Pursuit of Princes (The Jacobite Chronicles Book 5)

by Julia Brannan

  Sarah insisted that she and John set off bright and early for Kennington Common on the Wednesday morning.

  “It’s going to be very crowded,” she said, “and if you’re determined to do this, then you want to stand near enough that there’s a slight chance at least of one of your friends seeing you.”

  “I really appreciate this, but you don’t have to go, you know,” John said.

  “Yes, I do. I’m not letting you face this alone. I’d never forgive myself if I did.”

  Initially John had planned to get the stagecoach to Manchester straight after the executions, but Sarah had pointed out that the crowds would be so dense it would take him hours to get away afterwards, and that in any case he would have to carry both his spare clothing and the money she was lending him for his fare – a crazy thing to do when London’s most accomplished pickpockets would be enthusiastically plying their trade.

  Privately she also wanted him to spend another night with her, because over the last week that he had stayed with her she had come to know him well, and both liked and respected him. She could see why Beth was so fond of him. He was both passionate about the Jacobite cause and sensitive, and Sarah was sure that seeing his friends die in such an awful way would affect him profoundly. She wanted to be with him tonight so that she could try to help him come to terms with what he was about to see.

  And she would miss him. In the last week they had grown close, and she had come to think of him like a brother, which made the pretence that he was to inquisitive customers easy to maintain. He was wonderful with Mary too. In fact she would be quite happy were he to stay with her indefinitely, but knew that it was too dangerous. He had to get out of London as soon as possible. Thomas and Jane would look after him until he was completely healed of his fetter wounds, and then he could find a place to go where no one knew him, and make a new life for himself.

  Although they set off very early there were already plenty of people out on the streets, heading in the same direction. They were about halfway there when a coach passed them and then stopped. As they drew level, the door opened and Caroline leaned out.

  “Sarah!” she said brightly. “Are you going to Kennington?”

  Sarah looked up. “Good morning. Yes, we are,” she replied.

  “Jump in then. We’ll take you,” she said. The footman jumped down from the back of the coach and lowered the steps for them to climb in. Sarah hesitated.

  “It’s very kind of you, but we can walk,” she said.

  “Nonsense!” Caroline replied briskly. “It’s coming on to rain. There’s no point in you both getting wet before you need to.”

  Realising that it would look churlish at the least, and suspicious at the worst if they were to refuse this kind offer, she capitulated. John handed Sarah up into the coach, then climbed in after her. They sat down opposite the Harlows, and the coach started off again. Caroline looked expectantly at John.

  “This is my brother, Jem,” Sarah said. “He was in the militia and was away when my sister…when Mary was born. He came down here to see her and he’s been staying with me for a few days. Jem, this is Mr and-”

  “This is Edwin, and I’m Caroline,” Caroline interrupted.

  Edwin, who had been sitting back in the coach looking uncharacteristically morose, now leaned forward and offered his hand to John, who shook it, very glad that he had remembered to wear gloves today. His fingers were healing, but were still raw enough to excite curiosity.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss, Jem,” Edwin said. “It must have been a terrible shock for you.”

  “It was, sir,” John replied, then fell silent, hoping that the couple would think he was too overcome with emotion to elaborate on the death of his fictional sister.

  There was a slightly awkward silence.

  “So what do you think of London, Jem?” Caroline asked. “Have you been here before?”

  “No, and I hope never to again,” John replied without thinking, then reddened.

  “Jem’s a country boy,” Sarah leapt in immediately. “He finds the noise of the city difficult to become accustomed to.”

  “To say nothing of the smells,” Caroline put in, to John’s surprise. “Although you get used to those, for the most part. We’ve lived in London for five years, and it can be an exciting place to be, but it’s also very tiring. We’ve got a house in the country now, Sarah. I’m furnishing it at the moment. When it’s finished, you must come and visit. Both of you.”

  John looked at this obviously aristocratic woman, astounded. There was no condescension in her invitation to this couple who were so far beneath her on the social ladder. Edwin and Caroline. He vaguely remembered Beth telling him that she didn’t give a fig about deceiving her family, but she felt bad about two of her friends. She had written to one of them about Martha. Was this her? Her husband was in the government or something.

  “Do you work in the city, sir?” John asked Edwin impulsively.

  “Yes, for my sins,” Edwin replied.

  “Edwin is a Member of Parliament,” Caroline explained. “He is attending the executions today because he is obliged to. He has no wish to go, and neither do I. But of course there is nothing wrong with going to such an event, if you want to,” she amended hurriedly.

  This was the woman Beth had spoken so highly of! He warmed to her instantly, smiled, and was a hairsbreadth from mentioning that he knew Beth when Sarah squeezed his arm warningly, and he remembered that he was supposed to be Sarah’s brother. He had never met Beth, had no idea she existed.

  He hated lying. He was no good at it. They should have insisted on walking.

  “Jem has never been to a hanging before,” Sarah said quickly. “I don’t think he’ll enjoy it, myself, but he insisted on coming, so I decided to come with him.”

  “Well, it is certainly a memorable experience,” Caroline said brightly. “But I hope Sarah has had the time to show you some of London’s more pleasant attractions. St Paul’s, Vauxhall or Ranelagh Gardens, perhaps?”

  “Sarah works very hard,” John said. “I came to see her and the baby, that was enough for me. I didn’t come to see the sights.”

  If you only came to see your family, why are you so eager to go to an execution? The question hung in the air between them. Damn.

  “I didn’t have time to show him anything else,” Sarah said somewhat frantically, John thought. “And Vauxhall and St Paul’s will be there next time he visits me. But there will never be another execution like this.”

  “God, I hope not,” Edwin said with great feeling.

  The carriage came to a halt and Edwin jumped down, followed by John, who then helped the ladies down. That done, he looked around and discovered to his horror that the coachman had managed to work his way almost to the front, and there were only a few rows of people between him and the gallows. Sarah had told him that people would have been arriving there since the previous evening, and in his heart of hearts he had hoped to be able to satisfy his conscience from a great distance, and maintain some level of emotional detachment.

  “Edwin did not purchase tickets for the stands,” Caroline was explaining, “but we will be able to see everything from here.”

  In front of the gallows a block had been set on which the bodies would be dismembered, and next to it a pile of faggots on which their hearts and intestines would be burnt.

  They stood and waited. People pushed their way through the crowd selling pies, oranges and printed copies of the dying speeches of the men, who had not even arrived yet, let alone spoken.

  “The crowd is very quiet,” Caroline, who had attended many executions as a girl, said. “I hope there will not be trouble.”

  “Why, are they not normally like this?” John asked. He had thought this normal. Seeing men being executed was not a reason to celebrate, in his view.

  “No. For most people this is a day out, an entertainment. It’s like going to the fair would be in smaller towns. This is unusual. Perhaps it’s because t
hey are to suffer a traitor’s death.”

  A great sigh suddenly arose from the crowd as a detachment of soldiers came into view, their scarlet coats a bright splash of colour. Between them were three sledges drawn by shire horses, and on each sledge three men were strapped on their backs facing the sky, the rain, which was now falling heavily, splashing onto their faces. The sledges stopped, the men were untied, and the soldiers formed an oval around the gallows, bayonets fixed, watching the crowd intently for any sign of an attempt at rescue. They too were clearly unnerved by the abnormally quiet crowd.

  “Where is the minister?” Caroline asked, puzzled. John hadn’t thought about that, but others clearly had, and murmurs of indignation arose from the people near to them.

  “This isn’t right,” one man to the left of John said. “They should have a man of God with them to help them pray and repent of their sins. Even papists deserve that.”

  John opened his mouth to tell the man that they were not papists but Episcopalians, as was he, but Sarah took his arm in a death grip, and he subsided.

  The faggots were lit with some difficulty due to the rain, and the nine men who were to die that day were helped up to the scaffold and left there to make their last statements.

  Colonel Towneley spoke first, the man who John had said was humourless and thought himself above his men, but who was brave. He certainly showed his bravery, speaking in a clear, calm voice about how honoured he was to give his life for his rightful king and prince.

  After him came Dai Morgan, who tried the patience of the crowd by taking out a book and reading aloud from it for a full half hour. He also made a vicious attack on the Roman Church, to the astonishment of the man to the left of John, who had obviously believed the Hanoverian propaganda that Jacobites were papists to a man.

  The other seven condemned men made shorter speeches. Thomas Deacon suddenly lifted his arm and threw his hat into the crowd, and John made a desperate leap high into the air as it flew over his head, snatching it from the eager fingers of three other men, who would have perhaps made something of it had John not shot them a look of such hatred and venom that they thought better of it and let him keep his prize, which he clutched to his chest.

  “I’ll give it to his father, when I get home,” he said softly to Sarah.

  Caroline looked at him strangely, but anything she was thinking to say was drowned out in the sudden roar of the crowd as, finally, the men stopped speaking, and the hangman adjusted the nooses around their necks then pulled hoods over their heads, before pushing them one by one off the cart, where they dangled, their limbs twitching and jerking as they strangled.

  John made a sudden move forward in an instinctive gesture to rescue his friends, and Caroline, noticing, put a hand out, and he stopped himself. Edwin had closed his eyes momentarily, but now opened them again, and forced himself to look as the men’s struggles became weaker.

  After a few minutes, the men’s clothes were removed and Francis Towneley’s body was cut down and laid on the block, while the others were left to hang naked. The hangman lifted a butcher’s cleaver and bent over Towneley’s body, which twitched feebly.

  “Dear God, this is terrible,” Edwin breathed. He was as white as a sheet. Caroline put her arm around his waist, and he leaned into her.

  John was breathing heavily through his mouth, tears streaming down his face unheeded, and white flashes swam at the edge of his vision. By a sheer effort of will he forced himself not to faint, nor to look away. It had been cowardly of him to hope that he would be too far away to see their suffering. He should have been on the scaffold with them, strangling slowly, gasping for breath. The very least he could do was witness it, to tell others that even if they had never had the chance to show their bravery in battle, they had shown it on the scaffold.

  John expected the hangman to slit open Towneley’s chest and tear his heart out, still beating, but instead he hacked off the man’s head first, holding it up to the crowd, who cheered, and only then did he cut open the chest and draw out the bowels and heart, which were thrown on the fire.

  It seemed to John to take an eternity for the process to be repeated with the other eight men, but finally Jemmy Dawson’s heart was thrown into the fire and the hangman shouted to the crowd, “God save King George!”

  The crowd roared back, and then it was over. The coffins, containing the severed heads and corpses of John’s brothers-in-arms were drawn away, and the crowd began to disperse. John stood, rooted to the spot, while a wave of hatred for this so-called king and all his family washed over him so strongly that he thought he would never feel anything again but a burning desire to be revenged for the undignified, brutal way these young men had died for the entertainment of a mindless mob, the same mob who would have no doubt cheered for Prince Charles had he continued on to London and victory, instead of turning back to Culloden and defeat.

  He felt the hot bile rise in his throat, and swallowed it back. If they, who had suffered and died, had not shown weakness, then he was damned if he would.

  He felt a tugging on his arm, and looked down into the worried eyes of Sarah. Incapable for the moment of speech, he nodded to her to let her know he was alright, although at that moment he thought he would never be alright again. He let her lead him back to the coach, and he handed her in and then climbed in after her, hardly aware of what he was doing.

  The coach trundled along, slowly at first, and then faster as they started to move away from the crowds.

  “Dear God, that was awful,” Edwin said, half to himself. “This is not right. How can people enjoy seeing men suffer so?”

  “They were traitors, Edwin,” Caroline said softly. “That is the penalty for high treason. At least their heads were cut off before their parts were thrown on the fire. It was not always so. And women can still be burnt at the stake for treason, which can be far more prolonged and painful.”

  “I know they had to die, and be made an example of, to deter others. But to take children…I would never take Freddie to such a horror,” Edwin said. He took out his handkerchief, wiped his eyes and blew his nose.

  Caroline looked across at Sarah’s brother, who hadn’t spoken and was still clutching the hat to his chest. He looked ghastly.

  “You knew some of them,” Caroline said. It was not a question, and John felt too sick at heart to deny it.

  “Yes,” he replied. “I did.”

  “Jem lived in Manchester for a time, like me,” Sarah jumped in. “A short time. He got to know quite a lot of people, but only a little. A very little.”

  Caroline nodded.

  “Well,” she said. “I hope that you will take something useful away from this experience.”

  She was looking at the hat, but John had the uncomfortable feeling that she was not referring to that.

  “I certainly will,” he said bitterly.

  Caroline had instructed the coachman to drive straight to Sarah’s shop, and once there, John and Sarah thanked them and climbed out. Sarah went to open the door, but as John turned to follow her, Caroline leaned out of the coach again and beckoned him closer.

  “Jem,” she said very softly, so only he would hear. “May I say something, as a friend of your…sister?”

  He nodded and waited, very aware of the pause she had made in her sentence and its implications.

  “Do not take offence, but you are not a good liar. Which is to your credit, but I think you should leave London as quickly as possible, and perhaps refrain from any more outings in the meantime. I am sure your friends would have appreciated your gesture today, had they known, and that Mr Deacon’s father will take great comfort from the return of his son’s hat. It was a reckless thing to do, but a brave one. I wish you well, but there are many who wouldn’t. It would not be wise to linger here, I think, for your sake and Sarah’s.”

  Before he could respond she sat back in the coach and tapped on the roof, and the driver set off down the street. John watched as it disappeared round the corner, t
hen slowly turned and followed Sarah into her shop.

  He would leave tomorrow, as early as possible.

  They rode on in silence for a few minutes, Edwin looking out of the window, deep in thought.

  “You said the crowd were quiet today. What are they normally like?” he asked suddenly, making Caroline jump.

  “They’re normally a lot noisier than that, but their mood depends on who’s being hung,” she replied. “If it’s an unpopular criminal, then they’ll jeer and throw things. When Jonathan Wild was hung twenty years ago there was nearly a riot, he was so hated. On the other hand if it’s someone popular, like Jack Sheppard, or some of the more famous highwaymen for example, then the crowd might be more sympathetic, especially if he or she gives a good speech. That can be more dangerous in a way, because the sympathy is for the criminal, not the authorities. It’s a great entertainment for them, in any case.”

  “I really cannot comprehend how people can be entertained by watching others die horribly. I have no sympathy for murderers and robbers; they know the risks they run if they are caught. The law of the land must be upheld or we would have anarchy, and of course such people have to die. I understand that. But I have always thought executions to be a lesson to the spectators, not an amusement! And now you tell me that rather than learning from their grisly end, people actually have sympathy for footpads and highwaymen?” Edwin asked, bemused.

  And traitors. Caroline had been about to mention that when Sarah’s brother had leapt up to grab the hat his coat sleeve had fallen down his arm, and she had seen the unmistakable fetter wounds on his wrist. Three men had escaped from Newgate a week ago. Three men who should have been hung today.

  No. Now was clearly not the time. Maybe there would never be a right time to tell him that where he would see a traitor in Jem, she saw a brave if misguided young man, who had risked recapture to make a gesture of support and loyalty to his friends. She was almost certain that Thomas Deacon had seen him, had aimed the hat at him, had hopefully taken comfort from the fact that he’d caught it. She could not bring herself to turn him in, and in doing so also condemn Sarah, who she considered to be a friend.