13
ON THE MORNING OF THE EXECUTION, I rose before dawn. How could I sleep? Mr. Garnett had informed me that Daniel would be taken to Newgate, where the ceremony was performed outside the wall, and I had spent the night imagining all the tortures of the condemned man. I dressed and went out into the street, in order to clear my head, but then some involuntary and peremptory impulse sent me walking towards Newgate itself. I was like some man of the crowd, hastening towards a spectacle. If it were possible to be two people, then this was my condition: I wished to be hidden away, lamenting the fate of Daniel in the secrecy of some locked chamber, but at the same time I walked with fiery eyes towards the prison to see him despatched. I seemed to be possessed by some spirit that broods over London on a hanging day, some craving for blood and punishment that is beyond rational calculation. A further consideration occurred to me later. I had given life to the creature, but could the presence of the creature be changing me?
I arrived at Newgate very early, but such was the press of people that I could only reach as far as the churchyard of St. Sepulchre. A mob of children were already assembled in the most prominent places, setting up a cacophony of cries and howls that would have shamed a tribe of monkeys in the jungles of the Niger. Their catcalls were taken up by others in the crowd, some of whom began dancing and singing obscenities. Such grotesque merriment in the face of death was for me unexampled. The English mob, screeching and laughing and yelling, is a thing of horror in what we deign to call the civilised world. The open space in front of the prison was taken up by men and women who had all the appearance of thieves and prostitutes, as well as other rogues and ruffians of every description. Their smell was insupportable. They whistled and imitated Mr. Punch; they drank from bottles, and fought among themselves. Some of them urinated freely against the walls of the prison itself calling out, according to the London tradition, “In pain!”
There was a lull when Daniel was brought out from a little door that opened onto Newgate Street; then, after the instant of recognition, there was a great roar of execration and triumph. It was as if the whole foul ceremony represented some ritual of human sacrifice by which the community would be healed. The sun had come out from behind clouds as Daniel mounted the steps to the scaffold, greeted with such a chorus of abuse and obscenity that I am surprised he could endure it. But he seemed to hear none of the execration. In the face of the general disorder he was quite calm; if anything, his bearing expressed resolution and, even, resignation. Yet that did not stop the baying of the mob. I looked at the upturned faces of the crowd, so delighted and excited by the coming scene that they seemed to be images of evil itself. Who can believe that humankind is created in God’s image, when observing that desperate and dissolute assembly? The human form is not divine.
The noose was fastened around Daniel’s neck, and a coarse sack pulled over his head; whether this was some courtesy to his own feelings, I am not sure. Who could bear to see the rictus of death upon his face? The crowd could. The executioner then positioned him carefully above the trap. The cries and yells grew stronger, as the executioner was urged to pull the lever. Then with a sudden movement the platform opened under Daniel. He plunged down as if he had been a stone descending through the air. The crowd then bayed for his death as his body heaved and struggled in the last palpitations of life. The executioner took hold of his legs and jerked them down. Then Daniel was still. The life had gone from him.
I had seen the moment when new life was instilled; now I had seen the instant of departure, when the fire and energy vanished as swiftly as once they had come.
There was a general rush towards the body, for tokens or mementoes, but the line of constables somehow managed to keep the crowd back. Again there was such a roar of abuse and filthy words and ribald songs that I felt quite sickened and shamed by my fellow creatures. The body was cut down from the rope by the executioner, and placed upon a wooden board. According to custom Daniel would now be given to the anatomists, who would begin their ministrations immediately in their hall nearby. I knew enough of that work. So I did not linger at Newgate.
With difficulty I freed myself from the crowd, and walked quickly down towards Fleet Street and the river. I caught a wherry there to Limehouse and, as my boatman rowed against the freezing wind, I exulted in the cold. It tamed my blood. It steadied my excited nerves. I disembarked from the wherry a little upriver from the workshop, and made my way slowly along the deserted foreshore. It was a forlorn enough scene, with the small wooden jetties and the narrow stone stairs descending into the water.
I came up to the workshop, where I discerned no trace of life. It was as I had left it three months before, wrecked and empty, with the broken glass and detritus covering the floor. There must have been tides higher than usual because there were pools and puddles of river water among the confusion. Any hope of restoring or renovating the broken equipment was clearly misplaced: my whole venture would be left to rack and ruin. I picked up a chair, lying on the ground, and, placing it in the middle of the workshop, sat down. From here I could see the river, through an opening in the broken door, and I waited. My resolution was so intense, and my attention so alert, that I hardly felt the cold. I knew that he would come to this place-that he would wish to encounter me and, if he had the use of language, to converse with me. He had done everything with the simple object of taking vengeance upon me, and he would not miss the opportunity of confronting his creator in the place where he had risen from the dead.
I waited throughout that day. I was shielded from the rain and the wind, and with a phosphorous match I managed to make a fire from the broken wooden shelves that lay upon the floor. Just before dusk I ventured onto the jetty. There was a smell of oil and tar coming from the water, and I could hear the low murmur of the tide against the wooden walls of the embankment. I could see a log, perhaps fallen from a merchantman, coming up with the current-yet it was no log. It was a swimmer, quite straight in the water; I saw his arms moving with almost mechanical force, and he left no wake behind him. The figure approached, and raised his head from the water; an oil-lamp from an alley on the north bank illuminated him for a moment. It was the creature, swimming steadily towards the workshop. He must have seen me, but he gave no sign of greeting or recognition. He plunged once more into the water, and I lost sight of him.
I walked back into the workshop, and sat down. I was quite composed.
I heard the sound of something raising itself onto the jetty, with a laboured and heavy motion, and then two footsteps. All at once he stood before me, his clothes steaming; I noticed that, curiously enough, they were drying quickly before my eyes. He was possessed of some extraordinary inward heat.
I suppressed a sudden and overwhelming desire to flee his presence, and remained seated. “You have sought me out,” I said.
He looked at me with an expression of the utmost curiosity. His eyes were gleaming, as if a candle or a lamp had been lit behind them. I knew them, then, to be eyes of the keenest intelligence. Then he bowed his head. “There is no substance,” he replied, “without a shadow.”
I was astonished-no, lost in amazement-at the purity and refinement of his diction. I might have been talking to an angel rather than a devil. “What have you done?” I asked him.
“I? I have done nothing. What have you done? Can you look at me and not weep?” As if under the impress of overwhelming feeling he turned and walked out onto the jetty; yet after a moment he returned, and once more stood before me. I now observed him carefully. Somehow or other he had acquired breeches and linen, and strong leather boots that came up to his calves; he still possessed the black cloak he had taken from me, on the night of his creation, but he had lost or forgotten the hat. His long yellow hair, parted at the crown, reached down to his shoulders and somehow gave him a preternatural image of age; and his skin still had the frightful appearance of being furrowed and folded.