Which meant the trapdoor had opened.
And Saint Sepulchre's bell tolled on for the dying.
===OO=OOO=OO===
Venables swore at the Ordinary and cursed the Keeper, but gave no insults to Jemmy Botting for he knew well enough that the hangman could hasten his end. 'Stop weeping,' he told Corday.
'I did nothing!' Corday protested.
'You think you're the first innocent person to die up here?' Venables asked. 'Or the hundredth? It's a scaffold, Charlie, and it knows no difference between the guilty and the innocent. Are you there, Jemmy?' Venables had the white hood over his eyes, so he could not see that the hangman had snuffled to the corner of the platform to pull the safety peg. 'Are you there, Jemmy?'
'Not long now, boys,' Botting said, 'have patience.' He vanished down the back stairs.
'It's Rider!' Lord Alexander was standing now, to the annoyance of the guests seated behind him. 'It's Rider!'
The crowd had at last sensed that something untoward was happening. Their first inkling was when Lord Alexander, tall and striking, stood by the pavilion and pointed towards Ludgate Hill, then they turned and saw the horsemen who were trying to force their way through the crowd.
'Let them through!' some of the people shouted.
'What's happening?' Venables roared from the trapdoor. 'What's happening?'
'Sit down, my lord,' the Sheriff said to Lord Alexander, who ignored him.
'Rider!' he shouted across the crowd, his voice drowned by their commotion.
Jemmy Botting cursed because he had pulled the rope and the tallow-greased beam had juddered, but not moved. 'God damn you to bloody hell!' he cursed the beam, then took hold of the rope a second time and gave it a monstrous tug and this time the beam moved so swiftly that Botting was thrown backwards as the sky opened above him. The trap fell with a thump and the two bodies fell into the scaffold's pit. Venables was dancing and throttling, while Corday's legs were thrashing against the chair.
'Sheriff! Sheriff!' Sandman was nearing the scaffold. 'Sheriff!'
'Is it a reprieve?' Lord Alexander roared. 'Is it a reprieve?'
'Yes!'
'Kit! Help me!' Lord Alexander limped on his club foot to where Corday hung, twitched and gagged. 'Help me haul him up!'
'Let go of him!' the Sheriff bellowed, as Lord Alexander reached for the rope.
'Let go, my lord!' the Reverend Cotton demanded. 'This is not seemly!'
'Get off me, you damned bloody fool!' Lord Alexander snarled as he pushed Cotton away. He then seized the rope and tried to haul Corday back up to the platform, but he did not possess nearly enough strength. The white cotton bag over Corday's mouth shivered.
Sandman thrust aside the last few folk and rammed his horse against the barrier. He fumbled in his pockets for the reprieve, thought for a dreadful instant that it was lost, then found the paper and held it up towards the scaffold, but the Sheriff would not come to receive it. 'It's a reprieve!' Sandman shouted.
'Kit, help me!' Lord Alexander tugged feebly at Corday's rope and could not raise the dying man by even an inch, and so he turned to Lord Christopher. 'Kit! Help me!' Lord Christopher, eyes huge behind his thick spectacles, held both hands to his mouth. He did not move.
'What the bloody hell are you doing?' Jemmy Botting shouted at Lord Alexander from beneath the scaffold and then, to make sure he was not cheated of a death, he scrambled over the supporting beams to haul downwards on Corday's legs. 'You'll not have him!' he screamed up at Lord Alexander. 'You'll not have him! He's mine! He's mine!'
'Take it!' Sandman shouted at the Sheriff, who still refused to lean down and accept the reprieve, but just then a black-dressed man pushed his way to Sandman's side.
'Give it to me,' the newcomer said. He did not wait for Sandman to obey, but instead snatched the paper, hoisted himself onto the railing that protected the scaffold and then, with one prodigious leap, jumped to catch hold of the scaffold's edge. For an instant his black boots scrabbled on the baize for a lodgment, then he managed to grip the exposed edge left by the fallen trapdoor and heaved himself onto the platform. It was Sally's brother, dressed all in black and with a black ribbon tying his black hair, and the regulars in the crowd cheered for they recognised and admired him. He was Jack Hood, Robin Hood — the man that every magistrate and constable in London wanted to see caper on Jem Botting's stage, and Jack Hood mocked their ambition by flaunting himself at every Newgate hanging. Now, on the scaffold at last, he thrust Corday's reprieve towards the Sheriff. 'Take it, God damn you!' Hood snarled, and the Sheriff, astonished by the young man's confidence, at last took the paper.
Hood strode to Lord Alexander's side and took hold of the rope, but Jemmy Botting, fearing that his victim would be snatched at the last minute, had scrambled onto Corday's lap so that his weight was added to the choking noose. 'He's mine!' he shouted up at Lord Alexander and Hood. 'He's mine!' Corday's wheezing breath was drowned in the morning's din. Hood heaved, but could not raise the combined weight of Corday and Botting. 'He's mine! Mine!' Botting screamed.
'You!' Sandman snapped at one of the City Marshal's javelin men. 'Give me your hanger! Now!'
The man, bemused, but cowed by Sandman's snap of command, nervously drew the short curved sword that was more decorative than useful. Sandman snatched the blade from him, then was assaulted by another of the scaffold guards who thought Sandman planned an assault on the Sheriff. 'Bugger off!' Sandman snarled at the man, then Berrigan thumped his fist on the crown of the man's head.
'Wait!' the Sheriff shouted. 'There must be order. There must be order!' The crowd was shrieking, its noise filling the street like a great roar. 'Marshal!' the Sheriff called. 'Marshal!'
'Give up the sword!' the Marshal bellowed at Sandman.
'Hood!' Sandman shouted as he stood in the stirrups. 'Hood!' Hands reached up to haul him out of the saddle, but Sandman had the highwayman's attention now and he tossed him the hanger. 'Cut him down, Hood! Cut him down!'
Hood deftly caught the blade. The constables who had escorted Sandman and Berrigan from Whitehall now pushed away the Marshal's men. Lord Christopher Carne, eyes still wide and mouth agape, was staring in horror at Rider Sandman, who at last noticed his lordship. 'Constable,' Sandman spoke to the horseman nearest him, 'that's the man you arrest. That man there.' Sandman pointed and Lord Christopher turned as if to escape, but the stairs from the pavilion led only down to the prison itself.
Jemmy Botting had his arms about Corday's neck, embracing him like a lover as he heaved his weight up and down on the hanging man's lap. 'Mine,' he crooned, 'mine,' and he heard the scraping in the boy's throat, then Jack Hood was sawing the hanger blade at the rope. 'No!' Botting screamed. 'No!' But the rope, though it was supposed to be the best Bridport hemp, cut like rush string and suddenly Corday and Botting, still locked in their embrace, were falling and the legs of the chair splintered on the cobbles as the rope's cut end flicked empty in the London wind.
'We must cut him down,' the Sheriff said, having at last read the reprieve.
The crowd, fickle as ever, now cheered because the victim they had despised had cheated the hangman. He would live, he would go free, he would paint.
Sandman slid from his horse and gave the reins to a constable. Other constables had used the ladder that waited for any member of the crowd who wanted to be touched by a hanged man's hand and those men now took hold of Lord Christopher Carne. Sandman saw his lordship weeping and felt no pity. Worse, he could hear Venables's choking noises and see the dying man's rope quivering above the black-draped platform. He turned away, trying and failing to discover some consolation that even one soul had been stolen from the gallows. 'Thank you, Sergeant,' he said.