How the Hangman Lost His Heart (17 page)

Alice understood, but she was not finished. “Well, thank you very much, but I'm not going right now,” she declared. “I'm going to wait for my friends.” Ignoring the soldiers, she climbed out of the dock in a manner not at all ladylike and went quite deliberately to sit beside a bristling Mabel. She could hear Major Slavering grinding his teeth but she would not look at him.

Peckersniff pinned his handkerchief more firmly to his face. “Next,” he called faintly.

Hew was brought in, his legs in shackles, his clothes a disgrace, and his eyes red and rheumy. From his expression, however, he might have been going to a ball. One of the guards had told him of Alice's sentence and he was light-headed with joy. Whatever happened to Dan and himself, at least she was safe and would soon be home, under her father's care. As he climbed into the dock, Hew smiled broadly at Uncle Frank. But something in Frank's demeanor advised caution and, indeed, when Hew looked around his smile faded. Up in the gallery, Major Slavering, enraged by Alice's easy escape, was busy expounding his erstwhile captain's
many iniquities to an audience not unwilling to listen, and although Alice, now sitting straight in front of him, appeared utterly confident and even Mabel seemed cautiously optimistic, it was clear from his mother's face that she, at least, was expecting the worst.

His mother turned out to be right. Slavering had done his work well. The evidence against Hew was damning. He had, by his actions, expressed sympathy with the Jacobite cause and he was responsible for the loss of the king's property. Some witnesses swore blind they had heard Hew urging Alice to flee. Others, with their own eyes, had seen him hide the head. Yet more could vouch for his treasonable thoughts because, after the battle of Culloden, he had told them to spare the wounded specifically so that they could live to fight against King George another day. The witnesses grew more and more fanciful and although the jurymen clearly disbelieved some of the wilder claims—one man swore that Hew really
was
Bonnie Prince Charlie—that only made the lesser charges more credible. It was, at any rate, indisputable that Hew had allowed two criminals to escape. Even Hew did not deny this.

Peckersniff could feel the bracelet slipping away. Then he had a brainwave. “Maybe, Captain Ffrench, the girl affected your judgment?” he asked deliberately
slowly, to allow Hew time to see the bait. “Have you been led astray, young man? If Alice Towneley, as comely a wench as I have ever seen, has obliged you to do things that you would not, in your right mind, otherwise have done, this may be taken into account.” At this, both Major Slavering's ribald laughter and Lady Widdrington's cackle shook the rafters, but despite Mabel muttering, “Say yes, you weak fool, admit it,” Hew said nothing. Peckersniff could do no more. A guilty verdict was now inevitable.

When the jury pronounced it, Alice shot up again, but Mabel pinched her until she sat down. “You'll only make it worse,” she snarled. “How I wish Hew had never met you. I'd like to execute you myself.” Her mother had to hold the bench to stop herself collapsing.

Peckersniff felt sorry for them, but sorrier for himself, and he would not look at Lady Widdrington. He passed the awful sentence gazing at the floor. Even now, he tried to do his best for Hew and just sentence him to hang, but the public gallery, pumped and primed by Slavering, was having none of that. It was only right that Hew should suffer the same fate as the man whose head he had helped to steal. The scene grew so noisy that Dan could hear it from his cell. He knew what it meant. He had heard it before and when Hew, gray as prison porridge, was
brought back, Dan took him from the rough grasp of the guard and sat him gently on the floor. Neither could speak, but Dan took Hew's hand and shook it hard before being dragged up to the courtroom himself.

When Dan reached the dock, Mabel and Mrs. Ffrench were clinging to each other and Alice, now a shrunken and forlorn figure, had drawn her knees up under her chin. Above, a frenziedly animated Lady Widdrington kept bawling something at the Lord Chief Justice and, for reasons Dan could not fathom, kept shaking not her fist but her wrist. Peckersniff's handkerchief had risen so far up his face that his eyes were barely visible, and anyway they were shut. This was a nightmare.

The usher saved the day by banging on the floor so hard that the vibrations made Uncle Frank's teeth clack and the pitchy hair flop over his face. As silence fell once more, Dan gazed sorrowfully at the head and itched to tidy it up, for he was a professional still. But now he had to concentrate.

“Dan Skinslicer?” the clerk asked him. “Hangman and jobbing executioner?”

“I am,” said Dan.

The crowd shushed at each other as their skin crept with delicious horror. A real live hangman in the dock! A man who made a living strangling, slicing, burning,
or flaying. Surely he must be a monster? It was disconcerting to find somebody who looked like the sort of husband every decent mother might wish for her daughter.

Peckersniff reopened his eyes. At least he knew what to do with this one. The City of London was currently short of men who could hang, draw, and quarter without making a complete mess of the thing. He knew it and he was sure the jurymen had been told. There would surely be witnesses lined up to prove this simpleton not guilty.

Dan answered every question politely and as accurately as he could, since he had seen too much death to be afraid of it. Yes, he had helped Alice to escape with the head. Yes, he had ridden Major Slavering's horse without the major's permission. “And he is a very good horse, Your Honor and honored jury members,” Dan said. “I took a very good horse.” He was so calm and accommodating that Peckersniff began to sweat. This dunderhead was going to send himself to the very gallows from which he was supposed to be saved. Then a man ran in clutching Johanna and the jury breathed again. The wife! She would surely cry heartrending tears and plead for him?

But within moments it was clear that if anybody was going to send Dan to the gallows it was Johanna. In fact, Dan hardly recognized her, for she was plump
and round and dressed from head to toe in scarlet satin, imported in great rolls from France by her new smuggler lover. She had been delighted when the court messenger turned up. Nothing would suit better than to play the desolate wife for a fat fee and at first she had meant to. However, her natural ill temper soon got the better of her and, despite her silks and her painted lips, she began to berate Dan like a fishwife, calling him every name under the sun. Even Peckersniff himself could not bring her diatribe to an end, though he used his best frown. The courtroom, which at first found Johanna funny, grew bored and began calling out. Alice wanted to shout too, but her voice would not obey her anymore. She looked only at Uncle Frank. How had it come to this? He looked back at her, but his expression was a mystery.

The usher beat the walls again. “Silence in the court,” he roared. The noise abated a little, but simmered, still ready to blow.

Peckersniff, at his wits' end, addressed Johanna himself. “My dear lady,” he said, picking his words with care, “you have clearly had a great deal to put up with.”

“Aye. I should never have married the stupid numbskull. He conned me, pretending he was clever and able to provide a lady with the good things in life.”

Peckersniff sat up. “Are you saying that your husband is a very stupid man?”

“Aye. The stupidest. He's so stupid that when we married it was me who 'ad to find the parson and all. He's so stupid that sometimes he even forgets to grab a tip from those he tops. Stupid? Lord Justice, sir, 'e's stupider than your big toe.”

Peckersniff circled her like a pointer. “Yes, my dear, I see, I see. Very stupid. So stupid that you have to think of everything?”

“Everything.”

“So stupid that he can't even make a decent living from hanging people?”

“Even that stupid.”

“Thank you, madam, you may step down.”

Thoroughly pleased with herself, Johanna left the box.

Peckersniff turned at once to the jurymen. “You heard the lady,” he said. “As this man's wife, she surely knows him better than any person living and we hear from her own lips, my good sirs, from her own lips, that the major sin of this wretched hangman is not treachery but stupidity! He could no more plan something than fly. He's a dolt, a dimwit, an absolute block of wood, one of those unfortunates to whom intelligence is unknown.” The crowd rustled uneasily. Where was this going? Peckersniff
shook his head, oozing regret. “My good fellows,” he declared at last, with a pained smile, “we cannot execute the dolts and the dimwits, or who on earth would be left?”

The crowd hummed and hawed. Gaining confidence, Peckersniff flowed smoothly on. “This man was, in my humble estimation, dragged into this unfortunate affair by mistake and was not clever enough to get himself out. In view of this, we must drop the case against him. Indeed, there is no case. I feel this most strongly.” There was a groan of disappointment. “But,” Peckersniff continued brightly, “we can still punish him in another way. We will make it his duty to execute Captain Hew Ffrench. Is justice not neat sometimes, is it not neat I say? Captain Ffrench will meet his Maker in three days. Three days. That should give both him and Dan Skinslicer time to prepare. That's the end of that. Now, there's just time to try this head before we all go home.”

Dan was released and told to make himself scarce.

The charges against Uncle Frank were heard. He was declared to have connived in his own stealing by keeping his eyes open. The Lord Chief Justice was obliged to ask the colonel if he would close them. Uncle Frank did nothing. He was asked again. Still nothing. So he was duly found guilty of contempt of court and condemned to be put back onto Temple Bar.

As soon as he had passed this last sentence, Peckersniff declared the courtroom closed and fled. In the safety of his library, he threw his handkerchief into the fire and, after much pacing about, got out the bracelet, wrapped it up, and prepared to send it back to Lady Widdrington.

Then he heard a weighty thud, thud, thud. “Peckie, my angel,” his wife trilled. “I've something to sho-o-o-o-w you!”

He cowered but there was no escape. Into the room strode Lady Peckersmith, magnificently triangular except for a pair of square feet. She came close to her husband, then closer. Her mouth opened and a blast of breath, not whiffy pig but now even whiffier wild boar, rapidly altered the Lord Chief Justice's perspective. The bracelet was his only hope! When at last he escaped from his wife's embrace, he tore up his letter to Lady Widdrington, popped the package into a pouch marked “Important Papers: KEEP OUT!” and headed for the door.

Alice had not fled the courtroom. She had hardly moved at all. She felt as if she was crying loudly and would have been surprised to be told that she was completely silent. It had all been for nothing. Hew was to die for nothing. She did not know where to turn now. Mabel had urged Mrs. Ffrench away, forbidding
Alice to come anywhere near them, and she could not bear to go back to her grandmother's. The thought of Hew alone in his prison cell was unbearable. And the most terrible thing of all was that she couldn't bear to be with Dan either, knowing what he must do. Eventually she was shoved out by the usher and she wandered the streets alone. Her moment of fame had come and gone and she was no longer of any interest to anybody.

Except to Dan, who had been patiently waiting. He did not approach Alice immediately but never let her out of his sight. His heart wept for her, and sometimes his eyes too. Occasionally she would draw herself up and Dan knew that she was thinking of some plan—rushing to the king, storming Newgate Prison, setting fire to the gallows, or some such. This tortured him more, for when the plan was abandoned, Alice's desolation ran deeper than ever. Eventually, she found herself back under Temple Bar and sat stiffly on an old bench. When Dan edged closer and then tentatively sat down beside her, he was relieved that she did not recoil. He knew he was once again a hangman in her eyes but she had nobody else.

“What have I done, Dan Skinslicer?” she asked, wincing for the first time ever at his name. “Captain Ffrench is really dying for me.”

“Captain Ffrench chose his own path,” Dan told her. “Blaming yourself is silly.”

“Maybe I am silly.”

“No,” said Dan slowly. “You are many things, missy. Bossy sometimes, even hurtful. But you are never silly—at least I've never seen it.”

“You don't know me very well then,” Alice said, hunching her legs up. The face she turned to Dan was streaked and, as the daylight faded, he could almost see through her. They sat in silence. Then Alice put out her hand and touched Dan's shoulder. “I'm sorry,” she said, and her voice broke. In a moment she was folded into two strong arms and Dan rocked back and forth as she wept and wept. “You do know me, Dan Skinslicer,” she sobbed. “You know me better than Hew Ffrench. He loves me. I can see that. But he doesn't know me. He can't, because his eyes are full of that kind of love-blindness people get. Do you know what I mean?” Dan nodded, unable to speak himself now. Alice wiped her eyes on his sleeve. “Hew's not like you. You see just me, Alice Towneley, a foolish girl who has got you into trouble. But Hew, well, Hew sees somebody else, somebody almost perfect, and it's not me, it's really not me, although I can't help loving him for thinking it is.” She sobbed harder than ever. “But I can hardly bear it, Dan Skinslicer, because this blind love has sent him to your gallows. If I'd been fat
and hairy, he'd never have even dreamed of helping me, let alone loving me. And just look where it's led.”

Dan held her close. Her hair was lank and greasy but it was the dearest thing in the world to him. She had that capacity, this Alice, to make him happier, angrier, more elated, more frustrated, more like a lion or more like a worm than any other person he had ever met. And she was right. His sort of love was not like Hew's. He did not think her perfect. He did not even think her good. He just thought of her as somebody for whom he would gladly lay down his life. Dan's love did not depend on the blue of Alice's eyes, although it was a wonder to him. Nor did it depend on her loving him, for Dan thought this impossible. The truth was that his love did not depend on anything at all. It was just there, lifting him up or casting him down as it chose, but never waning or diminishing. It was so steady that sometimes he wondered if it had disappeared, but then realized that it could no more disappear than his own skin could disappear. It was just part of him.