Bernard Cornwell - Gallows Thief

Sandman nodded. He was staring at the Countess's picture. Her dress had been very lightly sketched, presumably because it was doomed to be obliterated, but her face, as striking as it was alluring, was almost completed. 'You said, did you not,' he asked, 'that the Earl of Avebury commissioned the portrait?'

'I did say so,' Sir George agreed, 'and he did.'

'Yet I heard that he and his wife were estranged?' Sandman said.

'So I understand,' Sir George said airily, then gave a wicked laugh. 'He was certainly cuckolded. Her ladyship had a reputation, Captain, and it didn't involve feeding the poor and comforting the afflicted.' He was pulling on an old fashioned coat, all wide cuffs, broad collars and gilt buttons. 'Sammy,' he shouted down the stairs, 'I'll eat the game pie up here! And some of that salmagundi if it ain't mouldy. And you can open another of the 'nine clarets.' He lumbered to the window and scowled at the rain fighting against the smoke of a thousand chimneys.

'Why would a man estranged from his wife spend a fortune on her portrait?' Sandman asked.

'The ways of the world, Captain,' Sir George said portentously, 'are a mystery even unto me. How the hell would I know?' Sir George turned from the window. 'You'd have to ask his cuckolded lordship. I believe he lives near Marlborough, though he's reputed to be a recluse so I suspect you'd be wasting your journey. On the other hand, perhaps it isn't a mystery. Maybe he wanted revenge on her? Hanging her naked tits on his wall would be a kind of revenge, would it not?'

'Would it?'

Sir George chuckled. 'There is none so conscious of their high estate as an ennobled whore, Captain, so why not remind the bitch of what brought her the title? Tits, sir, tits. If it had not been for her good tits and long legs she'd still be charging ten shillings a night. But did little Charlie the sodomite kill her? I doubt it, Captain, I doubt it very much, but nor do I care very much. Little Charlie was getting too big for his boots, so I won't mourn to see him twitching at the end of a rope. Ah!' He rubbed his hands as his servant climbed the stairs with a heavy tray. 'Dinner! Good day to you, Captain, I trust I have been of service.'

Sandman was not sure Sir George had been of any service, unless increasing Sandman's confusion was of use, but Sir George was done with him now and Sandman was dismissed.

So he left. And the rain fell harder.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'That fat bastard never offers us dinner!' Sally Hood complained. She was sitting opposite Sandman in a tavern on Piccadilly where, inspired by Sir George Phillips's dinner, they shared a bowl of salmagundi: a cold mixture of cooked meats, anchovies, hard boiled eggs and onions. 'He guzzles himself, he does,' Sally went on, 'and we're supposed to bleeding starve.' She tore a piece of bread from the loaf, poured more oil into the bowl then smiled shyly at Sandman. 'I was so embarrassed when you walked in.'

'No need to be,' Sandman said. On his way out of Sir George's studio he had invited Sally to join him and they had run through the rain and taken shelter in the Three Ships where he had paid for the salmagundi and a big jug of ale with some of the money advanced to him by the Home Office.

Sally shook salt into the bowl, then stirred the mixture vigorously. 'You won't tell anyone?' she asked very earnestly.

'Of course not.'

'I know it ain't actressing,' she said, 'and I don't like that fat bastard staring at me all day, but it's rhino, isn't it?'

'Rhino?'

'Money.'

'It's rhino,' Sandman agreed.

'And I shouldn't have said anything about your friend,' Sally said, 'because I felt such a fool.'

'You mean Lord Alexander?'

'I am a fool, aren't I?' She grinned at him.

'Of course not.'

'I am,' she said fervently, 'but I don't want to be doing this forever. I'm twenty-two now and I'll have to find something soon, won't I? And I wouldn't mind meeting a real lord.'

'You want to marry?'

She nodded, shrugged, then speared half a boiled egg. 'I don't know,' she admitted. 'I mean when life's good, it's very good. Two years ago I never seemed not to be working. I was a witch's servant girl in a play about some Scottish king,' she wrinkled her face trying to think of the name, then shook her head, 'bastard, he was, then I was a dancing girl in a pageant about some black king what got himself killed in India and he was another bastard, but these last two or three months? Nothing! There's not even work at Vauxhall Gardens!'

'What did you do there?'

Sally closed her eyes as she thought. 'Tabbel,' she said, 'tabbler?'

'Tableau vivants?'

'That's it! I was a goddess for three months last summer. I was up a tree, playing a harp and the rhino wasn't bad. Then I got a turn in Astley's with the dancing horses and that kept me through the winter, but there's nothing now, not even down the Strand!' She meant the newer theatres that offered more music and dancing than the two older theatres in Drury Lane and Covent Garden. 'But I've got a private show coming up,' she added, sniffing at the prospect.

'Private?' Sandman asked.

'A rich cove wants his girl to be an actress, see? So he hires the theatre when it's out of season and he pays us to sing and dance and he pays an audience to cheer and he pays the scribblers to write her up in the papers as the next Vestris. You want to come? It's Thursday night at Covent Garden, and it's only the one night so it ain't going to pay any bills, is it?'

'If I can I'll come,' Sandman promised.

'What I need,' Sally said, 'is to join a company, and I could if I was willing to be a frow. You know what that is? Of course you do. And that fat bastard,' she jerked her head, meaning Sir George Phillips, 'he thinks I'm a frow, but I'm not!'

'I never supposed you were.'

'Then you're the only bloody man who didn't.' She grinned at him. 'Well, you and my brother. Jack would kill anyone who said I was a frow.'

'Good for Jack,' Sandman said. 'I rather like your brother.'

'Everyone likes Jack,' Sally said.

'Not that I really know him, of course,' Sandman said, 'but he seems friendly.' Sally's brother, on the few occasions Sandman had encountered him, had seemed a confident, easy-mannered man. He was popular, presiding over a generous table in the Wheatsheaf's taproom and he was strikingly handsome, attracting a succession of young women. He was also mysterious for no one in the tavern would say exactly what he did for a living, though undoubtedly the living was reasonably good for he and Sally rented two large rooms on the Wheatsheaf's first floor. 'What does your brother do?' Sandman asked Sally now and, in return, received a very strange look. 'No, really,' he said, 'what does he do? It's just that he keeps odd hours.'

'You don't know who he is?' Sally asked.

'Should I?'

'He's Robin Hood,' Sally said, then laughed when she saw Sandman's face. 'That's my Jack, Captain,' she said, 'Robin Hood.'

'Good Lord,' Sandman said. Robin Hood was the nickname of a highwayman who was wanted by every magistrate in London. The reward for him was well over a hundred pounds and it was constantly rising.

Sally shrugged. 'He's a daft one, really. I keep telling him he'll end up doing Jemmy Botting's hornpipe, but he won't listen. And he looks after me. Well up to a point, he does, but it's always feast or famine with Jack and when he's in cash he gives it to his ladies. But he's good to me, he is, and he wouldn't let no one touch me.' She frowned. 'You won't tell anyone?'

'Of course I won't!'

'I mean everyone in the 'sheaf knows who he is, but none of them would tell on him.'

'Nor would I,' Sandman assured her.

'Of course you wouldn't,' Sally said, then grinned. 'So what about you? What do you want out of life?'