Gallows Thief

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘I only have three guineas on me,’ he whined.

  ‘I think Miss Hood is worth that,’ Sandman said. ‘Give the three guineas to the Sergeant.’

  Sir George handed over the money as Sandman turned to the painting. Britannia was virtually finished, sitting bare-breasted and proud-eyed on her rock in a sunlit sea. The goddess was unmistakeably Sally, though Sir George had changed her usually cheerful expression into one of calm superiority. ‘You really have inconvenienced me,’ Sandman said to Sir George, ‘and worse, you were ready to let an innocent boy die.’

  ‘I’ve told you everything I can!’

  ‘Now you have, yes, but you lied and I think you need to be inconvenienced too. You need to learn, Sir George, that for every sin there is a payment extracted. In short you must be punished.’

  ‘You insolent …’ Sir George began, then lurched to his feet and called out a protest. ‘No!’

  Berrigan held Sir George down while Sandman took the knife to the Apotheosis of Lord Nelson. Sammy had just brought his tray of tea to the stairhead and the boy watched appalled as Sandman cut down the canvas, then across. ‘A friend of mine,’ Sandman explained as he mutilated the painting, ‘is probably going to get married soon. He doesn’t know it, and nor does his intended bride, but they plainly like each other and I’ll want to give them a present when it happens.’ He slashed again, slicing across the top of the painting. The canvas split with a sharp sizzling sound, leaving small threads. He slid the knife downwards again and so excised from the big picture a life-size and half-length portrait of Sally. He tossed the knife onto the floor, rolled up the picture of Britannia and smiled at Sir George. ‘This will make a splendid gift, so I shall have it varnished and framed. Thank you so very much for your help. Sergeant? I believe we’re finished here.’

  ‘I’m coming with you!’ Sally said from the stairs. ‘Only someone has to hook me frock up.’

  ‘Duty summons you,’ Sandman said to Berrigan. ‘Your servant, Sir George.’

  Sir George glared at him, but seemed incapable of speaking. Sandman began to smile as he ran down the stairs and he was laughing by the time he reached the street, where he waited for Berrigan and Sally.

  They joined him when Sally’s dress was fastened. ‘Who do you know getting married soon?’ Berrigan demanded.

  ‘Just two friends,’ Sandman said airily, ‘and if they don’t? Well. I might keep the picture for myself.’

  ‘Captain!’ Sally chided him.

  ‘Married?’ Berrigan sounded shocked.

  ‘I am very old-fashioned,’ Sandman said, ‘and a staunch believer in Christian morality.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ the Sergeant said, ‘why have we got pistols?’

  ‘Because our next call, Sergeant, must be the Seraphim Club and I do not like to go there unarmed. I’d also prefer it if they did not know we were on the premises, so when is the best time to make our visit?’

  ‘Why are we going there?’ Berrigan wanted to know.

  ‘To talk to the coachmen, of course.’

  The Sergeant thought for a second, then nodded. ‘Then go after dark,’ he said, ‘because it’ll be easier for us to sneak in, and at least one jervis will be there.’

  ‘Let us hope it’s the right coachman,’ Sandman said, and snapped open his watch. ‘Not till dark? Which means I have an afternoon to while away.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I shall go and talk to a friend. Shall we meet at nine o’clock, say? Behind the club?’

  ‘Meet me at the carriage house entrance,’ the Sergeant suggested, ‘which is in an alley off Charles II Street.’

  ‘Unless you want to stay with me?’ Sandman suggested. ‘I’m only going to pass the time with a friend.’

  ‘No,’ Berrigan reddened. ‘I feel like a rest.’

  ‘Then be kind enough to place that in my room,’ Sandman said, giving the Sergeant the rolled portrait of Sally. ‘And you, Miss Hood? I can’t think how you might want to pass the afternoon. Would you want to accompany me to see a friend?’

  Sally put her arm into the Sergeant’s elbow, smiled sweetly at Sandman, so very sweetly, and spoke gently. ‘Fake away off, Captain.’

  Sandman laughed and did what he was told. He faked away off.

  7

  ‘Bunny’ Barnwell was reckoned to be the best bowler in the Marylebone Cricket Club, despite having a strange loping run that ended with a double hop before he launched the ball sidearm. The double hop had provided his nickname and he now bowled at Rider Sandman on one of the netted practice wickets at the downhill side of Thomas Lord’s new cricket ground in St John’s Wood, a pretty suburb to the north of London.

  Lord Alexander Pleydell stood beside the net, peering anxiously at every ball. ‘Is Bunny moving it off the grass?’ he asked.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘He’s supposed to twist the ball so it moves into your legs. Sharply in. Crossley said the motion was extremely confusing.’

  ‘Crossley’s easily confused,’ Sandman said, and thumped the ball hard into the net, driving Lord Alexander back in fright.

  Barnwell was taking turns with Hughes, Lord Alexander’s servant, to bowl to Sandman. Hughes reckoned himself a useful underarm bowler, but he was becoming frustrated at being unable to get anything past Sandman’s bat and so he tried too hard and launched a ball that did not bounce at all and Sandman cracked it fast out of the net and over the damp grass so that the ball flicked up a fine silver spray as it shot up the hill where three men were scything the turf. Making a cricket field on such a pronounced slope made no sense to Sandman, but Alexander had a curious attachment to Thomas Lord’s new field even though, from one boundary to another, there must have been a fall of at least six or seven feet.

  Barnwell tried bowling underarm and was forced to watch his ball follow Hughes’s last delivery up the slope. One of the boys who were fielding for the nets tried a fast ball at Sandman’s legs and was rewarded with a blow that almost took his head off. ‘You’re in a savage mood,’ Lord Alexander observed.

  ‘Not really. Damp day, ball’s slow,’ Sandman lied. In truth he was in a savage mood, wondering how he was to keep his promise to Eleanor and why he had even made the promise to elope if her father refused his blessing. No, he understood the answer to the second question. He had made the promise because, as ever, he had been overwhelmed by Eleanor, by the look of her, by the nearness of her and by his own desire for her, but could the promise be kept? He slashed a ball into the net behind with such force that the ball drove the tarred mesh into the back fence, rattling the palings and startling a dozen sparrows into the air. How could he elope, Sandman asked himself. How could he marry a woman when he had no means to support her? And where was the honour in some hole-in-the-wall Scottish wedding that needed neither licence nor banns? The anger surged in him so he skipped down the pitch and drove a ball hard towards the stables where the club members kept their horses during games.

  ‘An exceedingly savage mood,’ Lord Alexander said thoughtfully, then took a pencil from the tangled hair behind his ear and a much creased piece of paper from a pocket. ‘I thought Hammond could keep wicket, do you agree?’

  ‘This is your team to play Hampshire?’

  ‘No, Rider, it’s my proposal for a new Dean and canons of St Paul’s Cathedral. What do you think it is?’

  ‘Hammond would be an excellent choice,’ Sandman said, going onto his back leg and blocking a sharply rising ball. ‘Good one,’ he called to Hughes.

  ‘Edward Budd said he’ll play for us,’ Lord Alexander said.

  ‘Wonderful!’ Sandman spoke with genuine warmth, for Edward Budd was the one batsman he acknowledged as his superior and was also thoroughly good company.

  ‘And Simmons is available.’

  ‘Then I won’t be,’ Sandman said. He collected the last ball with the tip of his bat and knocked it back to Hughes.

  ‘Simmons is an excellent batsman,’ Lord Alexander insisted.

  ‘So he is,’ Sandman
said, ‘but he took cash to throw a game in Sussex two years ago.’

  ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘Not while I’m on the same team, it won’t. Make your choice, Alexander, him or me.’

  Lord Alexander sighed. ‘He really is very good!’

  ‘Then pick him,’ Sandman said, taking his stance.

  ‘I shall think about it,’ Lord Alexander said in his most lordly manner.

  The next delivery came hurtling at Sandman’s ankles and he rewarded it with a blow that sent the ball all the way to the tavern by the lower boundary fence where a dozen men watched the nets from the beer garden. Were any of those men Lord Robin Holloway’s footpads? Sandman glanced at his coat folded onto the damp grass and was reassured by the sight of the pistol’s hilt just protruding from a pocket.

  ‘Maybe you can talk to Simmons?’ Lord Alexander suggested. ‘Including him will give our side an immense batting force, Rider, a positively immense force. You, Budd and him? We shall set new records!’

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ Sandman said, ‘I just won’t play with him.’

  ‘For God’s sake, man!’

  Sandman stepped away from the wicket. ‘Alexander. I love the game of cricket, but if it’s to be bent out of shape by bribery then there will be no sport left. The only way to treat bribery is to punish it absolutely.’ He spoke angrily. ‘Is it any wonder that the game’s dying? This club here used to have a decent field, now they play on a hillside. The game’s in decline, Alexander, because it’s being corrupted by money.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you to say that,’ Lord Alexander said huffily, ‘but Simmons has a wife and two children. Don’t you understand temptation?’

  ‘I think I do, yes,’ Sandman said, ‘I was offered twenty thousand guineas yesterday.’ He stepped back to the crease and nodded at the next bowler.

  ‘Twenty thousand?’ Lord Alexander sounded faint. ‘To lose a game of cricket?’

  ‘To let an innocent man hang,’ Sandman said, playing a demure defensive stroke. ‘It’s too easy,’ he complained.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘This intellectual bowling.’ The sidearm delivery, when the ball was bowled from a straight arm held at shoulder height, was curiously known as the intellectual style. ‘It has no accuracy,’ Sandman complained.

  ‘But it has force,’ Lord Alexander declared energetically, ‘far more so than balls bowled underarm.’

  ‘We should bowl overarm.’

  ‘Never! Never! Ruin the game! An utterly ridiculous suggestion, offensive in the extreme!’ Lord Alexander paused to suck on his pipe. ‘The club isn’t certain it will even allow sidearm, let alone overarm. No, if we wish to redress the balance between batsman and bowler, then the answer is obvious. Four stumps. Are you serious?’

  ‘I just think that overarm bowling will combine force with accuracy,’ Sandman suggested, ‘and might even present a challenge to the batsman.’

  ‘Serious, I mean, about being offered twenty thousand pounds?’

  ‘Guineas, Alexander, guineas. The men who made the offer consider themselves to be gentlemen.’ Sandman stepped back and cracked the ball hard into the netting, close to where Lord Alexander was standing.

  ‘Why would they offer you so much?’

  ‘It’s cheaper than death on the gallows, isn’t it? The only trouble is I don’t know for certain which member of the Seraphim Club is the murderer, but I hope to discover that this evening. You wouldn’t like to lend me your carriage, would you?’

  Lord Alexander looked puzzled. ‘My carriage?’

  ‘The thing with four wheels, Alexander, and the horses up front.’ Sandman sent another ball scorching up the hill. ‘It’s in a good cause. Rescuing the innocent.’

  ‘Well, of course,’ Lord Alexander said with admirable enthusiasm. ‘I shall be honoured to help you. Shall I wait at your lodgings?’

  ‘Keeping Miss Hood company?’ Sandman asked. ‘Why not?’ He laughed at Alexander’s blushes, then backed away from the stumps as a young man walked towards the practice wickets from the tavern. There was something purposeful in the man’s approach and Sandman was about to fetch his pistol when he recognised Lord Christopher Carne, the heir to the Earl of Avebury. ‘Your friend’s coming,’ he told Lord Alexander.

  ‘My friend? Oh, Kit!’

  Lord Christopher waved in response to Lord Alexander’s enthusiastic greeting, then noticed Sandman. He blanched, stopped and looked annoyed. For a heartbeat Sandman thought Lord Christopher was about to turn on his heel and walk away, but instead the bespectacled young man strode purposefully towards Sandman. ‘You never told me,’ he said accusingly, ‘that you were visiting my father.’

  ‘Did I need to tell you?’ A ball kicked up and Sandman swayed aside to let it thump into the net behind.

  ‘It would have been c-courteous,’ Lord Christopher complained.

  ‘If I need lessons in courtesy,’ Sandman said sharply, ‘then I shall go to those who treat me politely.’

  Lord Christopher bridled, but lacked the courage to demand an apology for Sandman’s truculence. ‘I spoke to you in c-confidence,’ he protested, ‘and had no idea you would p-pass anything on to my father.’

  ‘I passed on nothing to your father,’ Sandman said mildly. ‘I did not repeat one word you said. Indeed, I did not even tell him I had seen you.’

  ‘He wrote to me,’ Lord Christopher said, ‘saying you’d visited and that I wasn’t to speak with you again. So it’s plain you’re lying! You d-did tell him you spoke with me.’

  The letter, Sandman thought, must have travelled on the same mail coach that brought him back to London. ‘Your father deduced it,’ Sandman explained, ‘and you should have a care whom you accuse of telling lies, unless you’re quite confident you are both a better shot and a better swordsman than the man you accuse.’ He did not look to see the effect of his words, but instead danced two quick-steps down the pitch and drove at a delivery with all his strength. He knew the stroke was good even before the bat struck the ball, and then it shot away and the three men scything the playing wicket stared in awe as the ball streaked between them to take its first bounce just short of the uphill boundary and it still seemed to be travelling at the same speed with which it had left the bat when it vanished in the bushes at the top of the hill. It had gone like a six-pounder shot, Sandman thought, and then he heard it crack against the fence and heard a cow mooing in protest from the neighbouring meadow.

  ‘Good God,’ Lord Alexander said faintly, staring up the hill, ‘good God alive.’

  ‘I spoke hastily,’ Lord Christopher said in scant apology, ‘but I still don’t understand why you should even need to go near Carne Manor.’

  ‘Did you see how hard he struck that?’ Lord Alexander asked.

  ‘Why?’ Lord Christopher insisted angrily.

  ‘I told you why,’ Sandman said. ‘To discover whether any of your stepmother’s servants had gone there.’

  ‘Of course they wouldn’t,’ Lord Christopher said.

  ‘Last time you thought it possible.’

  ‘That’s because I hadn’t thought about it p-properly. Those servants must have known precisely what vile things my stepmother was doing in London and my father would hardly want them spreading such t-tales in Wiltshire.’

  ‘True,’ Sandman conceded. ‘So I wasted a journey.’

  ‘But the good news, Rider,’ Lord Alexander intervened, ‘is that Mister William Brown has agreed that you and I should attend on Monday!’ He beamed at Sandman. ‘Isn’t that splendid?’

  ‘Mister Brown?’ Sandman asked.

  ‘The Keeper of Newgate. I would have expected a man in your position to have known that.’ Lord Alexander turned to a bemused Lord Christopher. ‘It occurred to me, Kit, that so long as Rider was the Home Secretary’s official Investigator, then he should certainly investigate the gallows. He should know exactly what awful brutality awaits people like Corday. So I wrote to the Keeper and he has very decently i
nvited Rider and myself to breakfast. Devilled kidneys, he promises! I’ve always rather liked a properly devilled kidney.’

  Sandman stepped away from the stumps. ‘I have no wish to witness a hanging,’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you wish,’ Lord Alexander said airily, ‘it is a matter of duty.’

  ‘I have no duty to witness a hanging,’ Sandman insisted.

  ‘Of course you do,’ Lord Alexander said. ‘I confess I am apprehensive. I do not approve of the gallows, but at the same time I discover a curiosity within me. If nothing else, Rider, it will be an educational experience.’

  ‘Educational rubbish!’ Sandman stepped back to the wicket and played a straight bat to a well-bowled ball. ‘I’m not going, Alexander, and that’s that. No! The answer is no!’

  ‘I’d like to go,’ Lord Christopher said in a small voice.

  ‘Rider!’ Lord Alexander expostulated.

  ‘No!’ Sandman said. ‘I shall happily send the real killer to the gallows, but I’m not witnessing a Newgate circus.’ He waved Hughes away. ‘I’ve batted long enough,’ he explained, then ran a hand down the face of his bat. ‘You have any linseed oil, Alexander?’

  ‘The real killer?’ Lord Christopher asked. ‘Do you know who that is?’

  ‘I hope to know by this evening,’ Sandman said. ‘If I send for your carriage, Alexander, then you’ll know I’ve discovered my witness. If I don’t? Alas.’

  ‘Witness?’ Lord Christopher asked.

  ‘If Rider’s going to be obdurate,’ Lord Alexander said to Lord Christopher, ‘then perhaps you should join me for the Keeper’s devilled kidneys on Monday?’ He fumbled with his tinder box as he tried to light a new pipe. ‘I was thinking that you really ought to join the club here, Rider. We need members.’

  ‘I can imagine you do. Who’d join a club that plays on an imitation of an alpine meadow?’

  ‘A perfectly good pitch,’ Lord Alexander said querulously.

  ‘Witness?’ Lord Christopher broke in to ask again.

  ‘I trust you’ll send for the carriage!’ Lord Alexander boomed. ‘I want to see that bloody man Sidmouth confounded. Make him grant a pardon, Rider. I shall await your summons at the Wheatsheaf.’