“I think it may be Edmund,” said Rebeccah faintly. “How long has he been waiting?”
“A quarter hour,” said Mrs Dutton. “So you had better see him without further delay, my dear.”
“You know I cannot accept him.”
“I know nothing of the kind.” With a shooing motion, Mrs Dutton urged her daughter towards the parlour. Rebeccah refused to budge, but her mother’s hand in the small of her back propelled her forward.
“But I don’t love him,” she hissed. “And did I not tell you he wants a brood mare rather than a wife?”
“Bless me, are we back to that old song? A woman must learn to count herself lucky if her marriage brings her security and good company.” Rebeccah’s mother glanced at her, saw the stubborn set of her jaw, and sighed. “But I collect that you will do as you think fit, as always. Keep in mind, though, I beg you, that at three-and-twenty you are not getting any younger, Beccah, and another marriage proposal may not come your way.”
That thought didn’t depress her as it once might have. Of more concern was her mother’s obvious worry at her gloomy prospects. “Mr Stanhope has promised to look for someone suitable amongst his acquaintance, Mama,” she offered by way of a sop. Then she felt duty bound to add, “Though he does not hold out much hope of success.”
“Mr Dunlop is still waiting,” reminded Anne.
With a tart “Thank you, I am well aware of that,” Rebeccah took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and reached for the handle to the parlour door.
“Mr Dunlop. What a pleasant surprise,” lied Rebeccah, as the young man with the fleshy jowls put down his sherry glass and rose from the sofa.
“I hope it is.” His smile was jovial. “I sincerely hope it is.” She blinked at him in puzzlement. “Pleasant, I mean.”
“Ah.” She found it difficult not to stare at his waistcoat, which was strained so tightly across his ample stomach she expected at any moment to hear the ping of buttons. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting. But I see that you have had some refreshment. Please.” She took an easy chair opposite the sofa and gestured for him to resume his seat. “How may I help you, Mr Dunlop?”
Her heart was thumping so hard she felt dizzy. Her Chatham suitor didn’t look any more comfortable. Sweat beaded his temples and he eased a forefinger round the inside of his cravat. For a moment he was silent, then he cleared his throat and began.
“I won’t beat about the bush, Rebeccah. I may call you that, may I not?” He gave her no time to demur. “I much enjoyed our talks in Chatham, and I fancy you felt the same.” Rebeccah suppressed a snort. “Which leads me to believe, that you and I would rub along together tolerably well.” Dunlop’s smile broadened. “So I have come to ask for your hand in marriage.” When the expected response didn’t come, his smile dimmed, then vanished.
Rebeccah looked down at her lap, examining a suddenly fascinating fingernail while she considered how best to answer him. Should she tell him he had totally mistaken her feelings, that he was in fact the most boring man alive? But she had too much consideration. The silence stretched.
“Well?” Dunlop sounded indignant. She looked up and saw that his expression matched his tone; he had gone quite redfaced - it didn’t suit him. “May I not have your answer?”
“Mr Dunlop, I hope you will believe me when I tell you I am aware of the very great honour you have done me in asking for my hand.”
“Harrumph!” But her compliment seemed to lessen his irritation a little. “And?”
“But I must regretfully decline.”
“What the devil?” If intemperate language in front of a lady weren’t sufficient evidence of his inner turmoil, his getting up and pacing was. “I was invited in, given to understand by your mother …” He stopped pacing and stared at her. “Was I got here under false pretences? It won’t wash, Madam. It won’t wash.”
‘Got here?’ Rebeccah suppressed an indignant retort and instead crossed her fingers. She could be excused a lie if she was trying to spare his feelings, couldn’t she? “The truth is, Mr Dunlop, my mother was not in possession of all the facts.”
His gaze sharpened. “And what facts are those, pray?”
“That my feelings are already engaged elsewhere.”
“Was this the case when we met at Chatham?”
“No, Sir. Indeed we came to our agreement only this morning, while I was walking in the Park.” She hoped her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. “It is unfortunate we had no notion of your intention to come today, Mr Dunlop. For if we had we should certainly have dissuaded you.”
“Good God!” He tugged his waistcoat straight, and a button pinged into the fireplace. Rebeccah bit the inside of her cheek to keep from bursting into hysterics. “Do you mean to tell me, that I have travelled all this way, risking hours of discomfort, highwaymen and Lord knows what else, and this is to be my answer?”
“I fear so. I can only apologise once more for the gross inconvenience you have suffered.”
“Well, ‘tis of no matter.” He sniffed. “There are plenty of other sensible young women,” he eyed her meaningfully, “who will be only too eager to become Mistress Dunlop.”
“I’m certain of it.” She stood up to ring the bell for a footman, but Dunlop pre-empted her by crossing towards the door, evidently eager to put as much distance between himself and this ungrateful family as he could. It opened, revealing a flustered-looking Anne and Mrs Dutton, who both pretended to have been passing by the parlour at that very moment.
“Oh, are you about to leave us, Mr Dunlop?” Mrs Dutton feigned surprise. She didn’t ask him how his interview had gone - if she hadn’t already heard everything through the door, one look at his face must have told her.
“Indeed I am, Madam. Good day to you.”
He accepted his tricorne, gloves, and cane, which the senior footman had hurriedly retrieved, and strode out the house towards his waiting carriage.
“Well I never!” exclaimed Anne, as the front door blocked their departing visitor from sight. “He looked as though he’d like to horsewhip the lot of us.” She turned to her sister. “I take it there is to be no double wedding?”
“No.” Rebeccah sighed. “Just as well. For a man as blind as he is to a woman’s true feelings could not make anyone a good husband.”
“Mistress Rebeccah?” called Mary, hurrying up the stairs after her.
Rebeccah paused while her mother and sister went on ahead to the drawing room on the first floor. “What is it?”
The maid checked to see they weren’t overheard before lowering her voice, “While you were out walking, a parcel came.”
Rebeccah blinked. “A parcel?”
“Yes, Madam. Containing Will’s coat and wig.” She held Rebeccah’s gaze.
The implications made her pulse quicken. “Oh! Was she here?” Both women knew who she meant.
“A boy delivered it, Madam. Said he’d been paid to. … I took a quick look round the Square, to see if there were any … loiterers. None that I could see.” Rebeccah’s disappointment must have shown in her face. “Just as well,” consoled her maid at once. “With the thieftaker due to make his report to your sister this afternoon ….” She trailed off.
It would be too dangerous. “Indeed….. Was there a note? In the parcel, I mean?”
“No, Madam.”
She bit her lip in frustration. “What? Nothing? No mention of how her wound is?”
Mary smiled and pressed Rebeccah’s hand. “Don’t fret about that, Madam. I know my wounds, and that one was healing well. She’ll be right as rain in no time. You mark my words.”
She sighed and felt an overwhelming longing to see the highwaywoman again, if only for a moment. “I hope so, Mary.”
“Beccah, where are you?” came Anne’s voice from upstairs.
“Oh pish! I must go.” She paused and turned back. “You will let me know if you should hear any more from her?” she whispered.
Mary nodded. “Of course, Madam.
At once.”
***
It was 1 o’clock when Kate set off for Tyburn. If she was honest, it was a relief to be able to leave her rooms at last. All morning Alice had indicated her disapproval of Kate’s intentions with her constant black looks, silences, and flounces. And all morning the church bells of London had rung, muffled as befit the occasion, announcing that a ‘collar day’ was in the offing.
As she made her way north through the bustling rookeries of St Giles, then turned west towards the Oxford road, she wondered how John Stephenson was faring. Would he choose to wear his Sunday Best as many of those condemned to die did?
Kate had known her fellow highwayman since she was seventeen. After her escape from Newgate, she had let Fortune’s tide sweep her where it would, before ending up at a shabby coaching inn on the outskirts of London. There, to her surprise she found herself very much at home. The footpads and highwaymen who frequented the Old Magpie had been wary of her at first, but soon became friends. Among them was Stephenson, who knew a fast horse she could hire cheap, and who first coined the name ‘Blue-Eyed Nick’.
Stephenson had taught Kate everything he knew about the rattling lay: how to assess a likely cully by his clothes and the weight of his luggage (the Old Magpie’s yard was always abustle with coaches and passengers); which routes certain drivers preferred; and the perfect ambush sites. He had even asked her to go into partnership with him. But after Wildey, she found it difficult to trust anyone, and so declined.
And now, she would have to watch her friend die.
That she could do nothing to help Stephenson escape his fate on the Triple Tree was galling. She hadn’t even dared visit him in Newgate for fear of discovery - Samuel Josselin was sure to have set someone to scrutinise all the condemned highwayman’s visitors. Stephenson wouldn’t hold her absence against her, Kate knew, but still… It had made her even more determined to offer him moral support as he went to meet his Maker, which infuriated the red-haired landlady.
“How can you? He’ll be waiting for you there.”
“Ay. But if I wear skirts, Alice, the chances are good Josselin won’t recognise me.”
“You cannot be sure of that.”
“Nothing in life is certain. But Stephenson is my friend, and I owe it to him to witness his end. You will not dissuade me, Alice, and there’s an end to it.”
Kate hitched up her skirts and stepped over a pile of horse dung. The man crowding her heels let out a curse and halted to scrape the mess off his shoes.
Ten minutes brisk walking brought her to the Oxford road and she turned west onto it and started forcing her way through the people lining the route along which the hanging procession would come. Some were standing on carts or barrels brought specially for the purpose. Some hung out of the windows of the houses on either side of the road. The balconies were mostly full, Kate saw, peering up at them, and some sightseers were even climbing out onto the rooftops in search of a better view. There was a carnival air to the proceedings. The shouts and laughter of families bent on a good day out combined with that of the hawkers crying their pamphlets, rotten fruit, flowers, and gin. Kate grimaced at the racket and increased her pace.
Paper crunched under her shoe and she glanced down and saw it was one of the pamphlets the hawkers were selling. She picked it up, smoothed it, and squinted at the crabbed print, made even more illegible by the smudged impression of someone’s boot heel.
‘A full and true account of the discovery and apprehending of the notorious highwayman, Jack Stephenson, as told to the Ordinary of Newgate,’ she read.
Prison chaplains were known for embroidering prisoners’ last words, sometimes even fabricating their story entirely - the more bloodcurdling the tale, the better it sold. Sure enough, as she scanned the account, she saw that not only had her fellow highwayman apparently committed some of the robberies that should be laid at her door, the thieftaker’s part in his capture had been inflated - after all, it was sheer fortune that had led to Stephenson’s capture at the Rose and Crown. And if Josselin hadn’t been looking for me in the first place …
“Devil take him!”
She crumpled the pamphlet into a ball and hurled it into the gutter. A roar from the crowd a hundred yards back down the road announced the arrival of the hanging procession. I’d better hurry.
“What d’ye lack, what d’ye lack?” sang out a bent old woman selling flowers.
Nothing you’ve got. Kate brushed past her, evaded a red-cheeked pedlar whose coat was lined with laces and coloured ribbons, eased past the stall of a plump ginger-cake seller, then sidestepped a family bent on enjoying the hanging fair. The sullen oldest boy was clutching an armful of rotten vegetables; his squint-eyed father had brought along a dead cat. At least such missiles would be softer than the cobblestones some onlookers had levered up. Fortunately, Stephenson should be safe from the crowd’s fury - there was nothing the mob liked better than a glamorous highwayman.
Up ahead, she spied the fearsome silhouette that was her goal. Some called the massive triangular wooden gallows the Triple Tree and others the three-legged mare. Many of the sightseers gathered around it had arrived early to be sure of their place and had been drinking steadily - the gin hawkers were doing a roaring trade. Scuffles and brawls were inevitable as those the worse for drink jostled for the best places. Kate dodged a flying bottle, stumbled into a barrow, and nearly sent the man standing on it flying, then elbowed her way towards the gallows.
The jeers and catcalls were growing louder as the hanging procession drew closer. Kate found a suitable vantagepoint by a wall, from where she could see the scaffold and the horse-drawn cart waiting beneath it, but be reasonably hidden from view herself. With a growl and a forbidding glare she evicted its current occupant, then settled back to wait.
Though the City Marshal dismounting from his horse and the Under-Sheriff accompanying him were magnificent in their uniforms, Kate had eyes only for the two carts that had halted a few yards behind them. Flanking them on all sides were peace officers, constables, and javelin men, trying to hold back the rabble with their staves
Kate shaded her eyes and peered at the first cart. Four coffins were stacked at one end; at the other stood the Ordinary and four prisoners: a hard-eyed harlot, her face freshly rouged; a weeping boy who could be no more than twelve; a rat-faced little pickpocket who Kate had seen several times at the Rose and Crown; and John Stephenson.
Her fellow highwayman looking dashing in a new tricorne, his boots polished and his coat, waistcoat, and breeches freshly laundered. He smiled and nodded at the crowd, who began to cheer and chant his name. After a moment, his gaze found Kate’s. His eyes flicked to one side, then moved on. She puzzled over that then followed the direction he had indicated. The stocky figure of Samuel Josselin was standing with a group of peace officers, his arms folded, his small eyes alert.
Devil take him! She looked away.
“Let them hang,” chanted the impatient crowd, as the prisoners from both carts were transferred to the wide cart beneath the gallows and urged by the Ordinary to say one last prayer and a psalm. Then the cordon of constables parted, and the relatives were let through, to scramble up and say their farewells. The buxom young woman Stephenson had been bedding for the last two years was among their number. Moll’s face was blotchy from crying, and she hugged her highwayman lover fiercely.
Kate couldn’t bear to watch their embrace or the reunion of the weeping boy with his tearful mother and silent father. She looked away, and when she looked back Moll and the other relatives were being herded back into the crowd.
The hangman began to hood the seven prisoners. While Stephenson waited his turn, he glanced at Kate again. She tried to will strength into him for the ordeal ahead, and mouthed “Fare well, old friend.” He nodded, then his eyes sought the weeping Moll once more, until the white sack covered his head.
As the black-masked hangman checked each prisoner’s halter before tying it round the huge beam above, Kate
could almost feel a rope resting around her own neck. A hawker came with earshot, and she called him over, bought a jug of ale and took a swig to ease her dry throat. The crowd hushed, every breath held in anticipation. Then the hangman whipped the horse, and the wide cart surged forward, and to a collective cheer, seven halters snapped taut.
Kate balled her fists and stared at the dangling figures now writhing like marionettes from the massive beam. The constables stood back and the hangers-on lunged forward, trying to hasten their loved one’s end by clinging onto their legs or banging their chests.
Moll was trying to do the same service for Stephenson, but it clearly wasn’t enough. Kate didn’t even think about it. She fought her way to the front, shoving aside anyone too slow to get out of her way. When she added her weight to Moll’s, the girl looked round in surprise then nodded her thanks. But even with Kate’s help, Stephenson’s limbs continued to jerk.
“Christ’s wounds, he’s strangling! What shall we do?” cried Moll.
Kate thought quickly. “Lift him,” she ordered. “I’ll count to three, then you give one sharp tug. Understand?” The girl nodded.
Kate took a firmer grip on her friend’s legs and heaved him up. “1,” she said through gritted teeth, for Stephenson was not a lightweight. “2…”
On “3.” both women gave a tremendous tug. Kate couldn’t hear the snap of Stephenson’s neck, but she felt it. Then something warm and wet soaked his breeches and his legs stopped jerking.
She closed her eyes and murmured a brief prayer. “God speed, my friend.” When she opened them again, she found Samuel Josselin staring straight at her.
Though fifty feet separated her from the thieftaker, Kate’s heart pounded. Perhaps it’s a coincidence. She dropped her gaze, hunched her shoulders to make herself appear shorter, then peeked at him again. He was still staring at her, but now his forehead was deeply furrowed.
Hellfire and damnation!
Kate grabbed the weeping Moll to get her attention. “I have to go.” But even as she sought the cover of the crowd, Josselin was signalling his men to follow her.
Rebeccah and the Highwayman Page 13