Wooden rafters stretch high above my head. Daylight streams through an open window, casting blocks of dazzling light on to the bare floor. Curtains billow in a soft spring breeze. The room smells of gin and unwashed clothes. I sit up slowly, still dazed and uncertain. There are piles of rags stacked against the far wall ready to sell. The floorboards feel rough under my fingers; the breeze chills the sweat on my chest. Am I truly alive? Where am I?
Someone coughs loudly on the other side of the wall, hawking up thick phlegm.
Not heaven, then.
Kitty kneels down next to me. She has pulled off her mob cap. Her face is flushed pink from the effort of opening the coffin. It is the most beautiful thing. She is the most beautiful… The room fades and I begin to slide to the floor. She grabs hold of my shoulders. ‘You’re safe,’ she says. ‘Tom – do you understand? You’re safe.’
I try to speak through my bruised and swollen throat. ‘Kitty.’
Her bright-green eyes soften in relief. ‘Idiot.’ She kisses my forehead, my lips. Kisses me as though she is breathing the life back into me. I break away, staring in wonder at the face I have missed so much, touching clumsy, half-numb fingers to her cheek.
I don’t know how I came to be here, what magic she has wrought to bring a hanged man back from the dead. All I know is that my heart is beating, my pulse is racing, my skin is warm. I lean against her and weep with joy, like a child.
Later, we lie tangled upon the narrow bed, a thin sheet draped at our hips. My need had been wild, more animal than human. I would have devoured her if I could, teeth scraping her skin, fingers digging into her flesh. She had held me tightly, back arched, caught in her own frenzy. I spent inside her and collapsed, only to rise again twice more. My body, rejoicing in the simple truth – I am alive.
Only now, half dozing, do I ask how the miracle was accomplished.
She sits up, reaches for her wrapping gown. ‘We paid Hooper.’
I think back to the gallows, Hooper lying stretched upon the high beam, smoking a pipe. The last moments as he rolled the cap down over my face. Courage, sir. My breath hot and fast against the linen. The roar of the crowd.
‘There’s ways to tie a knot to finish things fast. Here.’ She coils her long red hair and slips it over one shoulder. Presses two fingers against her bare neck, below her ear. ‘And ways to make it slow.’ She moves her hand to the back of her neck, where Hooper had tied the rope. ‘You only seemed dead when he cut you down. You were still breathing. A little.’
‘You were there?’
She shakes her head. ‘I couldn’t…’ She glances about the room and I know she is thinking of that long wait, not knowing if I were dead or alive. I reach over and grip her hand.Tears brim beneath her lowered lids. At last, she begins again. ‘We paid Skimpy to smuggle you on to the wrong cart.’
I raise an eyebrow.
‘He works for the surgeons. Brings the bodies back for anatomising…’
My stomach turns at the thought – how close I had come. I remember the surgeons’ assistant from the gallows – a pale, thin lad with white-blond brows and lashes, arguing with the Marshal. I wonder if he will be in trouble with his masters for losing a valuable corpse. Most likely not – bodies often disappear on the road back from Tyburn, grieving families dragging the coffins away for a decent burial. Jack Sheppard’s body had been taken by his friends and buried.
‘Where are we?’
She smiles. ‘Phoenix Street.’
I sit up in alarm. We paid Hooper. We paid Skimpy. ‘Fleet arranged this?’
Her smile fades. ‘No. Wouldn’t trust that bastard to piss straight.’
It takes me a moment to guess. ‘Sam.’
‘He came to see me last night. Told me everything.’ She punches me once, very hard, in the arm. ‘You promised there’d be no more secrets between us, Tom.’
I rub my arm. ‘Fleet threatened to kill you.’
‘All the more reason to tell me, you stupid prick!’
I let her rage. She has every right. I had been so proud of my own martyrdom I had never stopped to consider the toll it had taken on Kitty. She had spent the last few weeks broken-hearted and desperate. Behind the arm-punching and curses I can see how much I’ve hurt her. Her cheeks are hollow, her sweet little belly stretched taut. So much for my noble self-sacrifice: it has almost destroyed her.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, when she is done, or has at least run out of breath. I lean in to kiss her and hear a soft, irritable sigh from the doorway. Sam has slipped into the room, God knows when. Best not to ask. Kitty tightens her gown and jumps up from the bed, crossing to him on tiptoes. She pulls him further into the room, clasping his hand in both of hers. The hero of the hour. I must confess I suffer a curious pang of jealousy at that. I’d felt some pride this morning, going bravely to my death. Now here I am, rescued by a boy of fourteen and a surgeon’s assistant called Skimpy. I am grateful, but…
‘You’re well, Mr Hawkins?’
There is a tremor in Sam’s voice, as if I might still be angry with him. I wrap the sheet around my waist and hobble to meet him. Hug him for as long as he will let me, which is not very long at all. He keeps his hands at his side and stays rigid. It is like hugging a short roll of heavy cloth. ‘You saved my life.’
He stifles a grin of pride. Better, is it not, to save lives than to end them? He hands me a broadsheet, warm from the press. Guthrie’s account of my life and death, curse him, printed fast for profit. ‘World thinks you’re dead.’
The world thinks I’m a monster.
‘We’ll stay here for a few days Tom,’ Kitty says as I sit back down upon the bed, still reading. ‘Let everyone forget all about you.’
‘A gentleman, hanged for murder? They won’t forget me in a hundred years.’
‘We’ll go to Italy, just as we planned. Sam will keep looking for the true killer.’
‘Alice,’ Sam says, as if the thing were settled.
The killer. My God. I had quite forgotten amidst all the drama of dying. I crumple up the broadsheet and toss it across the room on to the unlit fire, taking some small pleasure in hitting my target. ‘No. It wasn’t Alice. You were right Kitty. It was Judith.’
Perhaps it was because I had been so close to death. A flash of revelation as my soul prepared to escape its cage.
I had seen her through the crowds, dressed in her mother’s mourning gown. She had been granted a place of honour in the galleries, surrounded by powdered courtiers, a single jet-black stone in a flower bed of colour. She sat forward in her seat, lips parted, gloved hands laced across the folds of her dress, as if she were waiting for her favourite opera singer to take the stage.
She was so young. And beneath her composed expression, so very lost. A boat unmoored and drifting on the open ocean. Our eyes met and in that brief communion I had seen how much she wished me dead. Not out of malice, nor for revenge, but to be sure that suspicion would never fall on her. She smiled at me. Gave the tiniest nod of acknowledgement. Thank you, sir. I am most obliged to you.
Hooper prepared the cart, and still we’d stared at each other across the crowds; murderer and victim locked in one last deathly gaze. She clutched her gown in anticipation, fingers twisting and turning the black silk. Black for mourning. Black for death. A black so deep no stains of red would show upon it.
Hooper rolled the cap over my face.
‘Wait.’