Ladies in Waiting

by Laura L. Sullivan

  “Yer a hard one, sir, if I do say! Hanging will do the job right enough, never you fear.”

  Zabby frowned, puzzled. Hanging was for everyday criminals, common thieves, and robbers. Surely Harry Ransley had been charged with treason. To kidnap the queen with intent of doing away with her, either by murder or secret imprisonment, was a high crime against the throne, and had direr consequences than mere death. A woman guilty of high treason was usually burned to death. A man was hung, drawn, and quartered, a gruesome process in which the culprit was strangled half to death, cut down just in time, only to have his abdomen sliced neatly open and his intestines slowly drawn out like so many yards of sausage before his still living (for a time, anyway) eyes. Then, when sufficiently dead, he was hacked into pieces and displayed about town, a head here, a leg there.

  Many offenses were considered high treason. The old woman who shaved slivers from coins to melt down was treasonous, because she interfered with the national currency in a way that could, on a much larger scale, have catastrophic civil results. The woman who killed her neighbor was a simple murderess; the woman who slayed her husband or father committed treason, because she defied the natural order of authority, and by extension the Crown.

  But rarely were such people actually burned or drawn and quartered. It was simply too messy, and though the public loved a good clean hanging, there would have been trouble if everyone technically charged with treason was immolated or mutilated. The English public had a strong stomach, but not quite that strong. Those terrible consequences were reserved for the worst of the worst.

  No one could argue that to steal a queen was not a crime against the king, the highest of high treason.

  What did Charles know? Why was he letting Harry off with a relatively dignified and quick hanging?

  Or what, she suddenly thought, did he not want others to know?

  A swarthy blacksmith came to strike off the fetters binding the prisoners’ wrists and legs. They were then tied with rope, their arms bent before their breasts in prayerful pose and bound together, and to their bodies.

  A small sound came from the pretty gentleman who was so fascinated by the proceedings. They had slipped a noose around one prisoner’s neck.

  “’E’s a lucky one, ’im. Someone ordered ’im and ’is friends silken ropes.”

  “I hardly think comfort matters,” Eliza said.

  “Bless ye, sir, not comfort or fashion, but mercy. A silk rope lies close, ye see, and the knot slips that tight. A man might hang from a hempen rope a quarter hour before ’e perishes. A silk noose chokes ’im off quick as anything. Was a red-haired lady in the finest carriage you ever did see, pulled up late last night and handed ’em out. They say ’e ’ad ’em all, skivvy and quality alike. A fine lover’s present, that.”

  Though the execution had not been announced, a crowd was already gathering. Apprentices, vendors, buskers, huswives, were drawn by the clang of the blacksmith’s strike. They had lived and worked near Newgate long enough to know that sound meant a show. Those with the leisure to do so began to mill around the gate, and as a small crowd always draws a large crowd, the numbers quickly grew.

  At eight the guards appeared, mounted with pistols and swords, and afoot with lances. Then the cart rumbled in, drawn by a pair of shaggy dray horses, already loaded with the three coffins that would be the criminals’ couches on the way to Tyburn, their beds ever after.

  The condemned climbed into the wagon, and now Zabby recognized the other two, the lean pistoleer and the solid barbarian skilled in pipe and deadly flail. The latter’s teeth were cleaned of black grease now, and they gleamed white and even. Both of Harry’s accomplices looked like gentlemen, or gentry at the least.

  Beth stared at the lover she had scarcely touched, memorized him, burned him into her heart, as behind her the crowd began to murmur a name in rapturous awe. Elphinstone! Boys were sent running to spread the word, and by the time the cart rolled down Newgate Road with the city marshal at the head and the chaplain in a sedan, the crowd had burgeoned to a hundred. A thousand marched behind the cart on Holborn, two thousand at St. Giles. By the time the criminals were offered their penultimate drink at the Bowl Inn, the gathering had swelled to dangerous numbers. The three Elizabeths kept to the front as best they could, fighting the press together, and had an easier time than most, for their fine clothes commanded respect. Still, it was a long, slow trudge to the next tavern, the Mason’s Arms, and on to Tyburn’s triple gallows.

  It was impossible for Beth to catch Harry’s eye. She was lost in the crowd, and in any event, was at present the wrong gender to attract his attention. Plenty of other women were trying to do just that, though, throwing him kisses and hastily gathered nosegays of dried flowers.

  Harry ignored them all—the morbidly flirtatious women hoping for a glance, a touch; the men, frankly admiring his luck (up until then); the curious cottagers longing to be a part of something famous, for the chance to say around a fire that night, Yes, I saw him, and a fine brave sight he was, riding to his death without a care in the world, head high, curls bright on the knotted rope. His companions were eager for their share of spirits at the two tavern stops, but Harry only shook his head and looked above and beyond the crowd. From time to time on the tortuous two-hour trek he spoke a low word to his friends, but apart from that he seemed hardly there at all.

  If London had been warned of Elphinstone’s imminent demise, it would have rallied a hundred thousand spectators, called forth chestnut and potato vendors, tapped casks of cider and strong ale. It would have summoned jugglers and balladeers. It would hawk pamphlets upon which were printed confessions that had never been made, final words that had yet to be spoken. As it was, word of mouth had drawn perhaps five thousand, half of which didn’t quite believe this was the Elphinstone gang but refused to leave in case they were wrong.

  The cart backed up underneath one of the gallows crossbars and an assistant shimmied up, ready to catch the ropes and secure them.

  “Last words! Last words!” the crowd roared.

  The city marshal spurred his horse to the cartside and boomed, “By royal decree, the condemned are to have no last words.”

  The crowd hissed and spat and surged forward like an enraged cat. Already they had been robbed of so many pleasures in this execution—the festivities and food—now they were to be denied three final heroic or piteous or brazen speeches? Seats in the theater pit cost two shillings, but everyone was entitled to the free drama and pathos of a gallows epilogue.

  The marshal called for silence and peace, but the crowd, that same animal that had killed a king, made its will and power known. The lancers acting as guards shifted nervously, the pistol men accompanying them reckoned up the mob’s numbers and the time it would take to reload if it came to a fight. The guards would not defy the king’s orders, but if there happened to be a delay and the prisoners happened to say a word or two in the interim, how were they to stop it? The marshal signaled to the executioner, and all fell quiet.

  The highwayman who had played such a merry tune on his pipe half rose from his coffin, drawing breath to speak, but Harry stayed him with a hand. The man sat again, biting his lip. The prisoners would not speak. For a long moment there was silence. Then, from the tight press at the front, came a girl’s sweet voice.

  “Harry Ransley, I marry you!”

  Everyone looked about, but they could not tell which girl had spoken. They did not regard the three noblemen at the front at all.

  Harry, though, looked up in quick alarm and, as he had once before, saw through the mob, through her disguise, directly to Beth. He held her gaze only for an instant, long enough for a lifetime of love and apology to be translated straight to her heart. Then he looked off to the horizon of rooftops and said, loudly but apparently to no one, “And I marry you, my beloved Elizabeth.”

  There were two score Elizabeths in the crowd that day, and each carried the story away with her, some laughing to tell it, some weeping. A few
never spoke of it at all, but kept it in their own hearts, a seed pearl of a precious secret, the day the bravest, most beautiful man on earth married them the moment before he died.

  A couple could be married in their parish church after calling the banns with their whole community as witnesses, or, if they had a bit of money and didn’t want to wait, by special license. But among the poor, it was common, and perfectly legal, to marry by mere declaration. A betrothal was spoken of in future tense: I will marry you. That could be broken. All that was really needed for a binding marriage was an espousal in the present tense: I marry you.

  He did not look at her again. He did not have to. They had done all they could possibly do.

  “ ’Tis a new hangman,” they heard someone beside them say. “One Jack Ketch. Hope he knows what he’s about.”

  The three silken lines were stretched taut and tied off on the beam. Any moment now the driver would whip up the horses and the condemned would be dragged from their coffins to hang suspended until the life was choked out of them. But if a man was brave, if he kept his wits about him, if he did not hold on to hope for a last-second reprieve, he could hasten his end.

  When the driver settled himself and the moment was near, the three men rose as one to hurl themselves from the back of the cart. If they jumped, it was likely their necks would snap instantly. If not, silk cord or no, their agony would be prolonged.

  But there was a tangle; there was not room for all of them. Harry, the gentleman, stepped back so that his companions could have their easy deaths, and by the time the way was clear for him, by the time the silent air echoed with the twin snap of two necks breaking, it was too late and he was being dragged slowly off the cart, suspended in the air.

  If the crowd hated him they would have let him hang, mocking his struggling and suffering as he turned purple and bloated and grotesque. But they loved Elphinstone, their hero, their legend, so once again they surged forward to grab hold of him, weigh him down, kill him as quickly as they could. Bad men must die, aye, but the best of the bad men must have a good end.

  First upon him, wrapping himself around the criminal’s legs like a drowning man, was a garishly dressed fop in emerald and silver, weeping as though his heart would break.

  Chapter 25

  The Naked Truth

  BETH HAD LOST HER MIND, Zabby was certain of it. That night was the premiere of Nunquam Satis, and Beth, instead of falling into despair or unconsciousness as they’d expected, quietly cleaned herself up and immediately dressed for the theater.

  “Beth, love,” Eliza said, “there is no need to show us your strength. Stay here. I . . . I will stay with you if you’d like.” It would be the supreme sacrifice to give up attending the opening performance, for her plans for the rest of her life depended on it.

  “No, I will go,” Beth said, and fixed her hairpins and settled her petticoat exactly as if her true love had not been executed a bare two hours before. She smiled and took her friends’ hands. “Don’t worry. Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters now. We are well and truly married in the eyes of God, and that means we will be together for all eternity. What does this life matter to me now? It is a prison I will bear with good grace while I reside in it, looking forward only to my release. What are a few years against all eternity?” She gave an odd little laugh. “You haven’t congratulated me yet on my marriage. Don’t you think he looked well?”

  “Will she kill herself, do you think?” Eliza asked Zabby later.

  “I don’t know. And to tell you truly, I don’t know if I’d stop her.”

  “All the same, one or the other of us should stay with her until her marriage. Her second marriage. Lord, if her mother and the earl only knew! He’s coming for her tomorrow, you know, with no idea he’s getting a widow for a bride.” Eliza’s thoughts were firmly with her own problems, and she believed the best place for Beth was as the wife of a wealthy man who would pamper her and keep her from foolishness. “Do you think we should tell her that gentlemen who kidnap queens rarely make it to heaven?”

  “No,” Zabby said adamantly, not certain herself if that was true. “Knowing Beth, in her current state, it would only make her commit murder to join Harry in hell.”

  The queen, still recuperating, was not in attendance, but since maids of honor made such pretty ornaments, two of the three Elizabeths were still in the king’s box. Beth sat very primly, completely unaware that her future husband, Thorne, watched her intently from a nearby seat.

  His London home alone housed a hundred works of art, a thousand rare antiquities. His country estate boasted flowers from every corner of the globe, coaxed with glass and heat into spring bloom even in the declining season. And yet despite all this amassed beauty belonging to him and him alone, the only thing he’d thought of for the past six months was Elizabeth Foljambe. Out of all the more garish beauties of the court, with their paint and patches and protruding bosoms, he had instantly picked the one true, perfect jewel, the masterpiece. It did not matter that her mother was a syphilitic monster, any more than it mattered that a priceless sculpture had been hewn by a lunatic. It did not matter that she was poor. How many gems had been hidden in the hearth, coal-blackened to disguise their worth?

  For the next three hours Thorne watched Beth watch the play.

  For the next three hours Beth relived every happy moment with her Harry, forgetting, almost, that he was gone, thinking only of the time they would be together again. She concocted pretty little things to say to him, and wondered if there were flowers in heaven. If there were, Harry would surely have a nosegay of lily of the valley waiting for her.

  For the next three hours, Zabby made her eyes ache by pretending to stare straight at the stage, all the while watching sidelong as Charles dallied under Barbara’s skirts in a way he must believe subtle. Though it was a breech of protocol, Barbara sat in the queen’s seat. There were those who said she was rapidly falling in Charles’s favor, but to see her, she might just as well be queen. She was so radiantly lovely, with such animalistic energy, it did not seem that any queen or wife—or lowly maid of honor—could ever compete with her. But Zabby remembered what the Newgate guard had said about the red-haired woman in the splendid carriage who’d brought silken cords, and again she wondered, who, and what, was Barbara, really?

  For the next three hours a scowling, starched, stiff man in a high-crowned hat said to the young lord who was his companion, “What was that? Why are they laughing? Was she referring to his privities? Whoever wrote this offal ought to have his ears nailed to the pillory. Tell me why that was amusing, eh? Eh?”

  For the next three hours a handsome, sturdy young man with a tense, beardless face sat in the pit and mouthed every line of Nunquam Satis, interrupting himself to snarl whispered vitriol at the actors. “Hellfire, Beck, if you turn they can’t see you roll your eyes, and then the next jest is lost! Hart, you pricklouse, from the belly! What’s the use of me writing a clever line if it can’t be heard over the harlots’ banter?”

  Near the end he slipped from his seat, trod on several toes, missed an offer to duel, and went backstage.

  “Duncan, my man!” Killigrew embraced his friend. “You’ve saved the company! Did you see His Majesty laugh at all the right moments? He wore a smile the whole way through.” This was perhaps because of where his hand was, or perhaps because he’d caught the eye of a piquantly lovely little red-haired orange girl making her saucy way through the pit. “It’s a success, all thanks to you! Hark, do you hear the applause?” He shouted to a stagehand. “Close the curtain, quick, and send Doll out to give them another dance. Keep them cheering and then we’ll have the flourish of raising the curtain in the end. Come here, Duncan, where you can see the audience. Isn’t it glorious?”

  He pulled Eliza into an alcove of fabric, a sort of makeshift room for quick costume changes attached to the main curtain. They peeked through a slit to see the audience on its feet, whooping as Doll pranced onstage in her tight
pants and nearly sheer shirt for a reprise of the popular “breeches part.” They cheered her and called for their other favorite actors to return as well. They guffawed and quoted their favorite clever lines to show that they’d had wit enough to understand them. They called for Killigrew, and then . . .

  “Give us the playwright!” someone shouted, and it was echoed throughout the pit. The author’s name was always left off his play for the first performance—if it was a crashing failure, his career wouldn’t be ruined. Of course, there was the risky possibility that an unscrupulous competitor might claim authorship first, and no one would believe the real author later.

  “Will you come out with me?” Killigrew asked.

  Eliza’s eyes were shining. “And as you promised, you’ll tell the world my name? Let them know who has given them their pleasure today?”

  “Of course! Conley, is it? Conley Duncan?” He took Eliza by the arm and started to pull her out, but she held her ground.

  “No, that’s not my real name. Will you tell them my real name?” She let her voice float up to her true feminine tones, but Killigrew didn’t notice in the din.

  “For certs. What is it?”

  She told him, but he did not catch it above the clamor.

  She tried again.

  “Eliza Parsloe.”

  “Elijah? A good biblical name . . .”

  “No!” she shouted. “Eliza. Elizabeth Parsloe.”

  Killigrew gasped, and shook his head. “A woman? I am ruined! Woe! Woe!” He had been a tragedian in his youth. “No, I don’t believe it! I won’t believe it! Oh-ho, you are a madman like all the others, and love your jest.”

  She could see he was desperate for it not to be so, and if it hadn’t concerned her so nearly she might have backed away from the truth and laughed along with him, clapped her hat on her periwig, and strutted onstage, Conley Duncan to all the world.

  “No one would believe a woman wrote a play like that. If you were a woman I’d be a laughingstock. The king would dismiss me. I’d lose everything. No, I don’t believe it! Come on, to the stage, and stop this nonsense!”