How the Hangman Lost His Heart Read online

  “Do you have enough money?”

  Dan felt in his pouch. “I have none,” he said sorrowfully. “It must have all emptied itself in that dratted basket.”

  “I have lost mine too,” said Alice. She opened her eyes, all innocence. “So how will somebody who disapproves of stealing get what we need?” She couldn’t resist teasing.

  “I’ll do it my own way,” said Dan, turning rather grumpy, “and anyway, this is different. This is an emergency.”

  “At least we can agree about that.” Alice took one large hand between both of hers to rub his temper away, then she got up. “I want to come with you, but I suppose somebody has to keep the horses. Be back by evening, Dan Skinslicer. If you’re not, I shall come looking for you.”

  Quick as a flash, Dan was in front of her, seizing her and looking her square in the face. “If I’m not back by evening,” he said, deadly serious, “Uncle Frank’s head or no Uncle Frank’s head, you get on that horse and ride as fast and hard as you can over those hills until you get home. You hear me? You ride straight home. I’ll not go unless you promise me, on the dead colonel’s soul, to do that.”

  Alice tried to wriggle away but Dan easily held her. “You promise me,” he said, and shook her hard. “On the dead colonel’s soul, promise.”

  “All right, I promise,” said Alice reluctantly. “I promise, on Uncle Frank’s soul.”

  Dan made her repeat this and only then, with many misgivings, did he let go. There was nothing he wanted to do less than trudge down the road up which he had galloped so uncomfortably only moments before. There was nothing in the world he wanted to do less than leave Alice. But there was no option. He turned around just once before he was out of sight and opened his mouth to call to her. But Alice was not looking his way: she was fully occupied petting Hew’s horse. Dan shook his head, cursing himself for being nothing but a soppy mooncalf. Then he shut his mouth and, with weary resignation, headed back toward danger.

  6

  Stranded with the laundry basket, Major Slavering’s parting glare still hot on his face, Hew also felt foolish. He was too polite to curse Alice, but he did wish that she had found a less lively way of leaving Grosvenor Square and that she had not taken his horse. He could get another horse, of course, but he had been fond of Marron, who had cost him a pretty penny. Slavering’s horse, Belter, had been expensive too, and looking at the major’s face as he fought his way up the road on a rather lowly, borrowed beast, Hew knew that if Dan and Alice were ever caught, their list of offenses would be long and grim. Treachery, thieving, resisting arrest, and now horse stealing. Hew paled at the punishments. On his left, the Duke of Mimsdale was grumbling away as his linen and clothes were collected and given to maidservants to fold. Hew itched to tell the silly old fool to shut up, but he did not. Instead, to hasten the process, he helped repack the basket.

  It was while shoving half a dozen petticoats down the side that he felt the wig bag. It was a strange thing to find in a laundry basket and it brought him up short. When Alice and Dan had leaped out, he had hardly expected them to be swinging Uncle Frank’s head by its hair. In fact, he had not really been thinking about the head at all. But now that he was thinking about it, everything fell into place. Of course! What better place to hide a head than a wig bag? He looked cautiously around.

  The major, grim-faced, had returned empty-handed from pursuing Alice and Dan, his temper beyond filthy. Troopers from all over the city would be dispatched to search out the fugitives like animals, for the major would not be made an idiot of anymore. Hew knew Slavering in this mood. To hand over Uncle Frank’s head now would not pacify him or make him less likely to pursue Alice to the death. Rather the opposite. He would pursue Alice using the head as some disgusting form of blackmail, probably to lure her into a trap from which there would be no escape. Hew frowned. He must extricate the wig bag before the laundryman found it but without Slavering seeing. He began, cautiously, to pull at it, then stopped. What on earth was he doing? Why was he risking not only his own life but the lives of his mother and sister, his only remaining family, for a girl he hardly knew?

  It was a silly question because he already knew the answer. The memory of Alice’s cornflower eyes and the radiating confidence with which she had saved him at Temple Bar floated constantly about his head, knocked into his heart, and disturbed his sleep. Hew was not in the habit of thinking about girls. He had given up on them since most of those he knew, the sisters of his fellow officers or friends of his own sister, despised the poverty that had forced him to rise up through the ranks of his regiment rather than buy his captaincy as people of his class found it more convenient to do. If Hew showed any romantic interest in such girls, they smirked and pouted and made him feel very uncomfortable. Alice made him feel uncomfortable too, but in quite a different way. He wanted her to like him. He wanted that very much. And if a girl such as her could steal a head, surely he could hide it. Moreover, although Hew was a staunch supporter of King George and the colonel was a traitor, what harm could his head do now? It was only proper that it should be reunited with the body and left in peace.

  However, before he could do anything at all with the wig bag, Major Slavering stamped up, dragging the Duke of Mimsdale behind him. For one terrible moment Hew thought the major had also realized that Alice and Dan had been empty-handed as they galloped away. But the major was too busy cursing to think of anything. Hew stuffed the last of the sheets into the basket and slammed it shut. “Nothing more here,” he said firmly. “Shall we let the laundryman go?”

  “I don’t give a farthing about the laundryman, Captain Ffrench, but we’ll keep his cankerous cart until we have delivered this sniveling aristocrat to the Fleet prison.’ Slavering was jabbing at the Duke of Mimsdale’s shins with his scabbard, making the poor man dance. He was determined to take something from the whole fiasco and imprisoning the duke seemed the most satisfactory option. After a day or two with only rats for company, His Great Gormless Graceness would most certainly pay handsomely for his release. The laundryman slithered up, whining about the money owed to him. Major Slavering batted him aside and the man scurried off, shouting that he lived by the Thames and if pony, cart, and laundry did not appear and soon, he would complain to the king himself.

  The duke was silent and gloomy as he was bundled on top of the basket to endure the short but extremely humiliating journey. At the Fleet, the warden was very happy indeed to meet him and soon he and Major Slavering were engrossed in highly important discussions of a financial nature.

  Waved peremptorily away by the major, Hew prodded the pony. At first, he aimed straight down toward the river, as would have been expected, but once out of sight of the prison he turned west. It took about an hour to reach the poorest part of Chelsea, far beyond the big houses with gardens, where Hew’s mother lived in a dwelling so modest that its walls seemed too embarrassed to stand up straight. He jumped down and knocked on the door. “Mother?” he called. “Mother, are you in?”

  A lady wearing a darned cap and gown appeared. “Hew! I wasn’t expecting you.” She was all smiles, but her brown eyes, so like her son’s, were anxious. “Come in, come in,” she said. Then she saw the pony and laughed. It was a nice sound and the pony looked hopefully for a treat. “My dear boy, have you swapped Marron for this, and your captaincy for life as washerwoman?”

  Hew grinned. Just hearing his mother’s voice eased the knots from his shoulders. “It’s a bit of a story,” he said, jumping back onto the wagon, unstrapping the basket and rummaging about. “I can’t stop, but—” The wig bag appeared.

  His mother looked surprised. “You’ve brought me a wig?” she exclaimed. “Bless me, Hew, won’t I just be in the forefront of fashion now?”

  Hew looked a little rueful. “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said. “It’s not actually a wig, or a present for you at all.”

  She appeared crestfallen, then, when Hew looked contrite, shook her head so that the ribbons on her cap fluttered. “I’m
only teasing, my darling,” she said. “What on earth would I do with a wig, except sell it, I suppose.”

  “Are things bad at the moment?” Hew frowned. He wanted to help his mother, but most of his pay still went to settle his father’s gambling debts and to refund the money he had borrowed to buy his horse.

  “Never mind about that now,” said Mrs Ffrench. “Tell me about this mysterious wig bag that contains neither wig nor present.”

  Hew jumped down and threw the reins over a tree stump before following his mother inside. The cramped hall was drab, but the parlor bore traces of a once elegant life, with furniture obviously brought from a house rather less cramped. Hew looked around, hesitated, then bundled all the clothes out of his mother’s workbasket and tucked the wig bag into the bottom. However, before replacing all the mending, on impulse he opened the wig bag up and glanced inside. For a second or two he was revolted. Uncle Frank’s head was not a cozy sight, but then he paused and the two men stared gravely at each other. The colonel’s expression, ruefully grateful, made Hew smile at first, then the little hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. This was most certainly not the expression that had been on the dead man’s face when he was on Temple Bar. Of that Hew was sure. He looked again, but Uncle Frank’s expression remained the same. He even had a twinkle in his eye. Now, as a sensible person, Hew knew this to be quite impossible. Nevertheless, he tied the bag up smartly and covered it over. “There,” he said. “Can you keep this in here for me?”

  “I can,” said his mother, wanting to be accommodating, “but I would like to know what is in it.”

  “I can’t tell you,” said Hew, taking her hands, from which, he noticed, all the rings were now gone, “and really, it’s best if you don’t know. Absolutely best.”

  A look passed between them. They understood each other well, for Hew had been his mother’s main support on the many evenings when his father had returned home from the races, drunkenly raging about the failure of horses he had bought with other people’s money. After he was killed in a pointless duel, Mrs. Ffrench had been deluged with unsettled bills and had sold everything to pay them. Now she scraped a living making and mending gloves, dresses, and hats, while Hew’s sister, Mabel, was a governess to the young daughters of the Duke of Cantankering in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. There, at least, was good news, for Mabel’s employer liked her and, to Mrs. Ffrench’s hopeful delight, Mabel was being gently courted by the Cantankering’s oldest son, Peregrine, Marquis of Trotting. During her many lonely evenings, Mrs. Ffrench prayed that the match would be made and that Mabel would be saved from turning into the sour old maid she was threatening to become. The only worry here was that Peregrine seemed too shy to propose. It would be the last straw if this came to nothing.

  Hew knew all about his mother’s ambitions for his sister and a sudden panic engulfed him. What was he doing? If Uncle Frank’s head was discovered here, everything would be lost. He was a thoroughly bad son and a thoroughly bad brother. At that moment he came within a whisker of grabbing the wig bag, running out the door, and throwing Uncle Frank into the river.

  But he did not. Instead, he remembered Uncle Frank’s look and Alice’s face and led his mother to a chair. “You mustn’t know the contents, Mother,” he said, “and please never look. The wig bag isn’t stolen, if that’s what you are thinking. It belongs to somebody—” He did not know quite how to describe Alice, but opted for “an acquaintance.” His mother opened her mouth, but Hew rushed on. “Yes, I know it sounds odd, Mother, but it belongs to a girl I met and, as soon as I can, I want to return it to her, or at least get it to her family, who I think live in the north. But in the meantime, I didn’t know what else to do with it so I brought it here.”

  “Can’t you keep it at the barracks?”

  “No. If Major Slavering found it, well …” Hew trailed off.

  Mrs. Ffrench looked at her workbasket. “It will be safe here,” she said, not wanting to push Hew any further, for though she was curious, she trusted him implicitly. “Now, Mabel brought back the end of a veal pie from Lincoln’s Inn Fields yesterday. The Cantankerings may not pay much but they are very generous with food.” Her jaw tightened a little, for she did not like accepting charity. “I’ll get you a slice.”

  Hew shook his head and headed for the door. “I must be off at once,” he said, but after a few moments he returned. His mother was standing just where he had left her. “Here,” he said, and handed her a pair of soiled and torn stockings and three pairs of large gloves with M initialed on each. “If anybody asks, you can say that I brought these for you to wash and mend because they got damaged this morning in a scuffle. You don’t need to know any more than that.” Then he kissed his mother warmly on both cheeks and hurried out.

  He was glad to find that the pony knew his own way back to his riverside home and, when the laundryman appeared, he gave him sixpence as well as telling him to do the laundry in double-quick time. The laundryman humphed and wanted to make Hew listen to all his complaints, but Hew did not wait. Quite suddenly, having put his mother in such danger on her behalf, he found he wanted to discover more about Alice Towneley than her cornflower eyes, so instead of returning straight to the barracks, he made his way at speed back to Grosvenor Square. There he waited until a girl appeared, sent out by Ursula to pick up a cordial for her nerves.

  Using a smile and a soldier’s easy charm, it was not hard to get the girl to talk. Alice’s family, he discovered, lived at Towneley Hall and were “real rich and real grand.” “In fact,” the girl said, flattered by Hew’s attention, “if she weren’t a papist and didn’t ’ave such a wicked temper, I’m sure she could ’ave married a prince.” Hew revealed nothing, but after he had doffed the new hat he had had to buy after his trip up Temple Bar and left her, his face was grave. What a bonehead he was. If Alice’s family were rich and grand, she was obviously quite out of the league of a humble captain. When he thought of Uncle Frank sitting in his mother’s work basket, he felt hot all over and walked faster and faster, trying to decide the best thing to do. By the time he got back to the barracks, he had made up his mind. He could not leave Alice entirely in the lurch, so he would do the honorable thing and get the colonel’s head to Towneley. After that, he would leave England and seek active service in France.

  7

  From behind a tree, Dan watched Hew and the servant girl. After stealing a chunk of ham from a butcher’s basket and wolfing it down in a style that he knew was not one employed at the sort of dinner tables Alice frequented, he too had returned to the environs of Grosvenor Square, not knowing where else to begin tracing the whereabouts of Uncle Frank. He was glad to have found Hew so easily and, as he followed him, an idea began to form in his head, which, he believed, was easily as daring as any idea of Alice’s. The thought that she would be impressed was very pleasing. Dan’s plan was this. Nobody questioned a uniform. If Dan and Alice could dress up as members of Kingston’s Light Horse, they could travel unmolested, even carrying a wig bag with a head in it. They already had the requisite black horses with their regulation docked tails. If they also wore the red coat, yellow sash, and gloves, who would dare stop them? When Hew began to walk more quickly, it entirely suited Dan’s mood, for he found himself full of a kind of excitement he had never felt before, not even as he raised the ax for his first execution, and that had been exciting enough.

  The more Dan thought, the better his plan seemed to be, especially as—and he stopped to slap his thigh—the barracks were also the place that Uncle Frank was most likely to be! By Dan’s calculation, Slavering would have searched the laundry basket, found the wig bag, looked inside it, and was probably even now encouraging all those ignorant troopers to mock the poor colonel and stick silly hats on his head. When Hew disappeared through the gates, however, Dan was brought up short. How could he get inside? He slipped behind a cutler’s stall crushed hard up against the walls and scrutinized the place carefully.

  Between the rough stone pillars that ma
rked the entrance, the double gates opened and shut constantly as men and horses flowed in and out. Dan did not have to wait long before a group of blacksmiths, brawny men like Dan himself, walked boldly up to the guardhouse and demanded entry. Dan clasped his hands together. He would not get a better chance than this. The cutler was deep in conversation with a customer, so Dan took the opportunity to steal several knives and three pairs of scissors. These he wrapped in an expensive linen apron and bulked them out with the cutler’s walking stick and the iron bar he used to ward off thieving boys. If not inspected too closely, the bundle could have been full of blacksmiths’ tools. Dan’s conscience twinged, but he settled it by blaming his new dishonesty on Alice. With his bundle neatly secured, he quickly caught up with the blacksmiths and walked boldly through the gates with them.

  The horses that needed shoeing were standing sleepily in the yard and the troopers who held them had discarded their coats and opened their shirts to give their armpits an airing. Dan’s heart sank as he realized that the blacksmiths had to wait in line, in full view of everybody, to be allocated an animal. He had thought that once inside the barracks it would be easy to disappear. Worse, the line moved swiftly and in a moment he found himself holding a horse. He gazed at it, for he had little practical knowledge of blacksmithery. He bent down and picked up a foot. He could manage that. He felt the shoe. It was loose. He let the foot drop and began slowly to open his bundle.

  But before he had even undone the string, he was hit smartly from behind by a stocky oaf with a boxer’s face, a cauliflower ear, and two mighty fists. “I saw you slippin’ into our line,” the oaf said threateningly. “You must be a foreigner from over the river.” He punched Dan right on his wounded shoulder. “Well, I live round ’ere and I say this ’oss is mine. Go and find yourself another. This lot’s new shoes means new shoes for my brats. Now get lost.” Dan tried to look gruff and quarrelsome. He even pretended to square off. One of the troopers ran over and clicked his tongue. He didn’t want trouble. “Just get on with it,” he said, shrugging at Dan and nodding at the smaller man.