The chapel door was open and, as Sharpe passed, a hand shot out and grasped his left shoulder. He swung on the hand, right fist already moving, then stopped. A woman stood there, swaying and blinking, and behind her there were candles beyond the open door in the grille. 'Coming in, darling? She smiled at Sharpe, then staggered against the door.

'Go and sleep it off.

A man's voice, speaking in French, called from inside the chapel. The woman shook her head. 'He's no bloody good, darling. Brandy, brandy, brandy. A child, not three years old, came and stood beside her mother and peered up solemnly at Sharpe, sucking its thumb. The woman squinted at Sharpe. 'Who are you?

'Lord Wellington. The French voice shouted again and there was the sound of movement. Sharpe pushed the woman inside the door. 'Go on, love. He's feeling better now.

'A chance would be a fine thing. Come back, yes?

'We'll be back.

He led his men, grinning broadly, round the further corner and down to the passageway that led to the inner cloister. Footsteps echoed in it as he approached and then a child burst from the archway, pursued by another child, and they ran into the upper cloister and shrieked with laughter and excitement. A voice yelled at them from a storeroom. The drunks seemed to be sleeping it offin this upper level.

Sharpe motioned his men to wait in the passageway and walked out onto the upper cloister level where he had stood and talked with Madame Dubreton. He stayed in the shadows and he stared down into the eye of chaos. This was the anarchy that Wellington feared, the short step from order, the abandonment of hope and discipline.

Flames lit the deep cloister. A great fire burned on the broken stones, above the wreckage of the delicate canals, and the fire was fed by thorn trees and by planks that had been torn from the great windows of the hall on the northern side of the cloister. The windows ran from the ground level, past the upper walkway, to delicate arches beneath the gallery, and now that the protective planks had been prised from the stonework the window spaces gave free entrance between courtyard and hall. Their glass was long gone. Men and women came and went between the two areas and Sharpe watched from above.

He had run from the Foundling Home before his tenth birthday and he had gone into the dark close alleys of London's slums. There was work there for a nimble child. It was a world of thieves, body-snatchers, murderers; of drunkards, cripples, and of whores who had sold themselves into disease and ugliness. Hope meant nothing to the inhabitants of St Giles. For many their longest journey in this world was a mile and a half along the length of Oxford Street, due west, to the three-sided gibbet at Tyburn. The countryside, just two miles north up the Tottenham Court Road, was as remote as paradise. St Giles was a place of disease, starvation, and a future so dark that a man measured it in hours and took his pleasures accordingly. The gin-shops, the gutter, the floors of the common lodging houses were the places where men and women dissolved their desperation in drink, coupling, and finally in death that tipped most into the open sewer along with the night's harvest of dead babies. Without hope there was nothing but desperation.

And these people were desperate. They must have known that revenge was coming, perhaps in the spring when the armies stirred from winter torpor, and until it came they numbed their desperation. They had drunk and were still drinking. Food lay on the broken stones, men lay with women, children picked their way through the couples to find bones that still had chewable meat or wineskins whose spigots they would suck on desperately. Close to the fire some of the bodies were naked, asleep, while further away they were covered in blankets and clothes. Some moved. One man was dead, blood black on his opened stomach. The noise was not from here, but from the hall and Sharpe could not see what was prompting the sound. He thought of the minutes ticking by, of Frederickson counting in the cold thorns.

He turned to the passageway and kept his voice low. 'We're going round the cloister, lads. Walk slowly. Go in twos and threes. There's a view you'll like as you go round. Harper walked just behind Sharpe, both men clinging to the shadows by the wall. The huge Irishman watched the couples by the fire and his voice was cheerful. 'Just like the officers' mess on a Friday night, eh?’Every night, Patrick, every night. And what, he wondered, was to stop his own men going to join those in the courtyard? To be offered drink and women instead of work and discipline was the avowed dream of every soldier, so why did they not just go now? Kill him and Harper and take their freedom? He did not know the answer. He just knew that he trusted them. And where, more importantly, were the hostages kept? He pushed open the doors that he passed, but the rooms were either empty or inhabited by sleeping people. None were guarded. Once a man growled in protest from the darkness and two women giggled. Sharpe closed the door. The flames of the great fire were warm on the left side of his face.

He turned the corner and now he could see into the great hall. A hundred men and as many women crowded the floor. There was a kind of platform at the far end, a raised dais, and a staircase went from the dais to a gallery above that spanned the width of the hall. Sharpe could see two doorways leading from the gallery into corridors or rooms behind. There was easy access to the gallery through the tall, empty windows. A man could simply step from the cloister onto the gallery.

The men and the women were shouting, the shouting orchestrated from the dais. There sat Hakeswill. He had a chair that rose high above his head, like a throne, a chair with decorated armrests. He was dressed in the priest's finery, the robes too short for him so that his boots were visible almost to his knees. Beside him, leaning on the armrest, Hakeswill’s hand about her waist, was a small, thin girl. She was dressed in brilliant red, a white scarf about her waist, long black hair falling below the scarf.

A woman stood on the dais. She was grinning. She was dressed in a shift over which she wore a vest and a shirt. She had a dress in her right hand and, to the crowd's roar, she hurled the dress towards a man in the crowd who caught it and waved. Hakeswill held up his hand. The face twitched. 'Shirt! Come on, then! How much? Shilling?

It was an auction. She had sold the dress, presumably, and Sharpe saw two small grinning children picking up coins from the floor beneath the dais and carry them to an upturned shako. The shouts came from the hall, two shillings, three, and Hakeswill whipped them up and his eyes looked into the hat to see the takings.

They cheered and screamed as the shirt came off.

The vest went for four shillings. The coins rattled on the stones. Sharpe wondered how many minutes had passed.

The yellow face grinned. The hand jerked up and down on the small girl's ribcage. 'Her shift! Make it good. Ten shillings? No one answered. 'You lousy bleeders! You think she's not as pretty as Sally? Christ! You paid her two quid, now come on! He beat them up, higher and higher, and to a great cheer and thrown coins she peeled herself naked for one pound and eighteen shillings. She stood there grinning, hand on hip, and Hakeswill lurched upright and sidled towards her, his gold and white robes ridiculous in the flamelight, and his blue bright eyes leered at the people in the hall as he slid his right arm across the woman's shoulders. 'Now then. Who wants her? You're going to pay! Half to her, half to us, so come on!

Bids came and to some the woman stuck out her tongue, others she laughed, and Hakeswill egged them on. A consortium of Frenchmen bought her in the end, their price four pounds, and they came to fetch her and the crowd cheered louder as one of them carried the woman sitting on his shoulders towards the fire in the courtyard.