Sharpe’s Prey. Bernard Cornwell
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 big 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 practise, 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 sabre’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 sabre, 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 sabre 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 sabre 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.’
‘Trouble for you, Dick,’ Pierce tried to warn his old friend. ‘He’s never on his own.’
‘I’ll be all right. You can buy me an ale afterwards.’
Pierce left and Sharpe went into the stinking room. The badgers were all in wire cages stacked against one wall while the rest of the room was occupied by a table on which a dim oil lamp burned, and by an incongruous bed that was plump with sheets, blankets and pillows. Lumpy’s girls, the ones who sold gin and hot pies, used the room for their other business, but it would suit Sharpe perfectly. He put his pack and greatcoat on the table, then unsheathed the sabre which he placed on the badger cages with the hilt towards him. The beasts, pungent and sullen, stirred behind their wire.
He waited, listening to the sounds fading in the shed. A year ago he had been living in a house with eight rooms that he and Grace had rented close to Shorncliffe. He had fitted in with the battalion well enough then, for Grace had charmed the other officers, but why should he have ever thought it could last? It had been like a dream. Except Grace’s brothers and their lawyers kept intruding on the dream, demanding she leave Sharpe, even offering her money if she did the decent thing, and other lawyers had tied up her dead husband’s will in a tangle of words, delay and obfuscation. Get her out of your head, he told himself, but she would not leave and when the footsteps sounded outside the storeroom Sharpe’s sight was blurred with tears. He brushed his eyes as the door opened.
Jem Hocking came in with the girl, leaving the door ajar with the two young men just outside. The child was thin, frightened, red-haired and pale. She glanced at Sharpe then began to cry silently. ‘This is Emily,’ Jem Hocking said, tugging the girl’s hand. ‘The nice man wants to play games with you, ain’t that right, Major?’
Sharpe nodded. The anger he was feeling was so huge that he did not trust himself to speak.
‘I don’t want her hurt bad,’ Hocking said. He had a face the colour of beefsteak and a nose erupting with broken veins. ‘I want her back in one piece. Now, Major, the money?’ He patted the satchel that was hanging from his shoulder. ‘Ten pounds.’
‘In the pack,’ Sharpe said, nodding at the table, ‘just open the top flap.’ Hocking turned to the table and Sharpe edged the door closed with his shoulder as he moved to Emily’s side. He picked her up and placed her on the bed, then whipped the blanket up over her head. She cried aloud as she was smothered in woollen darkness and Hocking turned as Sharpe pulled the sabre off the cage tops. Hocking