The Last Confession Of Thomas Hawkins Part 26

Where am I? Am I safe? I concentrate on the sounds outside my narrow wooden box. I can hear drunken cries, the high squeal of street hogs, ballad singers and hawkers, and a low bell tolling my own death. The cart slows, caught in the crowds, then surges forward again. Someone curses the driver. The cart turns and the noise changes. Whispers, and the sound of a bottle smas.h.i.+ng. A baby screaming somewhere high above our heads. The wheels of the cart rattling over broken cobbles. The driver coughs. 'd.a.m.ned dust.' We roll to a halt, the horses snorting and chewing at their bits.

The coffin begins to move, sliding from the cart. It swings into the air and I roll inside, smas.h.i.+ng my knee. What if I am to be thrown into the Thames? I take a deep breath, ready to fight, but the coffin is carried higher, resting on solid shoulders. Boots thump and voices curse as we tilt and turn up the stairs. I count four storeys. The men are grunting now with the effort.

A door opens. The coffin is lowered to the floor with a heavy thump.

'Here he is, then.' Someone kicks the side. 'Ten pounds.'

'We agreed five.'

Kitty.

'Five to bring him here. Another five and I'll keep quiet.'

'A bullet in your throat will do that well enough.' A sharp, metallic click. 'Leave us. Now.'

A pause. The door slams shut. Hurried footsteps back down the stairs.

She starts to prise open the lid with an iron crow, nails groaning against the wood. I push hard from the other side and it starts to give. At last it splits open. I struggle free and roll on to my back, stunned and gasping for air.

Wooden rafters stretch high above my head. Daylight streams through an open window, casting blocks of dazzling light on to the bare floor. Curtains billow in a soft spring breeze. The room smells of gin and unwashed clothes. I sit up slowly, still dazed and uncertain. There are piles of rags stacked against the far wall ready to sell. The floorboards feel rough under my fingers; the breeze chills the sweat on my chest. Am I truly alive? Where am I?

Someone coughs loudly on the other side of the wall, hawking up thick phlegm.

Not heaven, then.

Kitty kneels down next to me. She has pulled off her mob cap. Her face is flushed pink from the effort of opening the coffin. It is the most beautiful thing. She is the most beautiful . . . The room fades and I begin to slide to the floor. She grabs hold of my shoulders. 'You're safe,' she says. 'Tom do you understand? You're safe.'

I try to speak through my bruised and swollen throat. 'Kitty.'

Her bright-green eyes soften in relief. 'Idiot.' She kisses my forehead, my lips. Kisses me as though she is breathing the life back into me. I break away, staring in wonder at the face I have missed so much, touching clumsy, half-numb fingers to her cheek.

I don't know how I came to be here, what magic she has wrought to bring a hanged man back from the dead. All I know is that my heart is beating, my pulse is racing, my skin is warm. I lean against her and weep with joy, like a child.

Later, we lie tangled upon the narrow bed, a thin sheet draped at our hips. My need had been wild, more animal than human. I would have devoured her if I could, teeth sc.r.a.ping her skin, fingers digging into her flesh. She had held me tightly, back arched, caught in her own frenzy. I spent inside her and collapsed, only to rise again twice more. My body, rejoicing in the simple truth I am alive.

Only now, half dozing, do I ask how the miracle was accomplished.

She sits up, reaches for her wrapping gown. 'We paid Hooper.'

I think back to the gallows, Hooper lying stretched upon the high beam, smoking a pipe. The last moments as he rolled the cap down over my face. Courage, sir. My breath hot and fast against the linen. The roar of the crowd.

'There's ways to tie a knot to finish things fast. Here.' She coils her long red hair and slips it over one shoulder. Presses two fingers against her bare neck, below her ear. 'And ways to make it slow.' She moves her hand to the back of her neck, where Hooper had tied the rope. 'You only seemed dead when he cut you down. You were still breathing. A little.'

'You were there?'

She shakes her head. 'I couldn't . . .' She glances about the room and I know she is thinking of that long wait, not knowing if I were dead or alive. I reach over and grip her hand.Tears brim beneath her lowered lids. At last, she begins again. 'We paid Skimpy to smuggle you on to the wrong cart.'

I raise an eyebrow.

'He works for the surgeons. Brings the bodies back for anatomising . . .'

My stomach turns at the thought how close I had come. I remember the surgeons' a.s.sistant from the gallows a pale, thin lad with white-blond brows and lashes, arguing with the Marshal. I wonder if he will be in trouble with his masters for losing a valuable corpse. Most likely not bodies often disappear on the road back from Tyburn, grieving families dragging the coffins away for a decent burial. Jack Sheppard's body had been taken by his friends and buried.

'Where are we?'

She smiles. 'Phoenix Street.'

I sit up in alarm. We paid Hooper. We paid Skimpy. 'Fleet arranged this?'

Her smile fades. 'No. Wouldn't trust that b.a.s.t.a.r.d to p.i.s.s straight.'

It takes me a moment to guess. 'Sam.'

'He came to see me last night. Told me everything.' She punches me once, very hard, in the arm. 'You promised there'd be no more secrets between us, Tom.'

I rub my arm. 'Fleet threatened to kill you.'

'All the more reason to tell me, you stupid p.r.i.c.k!'

I let her rage. She has every right. I had been so proud of my own martyrdom I had never stopped to consider the toll it had taken on Kitty. She had spent the last few weeks broken-hearted and desperate. Behind the arm-punching and curses I can see how much I've hurt her. Her cheeks are hollow, her sweet little belly stretched taut. So much for my n.o.ble self-sacrifice: it has almost destroyed her.

'I'm sorry,' I say, when she is done, or has at least run out of breath. I lean in to kiss her and hear a soft, irritable sigh from the doorway. Sam has slipped into the room, G.o.d knows when. Best not to ask. Kitty tightens her gown and jumps up from the bed, crossing to him on tiptoes. She pulls him further into the room, clasping his hand in both of hers. The hero of the hour. I must confess I suffer a curious pang of jealousy at that. I'd felt some pride this morning, going bravely to my death. Now here I am, rescued by a boy of fourteen and a surgeon's a.s.sistant called Skimpy. I am grateful, but . . .

'You're well, Mr Hawkins?'

There is a tremor in Sam's voice, as if I might still be angry with him. I wrap the sheet around my waist and hobble to meet him. Hug him for as long as he will let me, which is not very long at all. He keeps his hands at his side and stays rigid. It is like hugging a short roll of heavy cloth. 'You saved my life.'

He stifles a grin of pride. Better, is it not, to save lives than to end them? He hands me a broadsheet, warm from the press. Guthrie's account of my life and death, curse him, printed fast for profit. 'World thinks you're dead.'

The world thinks I'm a monster.

'We'll stay here for a few days Tom,' Kitty says as I sit back down upon the bed, still reading. 'Let everyone forget all about you.'

'A gentleman, hanged for murder? They won't forget me in a hundred years.'

'We'll go to Italy, just as we planned. Sam will keep looking for the true killer.'

'Alice,' Sam says, as if the thing were settled.

The killer. My G.o.d. I had quite forgotten amidst all the drama of dying. I crumple up the broadsheet and toss it across the room on to the unlit fire, taking some small pleasure in hitting my target. 'No. It wasn't Alice. You were right Kitty. It was Judith.'

Perhaps it was because I had been so close to death. A flash of revelation as my soul prepared to escape its cage.

I had seen her through the crowds, dressed in her mother's mourning gown. She had been granted a place of honour in the galleries, surrounded by powdered courtiers, a single jet-black stone in a flower bed of colour. She sat forward in her seat, lips parted, gloved hands laced across the folds of her dress, as if she were waiting for her favourite opera singer to take the stage.

She was so young. And beneath her composed expression, so very lost. A boat unmoored and drifting on the open ocean. Our eyes met and in that brief communion I had seen how much she wished me dead. Not out of malice, nor for revenge, but to be sure that suspicion would never fall on her. She smiled at me. Gave the tiniest nod of acknowledgement. Thank you, sir. I am most obliged to you.

Hooper prepared the cart, and still we'd stared at each other across the crowds; murderer and victim locked in one last deathly gaze. She clutched her gown in antic.i.p.ation, fingers twisting and turning the black silk. Black for mourning. Black for death. A black so deep no stains of red would show upon it.

Hooper rolled the cap over my face.

'Wait.'

But it had been too late. My feet slid from the cart and the rope pulled taut.

'I'll kill her. I swear it, Tom. I will f.u.c.king murder her.' Kitty is prowling the room, all thoughts of exile vanished. 'Turn your back,' she snarls at Sam, and throws off her wrapping gown without waiting to see if he has complied. She tugs on her stockings, garters, petticoat, stomacher, then reties her gown. Decent, then as decent as she can be. She catches me watching her and grins. 'Beast.' She hunts for her pistol. It takes her a while to realise I am holding it.

She lunges and I lift it high, out of her reach. There is a short tussle, Kitty pulling on my arm.

'Dangerous,' Sam warns, eyeing the c.o.c.ked and loaded pistol.

I unc.o.c.k it and throw it over to him. He catches it neatly and tips the powder onto the floor.

Kitty paces the room, annoyed. 'You cannot stop me, Tom. Who saved you today? Do you think it was Fate that cut you down from the scaffold still breathing? Or G.o.d?'

'No-'

'No indeed. We saved you. Me and Sam. If he hadn't come to me last night and d'you know he had to steal his way in to avoid Alice and Neala . . .'

'He enjoys stealing into places.'

Sam shrugs. This is true.

'How can you jest?' Kitty cries, fresh tears springing in her eyes. 'They let you hang, Tom. They let you hang.'

'We must find a way to make Judith confess,' I persist. 'She is the only one who can prove my innocence. She can't very well do that if you shoot her first.'

Kitty wipes her eyes. 'She let them arrest you in her place. She lied under oath in court. She sat in her room swigging poppy juice while I sobbed my heart out every night for you. Six weeks. And she never thought to speak out. She murdered her father and she let you hang for it. She will never confess, Tom.'

'Perhaps. But I must try.'

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Midnight on Phoenix Street and the city was alive, pulsing with revellers celebrating my death. It had been a good dying. I had shown pluck and a certain swagger at the end. That was something to admire, especially here in St Giles.

I stood with Sam, s.h.i.+elded behind a wall, waiting for a sprawling crowd to pa.s.s. His father was holding a vigil for me at home with all his gang. I'd kept my word and held my tongue the greatest virtue among thieves. They honoured me tonight, now that I was safely dead. Sam had slipped away while they drank and sang and raised toast after toast to Mr Hawkins. They did not know that Sam had not killed Burden. How disappointed they would all be in him.

A few revellers straggled into a gin shop. When it was quiet enough, we stepped out into the street.

The night was mild and damp, a light rain misting the air. Sam had brought me fresh clothes to replace my suit of blue velvet we had sent that to Hooper the hangman. A fair price for saving my life, I thought along with whatever else Kitty had paid him. I had cost her a great deal these past weeks. I pulled the collar of my greatcoat around my ears.

'They won't see you.'

I understood. People only see what they expect to see, and no one expected to see a dead man strolling about the town. But still, I preferred to keep my head down and my collar up. I bent my neck low and felt the bruise around my throat, where the rope had cut deep. For a moment, I couldn't breathe.

Sam held out a torch coated in thick black pitch. I took the tinderbox from my coat pocket and struck the flint, bright sparks flying from the stone. The torch caught fire and Sam raised it high. And of a sudden he was that young boy I'd met last September. The boy who promised to light me home and instead led me into darkness.

'Well, look at you, Sam. A moon-curser once more.'

He smiled a true, broad smile. 'No, sir. Not tonight. Tonight I'll see you home.'

On Long Acre, the pavements were covered in broken gla.s.s, sodden broadsheets, and the occasional drunk. I almost tripped over an old watchman, dead to the world and snoring, his lantern burned out. It was always the same the night after a hanging. Tomorrow he would stumble into a coffeehouse, clutching his head and cursing my name.

In the Garden, a few wh.o.r.es limped beneath the arches, clutching themselves for warmth and looking for a fresh customer. Most were busy, on their backs in their meagre rooms, or pushed up against a wall in a back alley. Men needed to f.u.c.k after a hanging, to feel the blood pumping in their veins.

At Moll's place, light glowed in the windows. Moll's voice carried across the piazza, sweet and sad. A song of mourning.

'Holding a wake for you,' Sam said.

So, this was how it felt to be a ghost. Some part of me yearned to draw near. Was Betty there, and did she grieve for me? She must have known the pardon would never come, even as she promised it. Her visit had ensured my silence between the trial and the hanging.

Betrayal. Well. I had felt that sting before. I pulled my hat low and kept my eyes on the cobbles.

We were home soon enough. Home. My heart rose. I had not dared to dream of coming home again. I tapped softly on the door and it swung free at once, Kitty waiting anxiously behind it. She had hurried back from St Giles under Sam's protection hours before, to prepare and to keep a close eye upon next door. She kissed me in silent welcome as Sam extinguished the torch, grinding it into the iron snuffer fixed to the wall outside.

'Alice is asleep in Jenny's old room,' she whispered. 'Neala's in the kitchen. I slipped a draught in her beer. She sleeps light.'

Alice and Neala had kept Kitty company throughout my imprisonment, Neala standing guard through the nights. There had been threats from some of the neighbours, convinced that Kitty had been involved in the murder. Neala had kept them away. Felblade had spoken out for her too, it seemed. Strange to discover true friends in such times and in such unexpected quarters. I was grateful to them all and did not want them tangled up in tonight's plan. Safer for them to think me dead, maybe for ever. Whatever happened tonight, I had not yet decided what should follow. There was, after all, a freedom in being dead. It could be a welcome chance to begin afresh, with a new name and none of the old ties I'd allowed to bind me. The thought of not being in the service of the queen, or James Fleet of answering to no one but myself . . . Well, it had its appeal.

Kitty grinned, excited by the fresh drama. Perhaps I should have slipped opiates in her beer. No, no. I had learned my lesson. I had chosen Kitty and she had chosen me. For good or ill, we would face our troubles together.

We tiptoed up the stairs, paying mind to every loose board. When we reached Sam's room, I took out the pistol and handed it to Kitty. 'It's not loaded.'

She scowled, then turned it around in her hand, testing its weight in her palm. Mollified, she tilted her chin towards the secret door, hidden behind the hanging with its white cherry tree design.

Kitty went first, followed by Sam. I stood alone for a few seconds, the candle flickering in my hand, then plunged through to the other side.

Burden's house was very still. Kitty had been studying the household these past weeks, while I languished in my cell. Judith hadn't replaced Alice perhaps she could not find anyone to join such a cursed household. No one had visited, either, save for one very stern lawyer who came almost every day, clutching a fat bundle of papers. Rumour was the business was in trouble. Even Mrs Jenkins had been banished since she'd served her purpose at the trial. It had left her suspicious, the way she had been used and discarded and her sharp eye noticed things she had missed before. One of her customers had seen Ned visiting the Carpenters' Company. 'Asking for charity,' she'd guessed, and that guess had been trans.m.u.ted into fact about the Garden.

I took the candle and examined the gowns hanging in the cabinet, running my hands over the flounces and pleats. They smelled of campion. The heavy black mourning gown was missing.

On the day I searched the house, Judith had dressed herself in that gown. She had thrown a heavy lace shawl over her head that fell all the way to her waist. She had pinned it carefully with an ebony brooch, to cover the fabric beneath. Her appearance had struck me as strange and affected even at the time. Why not order a new gown, or have the older one tailored to a modern cut? No one would have expected her to be in full mourning dress so soon. I'd thought it a sign of her grief, or an unbalanced mind. I had pitied Judith then. I had thought her weak.

And so I had searched every corner of the house looking for bloodstained clothes, while Judith had sat primly in the drawing room, wearing the same dress she'd worn when she killed her father. Smiling on the inside while I searched like a fool for what was right in front of my eyes.

Clever, wicked girl.

Down on the next landing we paused, each drawing strength from the other. The plan we had agreed to on Phoenix Street had seemed simple enough. Kitty and I would coax the truth from Judith. Sam would stand watch. And we must be quiet. Ned would be sleeping downstairs in the workshop, Stephen across the landing in his father's old room. If either woke we were all in trouble.

'No blood,' I whispered, for the hundredth time. I would not have another death on my conscience. Kitty and Sam exchanged guarded looks. I had the distinct impression they had agreed something rather different, out of my hearing. 'Swear it.'