by Hope Tarr
“I need to measure her,” he said, a bald-faced lie for by now he was as familiar with the terrain of her body as he was with his own flesh.
Wallis stepped back for him to enter. “Five minutes.”
“Surely you can do better than that?” Jack reached into the pocket of his coat for the whiskey he’d brought.
An eye on the flask, Wallis licked his lips. “A’right, ten then.”
He grabbed for the flask, but Jack held it just beyond his reach. “Twenty and I’ll throw in a guinea for your trouble.”
Wallis nodded. “Done.”
Jack handed him the flask but held back the coin. “After I’ve seen her.”
He followed Wallis’s shuffling footsteps down the narrow corridor leading to the prisoners’ ward, passing empty cell upon empty cell until they came to the one where the condemned was brought on execution eve. Through the Judas window in the curved cell door Jack saw her. She sat perched on the edge of the crude bench, dark head bowed, her normally straight shoulders fallen forward. The key grating in the lock had her snapping her head up, dark tangles falling back to reveal the pale oval of her face.
“Jack!” She shot from the bench, a welcoming smile pulling at the corners of her lips.
Feeling his heart twist, Jack shoved past Wallis to step inside. “Claudia,” he said, for what more could he say?
The cell was little more than a hole, measuring four feet by six, scarcely enough room to hold the straw pallet, wooden table and chair, and the bench Claudia had just vacated. Two long strides brought her into his arms.
“You came. I prayed that you would but…” Her voice broke off and she buried her face in his chest.
The cell door scraped closed. Ignoring the snicker at his back, he said, “Of course I came.”
Gently he disengaged her from his arms and went to set his burdens on the rough-hewn table. Turning back to her, he laid a hand on each shoulder, holding her at arms’ length while he took silent inventory. Crescents shadowed the undersides of her eyes but there were no bruises, at least none he could see.
“How do ye fare, lass?” Inane question—how well could a woman contemplating her imminent death possibly be? “Wallis, he hasna hurt ye?” he asked even as he wondered what he could do about it if he had.
“No one has harmed me,” she said, and he let out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Her gaze strayed to the shadowed corner where a slop bucket set, flies buzzing about the mouth. Even in the frail light trickling in through the crescent of barred window, he could see the pink staining her cheeks. “I was ill earlier, but I am well now. Now that you are here.”
He brushed back her hair and pressed a kiss upon her damp forehead. Her face still bore a few smudges from the fire, and he made a mental note to see she was given washing water before tomorrow.
She dropped her gaze to his chest. “It is vain of me, I know, but I hope I will not be sick tomorrow. I would like to die well—” she paused to smile, “—perhaps even with style—as my mother did. Will you help me to do that, chéri?”
When answering proved to be too painful, facing her all but impossible, he busied himself with setting out the contents of the hamper: bannocks and cured salmon, a soft cheese rolled in oats, called crowdie, and Milread’s own buttery shortbread.
“You should eat something. Ye’ll need your strength for the morrow.”
That drew a small chuckle. She joined him at the table. “Does it take so much fortitude, then, to swing from the rope?”
Jack’s throat felt as thick as though he were the one strangling. It was a minor miracle but somehow, from somewhere, he found both the voice and the courage to turn to her and explain, “When I pull the lever, the trapdoor beneath your feet will open and you’ll drop into the pit beneath the scaffold. Ye willna swing.” No if I can help it.
Chewing her bottom lip, she mulled over that information a while, then said, “So only those who take my…my body from the pit will see me after—”
“Aye, it is so.”
She took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled. “In Paris it was not uncommon for those at the front of the crowd to rush the scaffold for some memento from the dead. It is said that a countess had her little finger cut off and taken for a trophy.” She shuddered and so did he.
He took firm hold of her shoulders. “On my honor I promise ye no one will lay a hand on ye, lass, save myself and…and Luicas.”
“Merci. Thank you. And tell Luicas that…that he is not to blame himself. All this, it is not his fault.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Now ease your mind and sit down to your supper.” Surveying the bounty, she still smiled but made no move to take the single chair.
“It is the custom, is it not, to prepare the condemned all his favorite foods for a last meal? But even if I cared to eat, I do not think escargot and saumon au poivre are to be found in the pantry of a Scottish prison.” She let out a brittle laugh.
“Will you at least take some wine, then?”
Her dim eyes brightened. “There is wine?”
“Aye, there is,” he said, already pouring a measure from the uncorked bottle into a porcelain cup. “It’s no French but then it’s no punked, either. Milread showed me where Alistair keeps his private stock.”
She accepted the cup and took a sip. Wine in hand, she drifted over to the small window. Light dribbled in through the heavy metal bars. Lifting her face to it, she said, “You have been good to me, chéri. Not just this but…but these months past. I think now that I had never before known such happiness.”
Coming up behind her, he laid the blanket he’d brought over her shoulders. “You canna begin to ken what it does to me to see you like this, mo chride.” He took her cup and set it down on the bench, and then took her in his arms. “And to know that ’tis I who brought you to it. If I hadna borne you away from your faither’s, if only I’d—”
“Hush, no regrets,” she whispered, laying two cold fingers across his lips. “I would have found some other way to escape. Non, chéri, if my life must end, I am glad that it will end with you at my side.”
“You could plead your belly, say ye were wi’ child. The law forbids executing a woman who’s breeding.”
She shook her head. “And in a month or two, when the lie is discovered, what then?” Looking about, she shrugged. “Life in such a place as this…Can death be worse?” She shivered and pulled the ends of the plaid closer. “After a second night in this cell, I am almost looking forward to the morrow.”
He wrapped the plaid about her shuddering shoulders. “’Tis nerves as much as the chill that makes you tremble so.” He’d meant only to offer comfort and his body’s warmth, but already his flesh was preparing itself to provide a great deal more. “Let me warm you, mo chride.” He pulled a hard swallow. “Let us be together this one last time.”
She shook her head. “I am filthy.”
She tried to step back but he held her against him. “Nay, ye’re perfect. The loveliest lassie that ever was.”
Beneath the blanket, small cold hands slid over his chest. “How is it that one can feel so alive and still be but one night from death?”
“We’re all dyin’ starting from the day we’re born,” he told her and, taking her hand, guided her over to the table. Pushing the food to the far end, he cleared a spot and then, bracing his hands about her waist, lifted her up.
“I willna take ye on the filthy straw,” he whispered and, back to the door to shield them, he pulled the blanket about them both.
Within its shelter she shoved up her skirts and parted her legs to take him. He stepped inside, slid a hand inside her splayed thighs, found her with his fingers. She was warm and moist and throbbing with desire—with life. Desire for him, the very man who tomorrow would be her executioner.
Despair lent their lovemaking a desperate ardor. Claudia’s small deft hands, cold no more, worked the buttons fronting his trews. She took him in her hand and guided him to her. He slid a bu
ffering hand beneath her buttocks and thrust hard and deep.
“I love you, Claudia. I’ll love you forever.”
Hands anchored to his shoulders, she dug her fingernails into his flesh, marking him as tomorrow he would mark her. “Then do not leave me. Stay inside me.” She threw back her head, ground her pelvis against his. “I want to feel you come inside me. Please, Jack. There can be no fear of conceiving a child I will not live to bear.”
He reared back, then plunged into her again. “I willna leave ye, lass. God help me, I canna leave ye even if it were otherwise.”
He would have liked to hold back, to prolong their joining until they reached the threshold together, but there wasn’t time. Every passing second brought their inevitable parting that much nearer.
Claudia must know it too. She fixed violet eyes on his face and worked her inner muscles about him, squeezing and releasing until he could hold back no more.
He withdrew one last time and then drove into her. His seed spurted deep inside her, warm and heavy. Pleasure, release, crashed over him, leaving him gasping.
Even after the last ripple had ebbed, he stayed inside her. Laying his damp forehead against hers, he said, “You didna come. I want to make you come.”
She shook her head. “There is not time.”
He reached down to withdraw but kept his hand there, just there. “There’s time. I’ll make time.”
Her skirts were bunched about her waist at the front. Beneath the blanket he played his fingertips along the thick trickle of milky fluid, laving the slick, sticky folds of her woman’s flesh until they were slicker and stickier still. When she was ready, he sunk hard fingers inside her, first one then two then three. Again and again he plunged and withdrew, probed and kneaded, until he felt her inner muscles clench and unclench like a fist and she moaned that she couldn’t bear it, that he must stop, even as she clawed at his hands and lifted her hips to drive him deeper still.
And just as her release was upon her, just as the muscles of her thighs were stretched taut and quivering, he bent and covered her with his mouth. He felt her climax thrum his lips and tongue, drank in the tangy nectar of sweat and satisfaction, then rose and kissed her full on the mouth so that she could taste it, too.
He held her shuddering body tight against his as though he might really keep her safe for all time instead of for these few stolen moments.
She lifted her face to his. “Oh, Jack,” she said, then kissed his jaw. Taking his face between her hands, she smoothed her palms down the damp bristled flesh that he’d meant to shave for her. In the midst of the caress, her features froze and her body stiffened.
“Mon Dieu!” She pulled out of his embrace, yanking down the front of her gown with clumsy, shaking hands.
Jack whipped his head about to see two red-rimmed eyes and a thick bridge of nose framed in the cell’s portal. Wallis sniggered. “I thought yer kind liked to wait ’til after they was dead.”
Rage—raw, explosive and lethal—ripped through Jack and for the second time in as many weeks he kent what it was to want to kill someone for the pure, primitive pleasure he would take in the act.
For Claudia’s sake he forced down the anger. Ignoring Wallis, he whispered, “Dinna fash, mo chride. I’d my back to the door and the blanket about us the whole time. He couldna see so much as he’d have you believe.” She nodded and he helped her to arrange herself, then refastened his breeches. Ignoring the leering at his back, he pressed a chaste kiss onto her forehead. “I must leave you.”
She touched his cheek. “Oui, I know you must.” The eyes that so many times he’d seen bright with teasing regarded him now, solemn and resigned.
It was the hardest thing he’d ever done, harder even than not killing Tam, but he took his hands from her, turned away and walked to the cell door that even now was groaning open. On the threshold he turned back.
She shook her head and touched a shaky hand to her mouth to blow him a kiss. “Go, chéri. And do not weep for me. It is not adieu until the morrow. For this night, we will say only au revoir.”
It wasn’t until Jack stood outside the prison gates that he registered the wetness on his cheeks and realized he had been weeping all along.
It was a fine day for a hanging, the skies clear of either snow or rain. Looking out onto the sad-faced villagers who’d turned out to watch, Jack sighted Alistair at the back, his ale cart set up to take advantage of the drawn crowd though precious few of the onlookers held tankards. Most, like Dorcas and Milread and Peadair and Pol, held handkerchiefs and rosary beads instead.
Da dum, da dum.
In reality there was no one at the drums this day as there had been all those many years ago when as a boy Jack had stood watching the man falsely accused of his mother’s murder swing from the gallows. But the drumming resonated through him all the same, each regular, rhythmic beat building toward crescendo inside his skull. Too late he realized that it wasn’t to exact justice but vengeance that he’d become a hangman, that every neck about which he’d cinched the noose had stood as a surrogate for Mam’s murderer. Only the culprit had been under his verra nose all along, even had lived under the same roof, which made Jack’s life, at least until Claudia’s coming, one great, laughable lie.
Da dum, da dum.
Jack pressed a shaking hand to the small of Claudia’s back and guided her into position beneath the beam. Avoiding her gaze, he dropped down on one quivering knee to the trapdoor beneath her feet, aligning the tops of her small toes to the chalk mark he’d trusted no one but himself to draw.
Perfect, everything must be perfect.
She’d filled out since that first time he’d clapped eyes upon her all those many weeks ago, but she was still light as a feather, more bone than flesh. For her to drop hard and fast as required meant he must affix weights to her feet. He did so now, cinching the leather strap about her ankles and then securing the small sandbags to it. He’d weighed them a good ten times the night before and then another ten this morning.
Perfect, everything must be perfect.
Rising on jellied legs, he tested the knots once, twice and then thrice.
She fretted her bottom lip, looked about the scaffold, and then out into the crowd. “Luicas, he is not here to bid me bon voyage?”
“Be still, mo chride,” was all he said for he didna dare say more.
Her mouth trembled but the violet eyes meeting his were dry. “I am glad it is you. If it must be someone, then I am glad it is you.”
He hadn’t been able to bring himself to have them cut off her hair. Instead he’d ordered the ebony strands to be braided and pinned beneath the stiff white cap. Early that morning he’d sent Milread to help her with it, not trusting himself to see her again in private and still find the strength to do what he must.
Hands shaking, he reached up to place the noose about her neck. “Bend your head for me,” he said as he’d said on countless occasions before, only now his heart pounded and his palms sweated, for this was Claudia. The sight of the rope coiled about her slender throat froze the marrow in his bones. Cinching the knot, he leaned in and whispered, “Have courage, lass, and all will be well,” but in truth it was his courage, his faith, that was on the verge of failing.
“So much rope, Jack?” A smile flickered across her drawn face, and she reached up with her hobbled hands to touch the slender column of her throat. “And I have but a little neck.”
“For pity’s sake, Claudia, dinna make it any harder than it is.”
She nodded. “Pauvre Jack, it is hard to part, is it not? Fewer than three months…it seems such a little while to be happy but we were, were we not?”
He swallowed hard, his throat as thick and parched as if it were he who stood wearing a collar of hemp. “Aye, I’ve never been so happy.” Nor will I be so again.
“The end will come quickly, will it not?” For the first time since she’d mounted the scaffold, a quiver of fear found its way into her voice.
Praying it
was the truth he spoke, he said, “I’m verra precise. You’ll no feel a thing.” His gaze fixed on hers, his palms at the top of her shoulders. “But mind you stand exactly as I’ve placed you, toes to the line, and whatever happens dinna move so much as a muscle. And for Christ’s sake, dinna fight the rope.”
From the crowd Callum lifted his ale tankard and called out, “Get on wi’ it or give o’er tae those o’ us who can.” A trickle of applause echoed the sentiment—Callum’s cronies, Jack supposed.
Fingers shaking, he laid the white handkerchief over Claudia’s face. “When you are ready, call out to me.”
He backed away to take position by the pulley. Blood pummeled his temples in a roaring rush, and he could swear he heard his heart drumming inside his ears. Laying his gloved hand on the lever, he waited for her signal and prayed to God he wouldna pass out before she gave it.
Da dum, da dum.
It seemed an eternity but, over the Latin of Father Angus’s prayers, at last she called out, “Je suis prête. Jack, I am ready.”
Please, God, please, God, please, God…
Taking a deep breath, Jack threw the bolt home.
And sent the woman he loved hurtling into the black hole below.
So this was death. The afterlife was black as pitch—she’d expected that—but it also smelled musty. And felt prickly. Far too incommodious to be Heaven but then too cool for Hell. Purgatory, then, that murky middle ground where lost souls like hers were sent to wander pending Judgment Day. Only there was no room to wander, or even to move more than an inch or two. Indeed, the very “sky” seemed to scrape the crown of her head.
A cracked whisper tickled the edges of her ear. “Mistress Valemont. Claudia. Psst, are ye a’right?”