The Tyburn Guinea: A Fragment Page 3

  Chapter Two

  Sarah turned. She saw a battered hat over a yet more battered face. There was something military about the ragged coat, and perhaps about the wooden peg that took the place of his right leg from the knee down. He pulled his hat off and made a credible bow.

  “Begging your pardon, but I’ve a request to make of a widow woman’s charity.”

  Charity, indeed! Another few weeks of this cash famine, and she and her father might be looking for some of their own.

  In hope of intimidating the boy’s parents into handing over anything at all, she’d put on her black overcoat. This, plus a pair of sunken, bloodshot eyes, should be enough to see the beggar off.

  She prepared to lift her veil, to show how much of a walking corpse he’d accosted. Just in case he moved beyond begging, she moved her left forearm. The brass candlestick she’d seized in lieu of payment had a reassuring feel.

  But the man bared what remained of his teeth into a grin. “Oh, I’m not asking for the world, Ma’am,” he said quickly.

  He moved closer. “It’s just last offices for a poor unfortunate what’s been left with not a friend in the world to follow him west.”

  He stepped back and made another bow.

  Cautiously, Sarah shook her head. This was the overcoat she’d worn for Richard’s funeral. She’d not risk it by getting involved in a hanging.

  “He’s got you as a friend,” she said coldly. “You do the job.”

  She took Polly again by the arm and stepped towards what might be a gap in the crowd. They might get through towards Soho before the carts arrived.

  His wide iron foot scraping on the stones, the Irishman sidled round to block her path. “I’d gladly do it myself if I was a whole man.”

  He pulled a sad face. “Why, the poor boy means everything to me. It fair breaks my heart to see him go alone to the gallows.”

  As if for support, he looked up at the sky. The motion shifted his neck cloth, to show the beginning of the tattoos that everyone knew covered the bodies of the wilder savages from his country. It reminded her she was with a man who spoke English as if he were a native, but whose thoughts were in another language.

  For all the connected thought she could manage, her head might have been filled with mouldy ticking. She still knew she had to get away. You don’t get involved with the native Irish. Even if they don’t mean you positive ill, no good ever comes of it.

  But, with a great cheer and a ragged banging of drums, the carts were arriving. The crowd pressed back on itself, leaving the three of them in the middle of the road. Already drunk, the Sheriff slid off his horse and reeled past them towards the Angel. He was followed by two of the clergymen, and then by everyone in the two carts who wasn’t tied up.

  Now the empty part of the street was filled with bawling drunks. They milled aimlessly about, kicking up the dung-impregnated straw. One of the smaller urchins had his breeches down and was pissing over the Sheriff’s horse.

  There was a smell of baked meat, and of stirred up filth from the street. Someone broke into a moany ballad, his voice giving out on the higher notes. With much calling out of endearments too sincere to be genuine, the Sheriff and Lord Fremont were embracing. Sarah focussed harder into the sunlight. Her heart sank still further.

  Oh Jesus! It was Sir John Sweetapple in charge of today’s proceedings—someone else she’d rather avoid.

  Before she could turn and get herself and Polly back the way they’d come, she felt a hand brush against her left shoulder and reach inside her coat.

  Like water released from a rain barrel, Sarah’s growing rage found its outlet. Straight, she had the candlestick out and swung at the thief’s head.

  It was a spirited but a useless motion. The thief dodged her blow. He clamped both hand about the candlestick. Crying “Mine! Mine!” he pulled it away from her.

  What happened next was too fast for Sarah to make full sense of it. What she finally saw, after much blinking and a long and ragged breath, was the thief arched backwards in the street, blood gushing from a wound that laid his face open from right eye down to the jaw. Any squeal he might have brought out was lost in a renewed burst of cheering.

  The Irishman wiped his knife on the thief’s coat and stood up. “Come, dear ladies,” he chuckled.

  He bowed again, then handed back the candlestick. He stretched out both arms as if to shepherd the women away from further harm.

  “This is no place for discussing works of mercy.”

  Sarah bit her lip and looked at the fallen thief. After the first shock of injury, he should have been getting up to scarper. Instead, he flopped up and down, clutching at the soiled straw. It was clear that no sound came from his open mouth. Not knowing how to protest, she let herself be moved into the cover of a recessed doorway. Her head was ready to burst, her mind more scrambled than ever.

  She fell backwards up half a dozen steps and pressed her back against a locked door. With more scraping of his iron foot, the Irishman followed.

  At once, the crowd was silent. Sarah left off thinking about the pain in her head. She barely noticed the itching of her inner thighs from the muck she’d not been able to avoid splashing upwards. She looked over the sea of grey hats.

  “Who’ll treat Ned Heeler?” someone cried from the front cart. He struggled to his feet and held up his bound hands. One of his admirers climbed in beside him and straightened his hat and neck cloth.

  “Treat me now,” he croaked, “and it’s my turn on the way back.”

  The crowd broke into another loud cheer. Lord Fremont was in sight and making an elaborate bow. He snapped his fingers at a potboy. A double tankard of gin was soon moving towards the cart.

  Ned Heeler was cracking another joke. More cheers. One of the constables now spotted the boy. He got him a blow to the head that knocked him face down into the mire. No one paid attention to him or to the yapping dogs that gathered round. Somewhere out of sight, a violin struck up a dance tune.

  The Irishman waited for the noise to fall back to normal. “If it’s money you’ll be needing for your trouble,” he said, reaching into his pocket, “you’ll not find me wanting.”

  Sarah looked at the handful of rubbish he held out. One of the tiny, misshapen lumps might once have been a sixpence. As for the rest, its maker deserved to be sitting in one of the carts. He’d be going west beside men sentence for clipping less silver than this.

  Away from the light and the main noise, she was coming back to her senses. Payment offered could be service refused. Not caring if everything went into a spin round her, she shook her head again.

  Squatting down as if in the act of relieving herself, Polly was behind the Irishman, her face turned away. Sarah set a foot down one of the steps.

  “No, Ma’am!” The Irishman leaned against the wall, blocking Sarah’s path. He put on another smile, this one covering only the lower part of his face. With his free hand, he reached into another pocket and pushed about. A look of anger flitted briefly over his face.

  It was a very brief look. He was all smiles again by the time he held out the guinea.

  Does anyone see such a thing unannounced, and look away again? She took the shining disk and rubbed it between her fingers. She put it to her mouth and bit.

  A guinea! An entire and uncorrupted guinea!

  She kept hold of it. She looked into the now grinning but implacable face. He seemed to have filled the entire exit from the doorway.

  “Which one?” she heard herself ask.

  The Irishman gave a wolfish smile. He stepped up beside her and twisted round to look into the lurid brightness beyond the doorway.

  “That one.” He pointed pointing towards the rear cart.

  Sarah followed his hand. He was a young man—twenty, perhaps? Unlike the others beside him, he didn’t seem to have drunk himself cheerful. His face pale as his new-washed shirt, he was staring up the clock tower of St Giles. You couldn’t always tell, but he di
dn’t look Irish.

  “What did he do?”

  The answer she got was more smiles. Her guess was clipping. Monday had been the last day for receiving the old coins by face value. Right up till then, the clippers had been frantically at work, paring off a few last grains of silver before everything but the new coins would pass only by weight. Such easy money, it must have seemed. So little chance of getting caught. So certain the three mile ride west from Newgate if you did get caught.

  Though he wouldn’t, he could think himself lucky the sentence had been commuted to mere hanging. There was no drawing and quartering that day.

  She swallowed. He was young. He was pretty in a boyish way. He looked a bit like her late husband. Nothing could change that he was gallows fodder. And there was a guinea in it.

  Not unclenching her hand to see it again, she was aware of the wonderful coin she was about to earn. A guinea would pay the rent up to date. It would let them eat without having to wonder about the next meal. It would buy paper and ink and new quill pens, and still leave change for laudanum. The very feel of the warmed gold sent shivers through her body. Even her headache began to shift.

  As if he’d followed the workings of her mind, the Irishman leaned closer. “One more thing,” he said, now confidential. “I’ve a sealed packet to give you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I want you to slip it inside the boy’s breeches.

  “Don’t let it be seen.”