How the Hangman Lost His Heart (21 page)

Dan shook his head. “He needed to come home, missy,” he said. “He needed to be where he is comfortable.” He could see Hew approaching and let go of Alice's hand.

The coffin lid was difficult to get straight, but Alice held it steady while Dan wielded the hammer. It was a noisy business but had a jolly ring to it. In a few moments they were squabbling amicably about the straightness of the nails and whether a special inscription should be put on the coffin explaining the wax head.

But there was no time. As soon as the last nail was hammered home, Father Saunderson summoned four of the Towneley gardeners and they picked up the coffin and disappeared into the dark. There was much scraping as they edged Uncle Frank into his final resting place and slid back the flagstones. The vault was now completely hidden.

Alice felt a curious pang. Uncle Frank had been a more constant companion when dead than he had ever been when alive and she found that she missed him. She leaned against Dan. She knew he understood.

That night, Alice could not sleep. Her bed seemed first too hot, then too cold. When she was small and restless, she used to count the daisies her nurse had embroidered on the bed hangings, but that would not work now. Besides, Alice already knew there were forty-eight and a half, where Nurse had run out of thread. Instead, she got up. Taking a lamp, she left her room and roamed down the long paneled corridor, occasionally peeping into disused bedrooms and frightening the bats. With her candle and lace nightdress, she looked like a wraith, except that she swore when she hit her foot on a doorstop on her way down to the kitchens. She would find something to eat.

The kitchens were not in darkness, for the great fire never went out, and beside it Dan was sitting, his back to the warmth and his head in his hands. Three large wolfhounds were sitting bolt upright watching him.

When Alice approached, the dogs wagged their tails and Dan jumped. “You startled me, missy,” he exclaimed.

Alice set her candle down. “I couldn't sleep, Dan Skinslicer,” she said. She could feel her heart beating
and suddenly the beat was ominous. “Could you not sleep either?” She settled the wolfhounds back into their beds.

“I couldn't,” Dan replied shortly. Alice busied herself in the meat safe. She heard Dan's voice behind her. “It was your uncle Frank as reminded me.”

She reemerged. “Uncle Frank?”

“Yes. He could only shut his eyes when he was comfortable.”

“But aren't you comfortable here, Dan Skinslicer?” Alice forgot about her sore foot. “We could change your room.”

“I think you know what I mean, missy.”

But Alice didn't want to know what he meant. “Perhaps it's because you need something to do,” she said decidedly, and, as if to demonstrate the point, found some bread and began to slice off a mountain of salted lamb. “We'll find you something.”

Dan allowed her to push a plate in front of him. “It's not that.” He fiddled with a corner of the bread and made a ball, which he rolled across the table. Alice rolled it back. “I must go,” he said, “because in time you will be married to Captain Ffrench.”

“But that won't make any difference.” Alice pushed the bread ball faster and faster as Dan returned it slower and slower. “What on earth difference could that make?”

“Ah,” said Dan. “It will make no difference to you, but it will make a deal of difference to me.” He captured the bread ball in his palm.

The shadows in the kitchen were enormous and the dogs yawned and licked their lips. They could smell the lamb and waited expectantly.

“A difference to you, Dan Skinslicer?” Alice looked straight at him now and her voice lost its little-girl chirrup.

Dan threw the bread into a corner and the dogs scuffed over the flags, fighting to get it. Alice hastily threw down more crusts. Both she and Dan were glad of the distraction, but it could not last forever.

“I've never met anybody quite like you, Alice Towneley,” said Dan, and his use of her name, the first time he ever had, brought a lump straight into Alice's throat, “and it's not good for me, what you make me feel. The likes of me, see, can never be for the likes of you. We both know that. And Captain Ffrench is a good man who loves you dearly. So I'm happy for you and I'm happy for him. But I can't be happy for me.”

Alice made a sound in her throat.

Dan sighed. “Anyway, it doesn't matter. You are better off with him because he thinks you're a saint and I don't. We'd quarrel.” He watched a tear drop slowly off the end of Alice's nose. “Oh, don't cry,
missy,” he said, full of concern. “I didn't mean to make you cry. And anyway, you could never have married me because I've been married already. Johanna is getting a divorce, but even if I was an earl with the grandest coats of arms, that wouldn't be good enough for your type of Catholic.”

“But I thought you'd stay here with me. I love you, Dan Skinslicer,” Alice sobbed. It was true, it was perfectly true, and nothing would stop her from saying it. “Not in the same way I love Hew, but so much, Dan, so much. If you go, I'll be miserable and nobody will ever tell me off. I think somehow we're meant to be together.”

Dan hated her sobs but he shook his head. “In another time, perhaps,” he said softly. “One day, in the future, maybe it wouldn't matter that I'm a hangman and you are a lady. But I can't see you making my tea of an evening and asking me how my day went. Can you? Can you honestly?”

Alice wiped her nose and smiled wanly. “No, I suppose not.” The dogs sat around her. “But why do you have to be a hangman, Dan Skinslicer? You could be anything—a carpenter or a blacksmith, perhaps, or a butcher, yes, that's right, a butcher! Why didn't I think of it before?”

“I don't want to be a butcher, missy, or any of those other things. I execute people and I'm good at it and,
Lord knows, we need good ones for the poor souls as come to be sent to us.”

“You could execute people here!” Alice exclaimed wildly.

Dan got up. “Now you're being fanciful,” he said. “When was the last hanging around here?”

Alice began to cry again. “I don't know.”

“About a year ago. I asked a man in the village. And there's never been a drawing and quartering. I get more for that. One hanging a year isn't going to keep me going. I need to be back in London, where there's a steady supply. I have my pardon, so nobody will bother me.”

“But won't you be lonely? How will I visit you? I have to stay here.”

Dan came around to Alice's side of the table and put his huge hands on her shoulders. “Every time I feel lonely I will think of you,” he said simply, “and I'll think of how happy—and spoiled—you'll be with Captain Ffrench. Be nice to him, missy.” Alice stroked Dan's rough cheek. His voice dropped very low. “I want to ask you something, though,” he said. For once in her life, Alice listened hard. “When I am dying,” Dan spoke so softly, “I want you to come and close my eyes, just like you did for the colonel. I want you to promise me that if it's possible, and causes you no danger, that the last thing I shall feel on this earth will
be your fingers on my eyelids, because, Alice”—he still faltered at her name—“then I'll know for certain sure that despite my sins I'm going to rest in peace.”

Alice did not answer. Instead, she climbed off her stool and wound her arms around his neck. They stood, wrapped together, for quite some time, then Dan pulled away, picked up the bag of tools he had left beside the kitchen door, and silently let himself out.

Hew eventually became a Catholic and he and Alice did marry and had lots of children. Neither of them ever forgot Dan, who never married again, and when he caught a fatal fever at the age of seventy, just before the French Revolution, which would, with its scale of executions, have made him a millionaire, Alice answered his call. She traveled to London alone and nursed her old friend patiently through his last months. It was the happiest time Dan had ever known and on days when he felt strong enough, Alice hired a carriage and they picnicked on Kennington Common, reliving old times in the kind of perfect companionship they would never have achieved as man and wife. The day Dan died, it was Alice who closed his eyes, just as he had hoped, and his look of happy peace was so striking that people wondered at it. For a hangman, they said, he must have led a blameless life. Alice took him to Towneley Hall for burial, and she and Hew
laid him to rest in the garden with the tools of his trade and a headstone that read:

Dan Skinslicer
Hangman and Jobbing Executioner
HAND ALWAYS STEADY, STEEL ALWAYS SHARP
loved by one who loves him still

Years and years later, Alice and Hew's descendants became confused and believed that Dan was a blood relation, which didn't matter because, in a way, he was.

Mrs. Ffrench came up to live at Towneley, where she found Alice to be a wayward but endearing daughter-in-law, and they became friends. Mabel married Lord Trotting and eventually became the Duchess of Cantankering, which was quite apt, as she remained very cantankerous. Unlike her mother, she never really forgave Alice and couldn't forgive Hew either. When she died, her husband, although far too nice ever to say so, was quite relieved.

As for Ursula, she looked so becoming in the black she wore when pretending that Hew was dead that she never gave it up and when Lady Widdrington died, she made such an impression on the undertaker who organized the funeral that he married her himself. She
became very much in demand as a professional mourner and earned a most respectable living. When she died, her husband was genuinely heartbroken and had a large memorial erected to her, giving her age as six years younger than it really was, for no other reason than that he knew it would have pleased her.

Major Slavering lived to a fat old age and suffered badly from gout. Most people said he didn't suffer badly enough and when he died, his funeral was attended only by a couple of stray dogs.

Lord Chief Justice Peckersniff built his house and lived there neither happily nor sadly but in that boring space in between. It was better than his old house, but still not quite big enough to escape his wife. He died in his bed and was supposed to be buried with a handkerchief over his face, but the undertaker forgot, which was a pity.

And what of Uncle Frank's head? In real life, for Uncle Frank did exist, after the head was stolen and brought home, it was not buried, at least not immediately. Since permission could not be got to open his tomb, his head remained in the hatbox and was, for many years, passed around after dinner with the port for everybody to chat to. When he became a little old for that, he was
popped behind the paneling of the family chapel before, with the advent of central heating, being packed off to the bank for safekeeping. It was not until 1950 that his head was eventually reunited with his body and, when the tomb was opened in the mid-1970s to see how he was faring, the second head was discovered. Nobody knows to this day to whom the second head belonged. But I believe that if it belonged to anybody, it belonged to Captain Hew Ffrench, lately of Kingston's Light Horse and, as Dan Skinslicer would surely agree, one of the luckiest men in England.

I would like to thank all the children who, having heard me speak of the hapless head of Uncle Frank, encouraged me to write this story.

I would also like to apologize to Uncle Frank himself, for digging him up, as it were, yet again.

Sorry, Uncle Frank.

THE DE GRANVILLE TRILOGY:

Blood Red Horse
BOOK ONE

Green Jasper
BOOK TWO

Blaze of Silver
BOOK THREE

Copyright © 2006 by K. M. Grant
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States of America in 2007 by Walker Publishing Company, Inc. Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

First published in the U.K. in 2006 by the Penguin Group, Puffin Books

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Walker & Company,
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This electronic edition published in July 2012
www.bloomsburykids.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grant, K. M. (Katie M.)
How the hangman lost his heart / K. M. Grant.
p.    cm.
Story inspired by the author's ancestor who was executed in the
1745 Jacobite Rebellion.
Summary: When her uncle Frank is executed for treason against England's King
George in 1746 and his severed head is mounted on a pike for public viewing,
daring Alice tries to reclaim the head for a proper burial, finding an unlikely ally
in the soft-hearted executioner, while incurring the wrath of the royal guard.
1. Great Britain— History—George II, 1727–1760—Juvenile fiction. [1. Great Britain—
History—George II, 1727–1760—Fiction. 2. Executions and executioners—Fiction.
3. Fugitives from justice—Fiction. 4. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G7667755Ho 2007       [Fic]—dc22       2006053182

Book designed and typeset by Yelena Safronova

ISBN: 978-0802-7348-08 (e-book)