Antonia Hodgson - The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins

‘Murderer!’

An old woman ’ s voice pierces the air. His eyes snap open. She screams it again and he sees her, a stranger in the swirling crowds, her face twisted with hatred. Others take up the call, shouting curses down upon him.

‘Monster!’

‘Burn in Hell!’

How they hate him. Not just for the life they think he took, but for the life he squandered. A young gentleman, given every opportunity. Money, good health, an education – all wasted.

A gang of apprentices leans out of a tavern window, waiting for the cart to pass below them. As it does, they throw a hail of stones at him, laughing at the sport. They are drunk and most of their shots sail wide, but one catches him hard. Blood spurts from his temple. He shields his head with his hands, half-stunned.

A lean, black-clad figure clambers on to the open end of the cart and crawls towards him. The Reverend James Guthrie, the Newgate Ordinary. He holds out a handkerchief. ‘ They would hate you less if you confessed. ’

Hawkins presses the handkerchief to the wound and leans back, staring up into the cold, white sky.

‘ I ’ m innocent, Mr Guthrie. ’

‘ Mr Hawkins …’ Guthrie begins, then thinks better of it. He cannot help a man who will not help himself. He jumps down from the cart. ‘ God have mercy on your soul, ’ he says loudly, as he strides away. Playing to the crowd.

By the time they reach the edge of St Giles, the bleeding has stopped. St Giles. Drowning in vice, soaking in gin. Shake a house in St Giles and more thieves, whores, and murderers will tumble out than you ’ ll find in the whole of Newgate Prison. It ’ s a fitting place for one last drink. The horses stop outside the Crown tavern without a prompt from their riders. They have taken this road many times before.

The guards help him down from the cart. It is so cold he can see his breath, escaping in clouds from his lips. Someone passes him a cup of mulled wine, pats him on the shoulder. He curls his fingers around the cup, grateful for the warmth. The dark-red wine looks almost like blood, steaming in the freezing air.

The crowds are friendlier here. They shout encouragements and promise to pray for him. They are the lowest of men and the lewdest of women: cutpurses, highwaymen, fraudsters and cheats, only a step from the noose themselves. For the first time in his life he wishes he could linger here, but he has barely finished his wine when he is ordered back on the wagon. As the Crown fades into the distance a thought comes into his mind, hard and certain as prophecy. That was the last time my feet will ever touch the earth.

And now he feels it – the horror that he has fought off for so long. It knocks him reeling, harder than any stone hurled from the crowd.

He is about to die.

No. No! They promised. He will live.

He is a coin, spinning on its edge. Heads or tails. Life or death .

It was almost a week before I was ready to step into the world again. My jaw was so black and swollen for the first few days that I could only eat light broths and syllabubs. The gouges in my neck worried Kitty so much she insisted on washing them in hot wine twice a day.

‘I’ll stink like a tavern floor,’ I complained, flinching as the wine invaded the cuts.

‘Clean wounds mend faster,’ she said, dabbing a home-made salve over my throat. Kitty’s father Nathaniel had been a renowned physician – and a close friend of Samuel Fleet. When she first moved in to the Cocked Pistol, Kitty had found a cache of his books and journals locked in a chest in the cellar. She would read them avidly when the shop was quiet, or late at night, squinting by the light of the fire.

One morning, a few days after the attack, I was lying in bed when there was a soft tap on the door. I had just propped myself on my pillow when Jenny slipped into the room. She stayed close to the door, fingers on the handle. Her eyes trailed to my bare chest, then darted away. ‘May I speak with you, sir?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’m afraid… I’m afraid I must leave your service, sir.’

I hid my dismay. ‘Because of Sam? I’ll arrange a bolt for your room, Jenny, I promise – it’s just that I’ve been distracted these past days…’ I gestured to my wounds. ‘I will speak with him too, if you wish-’

‘It’s not that, sir. At least – only in part.’ She shielded herself behind the door, half in, half out. ‘I’ve found a position in a house on Leicester Fields. I met the family at church.’

‘Ah, I see. Well, Kitty will miss you.’ She ’ ll be furious. ‘D’you need a reference?’

She shook her head, alarmed by the offer. ‘It’s kind of you, sir, but I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention to no one that I worked here. They… they say such dreadful things about you in church.’

I chuckled. ‘Oh, I can imagine.’

‘No, sir.’

Her words stilled the room. No, sir. An interruption and a contradiction. This was not how Jenny spoke to me. A chill crept over me; a premonition that whatever she said next would destroy everything. I wanted to jump from the bed and cup a hand to her mouth. Instead, I waited, and a silence stole up between us.

Jenny twisted her fingers together in an anxious fashion. Her hands were red and chafed from her work and there was a small burn at the base of her thumb, where it had brushed against a hot pan. She too seemed reluctant to continue. Her lips were pressed together and she was breathing hard through her nose. She ’ s scared.Scared of me .

Don’t ask. Don’t ask her.

‘What do they say of me, Jenny?’ The fear made my voice turn cold. The question had sounded almost like a threat, even to my ears.

She swallowed. ‘They say you killed a man, sir. In the Marshalsea.’

There was a long pause. She began to shake.

‘You must know that is a lie,’ I said.

She nodded, without conviction.

‘Who is it, who tells such foul lies about me?’ But I knew the answer even as I asked. ‘Mr Burden?’

Another nod. She took half a step on to the landing. ‘He said Mr Gonson will prove it.’

‘And people believe him?’ Jenny attended St Paul’s church at the west end of the piazza. Half the neighbourhood worshipped there of a Sunday.

‘No… at least… not so much, sir. But then you was seen coming home all beaten and covered in blood and people began to wonder. Sir – I must think of my own reputation, you see? This new position, it’s most respectable…’

‘I understand,’ I said, and relief washed over her face. ‘I would be grateful, Jenny, if you did not speak of this to Miss Sparks.’

‘No, sir. I won’t say nothing. I promise.’

‘You do not believe I am a killer, Jenny?’

‘No, sir!’ she said. But oh – the pause before she answered. It near broke my heart.

‘Very good.’ I dismissed her with a nod.

She dipped a curtsey and closed the door. Packed her few belongings and left within the hour.

Damn Joseph Burden, spewing his poison. Rumours spread like the pox in this town – before long half of London would know me as a murderous villain. Heaven knows, I looked the part with my black eye and swollen jaw. I dared not venture out or even downstairs into the shop in such a dreadful state – that would only complete the portrait and set our neighbours gossiping afresh. And so I brooded alone in my room, prowling up and down as if I were back in prison.

I didn’t tell Kitty about Jenny’s confession. Kitty’s love was fierce and volatile as wildfire and it would only bring more trouble. At best she would worry. At worst she would confront Burden. So I kept quiet and prayed for the rumours to die away.