Sharpe opened the satchel and tried to guess how much cash was inside. At least twenty pounds, he reckoned. So crime does pay, he told himself, and shifted his chair so that his back was to the room. Twenty pounds. A man could make a good start in a new life with twenty pounds.
Twenty pounds! A decent night’s work, he thought, though he was angry at himself for having botched the killing. He had been lucky to escape unscathed. He doubted he would be in trouble with the law, for Wapping folk were reluctant to call in the constables. Plenty of men had seen that it was a Rifle officer who had been with Hocking and who, presumably, had done the murder in the back of Beaky Malone’s Tavern, but Sharpe doubted the law would care or even know. Hocking’s body would be carried to the river and dumped on the ebbing tide to drift ashore at Dartford or Tilbury. Gulls would screech over his guts and peck out his remaining eye. No one would hang for Jem Hocking.
At least Sharpe hoped no one would hang for Jem Hocking.
But he was still a wanted man. He had run out of Wapping with a small fortune and there were plenty of men who would like to find him and take that fortune away. Hocking’s mastiffs for a start, and they would look for him in just such a tavern as the Frog Prick. So stay here one night, he told himself, then get out of London for a while. Just as he made that decision there was a sudden commotion at the tavern door that made him fear his pursuers had already come for him, but it was only a boisterous group of men and women hurrying out of the rain. The men shook water from umbrellas and plucked cloaks from the women’s shoulders. Sharpe suspected they had come from the nearby theater, for the women wore scandalously low-cut dresses and had heavily made-up faces. They were actresses, probably, while the men were all army officers, gaudy in scarlet coats, gold braid and red sashes, and Sharpe looked away before any could catch his eye. “Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,” one of the red-coated officers called, “gives genius a better discerning!” That odd statement provoked a cheer. Tables and chairs were shifted to make room for the party which was evidently known to a score of men in the room. “You look in the pink of perfection, my dear,” the officer told one of the women, and was mocked for his gallantry by his fellows.
Sharpe scowled at his ale. Grace had loved the theater, but it was not his world, not any more, so damn it, he thought. He would not be an officer much longer. He had money now, so he could go into the world and start again. He drank the ale, gulping it down, suddenly aware of how thirsty he was. He needed a wash. He needed to soak his jacket in cold water. All in good time, he thought. Bed first, sleep or try to sleep. Try to sleep instead of thinking about Grace, and in the morning think what to do with the rest of his life.
Then a heavy hand dropped on his shoulder. “I’ve been looking for you,” a harsh voice said, “and here you are.”
CHAPTER 3
“I never forget a face,” Major General Sir David Baird said. He had taken a step back, alarmed by the ferocity of the scowl with which Sharpe had greeted him. “It is Sharpe, isn’t it?” Baird asked, but was now met with a stare of incomprehension. “Well, is it or isn’t it?” Baird demanded brusquely.
Sharpe, recovering from his astonishment, nodded. “It is, sir.”
“I helped save you from a flogging once, and now you’re an officer. The Lord’s providences are incomprehensible, Mister Sharpe.”
“They are, sir.”
Baird, a huge man, tall and muscled, was in a red uniform coat that was heavy with epaulettes and gold braid. He scowled at his companions, the group who had just arrived with wet umbrellas and painted women. “Those young men over there are aides to the Duke of York,” he said, “and His Majesty insisted they take me to the theater. Why? I cannot tell. Have you ever been forced into a theater, Sharpe?”
“Once, sir.” And everyone had stared at Grace and talked of her behind their hands and she had endured it, but wept afterward.
“She Stoops to Conquer, what kind of name for an entertainment is that?” Baird asked. “I was asleep by the end of the prologue so I’ve no idea. But I’ve been thinking of you lately, Mister Sharpe. Thinking of you and looking for you.”
“For me, sir?” Sharne could not hide his puzzlement.
“Is that blood on your coat? It is! Good God, man, don’t tell me the bloody Frogs have landed.”
“It was a thief, sir.”
“Not another one? A captain of the Dirty Half Hundred was killed just two days ago, not a hundred yards from Piccadilly! It must have been footpads, the bastards. I hope you hurt the man?”
“I did, sir. “
“Good.” The General sat opposite Sharpe. “I heard you’d been commissioned. I congratulate you. You did a fine thing in India, Sharpe.”
Sharpe blushed. “I did my duty, sir.”
“But it was a hard duty, Sharpe, a very hard duty. Good God! Risking the Tippoo’s cells? I spent enough time in that black bastard’s hands not to wish it on another man. But the fellow’s dead now, God be thanked.”
“Indeed, sir,” Sharpe said. He had killed the Tippoo himself, though he had never admitted it, and it had been the Tippoo’s jewels that had made Sharpe a rich man. Once.
“And I keep hearing your name,” Baird went on with an indecent relish. “Making scandal, eh?”
Sharpe winced at the accusation. “Was that what I was doing, sir?”
Baird was not a man to be delicate. “You were once a private soldier and she was the daughter of an earl. Yes, Sharpe, I’d say you were making scandal. So what happened?”
“She died, sir.” Sharpe felt the tears threatening, so looked down at the table. The silence stretched and he felt an obscure need to fill it. “Childbirth, sir. A fever.”
“And the child with her?”
“Yes, sir. A boy.”
“Good Christ, man,” Baird said bluffly, embarrassed by the tears that dropped onto the table. “You’re young. There’ll be others.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You!” This peremptory demand was to one of the serving girls. “A bottle of port and two glasses. And I’ll take some cheese if you’ve anything edible.”
“Lady Grace’s family,” Sharpe said, suddenly needing to tell the story, “claimed the child wasn’t mine. Said it had been her husband’s, and so the lawyers baked me in a pie. Took everything, they did, because the child died after its mother. They said it was the heir to her husband, see?”
His tears were flowing now. “I don’t mind losing everything, sir, but I do mind losing her.”
“Pull yourself together, man,” Baird snapped. “Stop sniveling.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” Baird said, “and you don’t piddle away your damned life because you don’t like His dispositions.”
Sharpe sniffed and looked up into Baird’s scarred face. “Piddling away my life?”
“I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Sharpe,” Baird said. “D’you know how many lives you saved by blowing that mine in Seringapatam? Scores! And my life among them. If it weren’t for you, Sharpe, I’d be dead.” He emphasized this by stabbing Sharpe’s chest with a big forefinger. “Dead and buried, d’you doubt it?”
Sharpe did not, but he said nothing. Baird had led the assault on the Tippoo Sultan’s stronghold and the General had led from the front. The Scotsman would indeed be dead, Sharpe thought, if Sharpe, a private then, had not blown the mine that had been intended to trap and annihilate the storming party. Dust and stones, Sharpe remembered, and flame billowing down a sunlit street and the air filling with smoke and the noise rolling about him like a thousand trundling barrels, and then in the silence afterward that was not silent at all, the moaning and screaming and the pale flames crackling.
“Wellesley made you up, didn’t he?” Baird asked.