himself had bet against his own side and Sir John would not meet Sandman’s eyes, which made the rumour believable.
So Captain Rider Sandman walked back to London.
He walked because he refused to share a carriage with men who had accepted bribes to lose a match. He loved cricket, he was good at it, he had once, famously, scored a hundred and fourteen runs for an England eleven playing against the Marquess of Canfield’s picked men and lovers of the game would travel many miles to see Captain Rider Sandman, late of His Majesty’s 52nd Regiment of Foot, perform at the batting crease. But he hated bribery and he detested corruption and he possessed a temper, and that was why he fell into a furious argument with his treacherous team-mates and, when they slept that night in Sir John’s comfortable house and rode back to London in comfort next morning, Sandman did neither. He was too proud.
Proud and poor. He could not afford the stagecoach fare, nor even a common carrier’s fare, because in his anger he had thrown his match fee back into Sir John Hart’s face and that, Sandman conceded, had been a stupid thing to do for he had earnt that money honestly, yet even so it had felt dirty. So he walked home, spending the Saturday night in a hayrick somewhere near Hickstead and trudging all that Sunday until the right sole was almost clean off his boot. He reached Drury Lane very late that night and he dropped his cricket gear on the floor of his rented attic room and stripped himself naked and fell into the narrow bed and slept. Just slept. And was still sleeping when the trapdoor dropped in Old Bailey and the crowd’s cheer sent a thousand wings startling up into the smoky London sky. Sandman was still dreaming at half past eight. He was dreaming, twitching and sweating. He called out in incoherent alarm, his ears filled with the thump of hooves and the crash of muskets and cannon, his eyes astonished by the hook of sabres and slashes of straight-bladed swords, and this time the dream was going to end with the cavalry smashing through the thin red-coated ranks, but then the rattle of hooves melded into a rush of feet on the stairs and a sketchy knock on his flimsy attic door. He opened his eyes, realised he was no longer a soldier, and then, before he could call out any response, Sally Hood was in the room. For a second Sandman thought the flurry of bright eyes, calico dress and golden hair was a dream, then Sally laughed. ‘I bleeding woke you. Gawd, I’m sorry!’ She turned to go.
‘It’s all right, Miss Hood.’ Sandman fumbled for his watch. He was sweating. ‘What’s the time?’
‘Saint Giles just struck half after eight,’ she told him.
‘Oh, my Lord!’ Sandman could not believe he had slept so late. He had nothing to get up for, but the habit of waking early had long taken hold. He sat up in bed, remembered he was naked and snatched the thin blanket up to his chest. ‘There’s a gown hanging on the door, Miss Hood, would you be so kind?’
Sally found the dressing gown. ‘It’s just that I’m late,’ she explained her sudden appearance in his room, ‘and my brother’s brushed off and I’ve got work, and the dress has to be hooked up, see?’ She turned her back, showing a length of bare spine. ‘I’d have asked Mrs Gunn to do it,’ Sally went on, ‘only there’s a hanging today so she’s off watching. Gawd knows what she can see considering she’s half blind and all drunk, but she does like a good hanging and she ain’t got many pleasures left at her age. It’s all right, you can get up now, I’ve got me peepers shut.’
Sandman climbed out of bed warily for there was only a limited area in his tiny attic room where he could stand without banging his head on the beams. He was a tall man, an inch over six foot, with pale-gold hair, blue eyes and a long, raw-boned face. He was not conventionally handsome, his face was too rugged for that, but there was a capability and a kindness in his expression that made him memorable. He pulled on the dressing gown and tied its belt. ‘You say you’ve got work?’ he asked Sally. ‘A good job, I hope?’
‘Ain’t what I wanted,’ Sally said, ‘because it ain’t on deck.’
‘Deck?’
‘Stage, Captain,’ she said. She called herself an actress and perhaps she was, though Sandman had seen little evidence that the stage had much use for Sally who, like Sandman, clung to the very edge of respectability and was held there, it seemed, by her brother, a very mysterious young man who worked strange hours. ‘But it ain’t bad work,’ she went on, ‘and it is respectable.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ Sandman said, sensing that Sally did not really want to talk about it, and he wondered why she sounded so defensive about a respectable job and Sally wondered why Sandman, who was palpably a gentleman, was renting an attic room in the Wheatsheaf Tavern in London’s Drury Lane. Down on his luck, that was for sure, but even so, the Wheatsheaf? Perhaps he knew no better. The Wheatsheaf was famously a flash tavern, a home for every kind of thief from pickpockets to petermen, from burglars to shop-breakers, and it seemed to Sally that Captain Rider Sandman was as straight as a ramrod. But he was a nice man, Sally thought. He treated her like a lady, and though she had only spoken to him a couple of times as they edged past each other in the inn’s corridors, she had detected a kindness in him. Enough kindness to let her presume on his privacy this Monday morning. ‘And what about you, Captain?’ she asked. ‘You working?’
‘I’m looking for employment, Miss Hood,’ Sandman said, and that was true, but he was not finding any. He was too old to be an apprentice clerk, not qualified to work in the law or with money, and too squeamish to accept a job driving slaves in the sugar islands.
‘I heard you was a cricketer,’ Sally said.
‘I am, yes.’
‘A famous one, my brother says.’
‘I’m not sure about that,’ Sandman said modestly.
‘But you can earn money at that, can’t you?’
‘Not as much as I need,’ Sandman said, and then only in summer and if he was willing to endure the bribes and corruption of the game, ‘and I have a small problem here. Some of the hooks are missing.’
‘That’s ’cos I never get round to mending them,’ Sally said, ‘so just do what you can.’ She was staring at his mantel on which was a pile of letters, their edges frayed suggesting they had all been sent a long time in the past. She swayed forward slightly and managed to see that the topmost envelope was addressed to a Miss someone or other, she could not make out the name, but the one word revealed that Captain Sandman had been jilted and had his letters returned. Poor Captain Sandman, Sally thought.
‘And sometimes,’ Sandman went on, ‘where there are hooks there are no eyes.’
‘Which is why I brought this,’ Sally said, dangling a frayed silk handkerchief over her shoulder. ‘Thread it through the gaps, Captain. Make me decent.’
‘So today I shall call on some acquaintances,’ Sandman reverted to her earlier question, ‘and see if they can offer me employment and then, this afternoon, I shall yield to temptation.’
‘Ooh!’ Sally smiled over her shoulder, all blue eyes and sparkle. ‘Temptation?’
‘I shall watch some cricket at the Artillery Ground.’
‘Wouldn’t tempt me,’ Sally said, ‘and by the by, Captain, if you’re going down to breakfast then do it quick ’cos you won’t get a bite after nine o’clock.’
‘I won’t?’ Sandman asked, though in truth he had no intention of paying the tavern for a breakfast he could not afford.
‘The ‘sheaf’s always crowded when there’s a hanging
