They died here, husbands forbidden to speak with their wives, and all half starved until their corpses were carried in a knacker’s cart to a pauper’s grave. That was the poorhouse, and it was divided from the foundling home by a narrow, three-story brick house with white-painted shutters and an elegant wrought-iron lantern suspended above its well-scrubbed front steps. The Master’s house. Jem Hocking’s small palace which overlooked the foundling home which, like the poorhouse, had its own gate: a black slab of heavy timber smeared with tar and surmounted with rusted iron spikes four inches long. A prison, really, for orphans. The magistrates sent pregnant girls here, girls too poor to have a home or too sick to sell their swollen bodies on the streets. Their bastards were born here and the girls, as often as not, died of the fever. Those that survived went back to the streets, leaving their children in the tender care of Jem Hocking and his wife.

It had been Sharpe’s home once. And now it was Friday.

He crossed the street and hammered on the small wicket door set into the foundling home’s larger gate. Grace had wanted to come here. She had listened to Sharpe’s stories and believed she could change things, but there had never been time. So Sharpe would change things now. He lifted his hand to hammer again just as the wicket door opened to reveal a pale and anxious young man who flinched away from Sharpe’s fist. “Who are you?” Sharpe demanded as he stepped through the small opening.

“Sir?” The young man had been expecting to ask that same question.

“Who are you?” Sharpe asked. “Come on, man, don’t bloody dither! And where’s the Master?”

“The Master’s in his house, but… ” The young man abandoned whatever he had been trying to say and instead attempted to stand in front of Sharpe. “You can’t go in there, mister!”

“Why not?” Sharpe had crossed the small yard and now pushed open the door to the hall.