Bernard Cornwell - Gallows Thief

'Show Thy servants Thy work,' the Reverend Cotton read,' "and their children Thy glory."'

Venables came up the steps and received only a perfunctory cheer from a crowd that had exhausted itself at Corday's expense. The big man nevertheless bowed to his audience, then walked calmly to the trapdoor and waited for rope and blindfold. The scaffold creaked beneath his weight. 'Do it quick, Jemmy,' he said loudly, 'and do it well.'

'I'll look after you,' the hangman promised, 'I'll look after you.' He took the white hood from his pocket and pulled it over Venables's head.

'"The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away,"' the Reverend Cotton said.

Lord Alexander, who had found himself appalled by the last few moments, became dimly aware of some disturbance at the southern, narrow end of Old Bailey.

'"Blessed be the name of the Lord."' intoned the Ordinary.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'God damn it!' Sandman found himself blocked by the press of traffic at the junction of Farringdon Street and Ludgate Hill. Off to his right the Fleet Ditch stank in the early morning sun. A coal wagon was turning into Fleet Street and it had jammed on the corner and a dozen men were offering advice while a lawyer in a hackney was telling his driver to whip the coal heaver's horses even though there was no room for it to move because an even larger wagon, loaded with a score of oak beams, was scraping past. The mounted constables, whistles blowing and truncheons drawn, clattered into the junction behind Sandman, who kicked a pedestrian out of his way, wrenched his horse to the left, swore at the lawyer whose coach blocked him, then had his bridle seized by a well-meaning citizen who thought Sandman was fleeing the constables.

'Get your bloody hands off me!' Sandman shouted, then Berrigan rode alongside and thumped the man on the head, crushing his hat, and Sandman's horse was suddenly free and he kicked it alongside the wagon with the huge oak beams.

'No point in hurrying!' the driver called. 'Not if you're going to the hanging. The culleys will be dangling by now!' All the bells of the city had rung the hour, the ones that always chimed early and even the laggards had struck eight, but the funeral bell of Saint Sepulchre still tolled and Sandman dared to hope that Corday was still alive as he burst out of the tangled traffic and kicked the horse up towards Saint Paul's Cathedral, which filled the crest of Ludgate Hill with its steps, pillars and dome.

Halfway up the hill he turned into Old Bailey and for the first few yards, as he passed the law courts in the Session House, the road was blessedly empty, but then it widened as he passed the big yard of Newgate Prison and suddenly the seething crowd stretched across the whole street, blocking him, and he could see the beam of the gallows reaching across the sky and the black scaffold platform beneath, and then he just drove the horse at the crowd. He was standing in the stirrups, shouting, just as the Royals, the Scots Greys and the Inniskillings had stood and shouted as they drove their big horses into the French corps they had destroyed at Waterloo.

'Make way!' Sandman bellowed. 'Make way!' He saw the men on the scaffold and noticed that one seemed to be sitting, which was strange, and he saw a priest there, and a knot of spectators or officials at the scaffold's rear, and the crowd protested at his savagery, resisted him, and he wished he had a weapon to thrash at them, but then the constables drove alongside him and thrust at the press of people with their long truncheons.

Then a sigh seemed to pass through the crowd, and Sandman could see no one but the priest on the scaffold's black stage that stretched halfway across the widest part of the street.

Which meant the trapdoor had opened.

And Saint Sepulchre's bell tolled on for the dying.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Venables swore at the Ordinary and cursed the Keeper, but gave no insults to Jemmy Botting for he knew well enough that the hangman could hasten his end. 'Stop weeping,' he told Corday.

'I did nothing!' Corday protested.

'You think you're the first innocent person to die up here?' Venables asked. 'Or the hundredth? It's a scaffold, Charlie, and it knows no difference between the guilty and the innocent. Are you there, Jemmy?' Venables had the white hood over his eyes, so he could not see that the hangman had snuffled to the corner of the platform to pull the safety peg. 'Are you there, Jemmy?'

'Not long now, boys,' Botting said, 'have patience.' He vanished down the back stairs.

'It's Rider!' Lord Alexander was standing now, to the annoyance of the guests seated behind him. 'It's Rider!'

The crowd had at last sensed that something untoward was happening. Their first inkling was when Lord Alexander, tall and striking, stood by the pavilion and pointed towards Ludgate Hill, then they turned and saw the horsemen who were trying to force their way through the crowd.

'Let them through!' some of the people shouted.

'What's happening?' Venables roared from the trapdoor. 'What's happening?'

'Sit down, my lord,' the Sheriff said to Lord Alexander, who ignored him.

'Rider!' he shouted across the crowd, his voice drowned by their commotion.

Jemmy Botting cursed because he had pulled the rope and the tallow-greased beam had juddered, but not moved. 'God damn you to bloody hell!' he cursed the beam, then took hold of the rope a second time and gave it a monstrous tug and this time the beam moved so swiftly that Botting was thrown backwards as the sky opened above him. The trap fell with a thump and the two bodies fell into the scaffold's pit. Venables was dancing and throttling, while Corday's legs were thrashing against the chair.

'Sheriff! Sheriff!' Sandman was nearing the scaffold. 'Sheriff!'

'Is it a reprieve?' Lord Alexander roared. 'Is it a reprieve?'

'Yes!'

'Kit! Help me!' Lord Alexander limped on his club foot to where Corday hung, twitched and gagged. 'Help me haul him up!'

'Let go of him!' the Sheriff bellowed, as Lord Alexander reached for the rope.

'Let go, my lord!' the Reverend Cotton demanded. 'This is not seemly!'

'Get off me, you damned bloody fool!' Lord Alexander snarled as he pushed Cotton away. He then seized the rope and tried to haul Corday back up to the platform, but he did not possess nearly enough strength. The white cotton bag over Corday's mouth shivered.

Sandman thrust aside the last few folk and rammed his horse against the barrier. He fumbled in his pockets for the reprieve, thought for a dreadful instant that it was lost, then found the paper and held it up towards the scaffold, but the Sheriff would not come to receive it. 'It's a reprieve!' Sandman shouted.

'Kit, help me!' Lord Alexander tugged feebly at Corday's rope and could not raise the dying man by even an inch, and so he turned to Lord Christopher. 'Kit! Help me!' Lord Christopher, eyes huge behind his thick spectacles, held both hands to his mouth. He did not move.

'What the bloody hell are you doing?' Jemmy Botting shouted at Lord Alexander from beneath the scaffold and then, to make sure he was not cheated of a death, he scrambled over the supporting beams to haul downwards on Corday's legs. 'You'll not have him!' he screamed up at Lord Alexander. 'You'll not have him! He's mine! He's mine!'

'Take it!' Sandman shouted at the Sheriff, who still refused to lean down and accept the reprieve, but just then a black-dressed man pushed his way to Sandman's side.

'Give it to me,' the newcomer said. He did not wait for Sandman to obey, but instead snatched the paper, hoisted himself onto the railing that protected the scaffold and then, with one prodigious leap, jumped to catch hold of the scaffold's edge. For an instant his black boots scrabbled on the baize for a lodgment, then he managed to grip the exposed edge left by the fallen trapdoor and heaved himself onto the platform. It was Sally's brother, dressed all in black and with a black ribbon tying his black hair, and the regulars in the crowd cheered for they recognised and admired him. He was Jack Hood, Robin Hood — the man that every magistrate and constable in London wanted to see caper on Jem Botting's stage, and Jack Hood mocked their ambition by flaunting himself at every Newgate hanging. Now, on the scaffold at last, he thrust Corday's reprieve towards the Sheriff. 'Take it, God damn you!' Hood snarled, and the Sheriff, astonished by the young man's confidence, at last took the paper.