Gallows Thief

  ‘Not an employment that would attract persons of quality,’ Eleanor remarked drily.

  ‘Botting, he’s called, James Botting.’ Sir Henry shuddered. ‘Hanging’s not a pretty thing, Rider, have you ever seen one?’

  ‘I’ve seen men after they’ve been hanged,’ Sandman said, thinking of Badajoz with its ditch steaming with blood and its streets filled with screams. The British army, breaking into the Spanish city despite a grim French defence, had inflicted a terrible revenge on the inhabitants and Wellington had ordered the hangmen to cool the redcoats’ anger. ‘We used to hang plunderers,’ he explained to Sir Henry.

  ‘I suppose you had to,’ Sir Henry said. ‘It’s a terrible death, terrible. But necessary, of course, no one disputes that …’

  ‘They do,’ his daughter put in.

  ‘No one of sound mind disputes it,’ her father amended his statement firmly, ‘but I trust I shall never have to witness another.’

  ‘I should like to see one,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ her father snapped.

  ‘I should!’ Eleanor insisted. ‘We are constantly told that the purpose of execution is twofold; to punish the guilty and to deter others from crime, to which intent it is presented as a public spectacle, so my immortal soul would undoubtedly be safer if I was to witness a hanging and thus be prejudiced against whatever crime I might one day be tempted to commit.’ She looked from her bemused father to Sandman, then back to her father again. ‘You’re thinking I’m an unlikely felon, Papa? That’s kind of you, but I’m sure the girl who was hanged last Monday was an unlikely felon.’

  Sandman looked at Sir Henry, who nodded unwilling confirmation. ‘They hanged a girl, I’m afraid,’ he said, then stared at the rug, ‘and only a young thing, Rider. Only a young thing.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Eleanor persisted, ‘if her father had taken her to witness a hanging then she would have been deterred from her crime. You could even say, Papa, that you are failing in your Christian and paternal duty if you do not take me to Newgate.’

  Sir Henry stared at her, not certain that she was talking in jest, then he looked at Sandman and shrugged as if to suggest that his daughter was not to be taken seriously. ‘So you think, Rider, that my servants might have heard of this girl Meg’s fate?’

  ‘I was hoping so, sir. Or that they could ask questions of the servants who live in Mount Street. The Avebury house isn’t a stone’s throw away and I’m sure all the servants in the area know each other.’

  ‘I’m sure Lizzie knows everyone,’ Eleanor said pointedly.

  ‘My dear,’ her father spoke sternly, ‘these are delicate matters, not a game.’

  Eleanor gave her father an exasperated look. ‘It is servants’ gossip, Papa, and Hammond is above such things. Lizzie, on the other hand, thrives on it.’

  Sir Henry shifted uncomfortably. ‘There’s no danger, is there?’ he asked Sandman.

  ‘I can’t think so, sir. As Eleanor says, we only want to know where the girl Meg went, and that’s merely gossip.’

  ‘Lizzie can explain her interest by saying one of our coachmen was sweet on her,’ Eleanor said enthusiastically. Her father was unhappy at the thought of involving Eleanor, but he was almost incapable of refusing his daughter. She was his only child and such was his affection for her that he might even have permitted her to marry Sandman despite Sandman’s poverty and despite the disgrace attendant on his family, but Lady Forrest had other ideas. Eleanor’s mother had always seen Rider Sandman as second best. It was true that when the original engagement took place Sandman had the prospect of considerable wealth, enough to have persuaded Lady Forrest that he would just about make an acceptable son-in-law, but he did not have the one thing Lady Forrest wanted above all else for her daughter. He had no title and Lady Forrest dreamt that Eleanor would one day be a duchess, a marchioness, a countess or, at the very least, a lady. Sandman’s impoverishment had given Lady Forrest the excuse to pounce and her husband, for all his indulgence of Eleanor, could not prevail against his wife’s determination that her child should be the titled mistress of marble stairways, vast acres and ballrooms large enough to manoeuvre whole brigades.

  So though Eleanor might not marry where she wanted, she would be allowed to ask her maidservant to delve the gossip from Mount Street. ‘I shall write to you,’ Eleanor said to Sandman, ‘if you tell me where?’

  ‘Care of the Wheatsheaf,’ Sandman told her, ‘in Drury Lane.’

  Eleanor stood and, rising onto tiptoe, kissed her father’s cheek. ‘Thank you, Papa,’ she said.

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘For letting me do something useful, even if it is only encouraging Lizzie’s propensity for gossip, and thank you, Rider.’ She took his hand. ‘I’m proud of you.’

  ‘I hope you always were.’

  ‘Of course I was, but this is a good thing you’re doing.’ She held onto his hand as the door opened.

  Lady Forrest came in. She had the same red hair and the same beauty and the same force of character as her daughter, though Eleanor’s grey eyes and intelligence had come from her father. Lady Forrest’s eyes widened when she saw her daughter holding Sandman by the hand, but she forced a smile. ‘Captain Sandman,’ she greeted him in a voice that could have cut glass, ‘this is a surprise.’

  ‘Lady Forrest,’ Sandman managed a bow, despite his trapped hand.

  ‘Just what are you doing, Eleanor?’ Lady Forrest’s voice was now only a few degrees above freezing.

  ‘Reading Rider’s palm, Mama.’

  ‘Ah!’ Lady Forrest was immediately intrigued. She feared her daughter’s unsuitable attachment to a pauper, but was thoroughly attracted to the idea of supernatural forces. ‘She will never read mine, Captain,’ Lady Forrest said, ‘she refuses. So what do you see there?’

  Eleanor pretended to scrutinise Sandman’s palm. ‘I scry,’ she said portentously, ‘a journey.’

  ‘Somewhere pleasant, I hope?’ Lady Forrest said.

  ‘To Scotland,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘It can be very pleasant at this time of year,’ Lady Forrest remarked.

  Sir Henry, wiser than his wife, saw a reference to Gretna Green looming. ‘Enough, Eleanor,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Yes, Papa.’ Eleanor let go of Sandman’s hand and dropped her father a curtsey.

  ‘So what brings you here, Rid—’ Lady Forrest almost forgot herself, but managed a timely correction. ‘Captain?’

  ‘Rider very kindly brought me news of a rumour that the Portuguese might be defaulting on their short-term loans,’ Sir Henry answered for Sandman, ‘which doesn’t surprise me, I must say. We advised against the conversion, as you’ll remember, my dear.’

  ‘You did, dear, I’m sure.’ Lady Forrest was not sure at all, but she was nevertheless satisfied with the explanation. ‘Now, come, Eleanor,’ she said, ‘tea is being served and you are ignoring our guests. We have Lord Eagleton here,’ she told Sandman proudly.

  Lord Eagleton was the man whom Eleanor was supposed to be marrying and Sandman flinched. ‘I’m not acquainted with his lordship,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ Lady Forrest said, ‘for he only moves in the best of circles. Henry, must you smoke in here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sir Henry said, ‘I must.’

  ‘I do hope you enjoy your visit to Scotland, Captain,’ Lady Forrest said, then led her daughter away and closed the door on the cigar smoke.

  ‘Scotland,’ Sir Henry said gloomily, then shook his head. ‘They don’t hang nearly as many in Scotland as we do in England and Wales. Yet, I believe, the murder rate is no higher.’ He stared at Sandman. ‘Strange that, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Very strange, sir.’

  ‘Still, I suppose the Home Office knows its business.’ He turned and gazed moodily into the hearth. ‘It isn’t a quick death, Rider, not quick at all, yet the Keeper was inordinately proud of the whole process. Wanted our approbation and insisted on showing us the rest of the p
rison.’ Sir Henry fell silent, frowning. ‘You know,’ he went on after a while, ‘there’s a corridor from the prison to the Sessions House? So the prisoners don’t need to walk in the street when they go to trial. Birdcage Walk, they call it, and it’s where they bury the hanged men. And women, I suppose, though the girl I saw hanged was taken to the surgeons for dissection.’ He had been looking into the empty fireplace as he spoke, but now looked up at Sandman. ‘The flagstones of Birdcage Walk were wobbling, Rider, wobbling. That’s because the graves are always settling underneath them. They had casks of lime there to hasten the decomposition. It was vile. Indescribably vile.’

  ‘I’m sorry you had to experience it,’ Sandman said.

  ‘I thought it my duty,’ Sir Henry replied with a shudder. ‘I was with a friend and he took an indecent delight in it all. The gallows is a necessary thing, of course it is, but not to be enjoyed, surely? Or am I being too scrupulous?’

  ‘You’re being very helpful, Sir Henry, and I’m grateful.’

  Sir Henry nodded. ‘It’ll be a day or two before you get your answer, I’m sure, but let’s hope it helps. Are you going? You must come again. Rider, you must come again.’ He took Sandman through to the hall and helped him with his coat.

  And Sandman walked away, not even noticing whether it was raining or not.

  He was thinking of Lord Eagleton. Eleanor had not behaved as though she were in love with his lordship, indeed she had made a face expressing distaste when his lordship’s name was mentioned, and that gave Sandman hope. But then, he asked himself, what did love have to do with marriage? Marriage was about money and land and respectability. About staying above financial ruin. About reputation.

  And love? God damn it, Sandman thought, but he was in love.

  It was not raining now, indeed it was a beautiful late afternoon with a rare clear sky above London. Everything looked clean-cut, newly washed, pristine. The rain clouds had flown westwards and fashionable London was spilling onto the streets. Open carriages, pulled by matching teams with polished coats and ribboned manes, clipped smartly towards Hyde Park for the daily parade. Street bands vied with each other, trumpets shrilling, drums banging and collectors shaking their money boxes. Sandman was oblivious.

  He was thinking of Eleanor and when he could no longer wring any clue as to her intentions from every remembered glance and nuance, he wondered what he had achieved in the day. He had learnt, he thought, that Corday had mostly told him the truth and he had confirmed to himself that bored young aristocrats were among the least courteous of all men, and he had usefully started Eleanor’s maid on her search for gossip, but in truth, he had not learnt much. He could not report anything to Viscount Sidmouth. So what to do?

  He thought about that when he returned to the Wheatsheaf and took his laundry down to the woman who charged a penny for each shirt, and he had to stand talking for twenty minutes or else she took offence. Then he stitched up his boots, using a sailmaker’s needle and palm leather which he borrowed from the landlord and when his boots were crudely mended he brushed his coat, trying to get a stain out of the tail. He reflected that of all the inconveniences of poverty, the lack of a servant to keep clothes clean was the most time-consuming. Time. It was what he needed most, and he tried to decide what he should do next. Go to Wiltshire, he told himself. He did not want to go because it was far, it would be expensive and he had no assurance that he would find the girl Meg if he went, but if he waited to hear from Eleanor then it might already be too late. There was a chance, even a good chance, that the servants from the London house had all been taken down to the Earl’s country estate. So go there, he told himself. Catch the mail coach in the morning and he would be there by early afternoon and he could catch the mail coach back in the next day’s dawn, but he cringed at the expense. He thought of using a stage coach and guessed that would cost no more than a pound each way, but the stage coach would not get him to Wiltshire before the evening, it would probably take him at least two or three hours to find the Earl of Avebury’s house, and so he was unlikely to reach it before dark, and that meant he would have to wait until next morning to approach the household, while if he used the mail coach he would be at the Earl’s estate by mid-afternoon at the latest. It would cost him at least twice as much, but Corday only had five days left and Sandman counted his change and wished he had not been so generous as to buy Sally Hood her dinner, then chided himself for that ungallant thought and walked down to the mail office on Charing Cross where he paid two pounds and seven shillings for the last of the four seats on the next morning’s mail to Marlborough.

  He went back to the Wheatsheaf where, in the inn’s back room among the beer barrels and the broken furniture waiting for repair, he blacked and polished his newly mended boots. It was a dark and malodorous space, haunted by rats and by Dodds, the inn’s errand boy and Sandman, seated on a barrel in a dark corner, heard Dodds’s tuneless whistle and was about to call out a greeting when he heard a stranger’s voice. ‘Sandman ain’t upstairs.’

  ‘I saw him come in,’ Dodds said in his usual truculent manner.

  Sandman, very quietly, pulled on his boots. The stranger’s voice had been harsh, not one inviting Sandman to call out and identify himself, but rather to persuade him to look for a weapon – the only thing to hand was a barrel stave. It was not much, but he held it like a sword as he edged towards the door.

  ‘You find anything?’ the stranger asked.

  ‘This tail and a cricket bat,’ another man answered and Sandman, still in the shadows, swayed forward and saw a young man holding his bat and his army sword. The two men must have gone upstairs and found Sandman absent, so the one had come down to look for him while the other had stayed to search his room and found the only two things of any value. Sandman could ill afford to lose either and his task now was to retrieve the bat and sword, and to discover who the two men were.

  ‘I’ll look in the taproom,’ the first man said.

  ‘Bring him back here,’ the second said, and so delivered himself into Sandman’s mercy.

  Because all Sandman needed to do was wait. The first man followed Dodds through the service door and left the second man in the passage, where he half drew Sandman’s sword and peered at the inscription on the blade. He was still peering when Sandman stepped from the back room and rammed the stave like a truncheon into the man’s kidneys. The wood splintered with the impact and the man lurched forward, gasping, and Sandman let go of the stave, seized the man’s hair and pulled him backwards. The man flailed for balance, but Sandman tripped him so that he crashed back onto the floor, where Sandman stamped hard on his groin. The man shrieked and curled around his agony.

  Sandman retrieved the bat and sword that had fallen in the passageway. The fight had not taken more than a few seconds and the man was moaning and twitching, incapacitated by sheer pain, but that did not mean he would not recover quickly. Sandman feared he might be carrying a pistol, so he used the sword scabbard to tweak the man’s coat aside.

  And saw yellow and black livery. ‘You’re from the Seraphim Club?’ Sandman asked, and the man gasped through his pain, but the answer was not informative and Sandman was not minded to obey the injunction. He stooped by the man, felt in his coat pockets and found a pistol which he tugged out, though in his haste he ripped the pocket’s lining with the pistol’s doghead. ‘Is it loaded?’ he asked.

  The man repeated his injunction, so Sandman put the barrel by his head and cocked the gun. ‘I’ll ask again,’ he said, ‘is it loaded?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘They wanted you fetched back to the club.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know! They just sent us.’

  It made sense that the man knew little more than that, so Sandman stepped back. ‘Just get out,’ he said. ‘Collect your friend in the taproom and tell him that if he wants to make trouble for a soldier then he should bring an army.’

  The man twisted
on the floor and looked up incredulously. ‘I can go?’

  ‘Get out,’ Sandman said, and he watched the man climb to his feet and limp out of the passage. So why, he wondered, would the Seraphim Club want him? And why send two bullies to fetch him? Why not just send an invitation?

  He followed the limping man into the taproom where a score of customers were seated at the tables. A blind fiddler was tuning his instrument in the chimney corner and he looked up sharply, white eyes blank, as Sally Hood uttered a squeak of alarm. She was staring at the gun in Sandman’s hand. He raised it, pointing the blackened muzzle at the ceiling, and the two men took the hint and fled. Sandman carefully lowered the flint and pushed the weapon into his belt as Sally ran across the room. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked, and in her anxiety she clutched Sandman’s arm.

  ‘It’s all right, Sally,’ Sandman said.

  ‘Oh bleeding hell, it’s not,’ she said, and now she was looking past him, her eyes huge, and Sandman heard the sound of a gun being cocked.

  He eased his arm from Sally’s grip and turned to see a long-barrelled pistol pointing between his eyes. The Seraphim Club had not sent two men to fetch him, but three, and the third, Sandman suspected, was the most dangerous of all, for it was Sergeant Berrigan, once of His Majesty’s First Foot Guards. He was sitting in a booth, grinning, and Sally took hold of Sandman’s arm again and uttered a small moan of fear.

  ‘It’s like French dragoons, Captain,’ Sergeant Berrigan said. ‘If you don’t see the bastards off properly the first time, then sure as eggs they’ll be back to trap you.’

  And Sandman was trapped.

  4

  Sergeant Berrigan kept the pistol pointed at Sandman for a heartbeat, then he lowered the flint, put the weapon on the table and nodded at the bench opposite. ‘You just won me a pound, Captain.’

  ‘You bastard!’ Sally spat at Berrigan.

  ‘Sally! Sally!’ Sandman calmed her.

  ‘He’s got no bleeding right to point a stick at you,’ she protested, then turned on Berrigan. ‘Who do you bleeding think you are?’