Sharpe’s Prey. Bernard Cornwell
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they saw the sabre. Sharpe twisted right and ran towards the big warehouse where tobacco was stored and where, in his childhood, a gang of counterfeiters had forged their coins.
‘Catch him!’ a voice shouted and Sharpe heard a rush of feet.
He twisted into another alley. The shouting was loud now. Men were pursuing him, not to avenge Hocking whom they did not even know was dead, but because Sharpe was a stranger in their gutters. The wolves had found their courage and Sharpe ran, the sabre in his hand, as the hue and cry filled the dark behind. The pack, greatcoat and satchel were heavy, the lanes were foot-clogging with mud and dung, and he knew he must find a lair soon, so he twisted into a narrow passage that ran past the Mint’s great wall, twisted left, right, left again and at last saw a dark doorway where he could crouch and catch his breath. He listened as men pounded past the alley’s entrance, then leaned back as the noise of the hunt faded northwards.
He grimaced when he realized his jacket was soaked in blood. That must wait. For now he sheathed the sabre, hid the scabbard beneath his greatcoat and then, with the pack in his hand, he went westwards through alleys and lanes he half remembered from childhood. He felt safer as he passed the Tower where yellow lights flared through high narrow windows, but he constantly looked behind in case anyone followed. Most of his pursuers had stayed as a pack, but some cleverer ones might have stalked him more silently. By now they knew he was worth killing, not just for the value of his sabre and his coat’s silver buttons, but for the coins he had thieved from Hocking. He was any man’s prey. The city streets were empty and twice he thought he heard footsteps behind him, but he saw no one. He went on west.
The streets became busier once he passed Temple Bar and he reckoned he was safer now, though he still looked back. He hurried along Fleet Street, then turned north into a confusing tangle of narrow alleys. It had begun to rain, he was tired. A crowd of men streamed from a tavern and Sharpe instinctively turned away from them, going into a wider street he recognized as High Holborn. He stopped there to catch his breath. Had he been followed?
Yellow light streamed from windows across the street. Go to Seven Dials, he thought, and find Maggie Joyce. The rain was coming down harder now, drumming on the roof of a parked carriage. Another carriage splashed by and its dim lamps showed a green-and-yellow painted board on the building with the glowing windows. Two watchmen, buttons shining on blue coats and with long staves in their hands, walked slowly past. Had the watch heard the hue and cry? They would be looking for a bloodstained army officer if they had and Sharpe decided he should go to earth. The carriage lamps had revealed that the tavern was the French Horn. The place had once been popular with the musicians from the theatre in nearby Drury Lane, but more recently it had been bought by an old soldier who was partial to any officer who happened to be in town, and throughout the army it was now known as the Frog Prick.
Beefsteak, Sharpe thought. Steak and ale, a bed and a warm fire. He had wanted to leave the army, but he was still an officer, so the Frog Prick would welcome him. He hefted the pack, crossed the street and climbed the steps.
No one took any notice of him. Perhaps half the patrons in the half-filled taproom were officers, though many of those in civilian clothes might also have been in the army. Sharpe knew none of them. He found an empty table in a shadowed spot by the wall and dropped his pack and took off his rain-soaked coat. A red-haired woman whose apron straps were decorated with the shako plates of a dozen regiments acknowledged that the tavern had a bed to spare for the night. ‘But you’ll have to share it,’ she went on, ‘and I’ll thank you not to wake the gentleman when you go up there. He went to bed early.’ She suddenly grimaced as she realized there was blood on Sharpe’s green jacket.
‘A thief tried to take this,’ Sharpe explained, patting the satchel. ‘You can give me a pail of cold water?’
‘You’ll want something to clean your boots too?’ she asked.
‘And a pot of ale,’ Sharpe said, ‘and a steak. A thick one.’
‘Haven’t seen many riflemen lately,’ the woman said. ‘I hear they’re going abroad.’
‘I hear the same.’
‘Where to?’ she asked.
‘No one knows,’ he said.
She leaned close to him. ‘Copenhagen, sweetheart,’ she whispered, ‘and just make sure you come home in one piece.’
‘Copen—’ Sharpe began.
‘Shh.’ She put a finger to her lips. ‘You ever got a question about the army, darling, you come to the Frog Prick. We know the answers two days before the Horse Guards ask the questions.’ She grinned and walked away.
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 theatre, 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 theatre, 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.’
And Sharpe, trapped, could not move.
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