SHARPE’S REGIMENT

He took a deep breath. The last time he had been as drunk as this was in Burgos Castle, the night before the explosion, and the war in Spain suddenly seemed a long, long way off, as though it belonged to another man’s life. He walked on, crossing one of the open ditches that ran with sludge thick as blood in the darkness.

He heard feet running behind him and he turned, always knowing to face a strange sound, and he saw a girl come from under the archway, stop, turn, and then walk awkwardly towards him. She had a scarf wrapped about a thin face that was bright-eyed with consumption. It, was odd, he thought, how the dying consumptives went through a period of lucent beauty before their lungs coughed up the bloody lumps and they died in racking agony.

She crossed the ditch, raising her skirts, then clumsily swayed her hips as she came close to him. The smile she gave him was nervous. ‘Lonely?’

‘No.’ He smiled back. He assumed she had seen him pass and had been sent to take some coins from the rich-looking officer to make up her night’s earnings.

To his surprise she put her thin arms up to his neck, her cheek on his cheek, and pressed her body against his. ‘Maggie sent me. Two men followed you and they’re behind you.’ She said it in a garbled rush.

He held her. To his right there was a gateway. He remembered it opened into an entranceway that ran between two houses. At its far end was a stairway that climbed to an old garret. A Jew had lived there, it was odd how the memories came back, a Jew who had worn his hair in long ringlets and had walked about with his nose deep into books. The rookery had left the old man alone, knowing him to be harmless, but after his death it was rumoured that a thousand gold guineas had been found in his room. The rookery was always full of such rumours. ‘Come with me.’

He took her hand. He laughed aloud as if he was carelessly drunk, but the girl’s message had sobered him as fast as a French twelve pounder shot smashing the air close to him. He took her through the gate, into the alley, and into the deep shadows by the wooden stairway.

‘Here.’ The girl was hoisting her skirts.

‘I don’t need that, love.’ He grinned.

‘You want this.’ At her waist was a belt and, hanging from the leather, a hook. It was an old device for hiding stolen goods, but now the girl had the huge horse pistol hooked by its trigger guard. It was a fearful weapon with a splayed brass muzzle that, like a blunderbuss, would spray its charge of metal fragments in a widening fan. An ideal weapon, Sharpe supposed, with which the guard cowed Maggie Joyce’s gin rooms. The barrel, Sharpe saw, was stuffed with rags to keep the missiles in place, and he pulled them out, then tapped the butt on the ground to tamp the stones and nails back onto the charge. He thumbed the heavy cock back. It was stiff, but clicked into place.

‘Who are they?’

‘One’s called Jem Lippett, she doesn’t know the other. Jemmy’s a topper.’ She gave the news that one of the men was a professional killer without any tone of alarm. This was a rookery.

Sharpe drew his long battle-sword. ‘Get behind me.’

She crouched low. Sharpe guessed she was fifteen, perhaps fourteen, and he supposed she whored for her living. Few girls escaped the rookery, unless they were startlingly beautiful, and then their men would hawk them further west where the prices were higher. ‘How do you know Maggie?’ He spoke softly, not worrying about silence, because the men, if they were following him, would expect to hear voices from the entranceway.

‘I work for her.’

‘She was beautiful once.’

‘Yes?’ The girl sounded disinterested. ‘She says you grew up here.’

‘Yes.’

‘Born here?’

‘No.’ He was watching the dark shape of the gate. His sword was beside him on the ground. ‘Born in Cat Lane. I came here from a foundling home.’

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