George Fraser - Flashman’s Lady

‘Quiet enough so far,’ says he, and I noticed that he carried his right arm at an odd angle, and his hand was crooked and waxy. ‘I wonder, sir, if I might accompany your party?’ He gave me his name, but I’m shot if I recall it now.

I didn’t mind, so he came abovestairs, into the wreck of our front room, with the remains of the night’s eating and drinking being cleared away and breakfast set, and the sluts being chivvied out by the waiters, complaining shrilly; most of our party were looking pretty seedy, and didn’t make much of the chops and kidneys at all.

‘First time for most of them,’ says my new acquaintance. ‘Interesting, sir, most interesting.’ At my invitation he helped himself to cold beef, and we talked and ate in one of the windows while the crowd below began to increase, until the whole street was packed tight as far as you could see both sides of the scaffold; a great, seething mob, with the peelers guarding the barriers, and hardly room enough for the dippers and mobsmen to ply their trade – there must have been every class of mortal in London there; all the dross of the underworld rubbing shoulders with tradesmen and City folk; clerks and counter-jumpers; family men with children perched on their shoulders; beggar brats scampering and tugging at sleeves; a lord’s carriage against a wall, and the mob cheering as its stout occupant was heaved on to the roof by his coachmen; every window was jammed with onlookers at two quid a time; there were galleries on the roofs with seats to let, and even the gutters and lamp-brackets had people clinging to them. A ragged little urchin came swinging along the Magpie’s wall like a monkey; he clung to our window-ledge with naked, grimy toes and fingers, his great eyes staring at our plates; my companion held out a chop to him, and it vanished in a twinkling into the ugly, chewing face.

Someone hailed from beneath our window, and I saw a burly, pug-nosed fellow looking up; my crooked-arm chap shouted down to him, but the noise and hooting and laughter of the crowd was too much for conversation, and presently my companion gave up, and says to me:

‘Thought he might be here. Capital writer, just you watch; put us all in the shade presently. Did you follow Miss Tickletoby last summer?’ From which I’ve since deduced that the cove beneath our window that day was Mr William Makepeace Thackeray. That was my closest acquaintance with him, though.

‘It’s a solemn thought,’ went on my companion, ‘that if executions were held in churches, we’d never lack for congregations – probably get much the same people as we do now, don’t you think? Ah – there we are!’

As he spoke the bell boomed, and the mob below began to roar off the strokes in unison: ‘One, two, three …’ until the eighth peal, when there was a tremendous hurrah, which echoed between the buildings, and then died away in a sudden fall, broken only by the shrill wail of an infant. My companion whispered:

‘St Sepulchre’s bell begins to toll,

The Lord have mercy on his soul.’

As the chatter of the crowd grew again, we looked across that craning sea of humanity to the scaffold, and there were the constables hurrying out of the Debtors’ Door from the jail, with the prisoner bound between them, up the steps, and on to the platform. The prisoner seemed to be half-asleep (‘drugged,’ says my companion; ‘they won’t care for that’). They didn’t, either, but began to stamp and yell and jeer, drowning out the clergyman’s prayer, while the executioner made fast the noose, slipped a hood over the condemned man’s head, and stood by to slip the bolt. There wasn’t a sound now, until a drunk chap sings out, ‘Good health, Jimmy!’ and there were cries and laughter, and everyone stared at the white-hooded figure under the beam, waiting.

‘Don’t watch him,’ whispers my friend. ‘Look at your companions.’

I did, glancing along at the next window: every face staring, every mouth open, motionless, some grinning, some pale with fear, some in an almost vacant ecstasy. ‘Keep watching ’em,’ says he, and pat on his words came the rattle and slam of the drop, an almighty yell from the crowd, and every face at the next window was eagerly alight with pleasure – Speedicut grinning and crowing, Beresford sighing and moistening his lips, Spottswood’s heavy face set in grim satisfaction, while his fancy woman clung giggling to his arm, and pretended to hide her face.

‘Interesting, what?’ says the man with the crooked arm. 9He put on his hat, tapped it down, and nodded amiably. ‘Well, I’m obliged to you, sir,’ and off he went. Across the street the white-capped body was spinning slowly beneath the trap, a constable on the platform was holding the rope, and directly beneath me the outskirts of the crowd was dissolving into the taverns. Over in a corner of the room Conyngham was being sick.

I went downstairs and stood waiting for the crowd to thin, but most of ’em were still waiting in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the hanging corpse, which they couldn’t see for the throng in front. I was wondering how far I’d have to walk for a hack, when a man loomed up in front of me, and after a moment I recognised the red face, button eyes, and flash weskit of Mr Daedalus Tighe.

‘Vell, vell, sir,’ cries he, ‘here ve are again! I hears as you’re off to Canterbury – vell, you’ll give ’em better sport than that , I’ll be bound!’ And he nodded towards the scaffold. ‘Did you ever see poorer stuff, Mr Flashman? Not vorth the vatchin’, sir, not vorth the vatchin’. Not a word out o’ him – no speech, no repentance, not even a struggle, blow me! That’s not vot ve’d ’ave called a ’angin’, in my young day. You’d think,’ says he, sticking his thumbs in his vest, ‘that a young cribsman like that there, vot ’adn’t no upbringin’ to speak of, nor never amounted to nothin’ – till today – you’d think, sir, that on the great hocassion of ’is life, ’e’d show appreciation, ’stead o’ lettin’ them drug ’im vith daffy. Vere vas his ambition, sir, allowin’ ’imself to be crapped like that there, ven ’e might ’ave reckernised the interest, sir, of all these people ’ere, an’ responded to same?’ He beamed at me, head on one side. ‘No bottom, Mr Flashman; no game. Now, you , sir – you’d do your werry best if you vas misfortinit enough to be in his shoes – vhich Gawd forbid – an’ so should I, eh? Ve’d give the people vot they came for, like good game Henglishmen.

‘Speakin’ of game,’ he went on, ‘I trust you’re in prime condition for Canterbury. I’m countin’ on you, sir, countin’ on you, I am.’

Something in his tone raised a tiny prickle on my neck. I’d been giving him a cool stare, but now I made it a hard one.

‘I don’t know what you mean, my man,’ says I, ‘and I don’t care. You may take yourself—’

‘No, no, no, my dear young sir,’ says he, beaming redder than ever. ‘You’ve mistook me quite. Vot I’m indicatin’, sir, is that I’m interested – werry much interested, in the success of Mr Mynn’s Casual XI, vot I hexpec’ to carry all before ’em, for your satisfaction an’ my profit.’ He closed an eye roguishly. ‘You’ll remember, sir, as ’ow I expressed my appreciation o’ your notable feat at Lord’s last year, by forwardin’ a token, a small gift of admiration, reelly—’

‘I never had a d----d thing from you,’ says I, perhaps just a shade too quickly.

‘You don’t say, sir? Vell, blow me, but you astonish me, sir – you reelly do. An’ me takin’ werry partikler care to send it to yore direction – an’ you never received same! Vell, vell,’ and the little black eyes were hard as pebbles. ‘I vonder now, if that willain o’ mine, Wincent, slipped it in ’is cly, fn3’stead o’ deliverin’ same to you? Hooman vickedness, Mr Flashman, sir, there ain’t no end to it. Still, sir, ve needn’t repine,’ and he laughed heartily, ‘there’s more vere that come from, sir. An’ I can tell you, sir, that if you carries yore bat against the Irreg’lars this arternoon – vell, you can count to three hundred, I’ll be bound, eh?’