“Yes,” Wilde agreed. “It simply wouldn’t do for it to become common knowledge that the war minister, a decorated hero of the Crimea, practiced the Uranian way of love. And, most unforgivably, with his valet, a man of the lower classes.”
Both looked up at the approaching tread of heavy feet. A group of sober-faced men crowded in through the cell door: Prison Warden Bland, a black frocked priest, Dr. Lamb, and two uniformed prison warders. It was a few minutes before nine. They had come for Vicente.
The hour of execution was nigh.
The young Italian saw them, too. Realizing that his death was but moments away, his face turned ghastly white. He pulled something from beneath the woolen blanket and stared at it for one last time: a square of folded paper and a small photograph. He kissed the photograph, muttering in Italian, and then looked up at Wilde with tears in his eyes and pressed them into his hands.
Wilde glanced at them: a photograph of a young woman, by resemblance a sister or cousin, along with a tightly folded letter damp with tears and tattered from many readings.
The valet muttered something to Wilde, and even though Conan Doyle could not completely understand the meaning, he fully understood the intent: the valet was pleading for Wilde to write to the woman in the photograph, informing her what had become of him.
“Gentlemen,” the prison warden announced. “The hour is at hand. Please go. We must make the prisoner ready to face his sentence.”
“I want to leave this wretched place at once,” Wilde said in a taut voice. “I do not wish to witness what is about to happen.”
“Nor I.”
But to their surprise, instead of returning to the front gate, the thuggish guard led them into an open quadrangle milling with newspaper men, civic officials, the idly curious, and, most shockingly, a few well-dressed society women, all attending on the pretense of fulfilling some form of civic duty in witnessing an execution, and not at all idle thrill seeking.
“You fail to understand,” Conan Doyle explained to the guard, “we wish only to leave.”
The guard did not attempt to conceal his amusement. “Too late to get squeamish now. The gates are locked. No one comes or goes until the execution is over.” He flashed them a Marquis de Sade grin. “Sorry, gents.”
Trapped.
“What in God’s name is that?” Wilde said, pointing at something.
The corner of the yard featured a strange construction with a steeply pitched roof complete with a glass skylight to allow daylight in. A low fence screened the lower half from view.
“The execution shed,” Conan Doyle answered. “It contains the gallows and the trap door.”
“Surely not?” Wilde said in a tone of utter revulsion. “It resembles a macabre Punch and Judy theater!”
The two friends were pinned against a wall, helpless to escape. The restive crowd fell silent as the condemned man, his arms pinioned at his sides, was led out onto the gallows platform. Dr. Lamb and a chaplain preceded the executioner, with Prison Warden Bland following at the rear. As the chaplain wobbled forward to give the prisoner last rites, he tripped and nearly sprawled full length.
“Wonderful,” Wilde said. “As at any good execution, the chaplain is drunk. Could this get any more delightful?”
The crowd of gentlemen began to push and jostle, subtly scrumming for a spot with the best view of the gallows.
An elderly man stepped to his right and Conan Doyle glimpsed the back of a head with long fiery red curls tumbling down about the shoulders. The redhead looked at something to his right and Conan Doyle instantly recognized the face. “That is the Marquess of Gravistock, Rufus DeVayne! He companioned the Prince of Wales to your play the other night.”
“Really? Are you sure?” Wilde said, squinting at the figure. “I doubt I would have forgotten meeting a youth so handsome.”
“You didn’t, Oscar. You were in your dressing room, sulking.”
“Ah, yes.” Wilde remembered, rather sourly.
A raffish young swell in a white silk topper also clapped eyes on the marquess and called out to him, “Rufus, you young fiend, is that you?”
The marquess turned to look and unleashed a wicked smile. “Hello, Bunky,” he replied. “It is I, manifested in the flesh.”
“What drags you from your rooms to this pest hole? Are you an enthusiast for executions?”
“Don’t be dull, Bunky. Everyone here is an enthusiast for executions, you included. I am here because a taste of death fires the blood. And in the hopes of gaining a trinket.” He flashed a pair of scissors. “I hope to snip a lock of hair, an earlobe, anything. Such talismans are imbued with great power.”
The young swell barked a laugh and said, “Just like at school. Still worshiping the devil, eh?”
“You’ve got it wrong, Bunky. It is he who worships me!”
The marquess seemed impervious to the scandalized stares launched at him by everyone within earshot of the remark. Conan Doyle harrumphed his disapproval and commented, “The young marquess seems rather a cad.”
But Oscar Wilde did not answer. He was staring fixedly at the young aristocrat in a pique of rapture.
On the gallows, the chaplain meandered to the end of his prayer and made a rather sloppy sign of absolution. Vicente was shuffled forward onto the trap by a warder gripping either arm. One dropped to his knees out of sight behind the wooden palisade as he bound the Italian’s ankles together.
“I refuse to witness this,” Wilde said, turning his face away.
The executioner stepped forward and drew a white hood over Vicente’s face, the fabric of which sucked in and out with each quickening breath. A warder handed the executioner the thick hawser with its heavy noose, and he slipped it over the young man’s head. Vicente’s knees visibly quivered as he took the weight of the rope.
The crowd’s subdued murmuring drained away. From somewhere, the execution bell began to toll the hour. Clong…
At the bell’s first strike, a flight of grubby pigeons burst up from the rooftops, wings creaking as they flapped around the courtyard, once, twice, three times, and then fled away.
… clong… clong…
The executioner gripped the long handle of the trap release.
… clong… clong…
Wilde’s head, against his volition, turned back to look.
… clong… clong… clong… clong. The bell tolled nine times and stilled. A resonating silence spread out in all directions.
The executioner yanked the handle, a catch released, and the double doors of the drop fell open with a guttural sound. Vicente seemed to hang suspended for a moment and then plummeted from view with a dreadful suddenness. The rope snapped taut and quivered with tension. All breath sucked from the crowd. Silence reigned. Some looked distraught. Some smiled. Others held a mystical look upon their faces, as if savoring the lingering taste of death.
A slow murmur began at the front of the crowd and swept back to where Conan Doyle and Wilde stood. For a moment they were puzzled, but then they understood why. The hanging rope was jerking from side to side and a sudden realization swept the crowd.
The executioner had botched the job.
The drop had not broken Vicente’s neck, and he was strangling to death. His muffled screams, though faint, rose from the drop pit. They continued for several long moments, the rope penduluming back and forth with its dread weight, until it shivered and stilled.
Conan Doyle’s mouth filmed with bile. The death had been neither clean nor instantaneous.
“Oh, badly done!” a voice chortled — unmistakably that of the marquess.
A chorus of boos went up, and suddenly apple cores, crumpled newspapers, and every missile that came to hand began to soar from the crowd, aimed at the bungling executioner. The chief warden, the executioner, and the prison guards cowered beneath the fusillade and looked from one to the other with dismay.