Bernard Cornwell - Gallows Thief

At noon the coach swung across a stone bridge and clattered up a brief hill into the great wide main street of Marlborough, with its twin churches and capacious inns. A small crowd was waiting for the mail and Sandman pushed through the folk and out under the tavern's arch. A carrier's cart was plodding eastwards and Sandman asked the man where he might find the Earl of Avebury's estate. Carne Manor was not far, the carrier said, just over the river and up the hill and on the edge of Savernake. A half-hour's walk, he thought, and Sandman, hunger gnawing at his belly, walked south towards the deep trees of Savernake Forest.

He was hot. He had been carrying his coat, a garment that was not needed on this warm day though he had been grateful for it when he left the Wheatsheaf at dawn. He asked for more directions in a hamlet and was sent down a long lane that twisted between beech woods until he came to Carne Manor's great brick wall, which he followed until he reached a lodge and a pair of cast iron gates hung from stone pillars surmounted with carved griffins. A gravel drive, thick with weeds, led from the locked gates. A bell hung by the lodge, but though Sandman tolled it a dozen times no one answered. Nor could he see anyone inside the estate. Either side of the drive was parkland, a sward of grass dotted by fine elms, beeches and oaks, but no cattle or deer grazed the grass that grew lank and was thick with cornflowers and poppies. Sandman gave the bell a last forlorn tug and, when its sound had faded into the warm afternoon, he stepped back and looked at the spikes on top of the gates. They looked formidable, so he went back up the lane until he came to a place where an elm, growing too close to the wall, had buckled the bricks. The tree's proximity to the wall made it easy to climb. He paused a second on the mortared coping, then dropped down into the park. The grass was long enough to conceal a spring trap set against poachers and so he moved carefully until he reached the gravel drive and then turned towards the house that was hidden beyond some woods growing along the crest of a low hill.

He walked slowly, half expecting a gamekeeper or some other servant to intercept him, but he saw no one as he followed the drive though a fine stand of beeches in the centre of which was an overgrown glade surrounding a mossy statue of a naked woman hoisting a biblical water jar onto her shoulder. Sandman walked on and, from the far side of the beeches, he could at last see Carne Manor a half-mile away. It was a fine stone building with a façade of three high gables on which ivy grew about mullioned windows. Stables, coach houses and a brick-walled kitchen garden lay to the west, while behind the house were terraced lawns dropping to a placid stream. He walked on down the long drive. It suddenly seemed a futile expedition, futile and expensive, for the Earl's reputation as a recluse suggested that Sandman would most likely be greeted with a horsewhip.

The sound of his steps seemed extraordinarily loud as he crossed the great sweep of gravel where carriages could turn in front of the house, though the weeds, grass and moss growing so thick among the stones suggested that few coaches ever did. Sandman climbed the entrance steps. Two glazed lanterns were mounted either side of the porch, though one had a glass pane missing and a bird's nest was smothering its candle holder. He hauled on the bell chain and, when he heard no sound, pulled again and waited. The wooden door had gone grey with age and was stained with rust that had leaked from its decorative metal studs. Bees drifted into the shallow porch. A young cuckoo, looking uncannily like a hawk, flew across the drive. The afternoon was warm and Sandman wished he could abandon this search for a reclusive earl and just go down by the stream and sleep in the shade of some great tree.

Then a harsh banging to his right made Sandman step back to see that a man was trying to open a leaded window in the room closest to the porch. The window was evidently jammed, for the man struck it so hard that Sandman was certain the leaded lights would smash, but then it jarred open and the man leant out. He was in late middle age, had a very pale face and unkempt hair, which suggested he had just woken from a deep sleep. 'The house,' he said testily, 'is not open to visitors.'

'I hadn't supposed it was,' Sandman said, though it had occurred to him to ask the housekeeper, if such a person had answered the door, for a view of the public rooms. Most great houses allowed such visits, but plainly the Earl of Avebury did not extend the courtesy. 'Are you his lordship?' he asked.

'Do I look like him?' the man answered in an irritated tone.

'I have business with his lordship,' Sandman explained.

'Business? Business?' The man spoke as though he had never heard of such a thing, and then a look of alarm crossed his pale features. 'Are you a lawyer?'

'It is delicate business,' Sandman said emphatically, suggesting it was none of the servant's, 'and my name,' he added, 'is Captain Sandman.' It was a mere courtesy to provide his name and a reproof because he had not been asked for it.

The man gazed at him for a heartbeat, then retreated inside. Sandman waited. The bees buzzed by the ivy and house martins swerved above the weed-strewn gravel, but the servant did not return and Sandman, piqued, hauled on the bell-pull again.

A window on the other side of the porch was forced open and the same servant appeared there. 'A captain of what?' he demanded peremptorily.

'The 52nd Foot,' Sandman answered, and the servant vanished for a second time.

'His lordship wishes to know,' the servant reappeared at the first window, 'whether you were with the 52nd at Waterloo.'

'I was,' Sandman said.

The servant went back inside, there was another pause and then Sandman heard bolts being shot on the far side of the door, which eventually creaked open, and the servant offered a sketchy bow. 'We don't get visitors,' he said. 'Your coat and hat, sir? Sandman, you said?'

'Captain Sandman.'

'Of the 52nd Foot indeed, sir, this way, sir.'

The front door opened onto a hall panelled in a dark wood where a fine white-painted stairway twisted upwards beneath portraits of heavily jowled men in ruffs. The servant led Sandman down a passageway into a long gallery lined by tall velvet-curtained windows on one side and great paintings on the other. Sandman had expected the house to be as dirty as the grounds were unkempt, but it was all swept and the rooms smelt of wax polish. The paintings, so far as he could see in the curtained gloom, were exceptionally fine. Italian, he thought, and showing gods and goddesses disporting in vineyards and on dizzying mountainsides. Satyrs pursued naked nymphs and it took Sandman a moment or two to realise that all the paintings showed nudes: a gallery of feminine, abundant and generous flesh. He had a sudden memory of some of his soldiers gaping at just such a painting that had been captured from the French at the battle of Vitoria. The canvas, cut from its frame, had been purloined by a Spanish muleteer to use as a waterproof tarpaulin and the redcoats had bought it from him for tuppence, hoping to use it as a groundsheet. Sandman had purchased it from its new owners for a pound and sent it to headquarters, where it was identified as one of the many masterpieces looted from the Escorial, the King of Spain's palace.

'This way, sir,' the servant interrupted his reverie. The man opened a door and announced Sandman who was suddenly dazzled, for the room into which he had been ushered was vast and its windows that faced south and west were uncurtained and the sun was streaming in to illuminate a huge table. For a few seconds Sandman could not understand the table for it was green and lumpy and smothered in scraps that he thought at first were flowers or petals, then his eyes adjusted to the sunlight and he saw that the coloured scraps were model soldiers. They were thousands of toy soldiers on a table covered in green baize that had been draped across some kind of blocks so that it resembled the valley in which the battle of Waterloo had been fought. He gaped at it, astonished by the size of the model which was at least thirty feet long and twenty deep. Two girls sat at a side table with brushes and paint, which they applied to lead soldiers. Then a squeaking noise made him look into the dazzle by a south window, where he saw the Earl.