Dodger of the Dials (19 page)

Next to take the stand was the senior peeler who explained how this anonymous message he had received had arrived at his station via electronic telegraph. It warned that the life of Anthony Rylance was in urgent danger. This officer – who was called Detective Superintendent Mills – was convinced of its veracity and so despatched his minions with due haste. The court treated this Mills with a lot more respect than they did us and he was dressed to intimidate in his full uniform of high rank. He looked a lot like Bracken, it occurred to me as I watched him swear upon the Bible, with his beardless mutton-chops and tall, looming stature and I wondered if the Metropolitan Police grew these people like trees.

‘From where was the telegraph sent?’ Mills was then asked. But it was not our lawyer who asked the question – he had long since dozed off – and nor was it from the judge. No, the question instead came from the press bench and I had to crane my head around to see who had spoken. ‘You must know that at least, Detective Superintendent?’ the questioner continued.

DS Mills looked perturbed, as if he was being accosted by a drunkard on the street, and he looked to the judge to see if he should answer. The judge rebuked the caller but then mentioned that it was a fair enough question and expressed surprise that the defence had not asked it.

‘The telegraph came – oddly enough – from here, your honour,’ Mills then explained. ‘From the Old Bailey itself. We have endeavoured to discover who sent it but until now have had no luck. I can produce the document if the court requires it?’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said the judge and his pug-nosed face squinted with displeasure towards the press bench. ‘Now if the
Morning Chronicle
has no further question …?’

‘Did the witness have any prior knowledge of the victim, your honour?’ the voice called out again. ‘Was Mr Rylance known to the police?’ I looked again at the huddle of journalists now shoving each other in irritation but I was unsure as to which of them was addressing the court in so abrasive a manner. ‘And if not – why did the Detective Superintendent not consider the message a hoax?’

‘I had never heard the name Anthony Rylance before,’ Mills responded in an indignant manner. ‘I took the message seriously because it was a death threat and I am a public servant. And considering what my officers discovered upon arrival at the stated address, it is a good job that I did not think it a hoax.’

The judge, meanwhile, had become enraged and was banging his gavel like a demented blacksmith. He called for order from the press and once the court had settled down he thanked Mills for his trouble and declared that there would be no further questions. Mills nodded and left the courtroom.

The testimony of Mouse and myself was of course met with nothing but derision and disbelief from everyone present which was ironic as I was – for once in my life – telling a courtroom the
truth. There was no use denying burglary but it was a hanging for murder what we was trying to avoid and so we confessed to our crimes and no more. I left out the part about how we was put up to the job by someone else as I knew it would not have helped our cause much and I had the criminal code to think of. But this meant that I had no good reason to be creeping around the property of a man who no doubt seemed to be more impoverished than myself and when I told them that I had come to steal a metal deposit box – what I claimed to have seen him carrying on the streets and just assumed contained something worth having – I was asked why no such box was there in the apartment.

‘Yes, it was,’ I protested. ‘I saw it there when I entered the room and it was already emptied.’ The prosecutor announced that the police inventory had not catalogued such an item and he put it to me that I was making the thing up. My true intention for entering the Rylance home that night – he put it to me – was murder. Cold, premeditated murder. And all this talk of mystery boxes was simply a desperate lie to escape the noose.

Soon became time for the jury to retire. They was back within ten minutes.

When I heard the head juror declare us both guilty I was overcome with a vivid sensation. It was as though rays of sunlight had just burst through the tall windows of this courthouse and the room had reddened. Something invisible struck me behind the legs and I collapsed onto the floor. I was lifted up again by a pair of gaolers so I could stand for the sentence while beside me Mouse had begun to shake. The judge then announced that we was a wicked pair of criminals and that, considering that it was impossible to tell which of us had committed the foul deed, he would be sentencing us as one. He made much of the fact that I had been transported once before by the Crown and that I should never
have been allowed back to contaminate this fair country. He put on his black cap and cleared his throat.

We was to be taken from that place and led through the underground tunnel what connected the Old Bailey to Newgate Prison. There we would be kept until the hour of execution which would take place in two weeks’ time.

As he spoke I looked up to the galleries above to see if any of my familiars had come to support me in this dark and heavy hour. The only face what I recognised was that of Lily Lennox. She was crying for me without reserve and I wanted to shout up to her and tell her to dry her eyes as it would be all right. But I could not imagine what on earth I could base such an assertion on.

Beside Lily was another woman who I did not recognise. She had in her hands a small baby and when Mouse looked up towards this child he shouted out the name of his infant son in despair. But the gaolers soon had hold of us and they began leading our resistant selves out of the courtroom.

‘This
still
ain’t the shop for justice!’ I cried in outrage before they could force me from the court. ‘You’re the murderers, not us!’

But the whole place had now erupted into noise and clamour as I was pulled from the scene. The only sound I kept hearing though, as we was led downwards through the Bailey and towards the dim lights of the Newgate tunnel, was the persistent cries of little Robin Flynn – who had that day been sentenced to grow up an orphan like his father.

Part Two

Chapter 13
The Black Stage

A most dismal Christmas Eve over which the noose hangs like poisoned mistletoe

‘
Hats Off!
’

The voice was low and theatrical and it cried out from somewhere deeper within the crowd. I could not see from my low position to who this voice belonged but it impressed me as rich and familiar, like my father’s would have been had I ever known the man.

‘
Hats off for the condemned!
’

It was the hangman’s voice, I guessed as I forced my way through the thick crowd towards where I knew the scaffold to be, but nobody was paying it much mind and I did not see any of the gentlemen nor ladies remove their headwear as a mark of respect for those about to be executed. Instead they continued with their jostling for a better position, drunken squabbling and gallows humour – nothing makes Londoners more excitable than a bloody good hanging. Thousands of them was gathered together in this tight space outside of the prison but I needed to forge forwards if I was to reach the affluent hundreds, the ones what had bought tickets for the front spots.

‘
Behold the Black Stage!
’ cried the voice again and I realised that it was not the hangman – he had still not appeared and this voice was coming from somewhere else. It seemed to come from the other ticket-holders, those who occupied seats at the overlooking
windows and balconies and whose pockets remained out of reach. Yet the pickings was still rich the closer to the scaffold you got and so my friends and I continued forwards. ‘
The Cross-Beam!
’ continued the voice, although we was all too diminutive to see much among the hot crush of adults what surrounded us. ‘
The Rope!
’

The tone of the voice was peculiar and it was hard to tell whether it was gloating, as countless others had come here to do, or whether it was issuing a dread warning. But, as our small gang of three weaved our way to the uppermost part of this wedge of space between St Sepulchre’s Church and the doors of Newgate, I was struck by the odd sensation that it seemed to be addressing me alone. We soon reached the front of the spectators, having travelled further in than we had meant to, and the three lines ahead of us began to part. For the first time in my life saw the horrible sight what others had come here to relish in.

‘
All the hideous apparatus of Death!
’

The makeshift platform stood proud outside the Debtors’ Door, its carpentry neat and exact. It was much blander than I had been expecting but it also looked like an empty stage waiting for actors to bring it alive and the three patient nooses dangled from the scaffold. All what separated it from the baying crowd was a low wooden fence and, should any high-spirited wag wish to cross that barrier, jump onto the unguarded platform and play with the ropes for our entertainment, then there would be nothing stopping him. But nobody dared to. They just remained at a safe distance and continued calling for the real performance to hurry up and start.

A small hand tapped me on the sleeve. I did not look down but instead kept on staring up at the gibbets as I dropped my own hand down to meet it. A heavy pocket watch was passed between us and I could hear the ticks as I placed it within my coat with the rest of the booty. Mouse had done well on this, his first big outing. He was
still only eight then meaning that I must have been around eleven, and that watch had been his third good find since we had entered the crowd. I had explained to him the importance of passing any valuables along to me once the pockets was picked so that if he got grabbed then the beaks could not touch him. Some boys was reluctant to do this but not Mouse. He knew he could trust me to keep his things safe.

‘They’re coming, Dodger!’ said the boy to my right. ‘They’re bringing them up! It’s begun!’ I flashed Jem White one of my sternest looks because he was supposed to be concentrating on the thieve and not enjoying the spectacle and, what was furthermore, I did not appreciate him using my name in public hearing.

‘You trying to get us to twist an’ all?’ I hissed in a low whisper but he looked back to me like I was the one who was being a fool.

‘Stealing ain’t capital, Jack,’ he said, as if he could not have cared less who overheard him. ‘They won’t hang either of us for that.’

I was about to scold him for setting a bad example in front of the younger boy but it was too late as he was right, the show had begun. The immense crowd launched into a mighty roar and swelled forward as the first turnkey appeared at the open door and led in the rest of the procession. He was followed by three hobbling figures, all hooded in what appeared to be brown potato sacks with rope cords around their necks, two other gaolers and – bringing up the rear and earning the greatest cheer of all – the current hangman of the Stone Jug. Around us feet began stamping and chants of
Jack Ketch, Jack Ketch, Jack Ketch
rang out. Ketch has been dead for two hundred years but such was the notoriety of Newgate’s most celebrated executioner that his name has since been thrust upon anyone what has ever succeeded him. This Ketch, with the aid of the gaolers, was securing the nooses nice and tight around the necks of the three condemned
– one woman and two men. The man in the centre was thin and would have been tall if not so hunched.

‘They’re shivering,’ said Jem with some contempt. ‘You’d think they’d show a bit more steel than that.’ I turn to ask Jem if he thought he’d be putting on a better display come the day of his own appearance on the black stage but I was interrupted by another tug from Mouse’s hand. He had another trinket for me to take.

The executioner told us to remove our hats and this time the command was answered. I took off my own silk topper and, as I did so, I sensed that the hunched man had turned his face towards me.

‘Can they see out of those masks?’ I asked nobody in particular and a smart gentleman beside me scoffed at my question. Then the Ketch asked the three condemned – in a voice what carried for all our benefits – if they would now like to confess to their sins for which they was about to receive this final earthly punishment. If they did so, he told them, they might be spared further torments in the world beyond this and so it was worth a go. None responded to this entreaty save for the hunched man in the centre. He was shaking something violent now and raised his masked head up.

‘Strike you all dead!’ was his muffled cry. ‘What right have you to butcher me?’

I looked back to Jem to see if he considered that to be a stronger performance. But Jem had vanished into the crowd and I could hear that Mouse had begun to sob. I took his little hand again but this time to comfort him. I told him that he should trust me. That all was going to be just rosy.

The Ketch then pulled his lever and we heard the thud of the trap. Before I had time to turn away I saw all three figures drop and dangle like puppets and the sight was a horror to me. I turned down to see to Mouse but he had already turned hysterical. The
crowd roared louder than ever now but it did not sound like the cry of triumph I had expected, more like sudden outrage. It was as though this triple hanging was the last thing anyone here had expected to see.

‘Don’t look, Mouse,’ I bent down and whispered into the ear of my young apprentice. ‘Don’t look and it can’t hurt you.’

But the crowd grew bold once more and soon they was stamping again and cheering for the executioner to take a bow. I closed my eyes and soon the only sound I could hear was a thousand voices of the city all paying their noisy tribute.

‘
Jack Ketch! Jack Ketch! Jack Ketch!
’

*

I must have been making a proper fuss during my first night’s sleep in the condemned cell as a pair of rough hands shook me awake and someone told me to hold my tongue. I opened my eyes and strained to make sense of my dark surroundings and of the person what was leaning over me and speaking in an old and unkind voice. I was lying on a thin mattress on the stone bench what passed for a prison bed and I was clutching at some sweaty rag of a blanket. There was a fireplace what someone had lit and this was supplying the principal source of light. There was also one small window high up on the wall behind me but it was dark outside so it was from the fire’s crackle that I saw the side of the man’s face. He was grey and wrinkled and he looked to be fixing on breaking my neck if I did not calm myself first.