Will Starling

by Ian Weir

  Wrapping herself tightly once more in her mantle of defiance. Seething in shadow, where Will Starling was not going to reach her — nor anyone else.

  A sudden clamour arose, beyond. Women howling, a fight in the common room. Two of them pulling each other’s hair out by the roots, while others urged them on. The excitement was setting off the lunaticks, who screeched in agitation.

  “I will ask you for one kindness,” she said then. “Get word to Jemmy, when it’s done. After they’ve hung me.”

  “You never killed Uncle Cheese,” I protested. “So they’re not going to hang you.”

  But of course they were. That was plain from the outset, and it didn’t matter whether she’d killed him or no. Hanging’s just what they did to the Meg Nancarrows of this world — and I discovered all at once how much that grieved me. I am about to say that I liked her, though I don’t suppose that like is the word I want. There was something about Meg much too dark and too wild for mere liking. But the thought of all that fine ferocity, convulsing itself down to a bundle of rags — I found I couldn’t bear it.

  The afternoon sun had slipped below the wall. The shadows grew deeper and Meg’s face was in gathering darkness behind the bars.

  “The trial’s on Friday,” she said. “That’s what they’re saying. So Monday morning’s when they’ll do it.”

  Sworn Testimony of Linwood Buttons

  Delivered at the Old Bailey Sessions House

  10th May, 1816

  Buttons, Your Honours. Linwood Buttons. Master Buttons, as I was known upon the stage. Am known, I might make so bold as to say, for I still appear from time to time, though not so often nowadays, and not before such men as Your Honours. Men of discernment, I mean by that, and refinement of the sensibilities, for Your Honours would hardly set foot in such pits as I am latterly reduced — what’s that? Yes, of course, Your Honour — begging Your Honours’ pardon — the night in question.

  I seen them come out of the Three Jolly Cocks. A low tavern — Your Honours wouldn’t condescend to spit — near the foot of Ludgate Hill. The two of them, the woman and the deceased. Or leastways, the man Cheshire, I should say, for he was not deceased as yet, but more as you might call pre-deceased, and walking. He come out first, the man Cheshire, and she followed a moment afterwards, as if with something on her mind to say to him. There ensues a terse exchange — I call it such, for such it was, Your Honours — warm words on either side, and voices rising. At the end of it they separated. She goes off in one direction, and he continues in the other. Towards the north and east, sir, being the direction I was going in myself.

  The theatre, Your Honours, since you ask. I was coming from the theatre, where I’d spent the evening. Drury Lane. Not on the stage myself, but in the gallery, looking down on Edmund Kean. The man himself — the lion of the London stage, oh yes — hurling himself about, to the rapture of the unwashed. And many of the washed as well, who should know better, for it’s wrong, Your Honours — it’s all wrong — not acting at all. Philip Kemble — there is acting. Decorum, sirs — the measured pace — the voice an instrument of grandeur. Acting is Noble. Such was the model I myself aspired to, in the salad days of my —

  Quite, Your Honours. To the point.

  The pre-deceased walks on. Yes, of course I recognized him. A pawnbroker. A money-lender. A few streets on he stops to warm himself at a fire, which two men had built at the corner.

  What’s that? Apprentices? No, hardly. Just two ragged men with no other place to go, such as any man might one day become, Your Honours, if Fortune wills it, and he finds himself cast off through no fault of his own, and out of fashion with the world before he’s hardly possessed of whiskers to scrape from his chin. But this is not to the point — quite right — so I don’t mention it. The pre-deceased walks on again, and for a time I lose sight of him. Then I turn into another street, tending towards Fleet Ditch. And suddenly there he is, a little distance ahead of me, standing by the mouth of an alleyway. What’s that? Moonlight, Your Honours — I seen him by moonlight, for the rain had ceased and a shaft of moonlight had broken through. Just standing, but very still, as if he’d heard some sudden noise.

  That’s when she came out of the lane, behind him. Yes, Your Honours, the woman he’d been talking to before, outside the Three Jolly Cocks. The woman right there, in the prisoner’s dock, who can cry out “No!” as loud as she likes, for she knows it’s the truth. I seen her, though she never seen me, which is why I’m alive and standing here today. Like a Fury, Your Honours — that’s how she come out. Like a Fury from an ancient tragedy. So sudden and swift that he never had time to turn, before she was on him. Clinging to his back, with a knife in her hand. I seen it flash in the moonlight — I seen her wrench back his head by the hair. And before I can make a single sound, poor Edward Cheshire isn’t pre-deceased at all, but laying on the cobbles. His throat gaping open like a silent scream and his life’s blood pouring out.

  15

  Master Buttons, on his hind legs on the witness stand, giving the performance of his life. He wore a new suit of clothes for the occasion, a fine frock coat and a fine white neckerchee, his thinning locks fresh combed and his complexion primed bright red by a sojourn in the King of Denmark across the road. Meg cried “You’re a liar!” above the rising voices in the courtroom, but this was very grave. I saw it on the clocks of the jury: twelve good Londoners and true, assembled to hear the testimony and then get on with it, with dinnertime looming. I saw it on the beaks of the three Judges, looking down upon the rabble in the Old Bailey Sessions House. Tom Sheldrake saw it too.

  Sheldrake in his wig, looking like nothing so much as a haggard cauliflower. Cos Tom Sheldrake had been retained as Counsel for the Defence — a great startlement to me, as I arrived to watch the proceedings, and squirmed my way into a space at the front of the gallery. It was packed, as is always the case with a capital trial. There’s surprisingly few of these in London, now that the days of the Bloody Code are done and the Full Majesty of British Justice has left off hanging indigent thieves and ten-year-old pickpockets. I’d arrived just as the Under-Sheriffs were bringing Meg Nancarrow in. She wore a clean frock and a bonnet, and looked round the courtroom with such pale composure that a hush descended. A whispering began, cos here she was, and she was almost beautiful. She stood stone-still as the Prosecutor laid out the evidence: the bloody knife in her room, and a torn and bloodied dress. But she possessed such bleak dignity that the onlookers began to doubt what they were hearing — right up ’til Master Buttons took the stand.

  Tom Sheldrake sank lower in his seat with every syllable the actor uttered, as if he’d disappear at last from view entirely, and end in seeping down between the floorboards. He looked no better than he had when I’d seen him two weeks previous, at Bob Eldritch’s funeral. He looked as if he’d hardly slept — or washed — in all the days and nights since he’d flung himself headlong into the grave. He’d lurched in white with drinking — the Wreck of Tom, in search of a reef to founder upon — and proceeded to bungle so haplessly that I could have leapt down from the gallery to shake him.

  Not that another barrister could have made much difference, I suppose. There’s precious little that Defence Counsel can do at any criminal trial, which partly explains why trials are done so quick — under ten minutes, most of them, though capital trials can stretch out for an hour. But Defence can cross-examine, and this Tom did, rousing himself to fire random volleys of irrelevant questions at the Constables who had searched Meg’s room, and the Ale-Draper — Alf, it was, Alfred Pertwee to give his full and proper name — who had earwigged her threatening Ned Cheshire at the Three Jolly Cocks.

  MR SHELDRAKE: “His ‘weasand’ slit? She warned him of his weasand being slit? Why, sir, should you employ that particular word?”

  ALF: “Becos it was the word she used.”

  MR SHELDRAKE (angling tiger-like): “But was it ‘weasand’? Eh? Or was it another word entirely?”

  ALF: “Anoth
er word like what?”

  MR SHELDRAKE (terrifically): “The witness will answer the question!”

  ALF (baffled): “Weasel?”

  Sheldrake couldn’t call upon Meg herself, since the defendant is never permitted to testify. But Defence can summon character witnesses, and character is always of prime importance in the Eyes of the Law. Evidence is all well and good, but is the accused the sort of person who might commit the crime? So Sheldrake called upon Mr Comrie, who took the stand and glared stiffly across the courtroom, as if challenging the Majesty of British Justice to a prize-fight.

  Aye, he knew the defendant. Had met her on several occasions, the first time when she had come to his rooms to seek his professional help for her husband, and subsequently in the Giltspur Street Compter.

  Her character?

  “The woman sat by him for a week. Never left his side. As if she could keep him alive through pure force of will — and God knows, I half believe she did. D’ye call that character? I do.”

  A murmur in the court. The Prosecuting Attorney rose with silken politeness to cross-examine. A physician, was Mr Comrie? No?

  “A surgeon.”

  A surgeon. Ah. And he knew the accused in his professional capacity?

  “What I said.”

  Though not in hers? For the court was given to understand that the accused was not unfamiliar with the pavement.

  “Know nothing of that. And care less.”

  Quite so. And this man — the stricken husband — lying by death’s door in the Giltspur Street Compter. Because . . . ?

  “Been attacked.”

  Good heavens. Where?

  “A churchyard.”

  Why?

  “Some question of a theft.”

  Of?

  “A cadaver.”

  Gasps from the gallery. Mr Comrie stood his ground. The prosecutor blinked. Could the witness repeat that, please?

  “A dead body.”

  Then the stricken husband was — what was he, exactly? — a grave-robber? And she sat by him for seven days — a soiled dove, with her body-snatching beau — as devoted as a latter-day Penelope.

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  Which way?

  “Sneering.”

  No further questions.

  Then Master Buttons was called to the stand, in the fine new clothes that had come somehow into his possession. He performed. Finishing, he declined his head with perfect grace, like a tragedian in the moment of hush that precedes a storm of applause. He looked to Meg, as if she might herself clap hands and cry “Huzzah!”

  “You have murdered me,” she said.

  The jurors turned in to one another, and after a moment or two they turned grimly out again: guilty. The chief Judge reached for the black cap, for of course the verdict was Death. Sentence to be executed on Monday morning. The body turned over to the anatomists, for dissection. God have Mercy.

  Meg had stood ’til then in desperate composure, her hands white claws upon the rail. But now her face, already so pale, lost its last vestige of living warmth. She uttered a cry like a stricken bird, and crumpled.

  Exclamations. Rising tumult.

  In the gallery behind me, Dionysus Atherton sat still as a statue. He had been there since the trial commenced. More surprising still, it turned out subsequently that he had retained Sheldrake’s services on Meg’s behalf, and paid the bill. Now his face was grim and grey with the finality of it, but I’d swear there were other emotions as well, contending just beneath the surface of his calm. I’d swear there was agitation — and something else, that I could not understand at all: a flicker in those blue, blue eyes that was very close to triumph.

  16

  There had been some grisly business involving a dog the day before I had paid my very first visit to Crutched Friars. This had been the previous September, more than half a year prior to the events I have just been describing, and just a day or two after my own return to London from a journey I had taken to the Midlands in connection with my late mother. It is doleful, the tale of that particular journey, much concerned with breaking hearts and footsore foundlings trudging through unending rain, and I suppose I’ll end in relating it to you some time, when we’re both in the mood for leaky glims and sodden snotters. But first you need to know about the dog.

  A mastiff, weighing fully seventeen stone. It had apparently been kept in the stable behind the house, where Atherton was wont to carry out his experimentations upon poor dumb creatures — cos of course they all did it, the surgeons and anatomists; they were all of them vivisectionists, of necessity. Mapping the frontier of the living organism; extending the boundaries of scientific knowledge, quarter-inch by bloody quarter-inch. Mr Comrie never had much taste for it after his student days at Edinburgh University, although he conceded the need. And any surgeon’s neighbours grew bitterly familiar with the consequence: moggies disappearing into thin air, and Trusty the spaniel snuffling happily out into the morning light, never to return. But Atherton’s mastiff was a deadly serious matter, having escaped and run amok — a creature of such size, maddened by whatever trials it had endured. It terrorized the street, attacking several horses and then leaping up to pull a driver from a carriage. The man must surely have been torn to shreds, had Atherton himself not arrived at the last instant with Odenkirk, who dispatched the beast with a shot from a musket. But even so there had been a lasting fuss, with the driver requiring payment before he would be mollified, and the owners of the injured horses as well, two of which had subsequently to be destroyed.

  There had been something terribly wrong with the dog, beyond the obvious fact that it was mad; this was emphasized in the broadsheet reports that ensued. Several witnesses described a curious crick to its neck, and all of them dwelt at lurid length upon the eyes, which were of such a nature as forever to haunt the dreams — so it was claimed — of anyone who’d glimpsed them. There were subsequent reports that the mastiff was seen alive again, ranging through the London streets in the blackness of night in the company of Dionysus Atherton himself. But of course this was only to be expected. People will invent the most ridiculous tales, and the broadsheets will spread them about, and before you know it half the world is convinced they must be true.

  In any event, the panic involving the mastiff had taken place on a Tuesday afternoon. I had arrived at Crutched Friars on the Wednesday evening, just at dark. In the course of my recent journey to the Midlands, I had discovered Atherton’s name and where he lived. Now I knocked upon his door, refusing to go away until he came out to see me. When at last he showed himself, I told him who I was.

  “You are a liar,” he said.

  But he knew it was the truth, just looking at me. I watched the recognition dawn.

  “Christ,” he said.

  Night had fallen, and inside the house was ablaze with light. I heard laughter and voices behind him; he had guests. He wore a velvet jacket and a silk cravat, and his face was ruddy with wine.

  “What do you want?” he demanded after a moment. The flat hint of Lancashire in his voice — just the barest residue, but it would creep out more distinctly with each bumper of claret. You can never quite hide where you come from, or who you’ve been. “Money — is that what you’re after?”

  “I don’t want money.”

  “What, then?”

  “So we are nothing to each other?” Hearing my own voice very small, and feeling my stomach knot with the realization: I had been a fool to come.

  He produced a billfold, then, and took out a banknote. “Here,” he said, and thrust it at me. Ten pounds.

  “I don’t want your money,” I said again.

  “Take it.”

  “My mother . . .”

  “. . . Is dead these eighteen years. But of course you knew that. Didn’t you?”

  But I had not known, right up ’til that moment. Not for a certainty, although of course I’d suspected. I suppose the shock of it, the dead weight of finality, showed plainly in
my face.

  “Christ,” he said again. “Well, so now you do know.”

  “How did she . . . ?”

  “What could it possibly matter now?”

  Someone called from inside the house — a woman’s voice, laughing and thickened with drink, asking to know what was keeping him.

  “Nothing,” he called over his shoulder. “Nobody.”

  He looked back to me.

  “A fever,” he said. “It was a fever that took her.”

  “Were you with her?”

  “My sister was nothing to me when she died. As you are nothing to me now. Take what I offer you, and don’t come here again.”

  I left him standing with the banknote in his hand, and went back to Cripplegate. We were already living there, Mr Comrie and I.

  “Whaire’ve you been?” he called as I came up the stairs that night.

  “Nowhere,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  I stayed in my attic closet for three whole days, that time, just Wm Starling and his companion the Black Dog. When I emerged I discovered that life was going on, as life does. So I rejoined it.

  *

  Now here I stood outside his house at Crutched Friars once again, on the evening of the day of Meg Nancarrow’s trial. His coach turned into the street just as the bell of St Andrew Undershaft was striking seven. A mild May evening, leaves rustling on the trees and the sun declining into the western horizon. Its last rays haloed Atherton as he stepped down. You might in that moment have fancied him Phoebus, alighting from his chariot.

  I stepped out from beside the house, where I’d been waiting. The sun was behind me now; there was an instant before he made me out. Eyes slitting, hand rising to shield, then the souring of recognition.

  “I saw you at the trial,” I said. “You hired the lawyer.”

  Cos I’d made that discovery, asking about at the courtroom. One of the Clerks had told me.

  Atherton shrugged, making no attempt to deny.

  “Why?” I asked him.