bound, to take advantage of the gift. The executioners, with a practical eye to making their own job easier, assisted the pair to drink, now and again fortifying themselves from the same jug or bottle.
One of the Russian captain’s former shipmates was well-nigh insensible with drink before the ride was over.
It was the other of the two English prisoners who, in that age when death was so often a social function, had a small handful of relatives present; these–weeping, expostulating, or stony-faced according to their several temperaments–tagged after the cart, and were jostled to the rear by the sheriff’s men.
The authorities had long practice with such processions from Newgate; and this enabled them to time the arrival of the cart at Execution Dock to coincide almost precisely with the hour of low water in the tidal Thames, this being the only time when the gallows was readily accessible.
For hundreds of years, pirates and mutineers had been executed on this spot, while for occasional variety a captain or mate would be dispatched for murderous brutality directed at his own crew. On this morning, several of the fruits of last week’s executions were still to be seen, each hanging in chains on its own post. Gulls and weather had already reduced the dead faces to eyeless, discolored leather and protruding bone, raking the passing ships with empty stares. Their continued presence was intended to impress the thousands of seamen on those ships as examples of the Admiralty’s long arm and exact justice.
The posts displaying these veteran corpses had been erected along the riverbank at various distances from the now ominously empty gallows. The latter was no more than two posts and a crossbeam, the horizontal member being not much more than ten feet above the strip of muddy ground and gravel exposed now at low tide.
Somewhat closer to the gallows itself than last week’s bodies, another set of three stakes, also ominously empty, waited for today’s victims.
Crowding nearby land and water were spectators even more numerous than those along the route. Folk of high station and low were out this morning, their numbers not much diminished by the weather, which so far had not improved. Every comfortable vantage point, and some perches fit only for the stoic, even the acrobatic, had been occupied. The windows and terraces of taverns and other riverside buildings, as well as docks and jetties, were thick with onlookers. Scores of small boats passed to and fro, or had cast anchor in the river. The current was very slow just now, with the tide about to turn. A barge moored no more than forty yards offshore afforded rows of seats for those willing and able to pay. At a somewhat greater distance over the broad face of the Thames, the crews and passengers of a couple of anchored ships presented on decks and rigging rows of pale faces. Well beyond these larger craft, the shadowy shapes of docks and buildings on the south shore loomed out of cold mist and drizzle.
One of the watchers, ensconced in a high-priced seat in the window of a tavern built upon a nearby promontory, was a dark-haired, smooth-skinned woman of somewhat exotic dress and remarkable appearance. Despite the sunless pallor of her skin, her countenance was undoubtedly Asiatic. Today she was keeping to a position where she herself remained inconspicuous, her pallid face shaded from even this clouded daylight. She was sharing a table–though she was not eating or drinking–with a well-dressed, well-fed, stoutish man of middle age, named Ambrose Altamont, a commoner very recently come into startling wealth. The weathered condition of Altamont’s face suggested that he was no stranger to the sea and tropic suns.
The table was bare before the woman–she had assured her new patron that she was not hungry–but the man had dishes and bottles aplenty in front of him. He was dining early today, by way of celebration, on lamprey pie–then considered a rare treat–and sampling good wine.
As nearly as I can discover, Altamont at this point did not, strictly speaking, know that the woman with him was a vampire. That fact and all its implications still lay over his horizon. He certainly understood that she was strange–for several nights now he had reveled in excitement over her exotic antics in his bed. Whatever the limits of her strangeness, whatever disadvantages were yet to be discovered, here was an attractive female who gave delight and satisfaction, beyond anything that he had ever previously encountered in almost fifty years of a thoroughly unsheltered life. Altamont might well have betrayed a business partner for her favors alone–even had there been no jewels.
The creaking high wheels of the tall cart fell silent as the vehicle eased to a halt on Execution Dock. While the massed guards cleared a space of spectators, the prisoners–their bodies stiff with confinement, two of them reeling with drink, all three chain-laden–were helped down. The severely drunken man had to be lifted bodily. Then, one at a time, the sober Kulakov first, the three men were led–or carried–down through mud and gravel to the rude platform, which consisted of only a few boards laid in mud beneath the gallows.
Waiting for them at that threshold of eternity was the chaplain, Mr. Ford, Ordinary of Newgate, ready to lead repentant sinners in prayer or persuade them that they should seek divine forgiveness. No one today had thought to provide a Russian Orthodox clergyman; but if any had been there the Russian doubtless would only have snarled at him, as he did at Mr. Ford.
Under the circumstances whatever prayers were possible for Kulakov, the first victim, were soon said. Then a ready noose was placed around his neck and he was blindfolded.
Meanwhile, at the tavern table, the pale and sheltered but vivacious lady had allowed herself to be distracted from the show by a sudden impulse to admire yet again a gift she had very recently received. This was a wonderful bracelet, fine gold and silver filigree sparkling with red rubies and clear diamonds. This masterpiece of the jeweler’s art came into view upon her white and slender left wrist when she deliberately drew back her full sleeve to reveal it.
“It fits you loosely,” her companion commented, his voice rich with wine and satisfaction.
“I’ll not lose it. Where are the other things?” she inquired softly. “Your brother has them, perhaps?” Her voice was small but determined, her English sounding with a strong accent, hard to define, but certainly as Eastern as her face.
Altamont winked at her, and smiled. “They’re where they’ll be safe for the time being–and you may lay to that.” Turning away again, he squinted, in the practiced manner of a ship’s captain, through his sailor’s brass-tubed glass at the proceedings on shore.
Confident as Altamont was that no one could overhear their talk, he lowered his voice when he added: “My own suspicion–I’ve no proof of it, mind–is that they were meant as a gift for the Empress Catherine of Muscovy, from one of those nabobs in the East. Or they might have belonged to the Russian church, some of their clergy smuggling them abroad to keep them out of Her Imperial Majesty’s hands. I hear Catherine’s developed a taste for churchly property, as did our own dear Henry long ago.” He shot his companion a sharp glance. “The Russian might have given you a better answer than I can give, as to who the first owner of your bangle was. Not that it much matters now.”
The dark-haired woman did not seem to care. Indeed her fascination with the beauty of the ornament was as apparent as her lack of interest in its origins. “Then the other things must be just as rich as this?”
The man almost sneered, in his pride and his amusement. “Richer, by God! Half a dozen pieces in all, rings and necklaces, in the same style, but even more extravagant–a king’s ransom. I am surprised you had no chance to see them on the voyage. You must have shared the Russian’s cabin, sailing back to London.”
The woman let her long sleeve drop, concealing jewels and precious metal. “Cap-tain Kulakov kept all well hidden.”
“No doubt. I think he meant to keep such great treasure all to himself, and maybe to some of his men who knew of it. but to cheat his English partner–”* Altamont smiled and shook his head. “Well, greed, like pride, goeth before a fall. And now the Russian hath lost all; his treasure, his woman, life itself. Almost I could feel sorry for him–why are they taking so long about his stepping off?” He squinted through his glass again.
A prosperous man, Mr. Altamont, even before his recent dramatic accession of new wealth. He felt himself capable of handling even greater prosperity without undue difficulty. At the moment his countenance was alternating between frowns at the delay and a faint expression of abstract pleasure as he shifted from wine to hot buttered rum, while watching from his comfortable chair.
The pallid woman remained patiently seated with him. Though the air on this June morning had turned quite mild, she was glad to shelter here indoors; in her case it was in fact not chill nor damp, but the mild English sun that threatened.
On shore the experienced Thomas Turlis, and his assistant who was hardly less qualified, were proceeding about their business with deliberate speed. The junior member of the official team had already climbed to straddle the crossbeam, where he sat waiting until Turlis had guided his first victim halfway up the ladder, Kulakov’s feet on
