Lord Robin Holloway neither smiled nor spoke, but just stared at Sandman. There were still two raw scars across his cheeks and nose where Sandman had whipped him with the fencing foil. Skavadale pushed the glass of wine across the table, then looked pained when Sandman shook his head in refusal. ‘Oh come, Captain,’ Skavadale said with a frown, ‘we’re here to be friendly.’
‘And I’m here because I was threatened with a pistol.’
‘Put it away, Sergeant,’ Skavadale ordered, then he toasted Sandman. ‘I’ve learnt a little about you in the last couple of days, Captain. I already knew you were a formidable cricketer, of course, but you have another reputation besides.’
‘For what?’ Sandman asked bleakly.
‘You were a good soldier,’ Skavadale said.
‘So?’
‘But unfortunate in your father,’ Skavadale said gently. ‘Now, as I understand things, Captain, you are supporting your mother and sister. Am I right?’ He waited for a reply, but Sandman neither spoke nor moved. ‘It’s sad,’ Skavadale went on, ‘when folk of refinement are condemned to poverty. If it were not for you, Captain, your mother would long have been reduced to accepting charity and your sister would be what? A governess? A paid companion? Yet with a small dowry she could still marry perfectly well, could she not?’
Sandman still kept silent, yet Lord Skavadale had spoken nothing but the truth. Belle, Sandman’s sister, was nineteen years old and had only one hope of escaping poverty which was to marry well, yet without a dowry she could not hope to find a respectable husband. She would be lucky to find a tradesman willing to marry her, and even if she did then Sandman knew his sister would not accept such a husband for, like her mother, she had an exaggerated sense of her own high standing in society. A year ago, before her father’s death, Belle might have expected a dowry of several thousand pounds, enough to attract an aristocrat and provide a healthy income, and she still yearned for those prospects and, in some obscure way, she blamed Sandman for their loss. That was why Sandman was in London, because he could no longer bear the reproaches of his mother and sister, who expected him to replace his father as a provider of endless luxuries.
‘Now,’ Skavadale said, ‘your father’s gambling has reduced the family to penury. Is that not right, Captain? Yet you are trying to pay off some of his debts. You’ve chosen a difficult path and it’s very honourable of you, very honourable. Ain’t that honourable, Robin?’
Lord Robin Holloway said nothing. He just shrugged, keeping his cold eyes on Sandman.
‘So what will you do, Captain?’ Skavadale asked.
‘Do?’
‘A mother and a sister to keep, debts to pay, and no employment other than an occasional game of cricket?’ Skavadale asked, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘And, as I understand it, the Home Secretary’s demands upon you are very temporary and are hardly likely to lead to a permanent fortune. So what will you do?’
‘What will you do?’ Sandman asked.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘As I understand it,’ Sandman said, remembering Lord Alexander’s description of the Marquess of Skavadale, ‘you are not unlike me. Your family once possessed a great fortune, but it also possessed gamblers.’
The Marquess looked irritated for a second, but let the insult pass. ‘I shall marry well,’ he said lightly, ‘meaning I shall marry wealth. And you?’
‘Maybe I shall marry well, too,’ Sandman retorted.
‘Really?’ Skavadale raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘I shall succeed to a dukedom, Sandman, and that’s a great lure to a girl. What’s your attraction? Skill at cricket? Fascinating memories of Waterloo?’ His lordship’s voice was still polite, but the scorn was obvious. ‘Girls who possess money,’ Skavadale went on, ‘either marry more money or else they seek rank, because money and rank, Captain, are the only two things that matter in this world.’
‘Truth?’ Sandman suggested. ‘Honour?’
‘Money,’ Skavadale repeated flatly, ‘and rank. My family may be close to bankruptcy, but we have rank. By God, we have rank, and that will restore our fortune.’
‘Money and rank,’ Sandman said reflectively. ‘So how do you console a man like Sergeant Berrigan whose rank is lowly and whose fortune, I surmise, is paltry?’
Skavadale gave the Sergeant a lazy glance. ‘I advise him, Captain, to attach himself to a man of rank and fortune. That is the way of the world. He serves, I reward, and together we prosper.’
‘And where do I fit into this divinely ordained scheme?’ Sandman enquired.
Skavadale gave a ghost of a smile. ‘You are a gentleman, Captain, so you possess rank, but you have been denied your share of wealth. If you will allow us,’ he gestured to include the sallow Lord Robin Holloway, ‘and by us I mean the whole membership of the Seraphim Club, we should like to remedy that lack.’ He took a piece of paper from his pocket, placed it on the table and slid it towards Sandman.
‘Remedy?’ Sandman asked bleakly, but Skavadale said nothing, just pointed at the paper that Sandman picked up, opened and saw, first, Lord Robin Holloway’s extravagantly scrawled signature and then he saw the figure. He stared at it, then looked up at Lord Skavadale, who smiled. Sandman looked at the paper again. It was a money draft, payable to Rider Sandman, drawn on the account of Lord Robin Holloway at Coutts Bank, to the value of twenty thousand guineas.
Twenty thousand. His hands shook slightly and he forced himself to take a deep breath.
It solved everything. Everything.
Twenty thousand guineas could pay off his father’s small debts, buy his mother and sister a fine house and there would still be enough left over to yield an income of six or seven hundred pounds a year, which was small compared to the money Sandman’s mother had once been used to, but six hundred pounds a year could keep a woman and her daughter in country gentility. It was respectable. They might not be able to afford a carriage and horses, but they could keep a maid and a cook, they could put a gold coin in the collection plate each Sunday and they could receive their neighbours in sufficient style. They could stop complaining to Rider Sandman of their poverty.
There was a great clatter of hooves and chains as a dray arrived in the yard, but Sandman was oblivious of the noise. He was being tempted by the thought that he was not responsible for his father’s debts, and if he ignored the tradesmen who had been taken close to ruin by Ludovic Sandman’s suicide then he could get his mother an income of perhaps eight hundred a year. Best of all, though, and most tempting of all, was the knowledge that twenty thousand guineas would be a fortune sufficient to overcome Lady Forrest’s objections to his marrying Eleanor. He stared at the money draft. It made all things possible. Eleanor, he thought, Eleanor, and he thought of the money Eleanor would bring him and he knew he would be wealthy again and he would have horses in his stables and he could play cricket all summer and hunt all winter. He would be a proper gentleman again. He would no longer need to scratch for pennies or spend time worrying about the laundry.
He looked up into Lord Robin Holloway’s eyes. The young man was a fool who had wanted to challenge Sandman to a duel, now he was giving him a fortune? Lord Robin ignored Sandman’s gaze, staring off at a cobweb high on the parlour’s panelling. Lord Skavadale smiled at Sandman. It was the smile of a man enjoying another’s good fortune, yet it filled Sandman with shame. Shame because he had been tempted, truly tempted. ‘You think we are trying to bribe you?’ Lord Skavadale had seen Sandman’s change of expression and asked the question anxiously.
‘I did not expect such kindness from Lord Robin,’ Sandman said drily.
‘Every member of the Seraphim contributed,’ the Marquess said, ‘and my friend Robin collated the funds. It is, of course, a gift, not a bribe.’
‘A gift?’ Sandman repeated the words bitterly. ‘Not a bribe?’
‘Of course it’s not a bribe,’ Skavadale said sternly, ‘indeed not.’ He stood and went to the window where he watched the beer-barrels being rolled
down planks from the dray’s bed, then he turned and smiled. ‘I am offended, Captain Sandman, when I see a gentleman reduced to penury. Such a thing goes against the natural order, wouldn’t you say? And when that gentleman is an officer who has fought gallantly for his country, then the offence is all the greater. I told you that the Seraphim Club is composed of men who attempt to excel, who celebrate the higher achievements. What else are angels but beings that do good? So we should like to see you and your family restored to your proper place in society. That is all.’ He shrugged as though the gesture was really very small.
Sandman wanted to believe him. Lord Skavadale had sounded so reasonable and calm, as though this transaction was something very ordinary. Yet Sandman knew better. ‘You’re offering me charity,’ he said.
Lord Skavadale shook his head. ‘Merely a correction of blind fate, Captain.’
‘And if I allow my fate to be corrected,’ Sandman asked, ‘what would you want in return?’
Lord Skavadale looked offended, as though it had not even occurred to him that Sandman might perform some small service in return for being given a small fortune. ‘I should only expect, Captain,’ he spoke stiffly, ‘that you would behave like a gentleman.’
Sandman glanced at Lord Robin Holloway, who had not spoken. ‘I trust,’ Sandman said frostily, ‘that I always behave thus.’
‘Then you will know, Captain,’ Skavadale said pointedly, ‘that gentlemen do not perform paid employment.’
Sandman said nothing.
Lord Skavadale bridled slightly at Sandman’s silence. ‘So naturally, Captain, in return for accepting that draft, you will resign any paid offices that you might enjoy.’
Sandman looked down at the small fortune. ‘So I write to the Home Secretary and resign as his Investigator?’
‘It would surely be the gentlemanly thing to do,’ Skavadale observed.
‘How gentlemanly is it,’ Sandman asked, ‘to let an innocent man hang?’
‘Is he innocent?’ Lord Skavadale enquired. ‘You told the Sergeant you would bring proof from the countryside, and did you?’ He waited, but it was plain from Sandman’s face that there was no proof. Lord Skavadale shrugged as if to suggest that Sandman might just as well abandon a hopeless hunt and accept the money.
And Sandman was tempted, he was so very tempted, but he was also ashamed of that temptation and so he nerved himself and then tore the draft into shreds. He saw Lord Skavadale blink with surprise when he made the first rip, and then his lordship looked furious and Sandman felt a pulse of fear. It was not fear of Lord Skavadale’s anger, but for his own future and for the enormity of the fortune he was rejecting.
He scattered the scraps on the table. The Marquess of Skavadale and Lord Robin Holloway stood. Neither spoke. They looked at Sergeant Berrigan and it seemed that some kind of unspoken message was delivered before, without even glancing at Sandman, they went. Their footsteps receded down the passage as cold metal touched the back of Sandman’s neck and he knew it was the pistol. Sandman tensed, planning to throw himself backwards in hope of unbalancing Berrigan, but the Sergeant ground the cold barrel hard into Sandman’s neck. ‘You had your chance, Captain.’
‘You still have one, Sergeant,’ Sandman said.
‘But I ain’t a fool,’ Berrigan went on, ‘and I ain’t killing you here. Not here and now. Too many folk in the inn. I kill you here, Captain, and I’m dancing in Newgate.’ The pistol’s pressure vanished, then the Sergeant leant close to Sandman’s ear. ‘Watch yourself, Captain, watch yourself.’ It was the exact same advice that Jack Hood had given.
Sandman heard the door open and shut, and the Sergeant’s footsteps fade.
Twenty thousand guineas, he thought. Gone.
The Reverend Lord Alexander Pleydell had secured one of the Covent Garden Theatre’s stage boxes for the performance. ‘I cannot say I am expecting great artistry,’ he declared as he followed Sandman through the crowds, ‘except from Miss Hood. I am sure she will be more than dazzling.’ His lordship, like Sandman, was clutching his pockets for theatre crowds were famous hunting grounds for cly-fakers, knucklers, divers, dummy hunters and buzz-coves, all of them, to Lord Alexander’s delight, different names for pickpockets. ‘Do you realise,’ he said in his shrill voice, ‘that there is a whole hierarchy of cly-fakers?’
‘I was listening to the conversation, Alexander,’ Sandman said. Lord Alexander, before they left the Wheatsheaf, had insisted on another tutorial in the flash language, this one from the landlord, Jenks, who rather liked having a reverend lord as a customer. The Reverend Lord had taken notes, delighted to discover that the lowest rank of cly-faker was the clouter, a child who snitched handkerchiefs, while the lords of the buzzing trade were the thimble-coves who stole watches. It was not just the practitioners of the trade who had names, the pockets themselves were all differentiated. ‘Garret,’ Lord Alexander chanted, ‘hoxter, kickseys, pit, rough-fammy, salt box cly and slip. Did I miss one?’
‘I wasn’t paying attention.’ Sandman edged closer to the brightly lit awning of the theatre.
‘Garret, hoxter, kickseys, pit, rough-fammy, salt box cly and slip,’ Lord Alexander announced again to the bemusement of the crowd. The garret was the fob pocket of a waistcoat while the lower pockets were rough-fammies, the kickseys were pockets in breeches, the hoxter was a coat’s inside pocket, an unflapped chest pocket was a pit, an outside coat pocket protected by a flap was a salt box cly while a tail pocket, the easiest of all to pick, was a slip. ‘Do you think,’ Lord Alexander shouted over the noise of the crowd, ‘that Miss Hood will join us for supper after the performance?’
‘I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to bask in the admiration of one of her admirers.’
‘One of?’ Lord Alexander asked anxiously. ‘You’re not thinking of Kit Carne, are you?’
Sandman was not thinking of Lord Christopher Carne, but he shrugged as though the Earl of Avebury’s heir was indeed a rival for Sally’s hand. Lord Alexander looked very disapproving. ‘Kit is not a serious man, Rider.’
‘I thought he was very serious.’
‘I have decided he is weak,’ Lord Alexander said loftily.
‘Weak?’
‘The other night,’ Lord Alexander said, ‘he just stared at Miss Hood with a vacant look on his face! Ridiculous behaviour. I was talking to her and he was just gaping! Lord knows what she thought of him.’
‘I can’t imagine,’ Sandman said.
‘He was gaping like a fish!’ Lord Alexander said, then turned in alarm as a child squealed. The child’s pain was met by a roar of laughter. ‘What happened?’ Lord Alexander asked anxiously.
‘Someone lined their pockets with fish-hooks,’ Sandman guessed, ‘and a clouter just got torn fingers?’ It was a common precaution against pickpockets.
‘A lesson the child will not forget,’ Lord Alexander said piously. ‘But I mustn’t be hard on Kit. He has little experience of women and I fear he has no defences against their charms.’
‘That,’ Sandman said, ‘from a man who is eager to watch Sally Hood dance, is rich.’
Lord Alexander grinned. ‘Even I am not perfect. Kit wanted to come tonight, but I told him to buy his own ticket. Good Lord, he might even have wanted to come to supper with Miss Hood afterwards! Do you think she might like to visit Newgate with us?’
‘Visit Newgate?’
‘For a hanging! I told you I was requesting a privileged seat from the prison authorities, so I wrote to them. No answer yet, but I’m sure they’ll consent.’
‘And I’m sure I don’t want to go,’ Sandman shouted over the crowd’s noise, and just then the throng gave an inexplicable lurch and Sandman was able to make a lunge for the doorway. If it was a paid crowd causing the crush, he thought, then it was costing Mister Spofforth a rare fortune. Mister Spofforth was the man who had taken the theatre for the evening on behalf of his protégée, a Miss Sacharissa Lasorda, who was billed as the new Vestris. The old Vestris was only twenty years
old and a dazzling Italian actress who was reputed to add three hundred pounds a night to a theatre’s takings merely by baring her legs, and Mister Spofforth was now trying to launch Miss Lasorda on a career of similar profitability.
‘Do you know Spofforth?’ Sandman asked his friend. They were inside the theatre now and an old woman was leading them up musty stairs to their box.
‘Of course I know William Spofforth,’ Lord Alexander’s club foot banged against the risers as he struggled manfully up the dark stairs, ‘he was at Marlborough. He’s a rather foolish young man whose father made a fortune in sugar. Young Spofforth, our host tonight, kept wicket, but had no idea how to place fielders.’
‘I always think the captain or bowler should do that,’ Sandman observed mildly.
‘An absurd statement,’ Lord Alexander snapped. ‘Cricket will cease to be cricket when the keeper abandons his duties of field setting. He sees as the batsman does, so who else is better placed to set a field? Truly, Rider, I am second to none in my admiration of your batting, but when it comes to a theoretical understanding of the game then you really are a child.’ It was an old argument, and one that happily engaged them as they took their places above the stage’s apron. Lord Alexander had his bag of pipes and lit his first of the evening, the smoke wreathing past a large sign that prohibited smoking. The house was full, over three thousand spectators, and it was rowdy because a good number of the audience were already drunk, suggesting that Mister Spofforth’s servants must have dredged the taverns to find his supporters. A group of newspaper writers was being plied with champagne, brandy and oysters in a box opposite Lord Alexander’s plush eyrie. Mister Spofforth, an aloof beau with a collar rising past his ears, was in the neighbouring box from where he kept an anxious eye on the journalists who were costing him so much and whose verdict could make or break his lover, but one critic was already asleep, another was fondling a woman while the remaining two were loudly haranguing the box’s attendant for more champagne. A dozen musicians filed into the pit and began tuning their instruments.