Across the flagstones, through the chapel yard, thirty-five steps to the chapel door. I counted. That’s the real miracle, the time they let us spend outside.
I turned my face up. The clear sky, and the arched windows gleaming, like iced buns on a baker’s shelf. I breathed in, slow and deep, almost expecting the smell of sugar. Too soon inside, we were herded into the condemned pew, no choice but to sit with our knees poking the coffin they keep in there. You pray there’s nothing inside it, though no one will say. They make us stare at death before we face it.
We were there to be stared at, too. It’s instructive for the other gaol-birds to see us on our final night. The service for the condemned. Some of them reach for us, try to touch us on our smocks. Put in a word for us, they say, where you’re going.
The windows here are lined with greased paper, just like the rest of the gaol. Every room dim as mist. Still, the light dribbles in. Pale, but enough to watch the heads around you go from black to ash to white. Like coals burning down in a fire. The same high windows as the courtroom, and the same green velvet, come to think of it. The room is laid out much the same as well. I suppose it’s so you know they’re both about the same business. The King’s chapel, and the King’s court. Though it’s the Ordinary who’s in charge here, not a judge, and he wears white robes, not red. For we’re washed clean of blood, now. We are judged. Condemned.
When they came for us, for the service, I told them I didn’t want to go. But you’re to have God in your last days, here, whether you like it or not. Like swallowing a purgative. I’d rather have laudanum, given a choice, but Newgate is a clockwork universe, and everything in it works towards a single end. Mine.
Hanging’s an efficient business.
There we sat. Knees twittering, like birds on stumps, heels clanking like bell-clappers. Who could be more restless than a group of the condemned at forced prayers? There are six of us for tomorrow. I sat next to a thin woman with a jaw like a shovel, legs scabbed with sores big as coins. She kept lifting her skirt to pick at them. ‘What will happen to us?’ she said, fishing up one of her plaits and sucking it. I told her not to look too far ahead, because when you can see what’s coming it makes pain more like pain, and pleasure less like pleasure. Then we fell silent, though she began to cry. I didn’t say more, not wishing to bring her spirits down further, for they’d have nowhere to land but on me. We don’t speak much among ourselves, as a rule. Or with anyone else for that matter. There’s no point.
The Ordinary, stout, white-frocked, waved his arms and spoke to us about the wages of sin. The only wages I’ll ever earn, it seems. I tried to lean around him to read the plaques on the wall. I could see they were writings from Exodus, but not what they said. I’m so hungry to read I’d read anything, though the Bible would not be my first choice. But he blocked them with his waving arms and his sour face. He’s to write an account of each of us, as you know, before we’re hanged, and publish them in his Ordinary’s Accounts. Another thing they don’t give you any say in. He’ll try to make us sound pious and repentant, no matter how nasty we are at our rotted-apple cores. Full confessions and cautionary tales. I plan to say nothing, when it comes to my turn.
An hour outside with the sun on our faces would have been a mercy, far kinder, and God knows I need that more than Him. Besides, He’ll have all the words soon enough if they’re right. Why does He need the last one?
Everybody I’ve wronged is long gone. But I fell to my knees anyway, in the condemned pew. Oh, it caused some disturbance. Flocked all around with hands and robes. ‘Get up! Get up!’ they said. They tried to batter me back into my seat, but I held fast. My hands dragged like claws along the wooden bench. I’m no longer afraid of them. Oh, the things we do on our knees: confess, beg, pray. Love.
I beg your pardon, Phibbah. Calliope. I beg your pardon, baby. Both babies. Every last headless body left behind at Paradise. I beg your pardon, Madame.
In the end, hearing only silence, I rose.
What would you want to be remembered for? If you had one last page and one last hour, what would you write? In the end, this is what I choose. My account of myself. The only thing I’ll be able to leave behind. That there were two things I loved: all those books I read, and all the people who wrote them. Because life boils down to nothing, in spite of all the fuss, yet novels make it possible to believe it is something, after all.
But now I must set down my pen, and face what is coming to me, though it is more than I deserve. I must thank you, before I do. You gave me the reason to write, as well as the means. I’ve asked Sal to bring this to you. There’ll be money enclosed. It should be enough to pay a scribe to make copies you could send out. I’m not fool enough to think my story would sell. But the Mulatta Murderess’s might. Perhaps there’s enough of her in these pages to tempt a publisher. It isn’t lost on me that I am ending my life the same way Langton ended his, in the hope that my mutterings will find their way into ink. Some of us are the hewers of words, while the rest are merely the hewers of wood. Perhaps someone will be interested in all of this. Though I won’t hold the few breaths left to me. As Langton said once, most publishers can’t see past their noses. Probably not far enough to see a woman like me. I’ve left everything else to Sal, such as it is. I saved a little money at the School-house, and there’s my grey dress, and my copy of Moll Flanders, though she’ll have to get someone else to read it to her. I imagine Sal one day, watching some dusky little mulatta girl hanging off her mother’s hand. She smiles, as she does every time she sees a mongrel who reminds her of me. ‘Look ’pon dat, Fran, look ’pon dat. We still here! We fruitful! We multiplying!’ She laughs her big, wide-open laugh.
But these pages are for you.