She watched as the hood was pulled down over his face and the executioner slung the looped rope over the beam, tightened it, then pulled it down over Alexander’s head.
The vicar gently touched his fingers to Alexander’s elbow, then opened a small black bible, from which, above the riotous clamour of the crowd, he conveyed the last perceptible words that Alexander would hear.
As the hangman strode to the front of the cart, about to drive the horse forward and remove the footing from beneath Alexander, the crowd began to clap and cheer. But, to Ann’s horror, Alexander did not wait and kicked himself off the back of the cart, much to the hangman’s disgust.
She watched as the rope snapped tight and his legs began to kick wildly.
As usual, the hundreds who had gathered to witness his death screamed and shouted with delight—even the injudicious number in her immediate vicinity who believed Alexander to have been her brother.
Inexplicably, as she continued to watch him die, she thought of the moment when he had accepted her advocated remedy for his rope burn injuries and his hands were covered in viscous bubbling snail trails.
Ann looked over at the windows of the Black Horse Inn. The seated men were smiling, nodding and talking animatedly to each other, but without taking their gaze from Alexander’s writhing body. There was still no sign of Jonas Blackwood and doubt began to skulk into Ann’s mind that she had been correct in her identification. What on earth would a smuggler be doing dressed up like that and in the company of the upper classes? It surely hadn’t been him, she began to tell herself.
A disappointed groan and an instant disbanding of the crowd told Ann that Alexander had finally died. She remained still while the masses bustled around her. Quickly, she was left almost alone.
The body stopped twitching and swaying; the driver pushed the cart back below him once again. Taking Alexander by the hips, the hangman tossed him onto his shoulder before expertly loosening the noose and, freeing Alexander from the gallows, dropped him roughly into the coffin. She watched the vicar utter another prayer, the words ‘forgive’, ‘wretched’ and ‘soul’ reaching her ears.
The hangman placed the lid on the coffin and shouted for the driver to move on.
Within a minute the cart was out of sight and the street had returned to normality.
Ann held her attention on the door of the public house opposite, watching as the line of dignitaries streamed out. Even if she had been incorrect in her identification of Jonas Blackwood, the man whose gaze she had met from the upstairs window had not appeared by the time the last of the men from upstairs had left the inn.
Crossing the street, Ann entered the inn, desperate for a pint of rum. In a morbid parallel to the execution, the bar was several deep with an influx of dry-throated people, whom the two perspiring barmaids were struggling to serve. Standing back, she searched the room in vain for Jonas Blackwood. He had clearly scarpered moments after she had spotted him.
Ann turned around and caught a glimpse of the gallows through the window and suddenly the idea of drinking here became an uncomfortable one. Taking one final glance around the room, she walked out of the door and onto the street. She knew the town and its multitude of inns and public houses intimately, yet she began to wander aimlessly, her desire for rum having abated.
To her surprise, she found herself avoiding the familiar backstreets of Dover; evading the tiny filthy houses rife with poverty, larceny and prostitution, which had been a part of her life for as long as she could recall. Something had changed which meant that she was viewing life here with an odd sense of detachment, but she didn’t know what had changed exactly. Standing outside St James’s Church, she found herself staring up at the old castle perched high on the hill, as she pondered the thought.
‘Soberness,’ she said, her lips hanging onto the word unduly, as she mused its significance and implications.
‘Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise,’ someone said from behind her.
Ann twirled around to see a pretty young lady in a handsome yellow silk dress and matching bonnet, holding open a door to the building behind her. ‘What be that?’
‘Proverbs twenty, verse one,’ the lady answered, stepping aside as a young girl entered the building saying, ‘Good morning, Miss.’ The lady looked at Ann with a fixed stare. ‘You mentioned sobriety.’
Ann studied the building a little more carefully. It was a fine three-storey place, painted white; the type lived in by wealthy merchants.
Another well-turned-out young girl went inside with a gentle bob of her head and saying, ‘Good morning, Miss Bowler.’
‘Do this be some kind of a church?’ Ann asked with a sneer. ‘There bain’t no bible verse what I ever be hearing what ain’t condemning me to the fires of hell.’
The woman laughed heartily and pointed at the small plaque beside the door.
Ann took a fleeting glance at the sign, then rolled her eyes with indifference.
‘It says Miss Bowler’s Academy,’ the lady said.
Ann shrugged and began to walk away.
‘I teach girls to read and write,’ she called after her, before adding, ‘and women!’
Stopping in her tracks, Ann turned her head back towards the lady, eyeing her with a detached inquisitiveness. ‘And what good do that be doing someone like me?’
The lady smiled. ‘Perhaps if you could read the bible, you would see that forgiveness commonly follows condemnation.’
Uncertainty prevented Ann from wandering off indifferently. Something curious about the lady and her fancy words made her stay a little longer.
‘Four shillings per lesson,’ the lady said. ‘For girls and ladies who need to learn to read and write.’
‘Don’t know what I be needing,’ Ann commented. ‘A pub, a church or an academy.’
The lady laughed, as another proper girl who could have been no older than thirteen entered the building.
Ann joined in the laughter, seeing the absurdity of herself with a lurid flash of clarity: a drunk criminal sitting in a classroom among the young daughters of the town’s bankers, solicitors, officials and surgeons. Without another word, she continued down the road towards the quay, all the while laughing.
The Strond Street clock tower had just struck midday. Three hours until the carriage departed.
Ann stood at the edge of the quay, watching life humming around her. Finally, she surrendered to herself and entered the Gun Inn, the air filled with the smells of the sea, as it bristled with mariners, sailors and fishermen.
Approaching the bar, she ordered two pints of rum and water and found herself a dim corner, where she could sit alone and release the distressing morning into a stupor. The first glass she drank quickly, spilling some down Hester’s dress in her haste to speed up intoxication and soften the edges of her feelings.
Having finished the second drink and ordered a third, Ann’s thoughts began to detach from themselves and trail off into a void before she had fully explored and understood them. Then another idea or worry would present itself, before following the same course into obscurity. The last thought—barbed with the hooks of regret—which she managed to maintain, before insensibility took full hold of her, was walking away from Miss Bowler’s Academy and entering this God-forsaken place.
Chapter Fourteen
Morton carefully entered the dark bedroom. In one hand he held the baby monitor and in the other a fresh cup of coffee, which he placed down on Juliette’s bedside table. Planting a kiss on her forehead, he threw open the curtains, sending a stretched rectangle of warm spring light across the bed.
‘Oh, God…’ Juliette slurred, withdrawing herself under the duvet.
‘Morning,’ he said with a forced attempt at breeziness. His short sleep had been intruded upon by an obscure fusion of the many jobs which needed doing this morning before everybody arrived, and utterly bizarre dreams, which even Freud would have had trouble decrypting. The final dream, which h
ad been so shocking as to actually wake him up at the end, had been about this afternoon’s dinner. Everyone seated at the table had been drinking copious amounts of champagne and, one after the other, had stood up and given a speech. Through alcohol-laden tears, Juliette had used her platform to decry the current state of the police force and to reveal that she was pregnant again; his Uncle Jim had then risen and had spoken in such a strong Cornish accent that nobody had understood him, yet they had pretended that they had by raising their glasses encouragingly at moments where they felt it to have been appropriate; his half-brother, George, whom he had yet to meet, was played in the dream by a television actor whom Morton could now not name, and he had spent some time declaring to the table how wondrous his upbringing had been as an only child before taking his seat; Laura, Morton’s biological father’s wife, chose to speak about a moment in her career as an obstetrician when she had delivered a multiple-pregnancy of eighteen healthy babies; his Aunty Margaret and his father, Jack had then risen together and spoken jointly, telling the guests that they had always loved each other and were going to spend the rest of their lives together, before fleeing the room; finally, Morton had stood and begun to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ until the horror of the situation forced his eyes open, leaving him with absolutely no desire to return to sleep whatsoever.
He had been up for over two hours now, yet still elements of the dream plagued him. As he had cleaned the kitchen, he had given serious consideration to the possibility of his biological parents’ rekindling their love after more than forty years of having been estranged. He instantly castigated himself, remembering that it hadn’t been love at all. It had been a week-long holiday fling between two teenagers from two different continents that had resulted in—facing facts—an unwanted pregnancy.
Juliette’s cocooned voice asked, ‘What time is it?’
‘9.27,’ he said in a tone nuanced with the suggestion that her stretch in bed ought now to be over.
Her face poked out from the duvet, tortoise-like, her eyes tightly shut. ‘What time’s everyone getting here?’
‘Lunchtime.’
How she took that information, it was hard for Morton to know, for her head retracted sharply back under the duvet. ‘Right,’ he said, leaving the room.
Downstairs in the lounge he began to tidy away the abundance of Grace’s toys, which were strewn liberally all over the floor.
A low nonsensical babble began to erupt from the baby monitor, informing Morton that his time preparing the house was over; a swell of mild panic quickened his heart-rate as his mind flicked through the catalogue of jobs which still needed to be done before anybody arrived. Grace’s gibberish became suddenly clearer: ‘Dadda! Dadda! Dadda!’
Switching off the monitor, he bounded up the stairs to her bedroom, where he found Juliette picking her out from her cot bed. ‘Happy birthday, darling! Now say Mummy!’ Juliette said, a little exasperatedly. ‘Mummy!’
‘Dadda,’ Grace replied, opening her arms towards Morton.
‘Here you go,’ she said, handing Grace over to him. ‘I’m going to shower and try and wake up a bit, then we’ll give her her presents.’
‘I’ll make you some breakfast,’ Morton called after her. ‘Happy birthday, Grace!’
He carried Grace downstairs, sat her on the kitchen floor and watched with exasperation as she crawled over to her box of wooden blocks and promptly tipped them all over the floor. She began to select individual blocks, setting them on top of each other until the tower collapsed.
Morton watched her proudly and felt the tight anxiety from worry about the state of the house slowly dissipating. And with more new toys about to be added to the mix, the visitors would have to accept the house the way they found it.
‘See,’ Juliette said, two hours later. She was sitting beside Grace on the lounge floor, setting up a zoo with Grace’s new plastic animals. ‘You needn’t have worried. The house is tidy, the bathroom’s clean and the beds are made. We’re ready.’
‘Hmm,’ Morton agreed, slightly absentmindedly, as he gazed out of the window onto Mermaid Street. All he saw, however, were the first vestiges of the year’s many tourists, taking advantage of the unusually warm March day.
From his pocket, his phone beeped with the arrival of a text message. He quickly pulled his phone out and read it aloud. ‘Hi. Traffic awful – be a couple of hours late – sorry.’
‘Which parent is that from?’ Juliette asked with a wry smile.
‘Aunty Margaret,’ he answered, pocketing his mobile and checking outside once more.
‘They’re not going to get here any sooner because you’re constantly curtain-twitching,’ Juliette said, holding a small Dalmatian in front of Grace. ‘Doggy. Doggy.’
Grace glanced briefly to Morton, as if to check that what Juliette had said was correct, then said in a crystal-clear voice, ‘Dadda—doggy.’
‘Good girl!’ Morton exclaimed, bending down to kiss her.
‘Great—she says ‘doggy’ before ‘mummy,’ Juliette complained. ‘That’s just brilliant.’
Morton returned to the window, his chuckle swiftly morphing into a minor gasp. ‘Oh, God, they’re here!’
Juliette jumped to her feet just as the doorbell rang. ‘Go and open it, then.’
‘How do I look?’ he asked, his breathing suddenly becoming shallow.
‘What are you? A teenage girl? Go and open the door.’
Morton moved into the hallway and took a deep breath, wishing that his heart would slow down. Then, with Juliette at his side and Grace at his feet, he opened the front door.
Five animated, excitedly spoken greetings tangled in the air, before Jack, who was standing directly in front of the door, pulled Morton into an embrace. ‘How you doing, son?’ he asked, slapping him on the back, before bending down and planting a kiss on the top of Grace’s head. ‘Hi! How are you?’
‘Doggy,’ Grace said, removing the Dalmatian’s front paws from her mouth and offering it to him.
‘Yeah, that’s right—doggy!’ Jack said. ‘Happy birthday!’ He kissed her again, then stood back and moved to hug Juliette. ‘Lovely to see you again. Okay, introductions…’ he stood to one side. ‘This is my wife, Laura and this is our son, George.’
Morton embraced Laura as though she were an old friend, yet this was their first meeting. ‘It’s lovely to meet you,’ he said with a wide smile.
‘You too,’ she beamed. ‘It’s such a great story you guys have!’
‘Isn’t it just,’ Morton agreed, taking her in more fully. Like Jack, her face, hair and the way in which she dressed removed a good decade from her sixty-two years. Her dark eyes were enhanced by subtle make-up and her hair was trimmed into a neat blonde bob. She wore tight blue jeans and a small black leather jacket.
Laura took a step up towards Grace and Juliette, leaving Morton standing before his half-brother, George. He had seen plenty of photographs of George, yet to actually see him in the flesh was somewhat startling. He, just like Morton, had inherited many of Jack’s physical features. The three of them shared the chestnut-brown eyes, the dark hair and the handsome boyish facial detail. The main difference with George was that he was taller than Morton and heavier set.
‘Christ, look at you two,’ Juliette exclaimed, evidently having seen the same thing.
‘Wow—there’s no mistaking your paternity,’ Laura quipped.
‘Hi,’ Morton finally said, shaking his brother’s hand.
‘Nice to meet you,’ George said, with a deferential shyness.
‘How are you?’ Morton asked.
‘Exhausted,’ George answered with a thin smile.
‘Why don’t you have a sleep? Your bed’s made up. I’m afraid you’re in Grace’s room; not with her in there, I hasten to add.’
Juliette scooped Grace into her arms and directed everyone inside, asking them if they were hungry or thirsty.
‘I might just do that,’ George said. ‘Leave you guys to catch up.’
&
nbsp; Morton returned his smile, moving up the steps into the house, all the while wondering at George’s comment, which obliquely placed him on the periphery of the reunion. He hadn’t considered before now that George would be anything other than delighted to have a ready-made older brother thrust upon him.
Morton closed the front door, observing his half-brother carefully as he joined the others in the kitchen. Jack and Laura were seated comfortably at the table, discussing the house with Juliette. George slid in beside his father and Morton was sure that he exhaled in a way which suggested irritation. George ran the nail of his index finger down a grain line in the table, then looked up and caught Morton staring at him. Rather than smile, as Morton might have expected him to, he just stared back.
The short uncomfortable stalemate was broken when Morton smiled and glanced away, trying to latch on to whatever it was that Juliette had been saying.
‘I wasn’t very keen on this house at first, was I, Morton?’ she said.
‘No, I think you were after horizontal floors and vertical walls,’ Morton recalled with a laugh.
Juliette rolled her eyes. ‘And I still don’t know why we have two front doors…but that’s another question.’
‘How old is this beautiful place?’ Laura asked.
‘Built in the early 1500s,’ Juliette replied, leaving Laura’s mouth agape in awe.
Morton looked at the time, then said, ‘What do you feel like doing? It’s going to be a good three or four hours until dinner. We can stay here, you can go for a lie-down or, since it’s a nice day, we could go for a walk—show you a bit of Rye and get a cup of tea somewhere?’
The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7) Page 14
