Suki, page 48
Her husband roared at her. ‘’Od’s teeth we’re all at risk! She’s an accomplice, damme. You heard what the man said. An accomplice. You have nurtured a tongued viper in the family bosom. A tongued viper. Well, don’t blame me if we’re all murdered in our beds. That’s all I’ve got to say on the matter. ’Od’s blood and bowels, I never heard the like. To keep such a one in our service when I expressly forbade it. She’s to be dismissed, ma’am. She should ha’ been dismissed long since.’
‘I give ’ee me word—’ Hermione began weakly.
‘Aye and so you should!’ he roared. ‘Dismiss her, ma’am, and let that be an end on it.’
‘I give ’ee me word,’ Hermione pressed on, ‘’twill be done the minute the wedding is over. I can hardly spare time to find another wet nurse with Melissa’s wedding to arrange. Allow me that at least.’
‘Well,’ he grumbled, ‘you have the right of it in that regard, I daresay. The wedding takes precedence. But not a minute after, for I won’t hear of it.’
Hermione waved her kerchief at him to signify submission.
‘I’m off to attend to the coach,’ he told her. ‘We travel in an hour. Make up your mind to’t.’
In fact, it was late afternoon before the coach had been mended to his satisfaction and their journey could be resumed. But this time they negotiated the dreaded hill without mishap and, even though storm clouds gathered over their heads as they rattled on towards Calne, nobody minded. The coach and cart were stopped briefly so that William could be carried across and settled on Ariadne’s lap to keep him out of the shower but, apart from that, the journey was uneventful. They reached the Red Lion at Hungerford before dark and, although it was cramped, it was comfortable enough for one night’s stay. And the Bear at Slough, where they stayed for their second night, was quite palatial, even though the food was indifferent.
As far as Suki was concerned there were only two things wrong with the journey. One was that it was too slow, but nothing could be done about that. ’Twas the way of travel everywhere. The other was that Ariadne had to share a room with her sister so, even though she went to her night and morning to help her undress and dress again, and to bring her water to wash with, there was no chance of any conversation. And she did so want to tell her about the Captain.
But ’twill all come right in the end, she thought, as she settled to sleep on that second night. Now I know where he is. Bedlam-in-Moorfields. Moorfields in London. And I shall be in London tomorrow. There was still William — how was she going to explain about him? But she was full of hope. I will find the Captain first, she decided, letting the thought fill her with optimism, and then we will go to the master and confess together. I will tell him how much I love my little ’andsome and how I couldn’t be blamed for the death of the other poor little mite, on account of I wasn’t there when he died, which he must see the truth of. Which I might even remind him of. He’ll be fair about it, surely. One way or t’other. There’s good in the man. He aren’t all roaring an’ pushing ’ee down on beds.
The last day’s journey took far, far longer than it should have done. The horses were very slow and just before Cranford Bridge the coach got stuck in a ditch and it took nearly an hour to get it out again. But by early afternoon they were bowling along the London Road towards Tyburn and Suki could smell the smoke of the city. They were nearly there, praise be!
Fine coaches passed them as they progressed and the road grew more and more crowded. Soon they could hear the growling of a throng of people, and the air wafting in through the open window smelt of sweat and body heat and perfume. And not long after that, the coach ground to a halt.
Sir George filled window with his bulk and called out to the coachman to know what was amiss.
‘’Tis a hanging day, sir,’ the coachman’s voice replied. ‘I doubt we shall get past.’
‘Turn her sideways on,’ Sir George ordered happily, and he turned himself sideways on to announce the good news to the family. ‘Here’s good fortune. We’re to see a hanging. An’ if that ain’t the best medicine for a mute and the best warning for an accomplice, I don’t know what is, damme.’
So the coach and the cart were turned for the entertainment, and Sir George ascended to sit with the coachman, happily if ponderously, taking Ariadne with him, and leaving Melissa and her mother to watch from the windows.
‘Be sure the wet nurse has a good view,’ he called across to the cart. ‘I want her to see this. Mark, learn and inwardly digest. That’s the style on’t.’
The order sounded ominous. ’Tis on account of me being taken off by that wretched Spider, Suki thought. But she would have watched in any event for she’d never seen so many people gathered together in all her life. The road was packed from one side to the other, with coaches becalmed here and there within the mass. Even as she watched, their own coach was completely surrounded, and an orange seller arrived, pushing her way through the throng by dint of striking violently to right and left with her basket.
‘Be good sport today, yer honour,’ she called up to Sir George. ‘Sweet China oranges?’
He called back cheerfully. ‘Who’s to go?’
‘Jimmy Cade,’ the woman told him. ‘The highwayman. Peached by his mistress, so they say. A terrible black-hearted villain.’
‘And the other?’
‘I couldn’t say. Any sweet China oranges, sir?’
A little ahead of them on the left-hand side of the road was a high grandstand packed with the busy wigs and fine clothes of the gentry, and immediately in front of it, the famed triple tree of the Tyburn gallows, three gaunt beams weathered black and joined at the top by three equally forbidding cross beams set in a triangle. Nooses already hung in position on two of the beams but there was no sign of the death cart as yet so the crowd was in a state of excitement almost as high as the gallows.
Sir George bought oranges for them all, which made a welcome diversion, and presently while they were still moistening their dry throats with the juice, the crowd beyond the gallows began to cheer and catcall, and Suki could see the death cart rocking slowly through the mob towards its destination.
‘I haven’t never seen a man hung afore,’ she whispered to Barnaby.
‘Nor I,’ he whispered back. ‘Be a bit of sport, eh?’
‘That’s Tom Turlis, that is,’ the orange seller told them, nodding her head in the direction of the hangman. ‘Best Jack Ketch we ever ’ad. ’E’ll send ’em off like ninepence, you see if ’e don’t.’
The cart had reached the gallows and was being manoeuvred into position beneath the beam, and now Suki could see that the highwayman was young and handsome, like Jack. He was wearing a long white shirt of some kind and his own thick fair hair, which looked shocking somehow, among all the wigs around him, like nudity.
‘Look at that ’air,’ the orange seller said. ‘Growd that in jail. Make a fine wig after, that will.’
The hangman hauled the young man into position under the noose, pulling on the ropes that bound his arms, and tugging him by his fine hair, and Suki suddenly realised, with a shock that made her spine tingle, that the long white garment he was wearing wasn’t a shirt at all but a shroud. Then the crowd near the gallows shushed for silence and he began to make a speech. His thin voice echoed in the vast space before him but the Bradburys were too far away to hear the words. However it appeared to be a good speech, for the crowd cheered when it was done, and cheered again when the young man bowed. Then they held their breath while he stood meekly under the noose and the hangman removed rings from his fingers and took a purse from his trouser pocket and finally fitted his white neck into the grey snake of the rope. Then they grew gradually and terribly silent.
Poor thing, Suki thought, to have to stand there waiting to be killed, and she just had time to wonder what it would feel like to be hung when the horse darted from under the gallows, taking the cart with it at some speed. The crowd gave a great guttural roar, and the young man fell, his legs kicking the air. It was so quick and horrible that she couldn’t bear to look any more and buried her face in William’s body while the crowd roared and cheered and threw their hats into the air. There was a lump in her throat and her heart was pounding against her ribs as though she was afraid. How fearful to be alive one minute and choking to death the next. No wonder Quin Cutpurse told her not to peach.
By the time the tumult had died down and she dared to look again, the body had gone and another cart was inching towards the gallows. This one contained a plump, solid-looking woman with a billowing bosom and a very red face. She was dressed in her best, with a fine feathered hat and a blue cape with gloves to match.
Not for her modest speech and the terrible acceptance of a shroud. She was shouting at the top of her voice, running from one side of the cart to the other to attract attention, and struggling all the time to break from the ropes that bound her hands. Her voice was so loud that Suki could hear every word she was saying. ‘I never killed ’im. Never! I loved that babby! ’E could a been one of me own. I never killed ’im. ’Tis a lie, you unnerstand.’
‘We shall ’ave some rare old sport wiv this un,’ the orange seller said, licking her lips.
The sport began before the cart reached the gallows, for the lady suddenly wriggled her hands out of the ropes, whipped her hat from her head and tossed it into the crowd, to delighted cheers. The hangman made a dive for her hands but she was too quick for him and caught him such a blow in the stomach that he fell back against the side of the cart, momentarily winded. She had her gloves off immediately and then her cloak, and both were tossed to her friends before he could scramble to his feet and stop her. ‘You ain’t making money out of me, mate,’ she shouted at him. ‘An’ don’t you think it!’ And the crowd applauded all round her, as her friend held up the cloak and waved it like a triumphal flag. ‘You ain’t stringing me up neither!’ she shouted at the hangman, squaring up to him with her fists bunched like a prize fighter. Her audience was thrilled by her, and gave her another round of vociferous applause.
Could she fight him off? Suki wondered, admiring her. How proper and sensible to put up a struggle. That’s what I’d do. ’Tis the natural way. And she willed the woman on.
It was a riotous fight, for the woman was a heavyweight and knew how to punch and, even though the hangman was strong, she was almost a match for him, kicking and thumping and squirming out of his grasp when he tried to tie her hands again, and on one occasion flailing him with his own rope. But at last he pinned her into a corner of the cart and tied her legs into a bundle with shreds of her own skirt. And the crowd, being an extremely sporting lot, applauded him to show how even-handed they were. Even then she went on struggling, so that he was forced to sit astride her heaving body in order to tie her hands. And that provoked much cheerfully ribald comment, and several impossible suggestions, given the present state of her legs.
It was all so good humoured and noisily cheerful that Suki found herself enjoying it, excited by the struggle and the applause. It didn’t seem possible that this strong, determined woman would actually die. Even when the hangman was finally dragging her towards the noose by her hair, there was an unreality about it, like a Punch and Judy show. It was a brutal display, no more, and she half expected the two participants to stop and take a bow. But the noose was tightened about the woman’s neck, the hangman stood back from his handiwork and the crowd grew silent again. And the woman suddenly flung herself forward off the edge of the cart. Her neck snapped with such a crack that they could all hear it quite clearly, and then her head jerked upwards and red blood spouted out of her mouth like a fountain, and the crowd groaned and then cheered. And Ariadne fainted away.
Suki handed William to Hepzie at once and climbed out of the cart to help her but it took a tremendous effort to struggle over to the coach and, even when she finally reached it, it was a very long while before she could get her mistress to come round, for her body was wedged against the coachman’s seat and the crowd was so densely packed around them that there was no way she could be lifted down and set on the ground. Suki eased the poor girl’s head between her knees and rubbed her hands and wished she had some aqua vitae about her.
Sir George pronounced it an uncommon good thing. ‘She’ll speak now! You’ll see!’
How little you know of her, Suki thought, lifting the Ariadne’s head. It made her quail to think how heartless he was being.
Below them, two women were talking about the execution, their voices clear, and their sentiments unequivocal.
‘She was still a murderer, whatever you might say.’
‘Such a fighter! Does yer ’eart good to see a fighter. I don’t ’old with the meek ones!’
‘She killed that babba, don’ you ferget. Stole it from her ladyship an’ then killed the poor little soul.’
‘’Tis true enough. Aye! She never ’ad no business stealing a babba. That I’ll allow.’
Fear trailed icy fingers through the centre of Suki’s body. Could you be hung for pretending your baby was somebody else’s? Surely not. Not if you’d cared for it and loved it and kept it healthy. But then she remembered that other baby, that poor little long-forgotten baby, lying on the kitchen table, pale as wax and tiny and innocent. What if Sir George accused her of killing that baby? He was heartless enough to do it, in all conscience. Please God, she prayed, don’t ’ee let nothin’ like that happen to me. Out there, in the bloodthirsty crowd, with Ariadne unconscious, and Sir George callous, she felt horribly vulnerable.
At last Ariadne groaned and opened her eyes. She saw Suki but, much to her father’s annoyance, she didn’t speak. The worst of Suki’s fear receded now that her mistress had recovered, but she was still troubled, and it seemed more important to her than ever that she should find the Captain and get him to acknowledge their baby. She must go to Bedlam-in-Moorfields the very first chance she got.
But as she was soon to discover, life in London was even more frenetic than life in Bath. The house in Cavendish Square was enormous and the work there so demanding that even though there were scores of servants, they were all hard at it from early morning until they slept at night. It was late on Sunday afternoon before Suki even discovered that her old friend Bessie was working in the kitchen. She scarcely saw Mr Jessup and Mrs Sparepenny who were distant gods in this great household, although their orders came through endlessly to each and every one of their hard-working subordinates. Every single room had to be made ready for bridesmaids or wedding guests, and the kitchen was under such pressure, feeding the household and preparing the wedding feast, that the housekeeper and the cooks barely had time to talk about anything else — and were certainly in no mood to give permission to the family wet nurse to go off on some wild goose chase to the other side of London.
‘Vastly entertaining, I daresay,’ Mrs Sparepenny said disparagingly, when Suki finally plucked up the courage to seek her out and ask her, ‘viewing the lunatics, but ’tain’t for the likes of you. Nor me neither. We’ve got other matters to attend to. ’Twill need to wait till this wedding’s over and done.’
It was a disquieting answer. Was Bedlam a lunatic asylum then? Surely not. What would the Captain be doing in a lunatic asylum?
‘Oh yes!’ Barnaby said, when Monday came around and he and Bessie were helping Suki to prepare the guest rooms. ‘That’s what ’tis, right enough. Famous for it. They opens it up every afternoon an’ people come from all over to see ’em. Very comical they are, by all accounts. I wouldn’t mind going mesself.’
‘I s’pose you don’t know where ’tis?’ Suki asked, as casually as she could.
‘I do, as’t happens,’ Barnaby said, pleased to be the one with the information, for once. ‘Me an’ Dick was at an inn over there one time. ’Tis right over the other side a London. Miles away. Took us hours to get there.’
So I’ll never get there an’ back while this wedding’s a-going on, Suki thought. I’ll have to wait till it’s over. Mrs Sparepenny was right about that. But what was he doing in a lunatic asylum? Surely he hadn’t taken a job looking after madmen. He was too full of life and fun. Yet Quin Cutpurse had said that would be where she’d find him. And she did so want to find him, dear, dear Jack.
He was lying on dirty straw, on a stone-flagged floor, struggling to focus his eyes, and wondering where on earth he was. He knew that his mouth was dry from long fever, that his hips were sore from lying on the stones, that he was achingly hungry. He could see that his arms were thin for lack of sustenance, and that he was dressed in rough canvas breeches and a filthy cotton shirt. And he realised that, wherever he was, it was a dark stinking place and full of fearsome noises. But he’d been struggling with nightmares for so long that it was hard to tell whether he was awake or asleep.
Hideous faces swam into his line of vision, now a man with a bulbous nose and one eye lower than the other, here a mouth full of broken teeth, black with decay and green-edged, there a man with a shaven head and cheeks criss-crossed with scars, grinning and cackling. If this was a nightmare, it was of another kind. It wasn’t like the dreams that had racked him through the long days and nights of his fever — the dreams of formidable women who’d beaten him and starved him, who’d told him he was worthless and thrown him into the holds to stink and suffer with the slaves, who’d tossed him to the sharks to be torn apart alive.
I must speak, he thought, trying to clear his throat. If he could hear the sound of his own voice, he would know that the nightmare was over. ‘Where am I?’ he said and was ashamed to hear how weak he sounded. ‘Where am I?’
The question sent the grinning creature into hideous paroxysms of laughter and soon three more shaven heads pressed down towards him to grunt and cackle. He closed his eyes because he couldn’t bear the sight of them. When he opened them again, there was a new face before him and this one was showing concern. ‘Am I dead?’ he asked. ‘Is this Hell?’
