Gallows Thief

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘So the Countess was naked when you painted her?’ Sandman asked.

  ‘No,’ Corday hesitated, then shrugged. ‘She wasn’t to know she was being painted naked, so she was in a morning gown and robe. We would have used a model in the studio to do the tits.’

  ‘She didn’t know?’ Sandman was incredulous.

  ‘Her husband wanted a portrait,’ Corday said impatiently, ‘and he wanted her naked, and she would have refused him, so he lied to her. She didn’t mind doing a boudoir portrait, but she wasn’t going to unpeel for anyone, so we were going to fake it and I was just doing the preliminary work, the drawing and tints. Charcoal on canvas with a few colours touched in; the colours of the bed covers, the wallpaper, her ladyship’s skin and hair. Bitch that she was.’

  Sandman felt a surge of hope, for the last four words had been malevolent, just as he expected a murderer would speak of his victim. ‘You didn’t like her?’

  ‘Like her? I despised her!’ Corday spat. ‘She was a trumped-up demi-rep!’ He meant she was a courtesan, a high-class whore. ‘A buttock,’ Corday downgraded her savagely, ‘nothing else. But just because I didn’t like her doesn’t make me a rapist and murderer. Besides, do you really think a woman like the Countess of Avebury would allow a painter’s apprentice to be alone with her? She was chaperoned by a maid all the time I was there. How could I have raped or murdered her?’

  ‘There was a maid?’ Sandman asked.

  ‘Of course there was,’ Corday insisted scornfully, ‘an ugly bitch called Meg.’

  Sandman was totally confused now. ‘And, presumably, Meg spoke at your trial?’

  ‘Meg has disappeared,’ Corday said tiredly, ‘which is why I am going to hang.’ He glared at Sandman. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m making it up. But there was a maid and her name was Meg and she was there and when it came to the trial she couldn’t be found.’ He had spoken defiantly, but his demeanour suddenly changed as he began to weep again. ‘Does it hurt?’ he asked. ‘I know it does. It must!’

  Sandman stared down at the flagstones. ‘Where was the house?’

  ‘Mount Street,’ Corday was hunched and sobbing, ‘it’s just off …’

  ‘I know where Mount Street is,’ Sandman interrupted a little too sharply. He was embarrassed by Corday’s tears, but persevered with questions that were now actuated by a genuine curiosity. ‘And you admit to being in the Countess’s house on the day she was murdered?’

  ‘I was there just before she was murdered!’ Corday said. ‘There were back stairs, servants’ stairs, and there was a knock on the door there. A deliberate knock, a signal, and the Countess became agitated and insisted I leave at once. So Meg took me down the front stairs and showed me the door. I had to leave everything, the paints, canvas, everything, and that convinced the constables I was guilty. So within an hour they came and arrested me at Sir George’s studio.’

  ‘Who sent for the constables?’

  Corday shrugged to suggest he did not know. ‘Meg? Another of the servants?’

  ‘And the constables found you at Sir George’s studio. Which is where?’

  ‘Sackville Street. Above Gray’s, the jewellers.’ Corday stared red-eyed at Sandman. ‘Do you have a knife?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because if you do, then I beg you give it me. Give it me! I would rather cut my wrists than stay here! I did nothing, nothing! Yet I am beaten and abused all day, and in a week I hang. Why wait a week? I am already in hell. I am in hell!’

  Sandman cleared his throat. ‘Why not stay up here, in the cells? You’d be alone here.’

  ‘Alone? I’d be alone for two minutes! It’s safer downstairs where at least there are witnesses.’ Corday wiped his eyes with his sleeve. ‘What do you do now?’

  ‘Now?’ Sandman was nonplussed. He had expected to listen to a confession and then go back to the Wheatsheaf and write a respectful report. Instead he was confused.

  ‘You said the Home Secretary wanted you to make enquiries. So will you?’ Corday’s gaze was challenging, then he crumpled. ‘You don’t care. No one cares!’

  ‘I shall make enquiries,’ Sandman said gruffly, and suddenly he could not take the stench and the tears and the misery any more and so he turned and ran down the stairs. He came into the fresher air of the Press Yard, then had a moment’s panic that the turnkeys would not unbolt the gate that would let him into the tunnel, but of course they did.

  The porter unlocked his cupboard and took out Sandman’s watch, a gold-cased Breguet that had been a gift from Eleanor. Sandman had tried to return the watch with her letters, but she had refused to accept them. ‘Find your man, sir?’ the porter asked.

  ‘I found him.’

  ‘And he spun you a yarn, I’ve no doubt,’ the porter chuckled. ‘Spun you a yarn, eh? They can gammon you, sir, like a right patterer. But there’s an easy way to know when a felon’s telling lies, sir, an easy way.’

  ‘I should be obliged to hear it,’ Sandman said.

  ‘They’re speaking, sir, that’s how you can tell they’re telling lies, they’re speaking.’ The porter thought this a fine joke and wheezed with laughter as Sandman went down the steps into Old Bailey.

  He stood on the pavement, oblivious of the crowd surging up and down. He felt soiled by the prison. He clicked open the Breguet’s case and saw it was just after half past two in the afternoon; he wondered where his day had gone. To Rider, Eleanor’s inscription inside the watch case read, in aeternam, and that palpably false promise did not improve his mood. He clicked the lid shut just as a workman shouted at him to mind himself. The trapdoor, pavilion and stairs of the scaffold had all been dismantled and now the tongue-and-groove cladding that had screened the platform was being thrown down and the planks were falling perilously near Sandman. A carter hauling a vast wagon of bricks whipped blood from the flanks of his horses, even though the beasts could make no headway against the tangle of vehicles that blocked the street.

  Sandman finally thrust the watch into his fob pocket and walked northwards. He was torn. Corday had been found guilty and yet, though Sandman could not find a scrap of liking for the young man, his story was believable. Doubtless the porter was right and every man in Newgate was convinced of his own innocence, yet Sandman was not entirely naïve. He had led a company of soldiers with consummate skill and he reckoned he could distinguish when a man was telling the truth. And if Corday was innocent then the fifteen guineas that weighed down Sandman’s pockets would be neither swiftly nor easily earnt.

  He decided he needed advice.

  So he went to watch some cricket.

  2

  Sandman reached Bunhill Row just before the city clocks struck three, the jangling of the bells momentarily drowning the crack of bat on ball, the deep shouts and applause of the spectators. It sounded like a large crowd and, judging by the shouts, a good match. The gatekeeper waved him through. ‘I ain’t taking your sixpence, Captain.’

  ‘You should, Joe.’

  ‘Aye, and you should be playing, Captain.’ Joe Mallock, gatekeeper at the Artillery Ground, had once bowled for the finest clubs in London before painful joints had laid him low, and he well remembered one of his last games when a young army officer, scarce out of school, had thrashed him all over the New Road outfield in Marylebone. ‘Been too long since we seen you bat, Captain.’

  ‘I’m past my prime, Joe.’

  ‘Past your prime, boy? Past your prime! You aren’t even thirty yet. Now go on in. Last I heard England was fifty-six runs up with only four in hand. They need you!’

  A raucous jeer rewarded a passage of play as Sandman walked towards the boundary. The Marquess of Canfield’s eleven were playing an England eleven and one of the Marquess’s fielders had dropped an easy catch and now endured the crowd’s scorn. ‘Butter-fingers!’ they roared. ‘Fetch him a bucket!’

  Sandman glanced at the blackboard and saw that England, in their second innings, were only sixty runs ahead and still had four wi
ckets in hand. Most of the crowd were cheering the England eleven and a roar greeted a smart hit that sent the ball scorching towards the field’s far side. The Marquess’s bowler, a bearded giant, spat on the grass then stared up at the blue sky as if he was deaf to the crowd’s noise. Sandman watched the batsman, Budd it was, walk down the wicket and pat down an already smooth piece of turf.

  Sandman strolled past the carriages parked by the boundary. The Marquess of Canfield, white-haired, white-bearded and ensconced with a telescope in a landau, offered Sandman a curt nod, then pointedly looked away. A year ago, before the disgrace of Sandman’s father, the Marquess would have called out a greeting, insisted on sharing a few moments of gossip and begged Sandman to play for his team, but now the Sandman name was dirt and the Marquess had pointedly cut him. But then, from further about the boundary and as if in recompense, a hand waved vigorously from another open carriage and an eager voice shouted a greeting. ‘Rider! Here! Rider!’

  The hand and voice belonged to a tall, ragged young man who was painfully thin, very bony and lanky, dressed in shabby black and smoking a clay pipe that trickled a drift of ash down his waistcoat and jacket. His red hair was in need of a pair of scissors for it collapsed across his long-nosed face and flared above his wide and old-fashioned collar. ‘Drop the carriage steps,’ he instructed Sandman, ‘come on in. You’re monstrous late. Heydell scored thirty-four in the first innings and very well scored they were too. How are you, my dear fellow? Fowkes is bowling creditably well, but is a bit errant on the off side. Budd is carrying his bat, and the creature who has just come in is called Fellowes and I know nothing about him. You should be playing. You also look pale. Are you eating properly?’

  ‘I eat,’ Sandman said, ‘and you?’

  ‘God preserves me, in His effable wisdom He preserves me.’ The Reverend Lord Alexander Pleydell settled back on his seat. ‘I see my father ignored you?’

  ‘He nodded to me.’

  ‘He nodded? Ah! What graciousness. Is it true you played for Sir John Hart?’

  ‘Played and lost,’ Sandman said bitterly. ‘They were bribed.’

  ‘Dear Rider! I warned you of Sir John! Man’s nothing but greed. He only wanted you to play so that everyone would assume his team was incorruptible and it worked, didn’t it? I just hope he paid you well for he must have made a great deal of money from your gullibility. Would you like some tea? Of course you would. I shall have Hughes bring us tea and cake from Mrs Hillman’s stall, I think, don’t you? Budd looks good as ever, don’t he? What a hitter he is! Have you ever lifted his bat? It’s a club, a cudgel! Oh, well done, sir! Well struck! Go hard, sir, go hard!’ He was cheering on England and doing it in a very loud voice so that his father, whose team was playing against England, would hear him. ‘Capital, sir, well done! Hughes, my dear fellow, where are you?’

  Hughes, Lord Alexander’s manservant, approached the side of the carriage. ‘My lord?’

  ‘Say hello to Captain Sandman, Hughes, and I think we might venture a pot of Mrs Hillman’s tea, don’t you? And perhaps some of her apricot cake?’ His lordship put money into his servant’s hand. ‘What are the bookies saying now, Hughes?’

  ‘They strongly favour your father’s eleven, my lord.’

  Lord Alexander pressed two more coins on his servant. ‘Captain Sandman and I will wager a guinea apiece on an England win.’

  ‘I can’t afford such a thing,’ Sandman protested, ‘and besides I detest gambling on cricket.’

  ‘Don’t be pompous,’ Lord Alexander said, ‘we’re not bribing the players, merely risking cash on our appreciation of their skill. You truly do look pale, Rider, are you sickening? Cholera, perhaps? The plague? Consumption, maybe?’

  ‘Prison fever.’

  ‘My dear fellow!’ Lord Alexander looked horrified. ‘Prison fever? And for God’s sake sit down.’ The carriage swayed as Sandman sat opposite his friend. They had attended the same school where they had become inseparable friends and where Sandman, who had always excelled at games and was thus one of the school’s heroes, had protected Lord Alexander from the bullies who believed his lordship’s clubbed foot made him an object of ridicule. Sandman, on leaving school, had purchased a commission in the infantry while Lord Alexander, who was the Marquess of Canfield’s second son, had gone to Oxford where, in the first year that such things were awarded, he had taken a double first. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been imprisoned,’ Lord Alexander now chided Sandman.

  Sandman smiled and showed his friend the letter from the Home Office and then described his afternoon, though the telling of his tale was constantly interrupted by Lord Alexander’s exclamations of praise or scorn for the cricket, many of them uttered through a mouthful of Mrs Hillman’s apricot cake which his lordship reduced to a spattering of crumbs that joined the ashes on his waistcoat. Beside his chair he kept a bag filled with clay pipes and as soon as one became plugged he would take out another and strike flint on steel. The sparks chipped from the flint smouldered on his coat and on the carriage’s leather seat where they were either beaten out or faded on their own as his lordship puffed more smoke. ‘I must say,’ he said when he had considered Sandman’s story, ‘that I should deem it most unlikely that young Corday is guilty.’

  ‘But he’s been tried.’

  ‘My dear Rider! My dear, dear Rider! Rider, Rider, Rider. Rider! Have you ever been to the Old Bailey sessions? Of course you haven’t, you’ve been far too busy smiting the French, you wretch. But I dare say that inside of a week those four judges get through a hundred cases. Five a day apiece? They often do more. These folk don’t get trials, Rider, they get dragged through the tunnel from Newgate, come blinking into the Session House, are knocked down like bullocks and hustled off in manacles! It ain’t justice!’

  ‘They are defended, surely?’

  Lord Alexander turned a shocked face on his friend. ‘The sessions ain’t your Courts Martial, Rider. This is England! What barrister will defend some penniless youth accused of sheep stealing?’

  ‘Corday isn’t penniless.’

  ‘But I’ll wager he isn’t rich. Good Lord, Rider, the woman was found naked, smothered in blood, with his palette knife in her throat.’

  Sandman, watching the batsmen steal a quick single after an inelegant poke had trickled the ball down to square leg, was amused that his friend knew the details of Corday’s crime, suggesting that Lord Alexander, when he was not deep in volumes of philosophy, theology and literature, was dipping into the vulgar broadsheets that described England’s more violent crimes. ‘So you’re suggesting Corday is guilty,’ Sandman said.

  ‘No, Rider, I am suggesting that he looks guilty. There is a difference. And in any respectable system of justice we would devise ways of distinguishing between the appearance and the reality of guilt. But not in Sir John Silvester’s courtroom. The man’s a brute, a conscienceless brute. Oh, well struck, Budd, well struck! Run, man, run! Don’t dawdle!’ His lordship took up a new pipe and began setting fire to himself. ‘The whole system,’ he said between puffs, ‘is pernicious. Pernicious! They’ll sentence a hundred folk to hang, then only kill ten of them because the rest have commuted sentences. And how do you obtain a commutation? Why, by having the squire or the parson or his lordship sign the petition. But what if you don’t know such elevated folk? Then you’ll hang. Hang. You fool! You fool! Did you see that? Fellowes is bowled, by God! Middle stump! Closed his eyes and swung! He should be hanged. You see, Rider, what is happening? Society, that’s the respectable folk, you and me, well you at least, have devised a way to keep the lower orders under our control. We make them depend upon our mercy and our loving kindness. We condemn them to the gallows, then spare them and they are supposed to be grateful. Grateful! It is pernicious.’ Lord Alexander was thoroughly worked up now. His long hands were wringing together and his hair, already hopelessly tousled, was being shaken into a worse disorder. ‘Those damned Tories;’ he glared at Sandman, including him in this condemnation, ‘utterl
y pernicious!’ He frowned for a second, then a happy idea struck him. ‘You and I, Rider, we shall go to a hanging!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘It’s your duty, my dear fellow. Now that you are a functionary of this oppressive state you should understand just what brutality awaits these innocent souls. I shall write to the Keeper of Newgate and demand that you and I are given privileged access to the next execution. Oh, a change of bowler. This fellow’s said to twist it very cannily. You will have supper with me tonight?’

  ‘In Hampstead?’

  ‘Of course in Hampstead,’ Lord Alexander said, ‘it is where I live and dine, Rider.’

  ‘Then I won’t.’

  Lord Alexander sighed. He had tried hard to persuade Sandman to move into his house and Sandman had been tempted, for Lord Alexander’s father, despite disagreeing with all his son’s radical beliefs, lavished an allowance on him that permitted the radical to enjoy a carriage, stables, servants and a rare library, but Sandman had learnt that to spend more than a few hours in his friend’s company was to end up arguing bitterly. It was better, far better, to be independent.

  ‘I saw Eleanor last Saturday,’ Lord Alexander said with his usual tactlessness.

  ‘I trust she was well?’

  ‘I’m sure she was, but I rather think I forgot to ask. But then, why should one ask? It seems so redundant. She was obviously not dying, she looked well, so why should I ask? You recall Paley’s Principles?’

  ‘Is that a book?’ Sandman asked, and was rewarded with an incredulous look. ‘I’ve not read it,’ he added hastily.

  ‘What have you been doing with your life?’ Lord Alexander asked testily. ‘I shall lend it to you, but only so that you can understand the vile arguments that are advanced on the scaffold’s behalf. Do you know,’ Lord Alexander emphasised his next point by stabbing Sandman with the mouthpiece of his pipe, ‘that Paley actually condoned hanging the innocent on the specious grounds that capital punishment is a necessity, that errors cannot be avoided in an imperfect world and that the guiltless suffer, therefore, so that general society might be safer. The innocent who are executed thus form an inevitable, if regrettable, sacrifice. Can you credit such an argument? They should have hanged Paley for it!’