Gallows Thief

‘The Keeper always serves devilled kidneys on hanging days,’ Logan said, ‘it’s a tradition.’

The hammer struck at the highwayman’s leg irons, the bell tolled and James Botting snapped at the girl to come to him. ‘Stand still, girl,’ he said, ‘drink that if you want it. Drink it all.’ He pointed to a beaker of brandy that had been placed on the table next to the neatly coiled ropes. The girl spilt some because her hands were shaking, but she gulped the rest down and then dropped the tin mug, which clattered on the flagstones. She began to apologise for her clumsiness, but Botting interrupted her. ‘Arms by your side, girl,’ he ordered her, ‘arms by your side.’

‘I didn’t steal anything!’ she wailed.

‘Quiet, my child, quiet.’ The Reverend Cotton had moved to her side and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘God is our refuge and strength, child, and you must put your faith in him.’ He kneaded her shoulder. She was wearing a pale-blue cotton dress with a drooping neckline and the priest’s fingers pressed and caressed her exposed white flesh. ‘The Lord is a very present help in times of trouble,’ the Ordinary said, his fingers leaving pinkish marks on her white skin, ‘and he will be thy comfort and guide. Do you repent your foul sins, child?’

‘I stole nothing!’

Sir Henry forced himself to draw long breaths. ‘Did you escape those Brazilian loans?’ he asked Logan.

‘Sold them on to Drummonds,’ Logan said, ‘so I’m damned grateful to you, Henry, damned grateful.’

‘It’s Eleanor you must thank,’ Sir Henry said. ‘She saw a report in a Paris newspaper and drew the right conclusions. Clever girl, my daughter.’

‘Such a pity about the engagement,’ Logan said. He was watching the doomed girl who cried aloud as Botting pinioned her elbows with a length of cord. He fastened them behind her back, drawing the line so tight that she gasped with pain. Botting grinned at her cry, then yanked the cord even tighter, forcing the girl to throw her breasts forward so that they strained against the thin material of her cheap dress. The Reverend Cotton leant close so that his breath was warm on her face. ‘You must repent, child, you must repent.’

‘I didn’t do it!’ Her breath was coming in gasps and tears were streaming down her distorted face.

‘Hands in front, girl!’ Botting snapped and, when she awkwardly lifted her hands, he seized one wrist, encircling it with a second length of cord which he then looped about her other wrist. Her elbows were secured behind her body, her wrists in front, and because Botting had pulled her elbows so tightly together he could not join her wrists with the cord, but had to be content with linking them.

‘You’re hurting me,’ she wailed.

‘Botting?’ the Keeper intervened.

‘Shouldn’t be my job to do the pinioning,’ Botting snarled, but he loosened some of the tension from the cord holding her elbows and the girl nodded in pathetic thanks.

‘She’d be a pretty thing,’ Logan said, ‘if she was cleaned up.’

Sir Henry was counting the pots in the hearth. Everything seemed unreal. God help me, he thought, God help me.

‘Jemmy!’ The highwayman, his leg irons struck off, greeted the hangman with a sneer.

‘Come here, lad,’ Botting ignored the familiarity. ‘Drink that. Then put your arms by your side.’

The highwayman put a coin on the table beside the brandy beaker. ‘For you, Jemmy.’

‘Good lad,’ the hangman said quietly. The coin would ensure that the highwayman’s arms would not be pinioned too tightly, and that his death would be as swift as Botting could make it.

‘Eleanor tells me she’s recovered from the engagement,’ Sir Henry said, his back still to the prisoners, ‘but I don’t believe her. She’s very unhappy. I can tell. Mind you, I sometimes wonder if she’s being perverse.’

‘Perverse?’

‘It occurs to me, Logan, that her attraction to Sandman has only increased since the engagement was broken.’

‘He was a very decent young man,’ Logan said.

‘He is a very decent young man,’ Sir Henry agreed.

‘But scrupulous,’ Logan said, ‘to a fault.’

‘To a fault indeed,’ Sir Henry said. He was staring down at the floor now, trying to ignore the girl’s soft sobbing. ‘Young Sandman is a good man, a very good man, but quite without prospects now. Utterly without prospects! And Eleanor cannot marry into a disgraced family.’

‘Indeed she cannot,’ Logan agreed.

‘She says she can, but then, Eleanor would,’ Sir Henry said, then shook his head. ‘And none of it is Rider Sandman’s fault, but he’s penniless now. Quite penniless.’

Logan frowned. ‘He’s on half-pay, surely?’

Sir Henry shook his head. ‘He sold his commission, gave the money towards the keep of his mother and sister.’

‘He keeps his mother? That dreadful woman? Poor Sandman.’ Logan laughed softly. ‘But Eleanor, surely, is not without suitors?’

‘Far from it,’ Sir Henry sounded gloomy. ‘They queue up in the street, Logan, but Eleanor finds fault.’

‘She’s good at that,’ Logan said softly, though without malice for he was fond of his friend’s daughter, though he thought her over-indulged. It was true that Eleanor was clever and too well read, but that was no reason to spare her the bridle, whip and spur. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘doubtless she’ll marry soon?’

‘Doubtless she will,’ Sir Henry said drily, for his daughter was not only attractive but it was also well known that Sir Henry would settle a generous income on her future husband. Which was why Sir Henry was sometimes tempted to let her marry Rider Sandman, but her mother would not hear of it. Florence wanted Eleanor to have a title, and Rider Sandman had none and now he had no fortune either, and so the marriage between Captain Sandman and Miss Forrest would not now take place – Sir Henry’s thoughts about his daughter’s prospects were driven away by a shriek from the doomed girl, a wailing shriek so pitiful that Sir Henry turned in shocked enquiry to see that James Botting had hung one of the heavy noosed ropes about her shoulders and the girl was shrinking from its touch as though the Bridport hemp was soaked in acid.

‘Quiet, my dear,’ the Reverend Cotton said, then he opened his prayer book and took a step back from the four prisoners who were all now pinioned.

‘This was never the hangman’s job,’ James Botting complained before the Ordinary could begin reading the service for the burial of the dead. ‘The irons was struck and the pinioning was done in the yard – in the yard – by the Yeoman of the Halter! By the Yeoman of the Halter. It was never the hangman’s job to do the pinioning!’

‘He means it was done by his assistant,’ Logan muttered.

‘So he does know why we’re here?’ Sir Henry commented as the Sheriff and Under-Sheriff, both in floor-length robes and wearing chains of office and both carrying silver-tipped staves, and both evidently satisfied that the prisoners were properly prepared, went to the Keeper who formally bowed to them before presenting the Sheriff with a sheet of paper.

‘“I am the resurrection and the life,”’ the Reverend Cotton intoned in a loud voice, ‘“he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”’

The Sheriff glanced at the paper, nodded in satisfaction and thrust it into a pocket of his fur-trimmed robe. Until now the four prisoners had been in the care of the Keeper of Newgate, but now they belonged to the Sheriff of the City of London who, formalities over, crossed to Sir Henry with an outstretched hand and a welcoming smile. ‘You’ve come for the breakfast, Sir Henry?’

‘I’ve come as a matter of duty,’ Sir Henry said sternly, ‘but it’s very good to see you, Rothwell.’

‘You must certainly stay for the breakfast,’ the Sheriff said, as the Ordinary recited the prayers for the burial of the dead. ‘They’re very good devilled kidneys.’

‘I could get a good breakfast at home,’ Sir Henry said. ‘No, I came because Botting has petitioned for an assistant and we thought, before justifying the expenditure, that we should judge for ourselves whether or not one was needed. You know Mister Logan?’

‘The alderman and I are old acquaintances,’ the Sheriff said, shaking Logan’s hand. ‘The advantage of giving the man an assistant,’ he added to Sir Henry in a low voice, ‘is that his replacement is already trained. And if there is trouble on the scaffold, well, two men are better than one. It’s good to see you, Sir Henry, and you, Mister Logan.’ He composed his face and turned to Botting. ‘Are you ready, Botting?’

‘Quite ready, sir, quite ready,’ Botting said, scooping up the four white bags and thrusting them into a pocket.

‘We can talk at breakfast,’ the Sheriff said to Sir Henry. ‘Devilled kidneys! I smelt them cooking as I came through.’ He hauled a turnip watch from a fob pocket and clicked open its lid. ‘Time to go, I think, time to go.’

The Sheriff led the procession out of the Association Room and across the narrow Press Yard. The Reverend Cotton had a hand on the girl’s neck, guiding her as he read the burial service aloud, the same service that he had intoned to the condemned prisoners in the chapel the day before. The four prisoners had been in the famous Black Pew, grouped about the coffin on the table, and the Ordinary had read them their burial service and then preached that they were being punished for their sin as God had decreed men and women should be punished. He had described the waiting flames of hell, told them of the devilish torments that were even then being prepared for them, and he had reduced the girl and one of the two murderers to tears. The chapel’s gallery had been filled with folk who had paid one shilling and sixpence apiece to witness the four doomed souls at their last church service.

The prisoners in the cells overlooking the Press Yard shouted protests and farewells as the procession passed. Sir Henry was alarmed by the noise and surprised to hear a woman’s voice calling insults. ‘Surely men and women don’t share the cells?’ he asked.

‘Not any longer,’ Logan said, then saw where his friend was looking, ‘and I assume she’s no prisoner, but a lady of the night, Sir Henry. They pay what’s called “bad money” to the turnkeys so they can come and earn their living here.’