I am led, laughing, to the gallows before a crowd of thirty thousand. At first, I think they’ve taken out drums for me, but it’s their hands slamming on the gallows floor – the crowds animatedly clapping and stomping, forming a rhythmic heartbeat that pulsates through the soles of my shoes as I make the short walk from the gaol.
Men and boys whoop from the lampposts they have perched on all night, the metal clanging as they pound on it. The more affluent have rented out conveniently placed roofs and windows.
Sellers wave their printed broadsides and leaflets, their hoarsening bellows proclaiming they contain the dying words and lamentations of the Governess of Ensor House in print, the masses reaching for a glance at my likeness (chin too large, is my opinion). It was taken at the trial, during which Drusilla, the picture of grace and superior breeding in her dark bonnet and black lace mittens, informed the court that ‘Winifred Notty killed them, killed them all.’
A young lad tries to climb up a leaden pipe on one of the houses to get a better view, whereupon the landlord of said building immediately slaps him down. I chortle, and the crowds cheer, the air flavoured with beer and rot from empty stomachs and of sweet smoke from clay pipes.
Their hands slam, slam, slam on the gallows as I step, step, step up the scaffold.
I raise my hands, which are tied in front of me, in a sweet gesture of humility. The policemen escorting me linger about; shy, chuckling, relaxed once they realise they won’t have to deliver me to my fate with force – audiences never like to see violence committed against a lady.
I face my executioner, who is impatient, who thinks this is really all about him. Initially employed to flog juvenile criminals held in the gaol, he has now become one of the most prolific executioners in the country. I hear he favours the short-drop method, whereby the convicts are slowly strangled to death for ten to twenty minutes (to hasten the process, he might sometimes pull on legs or climb on shoulders to break the necks of the condemned).
The executioner throws the heavy braided rope around my neck, adjusts the knot. Tight. Tighter. Jute needles scratch at my skin. He pinions my legs to avoid my dress billowing up when I fall (that would be in bad taste).
The prison bell tolls.
The chaplain asks me if I have anything to say about my guilt. ‘It was grand,’ I say, to murmurs from the public. ‘It was all grand.’
UNREPENTANT, the accounts in the papers will read.
The executioner pulls a white nightcap from his pocket. ‘No,’ I say, ‘I want to see.’
He pauses, his eyes veer towards the chaplain, who nods solemnly. The executioner returns the nightcap to his pocket.
I look at the crowd, at Drusilla among them, her fawn eyes wide and brimming with the tears I never could produce.
The executioner removes the bolt and the drop falls.
IMAGES STREAM THROUGH my mind, glittering like sunlight reflected off the face of a pocket watch onto a blank wall. Dreams, or just memories. Buzzing flies in closed fists . . . my chubby, childish hands snapping a duck’s beak in two like a stalk of asparagus . . . Miss De Spère in white, rolling down a grassy hill to induce a miscarriage, the folds of her dress flapping loudly around her like dove wings . . . setting the Blackwoods’ whippets on fire, watching them streak across the grounds, three shrieking, shooting stars . . . biting into a meat pie sold by a street seller from a barrow, a milk-tooth crumbling inside my mouth along with the crust and beef . . . and the boar, always the boar, on a gilded crest on my father’s letters and in my eyes and in my father’s eyes and in my grandfather’s eyes which stare out in thick black paint from the portraits hanging in Ensor House.