gutter, so he hates her and he kills her, but he didn't kill the maid because she wasn't a threat.'
Berrigan thought about that for a moment. 'So he takes the maid off to one of the mortgaged estates instead?'
'That seems to be the size of it,' Sandman said.
'So why is Lord Robin Holloway trying to kill you?'
'Because I'm a danger to his friend, of course,' Sandman replied forcefully. 'The last thing they want is for the truth to be told, so they tried to bribe me and now they'll try to kill me.'
'A big bribe, it was,' Berrigan said.
'Nothing compared to the wealth that Skavadale's bride will bring him,' Sandman said, 'and the Countess put that at risk. So she had to die, and now Corday must die because then everyone will forget the crime.'
'Aye,' Berrigan allowed. 'But I still don't understand why they didn't just scrag this maid Meg. If they thought she was a danger they wouldn't let her live.'
'Perhaps they have killed her,' Sandman said.
'Then this is a right waste of time,' Berrigan said gloomily.
'But I don't think they'd have taken Meg all the way to Nether Cross just to kill her,' Sandman said.
'So what are they doing with her?'
'Maybe they've given her somewhere to live,' Sandman suggested, 'somewhere comfortable so she doesn't reveal what she knows.'
'So now she's the blackmailer?'
'I don't know,' Sandman said, yet as he thought about it, the Sergeant's notion that Meg was now blackmailing Skavadale made sense. 'Perhaps she is,' he said, 'and if she's sensible she's not asking too much, which is why they're content to let her live.'
'But if she is blackmailing him,' Berrigan suggested, 'then she'll hardly tell us the truth, will she? She's got Skavadale strapped down tight, don't she? She's got the whip on him. Why should she give all that up to save some bloody pixie's life?'
'Because we shall appeal,' Sandman said, 'to her better nature.'
Berrigan laughed sourly. 'Ah well, then,' he said, 'it's all solved!'
'It worked with you, Sergeant,' Sandman pointed out gently.
'That were Sally, that were.' Berrigan paused, then sounded embarrassed. 'At first, you know, in the Wheatsheaf that night? I thought it was you and her.'
'Alas no,' Sandman said, 'I am well spoken for and Sally is all yours, Sergeant, and I think you are a most fortunate man. As am I. But I am also a tired one.' He crawled under the carriage, bumping his head painfully on the forward axle. 'After Waterloo,' he said, 'I thought I'd never again sleep in the open.'
The grass was dry under the carriage. The springs creaked as one of the prisoners shifted inside, the picketed horses stamped and the wind sighed in a nearby stand of trees. Sandman thought of the hundreds of other nights he had slept under the stars and then, just as he decided that sleep would never come in this night, it did. And he slept.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Early next morning Sally brought them a basket with bacon, hard boiled eggs, bread and a stone jar of cold tea, a breakfast they shared with the two prisoners. Mackeson, the coachman, was phlegmatic about his fate. 'You didn't have much choice, did you?' he said to Berrigan. 'You had to keep us quiet, but it won't do you no good, Sam.'
'Why not?'
'You ever seen a lord hang?'
'Earl Ferrers was hanged,' Sandman intervened, 'for murdering his servant.'
'No!' Sally said in disbelief. 'They hanged an earl? Really?'
'He went to the scaffold in his own carriage,' Sandman told her, 'wearing his wedding suit.'
'Bleeding hell!' She was obviously pleased by this news. 'A lord, eh?'
'But that were a long time ago,' Mackeson said dismissively, 'a very long time ago.' His moustache, which had been waxed so jauntily when Sandman had first seen him, was now fallen and straggling. 'So what happens to us?' he asked gloomily.
'We go to Nether Cross,' Sandman said, 'we fetch the girl and you take us back to London where I shall write a letter to your employers saying your absence from duties was forced.'
'Much bleeding good that will do,' Mackeson grumbled.
'You're a jervis, Mack,' Berrigan said, 'you'll get a job. The rest of the world could be starving, but there's always work for a jervis.'
'Time to get ready,' Sandman said, glancing up at the lightening sky. A small mist drifted over the heath as the four horses were watered at a stone trough, then led back to the carriage where it took a long time to put on the four sets of bridles, belly bands, back bands, martingales, hames, traces, cruppers, driving pads and fillet straps. After Mackeson and Billy had finished harnessing the horses, Sandman made the younger man strip off his shoes and belt. The stable hand had pleaded to be left without bonds on his ankles and wrists and Sandman had agreed, but without shoes and with his breeches falling round his knees the boy would find it hard to escape. Sandman and Sally sat inside with the embarrassed Billy, Mackeson and Berrigan climbed onto the box and then, with a jangle and clanging and a lurching roll, they bounced over the grass and onto the road. They were travelling again.
They went south and east past hop fields, orchards and great estates. By midday Sandman had unwittingly fallen asleep, then woke with a start when the carriage lurched in a rut. He blinked, then saw that Sally had taken the pistol from him and was gazing at a thoroughly cowed Billy. 'You can sleep on, Captain,' she said.
'I'm sorry, Sally.'
'He didn't dare try nothing,' Sally said derisively, 'not once I told him who my brother is.'
Sandman peered through the window to see they were climbing through a beech wood. 'I thought we might meet him last night.'
'He don't like crossing the river,' Sally said, 'so he only works the north and west roads.' She saw he was properly awake and gave him back his pistol. 'Do you think a man can be on the cross and then go straight?' she asked.
Sandman suspected the question was not about her brother, but about Berrigan. Not that the Sergeant was exactly in the cross life, not as the Wheatsheaf understood it, but as a servant of the Seraphim Club he had certainly known his share of crime. 'Of course he can,' Sandman said confidently.
'Not many do,' Sally averred, but not in argument. Rather she wanted reassurance.
'We all have to make a living, Sally,' Sandman said, 'and if we're honest we none of us want to work too hard. That's the appeal of the cross life, isn't it? Your brother can work one night in three and make a living.'
'That's Jack though, isn't it?' She sounded bleak and, rather than meet Sandman's eye, she gazed through the dusty window at an orchard.
'And maybe your brother will settle down when he meets the right woman,' Sandman suggested. 'A lot of men do that. They start off by being rogues, but then find honest work and as often as not it's after they've met a woman. I can't tell you how many of my soldiers were utter nuisances, complete damn fools, more use to the enemy than to us, and then they'd meet some Spanish girl half their weight and within a week they'd be model soldiers.' She turned to look at him and he smiled at her. 'I don't think you've anything to worry about, Sally.'
She returned his smile. 'Are you a good judge of men, Captain?'
'Yes, Sally, I am.'
She laughed, then looked at Billy. 'Close your bleeding trap before you catch flies,' she said, 'and stop listening to private conversation!'
He blushed and stared at a hedge that crawled past the window. They could not change horses and so Mackeson was pacing the team, which meant they travelled slowly, and the journey was made even slower because the road was in bad condition and they had to pull over whenever a horn announced that a stage or mail coach was behind them. The mail coaches were the most dramatic, their approach heralded by an urgent blast of a horn, then the lightly built and high-sprung vehicles would fly past in a flurry of hooves, rocking like a galloper gun. Sandman envied their speed, and worried about time, then told himself it was only Saturday and, so long as Meg really was hiding at Nether Cross, then they should be back in London by Sunday evening and that left plenty of time to find
