Читать книгу: «The Sharpe Series», страница 2

Sharpe turned down Tower Hill. There was a pair of red-coated sentries at the Tower’s outer gate and they pretended not to see the sabre scabbard protruding from Sharpe’s greatcoat and he pretended not to see them. He did not care if they saluted him or not. He did not much care if he never saw the army again so long as he lived. He was a failure. Storekeeper to the regiment. A bloody quartermaster. He had come from India, where he had received a commission into a red-coated regiment, to England, where he had been placed in the greenjackets, and at first he had liked the Rifles, but then Grace had gone and everything went wrong. Yet it was not her fault. Sharpe blamed himself, but still did not understand why he had failed. The Rifles were a new kind of regiment, prizing skill and intelligence above blind discipline. They worked hard, rewarded progress and encouraged the men to think for themselves. Officers trained with the men, even drilled with them, and the hours that other regiments wasted in pipe-claying and stock-polishing, in boot-licking and tuft-brushing, the green-jackets spent in rifle practice. Men and officers competed against each other, all trying to make their own company the best. It was exactly the kind of regiment that Sharpe had dreamed of when he had been in India, and he had been recommended to it. ‘I hear you’re just the sort of officer we want,’ Colonel Beckwith had greeted Sharpe, and the Colonel’s welcome was heartfelt, for Sharpe brought the green-jackets a wealth of recent experience in battle, but in the end they did not want him. He did not fit. He could not make small talk. Perhaps he had frightened them. Most of the regiment’s officers had spent the last years training on England’s south coast, while Sharpe had been fighting in India. He had become bored with the training, and after Grace he had become bitter so that the Colonel had taken him away from number three company and put him in charge of the stores. Which was where most officers up from the ranks were placed in the hidebound, red-coated regiments, but the Rifles were supposed to be different.

Now the regiment had marched away, going to fight somewhere abroad, but Sharpe, the morose quartermaster, had been left behind. ‘It’ll be a chance,’ Colonel Beckwith had told Sharpe, ‘to clean out the hutments. Give them a damn good scouring, eh? Have everything ready for our return.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe had said, and thought Beckwith could go to hell. Sharpe was a soldier, not a damned barracks cleaner, but he had hidden his anger as he watched the regiment march north. No one knew where it was going. Some said Spain, others said they were going to Stralsund, which was a British garrison on the Baltic, though why the British held a garrison on the southern coast of the Baltic no one could explain, and a few claimed the regiment was going to Holland. No one actually knew, but they all expected to fight and they marched in fine spirits. They were the greenjackets, a new regiment for a new century, but with no place for Richard Sharpe. So Sharpe had decided to run. Damn Beckwith, damn the green-jackets, damn the army and damn everything. He had reckoned he would sell his commission, take the money and find a new life. Except he could not sell because of the bloody regulations. God damn it, Grace, he thought, what do I do?

Only he knew what he was going to do. He was still going to run. Yet to start a new life he needed money, which was why he had made certain it was a Friday. Now he edged down the greasy stairs at the foot of Tower Hill and nodded to a waterman. ‘Wapping Steps,’ he said, settling in the boat’s stern.

The waterman shoved off, letting the river current carry him downstream past Traitor’s Gate. The masts were thick on either side of the river where ships and barges were double berthed against wharves crudely protected by bulging fenders made of thick, twisted, tar-soaked rope. Sharpe knew those fenders. The worn-out ones had been carted to the foundling home in Brewhouse Lane where the children had been made to dismantle the matted remnants of tar and hemp. At the age of nine, Sharpe remembered, he had lost the nails on four of his fingers. It had been useless work. Teasing out the hemp strands with small bare and bloody hands. The strands were sold as an alternative for the horsehair that stiffened the plaster used on walls. He looked at his hands now. Still rough, he thought, but no longer black with tar and bloody with ripped nails.

‘Recruiting?’ the waterman asked.

‘No.’

The curt tone might have offended the waterman, but he shrugged it off. ‘It ain’t my business,’ he said, deftly using an oar to keep the boat drifting straight, ‘but Wapping ain’t healthy. Not to an officer, sir.’

‘I grew up there.’

‘Ah,’ the man said, giving Sharpe a puzzled look. ‘Going home, then?’

‘Going home,’ Sharpe agreed. The sky was leaden with cloud and darkened further by the pall of smoke that threaded the spires and towers and masts. A black sky over a black city, broken only by a jagged streak of pink in the west. Going home, Sharpe thought. Friday evening. The small rain pitted the river. Lights glimmered from portholes in the berthed ships which stank of coal dust, sewage, whale oil and spices. Gulls flew like white scraps in the early dark, wheeling and diving about the heavy beam at Execution Dock, where the bodies of two men, mutineers or pirates, hung with broken necks.

‘Watch yourself,’ the waterman said, skilfully nudging his skiff in among the other boats at the Wapping Steps. He was not warning Sharpe against the slippery flight of stairs, but against the folk who lived in the huddled streets above.

Sharpe paid in coppers, then climbed up to the wharf which was edged with low warehouses guarded by ragged dogs and cudgel-bearing thugs. This place was safe enough, but once through the alley and into the streets he was in hungry territory. He would be back in the gutter, but it was his gutter, the place he had started and he felt no particular fear of it.

‘Colonel!’ A whore called to him from behind a warehouse. She lifted her skirt then spat a curse when Sharpe ignored her. A chained dog lunged at him as he emerged onto High Street where a dozen small boys whooped in derision at the sight of an army officer and fell into mocking step behind him. Sharpe let them follow for twenty paces, then whipped round fast and snatched the nearest boy’s shabby coat, lifted and slammed him against the wall. Two of the other boys ran off, doubtless to fetch brothers or fathers. ‘Where’s Maggie Joyce?’ Sharpe asked the boy.

The child hesitated, wondering whether to be brave, then half grinned. ‘She’s gone, mister.’

‘Gone where?’

‘Seven Dials.’

Sharpe believed him. Maggie was his one friend, or he hoped she was, but she must have had the sense to leave Wapping, though Sharpe doubted that the Seven Dials was much safer. But he had not come here to see Maggie. He had come here because it was Friday night and he was poor. ‘Who’s the Master at the workhouse?’ he asked.

The child looked really scared now. ‘The Master?’ he whispered.

‘Who is it, boy?’

‘Jem Hocking, sir.’

Sharpe put the lad down, took the halfpenny from his pocket and spun it down the street so that the boys pursued it between the people, dogs, carts and horses. Jem Hocking. That was the name he had hoped to hear. A name from a black past, a name that festered in Sharpe’s memory as he walked down the centre of the street so that no one emptied a slop bucket over his head. It was a summer evening, the cloud-hidden sun was still above the horizon, but it seemed like winter twilight here. The houses were black, their old bricks patched with crude timbers. Some had fallen down and were nothing but heaps of rubble. Cesspits stank. Dogs barked everywhere. In India the British officers had shuddered at the stench of the streets, but none had ever walked here. Even the worst street in India, Sharpe thought, was better than this foetid place where the people had pinched faces, sunk with hunger, but their eyes were bright enough, especially when they saw the pack in Sharpe’s left hand. They saw a heavy pack, a sabre and assessed the value of the greatcoat draped like a cloak over his broad shoulders. There was more wealth on Sharpe than these folk saw in a half-dozen years, though Sharpe reckoned himself poor. He had been rich once. He had taken the jewels of the Tippoo Sultan, stripping them from the dying king’s body in the shit-stinking tunnel of the Water Gate of Seringapatam, but those jewels were gone. Bloody lawyers. Bloody, bloody lawyers.

But if the folk saw the wealth on Sharpe they also saw that he was very tall and very strong and that his face was scarred and hard and bitter and forbidding. A man would have to be desperately hungry to risk his life in an attempt to steal Sharpe’s coat or pack and so, like wolves that scented blood but feared losing their own, the men watched him pass and, though some followed him as he turned up Wapping Lane, they did not pursue him into Brewhouse Lane. The poorhouse and the foundling home were there and no one went close to those grim high walls unless they were forced.

Sharpe stood in the doorway of the old brewery, long closed down, and stared across the street at the workhouse walls. On the right was the poorhouse that mostly held folk too old to work, or else they were sick or had been abandoned by their children. Landlords turned them onto the street and the parish beadle brought them here, to Jem Hocking’s kingdom, where the men were put in one ward and the women in the other. They died here, husbands forbidden to speak with their wives, and all half starved until their corpses were carried in a knacker’s cart to a pauper’s grave. That was the poorhouse, and it was divided from the foundling home by a narrow, three-storey brick house with white-painted shutters and an elegant wrought-iron lantern suspended above its well-scrubbed front steps. The Master’s house. Jem Hocking’s small palace which overlooked the foundling home which, like the poorhouse, had its own gate: a black slab of heavy timber smeared with tar and surmounted with rusted iron spikes four inches long. A prison, really, for orphans. The magistrates sent pregnant girls here, girls too poor to have a home or too sick to sell their swollen bodies on the streets. Their bastards were born here and the girls, as often as not, died of the fever. Those that survived went back to the streets, leaving their children in the tender care of Jem Hocking and his wife.

It had been Sharpe’s home once. And now it was Friday.

He crossed the street and hammered on the small wicket door set into the foundling home’s larger gate. Grace had wanted to come here. She had listened to Sharpe’s stories and believed she could change things, but there had never been time. So Sharpe would change things now. He lifted his hand to hammer again just as the wicket door opened to reveal a pale and anxious young man who flinched away from Sharpe’s fist. ‘Who are you?’ Sharpe demanded as he stepped through the small opening.

‘Sir?’ The young man had been expecting to ask that same question.

‘Who are you?’ Sharpe asked. ‘Come on, man, don’t bloody dither! And where’s the Master?’

‘The Master’s in his house, but …’ The young man abandoned whatever he had been trying to say and instead attempted to stand in front of Sharpe. ‘You can’t go in there, mister!’

‘Why not?’ Sharpe had crossed the small yard and now pushed open the door to the hall. When he had been a child he had thought it a vast room, big as a cathedral, but now it looked squalid and small. Scarce bigger than a company’s barrack room, he realized. It was supper and some thirty or more children were sitting on the floor among the oakum and the tar-encrusted fenders that was their daily work. They scooped spoons in wooden bowls while another thirty children queued beside a table that held a cauldron of soup and a bread board. A woman, her red arms massive, stood behind the table while a young man, equipped with a riding crop, lolled on the hall’s low dais above which a biblical text arched across the brown-painted wall. Be sure your sin will find you out.

Sixty pairs of eyes stared at Sharpe in astonishment. None of the children spoke for fear of the riding crop or a blow from the woman’s burly arm. Sharpe did not speak either. He was staring at the room, smelling the tar and fighting against the overwhelming memories. It had been twenty years since he had last been under this roof. Twenty years. It smelt the same, though. It smelt of tar and fear and rotten food. He stepped to the table and sniffed the soup.

‘Leek and barley gruel, sir.’ The woman, seeing the silver buttons and the black braid and the sabre, dropped a clumsy curtsey.

‘Looks like lukewarm water to me,’ Sharpe said.

‘Leek and barley, sir.’

Sharpe picked up a random piece of bread. Hard as brick. Hard as ship’s biscuit.

‘Sir?’ The woman held out her hand. She was nervous. ‘The bread is counted, sir, counted.’

Sharpe tossed it down. He was tempted to some extravagant gesture, but what would it do? Upsetting the cauldron merely meant the children would go hungry, while dropping the bread into the soup would achieve nothing. Grace would have known what to do. Her voice would have cracked like a whip and the work-house servants would have been scurrying to fetch food, clothes and soap. But those things cost money and Sharpe only had a pocketful of copper.

‘And what have we here?’ a strong voice boomed from the hall door. ‘What has the east wind blown in today?’ The children whimpered and went very still while the woman dropped another curtsey. Sharpe turned. ‘And who are you?’ the man demanded. ‘Colonel of the regiment, are you?’

It was Jem Hocking. Come like the devil to the heart of hell.

He was no devil to look at. See Jem Hocking in the street and a man might take him for a prosperous farmer up from the Vale of Kent. The years had whitened his hair and stretched his chequered waistcoat taut across a bulging belly, but he was still a bull of a man with wide shoulders, stout legs and a face as flat as a shovel. Thick jowls hung beneath bushy white side whiskers, a golden watch chain held a dozen seals, his tall boots were tasselled, his dark-blue coat was edged with velvet cuffs and he carried a varnished black staff with a silver knob. He was the Master and for a moment Sharpe could not speak. He was overwhelmed by hatred, by the memories of this man’s cruelty, even by fear. Twenty years and a battlefield commission had not taken away that fear. He wanted to imitate the children; he wanted to freeze, pretend not to exist, not even breathe in case he was noticed.

‘Does I know you?’ Hocking demanded. The big man was frowning, trying to discern something familiar in Sharpe’s scarred face, but the memory would not come. He shook his head in puzzlement. ‘So who are you?’

‘My name is Dunnett,’ Sharpe said, using the name of an officer in the greenjackets who held a particular dislike of Sharpe. ‘Major Warren Dunnett,’ he said, promoting Dunnett from captain.

‘A major, eh? And what kind of uniform is that, Major? Red coats I know, and blue I’ve seen, but bless me, I ain’t seen green and black.’ He stepped towards Sharpe, pushing the children’s skinny legs out of the way with his beadle’s staff. ‘Is it a newfangled uniform, eh? Some kind of coat that gives a man the right to trespass on parish property?’

‘I was looking for the Master,’ Sharpe said. ‘I was told he was a man of business.’

‘Business.’ Hocking spat the word. ‘And what business do you have, Major, other than the killing of the King’s enemies?’

‘You want me to talk about it here?’ Sharpe asked. He took one of the pennies from his coat pocket and spun it towards the ceiling. It glittered as it flew, watched by hungry, astonished children, then fell into Sharpe’s hand and vanished.

The sight of the money, even a humble penny, was all the reassurance Hocking needed. The rest of his questions could wait. ‘I has business outside the poorhouse tonight,’ he announced, ‘it being a Friday. You’ll take an ale with me, Major?’

‘That would be a pleasure, Master,’ Sharpe lied.

Or perhaps it was not a lie, for Sharpe was angry and revenge was a pleasure. And this revenge had been simmering in his dreams for twenty years. He glanced a last time at the text on the wall and wondered if Jem Hocking had ever considered the truth of it.

Be sure your sin will find you out.

Jem Hocking should have taken note and been on his knees in prayer.

Because Richard Sharpe had come home.

CHAPTER TWO

The tavern displayed no name. There was not even a painted sign hanging outside, nothing, indeed, to distinguish it from the neighbouring houses except, perhaps, a slight air of prosperity that stood out in Vinegar Street like a duchess in a whorehouse. Some folk called it Malone’s Tavern because Beaky Malone had owned and run it, though Beaky had to be dead by now, and others called it the Vinegar Alehouse because it was in Vinegar Street, while some knew the house simply as the Master’s because Jem Hocking did so much of his business in its taproom.

‘I have interests,’ Jem Hocking said grandly, ‘beyond those of the mere parish. I am a man of parts, Major.’

Meaning, Sharpe thought, that Hocking persecuted more than the workhouse inmates. He had become rich over the years, rich enough to own scores of houses in Wapping, and Friday night was when the tenants brought him the rent. Pennies only, but pennies added up, and Hocking received them in the taproom where they vanished into a leather bag while a cowed white-haired clerk made notes in a ledger. Two young men, both tall, strongly built and armed with cudgels, were the taproom’s only other customers and they watched every transaction. ‘My mastiffs,’ Hocking had explained the two young men.

‘A man of responsibility needs protection,’ Sharpe had said, using two of his three shillings to buy a flagon of ale. The girl brought four tankards. The clerk, it seemed, was not to be treated to Major Dunnett’s largesse. Only Sharpe, Hocking and the two mastiffs were to drink.

‘It takes a man of authority to recognize responsibility,’ Hocking said, then buried his face in the tankard for a few seconds. ‘What you are seeing, Major, is private business.’ He watched a thin woman offer some coppers to the clerk. ‘But in my parish duties,’ Hocking went on, watching the clerk count the coins, ‘I have responsibility for the disbursement of public funds and for the care of immortal souls. I take neither duty lightly, Major.’ The public funds were fourpence three farthing a day for each pauper out of which Jem Hocking managed to purloin twopence, while the rest was grudgingly spent on stale bread, onions, barley and oatmeal. The care of souls yielded no profit, but did not require any outlay either.

‘You have overseers?’ Sharpe asked, pouring himself and Hocking more ale.

‘I have a Board of Visitors,’ Hocking agreed. He watched the ale being poured. ‘The law says we must. So we do.’

‘So where is the responsibility?’ Sharpe asked. ‘With you? Or the Board?’ He saw the question had offended Hocking. ‘I assume it is you, Master, but I have to be sure.’

‘With me,’ Hocking said grandly. ‘With me, Major. The Board is appointed by the parish and the parish, Major, is infested with bleeding orphans. And not just our own! Some even gets stranded here by the ships. Only last week the mudlarks found a girl child, if you can imagine such a thing.’ He shook his head and dipped his nose into the ale’s froth while Sharpe imagined the mudlarks, men and women who combed the Thames foreshore at low tide in search of scraps fallen overboard, bringing a child to Brewhouse Lane. Poor child, to end with Hocking as a guardian. ‘The Board, Major,’ Hocking went on, ‘cannot cope with so many children. They confine themselves to a quarterly examination of the accounts which, you may be sure, add up to the exact penny, and the Board votes me an annual motion of thanks at Christmas time, but otherwise the Board ignores me. I am a man of business, Major, and I spare the parish the trouble of dealing with orphans. I have two score and sixteen of the little bastards in the house now, and what will the Board of Visitors do without me and Mrs Hocking? We are a godsend to the parish.’ He held up a hand to check anything Sharpe might say. This was not to deflect a compliment, but rather because a thin young man had come from the tavern’s back door to whisper in his ear. A raucous cheer sounded from behind the door. The cheers had been sounding ever since Sharpe had arrived in the tavern and he had pretended not to hear them. Now he ignored the young man who tipped a stream of coins into the clerk’s leather bag, then gave Hocking a pile of grubby paper slips that vanished into the big man’s pocket. ‘Business,’ Hocking said gruffly.

‘In Lewes,’ Sharpe said, ‘the parish offers three pounds to anyone who will take an orphan out of the workhouse.’

‘If I had such cash, Major, I could strip Brewhouse Lane of the little bastards in five minutes.’ Hocking chuckled. ‘For a pound apiece! A pound! But we ain’t a rich parish. We ain’t Lewes. We ain’t got the funds to palm the little bastards off onto others. No, we relies on others paying us!’ He sank half the ale, then gave Sharpe a suspicious look. ‘So what does you want, Major?’

‘Drummer boys,’ Sharpe said. The 95th did not employ drummer boys, but he doubted Jem Hocking understood that.

‘Drummer boys,’ Hocking said. ‘I’ve got lads that could beat a drum. They ain’t much good for anything, but they can beat a drum. But why come to me for them, Major? Why not go to Lewes? Why not get three pounds with every lad?’

‘Because the Lewes Board of Visitors won’t let the boys go to be soldiers.’

‘They won’t?’ Hocking could not hide his astonishment.

‘There are women on the Board,’ Sharpe said.

‘Ah, women!’ Hocking exclaimed. He shook his head in exasperation and despair. ‘They’ll be the end of common sense, women will. There are none on our Board, I warrant you that. Women!’

‘And the Canterbury Board insists the boys go before a magistrate,’ Sharpe said.

‘Canterbury?’ Hocking was confused.

‘We have a second battalion at Canterbury,’ Sharpe explained, ‘and we could get the boys from there, only the magistrates interfere.’

Hocking was still confused. ‘Why wouldn’t the bloody magistrates want boys to be soldiers?’

‘The boys die,’ Sharpe said, ‘they die like bloody flies. You have to understand, Mister Hocking, that the Rifles are the troops nearest the enemy. Under their noses, we are, and the boys have to serve as cartridge carriers when they ain’t drumming. Back and forth, they are, and somehow they seem to be targets. Bang, bang. Always killing boys, we are. Mind you, if they live, it’s a fine life. They can become Chosen Men!’

‘A rare opportunity,’ Hocking said, believing every word of Sharpe’s nonsense. ‘And I can assure you, Major, there’ll be no interference from Boards or magistrates here. None! You can take my word for it.’ He poured himself more ale. ‘So what are we talking about here?’

Sharpe leaned back, pretending to think. ‘Two battalions?’ he suggested. ‘Twenty companies? Say we lose four boys a year to the enemy and another six die of fever or manage to grow up? Ten lads a year? They have to be eleven years old, or near enough to pass.’

‘Ten boys a year?’ Hocking managed to hide his enthusiasm. ‘And you’d pay?’

‘The army will pay, Mister Hocking.’

‘Aye, but how much? How much?’

‘Two pounds apiece,’ Sharpe said. He was amazed at his own glibness. He had dreamed of this revenge, plotting it in his imagination without ever thinking he would actually work it, yet now the lines were slipping off his tongue with convincing ease.

Hocking stuffed a clay pipe with tobacco as he considered the offer. Twenty pounds a year was a fine sum, but a little too obvious. A little too tidy. He drew a candle towards him and lit the pipe. ‘The magistrates will want paying,’ he observed.

‘You said there’d be no trouble from magistrates,’ Sharpe objected.

‘That’s because they’ll be paid,’ Hocking pointed out, ‘and there’ll be other costs, Major, other costs. Always are other costs.’ He blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. ‘Have you talked to your Colonel about this?’

‘I wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

Hocking nodded. Which meant Sharpe had negotiated a price with the Colonel and Hocking was damned sure it was not two pounds a boy. Five pounds, more like, with the Colonel creaming a pair off the top and Sharpe taking a single. ‘Four pounds,’ Hocking said.

‘Four!’

‘I don’t need you, Major,’ Hocking said. ‘I’ve got chimney sweeps who like my lads, and those that don’t sweep chimneys can shovel up the pure.’ He meant they could collect dog turds that they delivered to the city’s tanners who used the faeces to cure leather. ‘Some boys go to sea,’ Hocking said grandly, ‘some sweep chimneys, some scoop shit, some dies, and the rest go to the gallows. They’re all scum, Major, but they’re my scum, and if you wants them then you pays my price. And you will, you will.’

‘I will, why?’

‘Because, Major, you don’t need to come to Wapping to get boys. You can find lads anywhere, magistrates or no magistrates.’ Hocking turned his shrewd eyes on Sharpe. ‘No, Major, you came to me on purpose.’

‘I came to you for drummer boys,’ Sharpe said, ‘and no awkward magistrates and no one caring that so many die.’

Hocking still stared at him. ‘Go on,’ he said.

Sharpe hesitated, then seemed to make up his mind. ‘And girls,’ he said.

‘Ah.’ Hocking half smiled. He understood weakness and greed and Sharpe, at last, was making sense.

‘We hear –’ Sharpe began.

‘Who’s we?’

‘The Colonel and me.’

‘And who told you?’ Hocking asked fiercely.

‘No one told me,’ Sharpe said, ‘but someone told the Colonel. He sent me.’

Hocking leaned back and pulled at his bushy side whiskers as he considered the answer. He found it plausible and nodded. ‘Your Colonel likes ’em young, eh?’

‘We both do,’ Sharpe said, ‘young and untouched.’

Hocking nodded again. ‘The boys will be four pounds apiece and the girls ten a time.’

Sharpe pretended to consider the price, then shrugged. ‘I want a taste tonight.’

‘Girl or boy?’ Hocking leered.

‘Girl,’ Sharpe said.

‘You’ve got the money?’

Sharpe patted his pack which stood on the sawdust-strewn floor. ‘Guineas,’ he said.

Another cheer sounded behind the back door and Hocking jerked his head in that direction. ‘I’ve got business in there, Major, and it’ll take me an hour or two to settle it. I’ll have the girl cleaned up while you wait. But I want five pounds now.’

Sharpe shook his head. ‘You’ll see my money when I see the girl.’

‘Getting particular, are we?’ Hocking sneered, though he did not insist on receiving any deposit. ‘What do you want, Major? A redhead? A blackbird? Fat? Skinny?’

‘Just young,’ Sharpe said. He felt dirty even though he was merely pretending.

‘She’ll be young, Major,’ Hocking said and held out his hand to seal the bargain. Sharpe took the hand and suppressed a shudder when Hocking held on to it. Hocking gripped hard, frowning. ‘It’s strange,’ he said, ‘but you do look familiar.’

‘I was raised in Yorkshire,’ Sharpe lied. ‘Maybe you were up there once?’

‘I don’t travel to foreign places.’ Hocking let go of Sharpe’s hand and stood. ‘Joe here will show you where to wait, but if I was you, Major, I’d watch the dogs for a while.’

Joe was one of the two young men and he jerked his head to show that Sharpe should follow him through the tavern’s back door. Sharpe knew what to expect there, for when Beaky Malone had been alive Sharpe had helped in that back room which was little more than a long and gloomy shed raised above the yards of three houses. It stank of animals. There were storerooms at either end of the shed, but most of the space had been converted into a makeshift arena of banked wooden benches that enclosed a pit twelve feet in diameter. The pit’s floor was sand and was surrounded by a barrier of planks.

‘It’s in there,’ Joe said, indicating one of the storerooms. ‘It ain’t luxury, but there’s a bed.’

‘I’ll wait out here,’ Sharpe said.

‘When the dogs are done,’ Joe explained, ‘wait in the room.’

Sharpe climbed to the topmost bench where he sat close under the roof beams. Six oil lamps hung above the pit, which was spattered with blood. The shed stank of it, and of gin, tobacco and meat pies. There must have been a hundred men on the benches and a handful of women. Some of the spectators watched Sharpe as he climbed the steps. He did not fit in here and the silver buttons of his uniform coat made them nervous. All uniforms unsettled these folk, and spectators made room for him on the bench just as a tall man with a hooked nose climbed over the plank barrier. ‘The next bout, ladies and gentlemen,’ the man bellowed, ‘is between Priscilla, a two-year-old bitch, and Nobleman, a dog of three years. Priscilla is by way of being the property of Mister Philip Machin’ – the name provoked a huge cheer – ‘while Nobleman,’ the man went on when there was silence, ‘was bred by Mister Roger Collis. You may place your wagers, gentlemen and ladies, and I do bid you all good fortune.’

A boy climbed to Sharpe’s bench, wanting to take his money, but Sharpe waved the lad away. Jem Hocking had appeared on a lower bench now and the wagers were being carried to his clerk. Another man, as thin as the ringmaster, threaded his way up the crowded benches to sit beside Sharpe. He looked about thirty, had hooded eyes, long hair and a flamboyant red handkerchief knotted about his skinny neck. He slid a knife from inside a boot and began cleaning his fingernails. ‘Lumpy wants to know who the hell you are, Colonel,’ he said.