“Yes, er, sir,” his lordship’s man said warily. “If you will wait here, I shall inquire.”
He departed on this errand, and returned a moment later to inform Pickett that Lord Rupert would see him—although the tone he employed made it clear that he considered this a shocking lapse in judgment on the part of his master. Nevertheless, he led Pickett to a sunny chamber where sat his nemesis, clad in a silk banyan of exotic design and addressing a plate of buttered eggs and a large sirloin of beef—from which latter emanated an aroma that made Pickett’s stomach growl, forcibly reminding him that he’d had nothing to eat in almost twenty-four hours.
“Lord Rupert.” Pickett tore his gaze from this sizzling slab of temptation and acknowledged his lordship with a bow.
“Farley warned me,” Lord Rupert said slowly, regarding his visitor with an expression of mocking surprise on his saturnine countenance, “but I didn’t believe the half of it.”
Oddly enough, Pickett found this unflattering observation more than a little reassuring. The rest of the world might be turned upside down, but Lord Rupert Latham, at least, was unchanged. “You know me, then?”
“On the contrary, I am quite certain we have never met. I’m sure I would have found you, let us say, impossible to forget.”
Pickett, having more urgent matters on his mind, let the insult pass. “Forgive the interruption, your lordship, but I’ve come to ask a favor. It—it concerns someone we both care for.”
“You behold me agog with curiosity,” drawled his lordship.
“It may have escaped your notice that Ju—that Lady Fieldhurst has been found guilty of the murder of her husband and sentenced to hang.”
“Yes, what of it?”
“What of it?” Pickett echoed incredulously. “Her ladyship is innocent—as you, of all people, must know, since she was with you at the time!”
Lord Rupert’s expression could have frozen water. “If you want any favor from me, you would be wise to leave my activities out of the discussion. What is it you came to ask?”
“Surely a man of your standing”—Pickett reckoned a little flattery couldn’t hurt—“must have connections to whom you could apply for a stay of execution while the case is investigated further.”
“The ‘case,’ as you call it, has already been investigated quite thoroughly by Bow Street,” was Lord Rupert’s unpromising reply.
“Then the investigating officer, whoever he was, didn’t bother to look beyond the end of his nose!” Pickett retorted.
“I believe the man’s name was Foote. Perhaps you should make your complaint to him.”
And why doesn’t that surprise me? Pickett wondered bitterly. As for making any such complaint against Foote, he couldn’t, for the man was dead. Except that he wasn’t.
“Damn it, man, at one time you wanted to marry her!” Pickett reminded him. “Are you really willing to let her die without lifting a finger to stop it?”
Lord Rupert’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I don’t know where you came by your information, but if we’re to speak of looking beyond one’s nose, I suggest you put into practice what you so vociferously preach. The fact that you, a total stranger to me, are aware that I was with her ladyship at the time of her husband’s murder suggests that my connection with her is widely known. If her ladyship were to be exonerated, to whom, then, would the finger of suspicion point next?”
Pickett stared at his erstwhile rival with something akin to revulsion. “You bastard,” he breathed. “You’d see an innocent woman, a woman you claimed to love, hanged in order to save your own neck!”
His lordship regarded Pickett with a look of hauteur that took in every detail from his lack of coat and waistcoat to his no-longer-white shirt and wrinkled breeches. “My good fellow, I regret the situation as much as you do, but—” He broke off abruptly as a new thought occurred to him. “Look here, what exactly is your interest in all this? Who are you, and what is your connection to her ladyship?”
I’m her husband. No, he’d made such a claim once before to Lord Rupert, and while it had been perfectly true so far as the law was concerned, the results had been disastrous. He would not make such a mistake again. “Her ladyship doesn’t even know me,” he said in a flat voice, then turned and left the house without a backward glance.
He trudged back toward the prison, his steps dragging as he pondered how to break the bad news to Julia. For there was nowhere else to turn. Lord Rupert Latham, who had once entertained hopes of marrying her, was far more concerned with saving his own skin, while the Bertrams—rather, the new Lord and Lady Fieldhurst—had clearly washed their hands of her, choosing instead to go into hiding until the scandal could be forgotten. Nor could the prison guard be applied to for help; he’d been too interested in playing slap-and-tickle with the laundress to do more than advise Pickett to “keep his skirt on,” just as if he’d been an hysterical female...
An hysterical female... Pickett thought, his steps slowing to the point where those pedestrians behind him were hard-pressed to avoid running into him, whereupon they expressed their displeasure with glares and curses that were alike ignored.
An hysterical female, who might fall to her knees to beg for mercy from her captors or to make peace with her Maker and thus disguise the fact that she was taller than any female had a right to be... and who, furthermore, could not really die, since she had never been born...
There was still the matter of feeling pain, he thought, recalling the throbbing head that had accompanied his accident in the piazza at Covent Garden. He did not exactly look forward to the tightening of the hangman’s noose about his throat, cutting off the flow of air to his lungs, forcing his tongue past his lips and causing his eyes to bulge from their sockets, but it was better, surely, for him to suffer such a fate than for Julia to do so—Julia, who most certainly had been born, and who would just as certainly die without some intervention...
By the time he returned to Newgate and was once again admitted to her cell, this plan had taken such strong possession of his brain that the prisoner, seeing the light that blazed in his eyes, was moved to exclaim, “You’ve done it!”
“No, I’m afraid not,” he confessed, “but I have a better idea.”
“No? What, then—?”
“I’m going to take your place.”
13
In Which John Pickett Expounds His Proposal
She stared at him speechlessly for a long moment, then her eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Aloud, he merely said, “Never mind that.” He glanced at the slit through which the guard might be listening, and although it was closed, he lowered his voice nonetheless. “I’m going to help you escape, and then I’m going to the scaffold in your stead.”
“But—but Mr. Pickett, this is madness! Why should you do such a thing? Why, you don’t even know me!”
He could have set her straight on this point, but did not. In fact, he did not answer at all for a long moment, and when he spoke again, it was haltingly. “I must do this, my lady, in order to—to right an old wrong. There was once a lady I—I cared for very much. I was the only one who could save her; in fact, I believed I had saved her, only—only it proved not to be the case.”
“And this lady,” she said thoughtfully, “was her name Julia, by any chance?”
For the first time since he’d cracked his head in Covent Garden, Pickett felt a faint flicker of hope. “It was,” he said, while inwardly he pleaded, Please know me... please say you remember.
But no. “Mr. Pickett, I am truly humbled by your willingness to make such a sacrifice, but I cannot ask such a thing of you!”
“You didn’t ask,” he pointed out. “I make the gesture willingly.”
She shook her head impatiently, and her cropped hair swung back and forth, caressing her sunken cheeks in a way Pickett could only dream of doing. “Even if I were to allow you to go to the gallows in my place, how could such a scheme possibly w
ork? The guard could not fail to notice such a switch!”
“Perhaps; perhaps not. No, hear me out,” he said, when she opened her mouth to argue the point. “The brazier doesn’t give off much light. If the guard should open the door and see two ladies, one kneeling with her face buried in her handkerchief and the other standing over her with her face averted, attempting to console her, who is to say which is which?”
“There is the little matter of height, you know. You would be obliged to crouch all the way to the gallows!”
Pickett shrugged. “I daresay it wouldn’t be the first time a woman indulged in strong hysterics on her way to such a fate. Between bouts of tears and pleas for mercy, who among her executioners would notice a little thing like bent knees?”
To his surprise, he succeeded in coaxing a little laugh out of her. “ ‘Strong hysterics’? Really, Mr. Pickett, you might at least let people say of me that I met my fate with a little dignity!”
“If I’m willing to die in a skirt and mobcap, you might at least agree to a few hysterics, at least until the switch is discovered.”
“And what happens then? When they realize they’ve hanged the wrong person, I mean?”
“By that time, it’ll be too late. You’ll be long gone.”
“But gone where? There will surely be people searching for me.”
Recalling the mob at his heels only a few hours earlier, he could not deny it. “Very likely. And so you must be well away before the deed is done. As soon as the guard comes for me—for you, that is—you are to bid ‘Lady Fieldhurst’ a tearful farewell, bury your face in your handkerchief, and get out before he has time to get a good look at you. Go straight to Denmark Street, number seven—it’s in St. Giles; do you know it? Hardly a place for a lady, but needs must when the devil drives. Ask for the mistress of the house. Tell her I sent you.” His mother was familiar enough with the details of his life that she would surely not deny him this, that she would protect the woman he loved—the woman who, under different circumstances, would have been her daughter-in-law and the mother of her grandchild.
“It seems wrong, to run away and leave you to face the consequences alone,” Julia protested. “If you are determined to do this, the least I can do is honor your sacrifice by remaining with you until—until the end.”
“No, you mustn’t,” he insisted. “If you lo—” If you love me, he had almost said. But she did not love him. She didn’t even know him. “If you linger, someone may recognize you, and then the fat would be in the fire! In the meantime, if there is anyone else you might send for in order to say your goodbyes, it might be helpful if the guard forgets exactly who and how many he admits to your cell over the next few hours.”
She regarded him steadily for a long moment, then said, “I almost forgot: while you were gone, I was informed that the time of my execution has been pushed back. Instead of being at noon, it will be at three o’clock.”
“I shall return no later than two, then.” And then, although he hated making such a request of her, he asked, “Do you have any money I might use to purchase a dress and a mobcap in Petticoat Lane? I wouldn’t ask, but I”—he made a gesture that took in his lack of coat, waistcoat, and anything else of value that might be pawned in exchange for ready money—“I haven’t anything on me.”
She lifted one corner of the dirty straw mattress and withdrew the few coins concealed there. “I can see how one would want a new gown for the occasion,” she said with a pathetic attempt at humor.
“Yes, for my maid spilled tea all over my Sunday best, the silly girl,” Pickett replied as she poured the little store of coins into his hand, and had his reward when she looked up at him with a swift, fleeting smile. In the absence of a coat pocket, he tucked the little stash of coins into his shoe. “I shall give you back anything I have left over. In the meantime,” he added, suddenly serious, “in case I have no opportunity to tell you later, please know that when you make your escape, you will carry with you my best wishes for your future happiness.”
Her eyes took on a moist sheen, and she blinked rapidly several times. “Thank you.”
The words were little more than a whisper, but as he turned to go, she said quite clearly, “Oh, and Mr. Pickett—”
“Yes?” he prompted, when words apparently failed her.
She held out her hand to him, all the while looking at him as if she were trying to commit to memory the features of the man who was to be her deliverer. “I should have liked very much to have known you, Mr. Pickett.”
It was almost, almost enough. He raised her hand to his lips. “Goodbye, my lady,” he said, then turned and rapped on the door for the guard to let him out.
14
In Which Matters Come to a Head
After taking his leave of Julia, Pickett made his way to Petticoat Lane, where he scanned the stalls of secondhand clothing in search of a gown suitable for an aristocratic female. On its face, this was not the impossible quest it might have seemed, since he had learned during his investigation of Lord Fieldhurst’s murder—an investigation that, in his absence, had obviously not gone well for that gentleman’s widow—that ladies of Julia’s class frequently bestowed their castoff clothing on their maids, to wear or to sell as they saw fit. However, when one added the further requirement that this gown must be long enough to reach the ankles of a “lady” who stood six feet three inches barefooted, the difficulty increased exponentially.
He discovered one possibility in a dark green garment which Julia—at least, the Julia he knew—would never have been caught dead in (bad choice of words, but he wouldn’t let himself think of that) but which possessed the advantage of appearing rather longer than most of the other gowns on offer. He held it up to his chest experimentally, then looked down at the length of leg clearly visible beneath its hem—and looked up again to discover the proprietress and two of her female customers regarding him warily.
“It’s for my sister,” he said, feeling some explanation was called for. “She’s very tall.” Seeing they did not appear convinced, he added, “We’re twins.”
The proprietress merely shrugged. “It’s your money, ducks.”
Actually, it was Julia’s money, but Pickett was not inclined to waste time in correcting this mistaken assumption. He tossed the gown over his arm and turned his attention to the selection of a mob cap. If nothing else, he reasoned, he could recount this misunderstanding to her upon his return to Newgate, and if he was lucky, he would see her smile one more time before he took her place on the scaffold...
But he would think about that later. For now, he eyed a brown checked waistcoat and a slightly worn-looking olive-green tailcoat, and wondered wistfully if there might be enough money left over for him to at least make himself presentable. Presentable for what? he challenged his own wayward thoughts. Even if he managed to survive the execution, it wasn’t as if he could court his wife all over again. He had even less to offer her now than he’d had before. He had no money, he had no position—he didn’t even have a name, for he didn’t really exist.
With this lowering thought, he paid for the gown and mobcap, assured the proprietress (who still looked askance at him) that he was sure his “sister” would love it, and set out for Newgate. It was now almost noon, and while he doubted Julia would begrudge him a few pence to spend on a modest meal, his stomach roiled at the thought of eating while she sat alone in a dark, cold cell awaiting her execution. She deserved, at the very least, someone to keep vigil with her, and he resolved to fill this rôle, acknowledging at the same time his own selfish desire to spend every possible minute in her company.
As he approached the prison, he tucked the bundle of secondhand clothing under his arm and surveyed his surroundings for some alley or court in which he could put on the gown without being seen. This task was made considerably more difficult by the crowds amassing about the gallows. The size of the mob did not surprise him; the fact that it had assembled so early, fully three hours before the show was to beg
in, did. Unless, of course, Julia’s was not the only execution to take place that day. He wondered if that might explain why her hanging had been delayed. More to the point, he wondered if it might somehow be turned to her advantage.
“Who’s it for?” Pickett asked one bystander, jerking his thumb in the direction of the gibbet.
His potential informant spat on the ground, narrowly missing Pickett’s shoes. “A fine lady, so they say. Killed ’er ’usband,” he added significantly, drawing the flat of one hand horizontally across his throat in gruesome imitation.
“But that isn’t until three o’clock,” Pickett pointed out. To be sure, public hangings were a popular entertainment amongst a certain set, but surely such a crowd so early was excessive, even for a case that had generated as much attention as the Fieldhurst murder had done.
“Where’d you get such an idea as that?” the man asked, regarding Pickett with mild curiosity. “It’s to take place at noon. Ought to be comin’ out any minute now—here she is! No, wait, it’s only the ’angman.”
His face fell as the figure mounting the steps to the scaffold proved to be, not the notorious murderess, but the man charged with meting out her punishment. Unlike his fictitious counterparts on the stages of Covent Garden or Drury Lane, he wore no black hood to conceal his identity, but acknowledged with a nod several of those in the front who cheered his appearance.
Pickett did not linger to argue the point, but pushed his way through the crowd until he reached the door of the prison and stumbled inside. Ignoring the shouts of the keeper, he ran across the central hall and down the corridor that led to the cell where she was being held.
Nowhere Man Page 8
