Gallows Thief

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘They worked together in the theatre,’ Corday said.

  ‘Worked together? Meg was an actress?’ Sandman sounded astonished.

  ‘No, she was a dresser.’ Corday looked down at the portrait and seemed embarrassed. ‘She was more than a dresser, I think.’

  ‘More than?’

  ‘A procuress,’ Corday said, looking up at Sandman.

  ‘How do you know?’

  The painter shrugged. ‘It’s strange how people will talk when you’re making their portrait. They forget you’re even there. You just become part of the furniture. So the Countess and Meg talked, I listened.’

  ‘Did you know,’ Sandman asked, ‘that the Earl didn’t commission the portrait?’

  ‘He didn’t?’ That was plainly news to Corday. ‘Sir George said he did.’

  Sandman shook his head. ‘It was commissioned by the Seraphim Club. Have you heard of it?’

  ‘I’ve heard of it,’ Corday said, ‘but I’ve never been there.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t know why they commissioned the portrait?’

  ‘How would I know that?’ Corday asked.

  Berrigan had come to stand at Sandman’s shoulder. He grimaced at the sight of Meg’s portrait and Sandman turned the drawing so Berrigan could get an even better look. ‘Did you ever see her?’ he asked, wondering if the girl had ever been taken to the Seraphim Club, but Berrigan shook his head.

  Sandman looked back to Corday. ‘There is a chance,’ he said, ‘that we shall find her.’

  ‘How great a chance?’ Corday’s eyes were glistening.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sandman said. He saw the hope fade in Corday’s eyes. ‘Do you have ink here?’ he asked. ‘A pen?’

  Corday had both and Sandman tore one of the big pieces of drawing paper in half, dipped the steel nib in the ink, let it drain and began to write. ‘Dear Witherspoon,’ he began, ‘the bearer of this letter, Sergeant Samuel Berrigan, is a companion of mine. He served in the First Foot Guards and I trust him absolutely.’ Sandman was not certain those last four words were entirely true, but he had little choice now but to assume Berrigan was trustworthy. He dipped the nib into the ink again, conscious that Corday was reading the words from across the table. ‘The regrettable possibility occurs that I might need to communicate with his lordship on Sunday next and, in the presumption that his lordship will not be at the Home Office on that day, I beg you to tell me where he might be found. I apologise for prevailing upon your time, and assure you I do it only because I may have matters of the gravest urgency to report.’ Sandman read the letter over, subscribed it, and blew on the ink to dry it. ‘He won’t like that,’ he said to no one in particular, then folded the letter and stood.

  ‘Captain!’ Corday, his eyes full of tears, appealed to Sandman.

  Sandman knew what the boy wanted to hear, but he could not offer him any kind of assurance. ‘I am doing my best,’ he said lamely, ‘but I can promise you nothing.’

  ‘You’re going to be all right, Charlie,’ the bearded West Countryman consoled Corday and Sandman, who could add nothing more helpful, thrust the portrait inside his coat and led Berrigan back to the prison entrance.

  The Sergeant shook his head in apparent wonder when they reached the Lodge. ‘You didn’t tell me he was a bloody pixie!’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘It would be nice to think we was making an effort for a proper man,’ Berrigan growled.

  ‘He’s a very good painter.’

  ‘So’s my brother.’

  ‘He is?’

  ‘He’s a house-painter, Captain. Gutters, doors and windows. And he ain’t a pixie like that little worm.’

  Sandman opened the prison’s outer door and shuddered at the sight of the pelting rain. ‘I don’t much like Corday either,’ he confessed, ‘but he’s an innocent man, Sergeant, and he doesn’t deserve the rope.’

  ‘Most of those who hang don’t.’

  ‘Maybe. But Corday’s ours, pixie or not.’ He gave Berrigan the folded letter. ‘Home Office. You ask to see a man called Sebastian Witherspoon, give him that, then meet me at Gunter’s in Berkeley Square.’

  ‘And all for a bloody pixie, eh?’ Berrigan asked, then he thrust the letter into a pocket and, with a grimace at the rain, dashed out into the traffic. Sandman, limping painfully, followed more slowly.

  He feared that the rain might have persuaded Eleanor and her mother to abandon their expedition, but he walked to Berkeley Square anyway and was soaked by the time he arrived at the door of Gunter’s. A footman stood under the shelter of the shop’s awning and looked askance at Sandman’s shabby coat, then opened the door reluctantly as if to give Sandman time to reflect on whether he really wanted to go inside.

  The front of the shop was made of two wide windows behind which were gilded counters, spindly chairs, tall mirrors and spreading chandeliers that had been lit because the day was so gloomy. A dozen women were shopping for Gunter’s famous confections; chocolates, meringue sculptures and delicacies of spun-sugar, marzipan and crystallised fruit. The conversation stopped as Sandman entered and the women stared at him as he dripped on the tiled floor, then they began talking again as he made his way to the large room at the back where a score of tables were set beneath the wide skylights of stained glass. Eleanor was not at any of the half-dozen occupied tables, so Sandman hung his coat and hat on a bentwood stand and took a chair at the back of the room where he was half hidden by a pillar. He ordered coffee and a copy of the Morning Chronicle.

  He idly read the newspaper. There had been more rick-burnings in Sussex, a bread riot in Newcastle, and three mills burnt and their machines broken in Derbyshire. The militia had been summoned to keep the peace in Manchester, where flour had been selling at four shillings and ninepence a stone. The magistrates in Lancashire were calling on the Home Secretary to suspend habeas corpus as a means of restoring order. Sandman looked at his watch and saw that Eleanor was already ten minutes late. He sipped the coffee and felt uncomfortable because the chair and table were too small, making him feel as though he were perched in a school room. He looked back to the newspaper. A river had flooded in Prussia and it was feared there were at least a hundred drowned. The whale ship Lydia out of Whitehaven was reported lost with all hands off the Grand Banks. The East Indiaman Calliope had arrived in the Pool of London with a cargo of porcelain, ginger, indigo and nutmegs. A riot at the Covent Garden Theatre had left heads and bones broken, but no serious casualties. Reports that a shot had been fired in the theatre were being denied by the managers. There was the click of footsteps, a wafting of perfume and a sudden shadow fell across his newspaper. ‘You look gloomy, Rider,’ Eleanor’s voice said.

  ‘There is no good news,’ he said, standing. He looked at her and felt his heart miss a beat, so that he could scarcely speak. ‘There is really no good news anywhere in all the world,’ he managed to say.

  ‘Then we must make some,’ Eleanor said, ‘you and I.’ She handed an umbrella and her damp coat to one of the waitresses, then stepped close to Sandman and planted a kiss on his cheek. ‘I think I am yet angry with you,’ she said softly, still standing close.

  ‘With me?’

  ‘For coming to London and not telling me.’

  ‘Our engagement is broken, remember?’

  ‘Oh, I had quite forgotten,’ she said acidly, then glanced at the other tables. ‘I’m causing scandal, Rider, by being seen alone with a damp man.’ She kissed him again, then stood back so he could pull out a chair for her. ‘So let them have their scandal, and I shall have one of Gunter’s vanilla ices with the powdered chocolate and crushed almonds. So will you.’

  ‘I’m content with coffee.’

  ‘Nonsense, you will have what is put in front of you. You look too thin.’ She sat and peeled off her gloves. Her red hair was drawn up into a small black hat decorated with tiny jet beads and a modest plume. Her dress was a muted dark brown with a barely distinguishable flower pattern worked in black threads and
was high-collared, modest, almost plain, and decorated with only one small jet brooch, yet somehow she looked more alluring than the scantily clad dancing girls who had scattered when Sandman leapt down onto the stage the night before. ‘Mother is being measured for a new corset,’ Eleanor said, pretending to be oblivious of his inspection, ‘so she will be at least two hours. She believes I am at Massingberds, choosing a hat. My maid Lizzie is chaperoning me, but I’ve bribed her with two shillings and she’s gone to see the pig-headed woman at the Lyceum.’

  ‘Pig-headed? As in obstinate?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Rider, I trust all women are obstinate. This one is pig-headed as in ugly. She snuffles her food from a trough, we’re told, and has stiff pink whiskers. It sounds a very unlikely beast, but Lizzie was enchanted at the prospect and I was quite tempted to go myself, but I’m here instead. Did I see you limping?’

  ‘I sprained an ankle yesterday,’ he said, then had to tell the whole story which, of course, enchanted Eleanor.

  ‘I’m jealous,’ she said when he had finished. ‘My life is so dull! I don’t jump onto stages pursued by footpads! I am exceedingly jealous.’

  ‘But you have news?’ Sandman asked.

  ‘I think so. Yes, definitely.’ Eleanor turned to the waitress and ordered tea, the vanilla confection with the chocolate and almonds and, as an afterthought, brandy snaps. ‘They have an ice house out the back,’ she told Sandman when the girl had gone, ‘and I asked to see it a few weeks ago. It’s like a cellar with a dome and every winter they bring the ice down from Scotland packed in sawdust and it stays solid all summer. There was a frozen rat between two of the blocks and they were very embarrassed about it.’

  ‘I should think they would be.’ Sandman was suddenly acutely aware of his own shabbiness, of the frayed cuffs of his coat and the broken stitching at the top of his boots. They had been good boots, too, from Kennets of Silver Street, but even the best boots needed care. Merely staying respectably dressed needed at least an hour a day, and Sandman did not have that hour.

  ‘I tried to persuade Father to build an ice house,’ Eleanor said, ‘but he just went grumpy and complained about the expense. He’s having one of his economy drives at the moment, so I told him I’d save him the cost of a society wedding.’

  Sandman gazed into her grey-green eyes, wondering what message was being sent by her apparent glibness. ‘Was he pleased?’

  ‘He just muttered to me how prudence was one of the virtues. He was embarrassed by the offer, I think.’

  ‘How would you save him the expense? By remaining a spinster?’

  ‘By eloping,’ Eleanor said, her gaze very steady.

  ‘With Lord Eagleton?’

  Eleanor’s laugh filled the big space of Gunter’s back room, causing a momentary hush at the other tables. ‘Eagleton’s such a bore!’ Eleanor said much too loudly. ‘Mama was very keen I should marry him, because then, in due course, I would be her ladyship and Mama would be unbearable. Don’t tell me you thought I was betrothed to him?’

  ‘I heard that you were. I was told your portrait was a gift for him.’

  ‘Mother said we should give it to him, but Father wants it for himself. Mother just wants me to marry a title, she doesn’t mind what or who it is, and Lord Eagleton wants to marry me, which is tedious because I can’t abide him. He sniffs before he talks.’ She gave a small sniff. ‘Dear Eleanor, sniff, how charming you look, sniff. I can see the moon reflected in your eyes, sniff.’

  Sandman kept a straight face. ‘I never told you I saw the moon reflected in your eyes. I fear that was remiss of me.’

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing. They had always been able to laugh since the very first day they had met, when Sandman was newly home after being wounded at Salamanca and Eleanor was just twenty and determined not to be impressed by a soldier, but the soldier had made her laugh and still could, just as she could amuse him.

  ‘I think,’ Eleanor said, ‘that Eagleton spent a week rehearsing the words about the moon, but he spoilt it by sniffing. Really, Rider, talking to Eagleton is like conversing with an asthmatic lap dog. Mama and he seem to believe that if they wish it long enough then I will surrender to his sniffs, and I gathered a rumour of our betrothal had been bruited about so I deliberately told Alexander to inform you I was not going to marry the noble sniffer. Now I find Alexander never told you?’

  ‘I fear not.’

  ‘But I told him distinctly!’ Eleanor said indignantly. ‘I met him at the Egyptian Hall.’

  ‘He told me that much,’ Sandman said, ‘but he quite forgot any message you might have sent. He’d even forgotten why he had gone to the Egyptian Hall.’

  ‘For a lecture by a man called Professor Popkin on the newly discovered location of the Garden of Eden. He wants us to believe that paradise is to be found at the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers. He informed us that he once ate a very fine apple there.’

  ‘That sounds like proof positive,’ Sandman said gravely, ‘and did he become wise after eating the fruit?’

  ‘He became erudite, learned, sagacious and clever,’ Eleanor said, and Sandman saw there were tears in her eyes. ‘And,’ she went on, ‘he encouraged us to uproot ourselves and follow him to this new world of milk, honey and apples. Would you like to go there, Rider?’

  ‘With you?’

  ‘We could live naked by the rivers,’ Eleanor said, as a tear escaped to trickle down her cheek, ‘innocent as babes and avoiding serpents.’ She could not go on and lowered her face so he could not see her tears. ‘I’m so very sorry, Rider,’ she said quietly.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I should never have let Mama persuade me to break off the engagement. She said your family’s disgrace was too absolute, but that’s nonsense.’

  ‘The disgrace is dire,’ Sandman admitted.

  ‘That was your father. Not you!’

  ‘I sometimes think I am very like my father,’ Sandman said.

  ‘Then he was a better man than I realised,’ Eleanor said fiercely, then dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. The waitress brought their ices and brandy snaps and, thinking that Eleanor had been upset by something Sandman had said, gave him a reproachful look. Eleanor waited for the girl to move away. ‘I hate crying,’ she said.

  ‘You do it rarely,’ Sandman said.

  ‘I have been weeping like a fountain these six months,’ Eleanor said, then looked up at him. ‘Last night I told Mama I consider myself betrothed to you.’

  ‘I’m honoured.’

  ‘You’re supposed to say it is mutual.’

  Sandman half smiled. ‘I would like it to be, truly.’

  ‘Father won’t mind,’ Eleanor said, ‘at least I don’t think he will mind.’

  ‘But your mother will?’

  ‘She does! When I told her my feelings last night she insisted I ought to visit Doctor Harriman. Have you heard of him? Of course you haven’t. He is an expert, Mama tells me, in feminine hysteria and it is considered a great honour to be examined by him. But I don’t need him! I’m not hysterical, I am merely, inconveniently, in love with you, and if your damned father had not killed himself then you and I would be married by now. I do envy men.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They can swear and no one lifts an eyebrow.’

  ‘Swear, my dear,’ Sandman said.

  Eleanor did, then laughed. ‘That felt very good. Oh dear, one day we shall be married and I shall swear too much and you will get bored with me.’ She sniffed, then sighed as she tasted the ice. ‘That is real paradise,’ she said, prodding the ice with the long silver spoon, ‘and I swear nothing at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers can rival it. Poor Rider. You shouldn’t even think of marrying me. You should tip your hat at Caroline Standish.’

  ‘Caroline Standish? I’ve not heard of her.’ He tasted the ice and it was, as Eleanor had said, pure paradise.

  ‘Caroline Standish is perhaps the richest heiress in E
ngland, Rider, and a very pretty girl she is too, but you should be warned that she is a Methodist. Golden hair, damn her, a truly lovely face and probably thirty thousand a year? But the drawback is that you cannot drink ardent spirits in her presence, neither smoke, nor blaspheme, nor take snuff, nor really enjoy yourself in any way. Her father made his money in the potteries, but they now live in London and worship at that vulgar little chapel in Spring Gardens. I’m sure you could attract her eye.’

  ‘I’m sure I could,’ Sandman said with a smile.

  ‘And I’m confident she will approve of cricket,’ Eleanor said, ‘so long as you don’t play it on the Sabbath. Do you still indulge in cricket, Rider?’

  ‘Not as often as Alexander would like.’

  ‘They say that Lord Frederick Beauclerk earns six hundred a year gambling on cricket. Could you do that?’

  ‘I’m a better batsman than him,’ Sandman said truthfully enough. Lord Frederick, a friend of Lord Alexander’s and, like him, an aristocrat in holy orders, was the secretary of the Marylebone Cricket Club that played at Thomas Lord’s ground. ‘But I’m a worse gambler,’ Sandman went on. ‘Besides, Beauclerk wagers money he can afford to lose, and I don’t have such funds.’

  ‘Then marry the pious Miss Standish,’ Eleanor said. ‘Mind you, there is the small inconvenience that she is already betrothed, but there are rumours that she’s not altogether persuaded that the future Duke of Ripon is nearly as godly as he pretends. He goes to the Spring Gardens chapel, but only, one suspects, so that he can pluck her golden feathers once he has married her.’

  ‘The future Duke of Ripon?’ Sandman asked.

  ‘He has his own title, of course, but I can’t remember it. Mother would know it.’

  Sandman went very still. ‘Ripon?’

  ‘A cathedral city in Yorkshire, Rider.’

  ‘The Marquess of Skavadale,’ Sandman said, ‘is the title carried by the heir to the Dukedom of Ripon.’

  ‘That’s him! Well done!’ Eleanor frowned at him. ‘Have I said something wrong?’