She got up and went naked to the window. The weather was cold but sunny. The church bells were ringing muffled because it was a hanging day: one or more criminals would be executed this morning. Half the city’s workingpeople would take an unofficial day off, and many of them would flock to Tyburn, the crossroads at the northwestern corner of London where the gallows stood, to see the spectacle. It was the kind of occasion when rioting could break out, so Jay’s regiment would be on alert all day. However, Jay had one more day’s leave.
She turned to face him and said: “Take me to the hanging.”
He looked disapproving. “A gruesome request.”
“Don’t tell me it’s no place for a lady.”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“I know that rich and poor women and men go to see it.”
“But why do you want to go?”
That was a good question. She had mixed feelings about it. It was shameful to make entertainment of death, and she knew she would be disgusted with herself afterward. But her curiosity was overwhelming. “I want to know what it’s like,” she said. “How do the condemned people behave? Do they weep, or pray, or gibber with fear? And what about the spectators? What is it like to watch a human life come to an end?”
She had always been this way. The first time she saw a deer shot, when she was only nine or ten years old, she had watched enthralled as the keeper gralloched it, taking out its entrails. She had been fascinated by the multiple stomachs and had insisted on touching the flesh to see what it felt like. It was warm and slimy. The beast was two or three months pregnant, and the keeper had shown her the tiny fetus in the transparent womb. None of it had revolted her: it was too interesting.
She understood perfectly why people flocked to see the spectacle. She also understood why others were revolted by the thought of watching it. But she was part of the inquisitive group.
Jay said: “Perhaps we could hire a room overlooking the gallows—that’s what a lot of people do.”
But Lizzie felt that would mute the experience. “Oh, no—I want to be in the crowd!” she protested.
“Women of our class don’t do that.”
“Then I’ll dress as a man.”
He looked doubtful.
“Jay, don’t make faces at me! You were glad enough to take me down the coal mine dressed as a man.”
“It is a bit different for a married woman.”
“If you tell me that all adventures are over just because we’re married, I shall run away to sea.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
She grinned at him and jumped onto the bed. “Don’t be an old curmudgeon.” She bounced up and down. “Let’s go to the hanging.”
He could not help laughing. “All right,” he said.
“Bravo!”
She performed her daily chores rapidly. She told the cook what to buy for dinner; decided which rooms the housemaids would clean; told the groom she would not be riding today; accepted an invitation for the two of them to dine with Captain Marlborough and his wife next Wednesday; postponed an appointment with a milliner; and took delivery of twelve brassbound trunks for the voyage to Virginia.
Then she put on her disguise.
* * *
The street known as Tyburn Street or Oxford Street was thronged with people. The gallows stood at the end of the street, outside Hyde Park. Houses with a view of the scaffold were crowded with wealthy spectators who had rented rooms for the day. People stood shoulder to shoulder on the stone wall of the park. Hawkers moved through the crowds selling hot sausages and tots of gin and printed copies of what they said were the dying speeches of the condemned.
Mack held Cora’s hand and pushed through the crowd. He had no desire to watch people getting killed but Cora had insisted on going. Mack just wanted to spend all his free time with Cora. He liked holding her hand, kissing her lips whenever he wanted to, and touching her body in odd moments. He liked just to look at her. He enjoyed her devil-may-care attitude and her rough language and the wicked look in her eye. So he went with her to the hanging.
A friend of hers was going to be hanged. Her name was Dolly Macaroni, and she was a brothel keeper, but her crime was forgery. “What did she forge, anyway?” Mack said as they approached the gallows.
“A bank draft. She changed the amount from eleven pounds to eighty pounds.”
“Where did she get a draft for eleven pounds?”
“From Lord Massey, She says he owed her more.”
“She ought to have been transported, not hanged.”
“They nearly always hang forgers.”
They were as close as they could get, about twenty yards away. The gallows was a crude wooden structure, just three posts with crossbeams. Five ropes hung from the beams, their ends tied in nooses ready for the condemned. A chaplain stood nearby, with a handful of official-looking men who were presumably law officers. Soldiers with muskets kept the crowd at a distance.
Gradually Mack became aware of a roaring sound from farther down Tyburn Street. “What’s that noise?” he asked Cora.
“They’re coming.”
First there was a squad of peace officers on horseback, led by a personage who was presumably the city marshal. Next were the constables, on foot and armed with clubs. Then came the tumbril, a high four-wheeled cart drawn by two plow horses. A company of javelin men brought up the rear, holding their pointed spears rigidly upright.
In the cart, sitting on what appeared to be coffins, their hands and arms bound with ropes, were five people: three men, a boy of about fifteen and a woman. “That’s Dolly,” Cora said, and she began to cry.
Mack stared in horrid fascination at the five who were to die. One of the men was drunk. The other two looked defiant. Dolly was praying aloud and the boy was crying.
The cart was driven under the scaffold. The drunk man waved to some friends, villainous-looking types, who stood at the front of the crowd. They shouted jokes and ribald comments: “Kind of the sheriff to invite you along!” and “I hope you’ve learned to dance!” and “Try that necklace on for size!” Dolly asked God’s forgiveness in a loud, clear voice. The boy cried: “Save me, Mama, save me, please!”
The two sober men were greeted by a group at the front of the crowd. After a moment Mack distinguished their accents as Irish. One of the condemned men shouted: “Don’t let the surgeons have me, boys!” There was a roar of assent from his friends.
“What are they talking about?” Mack asked Cora.
“He must be a murderer. The bodies of murderers belong to the Company of Surgeons. They cut them up to see what’s inside.”
Mack shuddered.
The hangman climbed on the cart. One by one he placed the nooses around their necks and drew them tight. None of them struggled or protested or tried to escape. It would have been useless, surrounded as they were by guards, but Mack thought he would have tried anyway.
The priest, a bald man in stained robes, got up on the cart and spoke to each of them in turn: just for a few moments to the drunk, four or five minutes with the other two men, and longer with Dolly and the boy.
Mack had heard that sometimes executions went wrong, and he began to hope it would happen this time. Ropes could break; the crowd had been known to swarm the scaffold and release the prisoners; the hangman might cut people down before they were dead. It was too awful to think these five living human beings would in a few moments be dead.
The priest finished his work. The hangman blindfolded the five people with strips of rag then got down, leaving only the condemned on the cart. The drunk man could not keep his balance and he stumbled and fell; and the noose began to strangle him. Dolly continued to pray loudly.