27.

 

Half-past seven, the prison-bell tolling mournfully as Nick was conducted to the gate-house where his arms were pinioned at the elbows — his shirt open at the neck, wearing breeches, spruce flowered waistcoat, his hair neatly combed, chin freshly shaved, which privileges he had obtained by his last few coins to the turnkey. Nonchalant and debonair as ever, while the fetters about his ankles were knocked off by the morose-featured individual waiting with his block and hammer, he drank off the glass of brandy given him and waited coolly for his handcuffs to be removed. But no move was made to free his wrists and he gave an impatient curse. ‘Do you think I should want to wear this jewellery?’ It was indeed customary for the prisoner’s handcuffs to be removed after his arms had been bound.

‘You forget your reputation,’ the fellow with the hammer answered him. ‘It be feared you might not reach Tyburn safe without the iron on your wrists.’

To the surprise of those about him, expecting him to answer with some characteristic quip, instead Nick’s face darkened. As the hangman approached to loop round his neck the rope he spat at him: ‘Keep off, knight of the halter, until these damned things to be removed.’ The other hesitated and glanced at Mr. Ackerman himself, who had stood in the background and whose gaze suddenly narrowed with suspicion. With a nod to the turnkeys, ordering them to hold Nick securely, he came forward and began to search him. Suddenly he jumped back with a muttered oath, blood dripping from his fingers which had encountered inside the lining of Nick’s waistcoat the sharp-edged blade of a clasp-knife. There followed a desperate struggle until at last the knife was wrested from him.

When he realized his last throw of the dice had failed, that his lucky star no longer shone above, Nick smoothed his ruffled hair as best he could with his manacled hands, joking with Mr. Ackerman. ‘A present from a friend, and but for your insistence upon my wearing these poxy brancelets I would have escaped you at the last.’

He passed through Execution Gate and ascended into the cart awaiting him. Leaning casually against his coffin resting athwart the cart which was to accompany him on his two-mile journey, he called an airy time of day to the driver. A length of heavy chain secured his manacled wrists to the cart-floor. The bright June air was suddenly filled with the chimes of the neighbouring clocks striking the hour of eight. The cavalcade set off, led by prison officials, some on horseback, others in a coach, Nick accompanied by the prison chaplain of mournful aspect and in rusty black, the cart flanked on either side by mounted troops and peace officers and behind them another company of troops. Since they were conveying only one malefactor to Tyburn the procession was a short one.

At the junction of Giltspur Street and Newgate Street and the Old Bailey, they halted by the porch of St. Sepulchre’s Church, where the deep-toned bell boomed out above a scattered crowd, most of whom, Nick observed, sported the blue cockade in their hats or displayed it in their coats. On the church steps stood the sexton clanging his own hand-bell rhythmically while he delivered his solemn exhortation.

‘All good people pray heartily unto God for this poor sinner who is now going to his death and for whom the great bell doth toll. You who are condemned to die repent with lamentable tears. Ask mercy of the Lord for the salvation of your soul through the merits of the death and passion of Jesus Christ who now sits on the right hand of God to make intercession for you if you penitently return to Him. The Lord have mercy on you. Christ have mercy upon you. Christ have mercy upon you.’

Nick, his expression indifferent and lip curled contemptuously at the sexton’s platitudinous mumbling, heard groans of sympathy from the onlookers and caught admiring glances from several ogling wenches who threw him kisses as the cavalcade proceeded down the deep slopes of Snow Hill. Reflecting idly upon Ted Shadow’s mortification upon learning how the Blind Beak had made certain his lust for vengeance would not be denied, Nick was borne up Holborn Hill. The street being broad and more blue-cockaded crowds being encountered, the soldiers, apprehensive of any attempt to rescue its doomed occupant, enclosed the cart more tightly.

Despite Mr. Ackerman’s precautions, news of Nick Rathburn’s execution date having been put forward had begun to spread about the town. Excited and curious throngs were inceasing to such an extent that the steps of St. Andrew’s Church they were now approaching were, Nick could see, crowded with spectators. As the procession slowed down he searched on either side of him with a seemingly casual air, but alert for a sight of Shadow’s face.

Nowhere could he perceive in the thickening crowd anyone he knew. His only source of hope was the predominance everywhere of the blue cockade.

There reached his ears murmurs and shouts against his escort. Many raised their fists, so the chaplain by his side, gabbling prayers in his ear, was throwing anxious glances at the mob. Scowling, Nick glanced down at the irons about his wrists. Had they been free, had the knife smuggled into him by one of the strumpets not been discovered, he would surely have severed the rope about his elbows.

Unshackled and unpinioned he could have plunged into the crowd whom he felt certain would have aided him. ‘Jump for it,’ urged a fellow in a butcher’s apron all bloodied. ‘We will see they do not get you back.’ At which others in the mob raised a cheer, followed inconsequently by cries of: ‘No Popery, no Popery.’

Nick held up his manacled wrists to show the heavy chain which dragged at them, to evoke loud cries of sympathy for him and howls of execration against his captors. Suddenly noticing a coach that had appeared among the crowd some hundred yards behind, his hopes leapt. Had Shadow somehow learned of what had happened? Nick recalled how the other had spoken of a coach he would have ready at hand as near as possible to the gallows with hot blankets in which to wrap his body after he had been turned off, and a surgeon waiting to bleed him copiously and apply friction to stimulate circulation.

A hanged man might be resuscitated, so long as he could be speedily cut down, the soldiers and officials eluded, and conveyed to safety, and Nick kept his eye on the coach, striving to discern whether it was drawing any nearer through the impeding throng. Then he saw it turn aside to make its way down another street and he realized it could not have been Shadow after all.

The procession was now reaching the beginning of Oxford Street and his wry smile widened a trifle as a rough voice hailed him. It was Jem Morgan at the first-floor window of the Nag’s Head and holding aloft a tankard which gleamed in the sunlight. ‘You may pay for it on your way back, Nick Rathburn.’

The cart halted directly under the tavern window so the brimming tankard could reach Nick over the heads of the drolls calling out their jokes, wishing him good health. Raising the drink by his manacled hands, Nick fancied he detected a glint in the prize-fighter’s eye over the tankard-rim, as if the other was endeavouring to convey some sort of signal to him.

Even as the thought occurred to him, Morgan called: ‘That should help nail your thirst,’ and above the hubbub about him Nick caught a sharp sound inside the tankard, which sent his mind back to his conversation with the prize-fighter at New-gate. Draining the quenching wine he heard something again and, keeping his mouth open wide, felt the cause of it against his tongue. He jerked his head forward, choking, and spat into his hand held close to his mouth. Grinning at some wit who shouted: ‘Do not choke yourself now, Nick, and spoil the hangman his fun,’ Nick threw back the tankard, which was deftly caught and the cavalcade proceeded on its way.

The walls of Hyde Park came into sight and the wide space before it which led into Edgware Road. Here the huge grandstand was filling with spectators and then Nick beheld the Tree, a great wood triangular structure from whose three cross-bars could hang a score or more of malefactors. The crowd already assembled and sweating beneath the sun loosed a great roar as the procession made its slow progress towards the gallows, and above the clamour Nick could hear repeated again and again the battle-cry: ‘No Popery, no Popery.’

The cart drew to a halt underneath one of the cross-bars and Nick, standing taut and tensed, knew in a few more minutes all would be over. His mouth was dry, his heart pounded at his ear-drums as if they must burst, his brain was afire, a spinning chaos behind the nonchalant mask he wore. Eyebrow raised in sardonic amusement, he glanced about him as the chaplain began offering up a final benediction preparatory to clambering down from the cart, and the hangman fixed the rope to the cross-bar overhead.

The rough hempen collar coiled cold round his warm neck. Nick heard the intonations in his ear and observed the hangman from the corner of his eye, at the same time noting the increasingly apprehensive glances the soldiers and officials gave the sea of threatening fists and all around shouts of abuse.

The blue cockades seemed to reflect the hot blue June sky itself... now the clenched fists rose and fell in time to the mob’s fever-pitch roar... the horse in front of him gave a whinny of terror. It was, Nick knew, now or never. There were shouts for him to make his farewell speech, mingled with the confused babel in his ears like the pounding of a mighty torrent breaking over his head.

A voice kept jabbering over and over: ‘God help me... Christ save me... God save me... Christ help me... Christ help me,’ and he barely realized it was his own voice, or that the flecks of froth floating before his vision were from his twitching lips. Then, a sudden jangle of chains at his feet and with a great cry of exultation, his long dark eyes aglitter, he raised both hands, those broad-palmed, oddly tapering hands of steely strength, to be met with a tremendous howl. Held between a thumb and forefinger was the twisted rusty nail Jem Morgan had slipped into his tankard; then he plunged it into his breeches-pocket to draw forth his blue cockade which he waved high.

Another terrific roar greeted him and, as the hangman closed in, Nick caught him a back-handed blow that knocked him clean out of the cart. Slipping his head from the noose and leaping on to the coffin, Nick, still waving the blue cockade, rasped: ‘No Popery, no Popery.’ His hoarse cry was taken up by thousands of voices in another deafening yell, the mob threw itself upon the soldiers and police officers, and he dived into the struggling mass.