisted upwards beneath portraits of heavily jowled men in ruffs. The servant led Sandman down a passageway into a long gallery lined by tall velvet-curtained windows on one side and great paintings on the other. Sandman had expected the house to be as dirty as the grounds were unkempt, but it was all swept and the rooms smelt of wax polish. The paintings, so far as he could see in the curtained gloom, were exceptionally fine. Italian, he thought, and showing gods and goddesses disporting in vineyards and on dizzying mountainsides. Satyrs pursued naked nymphs and it took Sandman a moment or two to realise that all the paintings showed nudes: a gallery of feminine, abundant and generous flesh. He had a sudden memory of some of his soldiers gaping at just such a painting that had been captured from the French at the battle of Vitoria. The canvas, cut from its frame, had been purloined by a Spanish muleteer to use as a waterproof tarpaulin and the redcoats had bought it from him for tuppence, hoping to use it as a groundsheet. Sandman had purchased it from its new owners for a pound and sent it to headquarters, where it was identified as one of the many masterpieces looted from the Escorial, the King of Spain’s palace.

  ‘This way, sir,’ the servant interrupted his reverie. The man opened a door and announced Sandman who was suddenly dazzled, for the room into which he had been ushered was vast and its windows that faced south and west were uncurtained and the sun was streaming in to illuminate a huge table. For a few seconds Sandman could not understand the table for it was green and lumpy and smothered in scraps that he thought at first were flowers or petals, then his eyes adjusted to the sunlight and he saw that the coloured scraps were model soldiers. They were thousands of toy soldiers on a table covered in green baize that had been draped across some kind of blocks so that it resembled the valley in which the battle of Waterloo had been fought. He gaped at it, astonished by the size of the model which was at least thirty feet long and twenty deep. Two girls sat at a side table with brushes and paint, which they applied to lead soldiers. Then a squeaking noise made him look into the dazzle by a south window, where he saw the Earl.

  His lordship was in a wheeled chair like those Sandman’s mother had liked to use in Bath when she was feeling particularly poorly, and the squeak had been the sound of the ungreased axles turning as a servant pushed the Earl towards his visitor.

  The Earl was dressed in the old fashion that had prevailed before men had adopted sober black or dark blue. His coat was of flowered silk, red and blue, with enormously wide cuffs and a lavish collar over which fell a cascade of lace. He wore a full-bottomed wig that framed an ancient, lined face that was incongruously powdered, rouged and decorated with a velvet beauty spot on
one sunken cheek. He had not been properly shaved, and patches of white stubble showed in the folds of his skin. ‘You are wondering,’ he addressed Sandman in a shrill voice, ‘how the models are inserted onto the centre of the table, are you not?’

  The question had not even occurred to Sandman, but now he did find it puzzling, for the table was far too big for its centre to be reached from the sides, and if a person were to walk across the model then they would inevitably crush the little trees that were made from sponge or else they would disarrange the serried ranks of painted soldiers. ‘How is it done, my lord?’ Sandman asked. He did not mind calling the Earl ‘my lord’ for he was an old man and it was a mere courtesy that youth owed to age.

  ‘Betty, dearest, show him,’ the earl commanded, and one of the two girls dropped her paintbrush and disappeared beneath the table. There was a scuffling sound, then a whole section of the valley rose into the air to become a wide hat for the grinning Betty. ‘It is a model of Waterloo,’ the Earl said proudly.

  ‘So I see, my lord.’

  ‘Maddox tells me you were in the 52nd. Show me where they were positioned.’

  Sandman walked about the table’s edge and pointed to one of the red-coated battalions on the ridge above the Chateau of Hougoumont. ‘We were there, my lord,’ he said. The model really was extraordinary. It showed the two armies at the beginning of the fight, before the ranks had been bloodied and thinned and before Hougoumont had burnt to a black shell. Sandman could even make out his own company on the 52nd’s flank, and assumed that the little mounted figure just ahead of the painted ranks was meant to be himself. That was an odd thought.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’ the Earl demanded.

  ‘No reason, my lord,’ Sandman looked at the model again, ‘except that I wasn’t on horseback that day.’

  ‘Which company?’

  ‘Grenadier.’

  The Earl nodded. ‘I shall replace you with a foot soldier,’ he said. His chair squealed as he pursued Sandman about the table. His lordship had blue-gartered silk stockings, though one of his feet was heavily bandaged. ‘So tell me,’ the Earl demanded, ‘did Bonaparte lose the battle by delaying the start?’

  ‘No,’ Sandman said curtly.

  The Earl signalled the servant to stop pushing the chair. He was close to Sandman now and could stare up at him with red-rimmed eyes that were dark and bitter. The Earl was much older than Sandman had expected. Sandman knew the Countess had still been young when she died, and she had been beautiful enough to be painted naked, yet her husband looked ancient despite the wig, the cosmetics and the lace frills. He stank, too; a reek of stale powder, unwashed clothes and sweat. ‘Who the devil are you?’ the Earl growled.

  ‘I have come from Viscount Sidmouth, my lord, and …’

  ‘Sidmouth?’ the Earl interrupted. ‘I don’t know a Viscount Sidmouth. Who the devil is the Viscount Sidmouth?’

  ‘The Home Secretary, my lord.’ That information prompted no reaction at all, so Sandman explained further. ‘He was Henry Addington, my lord, and was once the Prime Minister? Now he is Home Secretary.’

  ‘Not a real lord then, eh?’ the Earl declared. ‘Not an aristocrat! Have you noticed how the damned politicians make themselves into peers? Like turning a toilet into a fountain, ha! Viscount Sidmouth? He’s no gentleman. A bloody politician is all he is! A trumped-up liar! A cheat! I assume he is first viscount?’

  ‘I am sure he is, my lord,’ Sandman said.

  ‘Ha! A back-alley aristo, eh? A piece of God-damn slime! A well-dressed thief! I’m the sixteenth earl.’

  ‘Your family amazes us all, my lord,’ Sandman said, with an irony that was utterly wasted on the Earl, ‘but however new his ennoblement, I still come with the viscount’s authority.’ He produced the Home Secretary’s letter, which was waved away. ‘I have heard, my lord,’ Sandman went on, ‘that the servants from your town house in Mount Row are now here?’ He had heard nothing of the sort, but perhaps the bald statement would elicit agreement from the Earl. ‘If that’s so, my lord, then I would like to talk with one of them.’

  The Earl shifted in the chair. ‘Are you suggesting,’ he asked in a dangerous voice, ‘that Blucher might have come sooner had Bonaparte attacked earlier?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘Then if he’d attacked earlier he’d have won!’ the Earl insisted.

  Sandman looked at the model. It was impressive, comprehensive and all wrong. It was too clean for a start. Even in the morning, before the French attacked, everyone was filthy because, on the previous day, most of the army had slogged back from Quatre Bras through quagmires of mud and then they had spent the night in the open under successive cloudbursts. Sandman remembered the thunder and the lightning whiplashing the far ridge and the terror when some cavalry horses broke free in the night and galloped among the sodden troops.

  ‘So why did Bonaparte lose?’ the Earl demanded querulously.

  ‘Because he allowed his cavalry to fight unsupported by foot or artillery,’ Sandman said shortly. ‘And might I ask your lordship what happened to the servants from the house in Mount Street?’

  ‘So why did he commit his cavalry when he did, eh? Tell me that?’

  ‘It was a mistake, my lord, even the best generals make them. Did the servants come back here?’

  The Earl petulantly slapped the wicker arms of his chair. ‘Bonaparte didn’t make futile mistakes! The man might be scum, but he’s clever scum. So why?’

  Sandman sighed. ‘Our line had been thinned, we were on the reverse slope of the hill and it must have seemed, from their side of the valley, that we were beaten.’

  ‘Beaten?’ The Earl leapt on that word.

  ‘I doubt we were even visible,’ Sandman said. ‘The Duke had ordered the men to lie down so, from the French viewpoint, it must have looked as if we just vanished. The French saw an empty ridge, they doubtless saw our wounded retreating into the forest behind, and they must have thought we were all retreating, so they charged. My lord, tell me what happened to your wife’s servants.’

  ‘Wife? I don’t have a wife. Maddox!’

  ‘My lord?’ The servant who had let Sandman into the house stepped forward.

  ‘The cold chicken, I think, and some champagne,’ the Earl demanded, then scowled at Sandman. ‘Were you wounded?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘So you were there when the Imperial Guard attacked?’

  ‘I was there, my lord, from the guns that signalled the first French assault to the very last shot of the day.’

  The Earl seemed to shudder. ‘I hate the French,’ he said suddenly. ‘I detest them. A race of dancing-masters, and we brought glory on ourselves at Waterloo, Captain, glory!’

  Sandman wondered what glory came from defeating dancing-masters, but said nothing. He had met other men like the Earl, men who were obsessed by Waterloo and who wanted to know every remembered minute of the battle, men who could not hear enough tales from that awful day, and all of those men, Sandman knew, had one thing in common: none had been there. Yet they revered that day, thinking it the supreme moment of their lives and of Britain’s history. Indeed, for some it seemed as though history itself had come to its end on June 18th, 1815, and that the world would never again see a rivalry to match that of Britain and France. That rivalry had given meaning to a whole generation, it had burnt the globe, matching fleets and armies in Asia, America and Europe, and now it was all gone and there was only dullness in its place and, for the Earl of Avebury, as for so many others, that dullness could only be driven away by reliving the rivalry. ‘So tell me,’ the Earl said, ‘how many times the French cavalry charged.’

  ‘Did you bring the servants from Mount Street to this house?’ Sandman asked.

  ‘Servants? Mount Street? You’re drivelling. Were you at the battle?’

  ‘All day, my lord. And all I wish to know from you, my lord, is whether a maid called Meg came here from London.’

  ‘How the devil would I know
what happened to that bitch’s servants, eh? And why would you ask?’

  ‘A man is in prison, my lord, awaiting execution for the murder of your wife, and there is good reason to believe him innocent. That is why I am here.’

  The Earl gazed up at Sandman, then began to laugh. The laugh came from deep in his narrow chest and it racked him, dredged up phlegm that half choked him, brought tears to his eyes and left him gasping. He fumbled a handkerchief from his lace-frilled sleeve and wiped his eyes, then spat into it. ‘She wronged a man at the very end, did she?’ he asked in a hoarse voice. ‘Oh, she was good, my Celia, she was so very good at being bad.’ He hawked another gobbet of spittle into the handkerchief, then glowered at Sandman. ‘So, how many battalions of Napoleon’s Guard climbed the hill?’

  ‘Not enough, my lord. What happened to your wife’s servants?’

  The Earl ignored Sandman because the cold chicken and champagne had been placed on the edge of the model table. He summoned Betty to cut up the chicken and, as she did so, he put an arm round her waist. She seemed to shudder slightly as he first touched her, but then tolerated the caresses.

  The Earl, a length of spittle hanging from his wattled jaw, turned his red, rheumy eyes on Sandman. ‘I have always liked women young,’ he said, ‘young and tender. You!’ This was to the other girl. ‘Pour the champagne, child.’ The girl stood on his other side and the Earl put a hand under her skirt while she poured the champagne. He still stared defiantly at Sandman. ‘Young flesh,’ he growled, ‘young and soft.’ His servants gazed at the panelled walls and Sandman turned away to look out of the window at two men scything the lawn while a third raked up the clippings. Two herons flew above the distant stream.