| |
In Which John Pickett at Last Finds His Wife
...Sort Of
Some time later—just how long, he could not have said—Pickett became aware of a slight pressure on his left foot. He scratched at it with his right, and encountered something soft and yielding—something, in fact, that felt very much like a human hand. Startled, he opened his eyes to find that it was now early morning and a fog hung over the river, through which a pale sun glinted feebly off the dirty blond hair of the urchin attempting to relieve him of his shoes.
“Here now, stop that!” Pickett exclaimed.
The young thief, realizing the jig was up, quickly took to his heels. Pickett threw off the newspapers that had made a very poor substitute for a blanket, and a headline in bold black type fairly leaped from the page:
FIELDHURST KILLER SENTENCED TO HANG
His gaze quickly scanned the column, which informed the reader that a jury of twelve good men and true had found the Viscountess Fieldhurst, formerly Miss Julia Runyon of Norwood Green in Somersetshire, guilty of the murder of her husband, the eminent diplomat Frederick Bertram, sixth Viscount Fieldhurst, and that the murderess was to be held at Newgate Prison while she awaited execution, at which time she would hang by the neck until dead.
“Oh, no. Oh, nonono...”
As he cast off the broadsheet and scrambled to his feet, it occurred to Pickett that if he’d had his way, he would have spent the night safely beneath his parents’ roof, never even knowing that scarcely more than a mile away, Julia was in mortal peril. He wondered fleetingly if his mother had known about Julia, if this, more than the need to avoid his being seen by his father, had been the real reason she’d turned him away. One thing was certain: he had no time to waste in returning to the house in Denmark Street to ask.
He’d had almost no sleep in twenty-four hours, but Pickett had never been more fully awake as he set out at a run for the forbidding edifice that was Newgate Prison. He had more than a passing familiarity with the building, as his duties with Bow Street had occasionally taken him there. A dark, almost windowless structure designed to warn of the misery that awaited within for those who flouted the law, it even boasted chains carved over its entrances, for those oblivious to subtler allusions. More ominous still was the crew of carpenters hard at work erecting a scaffold near the main entrance. Pickett could not suppress the thought that it was intended for Julia. Deliberately averting his gaze, he hurried inside and, after interrupting the keeper’s amorous tryst with one of the prison laundresses, asked to be taken to the cell where Lady Fieldhurst was being held.
The keeper displayed no surprise upon hearing this request, and his lack of curiosity was itself no surprise to Pickett; the more adventuresome ton bucks sometimes obtained permits from the Lord Mayor allowing them to visit the prison, where they amused themselves by viewing the miserable wretches incarcerated there as if they were animals in a menagerie. Pickett had no illusions as to being mistaken for a buck of the ton in his present disheveled state, but he had no doubt the murder trial of a beautiful young woman of the aristocracy would arouse a great deal of interest across a range of social classes.
“ ’er cell’s thataway,” the keeper informed him, withdrawing his hand from his inamorata’s skirt in order to point Pickett in the right direction.
“I thought the women’s cells were on the other side,” Pickett objected, indicating the opposite end of the building.
“Aye, but she’s bein’ ’eld for execution, ain’t she?”
“Do you mean to tell me she’s being housed with the men?” demanded Pickett in mounting horror.
“Keep yer skirt on,” recommended the keeper. “She’s in an ’oldin’ cell by ’erself, there bein’ no other females goin’ to the gallows just at present. If you don’t believe me, just ask the guard. “ ’e’ll show you.”
Pickett thanked the man—although his thanks were drowned out by the squeals of the laundress as the keeper thrust his hand back up her skirt—and started down the corridor in the direction he had indicated. Devoid of sunlight due to the lack of windows, the passage grew darker the farther he went, and it seemed to Pickett that he could almost feel the walls closing in on him. A man paced the corridor at the far end, a man who appeared to be a guard, if one were to judge by his bored mien as well as the ring of keys he slapped rhythmically against the palm of his hand with every step.
“Excuse me,” Pickett called as he approached. “I should like to see Lady Fieldhurst, if I may.”
The guard looked him up and down, but offered no comment. Instead, he stopped before one of the metal doors and slid open a narrow sheet of metal at roughly eye level, revealing a slit that allowed him to see inside the cell on the other side of the door.
“Ye’ve got a visitor,” he informed its occupant.
Pickett could not hear her reply, but she had apparently inquired as to his identity, for the guard responded, “ ’ow should I know? I’m not yer bloody butler.” He thrust a key into the lock and flung the door open.
Pickett entered the small chamber and, finding the cell lit and warmed (if one could call it that) by the flickering light of a small brazier, finally beheld his wife.
She was clad in the same mourning gown of black bombazine that she’d been wearing when he’d interviewed her on the morning after her first husband’s death. But now the dress was torn and dirty, and hung on her slender frame in a manner that suggested she had lost weight—an impression strengthened by the hollows in her cheeks that sharpened her chin and made her eyes appear somehow too large for her face. There was no sign of a pregnancy; had she miscarried? But no, he had never been born, so there had never been a pregnancy. Still, she was hardly the picture of blooming health: The dark circles beneath her eyes gave her a bruised look, and her golden hair was now dull and limp. Nor was it pinned up in her usual style; instead, it had been hacked off at about the level of her chin so as not to become tangled in the hangman’s noose.
She was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
As he stared at her, she met his gaze with one of dull resignation. “Well?” she prompted. “Who are you?”