The Unseeing

by Anna Mazzola

  The turnkeys were too busy watching the events themselves to bother chastising them. They did not notice, or affected not to see, as Rook slid over to where Sarah sat with her head bowed over her breakfast plate.

  “Too scared to look and see, Gale? Thinking about when it’ll be your turn? Don’t worry. It won’t come to that. I wouldn’t let that happen to you, would I? No. I’ll get you first.”

  Sarah glanced up at Rook and took in her smirk, her gray-tinged face. It was, it came to her, all a pretense: the claim to know Sarah’s secrets, the claim she would finish her off. And all at once she did not care what this miserable woman might do to her. Nothing could be worse than this: this feeling of guilt and rage and distress that was rushing over her like a tide.

  “Just leave me alone,” Sarah said wearily. “Go on. Go and find someone else to play with.”

  Rook opened her mouth but was prevented from making any reply by Groves, who had pushed through the group of women and seized Sarah’s arm. Without speaking, Groves guided Sarah past the others, down a flight of iron steps to the passageway that ran beneath Newgate. Through the grille of the gate, Sarah could see a light approaching along the dark corridor. It grew closer and closer and then, looming out of the blackness, a figure.

  “James!”

  His face as he turned toward her was stricken with horror. He seemed to stare right at her but not see her. In the candlelight, his skin was waxen and white as though it were already his death mask. His eyes were pinpricks of darkness.

  “I kept my part of the deal, Sarah,” he said. “I did what I said I would. May it keep me from hell.”

  And then he was gone.

  She heard the stamp of the jailers’ feet receding as they led him away. Then the deep and hollow toll of St. Sepulchre’s bell marking the moment that James emerged onto the scaffold. As she slumped down onto her knees, a roar went up from the crowd. The show had begun.

  • • •

  By the time Edmund reached the Old Bailey, the road was almost impenetrable, packed with ballad singers, street performers, and groups of people laughing as though they were attending a bullbaiting or a country fair. He pushed his way through the throng, past a booth selling “Greenacre tarts” and currant wine, and knocked at the door to one of the houses that backed onto Newgate Street. The maid admitted him and he climbed the carpeted stairs to the top floor.

  “Ah, the guest of honor!” a red-cheeked man shouted as Edmund entered the room.

  Faces turned toward Edmund as he advanced into the parlor. Twenty people or more were standing in clusters about the room, chattering, drinking, laughing.

  The red-faced man seized and shook Edmund’s hand with vigor. “Well, well, Edmund. Quite the lawyer now.”

  “Mr. Belcher. It was kind of you to invite me.” The man was a friend of his father. It was several years since Edmund had seen him and he had turned to fat, his chins spilling out from his linen shirt.

  “What a case, eh? My friends and I have been taking bets this morning as to whether the Gale woman will hang before the month’s end. Care to give us a tip?”

  Edmund swallowed. He should not have come here. “I thought bets were normally placed on how long the hanged person will twitch for.”

  “Oh, that too! That too!” The man laughed, gobbets of spit flying from his lips. “Eleanor! Bring this man a drink!”

  Edmund went to stand by the open window. Every other window in his field of vision was packed with people, as were the roofs of all the houses.

  “Quite a spectacle, isn’t it?”

  A tall man with gray whiskers and a long pipe stood to his left, also looking out of the window.

  “Your first time at the New Drop?” the man asked.

  “No, no,” Edmund said, although he had seen it only once before. His father had brought him and Jack here as boys and made them stand by this same window as the prisoners, five men convicted of conspiracy to assassinate the Prime Minister, were led onto the platform. The last man, weeping, had to be dragged. As they watched the executioner measure the men for the noose, his father had explained how the prisoners would have spent the night alone in the condemned cell, how they would have passed along Dead Man’s Passage in the morning, lighted only by a single candle.

  Here comes the candle to light you to bed,

  Here comes the chopper to chop off your head.

  Edmund wondered why his father had told them all this. Did he think it was an important lesson in the law, or had he meant only to frighten them? The corpses had been beheaded and their dripping heads held up to the crowd. Edmund had caught only a glimpse of the horror before covering his eyes with his hands. The image, however, had never left him.

  The gallows, which had already been brought out, was the same boxlike structure Edmund remembered. The black stage, the crossbeam, the rope. This time, however, there were two soldiers with spikes guarding the gallows and black barriers had been erected to keep back the crowds. Evidently they were expecting trouble.

  A great cheer went up. A small figure was climbing up the steps to the scaffold: the executioner.

  “It’s begun!” Mr. Belcher shouted. “Everyone, it’s begun!”

  Two women pushed forward to the window. One raised double-barreled opera glasses to her eyes.

  “Calcraft is fastening the halter onto the chain. It’s truly ghastly!” She passed the glasses to her friend so that she could observe the ghastliness for herself.

  “People from the crowd are being carried off,” the second woman told them. “They must be crushed or overheated or overcome. It is too awful!”

  It is too awful, Edmund thought. He moved farther away from the window and leaned his back against the wall.

  At a quarter before eight, the bell of St. Sepulchre’s church began to toll, low and hollow. Then the crowd gave a deep and sullen shout. Greenacre must have emerged.

  Edmund remained standing against the wall. He wondered how much Sarah could hear of this. He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them. He was not a boy anymore.

  The Ordinary was reciting the Hangman’s Psalm at the foot of the scaffold. His voice was audible even from where Edmund stood.

  Fill me with joy and gladness;

  Let the bones which thou hast broken rejoice.

  Hide thy face from my sins.

  Edmund made himself watch as the executioner stepped forward and covered Greenacre’s face with a white hood. The noise of the crowd had dropped to a murmur that rose again as Calcraft slipped the noose over Greenacre’s head and tightened it beneath his chin. For a moment, all was quiet.

  “Amen!”

  The trapdoor shot open and there was a collective gasp as Greenacre’s hooded body dropped and jerked. For thirty seconds or so he writhed and twisted as though partaking in some strange dance. Gradually, however, the struggling slowed to only an occasional movement, then to a twitching. In the breeze, the body swung gently. The crowd was finally silent. The vengeance of the law had been accomplished.

  25

  “A fiend is here behind, who with his sword

  Hacks us thus cruelly, slivering again

  Each of this ream, when we have compast round

  The dismal way; for first our gashes close

  Ere we repass before him.”

  —The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri, 1307

  Two bright black eyes looked out from the corner of the cell. Sarah dropped pieces from her hunk of bread onto the floor and then watched a small gray mouse scurry across the stone slabs, take the crumbs in its tiny hands and nibble upon them, watching her all the while. Sarah tried to eat some of the bread herself but it stuck to the roof of her mouth, glutinous and tasteless. The surface of her cup of cocoa had congealed into a dark, greasy skin.

  Since the hanging, the warders had mainly left her alone to sew in her cell. H
er face was puffy, her eyes still swollen, even though she had long ago ceased to cry. She felt dry and brittle like an old leaf, blown in the wind. The more she tried to shut out certain thoughts, the more they recurred: ugly visions at the edge of her consciousness, slivers of evil.

  Miss Pike had brought in leather-bound poetry books for her: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and other good works. It was not those she thought of, however, but Dante and his circles of hell: the falsifiers hacked into pieces by a sword-wielding demon, dividing parts of their bodies as in life they divided others.

  Now, when she closed her eyes, she saw not Hannah Brown, but James’s bloodless face, his eyes black coals glinting in the dark as he stared at her through the grating. He would have been hanged anyway, she told herself, but there was always that doubt eating away at her, like a wasp through wood. Could she have done differently?

  At ten o’clock Hinkley arrived to take her to the yard. “Come on, Sarah,” she said. “It’ll do you good to get outside in the fresh air.”

  Sarah remained sitting, not sure she had the strength to get up.

  Hinkley walked over to her, her skirts swishing, and as she put out her arm Sarah thought she meant to pull her to her feet. Instead, she put her hand on Sarah’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. In that moment it felt like the kindest thing anyone had ever done for her.

  “Come now,” Hinkley said. “You can’t stay in here all day.”

  Outside, it was raining. Cold drops fell onto Sarah’s upturned face and ran down her cheeks, mingling with tears that were themselves a mixture of grief, anger, and guilt. He could no longer hurt her. He could no longer hurt George. Why, then, did she feel such distress? Why should she mourn a man who had caused so much damage and pain?

  She could have shut the door in James’s face when he arrived on Christmas Day. Instead, she had invited him in; she had cooked the food he had brought and laid it out on the table, like a good wife. After dinner, as they sat by the fire eating nuts and segments of orange, George opened the present James had brought him. It was a tin spinning top painted with crimson and silver stripes.

  James helped him to spin it until it was just a whirl of colors spiraling into a vortex of deep red.

  In that instant, she had almost allowed herself to believe that it might all be for real. That they might be a happy and normal family together, despite everything that had happened, despite the blood she knew coated James’s hands. Amid all the lies that had been told, it was the lies she had told herself that were the worst.

  • • •

  When Sarah returned to her cell, she was soaked through. Hinkley placed a towel around her shoulders and told her to dry herself. As she did so, she noticed that there was a small parcel on the stool bound in twine. She looked at Hinkley, who nodded, so she took up the package and unwrapped it. Inside were James’s spectacles. She turned them over in her hand.

  “He said he wanted you to have them,” Hinkley said.

  Sarah wondered what this meant. That she should look out for herself? Or that he wanted her to know he was still watching her? Although, for once, a fire had been lit in her room, she shivered.

  • • •

  Edmund visited in the morning. Sarah realized, with a twinge of surprise, that she had missed their meetings. They sat close together at the little table, their knees almost touching through the layers of wool and linen.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “that I have not yet received a response from the Home Secretary. However, I think we should take this as a good sign. If Lord Russell intended to simply reject my recommendation then he would have done so quickly. I suspect that he’s passed the matter to the King’s Council so that His Majesty can approve the pardon.”

  “You really think so?” She felt a flutter of hope in her chest.

  “I do. I understand that the King is in very poor health, so that may well be the cause of the delay. Or it may be that they are confirming that the law is as I stated it—namely that acting under duress, as you did, provides a defense to concealing a murder.”

  “And does it? Is that what the law says?”

  “I believe so, yes. I’m sorry I can’t give you a complete assurance, but this isn’t an area that has been much tested in previous cases.”

  It all sounded so abstract: duress, defenses, and cases. And yet it was her life.

  “But, Sarah, as I said, I think these are good signs and I’m fairly confident you will be pardoned. You must try not to worry.”

  Sarah smiled thinly. Try not to worry whether you will live or die. Try not to worry whether you will be saved or damned. Not for the first time, she wondered how a man who was in some ways so clever, could in other ways be so obtuse.

  • • •

  The following day was a Wednesday. That meant there would be mutton for dinner. Not that this was anything to look forward to. Meat was believed to excite the animal emotions of criminals and the small amount of meat that was served up was therefore made as unappealing as possible. It was usually more gristle and bone than flesh, and the prisoners had to gnaw at it with their teeth, like dogs. Sarah lined up with the other women to collect her food and then sat down at her usual space on the far table, staring at the stringy piece of mutton before her. She knew she had to eat to keep her strength up, but the sight and smell of meat—another dead thing—turned her stomach.

  All at once, there was a shout and a loud clatter over by the kitchens. One of the prisoners had knocked a tray out of another woman’s hands. Within seconds, the turnkeys were at their side, reprimanding them and ordering that the wasted food be cleaned up. Other women stood up to get a better view of what was happening and there was a hum of voices all around. In that instant, Sarah felt a shadow cast over her and she looked up just in time to see the flash of a knife as it approached her face.

  It was not red Sarah saw then, but white—clear white. It was as though all the pent-up rage, despair, and frustration of the past few months were channeled into her and, rising like a tidal wave, she struck out and knocked the knife from Rook’s hand, the force of her fury carrying her over the table and on top of the other woman, hitting her head against the wooden surface and digging her hand into the flesh of her face. She felt as though she were watching the episode from outside herself, from high up, above the people and tables. She heard screaming but was not sure whether it was hers or Rook’s, or someone else’s altogether and, in the moment before the turnkeys pulled her away, she felt utterly and blissfully free.

  26

  “The eye is the window of the soul, the mouth the door. The intellect, the will, are seen in the eye; the emotions, sensibilities, and affections, in the mouth. The animals look for man’s intentions right into his eyes. Even a rat, when you hunt him and bring him to bay, looks you in the eye.”

  —Hiram Powers (1805–1873)

  Edmund woke in a panic, clammy with sweat, certain that someone close by had shouted his name. The room, however, was empty, the bed curtains drawn.

  Bessie was almost silent during breakfast and he could think of little to say. She looked at him reproachfully over the uneaten devilled kidneys.

  “You’re setting a bad example for Clem,” she said in a low voice.

  Was this a reference to his poor appetite, or to more serious failings? He could feel the dull throb of an approaching headache.

  He needed to get out of the house.

  “A consultation on a new case,” Edmund told her, standing up, although, despite his best efforts, he had received no decent new instructions for weeks. He certainly could not admit he was going to the prison now that there was no real reason for him to do so.

  “I hope you’re being paid well for it,” Bessie said, without looking at him.

  When he did not reply, Bessie raised her eyes. “The butcher has asked us to settle our account. We haven’t paid him for a month, Edmund.”


  “You mustn’t worry yourself about it, Bessie. This is for me to resolve.”

  Edmund had been counting on receiving his payment from the Home Secretary as soon as his report was completed. Spinks, however, had refused to pay him so much as a shilling.

  “You will get your money when His Majesty makes his decision,” he had said, smiling like a cat. “Assuming, of course, that your report meets with his approval.”

  Bessie folded her napkin. “I don’t see why you can’t just ask your father.”

  Edmund tensed. “Perhaps you should ask him yourself,” he said quietly. “Tell him that his son hasn’t lived up to expectations.”

  “That’s hardly fair, Edmund. I only meant—”

  “I asked my father for help before. Remember that? And his idea of help was to allocate me this case.”

  Bessie looked down.

  “Yes. So please, let me deal with this alone. I will find a way.”

  • • •

  Edmund had been waiting in the lodge for a quarter hour when Miss Sowerton approached him. The expression on her face was unreadable.

  “I’m afraid you won’t be able to see your Miss Gale today. She’s in the infirmary.”

  “The infirmary?”

  “Yes, she’s been fighting.”

  Edmund frowned. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Yes, not such a lady after all, it seems,” the warder said coolly. “And she certainly doesn’t look like one now.”

  Edmund stood up, alarmed. “Is she badly injured?”

  “Oh, don’t concern yourself, sir,” Miss Sowerton said. “A few scratches is all. The other woman is in a much worse state than she. Of course, Gale says it was all in self-defense. But then you know about her defenses.”