How the Hangman Lost His Heart

by K. M. Grant

  Hew turned to face his tormentor. “Why all this trumpery playacting, Major?” he asked. “We fought together at Culloden and we fought well. Why are you going to have me executed?”

  The major leaned back. “Because you defied me, Captain Ffrench,” he said with chilling simplicity, “but mainly because I can.” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “I wonder …”—he glanced down to see where his kick had sent the hatbox—“should we get Colonel Towneley out to see what he can add to our discussions?”

  Alice shrank away as Slavering retrieved the hatbox and opened it. But even he hesitated when he saw Uncle Frank’s head under Mabel’s hat. He turned on Dan. “You! Skinslicer! Come and deal with the traitor’s head,” he ordered brusquely. “You are used to having blood on your hands. Come on, man, look sharp.”

  With a helpless look at Alice, Dan shuffled over. Taking care first to remove the hat, he carefully eased Uncle Frank out and settled him on the desk amid the hanks of wigmaker’s horsehair. The dead face was a strange and not very attractive color, but the countenance was far from repulsive and Dan found himself muttering apologies for this new disturbance. The colonel’s eyes seemed not only to forgive but to offer warm encouragement.

  This was Major Slavering’s first close-quarters encounter with a disembodied head and it took him some time to approach it face-to-face, as it were. And certainly there was no warm encouragement for him in the colonel’s eyes. Indeed, Frank offered only a scowl that, for some reason, made Slavering feel as though he had eaten a hedgehog. “Well,” he choked, trying to look at Alice but unable to drag his gaze from Uncle Frank, “what a sight! I have to say, Mistress Towneley, at least your head will be a great deal prettier.”

  Alice couldn’t help giving a small squeak.

  Hew leaped up. “You know that the king would never sanction the execution of a girl like Alice,” he declared loudly.

  Slavering swung around. With the head behind him, he was back to his usual vile self. “I know nothing of the sort. Rather the opposite. Head stealing, horse stealing, treason, and treachery”—he counted Alice’s offenses off on his fingers—“she will need a good advocate. The king shows no mercy to traitors and criminals of whatever age or sex.”

  “I have my horse back and so do you.” Hew refused to be quiet.

  “I doubt whether Justice Peckersmith will grant her pardon on that basis.” Major Slavering laughed mirthlessly. “But then she could be spared any kind of trial at all if only you will confess your own crimes. All depends on you, Captain Ffrench. As I have said before, just a couple of the right words and we could lose her and her uncle Frank on the road north. Perhaps it might help to ask yourself this: should a captain in Kingston’s Light Horse be too lily-livered to die to give a young girl back her freedom?” He walked over to Alice, drew his sword, and delicately traced around her neck with the point. She tried not to waver, but was not very successful. “An easy chop for the executioner, this neck, wouldn’t you say, Skinslicer?”

  Dan was on his knees. “Look, Major Slavering—sir—your majorness, your honorableness. Why not just execute me? I’m the guilty one really. After all, it was me who persuaded missy here to get away with the head. I could’ve brought the colonel back, I really could’ve. But I didn’t. And I’ll say whatever you like. I’ll make green blue or say fish fly. Do you hear? Whatever you like, so then you can string me up and spike my head. But, sir, your most eminent sirness, let her go. Please let her go. I’m ready for a public confession. Just tell me what to say and I’ll say it, or get somebody to write it down and I’ll put my thumbprint on it.”

  Slavering snorted but Alice almost cried, so stirred was she by Dan’s heroism. He would sacrifice himself for her! She didn’t deserve it. Yet his courage gave her courage of her own. “You will not, Dan Skinslicer,” she stated. “None of this is your fault, so please get up and let’s have no more talk of confessions and thumbprints.” She pulled at Major Slavering’s arm. “You know full well that the whole responsibility for Uncle Frank’s head and the stolen horses lies with me and, although I may not be as brave as my uncle Frank, I’ll never be sorry for what I did. Do your worst, Major Slavering, but leave Dan alone. He’s perfectly innocent. If I have to die, I’m quite ready.” She hoped very much that this was true.

  Hew exclaimed, but Alice raised her hand as imperiously as she could. “As for Captain Ffrench,” she said, “he is as good a servant of King George the—well, whatever number George we have reached—as you are. It’s too stupid to pretend he’s not. So I don’t know what you really want, Major Slavering. All I know is that you’re not going to get it.”

  At this, Hew reached over to Alice and the next thing Slavering saw was their fingers slip together. Then his wrath was mighty. Uttering the foulest oaths, he raised his sword and brought it slicing down between them, almost burning their skin as their hands parted just in time and the sword clanged to the floor. “You’ll all go to trial, then,” he exploded. “All of you. There will be no more offers of ways out. Not one of you will be spared.” He roared for soldiers to come and remove the prisoners, slamming the flat of his hand again and again on the table. How had this silly child managed to inject the soul of that two-effed ninny with iron? He stopped raging long enough to scrutinize Alice as she went past. She stared right back at him and her stare, disconcertingly, reminded him of Uncle Frank’s. Yet had he turned to look at the colonel’s head at this particular moment, he might have been surprised, for as Hew, Dan, and Alice were hustled through the door, Uncle Frank’s expression was no longer either encouraging or scowling. In fact, he was, quite openly, beaming with pride. Nor did this beam diminish when the troopers drew lots to see who would dare put him back in his hatbox. Nor even when he was dropped unceremoniously inside and the lid clapped on again. It was still there when the troopers kicked the box around just to show they cared nothing for heads. And when finally the box was hurled into the cell along with Alice, Dan, and Hew to await the judgment of Lord Chief Justice Peckersmith, Uncle Frank was beaming still.

  12

  The trial gained notoriety before it had even begun. The combination of a dashing Kingston’s Light Horse captain, a girl, a hangman, and a head was irresistible to the newspapers springing up in London and the news traveled north. The Manchester Gazette and the Newcastle Courant carried reports and people heard rumors of it in taverns and coaching houses from the Welsh valleys to the Suffolk fishing harbors and from London to Berwick. The more interest it aroused, the more dashing, beautiful, and noble, or disgraceful, brazen, and wicked, depending on your point of view, Hew, Alice, and Dan became. Slavering’s troopers found themselves in heavy demand to fill in details, which they did with more enthusiasm than accuracy, happily supping the free ale that was their reward. Whole families made outings to Temple Bar to look up at the empty spike on which, they were told, Uncle Frank’s head would shortly be reinstated.

  The news did not, however, permeate behind the hilly fastness that cut Towneley Hall off from the outside world. The Towneleys heard news only when it was at least two months out of date. So while his brother’s dead head and his daughter’s living body languished in a prison cell and were the subject of taproom gossip, Sir Thomas Towneley measured his raindrops and his wife busied herself turning her cheeses and telling her rosary beads. When they thought of Alice at all, it was with regretful sighs that her nurse had not instilled in her the habit of weekly letter writing.

  Lady Widdrington and Ursula, on the other hand, knew about Alice’s capture almost at once. Bunion heard the news first at the coachmaker’s and, with one wheel only half-repaired, jumped onto the box and galloped back to Grosvenor Square to tell the footman, who ran upstairs to tell the two ladies, who were squabbling in the small drawing room, as they had been ever since Alice disappeared.

  This morning, Ursula was, as usual, flapping her hands and hopping up and down, screeching, “For God’s sake, how many times? Can’t you understand? Frank was never coming to dinn
er. He has lost his head and Alice has gone off with it. LOST HIS HEAD, you daft old wig wearer. God give me strength! Do I have to spell it out again? Frank’s dead and Alice is missing. Now, for pity’s sake, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?”

  Lady Widdrington’s mouth contracted to a pinhead. “How foolish you look and what nonsense you talk, Ursula. Heads are not things you mislay. Although,”—her lips wrinkled ever more—“it might be better if you could mislay yours. If you found a different one, you might catch a husband yet.”

  Ursula’s wig had just begun one of the more violent of its characteristic wobbles when the youngest footman exploded into the room, his excitement banishing any sense of propriety. Perched like a bird on her chair, Lady Widdrington listened, her head darting back and forth as he told his tale. Ursula squawked periodically. When the torrent of words came to an end, she was triumphant.

  “There now, Mother, what did I tell you?” she gabbled, but faltered when she saw her mother’s face.

  Just for a moment Lady Widdrington was a trembling old lady, jolting with shock from her bald head to her wizened toes. “Ursula?” Her voice was quavery. “Ursula? Did he say that Frank is dead?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “And Alice entirely at the cruel mercy of a skinslicer?”

  The footman tried to put her right about this, but Ursula shut him up. Desperate to take full advantage of this one moment of lucidity, she was not going to waste it on a hangman. “Something like that, Mother. But lordy, lordy, who cares? We must run from Grosvenor Square before they come to arrest us too. Hurry, Mother, hurry, hurry, hurry. We’ll set off at once for my Aunt Blackstone’s house in Chiswick—BUNION! BUNION! FETCH THE CARRIAGE! Come ON, Mother.”

  Lady Widdrington stared at Ursula. “I don’t like Chiswick.” Tears bumped an uneven course down her cheeks.

  “We can’t stay here.” Ursula shook her mother hard and tried a new tactic. “Listen, Mother. Frank wouldn’t want us to be executed. Listen, listen! Can’t you hear his voice? I do believe his ghost is telling us to go to Chiswick! Gooooo toooo Chiiiiiswiiiick. I can hear him, can’t you?”

  Lady Widdrington’s eyes rolled and Ursula’s heart sank. But suddenly her mother sprang up. “Send for Bunion,” she cried rather unnecessarily. “The coach, the coach! Harness the horses!”

  Babbling with relief, Ursula scrambled to her feet. “Didn’t you hear? Bring the coach around! Bring it around at once! My mother demands it!”

  Minutes later they bumped into each other at the front door. Ursula was wearing her traveling cloak, Lady Widdrington her most sparkling jewelry. “For goodness’ sake, Mother,” Ursula shrieked, “you won’t need jewelry if you don’t have a HEAD.” She was cut off, midcry, by a knock on the door. With a strangled hiccup, she scurried into the shadows, her nose twitching like a terrified mouse. Surely they were not to be arrested now, just at this last moment?

  Lady Widdrington stayed exactly where she was and settled her priceless tiara even more crookedly into her wig.

  The tiara was the first thing that caught the eye of Mrs. Ffrench as the door was opened and it took her a little time to adjust her sights downward to the powdered face beneath. “Lady Widdrington?”

  “Who else would I be?” Alice’s grandmother fixed Mrs. Ffrench with a baleful glare.

  Mrs. Ffrench tried to sound strong. “I’m Captain Hew Ffrench’s mother.”

  “Who?”

  Mrs. Ffrench explained, trying not to be disconcerted by Ursula, who had crept out of the shadows and was standing behind Lady Widdrington, signaling through bizarre gesticulations that her mother was, in fact, dotty. Lady Widdrington, who could see Ursula’s pantomime reflected in the paint on the door, kicked smartly backward as she listened, catching her daughter’s ankle with commendable accuracy.

  None of this filled Mrs. Ffrench with hope. She had come to Grosvenor Square to beg Alice’s grandmother to use any influence she had to prevent Hew from receiving the ultimate punishment. She herself was going to write to the Duke of Cantankering, she said, but she needed to know that Lady Widdrington would not try to gain her granddaughter’s release at the expense of Hew’s life. As for Dan Skinslicer, Mrs. Ffrench was worried about him too. The man had a wife, so everybody was saying, and it seemed he had been caught up in this escapade by mischance. “And so was my son,” Mrs. Ffrench insisted firmly. “He was trying to help Alice get Colonel Towneley’s head home out of the goodness of his heart.”

  Lady Widdrington tilted her own head farther and farther over as she listened until eventually her wig began to topple and plumped onto the floor, the tiara skidding under the sideboard. As Ursula scrabbled to rescue both from the dust, Mrs. Ffrench gave up entirely. These lunatic women, with their chalky scalps and eye-popping fashion sense, were from another planet entirely. She should never have come.

  Reunited with her wig and tiara, Lady Widdrington pushed past Mrs. Ffrench, hopped quickly through the door, down the steps, and, before Ursula could stop her, sprang into the carriage that Bunion had obediently brought around. Fizzing like champagne, she implored him to whip up the horses and was gone. Ursula smacked her hands together. “Stop! Oh, stop! STOP! Don’t you love me at all? Are you leaving me to the mercy of the mob, YOU UNFEELING CROW?”

  Mrs. Ffrench watched, wanting to do some smacking herself. When Ursula ran back into the house in a fine fit of hysterics, Mrs. Ffrench did not stay to comfort her.

  Lord Chief Justice Peckersniff was at home, a handkerchief over his nose. In either hand he held a beautifully heavy bag filled with money he wanted to invest. He did not wish to make a great fortune, only enough to buy a very large house in which he could have some hope of escaping from his wife, the very woman who had been having new teeth fitted on the day of Uncle Frank’s execution. Despite all Peckersniff’s hopes, the new teeth had done nothing to sweeten his wife’s breath, which was still whiffy as a dead pig, and while the Lord Chief Justice did not wish to divorce her, he could no longer bear to be in the same room.

  When he heard a carriage draw up, he stuffed the bags into the false seat of his chair and hid behind the curtains, only to find Lady Widdrington staring at him through the window. He could scarcely not ask her in. To start with, their conversation was extremely jerky, since Lady Widdrington could not quite remember why she had come and Peckersniff would not help her. Naturally, he knew now that the girl he had spotted on the gallows at Uncle Frank’s execution was not the hangman’s niece but the offspring of highly respectable parents and this rather less respectable grandparent. However, he most certainly didn’t want to discuss Alice in case he was required to sit in judgment over her on the bench. “My dear lady, dear lady,” he said gallantly after a few very uncomfortable minutes, “how well your wig looks, really very well, but my, my, is that the time? I must keep a very important appointment. Can I show you—”

  “My granddaughter has a head,” said Lady Widdrington. She had been rocking from foot to foot, but now she approached him very fast and Peckersniff had to swerve out of her way.

  “And a very pretty one too, I expect,” he replied nervously. He vaguely recalled that Alice had been pretty and anyway, in his experience, all grandchildren were pretty to their grandparents.

  “She must keep it.”

  “Indeed she must,” agreed the judge. “And I am sure, dear lady, that she will, sure she will, I say.”

  Lady Widdrington frowned. “And there’s a man with two effs,” she said, “although why he has two effs I couldn’t say. Anyway, he should keep his, or it will end up in a hatbox, like Frank. Or is he coming to dinner?” She looked expectantly at Peckersniff. “He’s not, though, is he? Body in a box. Was that because Frank only has one eff?”

  Peckersniff waved his hands, as if by catching the words and putting them in a different order he might discover what on earth they meant. Lady Widdrington followed his hands for a moment or two, then began to cry. Peckersniff was horrified. Now he would have to give her his handkerchief! He st
ood like a paralyzed heron, one bandy leg rooted to the floor. But it was no good. He couldn’t allow a lady’s nose to run uncovered. He leaned toward Lady Widdrington. Unfortunately, she mistook his gesture, ignored the handkerchief, and wiped powder all over his smoking jacket.

  Some faint girlhood memory triggered by the feel of the silk lapel cheered Lady Widdrington. She stopped crying and swiftly became spookily flirtatious. “Oh, sir!” She gave a girlish simper. “I want my granddaughter back, and the hatbox she is so attached to, and the man with two effs, because his mother asks so nicely. You could do that for me, couldn’t you?” She rolled back her lips. At least her gums weren’t black. “I’ve a daughter,” she wheedled. “She’s a little plain but you’d never know it in the dark.”

  “Madam, madam, madam!” cried the scandalized judge. “Please. I have a wife, a wife, indeed, whom I’m expecting shortly, expecting shortly, d’ye hear? Now, I can do nothing to help you. Nothing. Justice must be done, justice I say. That is clear. That is sufficient. That is all.” He remembered his position and frowned the frown of a man with the power of life or death. It had taken a long time to perfect this frown, but it had been more useful than a whole study of books. It was useful now. Lady Widdrington backed away and, skillful as a sheepdog, Lord Chief Justice Peckersniff hurried her out the way she had come in.

  It was not until he saw her face peering from the carriage window, like a ferret in a hutch, that he sank into his chair and placed a clean handkerchief over his face. But there was still no peace. Under his left buttock was something hard and bulgy. He tugged it out. It was a jeweled bracelet, thick as a horse’s girth, and valuable as a king’s ransom. The scrawly writing on the note attached simply said, “Ffor you iff you ffree Alice, Ffrank, and Ffrench.” Peckersniff held the treasure out as if it was contaminated, but the diamonds and rubies winked their devilish eyes at him, reflecting back not himself but a pleasure dome with parklands and a small gazebo all of his own. When his reverie was broken by his wife’s ponderous tread and her infernal “Peckie, my love?” he gave a great groan and slipped the price of freedom into his pocket.