The place reeked of tobacco smoke, sawdust, spilt liquor, stale bodies, vomit, and piss.
At Hawkwood’s entrance, conversation petered out. The silence, when it came, was so acute it was as if every person in the place was holding his or her breath. Hawkwood felt his skin crawl.
The girl released her grip on his coat. A scrape of a boot from behind made Hawkwood turn. Two men moved to the door, blocking his exit. Each man carried a thick wooden stave. Their gaze was malevolent. Several of the dogs, sensing a stranger and tension in the air, growled menacingly.
“Well now, and what have we got here? Reckon you’ve taken the wrong turning, squire.”
Hawkwood stood perfectly still.
“Christ!” A second voice broke the spell. “I knows ‘im. ‘E’s a bleedin’ Runner!”
Several of the men sprang up quickly, chairs scraping. A dog barked, a woman yelped. Candlelight glinted off a knife blade. Hawkwood sensed the girl starting to back away. His first thought was that she had played her part well. A trap had been set and he had walked right into it. He cursed his stupidity. He should have changed his clothes before accompanying the girl. He was too well dressed to be anything but an outsider.
Someone in the gauntlet hawked noisily and spat. A ribbon of mucus struck the floor an inch from Hawkwood’s boot. It was as if a signal had been given. Knives and razors were drawn as the men began to close in. Hawkwood could feel the strength of their hatred. He reached for his baton.
“LEAVE ‘IM BE!”
The voice came from the top of the stairs. What the speaker lacked in height he made up for in girth, but it was solid muscle, not fat, that gave him his wrestler’s build. The face was square and rough-hewn, framed by close-cropped hair the colour of pewter. He would not have been out of place gracing the canvas against the likes of Figg or Reuben Benbow. One hand rested on the rail, the other gripped a heavy blackthorn cudgel. He gazed down at Hawkwood, holding the pose for several seconds without speaking. Then, unexpectedly, his mouth split into a wide, leathery grin and he threw out his arms in a broad expansive sweep.
“Ev’ning, Cap’n! Welcome to Noah’s Ark!”
In the eerie glow of the tallow candles, the scar beneath Hawkwood’s eye shone white as he breathed a sigh of relief. He waited as the interloper descended the stairs. Hawkwood saw how the other men moved apart to give the man room. He sensed a subtle change in the mood of the cellar’s occupants, watched as expressions shifted from malice and suspicion to surprise and curiosity. The eyes of the dogs gleamed jewel bright.
“Hello, Nathaniel,” Hawkwood said. “How are you?”
Still grinning hugely, ex-sergeant Nathaniel Jago, late of His Britannic Majesty’s 95th Rifles, held out his hand. “Fit as a fiddle, sir, and you ain’t looking so bad yourself, considering.”
Hawkwood returned the smile and the grip. Jago’s hand was calloused and as hard as knotted rope.
“By God, sir, it’s grand to see you, and that’s no word of a lie!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Hawkwood noticed that the girl had reappeared at his side. She was staring up at them both.
Jago looked down. “Well done, Jen. Here you are, my love, and don’t go spendin’ it all at once.”
The girl’s eyes widened as the coins were pressed into her hand. Then, with an impish grin, she darted away.
“She’ll spend it on rotgut, as like as not,” Jago said. There was genuine sadness in his voice. He watched the girl go with knowing eyes. “Come on, Cap’n, let’s you and me find a bottle and a quiet corner. What’ll it be? Gin? Rum? Or how about something special? A drop o’ brandy perhaps?” Jago winked conspiratorially. “French, not Spanish. Took a delivery only this morning. Word is it’s from Boney’s own cellars.”
“French brandy, Sergeant?” Hawkwood said drily. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Anyway, I thought there was a war on?”
Jago grinned. “Never let political differences get in the way of business. First rule o’ commerce.”
Sticking the cudgel in his belt and taking a bottle and two tankards from beneath the counter, Jago led Hawkwood up the stairs to a table at the back of the room. Hawkwood could feel the eyes of every person in the cellar following their progress.
“Ignore ‘em,” Jago advised. The big man laid his cudgel on the table, then took the bottle and poured a liberal measure of brandy into each tankard. “Novelty’ll wear off soon enough.”
Hawkwood doubted that. Nevertheless, by the time they had taken their seats the conversation in the rest of the room had resumed. But Hawkwood could still feel eyes burning into his shoulder blades.
Jago raised his mug. “To old times.”
Hawkwood returned the toast. The brandy was smooth and warming at the back of his throat. Hawkwood wondered if it really had come from the cellars of the Emperor. And, if so, by what tortuous route had it ended up on this table, in a drinking den in London’s most notorious rookery?
There was a silence, then Jago said softly, “I hear you’ve been busy.” The big man took a sip of brandy and sat back. “Been makin’ a name for yourself.” He put his head on one side and fixed Hawkwood with a leery eye. “I heard tell it was you who closed down the Widow Gant.” Jago’s expression was all innocence as he added, “An’ not before time, too, if you ask me. The way the old bitch used to corrupt young minds and such.” He tut-tutted and shook his head at the sheer injustice of it all.
Hawkwood wondered about that. Putting the Widow Gant out of business had probably done all the other criminals in the district a substantial favour. Jago and his confederates would undoubtedly profit from the decrease in competition. Which, come to think of it, might well have accounted for the reason why nobody had bothered to warn the widow about the presence of law officers in the vicinity of her clearing house. Quite obviously, the old adage about there being honour among thieves didn’t apply to the denizens of the St Giles Rookery.
Observing his former sergeant, Hawkwood thought that Jago didn’t appear to have changed much in the months since he’d last seen him, except for having shed a little more hair and gained a few pounds. In fact, the ex-sergeant appeared to have taken to the civilian life like the proverbial duck to water; the mark of a born survivor.
The son of a farm labourer, raised in an isolated village on the Kent marshes, orphaned after his parents had fallen victim to the cholera, Nathaniel Jago, during his formative years, had turned his hand to many things, not all of them legal – blacksmith, drover, poacher and smuggler – with varying degrees of success, until a chance meeting with a recruiting party at a Maidstone fair had changed his life for ever.
The promise of a fine uniform, a roof over his head, and three square meals a day, not to mention the two guineas he’d receive for signing on, had seemed like a dream come true for a young man, homeless and hungry and only one step ahead of the Revenue. And so it was on a warm afternoon in early summer that Nathaniel Jago had accepted the King’s bounty and gone to war. From the lowlands of Flanders to the jungles of the West Indies and the dusty plains of India, Jago had marched and fought his way across the world. From private to sergeant, he’d served his country well.
He’d served Hawkwood well, too.
They’d faced the enemy together under Nelson at Copenhagen, marched with Black Bob Crauford in the Americas and with Moore in Spain and Portugal. Jago had stood with Hawkwood on the ramparts at Montevideo. He’d guarded his back at Rolica and Vimeiro and at Talavera they’d both watched in horror as the Coldstreams and the King’s German Legion had fallen victim to the French counterattack.
It was a friendship forged on the squares at Blatchington and Shorncliffe. Since then, Jago had stood by him