'I did nothing!' Corday shouted, and turned left and right as though he could see some way of escape.
'Quiet, Charlie,' Venables said softly, 'quiet.'
The Sheriff and Under-Sheriff, both in robes and both wearing chains of office and both carrying silver-tipped staves, and both evidently satisfied that the prisoners were properly prepared, went to the Keeper, who formally bowed to them before presenting the Sheriff with a sheet of paper. The Sheriff glanced at the paper, nodded in satisfaction and thrust it into a pocket of his fur-trimmed robe. Until now the two prisoners had been in the care of the Keeper of Newgate, but now they belonged to the Sheriff and he, in turn, would deliver them into the keeping of the devil. The Sheriff pulled aside his robe to find the watch in his fob pocket. He snapped open the lid and peered at the face. 'It lacks a quarter of eight,' he said, then turned to Botting. 'Are you ready?'
'Quite ready, your honour, and at your service,' Botting said. He pulled on his hat, scooped up the two white cotton bags and thrust them into a pocket.
The Sheriff closed his watch, let his robe fall and headed for the Press Yard. 'We have an appointment at eight, gentlemen,' he announced, 'so let us go.'
'Devilled kidneys!' Lord Alexander said. 'Dear God, I can smell them. Come, Kit!'
They joined the procession.
And the bells tolled on.
===OO=OOO=OO===
It was not far. A quarter-mile up Whitehall, right into the Strand and three quarters of a mile to Temple Bar, and after that it was scarcely a third of a mile down Fleet Street, across the ditch and up Ludgate Hill before the left turn into Old Bailey. No distance at all, really, and certainly not after the police office in Queen Square had brought some patrol officers' horses. Sandman and Berrigan were both mounted, the Sergeant on a mare that a constable swore was placid and Sandman on a walleyed gelding that had more spirit. Witherspoon brought the reprieve out of the house and handed it up to Sandman. The wax of the seal was still warm. 'God speed you, Captain,' Witherspoon said. 'See you in the 'sheaf, Sal!' Berrigan shouted, then lurched back as his mare followed Sandman's gelding towards Whitehall. Three patrolmen rode ahead, one blowing a whistle and the other two with drawn truncheons to clear a path through the carts, wagons and carriages. A crossing sweeper leapt out of the way with a shrill curse. Sandman thrust the precious document into his pocket and turned to see Berrigan making heavy weather of his mare. 'Heels down, Sergeant! Heels down! Don't snatch on the reins, just let her run! She'll look after you!'
They passed the royal stables, then took to the pavement in the Strand. They rode past Kidman's the Apothecary, driving two pedestrians into its deep doorway, then past Carrington's, a cutlery store where Sandman had purchased his first sword. It had broken, he remembered, in the assault on Badajoz. It had been nothing heroic, merely frustration at the army's apparent failure to get into the French fortress and in his anger he had slashed the sword at a marooned ammunition cart and snapped the blade off at the hilt. Then they galloped past Sans Pareil, the theatre where Celia Collet, actress, had entranced the Earl of Avebury. An old fool marrying a sharp young greed and, when their undying love proved to be no more than unmatched lust, and after they had fallen out, she moved back to London where, to keep herself in the luxury she felt her due, she took back her old theatre servant, Margaret Hargood, to be her procuress. Thus had the Countess snared her men, she had blackmailed them and she had thrived, but then the fattest fly of all came to her web. Lord Christopher Carne, innocent and naive, fell for his stepmother and she had seduced him and amazed him, she had made him moan and shudder, and then she had threatened to tell the trustees of the entailed estate, his father and the whole world if he did not pay her still more money from his generous allowance, and Lord Christopher, knowing that when he inherited the estate his stepmother would demand more and more until there would be nothing left but a husk, had killed her.
All this Sandman had learnt as the Viscount Sidmouth scribbled the reprieve in his own handwriting. 'The proper thing,' the Home Secretary had said, 'is for the Privy Council to issue this document.'
'Hardly time, my lord,' Sandman had pointed out.
'I am aware of that, Captain,' Sidmouth said acidly. The steel nib scratched and spattered tiny droplets of ink as he scrawled his signature. 'You will present this,' he said, sprinkling sand on the wet ink, 'with my compliments, to the Sheriff of London or to one of his Under-Sheriffs, one of whom will certainly be upon the scaffold. They may enquire why such an order was not signed in council and then forwarded to them by the Recorder of London and you will explain that there was no time for the proper procedures to be followed. You will also be so kind as to pass me that candle and the stick of sealing wax?'
Now Sandman and Berrigan rode, the seal on the reprieve still warm, and Sandman thought what guilt Lord Christopher must have endured, and how killing his stepmother would have brought him no relief for the Marquess of Skavadale had discovered him almost in the act of the murder and the Marquess, whose family was near penury, had seen his life's problems solved at a stroke. Meg was the witness who could identify Lord Christopher as the murderer, and so long as Meg lived, and so long as she was under the Marquess's protection, so long would Lord Christopher pay to keep her silent. And when Lord Christopher became Earl, and so gained the fortune of his grandfather, he would have been forced to pay all he had inherited. It would all have gone to Skavadale, while Meg, the lever by which that wealth would have been prised from the Avebury estate, would have been bribed with chickens.
Sidmouth had sent messengers to the channel ports, and to Harwich and to Bristol, warning officials there to keep a watch for Lord Christopher Carne. 'And what of Skavadale?' Sandman had asked.
'We do not know if he has yet taken any monies by threat,' Sidmouth said primly, 'and if the girl speaks the truth then they did not plan to begin their depredations until after Lord Christopher had inherited the earldom. We might disapprove of their intentions, Captain, but we cannot punish them for a crime that is yet to be committed.'
'Skavadale concealed the truth!' Sandman said indignantly. 'He sent for the constables and told them he didn't recognise the murderer. He would have let an innocent man go to his death!'
'And how do you prove that?' Sidmouth asked curtly. 'Just be content that you have identified the real killer.'
'And earned the forty pound reward,' Berrigan put in happily, earning a very dirty look from his lordship.
As they rode, their horses' shoes echoing from the walls of Saint Clement's Church, Sandman saw a dozen reflections of himself distorted in the roundel panes of Clifton's Chop House and he thought how good a pork chop and kidney would taste now. The Temple Bar was immediately ahead and the space under the arch was crowded with carts and pedestrians. The constables shouted for the carts to move, bullied their horses into the press and yelled at the drivers to use their whips. A wagon loaded with cut flowers was filling most of the archway and one of the constables started beating at it with his truncheon, scattering petals and leaves onto the cobbles. 'Leave it!' Sandman bellowed. 'Leave it!' He had seen a gap on the pavement and he drove his horse for it, knocking down a thin man in a tall hat. Berrigan followed him, then they were past the arch, Sandman was standing in the stirrups and his horse was plunging towards the Fleet Ditch, sparks flying where its shoes struck the cobbles.
The first church bells began to strike eight and it seemed to Sandman that the whole city was filled with a cacophony of bells, hoofbeats, alarm and doom.
He settled back in the saddle, slapped the horse's rump, and rode like the wind.
===OO=OOO=OO===
Lord Alexander, as he passed through the towering arch of the high Debtor's Door, saw in front of him the dark hollow interior of the scaffold and he thought how much it resembled the underside of a theatre's stage. From outside, where the audience gathered in the street, the gallows looked heavy, permanent and sombre with its black baize drapery, but from here Lord Alexander could see it was an illusion sustained by raw wooden beams. It was a stage set for a tragedy ending in death. Wooden stairs climbed to his right, going up into the shadows before turning sharply left to emerge in a roofed pavilion that formed the rear of the scaffold. The roofed pavilion was like the privileged stage boxes, offering the important guests the best view of the drama.
Lord Alexander was first up the steps and a huge cheer greeted his appearance. No one cared who he was, but his arrival presaged the coming of the two doomed men and the crowd was bored with waiting. Lord Alexander, blinking in the sudden sunlight, took off his hat and bowed to the mob who, appreciative of the gesture, laughed and applauded. The crowd was not large, but it filled the street for a hundred yards southwards and quite blocked the junction with Newgate Street immediately to the north. Every window in the Magpie and Stump was taken and there was even a scatter of spectators on the tavern's roof.
'We were asked to take chairs at the back,' Lord Christopher pointed out when Lord Alexander sat himself in the very front row.
