Bernard Cornwell - Gallows Thief

'Because I am your wish, dream and desire?' Eleanor asked with tears in her eyes and a smile on her face.

'Because you are all of those things,' Sandman said, 'and I love you besides.'

And Sergeant Berrigan, dripping with rainwater and grinning with delight at discovering Sandman at so delicate a moment, was suddenly standing beside them.

===OO=OOO=OO===

The Sergeant began to whistle 'Spanish Ladies' as they climbed Hay Hill towards Old Bond Street. It was a cheerful whistle, one that proclaimed that he was not at all interested in what he had just seen, and a well-judged whistle that, in the army, would have been recognised as entirely insubordinate, but quite unpunishable. Sandman, still limping, laughed. 'I was once engaged to Miss Forrest, Sergeant.'

'German coach there, Captain, see it? Heavy bloody thing.' Berrigan still pretended to be uninterested, pointing instead at a massive carriage that was sliding dangerously on the hill's rain-slicked cobbles. The coachman was hauling on the brake, the horses were skittering nervously, but then the wheels struck the kerb and steadied the vehicle. 'Shouldn't be allowed,' Berrigan said, 'foreign bloody coaches cracking up our roads. They should tax the buggers blind or else send them back across the bloody Channel where they belong.'

'And Miss Forrest broke off the engagement because her parents did not want her to marry a pauper,' Sandman said, 'so now, Sergeant, you know all.'

'Didn't look much like a broken bloody engagement to me, sir. Staring into your eyes like the sun, moon and sparkles were trapped there.'

'Yes, well. Life is complicated.'

'I hadn't noticed,' Berrigan said sarcastically. He grimaced at the weather, though the rain was now spitting rather than cascading. 'And talking of complications,' he went on, 'Mister Sebastian Witherspoon was not a happy man. Not a happy man at all. In fact, if I was to be accurate, he was bloody annoyed.'

'Ah! He has adduced that I am not behaving as he expected?'

'He wanted to know what you were bloody up to, Captain, so I said I didn't know.'

'He surely refused to accept that assurance?'

'He could do what he bloody liked, Captain, but I told him yes sir, no sir, I don't know a blessed thing sir, up your back alley, sir, and go to hell, sir, but all of it in a deeply respectful manner.'

'You behaved, in other words, like a sergeant?' Sandman asked, and laughed again. He remembered that subservient insolence from his own sergeants; an apparent cooperation masking a deep intransigence. 'But did he tell you where the Home Secretary will be on Sunday?'

'His lordship won't be at his home, Captain, on account that the builders are putting in a new staircase in his house which they promised to have finished last May and which they ain't even painted yet, so his lordship is borrowing a house in Great George Street. Mister Witherspoon said he hopes he don't see you any day soon and, anyway, his lordship won't thank you for disturbing him on Sunday on account that his lordship is of the Godly persuasion, and anyway Mister Witherspoon, like his holy lordship, trusts that the bloody pixie is hanged by his bloody neck till he's bloody well dead like what he bloody deserves to be.'

'I'm sure he didn't say the last.'

'Not quite,' Berrigan admitted cheerfully, 'but I did, and Mister Witherspoon began to think well of me. Another few minutes and he'd have given you the butt end and made me the Investigator instead.'

'God help Corday then, eh?'

'The little bugger would go to the gallows so bleeding fast that his twinkle toes wouldn't touch the ground,' Berrigan said happily. 'So where are we going now?'

'We're going to see Sir George Phillips, because I want to know if he can tell me exactly who commissioned the Countess's portrait. Know that man's name, Sergeant, and we have our murderer.'

'You hope,' Berrigan said dubiously.

'Miss Hood is also at Sir George's studio. She models for him.'

'Ah!' Berrigan cheered up.

'And even if Sir George won't tell us, then I've also learnt that my one witness was carried away in the Seraphim Club's carriage.'

'One of their carriages,' Berrigan corrected him, 'they have two.'

'So I assume one of the club's coachmen can tell us where they took her.'

'I imagine they might,' Berrigan said, 'though they might need some persuading.'

'A pleasing prospect,' Sandman said, arriving at the door beside the jeweller's shop. He knocked and, as before, the door was answered by Sammy, the black page, who immediately tried to shut it. Sandman bulled his way through. 'Tell Sir George,' he said imperiously, 'that Captain Rider Sandman and Sergeant Samuel Berrigan have come to talk to him.'

'He don't want to talk to you,' Sammy said.

'Go and tell him, child!' Sandman insisted.

Instead Sammy made an ill-judged attempt to dodge past Sandman into the street, only to be caught by Sergeant Berrigan, who lifted the lad and slammed him against the door post. 'Where were you going, boy?' Berrigan demanded.

'Why don't you fake off?' Sammy said defiantly, then yelped. 'I wasn't going anywhere!' Berrigan drew back his fist again. 'He told me if you was to come again,' Sammy said hastily, 'I was to go and fetch help.'

'From the Seraphim Club?' Sandman guessed, and the boy nodded. 'Hold onto him, Sergeant,' Sandman said, then began climbing the stairs. 'Fee, fi, fo, fum!' he chanted at the top of his voice, 'I smell the blood of an Englishman!' He was making the noise to warn Sally so that Sergeant Berrigan would not see her naked. Sandman had no doubt that Berrigan would be getting that treat very soon, but Sandman also had no doubt that Sally would want to decide when that would be. 'Sir George!' he bellowed. 'Are you there?'

'Who the devil is it?' Sir George shouted. 'Sammy?'

'Sammy's a prisoner,' Sandman shouted.

'God's bollocks! It's you?' Sir George, for a fat man, moved with remarkable speed, going to a cupboard from which he took a long-barrelled pistol. He ran with it to the head of the stairs and pointed it down at Sandman. 'No further, Captain, on pain of your life!' he growled.

Sandman glanced at the pistol and kept on climbing. 'Don't be such a bloody fool,' he said tiredly. 'Shoot me, Sir George, and you'll have to shoot Sergeant Berrigan, then you'll have to keep Sally quiet and that means shooting her, so then you'll have three corpses on your hands.' He climbed the last few steps and, without any fuss, took the pistol from the painter's hand. 'It's always best to cock weapons if you want to look really threatening,' he added, then turned and nodded at Berrigan. 'Allow me to introduce Sergeant Berrigan, late of the First Foot Guards, then of the Seraphim Club, but now a volunteer in my army of righteousness.' Sandman saw, with relief, that Sally had received enough warning to pull on a coat. He took off his hat and bowed to her. 'Miss Hood, my respects.'

'You're still limping, then?' Sally asked, then blushed as Sergeant Berrigan arrived.

'He's bleeding hurting me!' Sammy complained.

'I'll bleeding kill you if you don't shut up,' Berrigan growled, then he nodded to Sally. 'Miss Hood,' he said, then he saw the canvas and his eyes widened in admiration and Sally blushed even deeper.

'You can put Sammy down,' Sandman said to Berrigan, 'because he won't go for help.'

'He'll do what I tell him!' Sir George said belligerently.

Sandman crossed to the painting and stared at the central figure of Nelson, and thought that since the admiral's death the painters and engravers had been making the hero ever more frail so that he was now almost a spectral figure. 'If you tell Sammy to go for help, Sir George,' he said, 'then I shall spread it abroad that your studio deceives women, that you paint them clothed and, when they are gone, you turn them into nudes.' He turned and smiled at the painter. 'What will that do to your prices?'