Bernard Cornwell - Gallows Thief

'Because our next call, Sergeant, must be the Seraphim Club and I do not like to go there unarmed. I'd also prefer it if they did not know we were on the premises, so when is the best time to make our visit?'

'Why are we going there?' Berrigan wanted to know.

'To talk to the coachmen, of course.'

The Sergeant thought for a second, then nodded. 'Then go after dark,' he said, 'because it'll be easier for us to sneak in, and at least one jervis will be there.'

'Let us hope it's the right coachman,' Sandman said, and snapped open his watch. 'Not till dark? Which means I have an afternoon to while away.' He thought for a moment. 'I shall go and talk to a friend. Shall we meet at nine o'clock, say? Behind the club?'

'Meet me at the carriage house entrance,' the Sergeant suggested, 'which is in an alley off Charles II Street.'

'Unless you want to stay with me?' Sandman suggested. 'I'm only going to pass the time with a friend.'

'No,' Berrigan reddened. 'I feel like a rest.'

'Then be kind enough to place that in my room,' Sandman said, giving the Sergeant the rolled portrait of Sally. 'And you, Miss Hood? I can't think how you might want to pass the afternoon. Would you want to accompany me to see a friend?'

Sally put her arm into the Sergeant's elbow, smiled sweetly at Sandman, so very sweetly, and spoke gently. 'Fake away off, Captain.'

Sandman laughed and did what he was told. He faked away off.

CHAPTER SEVEN

'Bunny' Barnwell was reckoned to be the best bowler in the Marylebone Cricket Club, despite having a strange loping run that ended with a double hop before he launched the ball sidearm. The double hop had provided his nickname and he now bowled at Rider Sandman on one of the netted practice wickets at the downhill side of Thomas Lord's new cricket ground in St John's Wood, a pretty suburb to the north of London.

Lord Alexander Pleydell stood beside the net, peering anxiously at every ball. 'Is Bunny moving it off the grass?' he asked.

'Not at all.'

'He's supposed to twist the ball so it moves into your legs. Sharply in. Crossley said the motion was extremely confusing.'

'Crossley's easily confused,' Sandman said, and thumped the ball hard into the net, driving Lord Alexander back in fright.

Barnwell was taking turns with Hughes, Lord Alexander's servant, to bowl to Sandman. Hughes reckoned himself a useful underarm bowler, but he was becoming frustrated at being unable to get anything past Sandman's bat and so he tried too hard and launched a ball that did not bounce at all and Sandman cracked it fast out of the net and over the damp grass so that the ball flicked up a fine silver spray as it shot up the hill where three men were scything the turf. Making a cricket field on such a pronounced slope made no sense to Sandman, but Alexander had a curious attachment to Thomas Lord's new field even though, from one boundary to another, there must have been a fall of at least six or seven feet.

Barnwell tried bowling underarm and was forced to watch his ball follow Hughes's last delivery up the slope. One of the boys who were fielding for the nets tried a fast ball at Sandman's legs and was rewarded with a blow that almost took his head off. 'You're in a savage mood,' Lord Alexander observed.

'Not really. Damp day, ball's slow,' Sandman lied. In truth he was in a savage mood, wondering how he was to keep his promise to Eleanor and why he had even made the promise to elope if her father refused his blessing. No, he understood the answer to the second question. He had made the promise because, as ever, he had been overwhelmed by Eleanor, by the look of her, by the nearness of her and by his own desire for her, but could the promise be kept? He slashed a ball into the net behind with such force that the ball drove the tarred mesh into the back fence, rattling the palings and startling a dozen sparrows into the air. How could he elope, Sandman asked himself. How could he marry a woman when he had no means to support her? And where was the honour in some hole-in-the-wall Scottish wedding that needed neither licence nor banns? The anger surged in him so he skipped down the pitch and drove a ball hard towards the stables where the club members kept their horses during games.

'An exceedingly savage mood,' Lord Alexander said thoughtfully, then took a pencil from the tangled hair behind his ear and a much creased piece of paper from a pocket. 'I thought Hammond could keep wicket, do you agree?'

'This is your team to play Hampshire?'

'No, Rider, it's my proposal for a new Dean and canons of St Paul's Cathedral. What do you think it is?'

'Hammond would be an excellent choice,' Sandman said, going onto his back leg and blocking a sharply rising ball. 'Good one,' he called to Hughes.

'Edward Budd said he'll play for us,' Lord Alexander said.

'Wonderful!' Sandman spoke with genuine warmth, for Edward Budd was the one batsman he acknowledged as his superior and was also thoroughly good company.

'And Simmons is available.'

'Then I won't be,' Sandman said. He collected the last ball with the tip of his bat and knocked it back to Hughes.

'Simmons is an excellent batsman,' Lord Alexander insisted.

'So he is,' Sandman said, 'but he took cash to throw a game in Sussex two years ago.'

'It won't happen again.'

'Not while I'm on the same team, it won't. Make your choice, Alexander, him or me.'

Lord Alexander sighed. 'He really is very good!'

'Then pick him,' Sandman said, taking his stance.

'I shall think about it,' Lord Alexander said in his most lordly manner.

The next delivery came hurtling at Sandman's ankles and he rewarded it with a blow that sent the ball all the way to the tavern by the lower boundary fence where a dozen men watched the nets from the beer garden. Were any of those men Lord Robin Holloway's footpads? Sandman glanced at his coat folded onto the damp grass and was reassured by the sight of the pistol's hilt just protruding from a pocket.

'Maybe you can talk to Simmons?' Lord Alexander suggested. 'Including him will give our side an immense batting force, Rider, a positively immense force. You, Budd and him? We shall set new records!'

'I'll talk to him,' Sandman said, 'I just won't play with him.'

'For God's sake, man!'

Sandman stepped away from the wicket. 'Alexander. I love the game of cricket, but if it's to be bent out of shape by bribery then there will be no sport left. The only way to treat bribery is to punish it absolutely.' He spoke angrily. 'Is it any wonder that the game's dying? This club here used to have a decent field, now they play on a hillside. The game's in decline, Alexander, because it's being corrupted by money.'

'It's all very well for you to say that,' Lord Alexander said huffily, 'but Simmons has a wife and two children. Don't you understand temptation?'

'I think I do, yes,' Sandman said, 'I was offered twenty thousand guineas yesterday.' He stepped back to the crease and nodded at the next bowler.

'Twenty thousand?' Lord Alexander sounded faint. 'To lose a game of cricket?'

'To let an innocent man hang,' Sandman said, playing a demure defensive stroke. 'It's too easy,' he complained.

'What is?'

'This intellectual bowling.' The side arm delivery, when the ball was bowled from a straight arm held at shoulder height, was curiously known as the intellectual style. 'It has no accuracy,' Sandman complained.

'But it has force,' Lord Alexander declared energetically, 'far more so than balls bowled under arm.'

'We should bowl over arm.'

'Never! Never! Ruin the game! An utterly ridiculous suggestion, offensive in the extreme!' Lord Alexander paused to suck on his pipe. 'The club isn't certain it will even allow side arm, let alone over arm. No, if we wish to redress the balance between batsman and bowler, then the answer is obvious. Four stumps. Are you serious?'