between his eyes, we don't get payment! So what are you going to do about that, culley?'
'Captain Sandman is leaving,' Lord Skavadale said firmly, and took Sandman's elbow.
Sandman shook him off. 'I've undertaken to pay some of my father's debts,' he told Lord Robin. Sandman's temper was brewing, but it did not show on his face and his voice was still respectful. 'I am paying the debts to the tradesmen who were left embarrassed by my father's suicide. As to your debt?' He paused. 'I plan to do nothing whatsoever about it.'
'Damn you, culley,' Lord Robin said, and he drew back the foil as if to slash it across Sandman's cheek.
Lord Skavadale stepped between them. 'Enough! The Captain is going.'
'You should never have let him in,' Lord Robin said, 'he's nothing but a slimy little spy for bloody Sidmouth! Next time, Sandman, use the tradesman's entrance at the back. The front door is for gentlemen.' Sandman had been controlling his temper and was moving towards the front hall, but now, very suddenly, he turned and walked back past both Skavadale and Holloway. 'Where the devil are you going?' Holloway demanded.
'The back door, of course,' Sandman said, and then stopped by the master-at-arms and held out his hand. The man hesitated, glanced at Skavadale, then frowned as Sandman just snatched the foil from him. Sandman turned to Holloway again. 'I've changed my mind,' he said, 'I think I'll use the front door after all. I feel like a gentleman today. Or does your lordship have a mind to stop me?'
'Robin,' Lord Skavadale cautioned his friend.
'Damn you,' Holloway said, and he twitched up the foil, swatted Sandman's blade aside and lunged.
Sandman parried to drive Holloway's blade high and wide, then slashed his foil across his lordship's face. The blade's tip was buttoned so it could not pierce or slash, but it still left a red welt on Holloway's right cheek. Sandman's blade came back fast to mark the left cheek, then he stepped three paces back and lowered the sword. 'So what am I?' he asked. 'Tradesman or gentleman?'
'To hell with you!' Holloway was in a fury now and did not recognise that his opponent had also lost his temper, but Sandman's temper was cold and cruel while Holloway's was all heat and foolishness. Holloway slashed the foil like a sabre, hoping to open Sandman's face with the sheer force of the steel's whiplike strike, but Sandman swayed back, let the blade pass an inch from his nose and then stepped forward and lunged his weapon into Holloway's belly. The button stopped the blade from piercing cloth or skin, and the weapon bent like a bow and Sandman used the spring of the blade to throw himself backwards as Lord Robin Holloway slashed again. Sandman stepped another pace back, Holloway mistook the move for nervousness and lunged his blade at Sandman's neck.
'Puppy,' Sandman said, and there was an utter disdain in his voice. 'You feeble little puppy,' he said, and began to fight, only now his rage was released — an incandescent and killing rage, an anger that he fought against, that he hated, that he prayed would leave him — and he was no longer fencing, but trying to kill. He stamped forward, his blade a hissing terror, and the button raked Lord Holloway's face, almost taking an eye, then the blade slashed across Lord Holloway's nose, opening it so that blood ran and the steel whipped back, fast as a snake's strike, and Lord Holloway cringed away from the pain and then, suddenly, a pair of very strong arms was wrapped about Sandman's chest. Sergeant Berrigan was holding him and the master-at-arms was standing in front of Lord Robin Holloway while Lord Skavadale wrenched the foil from his friend's hand.
'Enough!' Skavadale said. 'Enough!' He threw Holloway's foil to the far end of the room, then took Sandman's blade and tossed it after the first. 'You will leave, Captain,' he insisted, 'you will leave now!'
Sandman shook Berrigan's arms away. He could see the fear in Lord Robin's eyes. 'I was fighting real men,' he told Lord Robin, 'when you were pissing your childhood breeches.'
'Go!' Skavadale snapped.
'Sir?' Berrigan, as tall as Sandman, jerked his head towards the front hall. 'I think it's best if you go, Captain.'
'If you discover the person who commissioned the portrait,' Sandman spoke to Skavadale, 'then I would be grateful if you would inform me.' He had no realistic hope that Lord Skavadale would do any such thing, but asking the question allowed him to leave with a measure of dignity. 'A message can be left for me at the Wheatsheaf in Drury Lane.'
'Good day, Captain,' Skavadale said coldly. Lord Robin glared at Sandman, but said nothing. He had been whipped and he knew it. The master-at-arms looked respectful, but he understood swordsmanship.
Sandman's hat and greatcoat, both of them half dried and wholly brushed clean, were brought to him in the hallway where Sergeant Berrigan opened the front door. The Sergeant nodded bleakly at Sandman, who stepped past him onto the front step. 'Best not to come back, sir,' Berrigan said quietly, then slammed the door.
It started to rain again.
===OO=OOO=OO===
Sandman walked slowly northwards.
He was truly nervous now, so nervous that he wondered whether he had gone to the Seraphim Club merely to delay this next duty.
Was it a duty? He told himself it was, though he suspected it was an indulgence and was certain it was foolishness. Yet Sally had been right. Find the girl Meg, find her and so discover the truth, and the best way of finding a servant was to ask other servants which was why he was walking to Davies Street, a place he had assiduously avoided for the last six months.
Yet when he knocked on the door it all seemed so familiar and Hammond, the butler, did not even blink an eyelid. 'Captain Rider,' he said, 'what a pleasure, sir, may I take your coat? You should carry an umbrella, sir.'
'You know the Duke never approved of umbrellas, Hammond.'
'The Duke of Wellington might order the fashion of soldiers, sir, but his Grace has no authority over London pedestrians. Might I enquire how your mother is, sir?'
'She doesn't change, Hammond. The world suits her ill.'
'I am sorry to hear it, sir.' Hammond hung Sandman's coat and hat on a rack that was already heavy with other garments. 'Have you an invitation card?' he asked.
'Lady Forrest is giving a musical entertainment? I'm afraid I wasn't invited. I was hoping Sir Henry was at home, but if not I can leave a note.'
'He is home, sir, and I am sure he will want to receive you. Why don't you wait in the small parlour?'
The small parlour was twice the size of the drawing room in the house Sandman rented for his mother and sister in Winchester, a fact his mother mentioned frequently but which did not bear thinking of now, and so he gazed at a painting of sheep in a meadow and listened to a tenor singing a flamboyant piece beyond the double doors that led to the larger rooms at the back of the house. The man finished with a flourish, there was a patter of applause and then the door from the hall opened and Sir Henry Forrest came in. 'My dear Rider!'
'Sir Henry.'
'A new French tenor,' Sir Henry said dolefully, 'who should have been stopped at Dover.' Sir Henry had never much appreciated his wife's musical entertainments and usually took good care to avoid them. 'I forgot there was an entertainment this afternoon,' he explained, 'otherwise I might have stayed at the bank.' He gave Sandman a sly smile. 'How are you, Rider?'
'I'm well, thank you. And you, sir?'
'Keeping busy, Rider, keeping busy. The Court of Aldermen demands time and Europe needs money and we supply it, or at least we scrape up the business that Rothschild and Baring don't want. Have you seen the price of corn? Sixty-three shillings a quarter in Norwich last week. Can you credit it?' Sir Henry had given Sandman's clothes a swift inspection to determine if his fortunes had improved and decided they had not. 'How is your mother?'
'Querulous,' Sandman said.
Sir Henry grimaced. 'Querulous, yes. Poor woman.' He shuddered. 'Still has the dogs, does she?'
'I fear so, sir.' Sandman's mother lavished affection on two lap dogs; noisy, ill-mannered and smelly.
Sir Henry opened the drawer of a sideboard and took out two cigars. 'Can't smoke in the conservatory today,' he said, 'so we might as well be hanged for fumigating the parlour, eh?' He paused to light a tinder box, then the cigar. His height, slight stoop, silver hair and doleful face had always reminded Sandman of Don Quixote, yet the resemblance was misleading as dozens of business rivals had discovered too late. Sir Henry, son of an apothecary, had an instinctive understanding of money; how to make it, how to use it and how to multiply it. Those skills had helped build the ships and feed the armies and cast the guns that had defeated Napoleon and they had brought Henry Forrest his knighthood, for which his wife was more than grateful. He was, in brief, a man of talent, though
