The Last Confession Of Thomas Hawkins Part 27

They complied, eventually, with a good deal of reluctance and head-shaking. I stepped closer to Judith's door; reached for the handle and turned it slowly. The latch clunked and the door opened, creaking softly on its hinges.

The bed stood in the middle of the room, the canopy open to the night. I could hear Judith breathing softly. And this was shameful, was it not stealing into a young girl's bedchamber while she lay sleeping? I felt a prod in my back Kitty urging me forward, most likely with the pistol. She was overly fond of that weapon. She closed the door behind us.

'She murdered her father,' Kitty whispered, catching the doubt in my eyes. 'She let you hang, Tom.'

Judith stirred, legs swis.h.i.+ng under the sheets. Her dark hair fanned out across the pillow, a few damp strands clinging to her cheek. Her pale-blue night gown lay unb.u.t.toned at her throat, revealing a silver cross on a delicate chain. She had let me hang. And now she slept, peaceful and content.

Her eyes fluttered beneath closed lids.

Kitty hurried to the bed and covered Judith's mouth with a folded handkerchief. Judith's brows furrowed, then her eyes opened wide in shock. She tried to scream but the sound was m.u.f.fled by the cloth.

Kitty clamped it harder to Judith's lips. 'Be still.'

She gave a slight noise in her throat then nodded slowly, watching Kitty.

I stepped forward with the candle held high. 'Judith.'

She flinched at the sound of my voice and saw me at last. For a moment she lay senseless with shock, eyes bulging as she tried to understand what she saw. Then she began to whimper. I moved closer and her eyes rolled back in her head. She slumped back down in a dead faint.

'That was obliging of her,' Kitty said. She pulled out a couple of rags and tied Judith's wrists to the bedpost. She used the handkerchief as a gag.

This did not sit well with me. I shuffled from foot to foot, the floorboards creaking beneath my weight.

Kitty gave me an impatient look. 'Find the dress.'

I searched the closets while Kitty lit more candles about the room. I soon found the mourning gown and matching petticoat. I laid them out across the bed and lowered one of the candles over the skirts, tracing my fingers across the silk. It would have been drenched in blood the night of the murder. Judith must have spent many secret hours sponging it clean. There were still a few faint marks in the fabric. Some, caught in the st.i.tched seams of the quilted petticoat, would be easily covered by an ap.r.o.n. The stains on the bodice were harder to discover, mere faded patches where Judith had scrubbed out the blood. I scratched a fingernail along a seam and a tiny dark brown fragment of blood flaked into my palm. A jury would call it dirt, an old smudge on an old dress, but I was satisfied. Judith had killed her father.

It was not just the stains; it was the defiance with which she had worn the dress during the search. At my trial. At my hanging. The tiny smirk on her face, as she enjoyed her own private joke. It was only now that I began to understand Judith and the depths of her sickness. We had all dismissed her as a poor, timid thing. And perhaps she was her life smothered and ruined by her father, flinching beneath his hand, his sharp words. But something else had grown beneath that fragile surface. Something strong, formed of anger and bitterness. Alice had known the truth about her mistress but only Kitty had listened. Kitty had suspected Judith all along.

Judith blinked, waking in confusion. Her face was pallid, her lips almost white. We had frightened her half to death.

Kitty tipped a jug of ice-cold water in Judith's face.

She jolted with the shock, gasping beneath her gag. When she discovered that she was tied to the bed she gave a m.u.f.fled cry and pulled at the ties, turning her wrists frantically as she tried to slip free.

I sat down upon the bed and she shrank back, terrified.

'Be still,' I whispered. 'I've not come to hurt you.'

Kitty sat down on the other side of the bed, pistol resting in her hand. 'Do not presume the same of me.'

Judith stared at her, then nodded her understanding.

'I wish to speak with you, Judith,' I said. 'If we remove the gag, do you promise not to cry out?'

She nodded again.

I loosened the knot, then lifted the handkerchief free. She was trembling violently.

'Are you a ghost?'

'No, indeed.'

'I saw you hang. I watched you die.'

I touched my throat, where the rope burns chafed my skin. 'For your crime.'

For a moment she seemed almost ashamed. Then she pursed her lips and looked away.

I threw the mourning gown across her lap. 'You did a fair job, soaking out the blood. But it's still there.'

A long silence. She knew, now, that she was caught. A tiny, petulant shrug. 'Well, it's a maid's job, is it not? Scrubbing clothes.'

'It was clever of you to wear it. Easier to hide the stains.'

'All those dresses,' she murmured. 'Turning to dust. He never let me touch them. They were for a woman, and I was not a woman. I was his daughter. I must never grow up. Have you seen all those fine silk dresses, sir?' she asked, in a slow, dreamlike voice. 'I shall have them unpicked and made anew, cleaned and rest.i.tched in the latest fas.h.i.+ons. I shall do everything my father denied me. I shall walk about the town. I shall visit the theatre and the shops.' She paused, a light smile playing across her lips. 'I shall marry Ned.'

'Is that why you killed your father? So you could-'

'-So I could live. And to see his face. Oh . . . his face! He thought I was Alice. His filthy wh.o.r.e come to his bed again. Then he saw the knife. He was so shocked he didn't even cry out. I stabbed him and I stabbed him and all he could say was, Why, Judith? Why? Croaking like an old toad. Even as I plunged the blade into his heart.' She laughed. 'Why, Judith? Why? I told him, when it was over. When he was still. He never let me speak. Always lecturing. But I could talk to him now he was quiet. I could tell him anything I wanted. I am not a little girl now, am I, Father? A little girl could not kill such a big man so easily.' Her eyes flickered from mine to Kitty's. She giggled. 'I have shocked you both. The rake and his wh.o.r.e. How funny. You knew my father, how he treated us all. I was suffocating.'

'You could have run away,' Kitty said.

'No! No . . . I had to stay here. For Ned.'

She didn't know that Ned was her brother. I'd thought he might have told her by now but then he had always worried about Judith. She was so fragile. I shook my head.

'He loves me,' Judith cried, mistaking me.

'Quiet,' Kitty warned.

'Why do you not believe me?' she wailed. 'I told Father and he laughed at me. He called me a silly s.l.u.t. He said that he would never let me marry Ned or anyone else. He said he would send Ned away. He pinned me down and he beat me. I thought he would kill me.'

Ahh . . . here was the Burden I remembered. And I had almost begun to feel sorry for him.

'Then he announced that he would marry Alice. And I thought, Oh, no, Father. You shall not. You shall die and everyone will think it was Alice or Mr Hawkins.' She laughed again.

I rose and walked to the shuttered window, loosening the catch. It would be light soon. I had the truth, from the lips of the murderer, but would she confess it in public, without a pistol to her chest? Of course not. I rested my head against the cool windowpane.

'You let me hang, Judith,' I said, turning back to the bed. 'You knew I was innocent, and you let me die in your place.'

'Innocent? You killed a man, when you were in gaol. The world knows it.'

Kitty began to laugh. It was a mean, dangerous laugh.

Judith pulled anxiously on the ties at her wrists. 'Why do you laugh at me?'

Kitty smiled at her. 'I meant to kill you,' she said. 'But this will be much better. To let you live and suffer. I thought I'd lost Tom for ever. It broke my heart. So now, Judith, I shall break yours.'

'Kitty . . .' I said softly, in warning.

She ignored me. 'Has Ned asked for your hand?'

Judith fell still. 'He will. I know he will. He must . . .'

Kitty laughed again. 'Poor Judith. You have no idea, do you? Ned doesn't love you. He can't love you. Shall I tell you why?' Kitty pressed her lips to Judith's ear, soft as a kiss. 'He's your brother.'

Three words. Each one a blade.

'No.'

'That's why your father refused his permission. Ned Weaver is your brother, Judith. He will never be yours.'

'No!' Judith screamed a long, terrible wail. It tore through the room, a sound of desolation and despair.

Kitty slapped a hand across Judith's mouth, but it was too late. There was a thud as a door opened wide, followed by a short scuffle. I jumped from the bed, Kitty still struggling to silence Judith.

Stephen burst into the room holding his father's sword, closely followed by Sam. Stephen's courage fled the instant he saw me, a living spectre standing over his sister's bed. His legs buckled and he collapsed to the floor. The sword clattered from his hand. 'Oh, G.o.d!' he cried, hands clasped in prayer. 'Protect me from this devil.'

I kicked the sword over to Sam. 'I am not a devil, Stephen.' I pulled down my collar, so he might see the burns upon my throat.

Stephen stopped praying. He raised his eyes to mine. 'The Lord spared you,' he said, in a dazed wonder. 'He heard my prayers and in His wisdom He spared you. Oh, praise G.o.d!'

I frowned at him. Why would Stephen pray for his father's killer? Why was he so glad to find me alive? I remembered his empty room, the portrait of his sister stamped into the floor. I remembered he had hit Judith that first morning, after she had cried Murder! Not to calm her down, after all but in anger. In shame.

'You knew I was innocent.'

He began to weep.

Stephen had guessed his sister was guilty the moment he saw his father's body. The rage of the attack had convinced him. He'd lived under the same roof in the days leading up to the murder, and had heard them fighting. Watched as his father beat Judith for speaking out. Heard her crying in her room, tears of hatred and frustration. He'd seen her face when Burden announced he would marry Alice, and banish Ned from the house. When Stephen walked into his father's bedroom and saw the blood and the knife, he'd known. But then he'd pushed the truth from his mind. It was too painful, too horrifying to accept. 'She's my sister. I couldn't . . .'

'You let me hang for it.'

Stephen dropped his head. 'The jury found you guilty.'

'But you knew, Stephen. In your heart you knew it was Judith.'

He began to cry again, great gulps. 'I prayed for you, sir. Over and over in my room. I swear it.'

Judith glared at him from the bed, disgusted. She pulled again at the rags about her wrists, struggling to free herself. 'So. What now, Brother? Will you betray me? Will you let me burn?'

A burning. The punishment for petty treason. The king rules his people, and a father rules his family. For a girl to murder her father was the same, in law, as murdering her king. She would be burned at the stake if she were caught. I had not considered this.

'You killed our father, Judith!' Stephen cried.

'Well? What of it? How many times did we dream of it? How many times did we pray for it? Do you not remember, the last time he beat you for daring to speak against him? He would have killed you if Ned had not begged him to stop. I had to kill him, Stephen. I had to kill him because you were too weak.'

Stephen jumped up and ran from the room. Kitty ran after him. 'He'll wake Ned,' she hissed.

'Stay here,' I ordered Sam. 'Keep her quiet.'

Stephen had not run far only back to his father's room across the landing. He was crouched over a chamber pot, puking loudly. Kitty and I stared at one another helplessly. What now?

'Where is Ned?' I wondered. We had made enough noise to wake half the street. Surely he must have heard us by now.

'He left us,' Stephen sniffed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Kitty crinkled her nose. The air now stank of fresh vomit, laced with the usual bedroom smells of a fifteen-year-old boy. 'Where did he go?'

'I don't know. In search of work, I suppose. The business is in ruins. Father spent all the money.' He hung his head. 'There's nothing left but debts.'

Kitty touched my arm. 'Tom. That's why Burden planned to marry Alice. The debts.'

Of course. It had always puzzled me, why Burden would marry his housekeeper. Even more so once I'd heard Gabriela's story. Now I understood. He had not loved Alice of course not. But he knew his life was in danger. If he died, then all his debts would pa.s.s to his family to Stephen and Judith. But if he married Alice and named her in his will, she would be forced to take on all the responsibility for repayment. Thank G.o.d he had died before Alice married him. She might have spent the rest of her life rotting in a debtors' gaol.

'We owe money to half the town.' Stephen sobbed. 'And my sister. My sister . . . What am I to do?'

I glanced at Kitty and could guess what she was thinking. Learn to fend for yourself, the same as every other wretched soul in this world. He had let me hang, after all. But I did not have the heart to hate him. He was a boy older than Sam in years, but younger in so many ways. His father was dead, and all he'd inherited was debt. He might well be thrown in gaol now, instead of Alice.

So I said nothing, and the room fell very quiet. The whole house, indeed, was silent.

And then I thought of Sam and Judith, alone across the landing.

Something dark fluttered in my chest.

The door to Judith's room had been closed. I stood outside it for a moment and prayed to G.o.d I was wrong. Then I turned the handle and stepped inside.

G.o.d had not listened to my prayers in a very long time.

'Sam.'

Sam removed the pillow from Judith's face and stepped back. Her wrists were still tied to the bed, her eyes staring up at the ceiling, empty of life.

'No blood,' he murmured. 'I promised.'

Sorrow pressed against my throat, like a rope. I couldn't speak.

He cradled her head and slipped the pillow back into place. Delicate. Gentle. Turned to face me.

'Had to be done.'

No. No. Not in a thousand years.

He pulled a letter from his pocket. A confession, forged in Judith's hand. He must have written it earlier, on Phoenix Street. He must have planned it all. And wasn't that Sam's way? He tucked it under the candlestick by the bed. Plucked a bottle of Felblade's opiates from the table and poured the contents out of the window. Smooth and fluid as a dancer, well-trained in his art. 'She couldn't live with the guilt. Your death. Her father's.' He placed the empty bottle next to the note.

I said nothing. My heart was breaking.

Sam brushed a stray lock of hair from Judith's face and stepped back. 'Look. Is this not better? See how peaceful she is.'