Gallows Thief. Bernard Cornwell
often thought we ought to offer the job of hangman to the highest bidder instead of paying the wretch a salary.’
Sir Henry turned to look at Botting’s ravaged face. ‘The hand of glory doesn’t seem to work on the hangman though, does it?’
‘Not a pretty sight, is he?’ Logan agreed with a smile, then he held up his hand. ‘Hear it?’
Sir Henry could hear a clanking sound. The room had fallen silent again and he felt a kind of chill dread. He also despised himself for the prurience that had persuaded him to come to this breakfast, then he shuddered as the door from the Press Yard opened.
Another turnkey came into the room. He knuckled his forehead to the Keeper, then stood beside a low slab of timber that squatted on the floor. The turnkey held a stout hammer and Sir Henry wondered what its purpose was, but he did not like to ask, and then the guests closest to the door hauled off their hats because the Sheriff and Under-Sheriff had appeared in the doorway and were ushering the prisoners into the Association Room. There were four of them, three men and a young woman. The latter was scarce more than a girl and had a pinched, pale and frightened face.
‘Brandy, sir?’ One of the Keeper’s servants appeared beside Matthew Logan and Sir Henry.
‘Thank you,’ Logan said, and took two of the beakers. He handed one to Sir Henry. ‘It’s bad brandy,’ he said under his breath, ‘but a good precaution. Settles the stomach, eh?’
The prison bell suddenly began to toll. The girl twitched at the sound, then the turnkey with the hammer ordered her to put a foot onto the wooden anvil so her leg irons could be struck off. Sir Henry, who had long ceased to notice the prison’s stench, sipped the brandy and feared it would not stay down. His head felt light, unreal. The turnkey hammered the rivets from the first manacle and Sir Henry saw that the girl’s ankle was a welt of sores.
‘Other foot, girl,’ the turnkey said.
The bell tolled on and it would not stop now until all four bodies were cut down. Sir Henry was aware that his hand was shaking. ‘I hear corn was fetching sixty-three shillings a quarter in Norwich last week,’ he said, his voice too loud.
Logan was gazing at the quivering girl. ‘She stole her mistress’s necklace.’
‘She did?’
‘Pearls. She must have sold it, for the necklace was never found. Then the tall fellow next in line is a highwayman. Pity he isn’t Hood, eh? Still, we’ll see Hood swing one day. The other two murdered a grocer in Southwark. Sixty-three a quarter, eh? It’s a wonder anyone can eat.’
The girl, moving awkwardly because she was unaccustomed to walking without leg irons, shuffled away from the makeshift anvil. She began crying and Sir Henry turned his back on her. ‘Devilled kidneys, you say?’
‘The Keeper always serves devilled kidneys on hanging days,’ Logan said, ‘it’s a tradition.’
The hammer struck at the highwayman’s leg irons, the bell tolled and James Botting snapped at the girl to come to him. ‘Stand still, girl,’ he said, ‘drink that if you want it. Drink it all.’ He pointed to a beaker of brandy that had been placed on the table next to the neatly coiled ropes. The girl spilt some because her hands were shaking, but she gulped the rest down and then dropped the tin mug, which clattered on the flagstones. She began to apologise for her clumsiness, but Botting interrupted her. ‘Arms by your side, girl,’ he ordered her, ‘arms by your side.’
‘I didn’t steal anything!’ she wailed.
‘Quiet, my child, quiet.’ The Reverend Cotton had moved to her side and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘God is our refuge and strength, child, and you must put your faith in him.’ He kneaded her shoulder. She was wearing a pale-blue cotton dress with a drooping neckline and the priest’s fingers pressed and caressed her exposed white flesh. ‘The Lord is a very present help in times of trouble,’ the Ordinary said, his fingers leaving pinkish marks on her white skin, ‘and he will be thy comfort and guide. Do you repent your foul sins, child?’
‘I stole nothing!’
Sir Henry forced himself to draw long breaths. ‘Did you escape those Brazilian loans?’ he asked Logan.
‘Sold them on to Drummonds,’ Logan said, ‘so I’m damned grateful to you, Henry, damned grateful.’
‘It’s Eleanor you must thank,’ Sir Henry said. ‘She saw a report in a Paris newspaper and drew the right conclusions. Clever girl, my daughter.’
‘Such a pity about the engagement,’ Logan said. He was watching the doomed girl who cried aloud as Botting pinioned her elbows with a length of cord. He fastened them behind her back, drawing the line so tight that she gasped with pain. Botting grinned at her cry, then yanked the cord even tighter, forcing the girl to throw her breasts forward so that they strained against the thin material of her cheap dress. The Reverend Cotton leant close so that his breath was warm on her face. ‘You must repent, child, you must repent.’
‘I didn’t do it!’ Her breath was coming in gasps and tears were streaming down her distorted face.
‘Hands in front, girl!’ Botting snapped and, when she awkwardly lifted her hands, he seized one wrist, encircling it with a second length of cord which he then looped about her other wrist. Her elbows were secured behind her body, her wrists in front, and because Botting had pulled her elbows so tightly together he could not join her wrists with the cord, but had to be content with linking them.
‘You’re hurting me,’ she wailed.
‘Botting?’ the Keeper intervened.
‘Shouldn’t be my job to do the pinioning,’ Botting snarled, but he loosened some of the tension from the cord holding her elbows and the girl nodded in pathetic thanks.
‘She’d be a pretty thing,’ Logan said, ‘if she was cleaned up.’
Sir Henry was counting the pots in the hearth. Everything seemed unreal. God help me, he thought, God help me.
‘Jemmy!’ The highwayman, his leg irons struck off, greeted the hangman with a sneer.
‘Come here, lad,’ Botting ignored the familiarity. ‘Drink that. Then put your arms by your side.’
The highwayman put a coin on the table beside the brandy beaker. ‘For you, Jemmy.’
‘Good lad,’ the hangman said quietly. The coin would ensure that the highwayman’s arms would not be pinioned too tightly, and that his death would be as swift as Botting could make it.
‘Eleanor tells me she’s recovered from the engagement,’ Sir Henry said, his back still to the prisoners, ‘but I don’t believe her. She’s very unhappy. I can tell. Mind you, I sometimes wonder if she’s being perverse.’
‘Perverse?’
‘It occurs to me, Logan, that her attraction to Sandman has only increased since the engagement was broken.’
‘He was a very decent young man,’ Logan said.
‘He is a very decent young man,’ Sir Henry agreed.
‘But scrupulous,’ Logan said, ‘to a fault.’
‘To a fault indeed,’ Sir Henry said. He was staring down at the floor now, trying to ignore the girl’s soft sobbing. ‘Young Sandman is a good man, a very good man, but quite without prospects now. Utterly without prospects! And Eleanor cannot marry into a disgraced family.’
‘Indeed she cannot,’ Logan agreed.
‘She says she can, but then, Eleanor would,’ Sir Henry said, then shook his head. ‘And none of it is Rider Sandman’s fault, but he’s penniless now. Quite penniless.’
Logan frowned. ‘He’s on half-pay, surely?’
Sir Henry shook his head. ‘He sold his commission, gave the money towards the keep of his mother