person had answered the door, for a view of the public rooms. Most great houses allowed such visits, but plainly the Earl of Avebury did not extend the courtesy. 'Are you his lordship?' he asked.
'Do I look like him?' the man answered in an irritated tone.
'I have business with his lordship,' Sandman explained.
'Business? Business?' The man spoke as though he had never heard of such a thing, and then a look of alarm crossed his pale features. 'Are you a lawyer?'
'It is delicate business,' Sandman said emphatically, suggesting it was none of the servant's, 'and my name,' he added, 'is Captain Sandman.' It was a mere courtesy to provide his name and a reproof because he had not been asked for it.
The man gazed at him for a heartbeat, then retreated inside. Sandman waited. The bees buzzed by the ivy and house martins swerved above the weed-strewn gravel, but the servant did not return and Sandman, piqued, hauled on the bell-pull again.
A window on the other side of the porch was forced open and the same servant appeared there. 'A captain of what?' he demanded peremptorily.
'The 52nd Foot,' Sandman answered, and the servant vanished for a second time.
'His lordship wishes to know,' the servant reappeared at the first window, 'whether you were with the 52nd at Waterloo.'
'I was,' Sandman said.
The servant went back inside, there was another pause and then Sandman heard bolts being shot on the far side of the door, which eventually creaked open, and the servant offered a sketchy bow. 'We don't get visitors,' he said. 'Your coat and hat, sir? Sandman, you said?'
'Captain Sandman.'
'Of the 52nd Foot indeed, sir, this way, sir.'
The front door opened onto a hall panelled in a dark wood where a fine white-painted stairway twisted upwards beneath portraits of heavily jowled men in ruffs. The servant led Sandman down a passageway into a long gallery lined by tall velvet-curtained windows on one side and great paintings on the other. Sandman had expected the house to be as dirty as the grounds were unkempt, but it was all swept and the rooms smelt of wax polish. The paintings, so far as he could see in the curtained gloom, were exceptionally fine. Italian, he thought, and showing gods and goddesses disporting in vineyards and on dizzying mountainsides. Satyrs pursued naked nymphs and it took Sandman a moment or two to realise that all the paintings showed nudes: a gallery of feminine, abundant and generous flesh. He had a sudden memory of some of his soldiers gaping at just such a painting that had been captured from the French at the battle of Vitoria. The canvas, cut from its frame, had been purloined by a Spanish muleteer to use as a waterproof tarpaulin and the redcoats had bought it from him for tuppence, hoping to use it as a groundsheet. Sandman had purchased it from its new owners for a pound and sent it to headquarters, where it was identified as one of the many masterpieces looted from the Escorial, the King of Spain's palace.
'This way, sir,' the servant interrupted his reverie. The man opened a door and announced Sandman who was suddenly dazzled, for the room into which he had been ushered was vast and its windows that faced south and west were uncurtained and the sun was streaming in to illuminate a huge table. For a few seconds Sandman could not understand the table for it was green and lumpy and smothered in scraps that he thought at first were flowers or petals, then his eyes adjusted to the sunlight and he saw that the coloured scraps were model soldiers. They were thousands of toy soldiers on a table covered in green baize that had been draped across some kind of blocks so that it resembled the valley in which the battle of Waterloo had been fought. He gaped at it, astonished by the size of the model which was at least thirty feet long and twenty deep. Two girls sat at a side table with brushes and paint, which they applied to lead soldiers. Then a squeaking noise made him look into the dazzle by a south window, where he saw the Earl.
His lordship was in a wheeled chair like those Sandman's mother had liked to use in Bath when she was feeling particularly poorly, and the squeak had been the sound of the ungreased axles turning as a servant pushed the Earl towards his visitor.
The Earl was dressed in the old fashion that had prevailed before men had adopted sober black or dark blue. His coat was of flowered silk, red and blue, with enormously wide cuffs and a lavish collar over which fell a cascade of lace. He wore a full-bottomed wig that framed an ancient, lined face that was incongruously powdered, rouged and decorated with a velvet beauty spot on one sunken cheek. He had not been properly shaved, and patches of white stubble showed in the folds of his skin. 'You are wondering,' he addressed Sandman in a shrill voice, 'how the models are inserted onto the centre of the table, are you not?'
The question had not even occurred to Sandman, but now he did find it puzzling, for the table was far too big for its centre to be reached from the sides, and if a person were to walk across the model then they would inevitably crush the little trees that were made from sponge or else they would disarrange the serried ranks of painted soldiers. 'How is it done, my lord?' Sandman asked. He did not mind calling the Earl 'my lord' for he was an old man and it was a mere courtesy that youth owed to age.
'Betty, dearest, show him,' the earl commanded, and one of the two girls dropped her paintbrush and disappeared beneath the table. There was a scuffling sound, then a whole section of the valley rose into the air to become a wide hat for the grinning Betty. 'It is a model of Waterloo,' the Earl said proudly.
'So I see, my lord.'
'Maddox tells me you were in the 52nd. Show me where they were positioned.'
Sandman walked about the table's edge and pointed to one of the red-coated battalions on the ridge above the Chateau of Hougoumont. 'We were there, my lord,' he said. The model really was extraordinary. It showed the two armies at the beginning of the fight, before the ranks had been bloodied and thinned and before Hougoumont had burnt to a black shell. Sandman could even make out his own company on the 52nd's flank, and assumed that the little mounted figure just ahead of the painted ranks was meant to be himself. That was an odd thought.
'Why are you smiling?' the Earl demanded.
'No reason, my lord,' Sandman looked at the model again, 'except that I wasn't on horseback that day.'
'Which company?'
'Grenadier.'
The Earl nodded. 'I shall replace you with a foot soldier,' he said. His chair squealed as he pursued Sandman about the table. His lordship had blue-gartered silk stockings, though one of his feet was heavily bandaged. 'So tell me,' the Earl demanded, 'did Bonaparte lose the battle by delaying the start?'
'No,' Sandman said curtly.
The Earl signalled the servant to stop pushing the chair. He was close to Sandman now and could stare up at him with red-rimmed eyes that were dark and bitter. The Earl was much older than Sandman had expected. Sandman knew the Countess had still been young when she died, and she had been beautiful enough to be painted naked, yet her husband looked ancient despite the wig, the cosmetics and the lace frills. He stank, too; a reek of stale powder, unwashed clothes and sweat. 'Who the devil are you?' the Earl growled.
'I have come from Viscount Sidmouth, my lord, and…'
'Sidmouth?' the Earl interrupted. 'I don't know a Viscount Sidmouth. Who the devil is the Viscount Sidmouth?'
'The Home Secretary, my lord.' That information prompted no reaction at all, so Sandman explained further. 'He was Henry Addington, my lord, and was once the Prime Minister? Now he is Home Secretary.'
'Not a real lord then, eh?' the Earl declared. 'Not an aristocrat! Have you noticed how the damned politicians make themselves into peers? Like turning a toilet into a fountain, ha! Viscount Sidmouth? He's no gentleman. A bloody politician is all he is! A trumped up liar! A cheat! I assume he is first viscount?'
'I am sure he is, my lord,' Sandman said.
'Ha! A back-alley aristo, eh? A piece of Goddamn slime! A well-dressed thief! I'm the sixteenth earl.'
'Your family amazes us all, my lord,' Sandman said, with an irony that was utterly wasted on the Earl, 'but however new his ennoblement, I still come with the viscount's authority.' He produced the Home Secretary's letter, which was waved away. 'I have heard, my lord,' Sandman went on, 'that the servants from your town house in Mount Row are now here?' He had heard nothing of the sort, but perhaps the bald statement would elicit agreement from the Earl. 'If that's so, my lord, then I would like to talk with one of them.'
The Earl shifted in the chair. 'Are you suggesting,' he asked in a dangerous voice, 'that Blucher might have come sooner had Bonaparte attacked earlier?'
