“Why is she still holding her child?” said Hero.
“It’s probably the only way they could get her out here without dragging her.”
The three condemned men who came behind Amy had their hands tied together in front and their elbows pinioned tight against their torsos. All moved awkwardly without their leg irons, as if they had become so accustomed to their weight that they now found it difficult to walk without them.
A roar went up from the spectators. “Hats off! Hats off so we can see!” The men in the crowd whipped off their tall hats.
Hero found herself watching the watchers. Not only was the street below crammed with a surging, shoving crowd, but every window overlooking the space was occupied by gawkers affluent enough to pay for a better view of the spectacle. On the roof of a nearby house she could see a man with a telescope trained on the condemned; a well-dressed young woman with a pair of opera glasses leaned out a window of the inn next door. Judging by the faint smile curling the woman’s lips, she was not here to support any of those doomed to die. Then a turnkey snatched the child from Amy Hatcher’s arms, and the condemned girl began to scream and struggle against the hands that reached out to hold her.
“My baby! Oh, God, no, please don’t take her! Give me just one more minute with her. Oh, please don’t do this.”
The sheriff tightened his hold on his staff, his lips pressing into a thin line of distaste, as if there were something unseemly, something un-English about a young mother objecting to her own murder and what would surely be the inevitable death of her orphaned babe. The condemned were expected to cooperate, to “make a good end” and die repenting their sins and commending their spirits to God. Amy Hatcher was not supposed to create a scene, screaming and crying and half fainting, so that two turnkeys had to hold her up, one at each side, while her wrists were bound with cords and her elbows pinned to her body. The rope was taken from her thin shoulders and affixed to one of the black butcher’s hooks in the heavy beam above while the noose was slipped over her head.
“‘Lord Jesus Christ,’” prayed the Ordinary, his voice booming, as if he could somehow drown out her hysterical pleadings, “‘by your death you took away the sting of death: Grant to us your servants so to follow in faith where you have led the way. . . . ‘”
The baby was wailing now, too, her thin, reedy cry intertwined with the mother’s frantic pleadings. “Oh, please—”
A hush had fallen over the watching crowd, their upturned faces rapt as the three condemned men were led onto the trapdoor beside Amy and carefully positioned on the marks chalked there. One of the men was older, perhaps in his late thirties. But the other two were heartbreakingly young, still boys: a man and his two sons. All three were doing their best to “die game,” their heads held high and grim half smiles plastered in place. But Hero could see their legs shaking, see the sweat that glistened on their pinched pale faces despite the cold.
The sheriff said something, and one of the turnkeys stepped forward to bind the woman’s skirts around her legs with a strap to keep them from billowing up immodestly as her body fell. Because heaven forbid, thought Hero, that the multitude gathered to watch her die a hideous, painful death should be given a glimpse of her ankles.
“‘. . . receive them into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace and into the glorious company of the saints in light,’” prayed the Ordinary, closing his prayer book. “Amen.”
All four condemned prisoners were now in place, the nooses around their necks, and the executioner stepped forward to yank the white hoods down over their faces. Then, at the sheriff’s signal, the hangman pulled the lever that slid back the timbers supporting the long trapdoor. One of the doomed boys shouted, “Lord, have mercy on me!” as the trap fell with a loud crash that echoed around the street.
Four bodies dropped with an ugly jerk. But the distance they were allowed to fall was short—just eighteen inches. And so, rather than breaking their necks, the ropes simply began to strangle them. Slowly.
“Oh, no,” whispered Hero as the dying prisoners writhed in agony, twisting and twitching helplessly, the men’s legs kicking out spasmodically. Do the Morris dance on air, they called it. Dance the hempen measure, and cut a caper on the way to hell. All were euphemisms for hanging, cynical descriptions of the macabre jerks and gyrations performed by the condemned in their death throes.
There had been a time, when executions used to take place out at Tyburn, when the doomed prisoners’ friends and loved ones could grasp the dying men’s and women’s legs and pull, thus speeding their deaths. But that was no longer allowed. Now those who could afford it paid the hangman to do basically the same thing. But such a luxury was beyond the means of a desperate woman condemned for stealing food or three poor poachers. And so the executioner simply stood with his arms crossed at his chest and watched them suffer.
“I should have left her money for the hangman,” Hero said, stricken. “I didn’t think.”
Alexi sucked in a shaky breath. “Neither did I.”
An eternity later, Hero said, “My God. How much longer can it go on?”
“Sometimes it can take as long as four or five minutes. It’s a horrible way to die—strangling. That’s why the French instituted the guillotine.”
The young poachers’ bowels and bladders had released, staining their breeches. And still the dying fought to live, uselessly, hopelessly.
Finally, one after the other, they ceased to struggle, until all four dangling bodies simply
