Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

How these scoundrels did peach upon each other, for my master had no sooner heard from Cooke, than Thomas White, another villain squeamishly affected by sentence of death, accused John Hunter, who worked at the Mint, of supplying official guinea dies to Chaloner. He also named as coiners Robert Charnock, a notorious Jacobite who had been recently executed for his part in the treasonous plot against King William of Sir John Fenwick; James Pritchard, of Colonel Windsor’s regiment of horse guards; and a man named Jones, about whom little or nothing was known. White had been convicted on the evidence of Scotch Robin, who had been an engraver at the Mint, and was a very leaky fellow, most lachrymose; and although my master suspected his sincerity, he always managed to betray at least one more of his friends under Newton’s close questioning.

It was a source of no small wonder to me, that a man who had kept himself close-closeted in Cambridge for a quarter century should prove such an expert interrogator. Sometimes Newton seemed stern and unforgiving and promised White that he would hang before the week was out if he concealed any other criminals; and then, at other times, my master did counterfeit to White such friendship and mirth that a man might have thought they were cousins. By these advocate’s tricks, which Newton seemed to know by instinct, White named five others, which earned him another reprieve.

Most of these rogues made a good conscience of their deeds and accomplices, but a few tried to keep up the lie, and had the cunning to cry a great while and talk and blubber that they knew nothing at all. Newton was not a man who was easy to trick and with those who tried he was most unforgiving, as if anyone that filled his mind with false information was guilty of something even more heinous than coining. With Peter Cooke, who had sought repeatedly to trick my master most vexatiously, the Doctor proved he could be as vindictive as the Three Furies.

First, we visited the wretched man in his Newgate dungeon, as did several hundred others — for it is the custom in England to view the condemned man, as a visitor to the Tower might look at the lions in the Barbican. Second, we attended the foolish miscreant’s condemned sermon, where Newton fixed his eye upon Cooke, who sat alone in his segregated pew, in front of his own open coffin. And still not full-gorged with his revenge, for so I perceived it, my master insisted that we go to Tyburn and see Cooke make his terrible end.

I remember it well, for it was the first time that I saw a man hanged, drawn and quartered, which is a beastly business. But it was unusual besides because Newton seldomly attended the executions of those he prosecuted.

“I think it is right and proper,” he said by way of justifying himself, “that, as officers of the law, occasionally we should oblige ourselves to witness the fate to which our investigations lead some of these transgressors. So that we may conduct ourselves with a proper gravity, and that we shall not make our accusations lightly. Do you not agree, sir?”

“Yes sir, if you say so,” I said weakly, for I had little appetite for the spectacle.

Cooke, who was a brawny fellow, was drawn on a hurdle in his shift to the place of execution, with the halter wound around his waist and the noose in his hand. To my way of thinking he kept his countenance well, although the hangman rode with him upon the hurdle, and all the time held the axe which Cooke knew would shortly sever his limbs. I shook merely to contemplate the instrument of torture.

We were almost an hour at Tyburn, Cooke delaying the time by long prayers, one after another, until finally, half fainting with fright, he was dragged up the ladder by the hangman, who fixed his halter upon the beam and then threw him off, whereupon the mob set up such a roar of excitement and pressed toward the scaffold that I thought we would be crushed.

The hangman had judged it nicely, for Cooke’s toes touched the scaffold so that he was quite alive when the hangman cut him down and, knife in hand, fell upon his victim like one of Caesar’s bloody assassins. The crowd, much quietened, groaned as one when the hangman, gutting Cooke like an old goat, sliced open his belly, stuffed in his hand and drew it out again holding a handful of steaming tripes, for the day was cold; and these he burned on a brazier in front of the still visibly breathing man who, but for the noose still constricting his neck, would surely have screamed out his agonies.

Newton did not flinch at the sight and, studying his countenance for a few seconds, I saw that although he took no pleasure in this sad spectacle, nor did he show any signs of lenity either; and I almost thought my master regarded the whole spectacle as he would have observed the dissection of a human cadaver in the Royal Society, which is to say as some kind of experimental procedure.

Finally, the hangman struck off Cooke’s head and, prompted by the Sheriff, held it up for the encouragement of the crowd, declaring it to be the head of Peter Cooke, a villain and a traitor. So ended this terrible morning of blood.

From Tyburn we took a hackney to Newton’s house for dinner where Mrs. Rogers, the housekeeper, had cooked us a chicken. Newton’s appetite was undiminished by the cruelty of the punishment we had witnessed which I was moved to discuss, finding I had little stomach for eating, the sight of another man’s stomach ripped open being still so vivid in my mind.

“I cannot think the law is best served by such severity,” I declared. “Should a man who coins be punished in the same way as one who plans to kill the King?”

“One is just as disruptive to the smooth governing of the realm as the other,” declared Newton. “Indeed it might even be argued that a king might be killed with little disruption to the country at large, as in ancient Rome where the Praetorians killed their emperors like boys kill flies. But if the money is bad, then so the country lacks a true measure of prosperity and by that same sickness shall it quickly perish. But it is not for us to discourse upon the justice of the punishment. It is a matter for the courts. Or the Parliament.”

“I should as soon be murdered in my bed as treated thus.”

“Surely ’tis always better to be executed than murdered, for any condemned man has an opportunity to make his peace with Almighty God.”

“Tell that to Peter Cooke,” said I. “I should think he would have preferred to make a quicker end of it, and trusted God’s proper judgement afterwards.”

The exceedingly stormy weather of November gave way to a fierce frost in early December, in the midst of rumours about French naval preparations for a landing in Ireland. My master and myself had spent all morning in the office, this being close by the Byward Tower and over the entrance to the Mint. Like everywhere else in the Tower it was a damp little place, which a large fire did little to dispel so that I frequently suffered from a most pernicious cough. Frequently our documents were mildewed so that I was often obliged to dry them in front of the fire.

The office itself was furnished with several comfortable chairs, two or three desks, some shelves and a close stool. There were two windows: one that overlooked Mint Street and the other the moat, wherein we would empty our chamber pot. This moat was ten feet deep and some thirty feet in width, and, in ancient times, had once been filled with snakes, crocodiles, and alligators from the Royal Menagerie.

On this particular morning two dredgers operating under the licence of the Lord Lieutenant — it being one of the Tower liberties that anything which fell into the moat was the property of the Tower and, by extension, of the Lord Lieutenant — were dragging the filthy water. We paid little attention to them at the time, being much concerned with rumours of a new forging process having been perfected in relation to the golden guinea coin, this information being laid before my master by Humphrey Hall, who was one of Newton’s extensive web of informers, and a most reliable and diligent fellow. But presently news reached us that one of the dredgers had fetched out of the moat a man’s body, the condition of which was such that it was strongly suspected he had been murdered, for the feet were bound together and very likely he had been weighed down.