Gallows Thief

by Bernard Cornwell

  Lord Christopher had prayed for Corday. It was not right, of course, that the painter should die, but nor could Lord Christopher be persuaded that he himself deserved death for his stepmother’s murder. He would do good with his inheritance! He would be charitable. He would pay for the murder and for Corday’s innocence a thousand times over. Sandman had threatened that exercise of repentance and so Lord Christopher had consulted his manservant and, claiming that Rider Sandman had a grudge against him and planned to sue the trustees and thus tie up the Avebury fortune in the Court of Chancery, he had promised a thousand guineas to the man who could rid the estate of that threat. The manservant had hired other men and Lord Christopher had rewarded them richly for even making the attempt on Sandman’s life. Now, it seemed, further payment would be unnecessary for Sandman had evidently failed. Corday would die and no one would then want to admit that an innocent man had been sent to dance on Botting’s stage.

  ‘But your stepmother, surely, had no claim on the estate,’ Lord Alexander had been thinking about his friend’s words, ‘unless the entail specifically provides for your father’s widow. Does it?’

  Lord Christopher looked confused, but then made a great effort to concentrate on what his friend had just said. ‘No,’ he said, ‘the whole estate is entailed on the heir. Onto m-me alone.’

  ‘Then you will be a prodigiously rich man, Kit,’ Lord Alexander said, ‘and I shall wish you well of your great fortune.’ He turned from his friend as a huge cheer, the loudest of the morning, greeted the hangman’s arrival on the scaffold.

  ‘“I will keep my mouth as it were with a bridle,’” the Reverend Cotton’s voice grew louder as he climbed the stairs behind the first prisoner, ‘“while the ungodly is in my sight.”’

  A turnkey appeared first, then Corday, who was still walking awkwardly because his legs were not used to being without irons. He tripped on the top step and stumbled into Lord Alexander who gripped his elbow. ‘Steady, there’s a good fellow,’ Lord Alexander said.

  ‘Hats off!’ the crowd bellowed at those who stood in the front ranks. ‘Hats off!’ The roar of the crowd was massive as they surged forward to crush against the low wooden rail that surrounded the scaffold. The City Marshal’s men, arrayed just behind the rail, raised their staves and spears.

  Lord Alexander felt assaulted by the noise that echoed back from the prison’s granite façade. This was England at play, he thought, the mob given its taste of blood in the hope that, given this much, they would not demand more. A child, sitting on his father’s shoulders, was screaming obscenities at Corday, who was weeping openly. The crowd liked a man or woman to go to their deaths bravely and Corday’s tears were earning him nothing but scorn. Lord Alexander had a sudden urge to go to the young man and comfort him, to pray with him, but he stayed seated because the Reverend Cotton was already close beside Corday. ‘“O teach us to number our days,”’ the Ordinary read in a singsong voice, ‘“that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”’

  Then the crowd roared in mocking laughter because Corday had collapsed. Botting had half climbed the ladder and was just lifting the rope from the prisoner’s shoulders ready to attach it to one of the hooks of the beam, when Corday’s legs turned to jelly. The Reverend Cotton leapt back, the turnkey ran forward, but Corday could not stand. He was shaking and sobbing.

  ‘Shoot the bugger, Jemmy!’ a man shouted from the crowd.

  ‘I need an assistant,’ Botting growled at the Sheriff, ‘and a chair.’

  One of the guests volunteered to stand and his chair was brought into the sunlight and placed on the trapdoor. The crowd, realising this was going to be an unusual execution, applauded the sight. Botting and a turnkey hoisted Corday onto the seat and the hangman deftly undid the line holding Corday’s elbows and retied it so that it bound the prisoner to the chair. Now he could be hanged, and Botting clambered up the ladder, attached the rope, then came down and rammed the noose hard over Corday’s head. ‘Snivelling little bastard,’ he whispered as he jerked the rope tight, ‘die like a man.’ He took one of the white cotton bags from his pocket and pulled it over Corday’s head. Lord Alexander, silent now, saw the cotton pulsing in and out with Corday’s breathing. The boy’s head had dropped onto his chest so that, if it had not been for the flicker of cotton at his mouth, he might already have been dead.

  ‘“Show Thy servants Thy work,’” the Reverend Cotton read, ‘“and their children Thy glory.’”

  Venables came up the steps and received only a perfunctory cheer from a crowd that had exhausted itself at Corday’s expense. The big man nevertheless bowed to his audience, then walked calmly to the trapdoor and waited for rope and blindfold. The scaffold creaked beneath his weight. ‘Do it quick, Jemmy,’ he said loudly, ‘and do it well.’

  ‘I’ll look after you,’ the hangman promised, ‘I’ll look after you.’ He took the white hood from his pocket and pulled it over Venables’s head.

  ‘“The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away,”’ the Reverend Cotton said.

  Lord Alexander, who had found himself appalled by the last few moments, became dimly aware of some disturbance at the southern, narrow end of Old Bailey.

  ‘“Blessed be the name of the Lord,”’ intoned the Ordinary.

  ‘God damn it!’ Sandman found himself blocked by the press of traffic at the junction of Farringdon Street and Ludgate Hill. Off to his right the Fleet Ditch stank in the early morning sun. A coal wagon was turning into Fleet Street and it had jammed on the corner and a dozen men were offering advice while a lawyer in a hackney was telling his driver to whip the coal heaver’s horses even though there was no room for it to move because an even larger wagon, loaded with a score of oak beams, was scraping past. The mounted constables, whistles blowing and truncheons drawn, clattered into the junction behind Sandman, who kicked a pedestrian out of his way, wrenched his horse to the left, swore at the lawyer whose coach blocked him, then had his bridle seized by a well-meaning citizen who thought Sandman was fleeing the constables.

  ‘Get your bloody hands off me!’ Sandman shouted, then Berrigan rode alongside and thumped the man on the head, crushing his hat, and Sandman’s horse was suddenly free and he kicked it alongside the wagon with the huge oak beams.

  ‘No point in hurrying!’ the driver called. ‘Not if you’re going to the hanging. The culleys will be dangling by now!’ All the bells of the city had rung the hour, the ones that always chimed early and even the laggards had struck eight, but the funeral bell of Saint Sepulchre still tolled and Sandman dared to hope that Corday was still alive as he burst out of the tangled traffic and kicked the horse up towards Saint Paul’s Cathedral, which filled the crest of Ludgate Hill with its steps, pillars and dome.

  Halfway up the hill he turned into Old Bailey and for the first few yards, as he passed the law courts in the Session House, the road was blessedly empty, but then it widened as he passed the big yard of Newgate Prison and suddenly the seething crowd stretched across the whole street, blocking him, and he could see the beam of the gallows reaching across the sky and the black scaffold platform beneath, and then he just drove the horse at the crowd. He was standing in the stirrups, shouting, just as the Royals, the Scots Greys and the Inniskillings had stood and shouted as they drove their big horses into the French corps they had destroyed at Waterloo.

  ‘Make way!’ Sandman bellowed. ‘Make way!’ He saw the men on the scaffold and noticed that one seemed to be sitting, which was strange, and he saw a priest there, and a knot of spectators or officials at the scaffold’s rear, and the crowd protested at his savagery, resisted him, and he wished he had a weapon to thrash at them, but then the constables drove alongside him and thrust at the press of people with their long truncheons.

  Then a sigh seemed to pass through the crowd, and Sandman could see no one but the priest on the scaffold’s black stage that stretched halfway across the widest part of the street.

  Which meant the trapdoor had opened.

  And
Saint Sepulchre’s bell tolled on for the dying.

  Venables swore at the Ordinary and cursed the Keeper, but gave no insults to Jemmy Bolting for he knew well enough that the hangman could hasten his end. ‘Stop weeping,’ he told Corday.

  ‘I did nothing!’ Corday protested.

  ‘You think you’re the first innocent person to die up here?’ Venables asked. ‘Or the hundredth? It’s a scaffold, Charlie, and it knows no difference between the guilty and the innocent. Are you there, Jemmy?’ Venables had the white hood over his eyes, so he could not see that the hangman had shuffled to the corner of the platform to pull the safety peg. ‘Are you there, Jemmy?’

  ‘Not long now, boys,’ Botting said, ‘have patience.’ He vanished down the back stairs.

  ‘It’s Rider!’ Lord Alexander was standing now, to the annoyance of the guests seated behind him. ‘It’s Rider!’

  The crowd had at last sensed that something untoward was happening. Their first inkling was when Lord Alexander, tall and striking, stood by the pavilion and pointed towards Ludgate Hill, then they turned and saw the horsemen who were trying to force their way through the crowd.

  ‘Let them through!’ some of the people shouted.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Venables roared from the trapdoor. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Sit down, my lord,’ the Sheriff said to Lord Alexander, who ignored him.

  ‘Rider!’ he shouted across the crowd, his voice drowned by their commotion.

  Jemmy Botting cursed because he had pulled the rope and the tallow-greased beam had juddered, but not moved. ‘God damn you to bloody hell!’ he cursed the beam, then took hold of the rope a second time and gave it a monstrous tug and this time the beam moved so swiftly that Botting was thrown backwards as the sky opened above him. The trap fell with a thump and the two bodies fell into the scaffold’s pit. Venables was dancing and throttling, while Corday’s legs were thrashing against the chair.

  ‘Sheriff! Sheriff!’ Sandman was nearing the scaffold. ‘Sheriff!’

  ‘Is it a reprieve?’ Lord Alexander roared. ‘Is it a reprieve?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Kit! Help me!’ Lord Alexander limped on his club foot to where Corday hung, twitched and gagged. ‘Help me haul him up!’

  ‘Let go of him!’ the Sheriff bellowed, as Lord Alexander reached for the rope.

  ‘Let go, my lord!’ the Reverend Cotton demanded. ‘This is not seemly!’

  ‘Get off me, you damned bloody fool!’ Lord Alexander snarled as he pushed Cotton away. He then seized the rope and tried to haul Corday back up to the platform, but he did not possess nearly enough strength. The white cotton bag over Corday’s mouth shivered.

  Sandman thrust aside the last few folk and rammed his horse against the barrier. He fumbled in his pockets for the reprieve, thought for a dreadful instant that it was lost, then found the paper and held it up towards the scaffold, but the Sheriff would not come to receive it. ‘It’s a reprieve!’ Sandman shouted.

  ‘Kit, help me!’ Lord Alexander tugged feebly at Corday’s rope and could not raise the dying man by even an inch, and so he turned to Lord Christopher. ‘Kit! Help me!’ Lord Christopher, eyes huge behind his thick spectacles, held both hands to his mouth. He did not move.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ Jemmy Botting shouted at Lord Alexander from beneath the scaffold and then, to make sure he was not cheated of a death, he scrambled over the supporting beams to haul downwards on Corday’s legs. ‘You’ll not have him!’ he screamed up at Lord Alexander. ‘You’ll not have him! He’s mine! He’s mine!’

  ‘Take it!’ Sandman shouted at the Sheriff, who still refused to lean down and accept the reprieve, but just then a black-dressed man pushed his way to Sandman’s side.

  ‘Give it to me,’ the newcomer said. He did not wait for Sandman to obey, but instead snatched the paper, hoisted himself onto the railing that protected the scaffold and then, with one prodigious leap, jumped to catch hold of the scaffold’s edge. For an instant his black boots scrabbled on the baize for a lodgement, then he managed to grip the exposed edge left by the fallen trapdoor and heaved himself onto the platform. It was Sally’s brother, dressed all in black and with a black ribbon tying his black hair, and the regulars in the crowd cheered for they recognised and admired him. He was Jack Hood, Robin Hood – the man that every magistrate and constable in London wanted to see caper on Jem Botting’s stage, and Jack Hood mocked their ambition by flaunting himself at every Newgate hanging. Now, on the scaffold at last, he thrust Corday’s reprieve towards the Sheriff. ‘Take it, God damn you!’ Hood snarled, and the Sheriff, astonished by the young man’s confidence, at last took the paper.

  Hood strode to Lord Alexander’s side and took hold of the rope, but Jemmy Botting, fearing that his victim would be snatched at the last minute, had scrambled onto Corday’s lap so that his weight was added to the choking noose. ‘He’s mine!’ he shouted up at Lord Alexander and Hood. ‘He’s mine!’ Corday’s wheezing breath was drowned in the morning’s din. Hood heaved, but could not raise the combined weight of Corday and Botting. ‘He’s mine! Mine!’ Botting screamed.

  ‘You!’ Sandman snapped at one of the City Marshal’s javelin men. ‘Give me your hanger! Now!’

  The man, bemused, but cowed by Sandman’s snap of command, nervously drew the short curved sword that was more decorative than useful. Sandman snatched the blade from him, then was assaulted by another of the scaffold guards who thought Sandman planned an assault on the Sheriff. ‘Bugger off!’ Sandman snarled at the man, then Berrigan thumped his fist on the crown of the man’s head.

  ‘Wait!’ the Sheriff shouted. ‘There must be order. There must be order!’ The crowd was shrieking, its noise filling the street like a great roar. ‘Marshal!’ the Sheriff called. ‘Marshal!’

  ‘Give up the sword!’ the Marshal bellowed at Sandman.

  ‘Hood!’ Sandman shouted as he stood in the stirrups. ‘Hood!’ Hands reached up to haul him out of the saddle, but Sandman had the highwayman’s attention now and he tossed him the hanger. ‘Cut him down, Hood! Cut him down!’

  Hood deftly caught the blade. The constables who had escorted Sandman and Berrigan from Whitehall now pushed away the Marshal’s men. Lord Christopher Carne, eyes still wide and mouth agape, was staring in horror at Rider Sandman, who at last noticed his lordship. ‘Constable,’ Sandman spoke to the horseman nearest him, ‘that’s the man you arrest. That man there.’ Sandman pointed and Lord Christopher turned as if to escape, but the stairs from the pavilion led only down to the prison itself.

  Jemmy Botting had his arms about Corday’s neck, embracing him like a lover as he heaved his weight up and down on the hanging man’s lap. ‘Mine,’ he crooned, ‘mine,’ and he heard the scraping in the boy’s throat, then Jack Hood was sawing the hanger blade at the rope. ‘No!’ Botting screamed. ‘No!’ But the rope, though it was supposed to be the best Bridport hemp, cut like rush string and suddenly Corday and Botting, still locked in their embrace, were falling and the legs of the chair splintered on the cobbles as the rope’s cut end flicked empty in the London wind.

  ‘We must cut him down,’ the Sheriff said, having at last read the reprieve.

  The crowd, fickle as ever, now cheered because the victim they had despised had cheated the hangman. He would live, he would go free, he would paint.

  Sandman slid from his horse and gave the reins to a constable. Other constables had used the ladder that waited for any member of the crowd who wanted to be touched by a hanged man’s hand and those men now took hold of Lord Christopher Carne. Sandman saw his lordship weeping and felt no pity. Worse, he could hear Venables’s choking noises and see the dying man’s rope quivering above the black-draped platform. He turned away, trying and failing to discover some consolation that even one soul had been stolen from the gallows. ‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ he said.

  ‘It’s over then,’ Berrigan said, dismounting.

  ‘It’s over,’ Sandman sa
id.

  ‘Rider!’ Lord Alexander shouted from the scaffold. ‘Rider!’

  Sandman turned back.

  Lord Alexander limped about the hole made by the fallen trapdoor. ‘Rider! Would you play a single-wicket match? This Saturday?’

  Sandman stared in momentary astonishment at his friend, then looked at Hood. ‘Thank you,’ he shouted, but the words were lost in the crowd’s howling. Sandman bowed. ‘Thank you,’ he called again.

  Hood returned the bow, but then held up a single finger. ‘Just one, Captain,’ he called, ‘just one, and they’ll hang a thousand before you snatch another back.’

  ‘It’s against Budd!’ Lord Alexander shouted. ‘Rider, can you hear me? Rider! Where are you going?’

  Sandman had turned away again and now had his arm round Berrigan’s shoulder. ‘If you want breakfast at the ’sheaf,’ he told the Sergeant, ‘then you’d best hurry before the crowd fills the taproom. And thank Sally for me, will you? We would have failed without her.’

  ‘We would, too,’ Berrigan said. ‘And you? Where are you going?’

  Sandman limped away from the gallows, ignored by the crowd who demanded that Corday, their new hero, be brought to the scaffold’s platform. ‘Me, Sam?’ Sandman answered. ‘I’m going to see a man about a loan so that you and I can go to Spain and buy some cigars.’