The Sign of the Gallows

by Susanna Calkins

  ‘Why not just confront Mr Corbyn then and there?’ Lucy asked. ‘Why go to the trouble of working with Pike and Dev to kill him?’

  ‘That wouldn’t work with my plan, now would it?’ Mrs Wallace said. ‘My main goal was to find out where Mr Emerson was. I assumed when I first heard he’d been set free that the murderous fiend had likely fled London altogether. Later, though, when I thought about where he could have gone, it occurred to me that he might strive to forge a new identity for himself, as so many others had done. Then I wondered what kind of identity such a man could adopt. Surely he had no useful skills. I thought he might seek to be a tutor, so that he would not have to dirty his hands with real work. I congratulate myself on having read him so well.’ She sniffed.

  ‘As for Paul Corbyn,’ she continued, ‘I knew he had no reason to know me from the trial, so I just contracted him as a mercer. After I’d purchased a few objects from him, I gave him the ring and the letter, and paid him a handsome sum to take it to Dev and Pike, along with some other household goods. Delivered him to them! The foolish man! Who would have thought he’d make a copy of my message and keep it in a second pocket!’

  ‘The message you wrote to Pike and Dev, in which you pretended to be Miss de Witte, did not instruct the men to kill Mr Corbyn,’ Lucy said.

  ‘I most certainly did not instruct them to kill that guard,’ Mrs Wallace insisted, sounding peeved. ‘Those idiot innkeepers took matters into their own hands. I thought they would just beat Mr Corbyn until he told them where Philip was staying.’ She shook the bars. ‘Those idiots – they went and killed him with the death I wanted for Emerson! I had to track him down myself.’

  ‘How did you do that?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I knew that it would just be a matter of time, assuming he was still in London. I convinced Professor Wallace to begin cultivating the scholars in the area, with the hope that one might know Emerson and invite him to accompany him one evening. That came to pass just recently.’

  The sound of a man weeping interrupted them. It was Professor Wallace, who’d evidently been listening to the conversation from the back room. ‘Oh, Joanna!’ he cried, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘How can you have done such a terrible thing? Frame Lucretia? Frame me? Your own husband, whom you purported to love. How could you do such a thing?’

  Mrs Wallace’s eyes grew cold. ‘You brought this on yourself by behaving in such an abandoned way with Miss de Witte after we were already married. When I married you, I knew that we had little love between us.’ She sighed. ‘You’ll find your solace in your books soon enough.’

  Swallowing, Lucy finally asked the question she’d been wanting to know all evening. ‘Why did you treat me as you did?’

  Mrs Wallace sighed. ‘You were a means to an end, Lucy. At first, I was terrified when I realized you’d met Pike and Dev – those idiots – at the hanging tree, especially after you kept looking for information about Mr Corbyn’s identity. Then I thought how perfect it all was. I could feed you bits and pieces of information, and control what secrets you discovered and when. With your help, I was able to convince you that Miss de Witte and my own husband were to be blamed.’

  ‘You thought I was willing and gullible,’ Lucy said.

  Mrs Wallace laughed, although the sound lacked mirth. ‘That may be so, but clearly’ – she gestured to the cell – ‘I underestimated you, which I most heartily acknowledge and regret.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  When Adam declared it high time for Lucy to return home to Master Aubrey’s, she did not demur. They walked in silence through the quiet foggy streets. At some point, Adam drew Lucy’s arm in his. The snow from earlier was already melting into puddles that sparkled under the dancing light of the lantern.

  ‘I was tricked by that terrible woman,’ Lucy said, after taking a deep breath. ‘How could I not have realized it? She took advantage of my trust in her and my fervent belief that the friendship she offered was true.’ She gulped. ‘It is difficult to realize that when I thought she was helping us, she was in fact using us to throw suspicion on Miss de Witte, and even her husband.’

  ‘Lucy, you are berating yourself unnecessarily. Mrs Wallace tricked a lot of people, Father and me included,’ Adam replied. ‘Her duplicitous nature caused many a despicable and wanton act, which will be hard to recover from, but she will be brought to justice for her crimes.’

  ‘She spoke of me as her dear acquaintance, her dear companion. I truly believed that she had a high regard for me.’ Here Lucy gulped. ‘Her falsehoods inspired in me a false pride.’

  Adam gently patted her hand where it rested in the crook of his elbow. ‘Those who know you well only have the highest regard for you. Pray, do not view her treachery as commonplace.’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder how we can ever really know people, Adam!’ she exclaimed. ‘False identities. Liars. They’re all around us.’

  ‘That may be true. However,’ he said, stopping and putting his hands on her shoulders, ‘that is not true of all people. Let us be who we are to each other, Lucy. Let us not be Master Adam and Lucy the Hargraves’ servant.’ His gaze was intense, capturing her completely.

  ‘Other people won’t accept that,’ she said, tears coming to her eyes. ‘They’ll always say I’m not of your station. That I’m not worthy of you.’

  ‘Lucy, Lucy! The people who matter to us will know,’ he replied, wiping her tears away with his fingers. He placed his hands on her cheeks and inclined her face toward him. ‘Besides, it is I who am not always worthy of you. You are so quick to care, so quick to do what is just – there is so much I have learned from you.’ Leaning down then, he kissed her. As she closed her eyes, a sense of hope and love flooded over her. Perhaps there is a path forward.

  Several weeks later, Lucy set the type for the piece that Master Aubrey had approved the night before. As usual, the title was quite lengthy and in a larger italicized font.

  Order Restored – The Strange and True Account of Three Murderers, Who Will Hang in Accordance with the Law. One Escaped Murderer and Two who Killed the Newgate Guard who set him Free on the Night of the Great Fire, namely Philip Emerson, a Cambridge scholar, and Pike and Dev Browning, two innkeepers from Hoddesdon.

  Below that, in smaller font, was another headline.

  Additionally, two attempted murderesses sentenced to prison. Mrs Joanna Wallace, wife of the mathematician Neville Wallace, sentenced to ten years for attempted murder, and Miss Lucretia de Witte, three months for assault.

  Lucy shivered as she placed the woodcut in the top right-hand corner; it was an image they used with some regularity, depicting two witches and two criminals. She was grateful not to have to attend the hanging. Lach would go instead, selling all three pieces at Tyburn – the piece she’d written describing Paul Corbyn’s death, this True News they were currently setting, and the Last Dying Speech of Philip Emerson.

  She’d spoken to Emerson a few days earlier, before he was transferred to Newgate Prison to await his execution. Many of his words she’d used to put his final confession to paper as the Last Dying Speech. ‘I only ever wanted to be a musician,’ he’d told her. ‘My father, who died during the plague, insisted that I get a university education. Hammett de Witte was one of my only friends. But when I met Ellie Browning, she was singing. Her voice was light and beautiful, like a bird, and I was enchanted. I just wanted to have that beautiful voice to myself. When she brought me the love messages from Hammett, I was enraged, as I was the one who introduced them. Mrs Wallace was quite right when she said I was an ugly man. I am an ugly man, not just on the outside, but that I could take two such beautiful souls out of this world will be a regret.’ Here he’d paused in his speech to wipe his tears, which were flowing easily now. Lucy had handed him a handkerchief but did not say anything. When he was ready, she dipped her quill in the ink and began to write again.

  ‘When Jack Campbell – you know him as Mr Corbyn – set me free on the night of the dreadful conflagration, I thought the
good Lord had thought fit to give this sinner a second chance. I lived in fear of discovery, so it was not a life worth living. No love, no life – and very little song. When I received the message that fateful morning, which I now know was from Mrs Wallace, I was overwhelmed by my fear and anxious thoughts. When Miss de Witte attacked me with the knife, I had no other thought than to keep her from destroying the very little life I had regained.’ He concluded then, in the typical vein of many of these speeches. ‘I repent of my sins and ask for forgiveness. In this way, I end my last dying speech, full of repentance and a warning to others to avoid my sinful and shameful ways.’

  ‘The crossroads are just a little distance ahead,’ Lucy said to Mrs Corbyn. The woman had come to her the day before, dressed from head to toe in black, and asked Lucy if she might accompany her to the hanging tree. Although she did not wish to return to that site, Master Aubrey had overheard the request. ‘Go and sell at St Giles-in-the-Fields,’ he had said. ‘Those pieces will sell well there.’

  The woman nodded. She’d been silent for much of the journey, only breathing harder as she pushed a small cart through the mud. The cart did not appear to hold any of Mr Corbyn’s household goods, but rather bags of different weavings and colourful clothes. ‘I’m going to try my luck at the market, too,’ she said, when she’d seen Lucy looking at the pack. ‘I’m going to be Mariah Campbell again. No longer Mrs Corbyn. I never even knew who that was. No sense being something I’m not. I’ve left the house and everything behind. Besides, I’m certain the good Lord will punish me for our misdeed, even more than we’ve already been punished. Thank the Lord that the priest saw fit to bury him as Jack Campbell – that is my only solace in this whole matter.’

  At the hanging tree, Mrs Corbyn kneeled down in prayer. ‘You foolish man!’ she cried. ‘Why did we have to steal to better ourselves? Look at the world in which you’ve left me in. I cannot survive in that false role another moment. Why did you ask me to do such a wrongful, immodest thing?’

  During the woman’s teary tirade, Lucy hung back. As she listened to the woman rant, some of her words started floating in her world. ‘A new world doesn’t come without hard work! No one is going to hand you a new life! You must work for it! Become someone. You can’t make society accept you just by telling them you belong.’

  Lucy found herself nodding. In many ways, Mrs Corbyn was echoing some of the thoughts in her own heart as well and reminded her of the conversations she’d had with Adam, and with Duncan, too.

  ‘Are you certain, Lucy?’ Duncan had asked her, earlier that morning, when she’d tearfully told him of her decision. ‘I can give you a good home, a family. You can still work at Master Aubrey’s as you please. Can Hargrave offer you the same?’ She’d stood there, twisting her skirts, unsure how to explain her heart more fully. ‘Never mind, Lucy,’ he’d said, his voice gentle. ‘I can see that you are still besotted with him. Should anything change, please come back to me. I will wait for you until the day I see you wed.’

  Mrs Corbyn straightened up. ‘I’ll take my leave of you now.’

  Lucy turned away from the hanging tree and stared around her at the crossroads. She could turn back and take the road to London. She could go north or east and end up in Covent Garden or St Giles-in-the-Fields, two places she’d already been. She eyed the path leading to the east. ‘Time to make some decisions! Spitalfields market is that way,’ she said to herself. ‘Let me try something new. Who knows what awaits?’ Hefting her pack over her shoulder, she forged ahead.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I was inspired to write The Sign of the Gallows after I had the image of Lucy standing at a crossroads, which felt apt, given the big decisions still ahead of her. Crossroads also occupied an interesting space in early modern European folklore generally. The bodies of people who had committed suicide could not be buried in consecrated ground, and so it was not uncommon to bury them at crossroads, so that their restless spirits would not find their way back home. Such practices led to a common apprehension of crossroads, especially those in more secluded locations. However, I wanted Lucy to be braver and less superstitious than many of her contemporaries, which seemed reasonable to me, because she had spent many years with the magistrate, a man whose attitudes and behaviours aligned with the rational, scientific precepts associated with the emerging Enlightenment.

  I was further inspired when I began to research the new developments in mathematics, especially those focusing on ciphers and cryptography, that had been steadily advancing throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The story of Sir Francis Walsingham, who successfully deciphered an encoded message between Anthony Babington and Mary, Queen of Scots, which resulted in her demise, demonstrated how seriously the Crown and scholars alike took the new field of study. I drew particularly on the life of English mathematician, John Wallis, to inform the background of my character Professor Neville Wallace, who, among other things, de-ciphered Royal missives captured by Parliamentary forces during the English Civil Wars. By the mid-seventeenth century, coded messages were becoming more common, not just for concealing military secrets, but also for communications between merchants and in some cases, romantic partners. I spent many hours working out the ciphers in this book, using some of the more common principles discussed in popular tracts, such as Frances Bacon’s exploration of ciphering, which was an intriguing, if a bit daunting, task.

  Lastly, I’ve also always been fascinated by what happened to the inmates of Newgate prison during the Great Fire. Until recently, there was a long-standing narrative of the so-called ‘miracle’ of the Great Fire, drawn from Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis, in which there were only six or so confirmed deaths, despite half the city being destroyed. Recently, this narrative has been questioned, and indeed, there is no clear record of what happened to the inmates. An orderly evacuation seems unlikely, although it seems possible that some may have escaped before the notorious prison succumbed to the flames. Collectively, these are the kinds of questions and details that drive my story, and I do my best to be as faithful as possible to the larger social, cultural, political and economic trends of the period.