by Sean Gabb
Chapter Three
Sarah’s hand fell to her side. As if the sun was peering through a gap in heavy cloud, her mind cleared enough to realise the enormity of what was being asked of her. She looked harder at the Irishman. He turned his head away with a muttered excuse about a blessing from a sweetheart unable to attend. It was insulting in its brevity and palpable falsehood.
The smile, when he looked back in her face, was nothing more than an open gloat. He knew he’d got her. He knew she knew he’d got her. Triumph and contempt blazed from his face.
She stared at the packet in his hands. It was a thing of oiled cloth, and secured with a seal on red wax.
Had it finally come to this? Twenty-seven years in this world, and she was now reduced to libelling the dead. She’d heard of this in one of her father’s rambling stories about the Cromwell tyranny. You can’t get a confession from a living man. So you plant one for the hangman to find when he takes possession of the clothes and effects. It could be dirtier than that. You could implicate others as well.
She could have thrown the coin back in the Irishman’s face. Anyone with an ounce of self-respect would have done. He couldn’t have stopped her. He’d not have blocked her exit. What he was demanding needed a willing accomplice.
But she could feel the gold again in her hand. Stand long enough in the crowd that swarmed day and night before the Mint, and she could change it for 22/-6d in new silver. A trip to one of the better class of banks, and she’d get seventeen shillings—maybe eighteen, if she haggled. Either deal would mean more cash than she’d seen since the Act was published to call in the old money.
Her last pint of laudanum had been a shilling, and in clipped money.
Sarah made up her mind. No, be honest—she admitted what had never been in doubt.
“We’ll walk beside the cart,” she whispered. She’d not climb in beside the other women. Rather than sink that low, she’d take her chance in the mud.
The Irishman nodded. “I’ll be watching you.”
This was it. He turned. Almost before she could open her hand for another look at the guinea, he’d got himself down the steps. With a descending scrape of his iron foot, he was gone.
ooOoo
On a normal day, the Oxford Road could be a delight once past the junction with Soho. It was here that the buildings along its southern side became lower and less continuous, and those to the north gave out altogether. Go past the junction with Swallow Street, and you might almost be in open country.
But, if the sun rose steadily higher in an unclouded sky, there was no twittering of birds today—no sound of flying bugs or quiet lapping of streams. Coaches grinding away at the front, sedan chairs following these at a respectful distance, the rabble shambling behind in a long tail, the procession moved along in a blur of noise. The paved stretch of the road stopped after the junction with Charles Street. A dozen paces beyond, and Sarah’s clothing had swept up enough dried mud to cover her body from the waist down.
After that, she’d pulled herself aboard the rear cart.
Her face without expression, not seeming to care how much grit would lodge itself in her sensitive places, Polly continued on foot. Sarah looked back at her once or twice, to make sure she didn’t go out of sight.
Otherwise, she pretended not to notice the painted thing with no front teeth, who was sobbing away beside her, and looking every so often between a parting of her fingers. She didn’t look once at the young man, or any other of the condemned.
There was another crowd gathered at the crossroads formed with the Westminster and Edgware Roads. Here, the permanent hanging triangle was still joined by the viewing stands put up the month before.
Despite his bad legs, her father had got her and all his students out for the treason executions. That fool and general nuisance Collier had been round the night before to tip them off that he’d be there on the scaffold to give full and public absolution to Friend and Parkyns.
Her father had come along sure he’d be giving support to a loud clamour against the Government. Luckily, his cry of “King James Forever!” had been in Hebrew, and was drowned out in the general cry of outrage at Collier’s performance in full clericals
Then there had been the chaos of the search for Collier once he took to his heels. The Reverend Dr Obadiah Fritton and his party had got off with no more than a funny look from one of the constables.
That had been the previous month. Even with spitty rain and a cold wind, you’d expect a quarter of London to turn out and watch two men hanged who’d come close to murdering the King. When he was eventually taken and tried and sentenced, their associate Fenwick would fill the viewing stands again.
For the moment, if the weather was much improved, it wasn’t a tenth of that to say goodbye to a highwayman and a handful of decidedly petty felons. There may have been a few hundred sat in the frontal viewing stand. Everyone else was socialising on his feet.
Sarah felt a hard poke in her side. It was the toothless woman. “I said, dearie, aren’t we a bit previous?” she asked in an aggrieved tone.
Between feelings of shame at what she’d contracted herself to do, and the vague notion that she was riding to her own execution, Sarah had been coming slowly back to her senses. Most of these she’d been using on a Prologue that would soon be as late as the rent.
She turned and gave the woman a blank stare.
“I mean, he’s not dead yet,” the woman cackled. She stroked the faded black of Sarah’s coat.
“Don’t speak in my face,” came the answer in Sarah’s best imitation of Mrs Juniper. “You have a stinking breath.”
But, if Mrs Juniper could silence a jeer from the pit with the slightest rise of her voice, Sarah was no Queen of the Tragic Stage.
“Ooh, in’t she the bleeding dutchess?” the woman shrilled. “Ain’t even brung no effing broom!”
She made a grab at Sarah’s hat. A hard jab in her chest with the candlestick, and she fell back screeching.
The Sheriff was beside them, “Silence, you pair of bitches!” he roared from his horse. “Silence, or I’ll have you both taken in charge.”
Sarah fussed with her hat, checking if its veil still covered her face. If he did recognise her, it was possible Sir John would turn moderately pleasant. The price for that, however, would be weeks of heavy sarcasm in the playhouse.
But his face was red from gin. Just as likely, he’d lay about her with his horsewhip.
No pleasantry, though, nor horsewhip. He sat upright on his horse and straightened his wig and hat.
“Everyone not for hanging out of the carts,” he called in his official voice.
He leaned towards the toothless woman. “Mind you,” he went on in easier tone, “there’s room for twenty four on the gallows. Mistakes haven’t been unknown at Tyburn.”
He sat up again and laughed.
ooOoo
Away from the road, Sarah had found a patch of clear space that had been much trampled while it was still sodden. Now the mud was only soft. She tried to blot out the loud babble behind her and looked south towards the glittering magnificence of Westminster.
There was a faint stirring at the back of her mind.
I bid you, Gentlemen, behold
This tale of Grecian woe unfold….
Was this a good opening couplet? It had a nice peremptory sound. It would cut through the chatter in the playhouse. She thought again. Should she risk diffuseness by adding two syllables to each line? Should she avoid hiatus by turning “woe” to “woes?”
Whatever she did with it, how to follow the couplet?
Polly brought her back to the here and now. “I don’t like it, Mum,” she whined. “It ain’t right what we’re doing.”
Sarah took a deep breath of the country air. She didn’t like it either. But the worst of her headache was passed. She had the guinea tucked safely away, and it wouldn’t be long before she’d finished earning it. The dirt she’d kicked up earl
ier was a continuing irritation. It would have been nice to go off somewhere private and pull her dress up to see to herself. But she’d known worse days than this one—many of them, and all without hope.
Today, she was earning a guinea, and had made a start on her Prologue.
She looked away from the distant mass of the Abbey. Perhaps she was seeing Polly for the first time in good light. Or perhaps the freshness was already going from her face. On even a few days acquaintance, London was good for doing that. The tears the girl had been shedding didn’t help.
“Just do as you’ve been told,” she snapped.
She would have said more. But there was an approving shout from the crowd, followed by a fluttering of wings overhead. Polly looked up at the three birds flying south east in close formation.
“It’s the pigeons,” Sarah explained. “They get sent off to Newgate to confirm safe delivery of the prisoners.”
She paused, taking charge again of her voice.
“It will soon be time.”