The Tyburn Guinea: A Fragment

by Sean Gabb

  Chapter Seven

  From the Oxford Road, she took the right into Swallow Street. She would have staggered on till they could vanish into the packed anonymity of Piccadilly. But it was after the junction with Glasshouse Street that she had to let go of Polly. No longer supported, the girl fell straight to the ground and lay there in a sort of ball.

  “Get up!” Sarah wheezed. “Get up and move if you want to stay alive.”

  It was useless. The girl was fagged out. “I can’t go no farther, Mum,” she sobbed. “I can’t move me legs.”

  Sarah kicked her in the side, then in the chest. That got her back into her shitting pose, though not to her feet. She rocked back and forth.

  “Oh, I wish I was back in Catford,” she wailed. “I want to go home.”

  Sarah thought of slapping her face. But that would mean bending down, and she was sure she’d pulled a muscle in her back.

  She gave up on further escape and clutched for support at the railings that fronted one of the grand houses.

  She waited for her breathing to come back to a semblance of normality. Letting go of the railings, she moved out of the sunshine. She took a new position against the nearest street post. She stared south along the street, willing the restrained grandeur of its terraces to calm her.

  It was one of those long streets that were always busy without being crowded. Tradesmen led their carts along it, stopping now and again to make deliveries. A servant girl sat on one of the fourth floor window ledges, to polish the outer side of the glass. Half way along to Piccadilly, one coach was waiting for another to come out from some mews. A balladeer was singing out of sight.

  She had to get herself and the girl that last hundred yards into Piccadilly.

  But they could afford a short rest. They were out of immediate danger.

  No, it was better than that, she knew. Her feet were on fire with pain. Her legs were sore. Her back was stiffening by the moment. Her headache was returning. But she knew that any scraping she might hear of iron on cobblestones was the product of her imagination.

  She turned and looked back along the way she’d come. There was a coach moving slowly from left to right along the Oxford Road. Beyond that, the mounds of rubbish merged insensibly with the open country that stretched north as far as the eye could see.

  It was all as it should be. No one had followed her. No one would come looking. No one would find her. She was back in the great city.

  She looked once more at the junction with Piccadilly. From there, it would be a right into Whitcomb Street, and then left by Charing Cross, for the straight mile and a half to where Temple Bar marked the easternmost boundary between Westminster and the City.

  She’d got clean away from Tyburn.

  What she’d done there was another matter. In the formal sense, of course, her conscience was clear. She’d done the young man a favour. Without her to pull at him, who could say how long he’d have flopped about on the end of his rope? She hadn’t killed him. The Law had done that. All she’d done was to lessen the pain. She hadn’t even betrayed him in the end. Any moralist in England would have told her she was clean.

  And any child would have told her she had blood on her hands.

  She closed her eyes. Fighting for control, she kept them closed. She opened them to a sudden pattering of feet.

  No reason to worry—it was only a sedan chair that was pulling up close by. She watched as its door opened, and, with much bowing and scraping from the chairmen, a man stepped out, dressed in the finest clothes you see outside a Royal levee.

  She stared from the shimmering white of his stockings to the glossy brown of a wig that ended below his waist. He finished paying the chairmen and walked carefully across the higher, cleaner cobblestones towards one of the big front doors. Unless he turned at the last moment, he would go right past Sarah.

  She had her excuse for stepping off the spiral of despair she’d made for herself. Should she ignore the man? Should she curtsy?

  On the other hand, if there was nothing she could do about the patches of dirt all over her, she was wearing a hat. Would that earn her at least a polite nod?

  The man stopped directly in front of her. She looked into his jowly face. She held her breath. Then, with a “My good woman, please accept my commiserations on your loss,” he pushed something into her hand.

  Straight after, in a fog of civet perfume, he was bounding up the steps. The door opened and closed, and he was gone.

  For a moment, Sarah was completely still. She didn’t need to open her hand. The weight and reeded edge of the new-milled sixpence were enough. It was her clothing. She was all in black, though stained. The man had mistaken her for a recent widow without means.

  Done properly, that would raise a laugh in the playhouse. Or it might reduce the audience to tears. What mattered here was the flash of realisation it caused.

  She had to get out of everything black. If Sir John Sweetapple hadn’t recognised her at Tyburn, nobody had. Once she was back in her normal outgoing clothes, no one need ever connect her with the woman in black.

  Taking off the overcoat was a start. So too unpinning the black cloth from her hat.

  She stared down at Polly. Indifferent to the filth and the danger, she’d fallen asleep beyond the line of street posts. Sarah had got away unrecognised. Polly was the weak point. Five foot high, five across, hairline an inch above her eyes—she’d be known again by anyone who had seen her at Tyburn.

  Well, the girl had made a silly wish. Perhaps it should be granted. She had been in London five days, as all-purpose skivvy to the Fritton household. She hadn’t found time to enjoy her new life. It might be for the best if she was sent back to looking after the pigs in her Kentish village.

  Sarah stood over her. “Get up, Polly.” She kicked the girl again. “I need you to carry my coat.”

  The girl opened her eyes and whimpered something in dialect about Catford. She made a feeble effort to sit up, but only rolled sideways with her legs in the air. However, the dead man’s mess was now dried on her face, and was beginning to flake off.

  Sarah put on what she hoped was an encouraging smile. She folded her coat, grey lining on the outside.

  “Listen, Polly,” she added. “I don’t want you to say a word about any of this when we get home. Do you understand?”

  She knew she might have addressed one of the street posts to more certain effect. The girl really would have to go.