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.
“Who’s Lumpy?” Sharpe asked.
“Him.” The thin man nodded at the ringmaster.
“Beaky’s son?”
The man gave Sharpe a very suspicious look. “How would you know that, Colonel?”
“Because he looks like Beaky,” Sharpe said, “and you’re Dan Pierce. Your mother lived in Shadwell and she only had one leg, but that never stopped her whoring, did it?” The knife was suddenly just beneath Sharpe’s ribs, its point pricking his skin. Sharpe turned and looked at Pierce. “You’d kill an old friend, Dan?”
Pierce stared at Sharpe. “You’re not… ” he began, then checked. The knife was still in Sharpe’s side. “No,” Pierce said, not trusting his suspicions.
Sharpe grinned. “You and me, Dan? We used to run errands for Beaky.” He turned and looked at the ring where the dog and the bitch were being paraded. The bitch was excited, straining at the leash as she was led about the ring. “She looks lively,” Sharpe said.
“A lovely little killer,” Pierce declared, “quick as a fish, she is.”
“But too lively,” Sharpe said. “She’ll waste effort.”
“You’re Dick Sharpe, aren’t you?” The knife vanished.
“Jem doesn’t know who I am,” Sharpe said, “and I want it to stay that way.”
“I’ll not tell the bastard. Is it really you?”
Sharpe nodded.
“An officer?”
Sharpe nodded again.
Pierce laughed. “Bloody hell. England’s run out of gentlemen?”
Sharpe smiled. “That’s about it, Dan. Have you got money on the bitch?”
“The dog,” Pierce said. “He’s good and steady.” He stared at Sharpe. “You really are Dick Sharpe.”
“I really am,” Sharpe said, though it had been twenty years since he had last been in this rat pit. Beaky Malone had always prophesied that Sharpe would end up on the gallows, but somehow he had survived. He had run from London, gone to Yorkshire, murdered, joined the army to escape the law and there found a home. He had been promoted until, one hot day on a dusty battlefield in India, he had become an officer. Sharpe had come from this gutter and earned the King’s commission and now he was going back. The army did not want him, so he would say goodbye to the army, but first he needed money.
He watched as the timekeeper held up a great turnip watch. A coin had been tossed and the bitch was to fight first. The dog was lifted out of the ring and two cages were handed across the planks. A small boy unlatched the cages, tipped them, then vaulted the planks.
Thirty-six rats scuttled about the sand.
“Are you up and ready?” the ringmaster shouted. The crowd cheered.
“Five seconds!” the timekeeper, a drunken schoolmaster, called, then peered at his watch. “Now!”
The bitch was released and Sharpe and Pierce leaned forward. The bitch was good. The first two rats died before the others even realized a predator was among them. She nipped them by the neck, shook them vigorously and dropped them promptly, but then her excitement overtook her and she wasted valuable seconds snapping at three or four rats in turn. “Shake them!” her owner bawled, his voice lost in the crowd’s cheers. She ran into a knot of the rats and started working again, ignoring the beasts that attacked her, but then she would not let go of a large black victim.
“Drop it! Dead ‘un!” her owner screamed. “Drop it! Drop it, you bastard bitch! It’s a dead ‘un!”
“She’s too young,” Pierce said. “I told Phil to give her another six months. Let her practice, I said, but he wouldn’t listen. Cloth ears, that’s his problem.” He stared at Sharpe. “I can’t believe it. Dick Sharpe a bloody jack pudding.” He meant officer, for a jack pudding was a motley fool from the fairground, a clown dressed in fake finery and with donkey’s ears pinned to his hair. “Hocking didn’t recognize you?”
“I don’t want him to either.”
“I won’t tell the bastard,” Pierce said, then settled back to watch the bitch hunt the last few rats. The sand was speckled with fresh blood. A few of the rats were merely crippled and those who had wagered on the bitch were shouting at her to finish them off. “I thought when I first saw her,” Pierce said, “that she’d hunt like her mother did. Christ, but that bitch was a cold-hearted killer. But this one’s too young. She’ll get better.” He watched her kill a rat that had been particularly elusive. She shook it hard, spraying blood onto the customers closest to the barrier. “It ain’t the teeth that kills ‘em,” Pierce said, “but the shaking.”
“I know.”
“Course you do, ‘course you do.” Pierce watched as the boy climbed into the ring and shoved the bloodied rats into a sack. “Lumpy’s still trying to sell the corpses,” he said. “You’d think someone would want to eat them. Nothing wrong with rat pie, especially if you don’t know what it is. But he can’t sell ‘em.” He looked down at Jem Hocking. “Is there to be trouble?”
“Would you mind?”
Pierce picked at a tooth with a long fingernail. “No,” he said curtly, “and Lumpy will be pleased. He wants to run the book here, but Hocking won’t let him.”
“Won’t let him?”
“Hocking owns the place now,” Pierce said. “He owns every house in the street, the bastard.” Two more cages had been tipped into the arena and the new rats, black and slick, scampered about the ring as a roar from the crowd greeted the dog. It was held above the skittering sand for a second, then dropped and began to fight. It went about its business efficiently and Pierce grinned. “Jem’s going to lose his shirt on this one.”
The bitch had been good and quick, but the dog was old and experienced. It killed swiftly and the crowd’s cheers got louder. Most, it seemed, had bet on the dog and the pleasure of winning was doubled by the knowledge that Jem Hocking was about to lose. Except that Jem Hocking was not a man to lose. The dog had killed about twenty of the rats when suddenly a spectator on the front bench leaned forward and vomited over the barrier and the dog immediately ran to gobble up the half-digested meat pie. The owner screamed at it, the crowd jeered and Hocking’s face showed nothing.
“Bastard,” Pierce said.
“Old trick that,” Sharpe said, leaning back. He fingered his saber’s hilt. He did not like the weapon’s curved blade which was too light to do real damage, but it was the official weapon of Rifle officers. He would have preferred one of the basket-hilted broadswords that the Scots carried into battle, but regulations were regulations and the greenjackets had insisted he equip himself properly. A sword or saber, they said, was merely decorative and an officer who was forced to use one in battle had already failed so it did not matter that the light cavalry saber was unhandy, but Sharpe had used enough swords in battle and he had never failed. Go into a breach, he had told Colonel Beckwith, and you’ll be glad enough of a butchering sword, but the Colonel had shaken his head. “It is not the business of Rifle officers to be in the breach,” he had said. “Our job is to be outside, killing from a distance. That is why we have rifles, not muskets.” Not that any of it mattered to Sharpe now. He would make his money, resign his commission, sell the saber and forget the Rifles.
Lumpy closed the entertainment by announcing that the next evening would be a mixture of cockfighting and badger-baiting. They would be Essex badgers, he boasted, as though Essex gave the animals special fighting skills, though in truth it was simply the closest source to Wapping. The crowd streamed out and Sharpe went back to the storeroom. Dan Pierce went with him. “I wouldn’t stay, Dan,” Sharpe said. “Likely to be trouble.”