Charles Palliser (88 page)

“Do leave off, Sam,” she said impatiently, and he grew sulky and stared out of window.

When we reached the entrance to the market we left the coach and went to a shop selling second-hand clothes. I felt a keen sense of disappointment that I was not to be clothed in the style of the rest, yet even so I entertained some reluctance to accept a gift from them. However, there was nothing for it and I helped Sally to choose me some decent clothes.

“Aren’t these rather dear?” I asked when I saw what she had selected.

She laughed: “Barney’s gave me more than enough.”

“Why should Barney spend money on clothes for me?” I asked Sally.

She and Sam exchanged glances.

“You want to look nice for going to Tuck-up Fair, don’t you?” she asked. “And, besides, you don’t know but that you might be able to return the favour.”

I was wondering what she meant by this when the shop-keeper showed me where to go in the back premises to try on the clothes we had chosen.

To my surprise, Sam left Sally and stationed himself by the back-door. Removing my rags, I attired myself in my new garments and reappeared before Sally who pronounced herself satisfied — though in rather grudging terms.

“What shall I do with these, miss?” asked the shop-keeper, indicating my old rags.

Sally shuddered: “Burn ’em.”

We returned to the carriage and it moved off again.

Some way along Piccadilly Sam suddenly said: “I’ve got something to do. I’ll find you again at the shop.”

He stuck his head out and attracted the driver’s attention and when the coach stopped, jumped down and disappeared amongst the crowd.

“Why are we going to Bond-street?” I asked.

“To order your new togs,” Sally answered irritably. “Bless me, you are slow, Johnnie.

How old are you?”

I told her and she answered:
“
You seem less, perhaps because you’re not tall of your age. I’ve a brother about your years, or a little younger. But he seems older than you in some ways.”

This was a very interesting piece of information, especially if Barney really were her uncle. If that were more than a figure of speech or a jest, then it occurred to me that Barney might be not the husband — as I had assumed — but the brother-in-law of Mrs Digweed. In that case, Sally’s younger brother

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might well be none other than Joey. I tried to remember if he or his mother had mentioned an elder daughter and if so, whether they had referred to her name.

“Where is your brother? What’s his name?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s living with my mam and dad,” she said. “I ain’t seen ’em, though, since I’ve been with Barney.”

“Is he really your uncle?”

I longed to ask her if his second name was Digweed but I remembered the undertaking I had given him not to mention that name.

She looked at me sharply: “We don’t arst each other no questions in the company. It ain’t businesslike, Barney says. So don’t you ever do it again. Is that understood?”

I nodded.

“And don’t answer none, either. Whoever arsts you,” she said meaningfully.

We had reached Bond-street by now and when Sally had paid the fare we entered a magnificent tailor’s establishment where I was measured for a complete costume. As this ritual was being concluded Sam returned, strolling into the shop as he lit a cheroot like any young buck about town.

“Don’t let on to no-one that I made off, will you?” he asked off-handedly.

As we travelled back in another hackney-chariot, I felt pleased with myself as I anticipated my appearance in my fine new clothes. But why had Sam broken Barney’s injunction?

All during the week that followed my companions speculated on Peg’s circumstances and state of mind and took pleasure in enlightening my ignorance by telling me about the customs and rituals that attended upon judicial death. We were all going to the hanging and had to be there early to obtain good places, so on the eve of the execution there was to be a “rantipole” at the end of which we would set off for Newgate. My new clothes had arrived the day before and so this was my first opportunity to appear in them on a worthy occasion. While the others danced to Sam’s fiddle, I sat beside Barney and he described to me how at this very moment Peg and the other condemned prisoners who were to hang with him would be attending chapel, and would be preached to on the subject of death, sitting in a pew painted black and with a row of coffins draped in black laid out before them in which their mortal remains would lie the following day.

“Poor old Peg,” Bob sighed. “Do you reckon he’ll die game or chicken?” “Game,”

Barney replied. “I’ll lay you a crown at six to four agin it.” “How did Peg come to be working with the Cat’s-meat-man?” I asked Barney when Bob had accepted these odds.

“I mean, if he suspected him of ’peaching on his brother?”

Jack and Sally, who had been whirling round the room, now threw themselves onto the sopha near us.

“Well, it’s like this. Ever since Sam and Jack and me gived over the sack-’em-up •ay, the Cat’s-meat-man and Jerry Isbister has been fighting it out between ’em. Then about a year ago the Cat’s-meat-man outwitted him just like he got the better of me. It seems he made it up to Peg and told him he didn’t believe no more that he had a hand in

’peaching on his brother.”

There was laughter at this and Jack cried: “Fancy Peg being such a flatt!” “And he bribed him, too,” Barney went on, “to lure old Jerry into a trap down 406

THE CLOTHIERS

the Borough. There was a fierce mill by all accounts and old Jerry was soundly thrashed.

One of his men got pinked. And that was the end of Jerry’s company. He’s had to go back into the carting line, I hear. Peg started working with the Cat’s-meat-man but now he’s ’peached on him, in revenge for his brother, I b’lieve, for I’ll wager that was his game all along.”

“Did you say someone was stabbed?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Barney said off-handedly. “Who was it, do you know, Bob?”

“A cove called Jem, I heerd. Dead.”

I felt my heart pounding. I remembered seeing him lying in the gutter but I had never thought of this.

Without stopping to think what I was saying, I turned to Jack and blurted out: “Did you see who pinked him?”

There was a silence and the others looked from me to Jack in amazement. It was not so much my words that surprised them as Jack’s response: he turned quite white and stammered something. Barney watched us both closely and then said to me:

“Why, I don’t believe you’ve understood the half of what I’ve told you. Jack wasn’t working with Isbister then. That was years back.”

“That’s right,” Jack said, smiling in a rather uneasy manner.

Sally was staring at Jack in dismay and though I tried not to look at him I caught his eye a few minutes later and found him watching me narrowly. My slip had dispelled the earlier conviviality. We fell silent and I watched Sam fiddling furiously, his golden teeth glinting from the depths of his black beard as he smiled and nodded his head at the dancers while he threaded his way through them. I saw Barney glance at me and then at Jack several times.

“Time to be off,” Barney said after a few minutes.

While Bob hurried out to bring hackney-coaches from the nearest stand, I went to fetch my new great-coat for the weather was taking a frosty turn.

Jem dead. And murdered, in effect, by Peg who had been in league with Pulvertaft to lure his companions into the trap at Southwark. Perhaps oddly in view of what I had just learned, I felt a sudden revulsion at the thought of seeing him hanged.

Coming back down those dangerous stairs in the darkness I heard a sound on the upper landing and was suddenly seized from behind and my head banged against the wall. In the faint moonlight that came through the window I could just make out the face that was now thrust into mine — the features so unlike those of the habitually good-natured and handsome Jack.

“Why did you say that?” he demanded.

“It was a mistake! I didn’t see you.” Then, foolishly, I added: “They had masks on.”

“So you know what I’m talking about,” he said through gritted teeth and slammed my head against the wall for emphasis.

My answer had placed me in greater danger.

Now he whispered gently: “Say anythin’ about that agin and you’re dead.”

In a moment he was gone.

I remained on the landing reflecting on my plight. What was my life worth now? Why should he hesitate to make me quiet? I had to get away. I would refuse to accompany them tonight and seize my chance while they were all out of the house.

As my confederates assembled in the hall in all their finery, laughing and HONOUR AMONG GENTLEMEN

407

joking as if on their way to another rantipole, I said to Barney: “I don’t want to go.”

He looked at me in a manner that recalled the occasion when I had first come to the house, then gripped my arm and led me out to where the coaches were waiting for us.

He pushed me into one of them and slammed its door.

As it moved off he brought his great head towards me, increasing his grip on my arm until it was agonizing. I was terrified that he would ask me what I had meant about Jack, but to my surprise he said:

“That was a wrinkle you told me about your mam! Her name and the paritch.”

How could he know that I had been lying? And why did he care?

With a smile that was more frightening than any grimace would have been, he said:

“Tell us the truth.”

I shook my head: “That was the truth.”

He leaned back. “We shall see,” he said.

We arrived at Newgate in the middle of the night and yet we found a large crowd already gathered before the Debtor’s Door, stamping their feet and rubbing their hands against the bitter cold. As we approached we heard the sound of hammering. With considerable difficulty we pushed our way nearer and when Sam generously raised me to his shoulders I could see the New Drop — the ancient scaffold which usually stood in the Press Yard and which was now being erected in Newgate-street in front of the prison. While we waited, my companions joked about the price that various bits of the condemned man would fetch once his body had been dissected. Were they taking this tone in order to conceal the depth of their feelings? Were they really insensitive to the fact that only a few yards from us two men — for there was one other to be executed —

were at that very moment waiting in their cells for the footsteps that meant the Sheriff and Under-sheriffs were approaching? That one of them had been the companion of several of them — even though he had betrayed them — and the lover of another of them?

Hawkers were already going through the crowd crying the “sorrowful lamentations”

and the “execution-song” — both of them allegedly composed by the doomed man, though Sally assured me that Peg could not write his name. They were also selling a very fanciful life-story which, as further evidence of its lack of veracity, contained an account of the execution.

“He’s sold his life to pay for his funeral,” Sam explained.

“What’ll be left of him to bury,” Will remarked cheerfully.

Sharp on the hour of seven a bell nearby began to sound and the crowd responded with a muted cheer.

I recognised that bell and glanced round. Just behind me stood the church of St.

Sepulchre where my mother and I had paused after fleeing from Mr Barbellion that day when Miss Quilliam had brought him to Orchard-street. I understood now that she had been frightened by the steady, unrelenting tolling that every Londoner knows, for it sounds the knell of those wretches who are unfortunate enough to hear their own death-bell rung. And a little further away was the sign of the Saracen’s-head which had also alarmed her for some reason.

“They’re taking ’em to the Press-room now,” Barney said, his face intensely concentrated. “They’re unironing ’em and pinioning ’em.

At a minute to eight there was movement at the Debtor’s Door. We heard cheers in the crowd in front of us.

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THE CLOTHIERS

“What’s happening, John?” Sally begged, for, perched on Sam’s shoulders I had the best view.

“There they are!” I said. “There’s a party of men, some of them are in dark green livery and carrying pikes.”

“The Sheriff and Under-shcriffs,” Jack said.

I described the others who were identified by my companions as the Governor and the City Marshal.

“One of them has just come out with a mask over his face!” I exclaimed. “Is that the other one to be hanged?”

“No, that’s Calcraft,” Barney jeered.

Of course. It was the hangman rather than the victim who needed the protection of anonymity.

“You’ll know Peg when you see him!” Barney added, and there was laughter from the others.

He was right in a sense that he had not intended, for now I saw a man come through the door wearing ordinary dress, his wrists pinioned by cords before him, and walking awkwardly. For a moment I could not see why.

Then Bob called out: “Don’t twist the blessed leg! It ain’t done nothing!”

He had a wooden leg! Hence the cruel nick-name “Peg”.

“Blueskin!” I exclaimed, for it was he.

The shouts of laughter at Bob’s sally hid my exclamation from all but Jack who looked at me in a way I have never forgotten.

The laughter turned into cries of “Hats off!” from all over the crowd. Barney and Sam took up the cry, removing their own and holding them before them. There was a gentleman in front of us wearing a high hat which he did not remove.

Barney reached forward and knocked it off. “I can’t see through your damn’ tiler!” he shouted.

“Game or dunghill?” cried Bob.

I explained that I could not see Peg’s face for he was holding his head down and slightly turned away.

“What
can
you see, Johnnie?” Sally urged.

“There’s a gentleman wearing canonicals walking beside him and he seems to be reading aloud from a book.”

“That’s the Ordinary and he’s a-reading of the Burial Sarvice,” Sam said with a kind of awed relish.

All the while the bell was tolling the death-knell and now there was only a faint murmur from the vast crowd as if we were collectively holding our breath. The execution-party moved forward towards the awful construction. They mounted the steps and now the prisoner advanced to the front like an actor coming forward to deliver a soliloquy. He seemed to be looking straight at me now. He raised his bound wrists before him and shook them at the crowd which broke the silence by roaring back. He seemed to be grinning. The crowd drew in its breath again.