Bernard Cornwell - Gallows Thief

'Did you bring the servants from Mount Street to this house?' Sandman asked.

'Servants? Mount Street? You're drivelling. Were you at the battle?'

'All day, my lord. And all I wish to know from you, my lord, is whether a maid called Meg came here from London.'

'How the devil would I know what happened to that bitch's servants, eh? And why would you ask?'

'A man is in prison, my lord, awaiting execution for the murder of your wife, and there is good reason to believe him innocent. That is why I am here.'

The Earl gazed up at Sandman, then began to laugh. The laugh came from deep in his narrow chest and it racked him, dredged up phlegm that half choked him, brought tears to his eyes and left him gasping. He fumbled a handkerchief from his lace-frilled sleeve and wiped his eyes, then spat into it. 'She wronged a man at the very end, did she?' he asked in a hoarse voice. 'Oh, she was good, my Celia, she was so very good at being bad.' He hawked another gobbet of spittle into the handkerchief, then glowered at Sandman. 'So, how many battalions of Napoleon's Guard climbed the hill?'

'Not enough, my lord. What happened to your wife's servants?'

The Earl ignored Sandman because the cold chicken and champagne had been placed on the edge of the model table. He summoned Betty to cut up the chicken and, as she did so, he put an arm round her waist. She seemed to shudder slightly as he first touched her, but then tolerated the caresses.

The Earl, a length of spittle hanging from his wattled jaw, turned his red, rheumy eyes on Sandman. 'I have always liked women young,' he said, 'young and tender. You!' This was to the other girl. 'Pour the champagne, child.' The girl stood on his other side and the Earl put a hand under her skirt while she poured the champagne. He still stared defiantly at Sandman. 'Young flesh,' he growled, 'young and soft.' His servants gazed at the panelled walls and Sandman turned away to look out of the window at two men scything the lawn while a third raked up the clippings. Two herons flew above the distant stream.

The Earl released his grip on the two girls, then gobbled his chicken and slurped his champagne. 'I was told,' he dismissed the two girls back to their painting by slapping their rumps, 'that the French cavalry charged at least twenty times. Was that so?'

'I didn't count,' Sandman said, still looking out of the window.

'Perhaps you were not there after all?' the Earl suggested.

Sandman did not rise to the bait. He was still looking through the window, but instead of seeing the long scythes hiss through the grass, he was staring down a smoky slope in Belgium. He was seeing his recurring dream, watching the French cavalry surge up the slope, their horses labouring in the damp earth. The air on the British-held ridge had seemed heated, as though the door of hell's great oven had been left ajar, and in that heat and smoke the French horsemen had never stopped coming. Sandman had not counted their charges for there were too many, a succession of cavalrymen thumping about the British squares, their horses bleeding and limping, the smoke of the muskets and cannon drifting over the British standards, the ground underfoot a matted tangle of trampled rye stalks, thick as a woven rush mat, but damp and rotten from the rain. The Frenchmen had been grimacing, their eyes red from the smoke and their mouths open as they shouted for their doomed emperor. 'All I remember clearly, my lord,' Sandman said, turning from the window, 'was feeling grateful to the French.'

'Grateful, why?'

'Because so long as their horsemen milled so thick about our squares then their artillery could not fire on us.'

'But how many charges did they make? Someone must know!' The Earl was petulant.

'Ten?' Sandman suggested. 'Twenty? They just kept coming. And they were hard to count because of the smoke. And I remember being very thirsty. And we didn't just stand and watch them coming, we were looking backwards, too.'

'Backwards? Why?'

'Because once a charge had gone through the squares, my lord, they had to come back again.'

'So they were attacking from both sides?'

'From every side,' Sandman said, remembering the swirl of horsemen, the mud and straw kicking up from the hooves and the screams of the dying horses.

'How many cavalry?' the Earl wanted to know.

'I didn't count, my lord. How many servants did your wife have in Mount Street?'

The Earl grinned, then turned from Sandman. 'Bring me a horseman, Betty,' he ordered and the girl dutifully brought him a model French dragoon in his greencoat. 'Very pretty, my dear,' the Earl said, then put the dragoon on the table and hauled Betty onto his lap. 'I am an old man, Captain,' he said, 'and if you want something of me then you must oblige me. Betty knows that, don't you, child?'

The girl nodded. She flinched as the Earl dug a skeletal hand into her dress to cradle one of her breasts. She was perhaps fifteen or sixteen, a country girl, curly haired, freckled and with a round healthy face.

'How must I oblige you, my lord?' Sandman asked.

'Not as Betty does! No, no!' The Earl leered at Sandman. 'You will tell me all I want to know, Captain, and perhaps, when you are done, I shall tell you a little of what you want to know. Rank has its privileges!'

Outside, in the hall, a clock struck six and the sound seemed melancholy in the great empty house. Sandman felt the despair of wasted time. He needed to discover if Meg was here and he needed to return to London, and he sensed that the Earl would play with him all evening and at the end send him away with his questions unanswered. The Earl, sensing and enjoying Sandman's disapproval, pulled the girl's breasts out of her dress. 'Let us begin at the beginning, Captain,' he said, lowering his face to nuzzle the warm flesh, 'let us begin at dawn, eh? It had been raining, yes?'

Sandman walked round the table until he was behind the Earl, where he stooped so his face was close to the stiff hairs of the wig. 'Why not talk about the battle's end, my lord?' Sandman asked in a low voice. 'Why not talk about the attack of the Imperial Guard? Because I was there when we wheeled out of line and took the bastards in the flank.' He crouched even lower. He could smell his lordship's reek and see a louse crawling along the wig's edge. He lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. They'd won the battle, my lord, it was all over except the pursuit, but we changed history in an eyeblink. We marched out of line and we gave them volley fire, my lord, and then we fixed bayonets and I can tell you exactly how it happened. I can tell you how we won, my lord.' Sandman's temper was rising now and there was a bitterness in his voice. 'We won! But you'll never hear that story, my lord, never, because I'll make damn sure that not one officer of the 52nd will ever talk to you! You understand that? Not one officer will ever talk to you. Good day, my lord. Perhaps your servant will be kind enough to show me out?' He walked towards the door. He would ask the servant if Meg had come here and if not, which he suspected would prove the case, then this whole journey would have been a waste of time and money.

'Captain!' The Earl had tipped the girl off his lap. 'Wait!' His rouged face twitched. There was malevolence in it; an old, bitter, hard-hearted malevolence, but he so badly wanted to know exactly how Bonaparte's vaunted Guard had been beaten off, so he snarled at the two girls and the servants to leave the room. 'I'll be alone with the Captain,' he said.

It still took time to draw the tale from him. Time and a bottle of smuggled French brandy, but eventually the Earl spewed the bitter tale of his marriage, confirming what Lord Christopher had already told Sandman. Celia, second wife to the sixteenth earl of Avebury, had been on stage when the Earl first saw her. 'Legs,' the Earl said dreamily, 'such legs, Captain, such legs. That was the first thing about her I saw.'