“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, skillfully 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 and 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 center 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 fetid 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 saber, 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.