How the Hangman Lost His Heart

by K. M. Grant

  13

  It was standing room only in the court and the jurymen looked very self-important as they took their seats. It was rumored that the king himself might pay a visit and, although he never actually showed up, a small box was kept empty for his use. The first dispute was about the head, for Uncle Frank too was to be tried for colluding in his own head’s removal and there had already been much discussion as to whether or not he should be openly displayed in the courtroom. Some argued that the sight would be too upsetting for the ladies, but from the ladies’ objections it was clear that they would be more upset if Colonel Towneley, about whom they had heard so much, remained hidden. The clerk of the court hesitated, looking to Peckersniff for guidance.

  The Lord Chief Justice, two handkerchiefs at his nose today, didn’t care either way. All he wanted was silence in the court. “Oh, very well, very well I say. Put out the head,” he ordered impatiently. There would be no peace until this was done.

  There were gasps as Uncle Frank appeared. Mrs. Ffrench and Mabel, who were in the body of the court, sat a little straighter and Lady Widdrington, who was sitting right at the front of the gallery above, gave a shrill kind of whistle. But nobody fainted, for Frank’s head looked rather fine on its horsehair base. What was more, he had such an intelligent look in his eyes that several times during the morning Peckersniff inadvertently found himself addressing him directly.

  Proceedings began. Alice was to be tried first and the charges against her were read out by a pompous young clerk. However, the charges were so badly framed that she couldn’t honestly plead guilty and waxed very indignant as she was sent back to the holding cell during a short refreshment recess. “I didn’t conspire against either the king’s majesty or his person,” she complained to Hew and Dan. “I never heard such a thing. I’ll plead guilty to theft but nothing else.”

  They nodded encouragement at her. All three had been imprisoned together in Newgate for nearly a fortnight before their trial began and during that time Hew’s regard for Alice had grown tenfold, for she had comported herself with admirable fortitude and common sense. An outside observer might have thought her brazen or rash as she teased the prisoners in neighboring cells with more wit and spirit than either Dan or Hew could muster. The whole prison had heard her too, as she whiled away the hours with unlikely stories of rescues and resurrection. The guards found her almost cheeky.

  But in those dead hours of the night, when the icy chill had made her bones ache and the groans echoing off the walls brought her worst nightmares to life, her courage had often failed her, and Hew and Dan had stayed by her while she sobbed quietly. “Will it be terrible, what they do to us?” she had asked again and again. “I’m not brave. I don’t want to die.” They had tried to reassure her and warm her, but usually failed at both.

  It was a relief, in many ways, that the trial had started, even though Alice could not help flinching when the usher’s voice boomed to summon her back once the break was over.

  Hew hugged her. “You’re as brave as a lion,” he said, “and a credit to your uncle. The jury will surely see you meant no harm.” Dan said the same, but their encouragement was forced. After she had gone, they were awkward with each other, each dreaming their private dreams in which the other, most certainly, did not feature.

  By the time Alice was back in the dock, the witnesses had lined up and she saw Major Slavering, arms crossed, licking his lips like a dog-fox anticipating a feast. Alice gave him a look of queenly disgust.

  The witnesses were many and all had seen the same thing. The accused, Alice Towneley, had stolen the head of her uncle, Colonel Francis Towneley, from the top of Temple Bar. She had then run off with it and, while doing so, had caused an affray in Grosvenor Square and later in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. She had also stolen a mount rightly belonging to Kingston’s Light Horse and in their individual and collective opinion, for all her angelic looks—Alice squirmed at this point—she was as wicked as any highwayman and worse.

  The jury took only moments to find her guilty as charged and Peckersmith had no option but to prepare himself for the sentence. He tried not to think of Lady Widdrington’s bracelet bribe, but just as he reached sadly for his black cap Alice finally lost her temper and shot to her feet. “Now look here!” she cried before anybody could stop her, “I just wanted to bury my uncle Frank properly. Is that treason? The king took my uncle’s life, but what on earth can he achieve by flaunting his dead head? My goodness me”—she got that phrase from her mother—“what century are we living in? Civilization is our watchword”—that was from her father—“yet we still chop people up and use their poor bodies as flags.” Quite ignorant of court etiquette, she turned on the jurymen. “Haven’t any of you got uncles or aunts, or any relations for that matter? Would you be happy to see their heads pecked by birds on top of Temple Bar? I mean, even if you didn’t like them, they surely deserve better than that. I only did what any of you would have done. Look at my uncle Frank.” The jurymen swiveled around and found Frank looking suitably contrite. Major Slavering leaned forward, enjoying the show. “I loved him.” Alice’s voice was a little choked now. “That’s why I did it. If the king was here, I’d tell him that. Only he’s not.” She sat down with a thump.

  There was great whispering among the jury. Many of them thought about their uncles and aunts. Then one was pushed toward Peckersniff. “We think, possibly, mercy, Your Honor,” he murmured. “Not the drop. She’s very young.” That juryman can never have known how very nearly he was kissed. The bracelet sparkled again in Peckersniff’s mind. But only for a moment. The jury were likely to be much harder on the captain. Nevertheless, if they had already lost their appetite for executions, Hew Ffrench might yet be lucky. He asked Alice to stand and, to conceal his relief, spoke to her with all the severity of his office. “Mistress Towneley, you are guilty as charged,” he said, “but mercy has been recommended by a jury of your peers. I therefore do not sentence you to execution, but rather banish you from London. Indeed, you are to go back to your family’s home, which, I understand, is in Lancashire, and once there you are to remain within five miles of its front door for at least ten years. You must go there right now. Do you understand?”

  Alice understood, but she was not finished. “Well, thank you very much, but I’m not going right now,” she declared. “I’m going to wait for my friends.” Ignoring the soldiers, she climbed out of the dock in a manner not at all ladylike and went quite deliberately to sit beside a bristling Mabel. She could hear Major Slavering grinding his teeth but she would not look at him.

  Peckersniff pinned his handkerchief more firmly to his face. “Next,” he called faintly.

  Hew was brought in, his legs in shackles, his clothes a disgrace, and his eyes red and rheumy. From his expression, however, he might have been going to a ball. One of the guards had told him of Alice’s sentence and he was light-headed with joy. Whatever happened to Dan and himself, at least she was safe and would soon be home, under her father’s care. As he climbed into the dock, Hew smiled broadly at Uncle Frank. But something in Frank’s demeanor advised caution and, indeed, when Hew looked around his smile faded. Up in the gallery, Major Slavering, enraged by Alice’s easy escape, was busy expounding his erstwhile captain’s many iniquities to an audience not unwilling to listen, and although Alice, now sitting straight in front of him, appeared utterly confident and even Mabel seemed cautiously optimistic, it was clear from his mother’s face that she, at least, was expecting the worst.

  His mother turned out to be right. Slavering had done his work well. The evidence against Hew was damning. He had, by his actions, expressed sympathy with the Jacobite cause and he was responsible for the loss of the king’s property. Some witnesses swore blind they had heard Hew urging Alice to flee. Others, with their own eyes, had seen him hide the head. Yet more could vouch for his treasonable thoughts because, after the battle of Culloden, he had told them to spare the wounded specifically so that they could live to fight against K
ing George another day. The witnesses grew more and more fanciful and although the jurymen clearly disbelieved some of the wilder claims—one man swore that Hew really was Bonnie Prince Charlie—that only made the lesser charges more credible. It was, at any rate, indisputable that Hew had allowed two criminals to escape. Even Hew did not deny this.

  Peckersniff could feel the bracelet slipping away. Then he had a brainwave. “Maybe, Captain Ffrench, the girl affected your judgment?” he asked deliberately slowly, to allow Hew time to see the bait. “Have you been led astray, young man? If Alice Towneley, as comely a wench as I have ever seen, has obliged you to do things that you would not, in your right mind, otherwise have done, this may be taken into account.” At this, both Major Slavering’s ribald laughter and Lady Widdrington’s cackle shook the rafters, but despite Mabel muttering, “Say yes, you weak fool, admit it,” Hew said nothing. Peckersniff could do no more. A guilty verdict was now inevitable.

  When the jury pronounced it, Alice shot up again, but Mabel pinched her until she sat down. “You’ll only make it worse,” she snarled. “How I wish Hew had never met you. I’d like to execute you myself.” Her mother had to hold the bench to stop herself collapsing.

  Peckersniff felt sorry for them, but sorrier for himself, and he would not look at Lady Widdrington. He passed the awful sentence gazing at the floor. Even now, he tried to do his best for Hew and just sentence him to hang, but the public gallery, pumped and primed by Slavering, was having none of that. It was only right that Hew should suffer the same fate as the man whose head he had helped to steal. The scene grew so noisy that Dan could hear it from his cell. He knew what it meant. He had heard it before and when Hew, gray as prison porridge, was brought back, Dan took him from the rough grasp of the guard and sat him gently on the floor. Neither could speak, but Dan took Hew’s hand and shook it hard before being dragged up to the courtroom himself.

  When Dan reached the dock, Mabel and Mrs. Ffrench were clinging to each other and Alice, now a shrunken and forlorn figure, had drawn her knees up under her chin. Above, a frenziedly animated Lady Widdrington kept bawling something at the Lord Chief Justice and, for reasons Dan could not fathom, kept shaking not her fist but her wrist. Peckersniff’s handkerchief had risen so far up his face that his eyes were barely visible, and anyway they were shut. This was a nightmare.

  The usher saved the day by banging on the floor so hard that the vibrations made Uncle Frank’s teeth clack and the pitchy hair flop over his face. As silence fell once more, Dan gazed sorrowfully at the head and itched to tidy it up, for he was a professional still. But now he had to concentrate.

  “Dan Skinslicer?” the clerk asked him. “Hangman and jobbing executioner?”

  “I am,” said Dan.

  The crowd shushed at each other as their skin crept with delicious horror. A real live hangman in the dock! A man who made a living strangling, slicing, burning, or flaying. Surely he must be a monster? It was disconcerting to find somebody who looked like the sort of husband every decent mother might wish for her daughter.

  Peckersniff reopened his eyes. At least he knew what to do with this one. The City of London was currently short of men who could hang, draw, and quarter without making a complete mess of the thing. He knew it and he was sure the jurymen had been told. There would surely be witnesses lined up to prove this simpleton not guilty.

  Dan answered every question politely and as accurately as he could, since he had seen too much death to be afraid of it. Yes, he had helped Alice to escape with the head. Yes, he had ridden Major Slavering’s horse without the major’s permission. “And he is a very good horse, Your Honor and honored jury members,” Dan said. “I took a very good horse.” He was so calm and accommodating that Peckersniff began to sweat. This dunderhead was going to send himself to the very gallows from which he was supposed to be saved. Then a man ran in clutching Johanna and the jury breathed again. The wife! She would surely cry heartrending tears and plead for him?

  But within moments it was clear that if anybody was going to send Dan to the gallows it was Johanna. In fact, Dan hardly recognized her, for she was plump and round and dressed from head to toe in scarlet satin, imported in great rolls from France by her new smuggler lover. She had been delighted when the court messenger turned up. Nothing would suit better than to play the desolate wife for a fat fee and at first she had meant to. However, her natural ill temper soon got the better of her and, despite her silks and her painted lips, she began to berate Dan like a fishwife, calling him every name under the sun. Even Peckersniff himself could not bring her diatribe to an end, though he used his best frown. The courtroom, which at first found Johanna funny, grew bored and began calling out. Alice wanted to shout too, but her voice would not obey her anymore. She looked only at Uncle Frank. How had it come to this? He looked back at her, but his expression was a mystery.

  The usher beat the walls again. “Silence in the court,” he roared. The noise abated a little, but simmered, still ready to blow.

  Peckersniff, at his wits’ end, addressed Johanna himself. “My dear lady,” he said, picking his words with care, “you have clearly had a great deal to put up with.”

  “Aye. I should never have married the stupid numbskull. He conned me, pretending he was clever and able to provide a lady with the good things in life.”

  Peckersniff sat up. “Are you saying that your husband is a very stupid man?”

  “Aye. The stupidest. He’s so stupid that when we married it was me who ’ad to find the parson and all. He’s so stupid that sometimes he even forgets to grab a tip from those he tops. Stupid? Lord Justice, sir, ’e’s stupider than your big toe.”

  Peckersniff circled her like a pointer. “Yes, my dear, I see, I see. Very stupid. So stupid that you have to think of everything?”

  “Everything.”

  “So stupid that he can’t even make a decent living from hanging people?”

  “Even that stupid.”

  “Thank you, madam, you may step down.”

  Thoroughly pleased with herself, Johanna left the box.

  Peckersniff turned at once to the jurymen. “You heard the lady,” he said. “As this man’s wife, she surely knows him better than any person living and we hear from her own lips, my good sirs, from her own lips, that the major sin of this wretched hangman is not treachery but stupidity! He could no more plan something than fly. He’s a dolt, a dimwit, an absolute block of wood, one of those unfortunates to whom intelligence is unknown.” The crowd rustled uneasily. Where was this going? Peckersniff shook his head, oozing regret. “My good fellows,” he declared at last, with a pained smile, “we cannot execute the dolts and the dimwits, or who on earth would be left?”

  The crowd hummed and hawed. Gaining confidence, Peckersniff flowed smoothly on. “This man was, in my humble estimation, dragged into this unfortunate affair by mistake and was not clever enough to get himself out. In view of this, we must drop the case against him. Indeed, there is no case. I feel this most strongly.” There was a groan of disappointment. “But,” Peckersniff continued brightly, “we can still punish him in another way. We will make it his duty to execute Captain Hew Ffrench. Is justice not neat sometimes, is it not neat I say? Captain Ffrench will meet his Maker in three days. Three days. That should give both him and Dan Skinslicer time to prepare. That’s the end of that. Now, there’s just time to try this head before we all go home.”

  Dan was released and told to make himself scarce.

  The charges against Uncle Frank were heard. He was declared to have connived in his own stealing by keeping his eyes open. The Lord Chief Justice was obliged to ask the colonel if he would close them. Uncle Frank did nothing. He was asked again. Still nothing. So he was duly found guilty of contempt of court and condemned to be put back onto Temple Bar.

  As soon as he had passed this last sentence, Peckersniff declared the courtroom closed and fled. In the safety of his library, he threw his handkerchief into the fire and, after much pacing ab
out, got out the bracelet, wrapped it up, and prepared to send it back to Lady Widdrington.

  Then he heard a weighty thud, thud, thud. “Peckie, my angel,” his wife trilled. “I’ve something to sho-o-o-o-w you!”

  He cowered but there was no escape. Into the room strode Lady Peckersmith, magnificently triangular except for a pair of square feet. She came close to her husband, then closer. Her mouth opened and a blast of breath, not whiffy pig but now even whiffier wild boar, rapidly altered the Lord Chief Justice’s perspective. The bracelet was his only hope! When at last he escaped from his wife’s embrace, he tore up his letter to Lady Widdrington, popped the package into a pouch marked “Important Papers: KEEP OUT!” and headed for the door.

  Alice had not fled the courtroom. She had hardly moved at all. She felt as if she was crying loudly and would have been surprised to be told that she was completely silent. It had all been for nothing. Hew was to die for nothing. She did not know where to turn now. Mabel had urged Mrs. Ffrench away, forbidding Alice to come anywhere near them, and she could not bear to go back to her grandmother’s. The thought of Hew alone in his prison cell was unbearable. And the most terrible thing of all was that she couldn’t bear to be with Dan either, knowing what he must do. Eventually she was shoved out by the usher and she wandered the streets alone. Her moment of fame had come and gone and she was no longer of any interest to anybody.

  Except to Dan, who had been patiently waiting. He did not approach Alice immediately but never let her out of his sight. His heart wept for her, and sometimes his eyes too. Occasionally she would draw herself up and Dan knew that she was thinking of some plan—rushing to the king, storming Newgate Prison, setting fire to the gallows, or some such. This tortured him more, for when the plan was abandoned, Alice’s desolation ran deeper than ever. Eventually, she found herself back under Temple Bar and sat stiffly on an old bench. When Dan edged closer and then tentatively sat down beside her, he was relieved that she did not recoil. He knew he was once again a hangman in her eyes but she had nobody else.