The Irishman’s eyes raced across lines of type, reading. “He’s to be hanged at Newgate on Wednesday.” Then realization stunned his eyes wide. “But… that’s today!”
“Precisely.”
“Tried and found guilty of treason by a special sitting,” Wilde read aloud, poring over the words. “In less than a week? Such an excess of haste seems impolitic, even in the case of treason.”
“I greatly suspect this execution has been rushed in order to silence Vicente before he can speak to anyone.” He snatched the paper back. “We must endeavor to see this man, Oscar. Talk to him. Learn the truth. Before his voice is forever extinguished.”
Wilde’s expression betrayed a lack of enthusiasm. “But, Arthur, you know how executions are. Newgate will be swarmed by every scamp, scallywag, ne’er-do-well, pimp, whore, prig, and pie monger, not to mention the bad, the mad, the insane, and the morbidly curious. We shan’t be able to even get within gawking distance.”
“Our fame may prove a key to unlock Newgate.” He tossed the paper aside. “Come, Oscar. Get dressed. We must leave without delay.”
Wilde stared up at him, flabbergasted. “Now? Just like that? I shall require at least an hour to select a suitable wardrobe. Come to think, what does one wear to an execution? Black? A tad cliché. And rather morbid given what is already likely to prove a morose occasion.”
Conan Doyle crossed to the armoire, snatched it open, grabbed a shirt at random and threw it at Wilde, who caught it and paused, struck by the color. “Burgundy? Really?” He laughed. “Rather a bold choice, don’t you think? Bravo, Arthur. Burgundy: a color that is rich and yet appropriately circumspect.” He held the shirt beneath his chin for Conan Doyle’s approval. “What do you think, Arthur? This shirt with an ivory cravat? Please, I want you to be brutally honest.”
“Being brutally honest, we need to leave now. Immediately. This instant. Newgate executes its prisoners on the stroke of nine and it is nearly eight o’clock.”
“B-but, Arthur,” Wilde sputtered. “Does a gentleman have time to wash? To shave? To break a crust? I am quite famished.”
Conan Doyle snatched the silver hip flask from the bedside table and pressed it into Wilde’s hands. “Here’s your breakfast. Now be a good chap and drink it down quickly. The game’s af—”
“Cease!” Wilde cried out, flinging up a restraining hand. “Please do not utter that phrase and I promise I shall hurry and never complain once.”
Wilde kept his promise and did not utter a single complaint during the carriage ride to Newgate Prison. Instead, he uttered many complaints — about the lingering fog, about the traffic, about the potholed road, about the noisome air — in an ongoing litany until the long, squat, ominous hulk of Newgate Prison finally hove into view through the carriage windows.
“Ugh,” he exclaimed upon seeing the stony shoulders of the prison (with the sepulchral dome of St. Paul’s hovering weightless above like a memento mori). “Newgate: a prime example of Architecture Terrible, a style so repulsive it proclaims its dread function to all who see it. Just looking upon its hideous proportions is like a slap of reprimand.”
Even though all executions were now carried on within the walls of Newgate, out of sight of gawkers, a mob of hundreds swarmed beneath the prison’s grim façade: Fleet Street hacks, penny-a-line pamphleteers, firebrand priests sermonizing against sin, false beggars, shoeless urchins with filthy faces, reeling drunkards puking on their own shoes. And, of course, despite being literally in the shadow of the most feared symbol of the law’s displeasure, the criminal classes, to whom the event wielded an attraction the way a magnet draws iron. And so dipsmen worked the crowd, brazenly rifling pockets while streetwalkers with rouged faces and overspilling bodices buffed men’s eyes with their breasts, and sharp-dressed swells arm-in-arm with peach-cheeked courtesans and a faceless horde of thrill-seeking loiterers and ne’er-do-wells from all levels of society, each and every one summoned by the titillating spectacle of the suffering and death of a fellow human being.
The carriage trundled along Newgate Street until forced to a standstill by the press of bodies. Conan Doyle flung open the door and he and Wilde dropped from the carriage into the greasy jostle of the crowd. The two friends threaded a meandering path through the morbid carnival until they fetched up outside the prison’s infamous black gates. Set within the hulking outer gate was a smaller, human-sized door. Behind a sliding lattice grille lurked a uniformed prison officer with a face like a clenched fist, snarling at every supplicant who wheedled to gain entry. Conan Doyle shouldered past them all and handed in a note. “This is for your warden. Tell him it is from Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories.”
The guard snatched the paper and glared at it with a doubting scowl. He eyeballed Conan Doyle and Wilde up and down, and then banged the grille shut without speaking a word.
“That looked far from promising,” Wilde observed.
“I concur.”
“Although if I hired him to be my footman, I should seldom be bothered by creditors.”
After a short wait, they heard the clunk of a heavy iron bolt being shot and the door-within-the-door swung open. The same surly guard beckoned them with a get-yer-arses-in-here wave. Wilde and Conan Doyle stepped through Newgate’s infamous portal to a dread realm devoted to misery, suffering, and death. Without speaking a word, the grim-faced guard marched them along an echoing stone corridor to where a man in a gray suit with graying hair stood waiting. His face contained no glimmer of emotion, although the depth and severity of his frown lines suggested that he was a man with little practice in smiling.
“I am William Bland, warden of Newgate.”
Conan Doyle nodded a bow and presented a small, leather-bound book to the warden. “I hope you will accept this collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, with my compliments.”
The warden pointedly eyed the proffered book but made no move to take it.
The Scots author quickly added, “I have taken the liberty of signing it to you, sir.”
Still, the warden kept his arms resolutely folded behind his back. “Your offer is noted, Doctor Doyle, but I cannot accept. I do not sully my mind by indulging in the fripperies and distractions of the day. The Bible is the only book I read.”
To his mortification, Conan Doyle was forced to retract the snubbed offering, which he hastily secreted in a coat pocket. “Ah, I see,” he muttered, stunned by the naked surliness of the warden’s demeanor.
“The state is about to relieve a man of his life,” Wilde said in his “lecture hall” voice. He had captured the entire North American continent with it, and had no doubt it would impress a lowly prison governor. “As two of the nation’s leading scribes, we are here to interview the unfortunate party and draw a picture in words of his final hours upon the earth.”
Bland seemed unimpressed by Wilde’s grandiloquence. “And what will that accomplish?”
The Irish wit was lost for a comeback. “Why, it will…” He threw a glance at Conan Doyle. “Go on, Arthur, explain to the governor what our mission today will accomplish.”
Put on the spot, the Scottish author threw a cutting look at his friend, but then forced a smile and said, “We are here as witnesses to history. To record the laudable efforts of the British penal system in preventing our nation from a descent into anarchy and lawlessness.”
If the warden was any more impressed by Conan Doyle’s speech, he successfully concealed it. “Newgate has been visited many times by scribblers such as yourselves, gentlemen. Mister Dickens himself toured the facilities here many years ago and wrote a very dour report of conditions inside Newgate.”