Gallows Thief

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘You look as if you’re thinking,’ Berrigan said.

  ‘I want kindling,’ Sandman said softly. ‘Kindling, firewood, a tinder box and see if there’s a big cauldron in the kitchen.’

  Berrigan hesitated, wanting to ask what Sandman planned, then decided he would find out soon enough so he and Sally went back downstairs. Sandman crossed the room and ran his fingers along the joints of the linenfold panelling that covered the walls on either side of the fireplace, but so far as he could determine there was no seam in the carvings. He knocked on the panels, but nothing sounded hollow. Yet that was the point of priest’s holes; they were almost impossible to detect. The window wall and the wall by the passage looked too thin, so it had to be the fireplace wall or its opposite where the deep cupboard was – yet Sandman could discover nothing. Yet nor did he expect to find it easily. Elizabeth’s searchers had been good, ruthless and well-rewarded for finding priests, yet some hiding places had eluded them despite days of looking.

  ‘Weighs a bloody ton,’ Berrigan complained as he staggered into the bedroom and dropped an enormous cauldron onto the floor. Sally was a few steps behind with a bundle of firewood.

  ‘Where’s the steward?’ Sandman asked.

  ‘Sitting in the kitchen looking as if he’s sucking gunpowder,’ Berrigan said.

  ‘His wife?’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Didn’t he want to know what you were doing with that?’

  ‘I told him I’d put a hole in his face if he dared ask,’ Berrigan said happily.

  ‘Tact,’ Sandman said. ‘It always works.’

  ‘So what are you doing?’ Sally asked.

  ‘We’re going to burn the damn house down,’ Sandman said loudly. He shifted the cauldron onto the hearth’s apron. ‘No one’s using the house,’ he still spoke loudly enough for someone two rooms away to hear him, ‘and the roof needs mending. Cheaper to burn it down than clean it up, don’t you think?’ He put the kindling in the bottom of the cauldron, struck a spark in the tinder box and blew on the charred linen till he had a flame that he transferred to the kindling. He nursed the flame for a few seconds, then it was crackling and spreading and he put some smaller pieces of firewood on top.

  It took a few minutes before the larger pieces caught the flames, but by then the cauldron was belching a thick blue-white smoke and, because the cauldron was on the hearth’s apron rather than in the fireplace, almost none of the smoke was being sucked into the chimney. Sandman planned to smoke Meg out, and in case the priest’s hole opened to the passage, he had put Berrigan to stand guard outside the bedroom while he and Sally stayed inside with the door shut. The smoke was choking them, so that Sally was crouching by the bed, but she was reluctant to leave in case the ruse worked. Sandman’s eyes were streaming and his throat was raw, but he fed another piece of wood onto the flames and he saw the belly of the cauldron begin to glow a dull red. He opened the door a fraction to let some smoke out and fresh air in. ‘You want to leave?’ he hissed at Sally, and she shook her head.

  Sandman stooped down to where the smoke was thinner and he thought of Meg in the priest’s hole, a space so dark and black and tight and frightening. He hoped the smell of burning was already adding to her fears and that the smoke was infiltrating the cunning traps and hatches and secret doors that concealed her ancient hiding place. A log crackled, split and a puff of smoke shot out of the cauldron on a lance of flame. Sally had the dust sheet over her mouth and Sandman knew they could not last much longer, but just then there was a creaking sound, a scream and a crash like the impact of a cannon ball, and he saw a whole section of the panelling open like a door – only it was not by the fireplace but along the outer wall, between the windows, where he had thought the wall too thin for a priest’s hole. Sandman pulled his sleeves over his hands and, so protected, shoved the cauldron under the chimney as Sally snatched the wrist of the screaming, terrified woman who had thought herself trapped in a burning house and now tried to extricate herself from the narrow, laddered shaft that led down from the dislodged panels.

  ‘It’s all right! It’s all right!’ Sally was saying as she led Meg over to the door.

  And Sandman, his coat scorched and blackened, followed the two women onto the wide landing where he gasped cool clean air and stared into Meg’s red-rimmed eyes. He thought how good an artist Charles Corday was, for the young woman was truly monstrously ugly, even malevolent-looking, and then he laughed because he had found her and with her he would discover the truth, and she mistook his laughter as mockery and, stepping forward, slapped his face hard.

  And just then a gun fired from the hallway.

  Sally screamed as Sandman pushed her down and out of the way. Meg, sensing escape, ran towards the stairs, but Berrigan tripped her. Sandman stepped over her as he limped to the balustrade, where he saw that it was the sour-looking housekeeper, much braver than her husband, who had fired the fowling piece up the staircase. But, like many raw recruits, she had shut her eyes when she pulled the trigger and she had fired too high, so that the duck shot had whipped over Sandman’s hair. A half-dozen men were behind her, one with a musket, and Sandman slapped down Berrigan’s pistol. ‘No shooting!’ he shouted. ‘No killing!’

  ‘You’ve no business here!’ the housekeeper screamed up at him. She had gone pale, for she had not meant to fire the gun, but when she had snatched it from her husband and aimed it up the stairway as a threat, she had inadvertently jerked the trigger. The men behind her were led by a tall, fair-haired giant armed with a musket. The rest had cudgels and sickles. To Sandman they looked like the peasants come to burn down the big house, whereas in truth they were probably tenants who had come to protect the Duke of Ripon’s property.

  ‘We have every right to be here,’ Sandman lied. He kept his voice calm as he drew out the Home Secretary’s letter which, in truth, granted him no rights whatsoever. ‘We have been asked by the government to investigate a murder,’ he spoke gently as he went slowly down the stairs, always keeping his eyes on the man with the gun. He was a hugely tall man, well muscled and perhaps in his early thirties, wearing a grubby white shirt and cream-coloured trousers held up by a strip of green cloth that served as a belt. He looked oddly familiar and Sandman wondered if he had been a soldier. His musket was certainly an old army musket, abandoned after Napoleon’s last defeat, but it was clean, it was cocked and the tall man held it confidently. ‘I have here the Home Secretary’s authorisation,’ Sandman said, brandishing the letter with its impressive seal, ‘and we have not come to harm anyone, to steal anything or to cause damage. We have only come to ask questions.’

  ‘You’ve no rights here!’ the housekeeper screeched.

  ‘Quiet, woman,’ Sandman snapped in his best officer’s voice. What she said was correct, absolutely correct, but she had lost her temper and Sandman suspected that these men would rather listen to a reasonable voice than to an hysterical rant. ‘Does anyone want to read his lordship’s letter?’ he asked, holding out the paper and knowing that a mention of ‘his lordship’ would give them pause. ‘And by the way,’ he glanced back up the stairs where the smoke was thinning on the landing, ‘the house is not on fire and is in no danger. Now, who wants to read his lordship’s letter?’

  But the man holding the musket ignored the paper. He frowned at Sandman instead and lowered the weapon’s muzzle. ‘Are you Captain Sandman?’

  Sandman nodded. ‘I am,’ he said.

  ‘By God, but I saw you knock seventy-six runs off us at Tunbridge Wells!’ the man said. ‘And we had Pearson and Willes bowling to you! Pearson and Willes, no less, and you knocked ’em ten ways crazy and halfway upside down.’ He had now uncocked the musket and was beaming at Sandman. ‘Last year, it were, and I was playing for Kent. You had us well beat, except the rain came and saved us!’

  And, by the grace of God, the big man’s name slithered into Sandman’s mind. ‘It’s Mister Wainwright, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ben Wainwright it is, sir.’ Wainw
right, who from his clothes must have been playing cricket when he had been summoned to the house, pulled his forelock.

  ‘You hit a ball over the haystack, I recall,’ Sandman said. ‘You nearly beat us on your own!’

  ‘Nothing like you, sir, nothing like you.’

  ‘Benjamin Wainwright!’ the housekeeper snapped. ‘You ain’t here to …’

  ‘You be quiet, Doris,’ Wainwright said, lowering the flint of the musket. ‘Ain’t no harm in Captain Sandman!’ The men with him growled their assent. It did not matter that Sandman was in the house illegally or that he had filled its upper landing with smoke, he was a cricketer and a famous one and they were all grinning at him now, wanting his approbation. ‘I heard you’d given the game up, sir?’ Wainwright sounded worried. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Sandman said, ‘it’s just I only like playing in clean games.’

  ‘Precious few of them,’ Wainwright said. ‘But I should have had you on our team today, sir. Taking a fair licking, we are, from a side from Hastings. I already had my innings,’ he added, explaining his absence from the game.

  ‘There’ll be other days,’ Sandman consoled him, ‘but for now I want to take this young lady into the garden and have a conversation with her. Or maybe there’s a tavern where we can talk over an ale?’ He added that because he realised it would be sensible to take Meg off the Duke of Ripon’s property before someone with a rudimentary legal knowledge accused them of trespass and explained to Meg that she did not have to talk with them.

  Wainwright assured them that the Castle and Bell was a fine tavern and the housekeeper, disgusted with his treason, walked away. Sandman let out a breath of relief. ‘Meg?’ He turned to the girl. ‘If there’s anything you want to take to London, fetch it now. Sergeant?’ Sandman could see the girl wanted to protest, maybe even hit him again, but he gave her no time to argue. ‘Sergeant? Make sure the horses are watered. Perhaps the carriage should be brought to the tavern? Sally, my dear, make sure Meg has everything she needs. And Mister Wainwright,’ Sandman turned and smiled at the Kent batsman, ‘I’d take it as an honour if you’d show me the tavern? Don’t I recall that you make bats? I would like to talk to you about that.’

  The confrontation was over. Meg, even though she was bitter, was not trying to run away and Sandman dared to hope that all would be well. One conversation now, a dash to London, and justice, that rarest of all the virtues, would be done.

  Meg was bitter, sullen and angry. She resented Sandman’s incursion into her life, indeed she seemed to resent life itself and for a time, sitting in the back garden of the Castle and Bell, she refused even to talk with him. She stared into the distance, drank a glass of gin, demanded another in a whining voice and then, after Benjamin Wainwright had left to see how his team was faring, she insisted that Sandman take her back to Cross Hall. ‘My chooks need looking after,’ she snapped.

  ‘Your chickens?’ That surprised Sandman.

  ‘I always liked hens,’ she said defiantly.

  Sandman, his cheek still stinging from her slap, shook his head in astonishment. ‘I’m not taking you back to the house,’ he growled, ‘and you’ll be damned lucky if you’re not transported for life. Is that what you want? A voyage to Australia and life in a penal settlement?’

  ‘Piss on you,’ she retorted. She was dressed in a white bonnet and a plain brown serge dress that was spotted with chicken feathers. They were ugly clothes, yet they suited her for she was truly ill-favoured, yet also remarkably defiant. Sandman almost found himself admiring her belligerence, but he knew that strength was going to make her difficult to deal with. She was watching him with knowing eyes, and seemed to read his hesitation for she gave a short mocking laugh and turned away to look at the Seraphim Club’s carriage, all dusty after its journey, which had just appeared on the village green. Berrigan was watering the horses at a duck pond while Sally, with some of the Sergeant’s coins, was buying a jug of ale and another of gin. Pigeons were making a fuss in a newly harvested wheatfield just beyond the Castle and Bell’s hedge while scores of swifts were lining the tavern’s thatched ridge.

  ‘You liked the Countess, didn’t you?’ Sandman said to Meg.

  She spat at him just as Sally stalked out of the tavern. ‘Bastards,’ Sally said, ‘bloody country bastards! They don’t want to serve a woman!’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Sandman offered.

  ‘There’s a potman bringing the jugs,’ she said. ‘They didn’t want to serve me, but they changed their minds when I had words with them.’ She flapped a hand at an irritating wasp, driving it towards Meg who gave a small scream and, when the insect would not leave her, began to cry with alarm. ‘What are you napping your bib for?’ Sally demanded, and Meg, uncomprehending, just stared at her. ‘Why are you bleeding crying?’ Sally translated. ‘You’ve got no bleeding reason to cry. You’ve been swanning down here while that poor little pixie’s waiting to be scragged.’

  The potman, plainly terrified of Sally, brought a tray of tankards, glasses and jugs. Sandman poured ale into a pint tankard that he gave to Sally. ‘Why don’t you take that to the Sergeant?’ he said. ‘I’ll talk with Meg.’

  ‘Meaning you want me to fake away off,’ Sally said.

  ‘Give me a few minutes,’ Sandman suggested. Sally took the ale and Sandman offered Meg a glass of gin, which she snatched from him. ‘You were fond of the Countess, weren’t you?’ he asked her again.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ Meg said, ‘nothing.’ She drained the gin and reached for the jug.

  Sandman snatched the jug away from her. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘None of your business, and give me some bloody max!’ She lunged at the jug, but Sandman held it away from her.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Sandman asked again, and was rewarded with a kick on his shin. He poured some of the gin onto the grass and Meg immediately went very still and looked wary. ‘I’m taking you to London,’ Sandman told her, ‘and you have two ways of going there. You can behave yourself, in which case it will be comfortable, or you can go on being rude, in which case I’m taking you to prison.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ she sneered.

  ‘I can do what I damn well like!’ Sandman snapped, astonishing her with his sudden anger. ‘I have the Home Secretary’s commission, miss, and you are concealing evidence in a murder case! Prison? You’ll be damned lucky if it’s only prison and not the gallows themselves.’

  She glowered at him for a moment, then shrugged. ‘My name’s Hargood,’ she said in a surly voice, ‘Margaret Hargood.’

  Sandman poured her another glass of gin. ‘Where are you from, Miss Hargood?’

  ‘Nowhere you bloody know.’

  ‘What I do know,’ Sandman said, ‘is that the Home Secretary instructed me to investigate the murder of the Countess of Avebury. He did that, Miss Hargood, because he fears that a great injustice is about to be done.’ The day that Viscount Sidmouth worried about an injustice to a member of the lower classes, Sandman reflected, was probably the day the sun rose in the west, but he could not admit that to the lumpen girl who had just sucked down her second gin as though she were dying of thirst. ‘The Home Secretary believes, as I do,’ Sandman went on, ‘that Charles Corday never murdered your mistress. And we think you can confirm that.’

  Meg held out her glass, but said nothing.

  ‘You were there, weren’t you,’ Sandman asked, ‘on the day the Countess was murdered?’

  She jerked the glass, demanding more gin, but still said nothing.

  ‘And you know,’ Sandman went on, ‘that Charles Corday did not commit that murder.’

  She looked down at a bruised apple, a windfall, that lay on the grass. A wasp crawled on its wrinkled skin and she screamed, dropped the glass and clasped her hands to her face. Sandman stamped on the wasp, crushing the fruit. ‘Meg,’ he appealed to her.

  ‘I ain’t got nothing to say,’ she watched the ground fearfully, evidently frightened that the
wasp might resurrect itself.

  Sandman picked up her glass, filled it and handed it to her. ‘If you cooperate, Miss Hargood,’ he said formally, ‘then I shall ensure that nothing harmful happens to you.’

  ‘I don’t know nothing about it,’ she said, ‘nothing about any murder.’ She looked defiantly at Sandman, her eyes as hard as flint.

  Sandman sighed. ‘Do you want an innocent man to die?’ The girl made no answer, but just twisted away from him to stare across the hedge and Sandman felt a rush of indignation. He wanted to hit her and was ashamed of the intensity of that desire, so intense that he stood and began to pace up and down. ‘Why are you in the Marquess of Skavadale’s house?’ he demanded and got no reply. ‘Do you think,’ he went on, ‘that the Marquess will protect you? He wants you there so that the wrong man can hang, and once Corday is dead then what use will you be to him? He’ll kill you to stop you testifying against him. I’m just astonished he hasn’t murdered you already.’ That, at least, got some reaction from the girl, even if it was only to make her turn and stare at him. ‘Think, girl!’ Sandman said forcefully. ‘Why is the Marquess keeping you alive? Why?’

  ‘You don’t know a bloody thing, do you?’ Meg said scornfully.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ Sandman said, his anger very close to violence. ‘I know that you can save an innocent man from the gallows, and I know you don’t want to, and that makes you an accomplice to murder, miss, and they can hang you for that.’ Sandman waited, but she said nothing and he knew he had failed. The loss of his temper was a sign of that failure and he was ashamed of himself, but if the girl would not talk then Corday could not be saved. Meg, just with silence, could defeat him, and now more troubles, niggling and stupid troubles, piled upon him. He wanted to get Meg back to London swiftly, but Mackeson insisted that the horses were too tired to travel another mile and Sandman knew the coachman was right. That meant they would have to stay the night in the village and guard their three prisoners. Guard them, feed them, and keep an eye on the horses. Meg was put into the coach and its doors were tied and windows jammed with wedges and she must have slept, though twice she woke Sandman as she screamed and beat on the windows. She finally broke a window and began to clamber out, then Sandman heard a grunt, a stifled cry and heard her slump back. ‘What happened?’ he asked.