How the Hangman Lost His Heart (15 page)

“Don't say ‘I told you so,'” she whispered to Dan.
“I'm saying nothing at all,” he muttered back.

Their return to London was mercifully quick, for the dragoons headed straight down the turnpike, making a travesty of the weary meanderings Dan and Alice had endured in order to keep out of sight. The two of them sat close together, with Uncle Frank beside them, glad that their conveyance was a closed one so that they were at least spared the indignity of having things thrown at them in the villages through which they passed. At regular intervals they stopped at coaching inns and the troopers ordered changes of cart horse “in the king's name.”
If only I could meet the beastly king
, Alice thought, holding on to Dan for comfort,
I am sure I could show him that we meant no harm
. When she confided these thoughts to Dan, he humored her but he could already feel the chilly tickle of the hangman's noose.

Once they were back in London, Major Slavering couldn't contain himself and had Hew dragged out immediately to witness their disheveled disgrace. “Well, Captain F-f-f-french,” he gloated, “I wonder if this tasty girl knows that she has you to thank for her less-than-comfortable quarters?”

Hew, blinking in the unaccustomed light, pulled himself up from the floor. It was not possible for his complexion to be any paler, but when he saw Alice he could have passed for a ghost. At the same time Alice, when she saw the emaciated and bedraggled state Hew was in, lost any delight in knowing for certain that he was still alive.

Slavering found this spectacle very satisfactory. “Did you know, Mistress Alice Towneley,” he said, deliberately conversational, “that Captain Ffrench could have saved you all this nonsense? He had it within his power to make sure I forgot all about you. All he had to do was reveal to the world that he is not really a supporter of King George, but secretly supports that overdressed Jacobite impostor, just like your traitorous Uncle Frank. But he was too cowardly, poor old Captain Two-Effs, so here we all are. Now, I know what to do with him, but the question is, what are we to do with you?”

“Touch her, Slavering, and you'll hang yourself,” Hew croaked.

“Oh, I'll not hang,” smiled the major, pushing Hew into a chair. “On the contrary, the king rewards those who get heads returned to Temple Bar and we'll have this one”—he kicked the hatbox—“back up there before you know it.” He walked over to Alice. “Now, my dear,” he said, lifting up her chin with his thumb
and enjoying the look in her eyes, “I'm going to ask Captain Ffrench once more, in your presence, if he will save you by telling us the truth about himself. Come, come.” He let go of Alice's chin and pulled her chair around so that she and Hew were facing each other. Dan, objecting loudly, was pushed into the corner.

Slavering sat himself down behind a desk, for all the world like a notary settling a dispute between neighbors over a hedge. “Captain Ffrench,” he began without further ado, “will you confess to harboring sympathy for the cause of Charles Edward Stuart, known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, against our lawful monarch, George II?” The major suddenly saw a joke. “You could just say ‘I will,' as if you were getting married!”

Hew turned to face his tormentor. “Why all this trumpery playacting, Major?” he asked. “We fought together at Culloden and we fought well. Why are you going to have me executed?”

The major leaned back. “Because you defied me, Captain Ffrench,” he said with chilling simplicity, “but mainly because I can.” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “I wonder …”—he glanced down to see where his kick had sent the hatbox—“should we get Colonel Towneley out to see what he can add to our discussions?”

Alice shrank away as Slavering retrieved the hatbox and opened it. But even he hesitated when he saw
Uncle Frank's head under Mabel's hat. He turned on Dan. “You! Skinslicer! Come and deal with the traitor's head,” he ordered brusquely. “You are used to having blood on your hands. Come on, man, look sharp.”

With a helpless look at Alice, Dan shuffled over. Taking care first to remove the hat, he carefully eased Uncle Frank out and settled him on the desk amid the hanks of wigmaker's horsehair. The dead face was a strange and not very attractive color, but the countenance was far from repulsive and Dan found himself muttering apologies for this new disturbance. The colonel's eyes seemed not only to forgive but to offer warm encouragement.

This was Major Slavering's first close-quarters encounter with a disembodied head and it took him some time to approach it face-to-face, as it were. And certainly there was no warm encouragement for
him
in the colonel's eyes. Indeed, Frank offered only a scowl that, for some reason, made Slavering feel as though he had eaten a hedgehog. “Well,” he choked, trying to look at Alice but unable to drag his gaze from Uncle Frank, “what a sight! I have to say, Mistress Towneley, at least your head will be a great deal prettier.”

Alice couldn't help giving a small squeak.

Hew leaped up. “You know that the king would never sanction the execution of a girl like Alice,” he declared loudly.

Slavering swung around. With the head behind him, he was back to his usual vile self. “I know nothing of the sort. Rather the opposite. Head stealing, horse stealing, treason, and treachery”—he counted Alice's offenses off on his fingers—“she will need a good advocate. The king shows no mercy to traitors and criminals of whatever age or sex.”

“I have my horse back and so do you.” Hew refused to be quiet.

“I doubt whether Justice Peckersmith will grant her pardon on that basis.” Major Slavering laughed mirthlessly. “But then she could be spared any kind of trial at all if only you will confess your own crimes. All depends on you, Captain Ffrench. As I have said before, just a couple of the right words and we could lose her and her uncle Frank on the road north. Perhaps it might help to ask yourself this: should a captain in Kingston's Light Horse be too lily-livered to die to give a young girl back her freedom?” He walked over to Alice, drew his sword, and delicately traced around her neck with the point. She tried not to waver, but was not very successful. “An easy chop for the executioner, this neck, wouldn't you say, Skinslicer?”

Dan was on his knees. “Look, Major Slavering—sir—your majorness, your honorableness. Why not just execute me? I'm the guilty one really. After all, it was me who persuaded missy here to get away with the
head. I could've brought the colonel back, I really could've. But I didn't. And I'll say whatever you like. I'll make green blue or say fish fly. Do you hear? Whatever you like, so then you can string me up and spike my head. But, sir, your most eminent sirness, let her go. Please let her go. I'm ready for a public confession. Just tell me what to say and I'll say it, or get somebody to write it down and I'll put my thumbprint on it.”

Slavering snorted but Alice almost cried, so stirred was she by Dan's heroism. He would sacrifice himself for her! She didn't deserve it. Yet his courage gave her courage of her own. “You will not, Dan Skinslicer,” she stated. “None of this is your fault, so please get up and let's have no more talk of confessions and thumbprints.” She pulled at Major Slavering's arm. “You know full well that the whole responsibility for Uncle Frank's head and the stolen horses lies with me and, although I may not be as brave as my uncle Frank, I'll never be sorry for what I did. Do your worst, Major Slavering, but leave Dan alone. He's perfectly innocent. If I have to die, I'm quite ready.” She hoped very much that this was true.

Hew exclaimed, but Alice raised her hand as imperiously as she could. “As for Captain Ffrench,” she said, “he is as good a servant of King George the—well, whatever number George we have reached—as
you are. It's too stupid to pretend he's not. So I don't know what you really want, Major Slavering. All I know is that you're not going to get it.”

At this, Hew reached over to Alice and the next thing Slavering saw was their fingers slip together. Then his wrath was mighty. Uttering the foulest oaths, he raised his sword and brought it slicing down between them, almost burning their skin as their hands parted just in time and the sword clanged to the floor. “You'll all go to trial, then,” he exploded. “All of you. There will be no more offers of ways out. Not one of you will be spared.” He roared for soldiers to come and remove the prisoners, slamming the flat of his hand again and again on the table. How had this silly child managed to inject the soul of that two-effed ninny with iron? He stopped raging long enough to scrutinize Alice as she went past. She stared right back at him and her stare, disconcertingly, reminded him of Uncle Frank's. Yet had he turned to look at the colonel's head at this particular moment, he might have been surprised, for as Hew, Dan, and Alice were hustled through the door, Uncle Frank's expression was no longer either encouraging or scowling. In fact, he was, quite openly, beaming with pride. Nor did this beam diminish when the troopers drew lots to see who would dare put him back in his hatbox. Nor even when he was dropped unceremoniously inside and the lid clapped on again.
It was still there when the troopers kicked the box around just to show they cared nothing for heads. And when finally the box was hurled into the cell along with Alice, Dan, and Hew to await the judgment of Lord Chief Justice Peckersmith, Uncle Frank was beaming still.

The trial gained notoriety before it had even begun. The combination of a dashing Kingston's Light Horse captain, a girl, a hangman, and a head was irresistible to the newspapers springing up in London and the news traveled north. The
Manchester Gazette
and the
Newcastle Courant
carried reports and people heard rumors of it in taverns and coaching houses from the Welsh valleys to the Suffolk fishing harbors and from London to Berwick. The more interest it aroused, the more dashing, beautiful, and noble, or disgraceful, brazen, and wicked, depending on your point of view, Hew, Alice, and Dan became. Slavering's troopers found themselves in heavy demand to fill in details, which they did with more enthusiasm than accuracy, happily supping the free ale that was their reward. Whole families made outings to Temple Bar to look up at the empty spike on which, they were told, Uncle Frank's head would shortly be reinstated.

The news did not, however, permeate behind the hilly fastness that cut Towneley Hall off from the outside world. The Towneleys heard news only when it was at least two months out of date. So while his brother's dead head and his daughter's living body languished in a prison cell and were the subject of taproom gossip, Sir Thomas Towneley measured his raindrops and his wife busied herself turning her cheeses and telling her rosary beads. When they thought of Alice at all, it was with regretful sighs that her nurse had not instilled in her the habit of weekly letter writing.

Lady Widdrington and Ursula, on the other hand, knew about Alice's capture almost at once. Bunion heard the news first at the coachmaker's and, with one wheel only half-repaired, jumped onto the box and galloped back to Grosvenor Square to tell the footman, who ran upstairs to tell the two ladies, who were squabbling in the small drawing room, as they had been ever since Alice disappeared.

This morning, Ursula was, as usual, flapping her hands and hopping up and down, screeching, “For God's sake, how many times? Can't you understand? Frank was never coming to dinner. He has lost his head and Alice has gone off with it. LOST HIS HEAD, you daft old wig wearer. God give me strength! Do I have to spell it out again? Frank's dead and Alice is missing.
Now, for pity's sake, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?”

Lady Widdrington's mouth contracted to a pinhead. “How foolish you look and what nonsense you talk, Ursula. Heads are not things you mislay. Although,”—her lips wrinkled ever more—“it might be better if you could mislay yours. If you found a different one, you might catch a husband yet.”

Ursula's wig had just begun one of the more violent of its characteristic wobbles when the youngest footman exploded into the room, his excitement banishing any sense of propriety. Perched like a bird on her chair, Lady Widdrington listened, her head darting back and forth as he told his tale. Ursula squawked periodically. When the torrent of words came to an end, she was triumphant.

“There now, Mother, what did I tell you?” she gabbled, but faltered when she saw her mother's face.

Just for a moment Lady Widdrington was a trembling old lady, jolting with shock from her bald head to her wizened toes. “Ursula?” Her voice was quavery. “Ursula? Did he say that Frank is dead?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And Alice entirely at the cruel mercy of a skinslicer?”

The footman tried to put her right about this, but Ursula shut him up. Desperate to take full advantage
of this one moment of lucidity, she was not going to waste it on a hangman. “Something like that, Mother. But lordy, lordy, who cares? We must run from Grosvenor Square before they come to arrest us too. Hurry, Mother, hurry, hurry, hurry. We'll set off at once for my Aunt Blackstone's house in Chiswick—BUNION! BUNION! FETCH THE CARRIAGE! Come ON, Mother.”

Lady Widdrington stared at Ursula. “I don't like Chiswick.” Tears bumped an uneven course down her cheeks.

“We can't stay here.” Ursula shook her mother hard and tried a new tactic. “Listen, Mother. Frank wouldn't want us to be executed. Listen, listen! Can't you hear his voice? I do believe his ghost is telling us to go to Chiswick! Gooooo toooo Chiiiiiswiiiick. I can hear him, can't you?”

Lady Widdrington's eyes rolled and Ursula's heart sank. But suddenly her mother sprang up. “Send for Bunion,” she cried rather unnecessarily. “The coach, the coach! Harness the horses!”

Babbling with relief, Ursula scrambled to her feet. “Didn't you hear? Bring the coach around! Bring it around at once! My mother demands it!”