Authors: The Tyburn Waltz
Maggie MacKeever
The Tyburn
W
altz
Maggie MacKeever
Vintage Ink Press
Los Angeles
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictionally.
Copyright © 2010 by Gail Clark Burch
Cover based on the portrait of Louise Augusta, Queen of Prussia, painted by Elisabeth Louise Vigee LeBrun, 1801. Original located at Schloss Charlottenburg, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.
Corner design elements courtesy of Istockphoto/Angelgild
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
ISBN: 978-0-9826239-6-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010930364
First Printing: November 2010
This book is an original publication of Vintage Ink Press.
For further information contact
www.vintageinkpress.com
Printed in the United States of America
With many thanks to those
who have walked these roads with me.
Table Of Contents
Prologue
London, 1810
The grim smoke-blackened walls of Newgate Prison rose stark
against the sky. Since early on this Monday morning, the crowd had been gathering round. When the great deep bell of St. Sepulcher’s tolled the appointed hour, unlucky Odo Cockbain would be led out through the Debtor’s Door and up a short flight of steps onto the gallows, there to deliver what was expected to be a passable dying speech, which the poor brute was no doubt practicing even now, before he was hanged.
Men, women, and children, highborn as well as low, congregated in the streets and on the rooftops. The more affluent among them commanded seats at the windows overlooking the gallows. Mingling with the spectators were vendors of barley broth and taffity tarts, tea and coffee and ginger beer and patent nostrums involving hog’s lice; broadsheet and ballad sellers, shoplifters and pickpockets and merchants; drunken lordlings that had passed the night celebrating in the tavern across the way.
Making his way through the throng was a neat little man in
dark coat and trousers, white linen, plaid vest, and carefully polished shoes. On his nose perched wire-rimmed spectacles, on his thinning hair a black bowl-shaped beaver hat. Pritchett had more the appearance of a clerk than a Bow Street thief-taker, save for the gilt-topped baton tucked under one arm. He paused to buy a bunch of lavender and a meat pie wrapped in greasy paper before continuing down the cobbled street, past the gallows and up to the great barred gate.
A nod, a coin, and Pritchett followed the leather-aproned turnkey into a rambling maze of yards, staircases, wards and ways so dark and dim that candles were necessary even in the daylight. The stench of unwashed flesh and excrement, sickness and death, was so noxious that it made a man’s eyes sting. The few windows faced inward, and were heavily barred with strong iron.
Down dismal passages they walked, through heavy oaken iron-bound gates that swung open and slammed shut again behind, past filthy cells where prisoners were manacled to chains stapled in the floor, lying in the fetid dampness with no covering and perhaps a rotting corpse for company until the deceased’s relatives dredged up enough money to buy its release. The turnkey paused by the men’s common yard, where an elaborately staged ‘prize fight’ was underway behind a door fashioned from thick bars of wood. The brutal thud of fist against flesh, the crunch of bone, the howl of shouting, bragging, cursing spectators
. . .
’Twas one way to dissipate energies that otherwise sought release in riots and disturbances. Let the brutes crack each other’s nappers, and damn any nonsense about who drew first blood.
Pritchett prodded the turnkey with his baton. The man led him to a private cell. Pritchett pulled another coin from his pocket. The turnkey unlocked the door.
The cell was small and close and clammy, empty of furnishings, the smell of urine strong enough to gag a mule. The walls oozed moisture. Rats and mice burrowed in the filthy straw. The turnkey’s candle illuminated a small ragged figure huddled in a corner of the tiny room.
Pritchett stepped into the chamber. The turnkey set down his candle on a narrow shelf. The heavy door swung shut behind him. The prisoner scrambled to his feet.
In addition to his Bow Street staff, Pritchett was armed with his prized Manton pistol — octagonal barrel with two white metal lines inlaid, engraved breech and lock, rounded chequered butt — not to mention his own handy bunch of fives. Unlikely he would have to use either his pistol or his fists. This scrawny mite must measure under five feet tall and weigh less than seven stone, a considerable amount of that muck clinging to his person. In tattered furze breeches and ragged shirt, he looked like someone could have stuck him on a stick to scare off crows.
The felon was staring at his dirty feet as if he expected his toes to detach themselves and go crawling toward the unlocked door. Pritchett raised the lavender to his nose, and inhaled. “In the interest of saving time, I’ll tell you what I know. You were caught on the day sneak. If snatching a set of silver teaspoons wasn’t bad enough, you had about your person a diving hook and picklock, as well as a ginny to open the grate. You’ve no money for easement, and by now your belly is as empty as if your throat was cut.” With the head of his baton, he tilted up the prisoner’s chin. “You’ve me
to thank for your private accommodations. You see, I know that you’re no boy.”
She met his gaze because she had no choice, her own eyes a startling vibrant blue surrounded by long thick lashes and an arch of dark eyebrows. Her nose was straight above a stubborn mouth, her face heart-shaped, her short curly hair matted to her head with dirt.
Dirt, and Pritchett didn’t care to think what else. She stank like rotting fish. He breathed deeply of his lavender. She jerked her chin away and suggested what he might do to her backside.
“More likely I’ll plant my boot there.” Pritchett handed her the meat pie and watched her cram the pastie whole into her mouth, wondered how long it had been since she last ate. The wrists and ankles that protruded from her ragged clothing were alarmingly thin.
Pritchett had no stomach for this business. But business it was, and once it lay behind him he would go home, clean his clothes with potter’s clay or chloride of soda, and put it from his mind. “You are well and truly caught, young Jules. There’s a very real possibility that you might dance the Tyburn waltz for your sins, or at the least be sent to the hulks, providing that you don’t die of gaol fever first.”
The girl scowled at him. “Go tip a pike.”
Pull a cat’s tail, and she would scratch. “Howsomever, I’m here to tell you that you can’t hang twice.”
The meat pie was devoured, the paper licked clean, and the girl’s attention all for him. “Mayhap you aren’t aware that countless crimes are punishable by death or transportation,” Pritchett added. “Including the theft of property worth more than five shillings from a shop.”
“May’ap instead of ’angin’ you’ll jaw me to death,” she snarled, displaying teeth that were white enough, the two front ones slightly overlapped. “Cut the cackle and get to the ’orses. You ain’t ’ere for the pleasure of me company.”
Pleasure had nothing to do with Pritchett’s presence at Newgate. He kept a prudent distance from the girl’s clever hands. Miss Jules could slip a ring off a gentleman’s finger, or a banknote from his pocket, without her victim noticing anything more than the usual jostling of a crowd.
She could also, in the normal way of things, lift a set of silver teaspoons as easy as water rolling off a duck’s back. “How old are you, lass?”
“Old as me tongue and a little older than me teeth.”
One meat pie had not been sufficient to disarm her. Pritchett was tempted to give the baggage a good shake. “If I had a dog with no more wit than you, I’d hang him. As
you
may hang without my help. Answer me, girl.”
She narrowed those amazing eyes at him. “Ten and four, near as I can guess.”
He had merely been curious. Pritchett stuck the lavender in his lapel. “Your luck is in today. If you’re willing to put yourself in my hands, on behalf of a certain benefactor, he’ll see you released from gaol.”
“What’s a benny-factor?”
“A gentry cove.”
Hope, followed by resignation, flashed across her expressive face. “Odds are this swell of yours is lookin’ to take a tumble-in.”
Pritchett was not often astonished, but his jaw dropped open now. “A
what?
”
“A tumble-in. To dab it up. That’s ’ow it is with the nobs. From a Mayfair mansion to a bare mattress in the corner of some rathole, and soon enough the poor doxy is sellin’ ’erself on the street ’til some cully does for her or she dies of the pox. If I must dance, I’d rather ’twas at the sheriff’s ball.”
This raggedy snippet foreswore the blanket hornpipe? Pritchett almost smiled. “When the Cap’n wants a tumble, he won’t be tossing up the skirts of such as you. Yes, I know you’re not wearing skirts at the moment, but if you was.”
Jules chewed on her lip. Pritchett wondered if the girl had ever owned a skirt. “Is he queer in the attic?” she asked.
That was an excellent question. Pritchett had wondered the same thing. “As I see it, you’ve two choices. You can go along with the Cap’n and sleep on clean sheets with a warming pan in your bed. Or you can take your chances in the common ward. How long do you think it will be before someone discovers you piss without a pizzle? Maybe an old whore could stand the business, but not a young pullet like yourself. And all that’s before you go out of the world by the steps and a string.”
Impossible to escape his meaning. Jules paled beneath her dirt. “What’s your Cap’n want with me?”
Though it was unlikely he meant to give this ragamuffin a tumble, whatever Cap’n Jack intended wasn’t likely to be good. Pritchett reminded himself that no one so frail and fragile as she seemed would have survived long in London’s cruel streets. The Cap’n’s private business was none of his affair.