How the Hangman Lost His Heart

by K. M. Grant

  The justice stepped backward, fanning himself. The smell from the fire where the bowels were still burning was both acrid and sickly. Dan loomed over him. “It’s bad luck, see, to open a coffin. Have you never heard? The dead become undead and haunt you.” The justice moaned.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Mabel’s voice broke through, sharp as an icicle. “Open the coffin at once, man. The least you can do for my brother, after such a clumsy execution, is to allow his body to rest in wholesome dignity. What a disgraceful performance.”

  Mrs. Ffrench added her pleas more quietly and sweetly, but just as vehemently, to those of her daughter.

  They were still arguing when Alice was woken by the smell of mackerel. The fishwives were flapping their aprons over her. She only gradually regained her senses and for at least five minutes everything was a muddle. Then it became horribly clear. She stumbled away from the fishwives, feeling as if she had been disemboweled herself. I am quite hollow, she thought. I’ll never feel anything again.

  There was nowhere to go but the scaffold and she crawled up behind Mabel, who was quarreling with Dan with increasing intensity. But Dan, his hands still stained, was implacable. “I won’t do it,” he was saying. “Not for anyone. If the king wants the coffin opened, he’ll have to do it himself. Or you do it.” The justice looked helplessly about him.

  “I will do it,” said Mabel, and Dan stepped aside but offered Mabel no tools, and though she scraped her fingers and almost cried with vexation, the lid remained firmly fixed. Now Mrs. Ffrench was on her knees, renewing her pleadings.

  Dan shifted uncomfortably. “I can’t do it, mistress,” he said. “No executioner would. It’s against everything we stand for. You don’t really want to see inside there, do you?”

  “Is it money you want?” asked Mrs. Ffrench tremulously.

  At this Dan’s face grew quite pink. “I do not, madam,” he retorted. “Now, if you will excuse me, you must tell me where you wish the body to be taken and I will make sure it arrives safely.”

  “We’re not going anywhere until Hew’s head is in the coffin too.” Mabel stamped both feet. “I thought he was your friend!”

  “And I can’t go until I have seen the king’s orders carried out.” The justice was almost as desperate as Mrs. Ffrench. This great vegetable of a hangman! He would have words about him.

  Alice edged her way farther onto the platform and when Mabel saw her, her venom increased. “Why are you here?” She jabbed a finger into Alice’s chest. “We hate you. Hate you. Because of you my brother is dead and my mother and I will end up in the gutter. I don’t know how on earth you persuaded Hew to help you in your ludicrous scheme, but I hope you are satisfied. And now, to add insult upon insult, this hulking imbecile won’t even put Hew’s head with his body. Some friends you are.”

  Alice raised her eyes miserably to Dan. “Couldn’t you …”

  “NO!”

  Alice continued to stare at him long after she had quite understood what he was saying.

  The crowd was dispersing, trudging back into the city. Soon, the only people left were a dozen small boys reenacting what they had just witnessed. Above the coffin, the severed rope was lazily unraveling.

  “We surely can’t stay here forever,” the justice groaned. If he had to stay even a moment longer, he would be ill. It was one thing handing out a capital sentence, quite another having to look at the consequences.

  Alice sat him down. “Do you actually have to witness the head going in with the body yourself?” she asked. “Couldn’t you just say it has been done? Perhaps I could witness it for you.”

  Mabel almost boxed Alice’s ears. “Of course you can’t witness it. That’s this man’s job,” she cried. “Now get this coffin opened at once.”

  But the justice sensed some sympathy from Alice and resolved only to address her in future. He unrolled his order. “No, no, you’re right, young lady. It doesn’t actually say I should witness it absolutely myself personally,” he said doubtfully. “It doesn’t at all. See, here.”

  Alice saw. “Well then,” she said, “leave it to me. My uncle Frank’s head was brought along here as a witness, so I think it only right that he finishes his duties by witnessing Captain Ffrench’s head going into the coffin. That would make everything right, wouldn’t it, and you can tell your fellow justices that the king’s orders have been carried out with perfect propriety. For they will be carried out, Mr. Justice, sir, they will be carried out, just not here.” She finished in a whisper.

  There was a hiatus as the justice hopped from foot to foot. Then, he with relief and Dan with horror, saw Major Slavering hand his reins to the cornet and spring over the grass toward them. His pleasure was unlimited and undisguised.

  Wasting no more time, Dan dragged Hew’s coffin across the platform and lowered it into the cart, sweeping the hatbox in too. “We’d best be getting along then,” he said, poking the fire to make sure all was burning merrily.

  “No, I tell you. Absolutely not. Not until my brother’s head is restored to him. I refuse.” Mabel stood above Dan, glowering, with Mrs. Ffrench weeping by her side.

  To Mabel’s fury and astonishment, Dan said nothing more, but seized her and shoved her unceremoniously on top of the coffin, where she landed in an undignified heap, and then toppled Mrs. Ffrench and Alice down like ninepins after her. At this, the justice began to wail. What was this fiendish hangman going to do next? “Major Slavering, Major Slavering,” the justice sobbed, “the hangman’s gone MAD!” And, indeed, Dan did look rather mad as he whipped his gallant pony into a trot.

  As the pony took off, Major Slavering began to run, gesticulating and shouting, but when he got to the gallows, what with the blood and the smoldering remains, he couldn’t help stopping to gloat. Oh, what sweet revenge, to see his enemy’s innards cooking so beautifully. He looked after Dan, who had almost disappeared. He would follow him in a moment. Or perhaps not. After all, who really cared about a bumbling executioner when the delicious spectacle of snooty Captain two-effed French sizzling like a common fry-up was here to enjoy. He bent down and scooped up some blood in his fingers and sniffed it. Enemy gore, he remarked gleefully to the justice, what better fuel to warm the cockles of a soldier’s heart. Then, finding the justice’s pea-green face irresistible, he grinned and thrust his sticky red hand right under the poor man’s nose. That was the end. Unable to take any more, the justice’s stomach gave a large heave and he was massively sick all down Major Slavering’s shiny leather boots.

  Had Dan seen this, he would have found it most satisfactory, but he never looked back. Waving his bloody ax dangerously near the necks of anybody who got in the way, he urged the pony to go faster and faster. Even had Mabel wanted to carry on shouting, she could not, for she was battered against the coffin like a paper bag. In the end, she had to cling to her mother, who clung to Alice, who, in her turn, clung to the hatbox to try and prevent the heads from being catapulted out into the street. Some folk screeched at them and some, clipped by the wheel spokes, shook their fists. But Dan never wavered and the pony galloped on. As they neared Grosvenor Square, he put out a great arm and yanked Alice up beside him. “Get Bunion to open the gate at the back,” he grunted, and pitched her swiftly out. Alice picked herself up and ran to the door, banging until she was let in, then flew through, crying for Bunion, or anybody, to help her. In moments, the cart was swinging inside the yard and the gates swung shut behind it.

  At last the pony was allowed to halt and it stood, its head between its knees and its flanks heaving, as, to Mabel and Mrs. Ffrench’s utter confusion, Dan turned his ax over and began, swiftly and urgently, to lever off the top of the coffin, just as all this time they had been asking and he had been refusing to do. The servants flapped about like jittery geese but Dan took no notice. He never looked up until the coffin lid cracked and he was able to pull it to one side. Alice couldn’t breathe. Hew was dead. She had seen him die with her own eyes. What was Dan going to do now?

&
nbsp; Dan did nothing. But then, from the coffin, slow as the unfolding of a flower, a headless body arose. The torso was rent and bloodied, but it sat up. Mabel gasped and Mrs. Ffrench would have keeled over completely had Dan not jumped down and caught her. Alice alone stood quite still, apart from a little flutter in her throat. The torso was steady for a second or two, then slumped over. Now a disheveled mop of black hair appeared from underneath it, then a head with a rope still wound tightly around its neck and, finally, a face that was certainly Hew’s, sporting an expression of almost comical wonder at the dummy sitting on his lap. There was a pause before Hew draped the dummy over the side of the coffin, where the arms swung, making a dull clump, clump, clump. Then he looked about carefully, as if a sudden movement might see him plummeting once again toward Dan Skinslicer’s butcher’s table. Apart from a great red welt on his neck, he was white as snow.

  Alice made a little sound. Like a sleepwalker, Hew turned to listen, but as he moved, the rope around his neck caught on one of the coffin nails and he began to choke. That snapped him awake and suddenly he was on his feet, eyes flashing wide as he grappled and wrenched at the twisted hemp that cut into his windpipe.

  In a second Alice was beside him. She knew nothing about ropes and her fingers, so willing, almost succeeded in strangling him. It was Dan who effortlessly slipped the knot, released Hew, and tossed the noose to the ground. Blindly, Hew put out his hand and Alice took it. “Hew,” she said. His name was all she could manage. “Hew.” It was enough. Hew stepped out of the coffin and hugged her so tightly she thought her ribs might crack.

  Mabel was absolutely livid. “What on earth is going on?” she raged. “Why were we not told? What have you been doing, Skinslicer?”

  Dan, not really wanting to look at Alice and Hew, was grateful for her diversion. “I’m sorry, mistress,” he said in a voice half triumphant, half apologetic, “but I daren’t say anything before because I didn’t know as I could pull it off.”

  He was interrupted by Alice. She had extricated herself from Hew and was pulling at his sleeve. “Dan Skinslicer, Dan Skinslicer”—she dazzled him with her delight—“you’re a genius.” And she kissed him.

  Dan blushed to the roots of his hair and hurried around to the pony’s head, murmuring about giving the poor animal a drink, but Mrs. Ffrench put out an arm to stop him. “Mr. Skinslicer,” she said, “I’m so startled I hardly know anything anymore, but I do know that you must be the bravest of the brave. What would the justices have done to you if you had been caught? How can we ever thank you? You have saved my son.” She seemed set to collapse again. “We can never repay you.”

  Dan helped her onto the steps. “I don’t want paying, mistress,” he said. “I did it for—well, I just did it.” Mrs. Ffrench nodded at him. She knew.

  “You still should have told us.” Mabel was furious with her mother for her undiluted gratitude. “For goodness’ sake, all of us could have been sentenced to hang if you really had been forced to open the coffin in front of the justice—which, by the way, you should have been.”

  But Dan was not going to be bullied by Mabel. He shrugged her away.

  Now Hew caught his hand and Dan was so embarrassed that Alice had to come to his rescue. “Who made the dummy?” she asked, dancing about like a ten-year-old. “And where did you get all the blood and guts from?” She was impossible to resist.

  “Well, I went to your granny’s wigmaker,” Dan told her. “I’m afraid I was not very nice to him, but I did at least pay him,” he went on pointedly. “Anyway, I got him to make a body and a very nice waxen head—I chose the wig myself.”

  “But swapping them in front of all those people—” Alice stopped dancing. Dan had made stealing Uncle Frank look like child’s play.

  “I knew that I would only have a second to make the change between Captain Ffrench and the dummy—” Dan didn’t get a chance to finish.

  “Which is why you bumped poor Hew so heavily onto the floor of the scaffold,” Alice interrupted, her thrill at Dan’s astonishing courage mixed with the delicious terror of retrospect.

  “That’s right, missy.” Dan grinned. “That was the crucial bit. I had to make it look like a bit of an error. Anyhow, I managed to get the captain into the coffin and get the dummy onto the table before anybody volunteered to come and help. I was frightened, though, that the captain would land flat on the dummy so that I couldn’t get it out, but luckily he landed on his side so I could get a decent hold and slip the dummy over him. And those soldiers standing at the sides, not at the back behind the scaffold—that was another piece of luck. I hadn’t really thought of them.” He cracked his knuckles. “Thank goodness though, or I might have chickened out. But anyway, it was quick, quick onto the table with the dummy for the slicing.” Dan looked at Hew. “Pig,” he said. Hew looked a little startled. “No, no,” Dan explained. “It was a bag of pig’s innards that I got the wigmaker to sew into the dummy’s stomach and into your head. Lots of blood and guts. Worked a treat.”

  “And you even remembered to put a rope around the dummy’s neck,” said Alice, so full of admiration she thought she might take off. “You thought of everything.”

  “Well, nearly everything,” said Dan modestly. “I did remember to make air holes in the coffin so as the poor captain could breathe, but look at your breeches, sir.” Hew looked down. “They’re brown,” Dan said. “Now look at the dummy’s.”

  “They’re black!” exclaimed Alice, her jig momentarily suspended.

  “I couldn’t remember what color they were,” said Dan. “Just fancy. All that time in Newgate together and I couldn’t remember the color of a pair of breeches. Probably because it was so dark. Anyway, I only realized my mistake when you were hanging. A nasty moment.” Dan’s grin faded. “But it’s over now.”

  A voice from the back door brought them all up short. “What is this? A fairground?” Lady Widdrington was gazing down and she recognized Mrs. Ffrench. “Good Lord, madam,” she called. “I thought you were a lady, not a tradesman. I never expected to find you at the back door.”

  Mrs. Ffrench went to greet her, but found herself confronted by Ursula, whose mouth was agape. Although the execution was hardly an hour past, a friend had already been around to tell her that it was the bloodiest she had ever seen. And now to find the dead man talking in the yard! Such a good-looking dead man too. Ursula did not know whether to flirt or faint.

  Alice wanted her to do neither. The appearance of her grandmother and aunt only served as a reminder that she, Dan, Hew, and Uncle Frank’s head were not yet out of danger. They must leave London at once. Only at Towneley would they be safe. Behind those granite hills, nobody would come looking for them. In a week or two, when some new scandal began to circulate through the country, the saga of Uncle Frank’s head would be quite forgotten. “I want to go home, Granny,” she said, hoping that the firmness of her tone would keep her grandmother’s mind from wandering off. “Indeed, I must go home, since that is what Justice Peckersniff told me to do and I’m never disobedient.”

  Her grandmother bent her head to the side. For one awful moment Alice thought that she was going to pretend that her granddaughter was a complete stranger full of ill intent and bellow for soldiers. Instinctively, Alice stepped back to protect Hew. However, Lady Widdrington just beckoned Alice to her, her little eyes both keen and sorry. “You’ll not come back to visit your Faraway Granny, I know that.” It was a statement of fact rather than a question. “No, Granny, I won’t,” Alice said. It seemed a time for truth. “I don’t think I’ll ever come to London again.”

  “I’ll miss you.” Lady Widdrington wiped away a tear, then gave a cackle and signaled to Bunion to prepare the carriage. “That is, when I remember who you are!”

  “Well, I won’t be sorry,” said Ursula, flumping down the steps with her hands on her hips. Her face was half twisted into a smile for Hew and half into a glare for her niece. It seemed just the last insulting straw that this chit of a girl, who had
ridden with no stockings on, should leave with not one man in tow, but two.

  “Good-bye, Aunt,” Alice said to her, but gave up when Ursula flounced off.

  Hew was bidding his mother and Mabel farewell. “Look after each other,” he told them. “I will send money to you somehow.”

  “Go, go quickly, Hew,” his mother urged. “I couldn’t bear it if anything else was to happen to you.” She shook Dan’s hand warmly, speechless now in both her happiness at her son’s rescue and her grief at his departure.

  Mabel, although her good-bye to Alice was terse, managed a warmer smile for Hew. “Write to us,” she said, and then added, for Alice’s benefit, “You’ll need a new identity, but don’t let those Catholics turn you into a priest.”

  Alice tossed her hair, rising to the bait. “Certainly not,” she said, taking Hew’s hand in a proprietorial gesture that made Mabel want to slap her. “I don’t think Hew is destined for the Church.”

  “Children, children,” admonished Mrs. Ffrench, “you must be friends if”—she looked directly at Hew—“you are eventually to be sisters.”

  Dan didn’t want to hear this. He gave a small gulp and seized Hew’s head. Alice screamed. But it was only Hew’s hair that Dan was after. With a knife and not a little satisfaction, he began to chop off the beautiful black locks. Thick wedges formed a carpet on the ground and Hew’s face was soon framed by uneven spikes. “Disguise,” Dan muttered. “Sorry if it does away with your looks.” He busied himself bundling the dummy back into the coffin and hammered down the nails again with a little too much enthusiasm. “You’ll have to take this and bury it,” he said to Mrs. Ffrench. “Bury it deep and don’t forget that you’ll have to do some mourning for your son. If you look too happy, we’ll all be undone.”

  At the word “mourning,” Ursula, who had flounced back, cheered up. She had some spectacular mourning clothes in which, she believed, she looked absolutely ravishing. She would lay them out at once.