Gallows Thief by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2011-03-26T05:00:00+00:00

Six

IT WAS RAINING NEXT MORNING WHEN SANDMAN AND Berrigan walked to Newgate Prison. Sandman was still limping badly, grimacing every time he put weight on his left foot. He had wrapped a bandage tight about the boot, but the ankle still felt like jellied fire. “You shouldn’t be walking,” Berrigan told him.

“I shouldn’t have walked when I sprained the other ankle at Burgos,” Sandman said, “but it was either that or get captured by the Frogs. So I walked back to Portugal.”

“You, an officer?” Berrigan was amused. “No gee-gee?”

“I loaned my gee-gee,” Sandman said, “to someone who was really injured.”

Berrigan walked in silence for a few paces. “We had a lot of good officers, really,” he said after a while.

“And there I was,” Sandman said, “thinking I was unique.”

“Because the bad officers didn’t last too long,” Berrigan went on, “especially when there was a fight. Wonderful what a bullet in the back will do.” The Sergeant had slept in the Wheatsheaf’s back parlor after it became clear he was not to be invited to share Sally’s bed, though Sandman, watching the two during the evening, had thought it a damn close-run thing. Lord Alexander, oblivious that he was losing Sally to a low-born rival, had stared at her in dumb admiration until he nerved himself to tell her a joke, but as the jest depended for its humor on an understanding of the Latin gerund, it failed miserably. When Lord Alexander finally fell asleep the Sergeant carried him out to his carriage, which took him home. “He can drink, that cove,” Berrigan had said in admiration.

“He can’t drink,” Sandman had said, “and that’s his problem.” Lord Alexander, he thought, was bored and boredom drove him to drink, while Sandman was anything but bored. He had lain awake half the night trying to work out who beyond the Seraphim Club might want him dead, and it had only been when the bell of St. Paul’s church rang two o’clock that the answer had come to him with a clarity and force that made him ashamed for not having thought of so obvious a solution before. He shared it with Berrigan as they walked down Holborn beneath clouds so low they seemed to touch the belching chimneys.

“I know who’s paying to have me killed.”

“It ain’t the Seraphim Club,” Berrigan insisted. “They’d have told me just to make sure I didn’t get in the way of some other cove.”

“It isn’t the club,” Sandman agreed, “because they decided to buy me off, but the only member with sufficient funds immediately available was Lord Robin Holloway, and he detests me.”

“He does,” Berrigan agreed, “but they all contributed.”

“No, they didn’t,” Sandman said. “Most of the members are in the country and there won’t have been time to solicit them. Skavadale doesn’t have the funds. Maybe one or two members in London donated, but I’ll wager the largest part of the twenty thousand came from Lord Robin Holloway, and he only did it because Skavadale begged him

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