Mungo makes a sympathetic noise in the back of his throat, and the Colonel suddenly stiffens up and gives him a penetrating stare.
“That’s quite a skin color you got there, lad. If I didn’t know you was English by the sand of your hair, I’d swear you was a Chinaman. Where you coming from, anyways?”
♦ ♦ ♦
One night at an inn along the way, and the next — Christmas Eve— jostling through the dark countryside, through Newington, St. George’s Fields and Southwark, across the Blackfriars Bridge and right on up to the White Swan on Farringdon Street. Christmas morning, 6:00 a.m., a cold drizzle hangs on the air like a washcloth, the Colonel snoring over a pint of brandy. The explorer steps down from the coach, his legs stiff, shoulders his satchel and starts off down the street. But then stops short, as if jerked by a rope. Where to? His sister Effie’s? But she’d be asleep at this hour. If it were ten or eleven he could take a cab to Soho Square and astonish Sir Joseph. Walk in as blithely as if he’d just strolled round the block and rewrite the map of Africa. “Well, Sir, I’m back. Back from the Niger. I’ve seen it, tasted it, swum in it. It’s no myth, believe me. Magnificent. Dwarfs the Nile, the Thames, the Mississippi. . riches untold. . a thriving civilization crowding its shores. And oh yes: it flows, most decidedly, to the eastward.’’
But at 6:00 a.m., on a holiday?
Suddenly it hits him. Effie’s husband, Charles Dickson. He’ll be at the British Museum at this hour, tending the plants. It was Dickson who’d launched the whole Niger venture in the first place, through his botanical association with Sir Joseph. Of course. He should be the first to know — especially since he’s the only one likely to be stirring at this hour. The explorer turns around and starts off for the museum. But then stops dead again. Will he be there on Christmas Day? Mungo pictures his brother-in-law bent over mounds of dried specimens in a white smock; feeding, watering and pruning his indoor collection; winterizing the arboretum; pinching off stamens and anthers; living and breathing horticulture till it must burgeon in his dreams like the thickest Gambian rain forests. . and knows he’ll be there.
There are no cabs at this hour, but it’s a short walk up to High Holborn and from there to Great Russell Street and Montague House, where the museum had been relocated six months before he left for Africa. Fingers of light are beginning to take hold of the eastern sky. There are wreaths on the doors, pine cones and red ribbon. The explorer feels as if he’s just been handed a million pounds. He flings the satchel in the air, claps his hands twice and catches it on the way down without breaking stride. Then launches into a hearty whistle, a Christmas carol. The wet cobblestones echo with it, glad of heart, soaring, heroic, until he modulates into another key and slides into “Now a’ ye that in England are,” thinking of Ailie.
He turns into Great Russell Street, and the dark imposing building springs up before him, a monument to the stone quarry. At that moment the drizzle begins to whiten, changing to snow. The wet crystals fly into his jacket and dissolve, the soles of his boots tap at the pavement, pigeons rustle their wings. All is silence, the streets deserted. It’s as if the entire world were holding its breath.
The arboretum gate is unlatched. Mungo slips in like a cat, playing for the surprise. Round a corner, through a stand of dwarf fruit trees — and what’s this? Up ahead, bent over a mulberry with strips of protective sacking, is a form in cloth coat, gloves, fur cap. A Dicksonish form. “Dix,” is all the explorer needs to say.
Charles Dickson turns around on a ghost. His breath hangs in the air, snow whitens his shoulders. A figure stands before him, eerie and incongruous in this place, on this day, at this hour. A figure out of the past — wasted, sallow, the gray of his eyes flecked with red— a figure dead and buried, so long hoped for that hope has become a habit. The botanist drops the sacking and wipes his spectacles on the sleeve of his coat before breaking into a wide wet grin. “Is it really you,” he stammers, “or some wraith come back to haunt us?”
♦ PEACE ON EARTH, GOODWILL TO MEN ♦
Prior to 1784, public executions in London were held at a place called Tyburn Tree, opposite the Marble Arch. An elaborate ritual was involved, and a good deal of hoopla as well. The condemned prisoners would ride through the streets on a cart, their elbows pinioned, the plain pine caskets beside them. Thousands turned out for the parade, bleachers were erected round the gallows, and makeshift stalls sold everything from small beer to gin, mackerel, muffins, gingerbread and tongue sandwiches. Hawkers did a brisk business in lurid confessions detailing the prisoners’ crimes, or tear-jerk letters ostensibly written to their sweethearts at the eleventh hour. All too frequently the condemned were small fry — sniveling forgers, starving women convicted of shoplifting, fifteen-year-old pickpockets— and when this was the case the crowd was merciless, jeering and spitting, pelting them with stones and offal. But when a highwayman was executed — particularly a striking and notorious one — they were in ecstasy. Invariably he would be decked out in silks, his hair fluffed and curled, the gold buckles of his pumps flashing defiance. He would bow to the women, shake hands with the boys who ran beside the cart, even sign autographs. He went to the gallows a hero, a martyr, and when the cart trundled off and left him swinging, his friends would rush forward to hang on his legs, anxious to expedite the inevitable and spare him the pain and ignominy of the slow process of strangulation.
But in 1784, despite the protests of a throng of people, not the least of whom was Dr. Johnson himself, the “Tyburn March” was done away with, and criminals were subsequently hanged just outside the walls of the prison itself. The idea was to eliminate the carnival atmosphere surrounding the executions, in the hope of intensifying their deterrent effect. The crowd that gathered for the first Newgate hangings was shocked and dismayed — the prisoners were led out, a short prayer was said, and they were hanged. No parade, no fanfare, no glory, no dignity. Just meat, twisting slowly round the rope in the cold glare of the sun.
♦ ♦ ♦
Ned Rise isn’t particular about the details. Fanfare or no fanfare, he doesn’t want to die. But it seems that now, after nearly a year of delays and hard-won postponements, he is going to do just that — die, croak, kick the bucket, part the pale — and there’s nothing anyone short of the King can do about it. And the King, as everyone knows, is mad as a hatter. Thorogood, backed by the Brooks fortune, had performed feats of prestidigitation — stretching days to weeks, weeks to months, months to a year. And he’d fought tenaciously for yet another postponement, but Sir Joseph Banks had fought just as tenaciously to see the thing consummated.
“But on Christmas Day, my lord?” Thorogood had squeaked at the Lord Mayor.
“Christmas falls on a Monday, Counselor — a regular hanging day.”
“What about ‘Peace on Earth’ and all of that?”
Banks was in the background, pulling strings. He’d talked to Pitt, the Prince, the Lord Chamberlain, protesting that so long a delay in so heinous a case was unconscionable, reprehensible — the courts were derelict in their duty. In their majestic, inscrutable, planetary way, these luminaries were moved to agree. The word came down from on high, and the Lord Mayor was deaf to further pleas. He squinted down at Thorogood. “We have two thieves and a murderer to hang, Counselor — I should think that their extermination will give the honest citizens of this nation a great deal of peace indeed.”