Then I press my fingers to the thick walls of my cell. I drum my fists against the stone. This is real. This is real and I must prepare myself for the worst. If the king’s pardon does not come, I must be ready.
God forgive me. Father forgive me. My beloved sister Jane: your brother loves you always.
Kitty. If I live, read this and know that I am out in the world somewhere, thinking of you. Maybe you and Sam can discover Burden’s killer together. But keep safe, above all. I fear you should not trust Alice. I fear you should not trust anyone.
And if I should die today, know that my last thoughts were of you. Live well, my love, and remember me.
Hooper, the hangman, climbs down from the gallows and pulls the pipe from his lips. He gestures to Hawkins’ wig. ‘I’ll need to take that now, sir.’ The air chills his bare scalp. Hooper pats his arm, surreptitiously stroking the blue velvet of his coat. These clothes will be his payment, when it is over.
He ties the rope around Hawkins’ neck. The knot presses tight against the back of his neck.
From the cart, Hawkins can see thousands of men and women, stretching out to the horizon. Every eye is turned upon him. The air is hot with sweat and dirt and perfume. The noise is deafening, it rolls over him and thrums beneath his feet. People are singing and shouting. Some are laughing. A few good souls are praying for him. It does not seem real. Even now, some small part of him is sure they will realise their mistake. That they are hanging an innocent man.
‘Confess!’ someone cries.
A cheer rises up to shake the heavens. This is what they want from him. This is the story they demand of Tyburn. Crime. Confession. Repentance. Death. Salvation. They wait, expectant.
The noose is rough about his throat. It chafes his skin as he cries out. ‘I am not guilty!’
Boos. Jeers and catcalls. Mud flung at the cart. Hooper ducks, eyeing the blue velvet tenderly. ‘Better confess, Mr Hawkins. It’s what they want.’
Hawkins sighs. What does it matter now what the crowd wants from him? But then he thinks of them all, a hundred thousand souls laughing and jeering as he dies slowly on the rope. It could take a man a quarter-hour to die. It would be better, he thinks, to be cheered out of this world than cursed from it.
So – it is a confession they demand of him. Very well. He takes a deep breath and begins to speak. ‘My friends. Upon my soul. I confess . . .’ The crowd screams its approval. He shouts to be heard above it. ‘ . . . I confess that I have lived a wicked life. Immersed in every vice.’
A few groans, but more laughter. A spattering of applause. The court beauties lean forward in their seats.
‘I confess that I am a gambler. I confess that I am over-fond of liquor and low company. I have wasted many nights in taverns and brothels and cannot say that I regret it. I confess that I broke a woman’s heart – and that I do regret, more than anything in this world.’ He swallows hard. The ladies fan themselves. ‘I confess all these things. But I swear upon my soul, I am not guilty of murder.’
A cheer goes up, the loudest of the morning. He has won them over, now at the end, with the rope about his neck. They do not care if he is guilty or innocent. In the face of death, he has conducted himself well, with wit and swagger. This is a good dying. And in the end, that’s all that matters. Beneath him, a few paces from the gallows, he sees the Reverend James Guthrie shaking his head, face tight with disapproval. It is his duty to record the last confessions and dying words of the condemned. He will have to write these words in his own hand.
This is the first cheerful thought Hawkins has had all day. He looks up at the gallery, at the rows of women. My God, all those women. His lips curve slowly in a wolf’s grin. Let them remember that . . .
And then he sees her. Judith Burden. She is sitting in the middle of the gallery, black-gloved hands in her lap. She holds his gaze. Smiles.
His heart slams into his chest. That dress. That black, widow’s gown. Of course.
‘Wait!’ he cries, but it is too late. Who would believe him now?
‘Courage, sir,’ Hooper murmurs.
The white hood slips over his head, rolls down until it covers his face. He breathes, and the air sucks the cloth against his lips. Courage. Yes. That’s all he has now. That and a few last, precious breaths. Use them well.
He closes his eyes and thinks of Kitty. The fresh, sweet scent of her. Powder-white skin, smooth and soft as silk. Her fingers against his chest, her breath hot and urgent on his throat. A soft cry of pleasure.
He had this, at least, before the end.
The noose tightens about his neck.
God forgive my sins.
Someone pulls the horse forward. He feels the cart move beneath his feet. A moment later his body swings free.
The Ballad of Thomas Hawkins
Tom Hawkins was a parson’s son
With evil in his heart
A deed most wicked he has done
And so he’ll ride the cart.
He stabbed Jo Burden with his blade
The blood is on his hands
A noose old Hooper he has made
The gentleman will hang.
They rode him off to Tyburn’s tree
They led him to his death
They stretched his neck for all to see
He took his final breath.
All rakes and scoundrels, now I pray
You learn this lesson well
A gentleman was hanged this day
And now he burns in hell.
Part Six
Chapter Twenty-Two
Life. It rips through me.
As the air sucks into my lungs.
As the blood pulses through my veins.
Life. How it burns.
I open my eyes and see nothing. My arms are pinned to my sides, my knuckles pushed hard against solid wood. My fingers and toes are numb. I can feel movement beneath me, the roll and sway of a cart. We are travelling at a furious pace, hooves thundering on the cobbles, but I am held tight in the darkness. I try to move, and pain screams through my cramped muscles. I stop. Breathe. Take in the scent of wood, fine grains of sawdust catching my throat.
I am trapped in my coffin.
I kick out at the lid in a frenzy, crying for help. My voice is a thin rasp, my neck swollen and bruised. No one will hear me over the rattle of the cart. The memory of choking, flailing on the rope seizes me. I cannot breathe. I will suffocate alone here in the darkness.
Terror gives me back my strength. I kick harder and the wood splinters against my boot.
‘Quiet, damn you.’ A rough male voice. ‘Lie still. If you want to live.’
I fall back, panting heavily. I feel as if I have lain asleep without moving for a hundred years. I try to stretch, and my legs cramp again. It is torture, but I push through it, gritting my teeth. Sensation returns to my fingers and toes, a throbbing pain laced with a thousand hot needles. As if pain is the only proof of life.
Where am I? Am I safe? I concentrate on the sounds outside my narrow wooden box. I can hear drunken cries, the high squeal of street hogs, ballad singers and hawkers, and a low bell tolling my own death. The cart slows, caught in the crowds, then surges forward again. Someone curses the driver. The cart turns and the noise changes. Whispers, and the sound of a bottle smashing. A baby screaming somewhere high above our heads. The wheels of the cart rattling over broken cobbles. The driver coughs. ‘Damned dust.’ We roll to a halt, the horses snorting and chewing at their bits.
The coffin begins to move, sliding from the cart. It swings into the air and I roll inside, smashing my knee. What if I am to be thrown into the Thames? I take a deep breath, ready to fight, but the coffin is carried higher, resting on solid shoulders. Boots thump and voices curse as we tilt and turn up the stairs. I count four storeys. The men are grunting now with the effort.
A door opens. The coffin is lowered to the floor with a heavy thump.
‘Here he is, then.’ Someone kicks the side. ‘Ten pounds.’
Kitty.
‘Five to bring him here. Another five and I’ll keep quiet.’
‘A bullet in your throat will do that well enough.’ A sharp, metallic click. ‘Leave us. Now.’
A pause. The door slams shut. Hurried footsteps back down the stairs.
She starts to prise open the lid with an iron crow, nails groaning against the wood. I push hard from the other side and it starts to give. At last it splits open. I struggle free and roll on to my back, stunned and gasping for air.
Wooden rafters stretch high above my head. Daylight streams through an open window, casting blocks of dazzling light on to the bare floor. Curtains billow in a soft spring breeze. The room smells of gin and unwashed clothes. I sit up slowly, still dazed and uncertain. There are piles of rags stacked against the far wall ready to sell. The floorboards feel rough under my fingers; the breeze chills the sweat on my chest. Am I truly alive? Where am I?
Someone coughs loudly on the other side of the wall, hawking up thick phlegm.
Not heaven, then.
Kitty kneels down next to me. She has pulled off her mob cap. Her face is flushed pink from the effort of opening the coffin. It is the most beautiful thing. She is the most beautiful . . . The room fades and I begin to slide to the floor. She grabs hold of my shoulders. ‘You’re safe,’ she says. ‘Tom – do you understand? You’re safe.’
I try to speak through my bruised and swollen throat. ‘Kitty.’
Her bright-green eyes soften in relief. ‘Idiot.’ She kisses my forehead, my lips. Kisses me as though she is breathing the life back into me. I break away, staring in wonder at the face I have missed so much, touching clumsy, half-numb fingers to her cheek.
I don’t know how I came to be here, what magic she has wrought to bring a hanged man back from the dead. All I know is that my heart is beating, my pulse is racing, my skin is warm. I lean against her and weep with joy, like a child.
Later, we lie tangled upon the narrow bed, a thin sheet draped at our hips. My need had been wild, more animal than human. I would have devoured her if I could, teeth scraping her skin, fingers digging into her flesh. She had held me tightly, back arched, caught in her own frenzy. I spent inside her and collapsed, only to rise again twice more. My body, rejoicing in the simple truth – I am alive.
Only now, half dozing, do I ask how the miracle was accomplished.
She sits up, reaches for her wrapping gown. ‘We paid Hooper.’
I think back to the gallows, Hooper lying stretched upon the high beam, smoking a pipe. The last moments as he rolled the cap down over my face. Courage, sir. My breath hot and fast against the linen. The roar of the crowd.
‘There’s ways to tie a knot to finish things fast. Here.’ She coils her long red hair and slips it over one shoulder. Presses two fingers against her bare neck, below her ear. ‘And ways to make it slow.’ She moves her hand to the back of her neck, where Hooper had tied the rope. ‘You only seemed dead when he cut you down. You were still breathing. A little.’
‘You were there?’
She shakes her head. ‘I couldn’t . . .’ She glances about the room and I know she is thinking of that long wait, not knowing if I were dead or alive. I reach over and grip her hand.Tears brim beneath her lowered lids. At last, she begins again. ‘We paid Skimpy to smuggle you on to the wrong cart.’
I raise an eyebrow.
‘He works for the surgeons. Brings the bodies back for anatomising . . .’
My stomach turns at the thought – how close I had come. I remember the surgeons’ assistant from the gallows – a pale, thin lad with white-blond brows and lashes, arguing with the Marshal. I wonder if he will be in trouble with his masters for losing a valuable corpse. Most likely not – bodies often disappear on the road back from Tyburn, grieving families dragging the coffins away for a decent burial. Jack Sheppard’s body had been taken by his friends and buried.
‘Where are we?’
She smiles. ‘Phoenix Street.’
I sit up in alarm. We paid Hooper. We paid Skimpy. ‘Fleet arranged this?’
Her smile fades. ‘No. Wouldn’t trust that bastard to piss straight.’
It takes me a moment to guess. ‘Sam.’
‘He came to see me last night. Told me everything.’ She punches me once, very hard, in the arm. ‘You promised there’d be no more secrets between us, Tom.’
I rub my arm. ‘Fleet threatened to kill you.’
‘All the more reason to tell me, you stupid prick!’
I let her rage. She has every right. I had been so proud of my own martyrdom I had never stopped to consider the toll it had taken on Kitty. She had spent the last few weeks broken-hearted and desperate. Behind the arm-punching and curses I can see how much I’ve hurt her. Her cheeks are hollow, her sweet little belly stretched taut. So much for my noble self-sacrifice: it has almost destroyed her.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, when she is done, or has at least run out of breath. I lean in to kiss her and hear a soft, irritable sigh from the doorway. Sam has slipped into the room, God knows when. Best not to ask. Kitty tightens her gown and jumps up from the bed, crossing to him on tiptoes. She pulls him further into the room, clasping his hand in both of hers. The hero of the hour. I must confess I suffer a curious pang of jealousy at that. I’d felt some pride this morning, going bravely to my death. Now here I am, rescued by a boy of fourteen and a surgeon’s assistant called Skimpy. I am grateful, but . . .
‘You’re well, Mr Hawkins?’
There is a tremor in Sam’s voice, as if I might still be angry with him. I wrap the sheet around my waist and hobble to meet him. Hug him for as long as he will let me, which is not very long at all. He keeps his hands at his side and stays rigid. It is like hugging a short roll of heavy cloth. ‘You saved my life.’
He stifles a grin of pride. Better, is it not, to save lives than to end them? He hands me a broadsheet, warm from the press. Guthrie’s account of my life and death, curse him, printed fast for profit. ‘World thinks you’re dead.’
The world thinks I’m a monster.
‘We’ll stay here for a few days Tom,’ Kitty says as I sit back down upon the bed, still reading. ‘Let everyone forget all about you.’
‘A gentleman, hanged for murder? They won’t forget me in a hundred years.’
‘We’ll go to Italy, just as we planned. Sam will keep looking for the true killer.’
‘Alice,’ Sam says, as if the thing were settled.
The killer. My God. I had quite forgotten amidst all the drama of dying. I crumple up the broadsheet and toss it across the room on to the unlit fire, taking some small pleasure in hitting my target. ‘No. It wasn’t Alice. You were right Kitty. It was Judith.’
Perhaps it was because I had been so close to death. A flash of revelation as my soul prepared to escape its cage.
I had seen her through the crowds, dressed in her mother’s mourning gown. She had been granted a place of honour in the galleries, surrounded by powdered courtiers, a single jet-black stone in a flower bed of colour. She sat forward in her seat, lips parted, gloved hands laced across the folds of her dress, as if she were waiting for her favourite opera singer to take the stage.
She was so young. And beneath her composed expression, so very lost. A boat unmoored and drifting on the open ocean. Our eyes met and in that brief communion I had seen how much she wished me dead. Not out of malice, nor for revenge, but to be sure that suspicion would never fall on her. She smiled at me. Gave the tiniest nod of acknowledgement. Thank you, sir. I am most obliged to you.
Hooper prepared the cart, and still we’d stared at each other across the crowds; murderer and victim locked in one last deathly gaze. She clutched her gown in anticipation, fingers twisting and turning the black silk. Black for mourning. Black for death. A black so deep no stains of red would show upon it.
Hooper rolled the cap over my face.
‘Wait.’
But it had been
too late. My feet slid from the cart and the rope pulled taut.
‘I’ll kill her. I swear it, Tom. I will fucking murder her.’ Kitty is prowling the room, all thoughts of exile vanished. ‘Turn your back,’ she snarls at Sam, and throws off her wrapping gown without waiting to see if he has complied. She tugs on her stockings, garters, petticoat, stomacher, then reties her gown. Decent, then – as decent as she can be. She catches me watching her and grins. ‘Beast.’ She hunts for her pistol. It takes her a while to realise I am holding it.
She lunges and I lift it high, out of her reach. There is a short tussle, Kitty pulling on my arm.
‘Dangerous,’ Sam warns, eyeing the cocked and loaded pistol.
I uncock it and throw it over to him. He catches it neatly and tips the powder onto the floor.
Kitty paces the room, annoyed. ‘You cannot stop me, Tom. Who saved you today? Do you think it was Fate that cut you down from the scaffold still breathing? Or God?’
‘No—’
‘No indeed. We saved you. Me and Sam. If he hadn’t come to me last night – and d’you know he had to steal his way in to avoid Alice and Neala . . .’
‘He enjoys stealing into places.’
Sam shrugs. This is true.
‘How can you jest?’ Kitty cries, fresh tears springing in her eyes. ‘They let you hang, Tom. They let you hang.’
‘We must find a way to make Judith confess,’ I persist. ‘She is the only one who can prove my innocence. She can’t very well do that if you shoot her first.’
Kitty wipes her eyes. ‘She let them arrest you in her place. She lied under oath in court. She sat in her room swigging poppy juice while I sobbed my heart out every night for you. Six weeks. And she never thought to speak out. She murdered her father and she let you hang for it. She will never confess, Tom.’
The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins Page 29
