Gallows Thief

by Bernard Cornwell

  The sound passed. The group of horsemen was on the main road, but they were not coming down this narrow lane. Sandman touched the hilt of the pistol stuck into his belt and he remembered a day up in the Pyrenees when, with a small forage party, he had been hunted by a score of dragoons. He had lost three men that day, all cut down by the straight French swords and he had only escaped because a Greenjacket officer had chanced by with a dozen men who had used their rifles to drive the horsemen away. There was no chance of a friendly rifle officer today. Would the horsemen search the lane? The hoofbeats had faded, but Sandman was reluctant to order the coach on for the vehicle was noisy, but he reflected that Meg’s scream had been noisier still and that had brought no pursuers, so he hauled himself up to the box and nodded to Mackeson. ‘Gently now,’ he said, ‘just ease her on.’

  ‘Can’t do nothing else,’ Mackeson said, nodding ahead to where the lane bent sharply to the left. ‘I’ll have to take her on the verge, Captain, and it’s a tight turn.’

  ‘Just go slowly.’ Sandman stood and looked back, but no horsemen were in sight.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ Mackeson asked.

  ‘There’ll be a farm down here somewhere,’ Sandman said, ‘and if the worst comes to the worst we’ll unhitch the horses, manhandle the coach round, and harness up again.’

  ‘She ain’t a vehicle built for rough roads,’ Mackeson said reprovingly, but he clicked his tongue and gave an almost imperceptible tremor to the reins. The lane was narrow and the turn was excruciatingly tight, but the horses took it slowly. The carriage lurched as the wheels mounted the verge and the horses, sensing the resistance, slackened their pull so that Mackeson cracked the whip above their heads and twitched the reins again and just then the leading left wheel slid down a bank obscured by grass and dock leaves and the whole carriage tilted and Mackeson flailed for balance as Sandman gripped the handrail on the roof. The horses neighed in protest, Meg screamed in alarm, then the spokes of the wheel, taking the weight of the whole carriage in the hidden ditch, snapped one after the other and, inevitably, the wheel rim shattered and the coach lurched hard down. Mackeson had somehow managed to stay on his seat. ‘I told you she ain’t built for the country,’ he said resentfully, ‘it’s a town vehicle.’

  ‘It ain’t any kind of bloody vehicle now,’ Berrigan said. He had scrambled out of the canted passenger compartment and helped the two women down to the road.

  ‘Now what will you do?’ Mackeson demanded of Sandman.

  Sandman teetered on the top of the coach. He was watching the road behind and listening. The wheel had broken loudly and the body of the carriage had thumped noisily onto the ditch’s bank, and he thought he could hear hoofbeats again.

  He drew the pistol. ‘Everyone!’ he snapped. ‘Be quiet!’

  Now he was sure he could hear the hooves, and he was certain the sound was getting closer. He cocked the pistol, jumped down to the road and waited.

  The Reverend Horace Cotton, Ordinary of Newgate, seemed to crouch in his pulpit, eyes closed, as though he gathered all his forces, physical and mental, for some supreme effort. He took a breath, clenched his fists, then gave an anguished cry that echoed from the high beams of the Newgate chapel. ‘Fire!’ he wailed. ‘Fire and pain and flames and agony! All the bestial torments of the devil await you. Fire everlasting and pain unimaginable and unassuaged weeping and the gnashing of teeth and when the pain will seem to you to be unbearable, when it will seem that no soul, not even one as rotten as yours, can endure such inflictions for a moment longer, then you will learn that it is but the beginning!’ He let that last word ring about the chapel for a few seconds, then lowered his voice to a tone of sweet reason that was scarce above a whisper. ‘It is but the beginning of your anguish. It is but the commencement of your punishment which will torment you through eternity. Even as the stars die and new firmaments are born, so you will scream in the fire which will rend your flesh like the tearing of a hook and like the searing of a brand.’ He leant from the pulpit, his eyes wide, and stared down into the Black Pew where the two condemned men sat beside the black-painted coffin. ‘You will be the playthings of demons,’ he promised them, ‘racked and burnt and beaten and torn. It will be pain without end. Agony without surcease. Torment without mercy.’

  The silence in the chapel was broken by the sound of mallets erecting the scaffold beyond the high windows and by Charles Corday’s weeping. The Reverend Cotton straightened, pleased that he had broken one of the wretches. He looked at the pews where the other prisoners sat, some waiting for their own turn in the Black Pew and others biding their time before they were taken to the ships that would carry them to Australia and oblivion. He looked higher up at the public gallery, crowded as it ever was on the day before a hanging. The worshippers in that gallery paid for the privilege of watching condemned felons listen to their burial service. It was a warm day and earlier in the service some of the women in the gallery had tried to cool themselves with fans, but no painted cardboard fluttered now. Everyone was still, everyone was silent, everyone was caught up in the terrible words that the Ordinary span like a web of doom above the heads of the two condemned men.

  ‘It is not I who promises you this fate,’ the Reverend Cotton said in warning, ‘it is not I who foresees your soul’s torment, but God! God has promised you this fate! Through all eternity, when the saints are gathered beside the crystal river to sing God’s praises, you will scream in pain.’ Charles Corday sobbed, his thin shoulders heaving and his head lowered. His leg irons, joined to an iron band about his waist, chinked slightly as he shuddered with each sob. The Keeper, in his own family pew just behind the Black Pew, frowned. He was not sure these famous sermons were of much help in keeping order within the prison, for they reduced men and women to quivering terror or else prompted an impious defiance. The Keeper would have much preferred a quiet and dignified service, mumbled and sedate, but London expected the Ordinary to put on a display and Cotton knew how to live up to those expectations.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Cotton thundered, ‘you will be taken out to the street and you will look up and see God’s bright sky for the very last time, and then the hood will be placed over your eyes and the noose will be looped about your necks and you will hear the great beating of the devil’s wings as he hovers in waiting for your soul. Save me, Lord, you will cry, save me!’ He fluttered his hands towards the ceiling beams as if signalling to God. ‘But it will be too late, too late! Your sins, your wilful sins, your own wickednesses, will have brought you to that dread scaffold where you will fall to the rope’s end and there you will choke and you will twitch and you will struggle for breath, and the struggle will avail you nothing and the pain will fill you! And then the darkness will come and your souls will rise from this earthly pain to the great seat of judgement where God awaits you. God!’ Cotton raised his plump hands again, this time in supplication as he repeated the word. ‘God! God will be waiting for you in all His mercy and majesty, and He will examine you! He will judge you! And He will find you wanting! Tomorrow! Yes, tomorrow!’ He pointed at Corday, who still had his head lowered. ‘You will see God. The two of you, as clearly as I see you now, will see the dread God, the Father of us all, and He will shake His head in disappointment and He will command that you be taken from His presence, for you have sinned. You have offended Him who has never offended us. You have betrayed your maker who sent His only begotten son to be our salvation, and you will be taken from before His great throne of mercy and you will be cast down into the uttermost depths of hell. Into the flames. Into the fire. Into the everlasting pain!’ He drew the sounds out into a quavering moan, and then, when he heard a gasp from a frightened woman in the public gallery, he repeated the phrase. ‘Into the everlasting pain!’ He shrieked the last word, paused so that the whole chapel could hear the woman sobbing in the gallery, then leant towards the Black Pew and dropped his voice into a hoarse whisper. ‘And you will suffer, oh, how you will suffer, and your suffering, your torment,
will commence tomorrow.’ His eyes widened as his voice rose. ‘Think of it! Tomorrow! When we who are left on this earth are having our breakfast you will be in agony. When the rest of us are closing our eyes and clasping our prayerful hands to say a grace of thanks to a benevolent God for providing us with our porridge, with our bacon and eggs, with toast and chops, with braised liver or even,’ and here the Reverend Cotton smiled, for he liked to introduce homely touches into his sermons, ‘perhaps even a dish of devilled kidneys, at that very moment you will be screaming with the first dreadful pains of eternity! And, through all eternity, those torments will become ever more dreadful, ever more agonising and ever more terrible! There will be no end to your pains, and their beginning is tomorrow.’ He was leaning out from the canopied pulpit now, leaning so that his voice fell like a spear into the Black Pew. ‘Tomorrow you will meet the devil. You will meet him face to face and I shall weep for you. I shall tremble for you. Yet above all I shall thank my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, that I shall be spared your pain, and that instead I shall be given a crown of righteousness for I have been saved.’ He straightened and clutched his hands to his chest. ‘I have been saved! Redeemed! I have been washed in the blood of the Lamb and I have been blessed by the grace of Him who alone can take away our pain.’

  The Reverend Horace Cotton paused. He was forty-five minutes into the sermon and had as long again to go. He took a sip of water as he stared down at the two prisoners. One was weeping and the other was resisting, so he would try harder.

  He took a breath, summoned his powers, and preached on.

  No horsemen came down the lane. The sound of their hooves sounded loud on the London road for a while, then they faded and at last vanished in the heat of the day. Somewhere, very far off, church bells began ringing the changes after matins.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ Mackeson asked again, this time with an undisguised note of triumph. He sensed that the wreck of the coach had ruined Sandman’s chances and his pleasure in that gave him a kind of revenge for the humiliations that had been heaped on him over the last day and two nights.

  ‘What I’m going to do,’ Sandman retorted, ‘is none of your damn business, but what you’re going to do is stay here with the carriage. Sergeant? Cut the horses out of the traces.’

  ‘I can’t stay here!’ Mackeson protested.

  ‘Then start bloody walking,’ Sandman snarled, then turned on Meg and Sally. ‘You two are riding bareback,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t ride,’ Meg protested.

  ‘Then you’ll bloody well walk to London!’ Sandman said, his temper slipping dangerously. ‘And I’ll make damn sure you do!’ He snatched the whip from Mackeson.

  ‘She’ll ride, Captain,’ Sally said laconically, and sure enough, when the team was cut from the traces, Meg obediently scrambled up the unfolded carriage steps to sit on a horse’s broad back with her legs dangling down one flank and with her hands gripping the fillet strap that ran along the mare’s spine. She looked terrified while Sally, even without a saddle, appeared graceful.

  ‘What now?’ Berrigan asked.

  ‘Main road,’ Sandman said, and he and the Sergeant led all four horses back along the lane. It was a risk using the London road, but the horsemen, if they were indeed looking for the missing carriage, had taken their search southwards. Sandman walked cautiously, but they met no one until they came to a village where a dog chased after the horses and Meg screamed for fear when her mare skittered sideways. A woman came out of a cottage and slapped at the dog with a broom.

  A milestone just beyond the village said that London was forty-two miles away. ‘A long day ahead,’ Berrigan said.

  ‘Day and night,’ Sandman said gloomily.

  ‘I ain’t staying up here all day and night,’ Meg complained.

  ‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ Sandman said, but at the next village Meg began to scream that she had been snatched from her home and a small indignant crowd followed the plodding horses until the village rector, a napkin tucked into his neck because he had been plucked from his dinner table, came to investigate the noise.

  ‘She’s mad,’ Sandman told the priest.

  ‘Mad?’ The rector looked up at Meg and shuddered at the malevolence in her face.

  ‘I’ve been kidnapped!’ she screamed.

  ‘We’re taking her to London,’ Sandman explained, ‘to see the doctors.’

  ‘They’re stealing me!’ Meg shouted.

  ‘She’s got bats in her belfry,’ Sally said helpfully.

  ‘I’ve done nothing!’ Meg shouted, then she dropped to the ground and tried to run away, but Sandman ran after her, tripped her, and then knelt beside her. ‘I’ll break your bloody neck, girl,’ he hissed at her.

  The rector, a plump man with a shock of white hair, tried to pull Sandman away. ‘I’d like to talk with the girl,’ he said. ‘I insist on talking to her.’

  ‘Read this first,’ Sandman said, remembering the Home Secretary’s letter and handing it to the rector. Meg, sensing trouble in the letter, tried to snatch it away and the rector, impressed by the Home Office seal, stepped away from her to read the crumpled paper. ‘But if she’s mad,’ he said to Sandman when he had finished reading, ‘why is Viscount Sidmouth involved?’

  ‘I’m not mad!’ Meg protested.

  ‘In truth,’ Sandman spoke to the rector in a low voice, ‘she’s wanted for a murder, but I don’t want to frighten your parishioners. Better for them to think that she’s ill, yes?’

  ‘Quite right, quite right.’ The priest looked alarmed and thrust the letter back at Sandman as though it were contagious. ‘But maybe you should tie her hands?’

  ‘You hear that?’ Sandman turned on Meg. ‘He says I should tie your hands, and I will if you make more noise.’

  She recognised defeat and began to swear viciously, which only made the rector believe Sandman’s claim. He began using his napkin like a fly-swatter to drive his parishioners away from the cursing girl who, seeing that her bid for freedom had failed, and fearing that Sandman would pinion her if she did not cooperate, used a stone watering trough as a mounting block to get back onto her horse. She was still swearing as they left the village.

  They trudged on. They were all tired, all irritable, and the heat and the long road sapped Sandman’s strength. His clothes felt sticky and filthy, and he could feel a blister growing on his right heel. He was still limping because of the damage he had done to his ankle jumping onto the stage of the Covent Garden Theatre, but like all infantryman he believed the best way to cure a sprain was to walk it out. Even so it had been a long time since he had walked this far. Sally encouraged him to ride, but he wanted to keep a spare horse fresh and so he shook his head and then fell into the mindless trudge of the soldier’s march, scarce noticing the landscape as his thoughts skittered back to the long dusty roads of Spain and the scuff of his company’s boots and the wheat growing on the verges where the seeds had fallen from the commissary carts. Even then he had rarely ridden his horse, preferring to keep the animal fresh.

  ‘What happens when we get to London?’ Berrigan broke the silence after they had passed through yet another village.

  Sandman blinked as though he had just woken up. The sun was sinking, he saw, and the church bells were calling for evensong. ‘Meg is going to tell the truth,’ he answered after a while. She snorted in derision and Sandman held his temper in check. ‘Meg,’ he said gently, ‘you want to go back to the Marquess’s house, is that it? You want to go back to your chickens?’

  ‘You know I do,’ she said.

  ‘Then you can,’ he said, ‘but first you’re going to tell part of the truth.’

  ‘Part of?’ Sally asked, intrigued.

  ‘Part of the truth,’ Sandman insisted. He had, without realising it, been thinking about his dilemma and suddenly the answer seemed clear. He had not been hired to discover the Countess’s murderer, but rather to determine whether or not Corday was guilty. So that was all he would tell
the Home Secretary. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he told Meg, ‘who killed the Countess. All that matters is that you know Corday did not. You took him out of her bedroom while she was still alive, and that’s all I want you to tell the Home Secretary.’

  She just stared at him.

  ‘That is the truth, isn’t it?’ Sandman asked. She still said nothing, and he sighed. ‘Meg, you can go back to the Marquess’s house. You can do whatever you want with the rest of your life, but first you have to tell that one small part of the truth. You know Corday is innocent, don’t you?’

  And, at last, at long last, she nodded. ‘I saw him out the street door,’ she said softly.

  ‘And the Countess was still alive?’

  ‘Of course she was,’ Meg said. ‘She told him to come back the next afternoon, but by then he was arrested.’

  ‘And you’ll tell that to the Home Secretary?’

  She hesitated, then nodded. ‘I’ll tell him that,’ she said, ‘and that’s all I’ll tell him.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Sandman said.

  A milestone told him that Charing Cross lay eighteen miles ahead. The city’s smoke filled the sky like a brown fog while to his right, glimpsed through the folds of darkening hills, the shining Thames lay flat as a blade. Sandman’s tiredness vanished. Part of the truth, he thought, would be enough and his job, thank God, would be done.

  Jemmy Botting, hangman of England, came to Old Bailey in the early evening to inspect the finished scaffold. One or two passers-by, recognising him, called out ironic greetings, but Botting ignored them.

  He had little to inspect. He took it on trust that the beams were properly bolted together, the planks nailed down and the baize properly secured. The platform did sway a little, but it always had and the motion was no worse than being on the deck of a ship in a very slight swell. He pulled the peg that held the trapdoor’s support beam in place, then went down below into the gloom beneath the platform where he seized the rope that tugged the beam free. It gave way with a judder, then the trapdoor swung down to let in a wash of evening sunlight.