Bernard Cornwell - Gallows Thief

Sandman heard the door open and shut, and the Sergeant's footsteps fade.

Twenty thousand guineas, he thought. Gone.

===OO=OOO=OO===

The Reverend Lord Alexander Pleydell had secured one of the Covent Garden Theatre's stage boxes for the performance. 'I cannot say I am expecting great artistry,' he declared as he followed Sandman through the crowds, 'except from Miss Hood. I am sure she will be more than dazzling.' His lordship, like Sandman, was clutching his pockets for theatre crowds were famous hunting grounds for cly-fakers, knucklers, divers, dummy hunters and buzz-coves, all of them, to Lord Alexander's delight, different names for pickpockets. 'Do you realise,' he said in his shrill voice, 'that there is a whole hierarchy of cly-fakers?'

'I was listening to the conversation, Alexander,' Sandman said. Lord Alexander, before they left the Wheatsheaf, had insisted on another tutorial in the flash language, this one from the landlord, Jenks, who rather liked having a reverend lord as a customer. The Reverend Lord had taken notes, delighted to discover that the lowest rank of cly-faker was the clouter, a child who snitched handkerchiefs, while the lords of the buzzing trade were the thimble-coves who stole watches. It was not just the practitioners of the trade who had names, the pockets themselves were all differentiated. 'Garret,' Lord Alexander chanted, 'hoxter, kickseys, pit, rough-fammy, salt box cly and slip. Did I miss one?'

'I wasn't paying attention.' Sandman edged closer to the brightly lit awning of the theatre.

'Garret, hoxter, kickseys, pit, rough-fammy, salt box cly and slip,' Lord Alexander announced again to the bemusement of the crowd. The garret was the fob pocket of a waistcoat while the lower pockets were rough-fammies, the kickseys were pockets in breeches, the hoxter was a coat's inside pocket, an unflapped chest pocket was a pit, an outside coat pocket protected by a flap was a salt box cly while a tail pocket, the easiest of all to pick, was a slip. 'Do you think,' Lord Alexander shouted over the noise of the crowd, 'that Miss Hood will join us for supper after the performance?'

'I'm sure she'll be more than happy to bask in the admiration of one of her admirers.'

'One of?' Lord Alexander asked anxiously. 'You're not thinking of Kit Carne, are you?'

Sandman was not thinking of Lord Christopher Carne, but he shrugged as though the Earl of Avebury's heir was indeed a rival for Sally's hand. Lord Alexander looked very disapproving. 'Kit is not a serious man, Rider.'

'I thought he was very serious.'

'I have decided he is weak,' Lord Alexander said loftily.

'Weak?'

'The other night,' Lord Alexander said, 'he just stared at Miss Hood with a vacant look on his face! Ridiculous behaviour. I was talking to her and he was just gaping! Lord knows what she thought of him.'

'I can't imagine,' Sandman said.

'He was gaping like a fish!' Lord Alexander said, then turned in alarm as a child squealed. The child's pain was met by a roar of laughter. 'What happened?' Lord Alexander asked anxiously.

'Someone lined their pockets with fish-hooks,' Sandman guessed, 'and a clouter just got torn fingers?' It was a common precaution against pickpockets.

'A lesson the child will not forget,' Lord Alexander said piously. 'But I mustn't be hard on Kit. He has little experience of women and I fear he has no defences against their charms.'

'That,' Sandman said, 'from a man who is eager to watch Sally Hood dance, is rich.'

Lord Alexander grinned. 'Even I am not perfect. Kit wanted to come tonight, but I told him to buy his own ticket. Good Lord, he might even have wanted to come to supper with Miss Hood afterwards! Do you think she might like to visit Newgate with us?'

'Visit Newgate?'

'For a hanging! I told you I was requesting a privileged seat from the prison authorities, so I wrote to them. No answer yet, but I'm sure they'll consent.'

'And I'm sure I don't want to go,' Sandman shouted over the crowd's noise, and just then the throng gave an inexplicable lurch and Sandman was able to make a lunge for the doorway. If it was a paid crowd causing the crush, he thought, then it was costing Mister Spofforth a rare fortune. Mister Spofforth was the man who had taken the theatre for the evening on behalf of his protégé, a Miss Sacharissa Lasorda, who was billed as the new Vestris. The old Vestris was only twenty years old and a dazzling Italian actress who was reputed to add three hundred pounds a night to a theatre's takings merely by baring her legs, and Mister Spofforth was now trying to launch Miss Lasorda on a career of similar profitability.

'Do you know Spofforth?' Sandman asked his friend. They were inside the theatre now and an old woman was leading them up musty stairs to their box.

'Of course I know William Spofforth,' Lord Alexander's club foot banged against the risers as he struggled manfully up the dark stairs, 'he was at Marlborough. He's a rather foolish young man whose father made a fortune in sugar. Young Spofforth, our host tonight, kept wicket, but had no idea how to place fielders.'

'I always think the captain or bowler should do that,' Sandman observed mildly.

'An absurd statement,' Lord Alexander snapped. 'Cricket will cease to be cricket when the Keeper abandons his duties of field setting. He sees as the batsman does, so who else is better placed to set a field? Truly, Rider, I am second to none in my admiration of your batting, but when it comes to a theoretical understanding of the game then you really are a child.' It was an old argument, and one that happily engaged them as they took their places above the stage's apron. Lord Alexander had his bag of pipes and lit his first of the evening, the smoke wreathing past a large sign that prohibited smoking. The house was full, over three thousand spectators, and it was rowdy because a good number of the audience were already drunk, suggesting that Mister Spofforth's servants must have dredged the taverns to find his supporters. A group of newspaper writers was being plied with champagne, brandy and oysters in a box opposite Lord Alexander's plush eyrie. Mister Spofforth, an aloof beau with a collar rising past his ears, was in the neighbouring box from where he kept an anxious eye on the journalists who were costing him so much and whose verdict could make or break his lover, but one critic was already asleep, another was fondling a woman while the remaining two were loudly haranguing the box's attendant for more champagne. A dozen musicians filed into the pit and began tuning their instruments.

'I'm putting together a gentlemen's eleven to play against Hampshire at the end of the month,' Lord Alexander said, 'and I rather hoped you'd want to play.'

'I'd like that, yes. Would the game be in Hampshire?' Sandman asked the question anxiously, for he did not particularly want to go near Winchester and his mother's querulous demands.

'Here, in London,' Lord Alexander said, 'at Thomas Lord's ground.'

Sandman grimaced. 'That wretched hillside?'

'It's a perfectly good ground,' Lord Alexander said huffily, 'a slight slope, maybe? And I've already wagered fifty guineas on the game, which is why I'd like you to play. I shall go higher if you're in my team.'

Sandman groaned. 'Money's ruining the game, Alexander.'

'Which is why those of us who oppose corruption must be energetic in our patronage of the game,' Lord Alexander insisted. 'So will you play?'

'I'm very out of practice,' Sandman warned his friend.

'Then get into practice,' Lord Alexander said testily, lighting another pipe. He frowned at Sandman. 'You look depressingly glum. Don't you enjoy the theatre?'

'Very much.'

'Then look as if you do!' Lord Alexander polished the lens of his opera glasses on the tails of his coat. 'Do you think Miss Hood would enjoy cricket?'