by L. A. Meyer
“Running away, are we, boy? You can run and hide, you know. Go ahead, I shan’t stop you,” sneered Flashby, advancing, point forward. He tried a feint at Randall’s sword arm, and then reversed and slashed at his head. Randall clumsily lifted his blade to ward off the blow, but not quite quick enough. A cut showed on Randall’s forehead, and then a trickle of blood ran down the side of his face. There was a shout from what was left of the spectators.
“Surely, Sirs, that’s enough!” said the Marshall, stepping between the swordsmen.
“No,” said Flashby.
“No,” said Randall, wiping the blood from his eye with the back of his hand.
“Very well,” replied the Marshall, stepping back out of the way. “Such a waste . . . but proceed.”
Flashby, breathing a bit harder now, had obviously planned to end this thing quickly, but that was not to be. He came at Randall hard, charging and slashing with his blade, but somehow Randall was able to parry each thrust and evade, however clumsily, each slash of Flashby’s sword.
Now fear was beginning to show in Flashby’s eyes. Sweat appeared on his brow. The drunken boy had managed to somehow fend off his attack, and he discovered that his easy opponent now stood much straighter, his eyes focused and unblinking, his blade beginning to get under Flashby’s guard, to snick in close to his now heaving chest.
Flashby redoubled his attack, swinging his sword cavalry style, in an arc, at Randall’s neck. Randall stepped aside, slipped his sword under Flashby’s, and enveloped it, sending it harmlessly off to the side. Then he put the point of his own sword on Flashby’s belly, just below his breastbone, and drove it home, all the way to the hilt.
“It seems you will be the one saving that place by the hellfire, Mr. Flashby, and not her,” said Randall, giving the blade a hard, sharp twist.
Flashby looked down, wide-eyed, unable to comprehend either the sight of the sword that had pierced his body or the flow of his life’s blood pouring down the blood gutter of Randall’s sword. Randall twisted the blade again, then pulled it out. Flashby stood for a moment, staring at his blood puddling on the ground, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell backward into the dirt.
The Marshall knelt down by him and put his ear to Flashby’s chest. Then he took up his hand and felt for a pulse. Shaking his head and getting to his feet, he said, “This man is dead. You may take your fellow officer away, gentlemen. You may tell your comrades that honor was, indeed, served.” The two stunned subalterns managed to pick up their suddenly deceased senior officer and drape his body across the saddle of his horse. After tying it down, they rode slowly off and were seen no more.
Shaking his head, the Marshall wearily walked back over to the body hanging under the gallows. Again he put his ear to a now still chest, again he lifted a dead hand and felt for a pulse. Again he shook his head.
“You may take her down, Mr. Trevelyne. Sheriff, I will now sign the death certificate. Justice has been done.”
Randall climbed back into the wagon, his bloody sword still in hand, and signaled to George Swindow to back up under the gallows. When Jacky’s body hung directly over the coffin, he said, “Stop.”
I could not take my eyes off the little stockinged foot that now pointed down at the coffin that would soon contain it and the rest of her. Soon, now, Sister. Soon . . .
Jim Tanner, who had leaped down to retrieve her shoe, to the great disappointment of the necromancers, was again back in the wagon.
“Open it up,” said Randall, and Jim, his face red with fury, lifted the lid of the coffin.
I looked in. There was a bit of silk cushioning, a small pillow, and to the side rested her pennywhistle. How touching. Well, this will serve, I thought.
“I’ll have my rope back, if you please,” said the Executioner from on high.
“You’ll get some of it back, Hangman, but not all,” answered Randall. He put his left arm around the waist of the hanged girl, and with the sword that was still in his right hand, slashed at the tight rope, severing it. He dropped his sword as the body slumped in his arms, and as gently as he could, he laid his burden in the coffin. “But you shall have this back.”
Randall untied the drawstring of the hood, gently drawing the hateful thing off her head and flinging it away.
I felt I could not bring myself to look upon her then, but I did. Her face was pale and her head lay to the side, her neck at a sharp angle, the thick rope concealing the marks that were sure to be on her throat. Her mouth was open, as it so often was in life when she smiled that vulpine grin, but now that mouth was slack, devoid of any mirth or joy. Her eyes, half-closed, stared out at nothing.
I could not stand seeing that. I reached out my left hand, and with my fingers, closed her eyes. Then, because I had promised, I began to put her body right.
“Jim. Your knife, if you please,” I said, and put out my hand. The blade was put in it and I leaned down and cut her hands free of the bonds. First I cut the rope that went around her waist, then slid the knife next to her wrists and cut the ropes that bound her hands. Then I tried to loosen the noose’s knot, but I could not, so I slipped the blade between her neck and the rope and began sawing away, but Randall appeared next to me and said, “Let me do that.” He took the knife from me and flung it back to Jim and put his fingers between her neck and the rope that had choked off her life and pulled on the knot and so was able to loosen it and take it off, her head bouncing senseless off the silk pillow as he did so. He threw the thing at the Executioner, but the wind caught it and it fell among what remained of the ghoulish crowd, which swarmed over the prize like flies on carrion.
I moved her body a little so she would lie flat on her back. I straightened her legs, putting her feet together. I took off her other shoe. Then I placed the pennywhistle on her chest and picked up her hands and crossed them on it. There, it is all done, Jacky. Almost all done.
“Forgive me, Lord, for what I am about to do,” I said as I climbed into the coffin and knelt over her remains, my knees just outside of hers in the narrow space. “Wait for me, Sister. I am coming with you,” I said as I drew out the loaded pistol I had concealed beneath my cloak the night before and held the barrel to my temple. “One grave will suffice for the two of us.” I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.
I believed I heard Jim Tanner cry, “No, Miss, don’t!” just before the hammer came down and the flint struck the steel that would ignite the powder charge, which would take me out of this woeful life.
But I felt not the shock of a cleansing bullet going through my brain, nor did I see the flash of divine light that would mean heaven was nigh, nor feel the soft comforting blackness of the Void. I saw not the hand of my friend extended toward me in the brightness at heaven’s gate, smiling her foxy grin and waiting for me to take that hand and cross over with her to the other side. No, I was rewarded only with a click and a dull pop, and when I opened my eyes, I saw only the still body of my friend lying below me and I knew that the pistol had misfired and that I yet remained in this wretched world.
I looked at the pistol and cocked the hammer again, then thrust the barrel in my mouth and fired again, and again, ramming the barrel against the back of my throat, tears of frustration pouring out of my eyes. But nothing . . . no, nothing but the smell of wet powder, and I knew the truth of it: Randall had found the pistol when I slept last night and had wet the powder.
My friend had gone over to the other side and I was left behind in this vale of tears, and there was no catching up with her now.
I fell down upon her body and wailed out my despair.
Then I felt hands upon me, and I was pulled from the coffin by Randall and Jim and put down on the floor of the wagon.
Oh, God, if you won’t let me go with her, at least take my mind and wipe it clean. Let me be a mindless lunatic, anything but this . . .
“The lid, Jim,” I heard Randall say. “Let’s get it on. There. Hand me the hammer.” Then I heard the sound of pounding,
which went on for a while and then stopped.
Randall, having driven in the last coffin nail, took the hammer and hurled it out into the crowd. He threw it with all the strength and rage that was in him, shouting, “Here, scum, see if there’s any black magic in that! The very hammer that nailed the coffin on Jacky Faber! May you all rot!” There was a yelp of pain when it landed, but again there was a struggle to gain the prize.
“Mr. Swindow, let us be gone,” said Randall, sheathing his sword and sitting down next to my crumpled form. He said something to Jim Tanner, who nodded and jumped out of the wagon.
George flicked the reins over the backs of the horses, and the cortege, small as it was, began the journey back toDovecote, bearing its sad burden. I felt Randall’s hand on my shoulder as we left that horrid ground, and it did give me some small measure of comfort, in spite of it all.
We traveled in silence for quite some time, a silence broken only by the snorts of the horses and the sound of their hooves on the road; that, and the steady sound of my own weeping. Randall rooted around and found the rum bottle he had been drinking out of earlier and took a long swig from it.
Presently, we rounded a curve in the road and I found that we had left the town entirely behind us. There was only countryside all around us now.
“Sit up, Sister,” said Randall. “Come, now, look about you. Do you not see the growing things all around?”
I sat and looked out on the green, growing fields.
“Yes,” I managed to say.
“There will be a harvest here in the fall. There will be one at Dovecote as well. Will you be there to see it brought in?”
I noticed that a troop of horsemen had come up and closed in around us. They wore the colors of Randall’s militia unit, but I cared little for that.
“Will you, Sister?”
“It is so hard,” I whimpered, “to keep going on.”
“She would want you to keep on. Certainly you know that.”
“I know, but . . .”
“We will abide, Sister, through this season and the next, and the ones after that, too. Will you be with those who love you, Sister, and see those harvests in?”
Exhausted, I bowed my head and nodded.
“I will abide,” I whispered.
“Good,” said Randall, putting the bottle to my lips and tipping it up. “Here, have a drink of this. It will refresh you.”
The liquid hit my mouth, spilling out, and I expected the harsh bite of rum on my tongue, but . . . what? Sassafras? Root beer? What?
“Would that the unfortunate Lieutenant Flashby had known what was in the bottle, eh?” Randall laughed. He leaned back and rapped sharply with his knuckles on the coffin. “How’s it going in there?”
“It is gettin’ a mite stuffy in here,” said a voice from inside the box. “Could you possibly pop the top a wee bit?”
Randall picked up a crowbar from beneath the wagon’s seat and inserted it under the lid of the coffin and pried it up a few inches.
Instantly, a nose and a pair of lips appeared at the opening and noisily sucked in the cool outside air. In my astonishment, I was reminded of a time when I was a young girl being taken by Randall on a winter walk along the shore of the frozen bay and we saw the nose of a young seal come up to an opening in the thick winter ice, to draw a life-giving breath.
Then I fell backward in a dead faint.
Chapter 44
THE BOSTON PATRIOT
Nov. 10, 1809—Special Edition
NOTORIOUS PYRATE and BRITISH SPY JACKY FABER HANGED
THE CONDEMNED SHOWED NO REMORSE AT END OF LIFE
Your Correspondent on the Scene, Mr. David Lawrence, reporting on the Events of the Day:
Protesting her Innocence to the last, the Criminal Jacky Faber, also known as Bloody Jack, the Scourge of the Caribbean; La Belle Jeune Fille Sans Merci; the Lily of the West; and the Belle of Botany Bay, was hanged today at 9:38 in the morning by Order of the State of Massachusetts, County of Plymouth, having been Convicted of High Treason against the United States. Incriminating Documents concerning detailed plans of the Fortifications at Fort McHenry had been found in her possession.
Other charges laid against her in the past include Piracy, Murder, Arson, Inciting to Riot, & Robbery.
The Condemned was brought out of the jailhouse at 9 o’clock and escorted to the Gallows by the local Sheriff, his Deputies, along with the Reverend Milton and the Federal Marshall. She appeared calm, but had to be steadied when she caught sight of the Gallows.
Recovering herself, she mounted the stairs and seemed ready to meet her Fate. She spoke some last words concerning her Innocence, and was led by the Executioner to stand upon the trap. The noose was put in place about her neck, and the Marshall had his hand on the lever that would spring the trap, when there were several interruptions. Those resolved, the trap was sprung, and she fell to her death. The crowd, which was considerable, was at the end sympathetic to her. For while they expected to find a shrill harridan being hanged, instead they found a very slight and pitiable young girl. A great mournful sigh was heard from the assembled when she was let off.
She suffered much and her struggles were long, but she was finally pronounced Dead at 9:58. Her body was claimed by friends for the burial at the Dovecote Estate, in Quincy.
More on this in our Regular Edition.
David Lawrence, Jr.
Chapter 45
James Fletcher
On the road to Dovecote Farm
Quincy, Massachusetts
My dearest Jacky, lost forever,
Now I truly write to a ghost. When I hurried off the ship that bore me to Boston, with the papers that would have exonerated you under my arm, I was joyful and full of anxious hope, but all that was cruelly dashed when I heard the hawker’s call and grabbed the hateful broadsheet to read the awful words. I was too late. Too late, dear God, always too late . . . My heart turned to lead, and so it shall remain.
I was too shattered by the terrible news to seek out any of your friends with whom to share our mutual grief and rage over the monstrous act that took your life. No, instead I hired a horse and am traveling alone to the place where they have buried you, so I may stand next to you one last time.
You might think, Jacky, wherever you may be in this universe—and I know you are somewhere—that I would stop these messages of the mind from me to you, but I know now that I will not. I will talk to you in this way to the end of my days, for you will always be with me, you, my brown-eyed sailor.
I am approaching Dovecote now, and, oh, what a sad, sad throng it must contain, and I must go to join them.
But I will contain myself, so as not to add to their woe. I’m sure you would ask that of me.
There’s the gatepost now.
With ashes in my mouth, and no joy in my heart, I say goodbye, Jacky, for now.
Always,
Jaimy
Chapter 46
“So, Miss Faber, it seems that at last you have consented to play Cordelia, as I knew you someday would!” crows Mr. Fennel, still in disguise as the Federal Marshall.
“And played her very well, I must say,” adds Mr. Bean, late the Humpbacked Hangman, who had by this time taken off the hump, along with the Executioner’s hood and the false whiskers he had worn beneath the thing. “The suffering portrayed, the nobility, the agony . . . My lips cannot frame the words, except to say, ‘a toast to our Cordelia!’”
“Hear, hear!” There are roars all around as glasses are lifted in my direction. This is a very festive gathering.
“It was not hard, since that harness hurt like hell,” I retort, rubbing my armpits, which had taken most of the punishment from the drop. The Cordelia dress also had straps that went about the waist and between the legs, so I was a bit sore in those places as well. “The worst thing was having to hang there, perfectly still, hardly breathing, with the hood over my head and quite blind to what was going on all around me. There I was trying to guess . . . not kn
owing if the trick was working, nor able to watch what was happening twixt poor Randall and that Flashby.”
“And, oh! The bit with the shoe, such a nice touch!” enthuses Mr. Fennell. “Pure tragic poetry!”
“Really, my dear friends, I did nothing,” I protest, exhausted from the events of the day. “It was you who saved my poor unworthy self, and I mean that. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and soul.”
“Well, then a toast to the master plotter, the one who set the whole game afoot, our own Mr. John Higgins!”
“Hear, hear! John Higgins!”
“Please,” says Higgins, in all modesty, shaking his head in refusal of the honor. “I merely helped design the plot, but the deed could not have been accomplished without the help of all those involved.” He lifts his glass. “A toast to the Grand Conspirators!”
“Hear, hear!”
All, or almost all, of the conspirators are seated in riotous celebration, not in the grand dining room at Dovecote but at a long table in a side room, a room with many windows so we can watch for the arrival of anyone who might question the proceedings of the morning in Plymouth. Although I have been saved once again by my loving friends, I am not yet exonerated of the false charges against my name. We wait for nightfall, when I will go onboard the Nancy B. and be spirited away to safety somewhere in this world, as I cannot remain here long. Jim Tanner had brought the schooner down from Boston, and she is now anchored off the beach at Dovecote. Where I will go, I do not know, but I ain’t thinking about that now. I’m just glad to be still alive and with my friends.
