At six o’clock the mass grows denser and people who have rented spaces begin to appear in shop windows and on the roofs of the surrounding streets.
The crowd swells ever greater, and grows more festive. Jokes are wending through the clusters of friends, and laughter follows. All is deliciously merry, as if an opera is expected.
The baker, Carson, arrives. Shouts of, ‘Witness coming through!’ afford him and his wife a better view, closer to the scaffold. Other tradesmen are here with their wives. The Mocketts are not among them. Their desire is to be unnoticed today, weighted as they are with relief that they were not implicated in the crimes.
It is seven o’clock – three hours have passed. Numbers grow greater with each minute until thousands fill every space. Now the Sheriffs’ carriages arrive; their procession arranges itself with great show and they wave to their peers.
St Sepulchre’s clock strikes the half hour. Five more minutes pass and the crowd settles down, eager, but quiet. They wonder what the condemned are doing in their last half hour on this earth.
The bell tolls the quarter hour.
The scaffold stands before the throng, the black chain hanging down from the beam, ready for the day’s work. It is eight minutes to the hour of execution. The crowd is feverish. The morning has passed so swiftly and yet now it creeps along to hanging time. The wall of people extends as far as the eye can see when the bell begins its toll of eight. The spectators settle into a quiet awe as they await the procession.
No one comes.
Necks strain, then a murmur is let loose. The message spreads through the masses like a breeze carrying smoke: the murdering boy has hung himself in his cell. They will be denied his young face.
Some in the crowd fold their arms and nod their heads.
‘Always a possibility.’
‘Did not think he had the fortitude, frankly.’
Still no one comes from the door.
‘Wait, wait. There is more news.’ The tattle spreads.
‘The sodomite. He has been murdered in his cell.’
The crowd sends out an approving roar. The last minutes before execution are always pregnant with a turn of fortunes. Reprieves, suicides, even murders – they are part and parcel of their expectations.
The attention turns back to the scaffold. Just then a shockingly white head of hair appears out of the black door. The mane is long, and tied back with a trailing black ribbon that lies against the man’s black suit-jacket.
‘A new hangman.’ Ripples run through the spectators.
They were expecting a short, stout frame with beefy arms. This long reed of a man that stands before them is somehow more sinister-looking in his slimness. The sharp lines of his body move like an ebony blade.
A man follows the executioner with his arms tied in front of him. He too wears a black suit, a new one, with a bright, white shirt. Supported by a turnkey, he mounts the scaffold. There is an awful silence. Finn Fowler is not the swashbuckler the crowd expects. Even if he tried, he cannot stand the hero. His supporter makes an effort to prop him up before the Newgate drop, but Finn trembles so, his strength has left him. There is call for a chair. The white-haired executioner lifts a skeletal arm.
‘Halt! No chair. Stand on your feet, Finn Fowler.’ His razor-like voice cuts through the air.
The Ordinary helps hold this felon who is entirely stripped of courage. Finn has refused the attentions of the Ordinary until now. If he could speak, he would give the man his story and then he would beg for his life. He would tell him that his only education as a child was the art of thievery, foisted on him by his parents. A beating, or a loaf of bread, these were his options when he was but four years of age. He stole the first loaf from the elder Carson, the baker, whose son witnessed Finn’s first act of thievery and stands glowering before him now.
Finn shakes his head to empty it of the memory until his hair falls loose.
‘How handsome you are, Finn Fowler!’ A nosegay lands at his feet.
‘Farewell, Finn!’
The crowd waits for her to appear. This Fowler woman, by God, they have imagined her over and over again and are now impatient to gaze upon her in the flesh. They anticipate her flowing, red hair, and her beauty, which is rumoured to be outrageous and envied, even by those in the Palace. There is a flush of pleasure in the excitement while they wait for their fantasies to be played out. Some admit to being sexually aroused.
She does not appear.
Caterwauls and whistles begin to voice the unrest in the audience. The feeling of being cheated is rising and spreading throughout. Those in charge are aware of the danger of an unruly mob and serve the announcement of Clovis Fowler’s reprieve in haste. Not one cheer goes up in her favour. Hissing and spitting rains down in nasty wet globs. The burden now rests on Finn and they have no faith that his will be a spectacular death. The draw was always the married couple. There are only eight hanging days a year at Newgate, and in this one they are short-changed.
The executioner removes a thin, white cotton cloth from his pocket. Finn stares at it dazed. Here is his last opportunity to speak and he will be given ample time as a pitiful offering to appease the crowd.
The executioner turns Finn’s body to afford the onlookers a better view. Finn recalls Clovis whispering in his ear, instructing him to make his speech a long one; he remembers this vividly, as though she were next to him at this moment. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes. Warm urine runs down his leg.
He looks to the crowd, for what, he
