Gallows Thief - Bernard Cornwell

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Henry said nothing. He shrank aside as Botting brushed past him to go down the stairs at the back of the pavilion. Only the four condemned and the Ordinary were now out in the sunlight. The Reverend Cotton stood between the coffins, well clear of the trapdoor. ‘“For when thou art angry all our days are gone,”’ he chanted, ‘“we bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told.”’

      ‘Fat bastard, Cotton!’ the highwayman shouted. The girl was swaying and under the thin cotton that hid her face Sir Henry could see her mouth was opening and closing. The hangman had vanished under the platform and was clambering through the beams that supported the scaffold to reach a rope that pulled out the baulk of timber that supported the trapdoor.

      ‘“Turn thee again, O Lord!”’ The Reverend Cotton had raised one hand to the heavens and his voice to the skies. ‘“At the last and be gracious unto thy servants.”’

      Botting jerked the rope and the timber shifted, but did not slide all the way. Sir Henry, unaware that he was holding his breath, saw the trapdoor twitch. The girl sobbed and her legs gave way so that she collapsed on the still-closed trapdoor. The crowd uttered a collective yelp that died away when they realised the bodies had not dropped, then Botting gave the rope an almighty heave and the timber shifted and the trapdoor swung down to let the four bodies fall. It was a short drop, only five or six feet, and it killed none of them. ‘It was quicker when they used the cart at Tyburn,’ Logan said, leaning forward, ‘but we get more Morris this way.’

      Sir Henry did not need to ask what Logan meant. The four were twitching, jerking and twisting. They were doing the Morris dance of the scaffold, the hempen measure, the dying capers that came from the stifling, killing, throttling struggles of the doomed. Botting, hidden down in the scaffold’s well, leapt aside as the girl’s bowels released themselves. Sir Henry saw none of it for his eyes were closed, and he did not even open them when the crowd cheered itself hoarse because Botting, using the highwayman’s pinioned elbows as a stirrup, climbed up to squat like a black toad on the man’s shoulders to hasten his dying. The highwayman had paid Botting so he would die more quickly and Botting was keeping faith with the bribe.

      ‘“Behold, I show you a mystery.’” The Ordinary ignored the grinning Botting, who clung like a monstrous hump on the dying man’s back. ‘“We shall not all sleep,”’ Cotton intoned, ‘“but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.”’

      ‘There’s the first one gone,’ Logan said, as Botting clambered down from the corpse’s back, ‘and I’ve got a mortal appetite now, by God, I have an appetite!’

      Three of the four still danced, but ever more feebly. The dead highwayman swung with canted head as Botting hauled on the girl’s ankles. Sir Henry smelt dung, human dung, and he could suddenly take no more of the spectacle and so he stumbled down the scaffold steps into the cool, dark stone shelter of the Lodge. He vomited there, then gasped for breath and waited, listening to the crowd and to the creak of the scaffold’s timbers, until it was time to go for breakfast.

      For devilled kidneys. It was a tradition.

       1

      Rider Sandman was up late that Monday morning because he had been paid seven guineas to play for Sir John Hart’s eleven against a Sussex team, the winners to share a bonus of a hundred guineas, and Sandman had scored sixty-three runs in the first innings and thirty-two in the second, and those were respectable scores by any standards, but Sir John’s eleven had still lost. That had been on the Saturday and Sandman, watching the other batsmen swing wildly at ill-bowled balls, had realised that the game was being thrown. The bookmakers were being fleeced because Sir John’s team had been expected to win handily, not least because the famed Rider Sandman was playing for it, but someone must have bet heavily on the Sussex eleven which, in the event, won the game by an innings and forty-eight runs. Rumour said that Sir John himself had bet against his own side and Sir John would not meet Sandman’s eyes, which made the rumour believable.

      So Captain Rider Sandman walked back to London.

      He walked because he refused to share a carriage with men who had accepted bribes to lose a match. He loved cricket, he was good at it, he had once, famously, scored a hundred and fourteen runs for an England eleven playing against the Marquess of Canfield’s picked men and lovers of the game would travel many miles to see Captain Rider Sandman, late of His Majesty’s 52nd Regiment of Foot, perform at the batting crease. But he hated bribery and he detested corruption and he possessed a temper, and that was why he fell into a furious argument with his treacherous team-mates and, when they slept that night in Sir John’s comfortable house and rode back to London in comfort next morning, Sandman did neither. He was too proud.

      Proud and poor. He could not afford the stagecoach fare, nor even a common carrier’s fare, because in his anger he had thrown his match fee back into Sir John Hart’s face and that, Sandman conceded, had been a stupid thing to do for he had earnt that money honestly, yet even so it had felt dirty. So he walked home, spending the Saturday night in a hayrick somewhere near Hickstead and trudging all that Sunday until the right sole was almost clean off his boot. He reached Drury Lane very late that night and he dropped his cricket gear on the floor of his rented attic room and stripped himself naked and fell into the narrow bed and slept. Just slept. And was still sleeping when the trapdoor dropped in Old Bailey and the crowd’s cheer sent a thousand wings startling up into the smoky London sky. Sandman was still dreaming at half past eight. He was dreaming, twitching and sweating. He called out in incoherent alarm, his ears filled with the thump of hooves and the crash of muskets and cannon, his eyes astonished by the hook of sabres and slashes of straight-bladed swords, and this time the dream was going to end with the cavalry smashing through the thin red-coated ranks, but then the rattle of hooves melded into a rush of feet on the stairs and a sketchy knock on his flimsy attic door. He opened his eyes, realised he was no longer a soldier, and then, before he could call out any response, Sally Hood was in the room. For a second Sandman thought the flurry of bright eyes, calico dress and golden hair was a dream, then Sally laughed. ‘I bleeding woke you. Gawd, I’m sorry!’ She turned to go.

      ‘It’s all right, Miss Hood.’ Sandman fumbled for his watch. He was sweating. ‘What’s the time?’

      ‘Saint Giles just struck half after eight,’ she told him.

      ‘Oh, my Lord!’ Sandman could not believe he had slept so late. He had nothing to get up for, but the habit of waking early had long taken hold. He sat up in bed, remembered he was naked and snatched the thin blanket up to his chest. ‘There’s a gown hanging on the door, Miss Hood, would you be so kind?’

      Sally found the dressing gown. ‘It’s just that I’m late,’ she explained her sudden appearance in his room, ‘and my brother’s brushed off and I’ve got work, and the dress has to be hooked up, see?’ She turned her back, showing a length of bare spine. ‘I’d have asked Mrs Gunn to do it,’ Sally went on, ‘only there’s a hanging today so she’s off watching. Gawd knows what she can see considering she’s half blind and all drunk, but she does like a good hanging and she ain’t got many pleasures left at her age. It’s all right, you can get up now, I’ve got me peepers shut.’

      Sandman climbed out of bed warily for there was only a limited area in his tiny attic room where he could stand without banging his head on the beams. He was a tall man, an inch over six foot, with pale-gold hair, blue eyes and a long, raw-boned face. He was not conventionally handsome, his face was too rugged for that, but there was a capability and a kindness in his expression that made him memorable. He pulled on the dressing gown and tied its belt. ‘You say you’ve got work?’ he asked Sally. ‘A good job, I hope?’

      ‘Ain’t what I wanted,’ Sally said, ‘because it ain’t on deck.’

      ‘Deck?’

      ‘Stage, Captain,’ she said. She called herself an actress and perhaps she was, though Sandman had seen little evidence that the stage had much use for Sally who, like Sandman, clung

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