The Wreck Page 7

  But perhaps one of them was not in a cell. One of them might be having his hand shaken, receiving a purse of money. Told it was a job well done, the capture of these depraved insurgents.

  She could not quieten her mind on the subject of who it might be. Not Sam, of course. Briardown was unlikely . . . or perhaps not – he may have gone to Manchester to set a trap for radicals, and seen Sarah and Sam’s bereavement as the ideal opportunity. Or was that too far-fetched? Tully – well, he didn’t have it in him, did he? Perhaps she had underestimated him.

  That left Tourville and Henry, and it could not be Henry. She would not believe it, as there didn’t seem to be any guile in him at all. But of course, a talent for hiding his true nature would make him valuable as an informer, and she had to admit she may have let her feelings scramble her judgement.

  It maddened her that Watkins would not show her newspapers or give her the means to purchase them. And he absolutely refused to give her any information on the trial at the Old Bailey. ‘You will find out more in good time,’ he had said. ‘What does it matter, anyway? There’s nothing you can do.’ He was obviously trying to keep her calm and under control, so that she would not cause any trouble for him. How did he not realise that he was instead forcing her to steal away from the ship?

  She would stalk around the prison for half an hour or so, never seeing anyone go in or out save guards and officials. Then she would return to the ship and try to distract herself with the menial tasks Watkins and Coombes demanded of her. But she could not escape the grasping fear of what would happen to her brother. Or her thoughts about the spy, if he existed. She could only presume that he did, based on Watkins’s behaviour. And a spy would surely have told the magistrates and their constables by now not to look for a boy but for a woman named Sarah McCaffrey. Then again, it would not take a spy to convey that information; even Henry might have informed on her for the chance at a lenient sentence.

  One afternoon she was walking around Newgate when a heavy hand clamped down on her shoulder. She wheeled around, raising her elbow to strike at her assailant, and pulled it back just soon enough to avoid connecting with Coombes’s jaw. ‘What are you playing at?’ she hissed. ‘You scared the life out of me!’

  ‘You’ll find your life leaving you sooner than you want, if you keep doing this.’

  ‘I won’t. I’m careful, I just want to see him. Just once.’ Her voice was quavering – she hated the sound; knew her apparent strength was her best chance of maintaining a level of friendliness with Coombes, and Watkins for that matter.

  The first mate, though, was not angry. ‘I know, lass. I know. Do you think, though, that he wants you to put yourself in danger?’

  ‘I am not in danger!’

  ‘Are you not? I noticed certain things when I followed you here. And if I can follow you, so can others. We’ll be going back to the ship now, yes? And then we’ll try to decide exactly how much danger you are in.’

  *

  Watkins glared at Sarah as he chewed his stew. She tried, for the sake of keeping the peace, to look contrite. But she didn’t seem to be managing it too well, and she would be damned if she apologised for trying to get a last glimpse of Sam.

  ‘Every afternoon?’ Watkins asked. ‘I’ve given you one of the safest places in London to hide, and you walk straight into the dragon’s mouth.’

  ‘No one has noticed me,’ she said. ‘The guards don’t pay attention to the girls and ladies parading up and down outside the gaol – they just assume we’re all wives, mothers and sweethearts.’

  ‘Or the sister of a brother who tried to overthrow the government,’ said Coombes. ‘While you do occasionally see women pining outside Newgate, it seems you are more noticeable than most.’ To his captain, he said, ‘The constables were looking at her and nodding. They’ve noticed her before, I’d wager my life on it.’

  ‘So what if they have?’ said Sarah. ‘I wear my lace cap every day and keep my head bowed.’

  ‘Perhaps they would ask their spy to watch you from inside the prison,’ suggested Watkins. He spat the gristle onto his plate and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Sarah knew it was pointless to request more information; if he had confirmed the existence and name of the spy, he certainly would not share it with her now. ‘Are you going to lock me in the hull?’

  ‘It had occurred to me,’ he said, and paused as though seriously considering the idea. ‘But we’ll keep the irons in abeyance for now. You must promise me, though, on all you hold dear, that you will not go to Newgate again.’

  ‘I would,’ she said, ‘if anything I held dear was left.’

  CHAPTER 10

  One week into her stay on the Serpent, Sarah had been moved to a tiny cabin. She tried not to think of it as a coffin, but her bunk was so narrow that she had fallen onto the floor a few times when she was rolling over in her sleep. Not that sleep was a frequent visitor. At night her mind conjured grotesque phantasms: Sam, purple-faced with his tongue lolling; Henry, having a furtive conversation with a Bow Street Runner at the Horse & Coach.

  This morning her nightly visions had propelled her to the deck, where she hoped the salt air would dull them.

  Coombes walked over to her. ‘You’ll find it easier once we set off.’

  ‘But I won’t be here.’

  He shrugged and said nothing further on the matter, as parsimonious with words as he was with money while he checked cargo, inspected the sails, and yelled at the increasing number of young sailors. ‘Captain wants to see you,’ he said, looking over the rail. ‘Ah. Cargo’s here.’

  But there were no barrels or crates. Instead, about fifty men were lined up along the ship’s side, encumbered by irons and by the red-jacketed soldiers guarding them. They walked one by one up the plank, across the main deck below Sarah and down through the hatch. Most kept their heads lowered, but some looked up and around. One, short and scrawny, seemed little older than the baker’s boy who had given her the note about the cabinet dinner.

  She turned to Coombes. ‘That – that is the cargo?’

  ‘Navy Board pays six shillings a man,’ Coombes said.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ she asked, then shook her head. ‘Of course you did. The captain can go to the devil, as can you.’

  ‘We no doubt will. But you will want to hear what he has to say first.’

  As they walked towards Watkins’s cabin, they passed knots of men loading provisions and calling to each other in voices made hoarse by wind and salt.

  ‘Why were you and Watkins both aboard so early?’ she asked.

  ‘Can only speak for myself,’ said Coombes. ‘I came aboard to watch the captain.’

  ‘Why would he need watching?’

  Coombes stopped walking. She thought he was going to reveal something, but he seemed to think better of it. ‘My reasons are my own,’ he said, and kept going.

  The cabin was in its usual chaotic state – Watkins kept it locked when he wasn’t there, so Sarah had never had a chance to tidy it up.

  Had Watkins not been there, she would have had no shortage of newspapers to read. They were strewn all over the green baize chart table, some slipping off its edge onto the floor. A plate of half-eaten mutton was by the captain’s elbow, and a smear of grease led from it to one of the documents spread out before him. The curtain that concealed his sleeping alcove was open, the bedclothes twisted and jumbled, a frayed shirt lying across it.

  Watkins had his head in his hands as he looked down at a sheet of newspaper. ‘Shut the door,’ he said without glancing up. ‘Mr Coombes, stay if you please.’ He slid the paper over to Sarah. ‘I am sorry.’

  She waited a moment before she looked at it.

  The dreadful sentence of the law has been passed on three of the conspirators who had intended to carry out the most atrocious conspiracy to murder ministers of the Crown. Aidan Briardown, Harold Tully and Samuel McCaffrey have been convicted of high treason and will be executed tomorrow mor
ning outside Newgate Prison.

  There was more, but Sarah could not read it, her vision blurring. She tried to swallow, then put her hand over her mouth as her stomach contracted and spasmed.

  The author of this article and the publisher of this newspaper, who invited her brother’s extinction with such fervour, and those in the court who had sat in judgement on him – they had not been there when the gaffer’s cane had come down on him. They had not been there whenever he gave a quiet sob of hunger at night, or when he had found his mother trodden into the earth. To them he was simply another gaping mouth that hoped to inhale as much of their treasure as possible.

  Watkins looked at Coombes then nodded towards a stand near his sleeping alcove. ‘Get the basin,’ he said flatly.

  Sarah, still with one hand over her mouth, waved the other. ‘Don’t bother,’ she said. ‘Don’t bother with anything. There is no longer anything worth bothering with.’

  Coombes squeezed her shoulder, while Watkins just stared; his dark eyes contained nothing.

  ‘They pardon people, sometimes,’ she said.

  Watkins shook his head. ‘Not people who wanted to assassinate the Cabinet.’

  Why, then, were only three to be hanged?

  ‘Henry – one of us – he’s not mentioned, nor Tourville. Do you know what happened to them?’

  Watkins shrugged. ‘I know you do not want to believe there was an informer, but perhaps there were two.’

  Had Henry been a fiction? She tried to be glad he was not listed to be hanged, but if he had put the other men on the gallows, he was not her Henry, and she could not be glad for the salvation of a phantom. Had Henry been secretly laughing at her and Sam, all this time? Had he sneered at the naive girl who seemed to believe he harboured some affection for her?

  She could hear Coombes shuffling from foot to foot just behind her chair. Watkins kept staring at her, to the point where she wondered if her appearance had suddenly changed, if the skin on her face had shrunk so that she looked like the corpse she felt herself to be. That her brother would soon be.

  ‘I have to go there,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow. I want to . . . I want to see him. Give him the chance to see me.’

  Watkins shook his head again. ‘That is an extraordinarily bad idea.’

  ‘What will I do instead? Peel vegetables in the galley, wondering if my brother’s neck is already being broken?’

  ‘I’ll go with her,’ Coombes said.

  ‘Oh, you will?’ said Watkins, an eyebrow raised. ‘You do not have other duties?’ To Sarah, he said, ‘We sail Monday night. I cannot be without a first mate while we are preparing, you understand.’

  ‘My duties will be attended to,’ Coombes said, a touch peevishly as though insulted the captain would think anything else. ‘But unless you accompany the lass, I will. She’ll go anyway, we both know that. She should not be alone.’

  ‘And then . . .’ Sarah said. ‘Then, after – you’ll be rid of me.’

  ‘What on earth would you do in London, alone?’ said Watkins.

  ‘I would find a way to continue,’ she said, drawing her shoulders back to convince both him and herself of her fortitude. ‘It is not over. It is never over.’

  CHAPTER 11

  The last time she had put on the clothes of a stableboy, Sam had been free. Now, by the time she took them off, he would be dead.

  She had wanted to look like herself, to give Sam the best chance of noticing her in the crowd. ‘Yes,’ Coombes had said, ‘but others might notice you as well, and if there was an informer they know they’re looking for a woman. I won’t go with you if you dress as one.’ So she had laced up the shirt, tied back her hair and jammed the boy’s cap on her head.

  The area outside Newgate was already thronged when Sarah and Coombes arrived just after dawn. The street was blocked, and barriers had been erected to stop the crowd pressing in. But the seats facing the scaffold – those with the best view – all seemed to be empty.

  ‘Why do they do this?’ asked Sarah, as she and the first mate made their way to the central area. ‘Why do they insist on having spectators to someone’s last breath?’

  ‘So those in power don’t draw their last breaths with knives to their throats. And because there would be a public outcry – no one forced these spectators here.’ He wormed his way through the crowd near the barriers to the side, dragging Sarah with him.

  They passed peddlers setting up their stalls, preparing to sell chestnuts or potatoes or meats on sticks to a crowd made peckish by carnage. Sarah had not thought to bring food, and she did not know when or how she would ever eat again.

  As she and Coombes made their way closer to the scaffold, a squat man in a grimy waistcoat, wearing an incongruously clean, satin-banded hat, jumped in front of Sarah and thrust a pamphlet under her nose; it had a picture of several men lined up on the scaffold, below the heading Last Words and Confessions of the Malefactors. Coombes roughly shoved him out of the way.

  ‘But what if something useful is in there?’ asked Sarah. ‘Something from Sam, some sort of message to me?’

  ‘There won’t be,’ the first mate said. ‘That weasel will have made it all up, and he will charge me a shilling or two for the privilege.’

  As the sky lightened, Sarah saw well-dressed couples lining up at the stands, handing over their shillings, taking their seats. Men leant on their canes and inclined their heads to their female companions, making observations at which the women trilled with laughter.

  ‘Collar day! Collar day mementos!’ the man with the filthy waistcoat and fancy hat shouted. One hand held the pamphlets in the air; the other accepted payments.

  Sarah narrowed her eyes at the food sellers, the man taking money for seats, the broadside peddler, and the fiddler standing near a wall, playing jauntily. They would all earn some pennies from her brother’s death; they all deserved a curse.

  By the time the sun had cleared the roofs of the buildings all around, there seemed to be almost as many gathered as there had been at St Peter’s Field. Most seemed as cheerful as those who had walked through Manchester’s streets, unaware some of them were on their final march.

  But today some stood sombrely and were dressed respectfully in black. As Sarah looked around, she saw several men gazing towards the gallows, their hats off, their jaws set. Perhaps they were fellow Spencean Philanthropists, or some other stripe of radical. Perhaps they had known Briardown; maybe they had taken part in planning the attack. They might even be feeling a measure of guilt that it was not their ‘collar day’ as well.

  Such men were far outnumbered, though, by chattering and laughing people. Sarah wanted to kneel on the ground, put her forehead on her knees and throw her arms over her ears. The fact that so much merriment was called forth by the anticipation of Sam’s death made it unbearable.

  Some of those in the crowd behind the barricades with Sarah and Coombes had clearly emptied their cupboards of every brightly coloured scarf or cravat or hat or shawl. Among them were women in silks with garishly painted mouths who would, after a brief conversation, disappear around a corner with certain gentlemen.

  Of course, those who had paid for their seats were more reserved, the men in plain waistcoats and carrying canes with ornate silver tops, the women in muted blues, greens and yellows, their faces shaded by broad-brimmed hats sprouting feathers and swagged with lace. They sat in front of a platform with three nooses dangling from a crossbeam. In front of the nooses was a large wooden block, indented at the top. Three coffins had then been laid out in front of the gallows.

  ‘Why is that block there?’ Sarah asked Coombes.

  He did not answer.

  ‘Tell me!’ she said, angry at him for trying to spare her horror on this day, which was saturated with it already.

  ‘They are going to take off their heads,’ said Coombes quietly. ‘Afterwards.’

  She swayed, and he put a hand out to steady her.

  It seemed the ultimate act of vindicti
veness. If all the government truly wanted to do was remove wrong doers, they would have no need of these blocks. But this posthumous humiliation spoke of the barbaric spite of which she well knew they were capable.

  A moment later, a hush fell across the crowd. There was a murmur from those in the seats, but Sarah couldn’t see anything beyond craning necks.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she asked Coombes.

  ‘I think they’re being . . . yes, there, see?’ He pointed, and Sarah positioned herself between the two people in front of her so she could watch three figures being led towards the gallows. They were wearing the clothes in which they had been arrested. Briardown’s lace cuffs were caught in his manacles. Tully wore a plain waistcoat, slightly less strained than it had been, but no jacket.

  Sam would surely come into view next, but she grasped this last moment of hope: perhaps there had been some reprieve. Then he appeared, wearing his rough worsted coat and a familiar cap that was now dirty.

  The three men lined up quietly, politely, to have their irons struck off. Briardown’s hands were freed first, and someone in the crowd yelled, ‘How are you feeling?’

  He looked pale, but smiled. ‘I have never been in better spirits in the course of my life.’

  Tully was almost dancing when he walked up, smiling to the crowd as he presented himself to have his irons removed. Someone yelled, ‘God bless you!’ and he bowed.

  No one yelled for Sam. Sarah was desperate to say she loved him, to wish him a joyful reunion with their parents. She did not, though, and chided herself for her cowardice.

  The freedom was momentary; the men’s hands were immediately bound with rope in front of them. They mounted the scaffold one by one, each standing in front of a noose. As soon as Sam took his position, a great roar erupted from the crowd, louder than the one that had greeted Orator Hartford on the hustings. It vibrated in Sarah’s chest so violently that she thought her heart might stop, and she did not know if she would mind.