T. Boyle - Water Music

He turns into Great Russell Street, and the dark imposing building springs up before him, a monument to the stone quarry. At that moment the drizzle begins to whiten, changing to snow. The wet crystals fly into his jacket and dissolve, the soles of his boots tap at the pavement, pigeons rustle their wings. All is silence, the streets deserted. It’s as if the entire world were holding its breath.

The arboretum gate is unlatched. Mungo slips in like a cat, playing for the surprise. Round a corner, through a stand of dwarf fruit trees — and what’s this? Up ahead, bent over a mulberry with strips of protective sacking, is a form in cloth coat, gloves, fur cap. A Dicksonish form. “Dix,” is all the explorer needs to say.

Charles Dickson turns around on a ghost. His breath hangs in the air, snow whitens his shoulders. A figure stands before him, eerie and incongruous in this place, on this day, at this hour. A figure out of the past — wasted, sallow, the gray of his eyes flecked with red— a figure dead and buried, so long hoped for that hope has become a habit. The botanist drops the sacking and wipes his spectacles on the sleeve of his coat before breaking into a wide wet grin. “Is it really you,” he stammers, “or some wraith come back to haunt us?”

♦ PEACE ON EARTH, GOODWILL TO MEN ♦

Prior to 1784, public executions in London were held at a place called Tyburn Tree, opposite the Marble Arch. An elaborate ritual was involved, and a good deal of hoopla as well. The condemned prisoners would ride through the streets on a cart, their elbows pinioned, the plain pine caskets beside them. Thousands turned out for the parade, bleachers were erected round the gallows, and makeshift stalls sold everything from small beer to gin, mackerel, muffins, gingerbread and tongue sandwiches. Hawkers did a brisk business in lurid confessions detailing the prisoners’ crimes, or tear-jerk letters ostensibly written to their sweethearts at the eleventh hour. All too frequently the condemned were small fry — sniveling forgers, starving women convicted of shoplifting, fifteen-year-old pickpockets— and when this was the case the crowd was merciless, jeering and spitting, pelting them with stones and offal. But when a highwayman was executed — particularly a striking and notorious one — they were in ecstasy. Invariably he would be decked out in silks, his hair fluffed and curled, the gold buckles of his pumps flashing defiance. He would bow to the women, shake hands with the boys who ran beside the cart, even sign autographs. He went to the gallows a hero, a martyr, and when the cart trundled off and left him swinging, his friends would rush forward to hang on his legs, anxious to expedite the inevitable and spare him the pain and ignominy of the slow process of strangulation.

But in 1784, despite the protests of a throng of people, not the least of whom was Dr. Johnson himself, the “Tyburn March” was done away with, and criminals were subsequently hanged just outside the walls of the prison itself. The idea was to eliminate the carnival atmosphere surrounding the executions, in the hope of intensifying their deterrent effect. The crowd that gathered for the first Newgate hangings was shocked and dismayed — the prisoners were led out, a short prayer was said, and they were hanged. No parade, no fanfare, no glory, no dignity. Just meat, twisting slowly round the rope in the cold glare of the sun.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ned Rise isn’t particular about the details. Fanfare or no fanfare, he doesn’t want to die. But it seems that now, after nearly a year of delays and hard-won postponements, he is going to do just that — die, croak, kick the bucket, part the pale — and there’s nothing anyone short of the King can do about it. And the King, as everyone knows, is mad as a hatter. Thorogood, backed by the Brooks fortune, had performed feats of prestidigitation — stretching days to weeks, weeks to months, months to a year. And he’d fought tenaciously for yet another postponement, but Sir Joseph Banks had fought just as tenaciously to see the thing consummated.

“But on Christmas Day, my lord?” Thorogood had squeaked at the Lord Mayor.

“Christmas falls on a Monday, Counselor — a regular hanging day.”

“What about ‘Peace on Earth’ and all of that?”

Banks was in the background, pulling strings. He’d talked to Pitt, the Prince, the Lord Chamberlain, protesting that so long a delay in so heinous a case was unconscionable, reprehensible — the courts were derelict in their duty. In their majestic, inscrutable, planetary way, these luminaries were moved to agree. The word came down from on high, and the Lord Mayor was deaf to further pleas. He squinted down at Thorogood. “We have two thieves and a murderer to hang, Counselor — I should think that their extermination will give the honest citizens of this nation a great deal of peace indeed.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Ned is alone, pacing off the final minutes in his cell. It is Christmas morning, gray, the drizzle turning to snow. The night before, Boyles had been in to pay his last respects, drunk as a hoot owl. He sang a couple of maudlin Irish tunes in a quavering baritone, took hold of Ned’s hand and told him he hoped to see him in a better world, then passed out in the corner. And Fanny had been in too — for the final farewells. Bruises like fermenting plums maculated her thighs, chafe marks gnawed at her wrists. There was a tattoo behind her ear (a Jolly Roger, in green), a fresh welt across her cheekbone, the lingering impressions of human teeth perforating her buttocks. She looked worn. Ned no longer cared. He flung himself into her with all the desperation of the doomed, his every cell crying out for survival, for the wedding of sperm and egg, for the sweet posthumous incubation of life. She left him at dawn, her face puffed with despair.

Quarter of seven. Fifteen minutes to go. He smokes his thirtieth pipe — panic beating at his ribs, his hand shaking — takes another pull at the bottle of gin Boyles left him, and bends to wipe a speck of dust from his shoes. Outside in the courtyard, the other prisoners are taking their exercise, huddled forms pressed to the walls and gathered in the corners like conspirators. Lucky bastards, he thinks, choked by a wave of self-pity. Absurdly, the strains of a Christmas carol keep pulsing through his head—”All is calm, all is bright”—and though he’s nearly polished off the bottle he feels as sober as a. . a judge. He laughs at the thought, a booming belly laugh that somehow gets out of control and pinches off into a shriek, crazed and bloodcurdling, the wail of an animal caught in a trap. “AAAaaaa-aaaaaaah!” he shrieks, “AAAaaaa-aaaaaaah!” But wait: what’s this? Footsteps?

They’re coming for him.

All at once he goes loose — his limbs heavy as wet mortar, spine slumping, eyehds drooping, feet splayed. A soothing serenity creeps over him, gripping him like a warm mitten. Now that the moment has actually come, he feels as calm as the average butcher or bootblack waking from his bed to the smells of holiday goose and figgy pudding. Got to die well, Ned Rise, he tells himself.

The turnkey stands at the door, flanked by two men with muskets. Ned throws his shoulders back and steps forward with all the composure of a prince gliding off to his coronation. Apart from an incipient pallor about the cheeks, he looks fit and trim, almost bubbling with health — thanks to Fanny he’s been well provided for. His hair is tied back with a bit of silver galloon, and he is dressed with panache in a blue velvet jacket, white silk hose, buckled pumps. Stay calm, he tells himself — don’t give in. But then another voice starts up in his head, a voice that keeps repeating, “But I’m going to die / But I’m going to die” like a litany. Die, die, die, echoes the blood pounding in his temples.