They came for William Greg an hour ago. The sound of soldiers’ boots and challenges and Greg’s screams reached through the palace even up here, to the attics. All the women ran out of their rooms with counterpanes round them, hair anyhow, and hurried downstairs to watch. I dressed. If they arrest me as well I’m not going in my shift.
I was in time to watch him dragged off. I don’t think he saw me; he was in terror. Will he tell? Lord, will he tell? The creature in the corner is roaring in triumph so that I can hardly hear anything else and have had to put my door ajar to listen for the soldiers’ approach to my room. Between horror of one and dread of the other I can feel my mind going.
Hold there, steersman. Hold. Hold.
To keep sane, I sit at the table in the middle of my room and pare my pen, order my papers and write. I have lit a fire in the grate so that at the first step of boots on the stair I can burn all I have written, though it will be a great pity.
Oh, my dear love, are we to lose our plan after this long voyage towards it? Hold. Hold.
My apparent calm puts the creature out of countenance. She doesn’t know what to do and mauls the air as if it were my throat. Her puzzled eyes bulge out at me through the seaweed like huge gooseberries.
Will Greg tell? Only an hour before his arrest he’d crept up here, to this room, for what he called ‘loving recreation’. He was so careless. He’s one of those who never think to reef till they’re dismasted. Suppose somebody saw him, connects me with him?
I was a fool to use him, but I had no other method of communicating with St-Germain to make arrangements for the Bratchet’s disposal. And he was a most excellent post office. Though not, it appears now, a consummate traitor.
Owing to the hours of posting, the ministry secretaries do their work here from eleven at night until four o’clock in the morning. It is drudgery, as Greg often complained to me: ‘I am the most intelligent fellow in Harley’s office and the only one with French,’ he would say. He worked for a pittance – hence his treachery – though Harley, who appreciated him, paid him over the usual rate.
He’d been given the job of censoring French prisoners’ letters home, which were then sent in a diplomatic bag to France, to Louis XIV’s Minister of War. It was easy for him to copy state papers and include them among the letters – and to slip one of mine in with them.
My first letter got through, I know, because I received a reply through the same channels. I sent the woman money and the promise of more when the job was done. We had met when I eventually divested myself of Trooper Johnson and crossed into France from Ghent and made my way to St-Germain to ask for Francesca’s help to get me to Jamaica. There was no one else to turn to. I dare trust nobody in England.
Francesca was enthusiastic for any attempt that would put her granddaughter on the throne – that was how I represented the matter. Her maid, ambitious woman, was even more so, seeing investment in such a plan might repay her a thousandfold and rescue her from a life of servitude that had no likelihood of a pension at the end of it.
My first letter to them got through, I say, but my second may have been in the batch discovered. Much good may it do them. We had established a code; reference to Bratchet’s demise was ‘the disposal of the goods’ and the signature ‘Anne Boleyn’. They’ll make nothing from that.
The interesting thing was that the reply to my first letter came from the maid. Francesca has grown feeble-witted in the intervening years. The maid, however, will further the plan by seeing that Bratchet is silenced. If I read her character right, she’ll enjoy it.
Will Greg tell? At least I had the sense never to be seen in public with him, knowing how rash he could be. But what if they torture him? The government likes to say that it has banned the use of the rack but there are more ways of skinning a cat than racking it, especially one which has sold state secrets to the enemy.
They’ve taken him to Newgate. I wonder, should I enquire of the Brotherhood if there’s anyone in the dub can kill him? He’ll be too well guarded, I fear. No, I must see the night out. If I maintain calm the creature will be unable to claw through my skull into my brains, which she longs to do. I shall keep writing.
The plan was proceeding well, too. Lord, let it continue. Let Greg hold his mouth. Queen Ant had learned to trust me. Carefully, gradually, I showed shock, then disapproval at the Duchess of Marlborough’s treatment of her. A gasp would be drawn from me – ‘Can she be thus unkind?’ – followed by, ‘Forgive me, Majesty. I did not mean so bold.’
Queen Ant did not mind in the least. Wounded, humiliated, she feeds on my sympathy. Abigail provides her with enough to swim in, dripping it like a barrel of oil, but she wants more. And always I suggest ‘cold tea’ to ease her distress. It is our private joke, cold tea, and I have been increasing the amount of brandy in it.
I could be sorry for the woman; she is anxious for her husband whose breath comes harder every day, yet she is harried by Sarah and the Whigs in her cabinet who want her to rid them of Harley. Through Abigail, she is equally harried by Harley, who wants her to rid him of all opposition so that he can be chancellor and chief minister.
That is where the power lies now – with Abigail and Harley. If Sarah were not blind she would cease her fulminations against Abigail. The more she rants the closer Queen Ant holds to the woman and, therefore, to Harley who is Abigail’s puppet-master.
How I have to fawn on that dreary Abigail with attentions and enquiries after her health! She is more difficult to attach than Sarah was, cold-hearted sow that she is, but I have done it. I resorted to an act of great daring to win her. I snubbed Sarah. A gamble, for the duchess is still titular governor of the household, after all, and her husband England’s hero – the duke has won another battle against the French, at Oudenarde.
Yet, though Queen Ant orders public celebrations for the victory, on reading the casualty list in the bedchamber she wept and said: ‘Oh Lord! Will this bloodshed never cease!’
With the wind in that direction, it was time to change course. I waited until Abigail was in the chamber when Sarah made one of her burstings-in, demanding from Queen Ant a promise that her (Sarah’s) daughters should succeed to her posts as Groom of the Stole, Keeper of the Privy Purse and Ranger of Windsor Park which, between them, are worth £9,000 a year. As ever, she ordered Abigail – ‘this person whom I took from a garret’ – to leave the room. Gently, the queen said, ‘I beg that Mistress Hill may stay, Mrs Freeman.’
Furious, Sarah looked around her and saw me putting clothes into a press, and commanded me, as a creature still in her power, ‘Fetch me a chair, girl, then bring a dish of chocolate.’
‘Certainly, ma’am,’ I said, ‘when I have finished folding, as Mistress Hill bid me.’
I have faced abductors, gunfire, boarders, a hurricane, but never, till then, a gorgon. I swear her hair rose from her head and waved in the air. ‘Is this the way of it, you ingrate?’
I was sorry for it; Sarah’s is a greater heart than the shrivelled thing that ticks within Abigail’s breast, but I have my own ship to sail. I was rewarded by Abigail’s look of satisfaction and approval and, some days later, her accolade – I attended her wedding.
It was celebrated in secret, for fear of Sarah knowing.
Late one evening at St James’s – I had been transferred to night duty – Queen Ant called to me to bring her cloak. Together, with her leaning on me, we tiptoed through the silent corridors. Tiptoed. A queen in her own palace, terrified of one female subject.
We reached the apartment of Dr Arbuthnot. He is the physician to Prince George, the consort, a snuffy, jovial Tory whose room is the resort of the coffee-house poets, wits and other idlers.
Tonight it was crowded with flowers, a parson, Mrs Arbuthnot in her best and twittering, Abigail in her best and smirking, Robert Harley in his best and impassive. And Sam Masham. Sam is Prince George’s equerry, formerly his page. His function, as far as I can divine it, is to bow and smile, for he does nothing else. But a fine catch for the lowly Abigail. Harley arranged it, of course.
The ceremony was brief and hushed. The queen kissed Abigail and blessed her. Harley did the same. Sam bowed and smiled. Dr Arbuthnot peered out of the door to see if all was clear and I heaved Queen Ant back to her chamber. All the way she pressed me to say nothing. Nor did I. But, inevitably, Sarah uncovered the truth.
It was just before the thanksgiving for Oudenarde, to be held at St Paul’s. A tight-lipped Sarah, in her capacity as Keeper of the Robes, laid out the royal costume, train and ceremonial jewels and then retired to ready herself. As wife of the great duke, she was to accompany the queen in the coach.
Queen Ant was miserable. The dead of Oudenarde weighed on her mind; she didn’t want to celebrate the battle at all. Also, she had been nursing the Prince Consort day and night. The cures she’s taken him to at Bath, Epsom and Tunbridge Wells have been in vain; she is soon to be a widow. She is beset by quarrelling ministers. Her rheumatism was flaring her legs into tree trunks and she would have to be hoisted into the carriage on the special platform-seat made for her.
‘I have no heart for jewels,’ she said, looking at the bed where Sarah had laid everything ready.
Abigail seized the moment. ‘Majesty, why wear them?’
A naughty look came into the queen’s eye. ‘Then I won’t.’
I confess I gaped at that; the diamonds are magnificent and glitter like a shoal of flying fish. Calico Jack would have slavered at the sight of them, as would any pirate worth his salt, as did I.
We learned what happened afterwards in the royal coach from Carrots, who went in it with Sarah and the queen.
‘When Sarah saw the queen had left off the jewels,’ Carrots told us, ‘she was so put out she kept silent all the way from Kensington to Temple Bar, after which she began to berate Her Majesty, accusing her of slighting “my lord, the hero of this hour”. The poor queen kept opening her mouth to gainsay her but the duchess would not let her speak. Over and over she accused Abigail, “Did not Masham instigate this?” “Is not this rudeness the handiwork of Traitress Masham?”
‘At last we reached St Paul’s and the queen was helped down on to the steps. There was a great crowd on them, held back by javelin men, but Sarah was yet fulminating as she descended. Her Majesty looked to say something in reply. At which…’ here Carrots paused as if she could still not believe it, ‘…at which the duchess, in front of them all, said, “Hold your tongue, madam.”’
The trumpets sounded then, the organ and choir crashed out into the Te Deum, the Tower guns fired their salvo over the City. Had Sarah known it, it was her requiem. The queen has indeed held her tongue; she has not spoken to her since.
At last it is dawn. A cock has just crowed and is being answered by others farther away. On the river a bargeman has shouted a greeting to another. Even the creature has subdued her gibbering and is become the insubstantial shape she assumes in daylight. She never completely leaves me now.
I have survived the night, then. We shall see what the day brings.
What I had forgotten, in fear for myself, was that someone else has to wait out the days and pray that Greg keeps his silence – Robert Harley.
The Whigs would like nothing better than to bring Harley down. And they scent blood. They are in the ascendancy now since Parliament holds more Whigs than ever before, through the arrival into it, under the Union, of Scotch peers and members.
And here is the wretched William Greg, Harley’s own secretary, under the Whigs’ hand, guilty of treason. If they can but make him admit Harley knew and approved it… you can see their chops slaver at the thought. The Earl of Sunderland, the Marlboroughs’ son-in-law, pads past Harley’s door grinning, like a wolf sighting lamb.
Did Harley conspire in the treachery? The Whigs think him capable of it – ‘Trickster Robin’ they call him – but are careless whether he did or not as long as they can make poor Greg say he did.
The man is certainly a schemer, so devious he could wriggle up his own arse, as Calico Jack used to say. Sometimes I am almost sure it was Harley ordered our kidnapping all those years ago; he was, and is, ruthless and would not have scrupled to rid the throne of an annoying complication. But selling his country’s secrets to the enemy? Greg never mentioned it to me – and if anybody would have known, Greg would.
I’ll say this for the man, I draw strength from his demeanour. Disgrace, Newgate, the gallows await him but his cottage-loaf face remains as bland as ever. If anything, he is the more dignified. A committee of seven Whig lords interrogate Greg in his Newgate cell all day, every day. So far, he has withstood them and named neither Harley nor, more importantly, myself.
Today Harley came to the bedchamber to enquire of Queen Ant’s health. In turn, she enquired after Greg’s. It is now a month since his arrest. Harley said, with meaning, ‘He still refuses to implicate those whom he knows to be innocent, ma’am. His only complaint is of his fetters which allow him neither to stand up nor to kneel down.’
The queen clicked her tongue in sympathy. ‘Such usage is hanging him over and over. I shall send Dr Arbuthnot to him with comforts and necessaries. And you, Mr Harley, how are you?’
Harley bowed. ‘Ma’am, I know nothing that I can do but to confide in the providence of God.’ Admirable. Calculated to win the queen’s heart.
If it was you, Harley, who organized the abduction of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, I shall open your stomach and take your living bowels and wind them round the nearest tree. In the meantime, my compliments. Both our heads are on the block, did you but know it. You, like me, know they press Greg harder every day. As I do, you retire at night and shake like a flapping jib sheet, waiting for the rap on the door. Yet in public there is no tremor of your voice or hand, as I hope there is none of mine.
I wanted to run after him. ‘Ahoy, shipmate. We share the same boat in this hurricane.’ He’d be surprised to know a mere bedchamber woman considers he’d make a most excellent pirate.
Three months gone by and still Greg has not confessed a word against anyone but himself. The Whigs are despairing that he will. There are hours in which even I forget he still might.
After all, why should they even question him about me? They have found one curious letter, but their main aim is to make Greg implicate Harley; they may overlook anything else. And Greg has a curious honour. He is refusing to say that Harley was involved in his treachery, though they are probably promising him his life if he does. Perhaps the same loyalty extends to me – he was undoubtedly mad for me.
Harley, I think, will go down whatever happens, not for employing a treacherous secretary but because the rest of the cabinet, now dominated by Whigs, has banded against him. Even Marlborough, egged on by Sarah, has threatened to resign if Harley is not dismissed. The queen is loth to let him go, whom she regards as her one ally, but a Whiggish House of Commons is refusing to pass the Bill of Supply unless she does. So Harley must fall.
And I, it seems, have backed the wrong horse. Sarah, who loathes Harley, triumphs over the court, refuses to speak to me, and won’t hesitate to demand my dismissal. The creature is delighted and howls taunts into my ear all night so that I lose sleep.
Harley has been dismissed and dear, dull George, the Prince Consort, is dead.
The queen had sat with him night after night, not caring that hated Whigs were taking control of her government, but only that her husband, ‘my dear companion’, should draw an easy breath. That wish was denied her. We could hear his gasps through two antechambers. Then the silence. And the queen’s scream.
Sarah came hot-foot to Kensington from Windsor, virtually ramming the door of the death chamber to get in, evicting Abigail from Queen Ant’s side and insisting Her Majesty leave the palace at once for St James’s. Apparently, it is the custom for the royal family to vacate instantly the building in which one of their number has died.
The queen didn’t want to go, of course, but was too crushed to prevail against the duchess. The poor thing went past us in a daze with barely time for us to bring her a hood, almost dragged by Sarah. She whispered, ‘Send to Masham to come to me before I go,’ but Sarah would not allow it.
So now we are in first mourning, which lasts three months. We are a court of rooks. Even the November sky has loyally made itself dark at noonday and is weeping. The only sound in the dull, silent palace is the swish of our black petticoats – bombazine for the maids of honour, lawn for bedchamber women, bought at the queen’s expense – as we creep about on our soft, black, chamois shoes.
Male courtiers and ministers have no buttons on the sleeves and pockets of their black worsted, wear black crêpe hatbands, black weepers, black buckles and swords.
Outside, St James’s steps are draped with black flannel while indoors even the sconces are oxidized black. The pincushions on the dressing tables are black, with black pins.
Sarah is everywhere efficient and crisp in her official capacity, spotting a coloured handkerchief in the Earl of Pembroke’s sleeve and whipping it away as if he might have been going to assassinate the queen with it, noticing that Anne Sunderland, her own daughter, had put flounces on her bombazine and ordering them stripped off. Queen Ant provides the only colour – she wears the royal mourning purple – but she is hardly seen, shutting herself away to haunt the closet where George used to make his model ships.
Neither Sarah nor Abigail has allowed the queen’s sorrow to stop their wrangling over her. Sarah is convinced the only reason she has shut herself in the consort’s closet is because it is near the back stairs to Abigail’s apartment and so stays with her every possible moment, despite Queen Ant’s pleas to be left alone. In fact, Sarah, who is unable to put herself in anyone else’s situation, believes the queen’s tears are merely a show. Nor does Abigail respect the queen’s wish for privacy, but hops inside the closet every time Sarah is out of it.
I chose a moment when neither harpy was with her and went in, unspeaking, to kneel and proffer a glass of cold tea. The Ant downed it in a swallow – and it was a bumper. Handing back the glass, she said, ‘Perhaps another, my dear, when no one is by.’
The little room smelled of varnish and raw wood and had shavings on the floor – she would not allow them cleared. A chisel lay in her lap and her hand stroked the vice attached to his workbench. If she pretends grief, as Sarah says, she does it well; her face blotched, her dress dirty and the bandages on her bad foot stained and trailing.
Even if it were not part of the plan to make her dependent upon me for her tipple, it would be charity to keep her three sheets in the wind for this period. Perhaps she did not, despite the seventeen pregnancies, love her dull old George with the passion which, even now, exists between Sarah and her duke. Nevertheless, he became her child, the only one to survive; unthreatening, undemanding and comfortable, a refuge. Now she has none.
When I brought the second glass she said, ‘You are my comfort, child.’ There was an emphasis on the ‘you’ which suggests she will not part with me now, whoever becomes my enemy. I am saved. Indeed, with caution, I may be able to supplant Abigail altogether and begin my own reign. Sarah’s is over for good. Somewhere within the Ant’s flabby, sentimental corpulence is a register of what is owed to a Stuart Queen of England and Defender of the Faith. She will not forget being told to hold her tongue on the steps of her own cathedral.
Now we are in second mourning – not quite so rigorous as first, but dreary enough. Everyone takes advantage of free days to slip away and find relief in recreation of some sort. My fellows find it strange that I do so alone, but they have become used to my solitary ways and no longer question me.
From St James’s it is a short walk to reach the river and hire a waterman – again, a usual practice since the Thames is a quicker and safer route than the roads. It is also easier to make sure I am not followed. I took double care, directing the waterman to the Bridge where I took another boat to Southwark where I took yet another to Wapping Steps.
It is always a tedious journey and, yesterday, very cold. The winter is turning bitter. I was glad of my two cloaks – the old, patched woollen to hide my mourning one of Norwich crépe.
Swathes of holly and other evergreens have been hung along the waterfront houses in readiness for Christmas but already they are shrivelling in the frost. From every church comes the sounds of a choir practising Christmas anthems and bellringers running through a peal. Their holiness hurts the creature and she screamed so loud I told her to shut her mouth, which angered the waterman who thought I was addressing to him.
This is become a danger. She is increasingly insistent in her demands and so infiltrates her voice into my head that I have to clench my mouth to stop it forming an answer. I nearly did so in the bedchamber the other day and got an old-fashioned look from Carrots.
Christendom runs out at Wapping where inns outnumber churches by thirty-six to one. Indeed, there is a part of Wapping Wall where other tongues drown out the English language altogether. But the Brotherhood holds sway in it and make sure I am never molested when I go to meet them there.
One of them, Billy, was at the steps and escorted me safely past the other taverns to the Bladebone, an old whalers’ inn, now the gathering-place for less admired marine professions. Not a pretty establishment; a whale skeleton still arches the roof, the skulls of sharks and dolphins decorate the walls and there is a distinct remembrance of blubber in the barrel-tables. I feel at ease there. Jem, the landlord, who was second mate on the Childhood under Captain Quelch before that gentleman had the misfortune to be executed in Boston, is always pleased to see me.
This time, however, one of his customers, a man I didn’t know, objected to my presence as I stepped over the threshold and, not wanting ‘no high-nosed lady’s maid’ overhearing his business, attempted to throw me out. I had my knife at his throat on the instant, which gave him pause and Jem time to come up and introduce me.
‘Gentlemen, this is Marianne, as fine a member of the Brotherhood as ever plundered a prize. I, personal, have seen her stick an impudent rogue like a pig for saying less than you said, Bob Clew.’ (Our visits to Jamaica’s Port Royal being infrequent and both of us being of similar build with dark hair, we were often confused by Brothers, other than our own crew. To avoid mistake, they ran our names together, calling us both ‘Mary-Anne’, or ‘Marianne’ or ‘Marion’ indiscriminately.)
Master Clew apologized, I put my knife away and downed a flagon with him, Jem extolling my virtues the while. ‘Not a freebooter in Jamaicky as wouldn’t heve been proud to have her aboard. Worth the price of three, she was, and as handy with a cutlass as meself. Never gave her mates away when in prison, neither. There’s not one of the Brotherhood as wouldn’t take her place on the gallows.’
I winked at him to stop before he got into shoal waters and babbled too much of my history. I have given him to believe I’ve turned respectable and married a parson up Hertfordshire way, occasionally dabbling in illicit trade in order to augment my husband’s stipend. The thought tickles him mightily.
‘Have I a visitor, Jem?’
‘Up aloft.’ He lit me up the stairs to a private room where Captain Porritt was waiting, then fetched more ale, chatted, and finally left us together.
The Brotherhood set me on to Captain Porritt. He is one of the new pirates of this sad age. Politics rather than plunder is his concern; he runs information and Jacobites back and forth across the Channel. I know him for a rabid Papist and slavish admirer of Mary of Modena and the Pretender, yet from his look, which is stern, and clothes, which are plain, he could be taken for a Puritan.
I questioned him about the situation at St-Germain and learned that the Bratchet was still alive the last time he was there. Francesca had been away from the court, taking some cure, but was expected back any day.
The creature insists now that not only the Bratchet but also Martin Millet and the Scotsman must be silenced. She points out that Bratchet might have confided in them who it was she saw leaving the scene of the murder. They cannot identify me, as Bratchet can, but it is true they are a risk to my position.
Hence my appointment with Porritt.
‘Captain,’ I told him, ‘I am here to warn you. You are in danger. Your name is on a list of suspected Jacobite sympathizers who are to be arrested for their treason.’
It was the truth. It was on Harley’s desk and Greg showed it to me. For such a devious man, Harley was extraordinarily reckless about leaving secret papers lying around – his carelessness enabled his enemies to point out that in this at least he had encouraged Greg’s treachery, which he had.
Porritt went pale. ‘How do you know?’
‘I have a lover who is the Secretary of State’s secretary,’ I told him, ‘You have been watched by government informers. I understand that at this moment the French are commissioning a ship for you so that you can harry the English navy in the West Indies.’
His increased pallor told me the information was accurate. More of England’s wealth is vested in the West Indies than most people realize; by encouraging privateers to interfere with Caribbean trade, Louis XIV is helping to ruin this country’s economy and reduce it to a state which will bring down the government, thereby giving the Pretender his chance.
Porritt would have rushed off there and then to board his boat and sail back to his French friends, and safety. I stopped him. ‘One good turn deserves another,’ I said, ‘In fact, there is a good turn you can do for the Jacobite cause.’
He sat down. ‘Are you one of us?’
‘I am. Thanks to my information, I am able to tell you that there is a spy at St-Germain, a wench on Her Majesty Queen Mary’s staff who has been spying on her and sending reports to the English government.’
‘Who?’ The venom with which he asked it made me think that he will dispose of Bratchet with pleasure; Mary of Modena inspires fanatical devotion in men like him, almost a lust. They see her as a wronged Queen of Heaven.
‘Mlle La Fée, but you needn’t concern yourself with her, she’s being dealt with. However, she has friends, also spies, also at court.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I understand that your port of call in France is Le Havre.’
He gave a brief nod.
‘And perhaps, during your stay in Le Havre, you have sometimes noticed a sizeable fishing smack, L‘Hirondelle, put in there from time to time.’
He nodded again.
‘She is an English government boat,’ I told him, ‘She crosses to Le Havre every two months or so to service their agents.’
Another gift from Greg. I was going to miss that man.
‘She won’t do it again,’ promised Porritt. Not only did he have the appearance of a Puritan, he radiated the same hatred for everything that some of them do. Give a man like that a cause and he’ll serve it in the hope of hurting anybody else’s.
‘I should be grateful if you left the boat alone for now,’ I said, ‘I want her watched. It may be that sooner or later two men will turn up at Le Havre, wishing to board her and return home. They have information damaging to the Jacobite cause. They must be stopped.’ I gave him the names and descriptions of Millet and Kilsyth.
‘Killed?’
I shrugged. ‘As you please.’ A happy thought struck me. ‘Or press them and take them with you to the West Indies.’
‘You’re a cold-hearted specimen, missie.’
It takes one to know one, I thought. I could see it was gall and wormwood to him to be receiving advice and instruction from what he regarded as a chit. If he had a wife, which I doubted, he was the sort who would beat her. ‘Will you do it?’
‘I’ll do it.’
He went off without a goodbye. Graceless man, he might have thanked me. I trusted him to do what he’d promised, though; it would give him the opportunity to make somebody unhappy.
‘So there’s for you, Martin Millet,’ I said to myself. It might be, of course, that he’ll try to return to England some other way but, as I knew from Greg, he is in touch with England’s embassy at The Hague whose spies use L‘Hirondelle, so there’s a fair chance that he’ll go via Le Havre when he wants to leave France. And with the Bratchet dead, he’ll have no reason to stay.
Jem was kindly enough to leave his customers and walk me to where I could hire a hackney, talking all the way of the good old days in Port Royal, but I could not attend to him.
‘What do you keep looking astern for?’ he asked me, ‘Afeared one of your husband’s churchwardens follows you?’ He thought it a great joke. I am amazed nobody but me can see her, or hear the clump of her boots stepping in time to mine.
‘You don’t hear anything?’ I asked him. She was cackling with joy that the poor Bratchet is doomed.
‘’Tis a hyena,’ he said, ‘or a lion.’
True, we were passing the wild-beast shops such as abound in Ratcliffe Highway. Jem says one day he’ll take me to see the menageries in which the pelicans and tigers and other animals brought by sailors are stored in ingenious ways. But I have my own wild beast. And am in the cage with it.
On the way out of the City, the hackney was delayed at Newgate where an excited crowd gathered outside the prison gates. I questioned my driver. He told me they were waiting to follow the cart taking William Greg to Tyburn ‘and see his treasoning tripes cut out afore he’s hanged’.
I had forgotten that this was the day. I told him to drive on.