The trial was quick. Without money for a lawyer, James was on his own from the start. He tried to tell the judge about Mary-Jane, about her feet, about her illness, but he’d never been a man of eloquence. He asked for Abel – he knew he worked there somewhere – but the court wouldn’t wait.
James was found guilty and sentenced to two years’ hard labour. It was all too predictable – though he, at least, would not be shipped off to the other side of the world like Aileen.
Time leached away in Mount Eden Stockade. Each day a notch etched with a spoon into the wood of the wall just above his bed. Five days of nothing but the sound of the warden’s footsteps to remind him he was alive.
‘If you don’t stop calling out, I’ll put a gag on,’ the warden yelled through the door with a bang of his fist.
The man was rigid: solitary confinement meant solitary confinement. James didn’t need to hear it again. Never had he felt so worthless; like it was all over, all the goodness gone. The only hope left in him was for Mary-Jane, for a miracle that she had somehow made it home to her mother.
He sat on the edge of the squeaky bench and rubbed the stubble of his prison-cropped hair. Where was Abel? Someone had sent for him the day James was arrested. A message marked urgent, they told him, though it could have said anything for all he knew.
It made no sense. Surely Abel would have gone to Mary-Jane, sent her home to Otahuhu. But doubt gnawed. He fell against the wall and belted it with his fist. He turned and slid down against it. There he stayed and watched the day come and go through the high, barred window. Hours wasting away inside the wooden interior of his mind.
Another night, and anxiety began to soar to its usual beaten heights. All the while Mary-Jane lay in her bed. James could see her; like a ghost she appeared every night, just before dawn, deathly still in her ripped nightdress, no blankets, and no one at her side. A reminder that he had abandoned her, left her alone, just as he’d left Aileen in the alley; just like his father the day he walked away from his family.
James woke in a panic, disorientated, but he caught himself. He waited for the darkness to sneak away and the sun to creep up to the small window. Another day. A solitary bird issued a simple note, nothing pretty, just a yawn of a sound, and James waited for the spoon to be delivered for the sixth time.
Footsteps hammered their way down the long corridor. The warden – James knew the heaviness of his boots. The cell door opened. The warden’s belly pulled at his buttons as he twisted to speak to someone behind him. James rose to the sound of a second voice.
‘James –’ Abel held out his hands in a confusion of greeting and disbelief. James jumped up, wrapped both hands around one of Abel’s and held on, even when he felt the pull to let go.
Abel looked good for an Englishman spoiled by tattoos. The warden locked the door and waited outside. They obviously didn’t have long.
‘Christ, man. Where have you been?’ James said, his voice giving out halfway through.
‘I’ve been away, James. Came soon as I heard.’
Abel motioned for James to sit beside him on the bench, but James stayed standing.
‘I’m sorry, James,’ Abel said, his voice dented. ‘Had matters of my own to deal with, or I’d have been here sooner.’
James was full of questions but he didn’t trust himself with the words. He shook his head and forced the emotions to settle.
‘Seen her then, have you? Mary-Jane?’
‘I have. She’s not in a good way, James. Have you heard?’
‘Nobody telling me nothing in here.’
‘No.’ Abel pulled on James’s sleeve to make him sit down. ‘What am I going to do with you? You need to make your way in life, stay out of trouble’s way.’
‘I’ve been trying, Abe, honest to God I have.’
‘Well, a fine mess you’ve got yourself into here.’
James folded his arms, suddenly embarrassed.
‘She all right then, Abe? Mary-Jane?’
‘Hard to say. I arranged for her to be sent home. Should arrive this afternoon. Best place for her, I think.’
James nodded.
‘I spoke to the warden. He says there’s a couple of murderers coming in. They’re going to keep them in here, so you’ll be put out with the others.’
James nodded again, but really he didn’t care, as long as Mary-Jane got home.
‘Thing is,’ Abel said. ‘There’s a way out, if you want.’
‘If I want it?’ James rolled his eyes. ‘No place for jokes, this.’
‘I’m not joking. The warden needs a man with experience in hanging. I told him how we hanged the fornicators on the ship, back when we first came out.’
James sat upright. Abel smiled. But it wasn’t a cheeky smile; it was much softer than that and much more cunning. They both knew they’d only practised on the ship, had never actually hanged anyone, but the warden was outside the door, listening.
‘Ah, aye, was a while ago, but you don’t forget a thing like that.’
‘Exactly what I said. Anyway, the offer’s ten pounds and instant release, if you’re up for it.’
James couldn’t believe it. Mother Mary had heard his prayers after all.
‘Up for it all right.’ He stood and shook Abel’s hand vigorously.
‘Right, that’s settled. Warden says we can use his pen and paper if you like. Do you want to send Mary-Jane a letter, James? Let her know you’re coming?’
James couldn’t understand it. Who was this person sitting next to him? How was it that Abel’s influence could get him out of the fix he was in? Abel’s eyes flashed, but not with their old blue mischief, more a penetrating grey that reflected his fine suit. The new tinge of educated authority in his voice held conviction, and the tattoos marked his experience. All of it was foreign to James, but the friendship remained familiar and strong as ever.
‘That’d be grand, Abe.’
‘Dear Mary-Jane,
‘It is in the greatest sadness that I send you this letter from Mt Eden Stockade.’
‘Don’t sound much like me,’ James said.
‘I changed things a bit, sounds better this way.’
‘Regretfully your illness was so devastating, that I did a most foolish thing, something I regret with all my heart. Because you were so ill, Mary-Jane, I thought to procure new boots to aid your recovery. As well you know, we could not afford new boots, and there-in lays my downfall. I fell into temptation, which I wholeheartedly regret, and beg your forgiveness.’
‘She won’t believe that,’ James said.
‘It’s a good letter. It’ll work. Trust me.’
‘Today our dear friend Abel has made it to my side these six days after my arrest. I can assure you I have made every attempt to get help in the meantime but have been unsuccessful in my efforts.
‘Abel brings news of your return to Otahuhu. I am happy to hear this. He also brings news of the miracle that I am to be released in a little over a week. So, my love, I will make my way back to your side, and we will begin again.’
‘My love! She ain’t never going to believe that, for sure. Where’d you learn to write like that?’
‘Waikato, with the Maori chiefs. Now hush, let me finish.’
‘Natives taught you that? Joking, aren’t you?’
‘No, not joking.’
‘There being nothing more to be done until my return, I ask you, your mother and your brothers to forgive me for taking you from your home, and believe me when I say that I am your loving husband still, in Christ, till death do us part. James Stack.’
James could see that Abel was happy with the letter, more his words than James’s; still, it sounded good, like he meant it. He shook Abel’s hand again, in case his friend got the urge to hug him like he had at the wedding, and kept shaking it until Abel started for the door. Then he was gone.
James listened, clung to the disappearing footsteps, the warden’s laugh that boomed in the emptiness of the corridor. He felt more alone than ever once Abel’s voice had left him. He longed to be back on the Witch, coming out. He would have done things differently for sure. He’d have joined the bushrangers, been a better friend, stayed in Otahuhu. But he couldn’t go back, so he shut the thoughts away.
The warden returned after a while and handed James a blanket, then took him to his bunk in one of the shared cells.
‘Remember,’ the warden said. ‘Not a word. If this lot find out you’re the hangman –’ He said no more but motioned death by slit throat with his hand against his neck.
After the first supper, James was keen to get back to the cell. Out in the open he was too obvious – the new man with no place. Already he could see the order of things: the men who went for their food first, the others who sat around their table. Just one week, he reminded himself. He didn’t need to settle in, prove himself. He wasn’t one of them; he was just passing through.
James shuffled down the hall with the pack of other prisoners, trying to coordinate his steps with the man in front. It wasn’t easy. Kicks from behind bit into his calves, the consistency of it too regular to be accidental. James turned and pinned the man behind him to the wall, causing a back-up. The guard’s whistle blew, but there were too many men in the way to do anything. The pinned man, his face expectant, was one of them from the elite table – he’d got what he wanted. But James gave him nothing more, just a flick to his shirt when he let go and returned to line.
Nineteen men filed off into his cell. The scuff of bodies against bunks kicked thick smells about, the sweat of them settling evenly over the room. Several guards pulled at the arms of a prisoner and fought to tie him to the bars of the window.
‘That’s Bentley.’ Another prisoner dragged heavy leg chains along the floor and sat himself down on James’s bunk. ‘Gone mad he has. Some men break into pieces in here. Some spread like oil, taking more than they deserve. Others grow stiff, defensive, avoid trouble. The broken ones are easy; you can take their food with a look, their boots, their blanket, but one day they snap, lose their minds over nothing.’
James had seen soldiers go mad on the battlefield the same way. At least there you knew what a man was. In the stockade, a man could be anything.
‘Spencer.’ The prisoner held his hand out.
‘James,’ he said, ignoring the hand. He’d already decided it reminded him too much of DeRose’s, long and sneaky.
‘Only a few crack, though. Most keep to themselves. William Bates over there –’ Spencer lowered his voice and glanced in the direction of the corner by the window – ‘he’s like the oil.’
‘Can see all right for meself.’
‘Irish, are you? English myself,’ he said, and carried on with his talk.
Spencer wasn’t like the other inmates. He was educated, worked for the New Zealand Steam Navigation Company until he was caught stealing their money. Embezzling, Spencer called it, but he only took what was owed, or so he said.
‘The way of the future,’ Spencer said, ‘steam,’ – only he had no future in it any more.
Spencer shifted the bracelets around his ankles to reveal broken skin where the metal rubbed. Two weeks in iron: discipline for trying to run. He seemed proud of his attempt at freedom.
‘Two days and they’re off again.’ His voice sparked.
James turned away from Spencer; the attention he drew from the room was unwelcome. James would keep to himself, he decided as he glanced around, paying no particular attention to anybody. Let the time unstitch day by day and he’d be all right.
‘They work too hard.’ Spencer leaned across and nodded towards three Maoris beside the door. ‘It’s not good for them – the food’s all wrong for a start, and the air – being shut up like this.’
‘Ain’t no good for any man.’
‘No, but they’re different from us.’
One of the Maoris lay near-naked on the bare floor, sick with fever.
‘That’s Tama. He’s going to die,’ Spencer said, climbing onto his bunk above James, the leg chain the last thing to disappear over the side.
James lay back and placed his blanket under his head for a pillow. ‘Nah, strong as rats they are,’ he said.
Spencer’s globe face appeared over the edge of the bunk. ‘By morning he’ll be dead.’
James pushed Spencer’s forehead away with his finger.
A guard came in and took the lamp that hung in the middle of the cell. Bentley, still shackled to the window, let a string of abuse fly out right into the eye of God, or the moon, or maybe it was both. Either way, it was all someone else’s fault he was there, an innocent man in the pit of hell. God Himself would vindicate him.
‘Hey, take that bloody Maori to the infirmary,’ someone called as the guard locked the door. ‘Make us all sick if he stays here.’
The guard lifted his lamp from the other side. Bars of light swung around the room, then dangled over Tama.
‘Can’t be helped, no infirmary no more, no room for it,’ he said, then shifted his way down the corridor.
Tama’s teeth chattered between breaths and he whispered what sounded like prayers. Bodies shuffled in the darkness and Bentley began to groan; deep, aching groans like a sinking ship creaking with the weight of water.
‘Shuddup will ya,’ someone called. ‘Or I’ll come over there.’
Bentley went quiet, but Tama kept on chattering and twitching.
‘Hey –’ Spencer’s head came over the side of the bunk again. James couldn’t see, but he felt the heat of the man’s stale breath.
‘Honesty, it’s like earth. Honesty, raw and natural like a clod of dirt, grows goodness. What do you think of that?’
‘Know something about it, do you?’ James kicked the wooden slats so hard they threatened to come away. For a moment he thought to jump from under them, but they settled, the stale breath gone from his space, and he pulled the blanket from under his head and wrapped it around his shoulders.
‘Keep watch.’ Spencer’s shallow whisper came through a gap between his mattress and the wall. ‘The oil creeps in the night.’
James turned to the wall for his nightly vigil of prayers to keep Mary-Jane from his dreams. Then he thought of the Witch, of Abel and the sailors, the sack of potatoes they practised hanging, the balance of the weights, the tying of the noose, the drop. The art of snapping necks.
Night deepened, and James awoke to a silhouette of a man, his face unrecognisable except for a smile side-slicked in moonlight. Immediately he knew it wasn’t one of his dreams. William bloody Bates.
He felt the change even before he tried to lift his head. It was a hostile day. From his bunk he heard the trees outside creak at the pressure of a bull wind.
Spencer’s irons clanked on the floor beside the bunk. James felt the panic in the way Spencer shook him – as if to check he was still alive. James groaned, but remained where he was. He didn’t want the others to see the mess he was in.
‘Up you get, Stack.’ The warden’s voice rolled over him.
Still he waited until the sounds of the other men had disappeared down the corridor. The butt of a guard’s rifle rammed his ribs, twice. His head swirled; his face felt like someone else’s.
‘Who did that?’ the warden asked, but James said nothing.
His jaw felt as though it might unhinge as he rolled his tongue around his teeth. All accounted for: still only two missing, one possibly loose, or sore – he couldn’t make it out through the swelling. James bent over and spat three globs into the piss pot. A stream of sticky blood trickled from his mouth.
‘Come with me.’ The warden pulled him up by the elbow. James wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt and let out an involuntary groan.
On the north-facing side of the cell block, the light of the morning seemed too bright, the water in the barrel too cool, and the women prisoners filling tubs with soapy water strangely disconcerting. He didn’t know they kept the women there, out front, out of sight. James washed the blood from his face under the watch of the guard’s rifle, then looked again at the thickly clad women in oversized bonnets. Not one lifted her head to look his way. The guard’s rifle nudged him to move back inside.
‘You’ll be on clean-up.’ The warden indicated a piss pot under a bunk in a cell. ‘I want all of them emptied and cleaned, the floors swept, any food scraps thrown in the sack outside the kitchen. Then you’ll be on wood chopping.’
James nodded – it was the best he could do. Words would hurt, he knew that.
His body felt heavy as he crossed the yard with two piss pots – and it wasn’t just from the beating. His back felt like the stone weight of life gone wrong, years of it pressing down on him, and he was tired, he realised, tired right through to his bones.
James took his lunch with the two wood-chopping boys. They looked young – eight or nine maybe. Runaways from the orphanage, charged with stealing the clothes they’d been given to wear. It didn’t make sense. The warden must have thought so too, because the eldest boy, George, said he let them sleep in the hall at night, away from the men.
James tried to ignore the startled look on the smallest boy’s face whenever he looked up at him. There was no way of reassuring the lad. The swell around James’s mouth kept his lips gripped, and the pain made it impossible for him to turn his head. He attempted a wink, but instantly regretted it.
‘Don’t cry, Billy,’ George ordered.
Billy sucked back the snot and wiped his eyes.
James planted the axe head in a block of wood with one brutal swing: the boys weren’t his responsibility and he wasn’t about to let the whimpering upset him. He got the beat going, just as he had on the Witch, the rhythm of song keeping him steady until Billy dropped a log on his own foot and yelped, throwing it all out of kilter. Twice the axe slipped and stuck in the chopping block. James wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers, while the boys took the split wood from in front of his block and stacked it against the wall, ready for the carts to take away. It was endless work.
To his right, prisoners chiselled at corners of basalt for the wall being built, all of them wearing red bibs – red targets in case they decided to run. It would be easy to run, James thought, and he could understand the temptation that pulled at Spencer. The wall around the prison still wasn’t finished, and freedom seemed just a dash away.
The next morning Spencer plonked his plate beside James’s at the farthest end of the supper table.
‘He’s gone to his grave,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘Tama.’ Spencer scooped his bread into the bowl of slop with the same lack of concern he’d shown two nights before.
‘Gone to the hospital, you daft feck.’
‘Same thing.’
James finished his porridge without listening to another word. Didn’t stop Spencer talking, but James was getting used to turning the noise into a blur.
Outside, James was directed to the far corner of the yard where a man called Durkee awaited instructions from the warden. The two of them had been assigned to fix the scaffold. The last man to hang was too large and had cracked the main beam right through. The hangman had to use ladders to support the beam while the fat man twitched, toes nearly touching the ground. This time, there’d be two hangings, two brothers, and the warden didn’t want any trouble.
‘A good quick death is the least a man can expect and it’s your responsibility to make sure it happens,’ he said, waving his finger at them.
Durkee examined the broken frame like a true fusspot. James knew how to construct a solid structure in a hurry – building redoubts had taught him that; no need for the fussing about. Durkee, though, had been a builder before he got drunk and burnt down the work of his competitor, and for him the reconstruction of the scaffold was for the skilled only. James sat on the platform and left him to it, happy for the chance to raise his ruined face to the sun. Durkee muttered to himself. James closed his eyes and listened to the scratch of chalk numbers scrawling across old planks behind him.
Finally, Durkee was ready. James stood and grabbed a hammer, but Durkee assigned him the task of moving beams while he disassembled the old structure himself. After that, James was put in charge of shifting the new delivery of sawn timber, given lines to saw and nails to pass; anything but the responsibility of hammering an actual nail.
Beam by beam the new scaffold went up at the back of the stockade, within full view of the cells, the stone-splitting yard and the chopping block. Only the women were sheltered from the dread it imposed. Townspeople climbed the hill behind the stockade to check on progress as if it were an amusement. Children ran about laughing until guards moved them all on.
By Friday afternoon it was finished.
Prisoners were taken off duty while the condemned men were brought out and measured against the weights of the hangman’s noose. James was glad they were blindfolded. It was bad enough to see faces jostling for space in the cell windows, faces measuring the burden of his involvement, he was sure.
He moved away and stood beside a guard to deflect the guilt, to appear as innocent as possible while Durkee took over in his usual fashion. They all watched as Durkee tied the rope around one man’s waist, then the next, exacting a balance between the mass of a man and a sack of sawdust. Then he measured each man’s height and made adjustments so they’d hit the end of the rope hard, a good five feet above the ground.
The condemned men said nothing. James coughed as they walked past the guard next to him. He couldn’t help it; the spittle rose in his throat as if to choke him. He could smell them, they were so close, and he wondered if they could smell him too.
The warden tugged on the ropes as hard as he could, then stomped on the trapdoors. Nothing was going to go wrong this time; Durkee had made a castle of a structure. The warden was happy: the scaffold was ready. The murderers were to have their last meal and prepare for the priest the next morning.
A gloomy air had crept in as the execution day drew near. A slow-building, resentful melancholy, and by the last night accusations flew among the prisoners at supper. Some were defended with the fist and a flying plate, some with innocence pledged on the head of a child or a mother, or both. James fought to appear aloof. He knew he had to keep himself together. If they worked out he was the hangman, he’d probably not make it to morning light. Truth was, it could be any one of them, and few ever suspected the men building the scaffold – that would be too obvious. At least that’s what Spencer said.
James crossed himself and prayed that the night would pass swiftly.
All prisoners were locked away for the night – James’s last night, one way or another. Down the corridor came the voice of one of the murderers. He sang the same song over and over, until the warden plugged him with the horse-bit. The murderer kept on, beating the rhythm of the song with his boots against the wall. Long into the night its sound carried from cell to cell, where one or two prisoners sang the words, muffled by walls and softened with sadness, until all its energy was gone.
Breakfast was accompanied with an odd silence. Only a few of the prisoners ate properly; most slumped over their oats without lifting a spoon. The previous day’s anger had disintegrated into a rumble of respect for the two men facing their doom. James couldn’t eat either, though he told himself he had no problem with hanging them. Could have been his own Mary-Jane they’d murdered in her bed. No, he’d happily send them on their way if it meant getting out of there.
‘You know it’s wrong,’ Spencer leaned in with a whisper.
James pulled back.
‘People don’t band together in times of trouble. It’s a lie. We all run for the hills. Those two men walk alone to their end today. Not one of us will do anything about it.’
‘For us to judge, is it?’ James said, too loudly.
Spencer sank back to his oats. James looked at his bowl of pale mush and pushed it away so he didn’t have to smell it.
‘There be hope for their souls at confession,’ he whispered.
‘Hope is wrong too.’ Spencer tilted his head to speak quietly. ‘Keeps you believing in a place that doesn’t exist, living for the wrong reasons.’
‘Why live at all then?’ James lifted his mug of tea, but even that smelled acrid.
‘Opportunities, Stack. The hangman knows about opportunities.’
‘All up!’ the warden called.
James hung back as if idly waiting to join the end of the line. He was glad to be rid of Spencer and his nonsense. Spencer looked back, realisation blooming on his face. He’d be singled out, no doubt: a friend of the hangman. James felt a slight pang of guilt but nothing more – Spencer was an idiot, after all; all words and too many ideas. James pushed him out of his mind; he had other things to think about, nooses to prepare, his life to get back to. It would all be over soon enough.
The window in the warden’s office looked across the yard where the guards prepared the hanging post with the nooses James had tied. James crossed himself and prayed to Mother Mary for forgiveness, for grace, for the nooses to work, for the murderers’ necks to snap without bother.
The warden came in and handed James his old clothes. It had been only two weeks since his arrest, but the clothes looked like strangers. The warden placed three black masks on the chair beside him. Immediately the memory of the surgeon on the Great South Road flooded in – DeRose and the stabbing that was never meant to happen.
‘You up to this?’ the warden asked.
James forced the image from his mind.
‘Sure enough. Could do with a nip, though. Steady a man’s nerve, that would.’
The warden poured a glass of sherry and James gulped it down in three swallows, hungry for the calmness that always came with the first taste. It left a warm track down his throat, but the small pool of it sat weighty in his stomach.
James removed his prison clothes and kicked them into the corner. He never wanted to see them again; would have thrown them into the hearth and set them alight if he could. It felt good to be back in his own clothes, free of the prison branding on his back. He rubbed the tattoo on his wrist before covering it with his sleeve. More branding.
Only one of the masks had holes for the eyes – the hangman’s mask. James pulled it over his face so the two holes fell into place. It was all too familiar.
‘Ready?’ the warden asked.
‘As I’ll ever be,’ James replied.
Curses rang from cell windows as he crossed the yard, but the abuse was easy to ignore. He was hidden by the black mask, inside a world of his own and focused on one last test of the ropes, the lever, the trapdoors. Then there was nothing to do but wait.
The sun stretched up the hill where a crowd had gathered. The condemned men, accompanied by a priest, walked towards him. Two murderers. One with a face melting with tears, the other tough with fear.
James kept his eyes fixed on the warden during the last words, the last prayers, the last proclamations of innocence. Then the nod came. James tied the elbows of the first man behind his back, then tied his knees together.
‘God have mercy on your soul,’ he whispered before he slid a mask over his face.
The man heaved with sobs. The mask, lacking holes of any sort, even for breathing, sucked in and out.
The second man was harder to tie. His body fought every last confinement.
‘God have mercy on your soul,’ James whispered once again.
‘And on yours,’ the man answered with venom.
The warden uttered the men’s names one last time, but James didn’t want them in his head. Murderers, that’s what they were. Two murderers, and their time had come. James checked once more that their feet were over the trapdoor, then wrenched the lever good and hard. They both dropped cleanly.
James ran down the steps, holding his mask in place. The second murderer’s head hung to the side, his neck snapped, but the first one’s legs still flung about. James stood stitched to the spot until the last twitches subsided.
That night the bodies of the two murderers rested underground, and James was released with the clothes he wore the day he was arrested, along with ten pounds and a discharge document he couldn’t read.
The night was cold, the sky crisp, with stars as clear and beautiful as a cathedral ceiling, the moon’s brilliance crowning the freedom of the night, lighting the path to Otahuhu. James walked without stopping, hands in pockets, the fabric of Mary-Jane’s nightdress and Aileen’s woollen lace encased in one hand, ten pounds in the other.