CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Patrick had been so shocked at the sight of Lord Charles Sheridan standing in the door of the tack room that he had turned nearly white. But his quite understandable fear of being tongue-lashed or lashed in earnest for running away from school-or even worse, that he might be sent back-had begun to disappear with Lord Charles’s first mild words. This gentleman who treated him with such grave courtesy was still his friend, however disappointed he might be at his abysmal failures of discipline and stick-to-it.

But as Patrick lay on his narrow straw pallet in the airless loft and waited for the other lads to fall asleep, it occurred to him that perhaps it was not Lord Charles’s expectations he had failed so miserably to satisfy, but merely his own unrealistic hopes-in which case it didn’t matter, for Patrick had already come to terms with his inadequacies. This comforting thought, together with the anticipation of pouring out his fears and his anger-and yes, even his guilt-into his lordship’s compassionate ears, lifted his spirits. While he wasn’t exactly jubilant, he was on the way to feeling that he was not, after all, entirely alone in the world.

Down in the stable, Patrick heard the soft, snorting whuffle of a horse, and he thought again, uneasily, of Gladiator. Jesse Clark and Lord Hunt had been out on Southfields that day, along with the usual motley crew of bookmakers’ touts, to watch the colt. Of course, there had been no repetition of that frightening business with the bottle, but Patrick was unhappily aware that it was only a matter of time before the same thing happened again-probably at the end of the week at Newmarket, where Gladiator was entered in a ten-furlong handicap. But what could he do to prevent it? How could he protect his magnificent horse from such a barbarous and dangerous offense?

Anxiously, he slipped his hand under the pallet and felt the rough lip of the floorboard he had pried up and the sharp splinter of wood he had wedged into it, as notice to himself of any attempt at the discovery of his hiding place. The splinter was still there. His cache was secure, although the question of what to do with it still remained. But Lord Charles had said that he wanted to know about what had happened to Gladiator. Perhaps it could be given to him. The thought brought a little comfort.

When the last lad had started to snore, Patrick climbed noiselessly down the ladder and through the unlatched door at the back of the feed room and then along the footpath that led down Long Hill to Bury Road to Newmarket High Street. The path was familiar and the quarter moon, a ghostly frigate silently adrift on a rippling current of cloud, gave almost enough light for him to see the whole space of open hills and down to the town, where the gas streetlamps were shrouded in an opaque wrapping of low-lying mist.

Patrick was an imaginative boy, and it seemed to him that there was something sinister about the rivulets of mist and fog that twisted and curled like live snakes across Railway Field and along the foot of Long Hill. He drew back, shuddering, when an owl swooped low over his head and he heard the beat of the heavy wings lifting into the dark. Perhaps it wasn’t an owl after all, but the sinister ghost of Hawkes, the highwayman who had often ridden the Bury Road, relieving drunken stragglers of the money they’d won at the race meeting. Perhaps-and he cringed at the thought-it was Johnny’s ghost, angry at him for failing to warn him about that stuff in the bottle, and what it had done to Gladiator. Or perhaps it was his own guilt, sinister and dark, riding over him like a ghostly winged shadow.

The boy was glad when he reached the first gaslight on the High Street, where the evening revelers were weaving their celebratory way from pub to pub. He knew better than to go along the street, however, for both Pinkie Duncan and the head lad-an older fellow named Grins-frequented the taverns and gambling dens of the Rookery, and he preferred not to be seen. So he slipped down first one dark alleyway and then another, crossed a third, and paused to get his bearings.

The moon had been swallowed by fog, but Patrick knew where he was by the clink of glasses, the rough male laughter, and the smell of sour beer that clung to the damp night air. He was directly behind the Great Horse pub, an old coaching inn which had been made redundant for its original purpose by the railway line and in which every sort of roguery and villainy had been plotted over the years. The Great Horse occupied a long, narrow building with rafters high above and sawdust on the floor, a bar along one wall and scarred deal tables along the other, and a large back room where various belligerent encounters occurred: prizefights, dogfights between vicious red bull terriers, and the cockfights that had been illegal for fifty years but which continued unabated. Staggering sums were wagered in that room-Patrick knew, for he had seen with his own eyes the sums of money that changed hands. Now, there was a vicious flurry of growls and barks and a loud cheer, and Patrick shivered. He was fond of dogs, and he did not like the idea of one dog destroying another.

But Wellington Street was a few paces ahead, and Hardaway House, with its brick gateway, just to the right. More relieved than he cared to admit that he had almost reached his destination, Patrick set off again, hurrying now, for the clock in the tower was striking ten.

He didn’t get far. Three or four quick steps, and he was lying flat on his face in the middle of the alley, his nose scraped, the wind knocked out of him. He lay there a moment, stunned and half-bewildered, then sat up, cursing loudly and rubbing his nose. He turned to see what had tripped him up.

A log that someone had carelessly left lying across the alleyway? He put his hand on it.

No, not a log, a roll of canvas, unexpectedly warm to the touch. He frowned, feeling farther along, and then farther still, discovering by degrees that what he had tripped over was neither a log nor a roll of canvas but a leg, a man’s leg, and that the owner of the leg was lying flat on his back with his toes turned up, dead drunk.

But as Patrick got to his feet, he realized that his hand was wet and slippery and when the moon peered over the fog for her own surreptitious glance at the scene, he saw to his dismay that it was covered with blood. With mounting horror, he turned to look at the man, whose eyes were staring open and whose waistcoat was soaked with blood.

He was not dead drunk after all. He was bloodily and indisputably dead. And he was no stranger.