‘Then they’d better not find me, Mack,’ Berrigan said.
The coachman gave another start of alarm when he heard the ratcheting sound of Sandman’s pistol being cocked. His eyes widened as he stared into the muzzle and uttered a pathetic moan. ‘I’m only going to ask you politely once more,’ Sandman said, ‘and after that, Mister Mackeson, I shall …’
‘Nether Cross,’ Mackeson said hurriedly.
‘Where’s Nether Cross?’
‘Fair old ways,’ the coachman said guardedly. ‘Seven hours? Eight hours?’
‘Where?’ Sandman asked harshly.
‘Down near the coast, sir, down Kent way.’
‘So who lives there,’ Sandman asked, ‘in Nether Cross?’
‘Lord John de Sully Pearce-Tarrant,’ Berrigan answered for the coachman, ‘the Viscount Hurstwood, Earl of Keymer, Baron Highbrook, lord of this and lord of God knows what else, heir to the Dukedom of Ripon and also known, Captain, as the Marquess of Skavadale.’
And Sandman felt a great surge of relief. Because he had his answer at last.
The carriage rattled through the streets south of the Thames. Its two lamps were lit, but cast a feeble glow that did nothing to light the way so that, once they reached the summit of Shooters Hill where there were few lights and the road across Blackheath stretched impenetrably black before them, they stopped. The horses were unharnessed and picketed on the green and the two prisoners were locked inside the carriage by the simple expedient of fastening the coach doors by looping their handles with the reins that were then strapped tight around the whole vehicle. The windows were jammed shut with slivers of wood, and either Sandman or Berrigan would stand guard all night.
The prisoners were the driver, Mackeson, and Billy, the stable hand. It had been Berrigan’s idea to take the Seraphim Club’s newly washed carriage. Sandman had refused at first, saying he had already arranged to borrow Lord Alexander’s coach and team and he doubted he had the legal right to commandeer one of the Seraphim Club’s carriages, but Berrigan had scoffed at the thought of such scruples. ‘You reckon Lord Alexander’s coachman knows the way to Nether Cross?’ he asked. ‘Which means you’ve got to take Mackeson anyway, so you might as well take a vehicle he knows how to handle. And considering what evils the bastards have done I don’t suppose God or man will worry about you borrowing their coach.’
And if the coach and driver were taken then Billy, the stable hand, had to be kept from betraying that Sandman had been asking about Meg, so he too must be taken prisoner. He put up no resistance, but instead helped Mackeson harness the team and then, with his hands and feet tied, he was put into the carriage while Mackeson, accompanied by Berrigan, sat up on the box. The few members of the club, ensconced in their dining room, had no idea that their coach was being commandeered.
Now, stranded on Blackheath, Sandman and his companions had to wait through the dark hours. Berrigan took Sally to a tavern and paid for a room and he stayed with her while Sandman guarded the coach. It was not till after the clocks had struck two that Berrigan loomed out of the dark. ‘Quiet night, Captain?’
‘Quiet enough,’ Sandman said, then smiled. ‘Long time since I did picquet duty.’
‘Those two behaving themselves?’ Berrigan asked, glancing at the carriage.
‘Quiet as lambs,’ Sandman said.
‘You can go to sleep,’ Berrigan suggested, ‘and I’ll stand sentry.’
‘In a while,’ Sandman said. He was sitting on the grass, his back against a wheel and he tilted his head to look at the stars that were drifting out from behind ragged clouds. ‘Remember the Spanish night marches?’ he asked. ‘The stars were so bright it was as though you could reach up and snuff them out.’
‘I remember the camp fires,’ Berrigan said, ‘hills and valleys of fire.’ He twisted and looked west. ‘A bit like that.’
Sandman turned his head to see London spread beneath them like a quilt of fire that was blurred by the red-touched smoke. The air up on the heath was clean and chill, yet he could just smell the coal smoke from the great city that spread its hazed lights to the western horizon. ‘I do miss Spain,’ he admitted.
‘It were strange at first,’ Berrigan said, ‘but I liked it. Did you speak the language?’
‘Yes.’
Berrigan laughed. ‘And I’ll bet you were good at it.’
‘I was fluent enough, yes.’
The Sergeant handed Sandman a stone bottle. ‘Brandy,’ he explained. ‘And I was thinking,’ he went on, ‘that if I go and buy those cigars I’ll need someone who speaks the language. You and me? We could go there together, work together.’
‘I’d like that,’ Sandman said.
‘There’s got to be money in it,’ Berrigan said. ‘We paid pennies for those cigars in Spain and here they cost a fortune if you can get them at all.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Sandman said, and smiled at the thought that maybe he did have a job after all. Berrigan and Sandman, Purveyors of Fine Cigars? Eleanor’s father liked a good cigar and paid well for them, so well that there might even be enough money in the idea to persuade Sir Henry that his daughter was not marrying a pauper. Lady Forrest might never be convinced that Sandman was a proper husband for Eleanor, but Sandman suspected that Eleanor and her father would prevail. He and Berrigan would need money, and who better than Sir Henry to lend it? They would have to travel around Spain, hire shipping space and rent premises in a fashionable part of London, but it could work. He was sure of it. ‘It’s a brilliant idea, Sergeant,’ he said.
‘So shall we do it when this is over?’
‘Why not? Yes.’ He put out his hand and Berrigan shook it.
‘We old soldiers should stick together,’ Berrigan said, ‘because we were good. We were damned good, Captain. We chased the bloody Crapauds halfway across bloody Europe, and then we came home and none of the bastards here cared, did they?’ He paused, thinking. ‘They had a rule in the Seraphim Club. No one was ever to talk about the wars. No one.’
‘None of the members served?’ Sandman guessed.
‘Not one. They wouldn’t even let you in if you’d been a swoddy or a sailor.’
‘They were jealous?’
‘Probably.’
Sandman drank from the bottle. ‘Yet they employed you?’
‘They liked having a guardsman in the hall. I made the bastards feel safe. And they could order me around, which they also liked. Do this, Berrigan, do that.’ The Sergeant grunted thanks when Sandman passed him the bottle. ‘Most of the time it weren’t nothing bad. Run errands for the bastards, but then once in a while they’d want something else.’ He fell silent and Sandman also kept quiet. The night was extraordinarily quiet. After a time, as Sandman hoped, Berrigan began talking again. ‘Once, there was a fellow who was taking one of the Seraphim to court, so we gave him a lesson. They sent a wagonload of flowers to his grave, they did. And the girls, of course – we paid them off. Not the ones like Flossie, they can look after themselves, but the others? We gave ’em ten pounds, perhaps twelve.’
‘What sort of girls?’
‘Common girls, Captain, girls that had caught their eye on the street.’
‘They were kidnapped?’
‘They were kidnapped,’ Berrigan said. ‘Kidnapped, raped and paid off.’
‘And all the members did that?’
‘Some were worse than others. There’s always a handful that are ready for any mischief, just like in a company of soldiers. And then there are the followers. And one or two of them are more sensible. That’s why I was surprised it was Skavadale that scragged the Countess. He ain’t a bad one. He’s got a ramrod up his arse and he thinks he smells of violets, but he ain’t an unkind man.’
‘I rather hoped it would be Lord Robin,’ Sandman admitted.
‘He’s just a mad bastard,’ Berrigan said. ‘Bloody rich, mad bastard,’ he added.
‘But Skavadale has more to lose,’ Sandman explained.
‘Lost m
ost of it already,’ Berrigan said. ‘He’s probably the poorest man there. His father’s lost a fortune.’
‘But the son,’ Sandman explained, ‘is betrothed to a very rich girl. Perhaps the wealthiest bride in Britain? I suspect he was ploughing the Countess of Avebury and she had a nasty habit of blackmail.’ Sandman thought for a moment. ‘Skavadale might be relatively poor, but I’ll bet he could still scratch together a thousand pounds if he had to. That’s probably the sort of money the Countess asked for if she was not to write a letter to the wealthy and religious bride-to-be.’
‘So he killed her?’ Berrigan asked.
‘So he killed her,’ Sandman said.
Berrigan thought for a moment. ‘So why did they commission her portrait?’
‘In one way,’ Sandman said, ‘that had nothing to do with the murder. It’s simply that several of the Seraphim had rogered the Countess and they wanted her picture as a trophy. So poor Corday was painting away when Skavadale comes to visit. We know he came up the back stairs, the private way, and Corday was hurried off when the Countess realised one of her lovers had arrived.’ Sandman was sure that was how it had happened. He imagined the silent awkwardness in the bedroom as Corday painted and the Countess lounged on the bed and made idle conversation with the maid. The charcoal would have scratched on the paper, then there would have been the sound of footsteps on the back service stairs and Corday’s ordeal had begun.
Berrigan drank again, then passed the bottle to Sandman. ‘So the girl Meg takes the pixie downstairs,’ he said, ‘and throws him out, then she goes back upstairs and finds what? The Countess dead?’
‘Probably. Or dying, and she finds the Marquess of Skavadale there.’ Would the Countess have been pleased to see the Marquess, Sandman wondered. Or was their adulterous tangle already at an end? Perhaps Skavadale had come to plead with her to withdraw her demands and the Countess, desperate for money, had probably laughed at him. Perhaps she hinted that he would have to pay even more, but somehow she drove him into a black rage in which he drew a knife. What knife? A man like Skavadale did not wear a knife, but perhaps there had been a knife in the room? Meg would know. Perhaps the Countess had been eating fruit and had had a paring knife which Skavadale seized and plunged into her, and afterwards, when she lay pale and dying on a bed of blood, he had the whimsy to put Corday’s palette knife into one of her wounds. And then, or just about then, Meg had returned. Or perhaps Meg had overheard the fight and was waiting outside the room when Skavadale emerged.
‘So why didn’t he kill Meg as well?’ the Sergeant asked.
‘Because Meg isn’t a threat to him,’ Sandman guessed. ‘The Countess threatened his betrothal to a girl who could probably pay off the mortgages on all his family’s estates – all of them! And the Countess would have ended that engagement and there’s no greater tragedy to an aristocrat than to lose his money, for with his money goes his status. They reckon they’re born better than the rest of us, but they’re not, they’re just a lot richer, and they have to stay rich if they’re to keep their illusions of superiority. The Countess could have put Skavadale in the gutter, so he hates her and he kills her, but he didn’t kill the maid because she wasn’t a threat.’
Berrigan thought about that for a moment. ‘So he takes the maid off to one of the mortgaged estates instead?’
‘That seems to be the size of it,’ Sandman said.
‘So why is Lord Robin Holloway trying to kill you?’
‘Because I’m a danger to his friend, of course,’ Sandman replied forcefully. ‘The last thing they want is for the truth to be told, so they tried to bribe me and now they’ll try to kill me.’
‘A big bribe, it was,’ Berrigan said.
‘Nothing compared to the wealth that Skavadale’s bride will bring him,’ Sandman said, ‘and the Countess put that at risk. So she had to die, and now Corday must die because then everyone will forget the crime.’
‘Aye,’ Berrigan allowed. ‘But I still don’t understand why they didn’t just scrag this maid Meg. If they thought she was a danger they wouldn’t let her live.’
‘Perhaps they have killed her,’ Sandman said.
‘Then this is a right waste of time,’ Berrigan said gloomily.
‘But I don’t think they’d have taken Meg all the way to Nether Cross just to kill her,’ Sandman said.
‘So what are they doing with her?’
‘Maybe they’ve given her somewhere to live,’ Sandman suggested, ‘somewhere comfortable so she doesn’t reveal what she knows.’
‘So now she’s the blackmailer?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sandman said, yet as he thought about it, the Sergeant’s notion that Meg was now blackmailing Skavadale made sense. ‘Perhaps she is,’ he said, ‘and if she’s sensible she’s not asking too much, which is why they’re content to let her live.’
‘But if she is blackmailing him,’ Berrigan suggested, ‘then she’ll hardly tell us the truth, will she? She’s got Skavadale strapped down tight, don’t she? She’s got the whip on him. Why should she give all that up to save some bloody pixie’s life?’
‘Because we shall appeal,’ Sandman said, ‘to her better nature.’
Berrigan laughed sourly. ‘Ah well, then,’ he said, ‘it’s all solved!’
‘It worked with you, Sergeant,’ Sandman pointed out gently.
‘That were Sally, that were.’ Berrigan paused, then sounded embarrassed. ‘At first, you know, in the Wheatsheaf that night? I thought it was you and her.’
‘Alas no,’ Sandman said, ‘I am well spoken for and Sally is all yours, Sergeant, and I think you are a most fortunate man. As am I. But I am also a tired one.’ He crawled under the carriage, bumping his head painfully on the forward axle. ‘After Waterloo,’ he said, ‘I thought I’d never again sleep in the open.’
The grass was dry under the carriage. The springs creaked as one of the prisoners shifted inside, the picketed horses stamped and the wind sighed in a nearby stand of trees. Sandman thought of the hundreds of other nights he had slept under the stars and then, just as he decided that sleep would never come in this night, it did. And he slept.
8
Early next morning Sally brought them a basket with bacon, hard-boiled eggs, bread and a stone jar of cold tea, a breakfast they shared with the two prisoners. Mackeson, the coachman, was phlegmatic about his fate. ‘You didn’t have much choice, did you?’ he said to Berrigan. ‘You had to keep us quiet, but it won’t do you no good, Sam.’
‘Why not?’
‘You ever seen a lord hang?’
‘Earl Ferrers was hanged,’ Sandman intervened, ‘for murdering his servant.’
‘No!’ Sally said in disbelief. ‘They hanged an earl? Really?’
‘He went to the scaffold in his own carriage,’ Sandman told her, ‘wearing his wedding suit.’
‘Bleeding hell!’ She was obviously pleased by this news. ‘A lord, eh?’
‘But that were a long time ago,’ Mackeson said dismissively, ‘a very long time ago.’ His moustache, which had been waxed so jauntily when Sandman had first seen him, was now fallen and straggling. ‘So what happens to us?’ he asked gloomily.
‘We go to Nether Cross,’ Sandman said, ‘we fetch the girl and you take us back to London where I shall write a letter to your employers saying your absence from duties was forced.’
‘Much bleeding good that will do,’ Mackeson grumbled.
‘You’re a jervis, Mack,’ Berrigan said, ‘you’ll get a job. The rest of the world could be starving, but there’s always work for a jervis.’
‘Time to get ready,’ Sandman said, glancing up at the lightening sky. A small mist drifted over the heath as the four horses were watered at a stone trough, then led back to the carriage where it took a long time to put on the four sets of bridles, belly bands, back bands, martingales, hames, traces, cruppers, driving pads and fillet straps. After Mackeson and Billy had finished harnessing the horses, Sandman made the younger man strip off hi
s shoes and belt. The stable hand had pleaded to be left without bonds on his ankles and wrists and Sandman had agreed, but without shoes and with his breeches falling round his knees the boy would find it hard to escape. Sandman and Sally sat inside with the embarrassed Billy, Mackeson and Berrigan climbed onto the box and then, with a jangle and clanging and a lurching roll, they bounced over the grass and onto the road. They were travelling again.
They went south and east past hop fields, orchards and great estates. By midday Sandman had unwittingly fallen asleep, then woke with a start when the carriage lurched in a rut. He blinked, then saw that Sally had taken the pistol from him and was gazing at a thoroughly cowed Billy. ‘You can sleep on, Captain,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry, Sally.’
‘He didn’t dare try nothing,’ Sally said derisively, ‘not once I told him who my brother is.’
Sandman peered through the window to see they were climbing through a beech wood. ‘I thought we might meet him last night.’
‘He don’t like crossing the river,’ Sally said, ‘so he only works the north and west roads.’ She saw he was properly awake and gave him back his pistol. ‘Do you think a man can be on the cross and then go straight?’ she asked.
Sandman suspected the question was not about her brother, but about Berrigan. Not that the Sergeant was exactly in the cross life, not as the Wheatsheaf understood it, but as a servant of the Seraphim Club he had certainly known his share of crime. ‘Of course he can,’ Sandman said confidently.
‘Not many do,’ Sally averred, but not in argument. Rather she wanted reassurance.
‘We all have to make a living, Sally,’ Sandman said, ‘and if we’re honest we none of us want to work too hard. That’s the appeal of the cross life, isn’t it? Your brother can work one night in three and make a living.’
‘That’s Jack though, isn’t it?’ She sounded bleak and, rather than meet Sandman’s eye, she gazed through the dusty window at an orchard.
‘And maybe your brother will settle down when he meets the right woman,’ Sandman suggested. ‘A lot of men do that. They start off by being rogues, but then find honest work and as often as not it’s after they’ve met a woman. I can’t tell you how many of my soldiers were utter nuisances, complete damn fools, more use to the enemy than to us, and then they’d meet some Spanish girl half their weight and within a week they’d be model soldiers.’ She turned to look at him and he smiled at her. ‘I don’t think you’ve anything to worry about, Sally.’