“So where is the responsibility?” Sharpe asked. “With you? Or the Board?” He saw the question had offended Hocking. “I assume it is you, Master, but I have to be sure.”

“With me,” Hocking said grandly. “With me, Major. The Board is appointed by the parish and the parish, Major, is infested with bleeding orphans. And not just our own! Some even gets stranded here by the ships. Only last week the mudlarks found a girl child, if you can imagine such a thing.” He shook his head and dipped his nose into the ale’s froth while Sharpe imagined the mudlarks, men and women who combed the Thames foreshore at low tide in search of scraps fallen overboard, bringing a child to Brewhouse Lane. Poor child, to end with Hocking as a guardian. “The Board, Major,” Hocking went on, “cannot cope with so many children. They confine themselves to a quarterly examination of the accounts which, you may be sure, add up to the exact penny, and the Board votes me an annual motion of thanks at Christmas time, but otherwise the Board ignores me. I am a man of business, Major, and I spare the parish the trouble of dealing with orphans. I have two score and sixteen of the little bastards in the house now, and what will the Board of Visitors do without me and Mrs. Hocking? We are a godsend to the parish.” He held up a hand to check anything Sharpe might say. This was not to deflect a compliment, but rather because a thin young man had come from the tavern’s back door to whisper in his ear. A raucous cheer sounded from behind the door. The cheers had been sounding ever since Sharpe had arrived in the tavern and he had pretended not to hear them. Now he ignored the young man who tipped a stream of coins into the clerk’s leather bag, then gave Hocking a pile of grubby paper slips that vanished into the big man’s pocket. “Business,” Hocking said gruffly.

“In Lewes,” Sharpe said, “the parish offers three pounds to anyone who will take an orphan out of the workhouse.”