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By Root 773 0

he informed Pyke that Foote’s throat had been so badly damaged by the assault he might never speak again. He explained that Godfrey had been charged with assisting an escape attempt and would be spending considerable time in prison. He said the two turnkeys whom Pyke had bought off had been dismissed and also charged with aiding and abetting. He told Pyke, with some glee, that one of the turnkeys had been overheard in a nearby tavern boasting about his role in Pyke’s escape bid and the money he was to receive. He reminded Pyke he would die the following morning, adding that such was the interest in Pyke’s execution - an interest that had been further stoked by Pyke’s ‘cowardly’ escape bid - crowds had already started to gather in the street outside Debtors’ Door.

‘If the hangman doesn’t get you,’ the governor said, almost drooling, ‘then the angry mob will.’

Inside the cell Pyke stared at the tarred wall and listened to the lowing of cattle as they were driven into their stalls and pens.

The bells tolled. Outside, beyond the walls of the prison, he heard them baying for his blood; working people who had been gathered since early in the morning drinking, laughing, shouting, singing and, above all, waiting for the greatest show on earth to begin. The scaffold outside Debtors’ Door would now be finished, a single noose hanging from the wooden beam. Across the street, the King of Denmark would be crawling with moneyed flesh. Viewing spots on roofs and up lamp-posts would be taken. The procession of clergymen, sheriffs, visitors and, of course, Pyke began to make its way from the press room down a flight of stone steps into an underground passage.

He was walking down the aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral with a younger woman dressed in white on his arm. Above him the grand dome was full of chirruping blackbirds.

Dead Man’s Walk, they called it. His own father was reading from the scriptures. Emily was next to him. Then it was Foote who was reading, but just his disembodied head. Damnation and forgiveness. Pyke could still taste the sweetness of the wine on his parched lips.

They were walking up some steps and Pyke found himself in a small hall. They waited momentarily. Ahead of them lay Debtors’ Door, and beyond that he could hear the crowd. He could smell them: their excitement, their fear, their hatred of him. Closing his eyes, he saw his own father fall, arms raised, under their stamping boots. He heard his father scream; heard the screams of animals being slaughtered.

Does anyone deserve to die? Do I deserve to die?

When he stepped out of the gloom of the prison into the foggy sunshine, followed by the Ordinary, the clergymen, the under-sheriffs and the visitors, he might have been forgiven for mistaking the squalid din of human noise that greeted him for approval, but almost at once the mood turned ugly: the gallows were pelted with food. The dignitaries held back and waited for the marshals to bring the mob to order. On the gallows, Pyke watched the hangman tug on the noose, to check it was properly attached to the beam. He was ushered towards the beam by Foote, who made a point of neither touching him nor looking at him. Foote waited for the crowd to settle before he turned to address Pyke. His vein-knotted hands shook ever so slightly while he read from the Bible. Standing on the gallows next to him was Sir Richard Fox.

‘You have another moment between this and death, and as a condemned man I implore you in God’s name to tell the truth.’ Fox was staring at him. ‘Have you got anything to repent?’

Edmonton guffawed. He ran his index finger across his bulbous throat.

Pyke said nothing. He felt detached even from himself. He tasted laudanum at the back of his throat. Folk in the crowd gathered below him, a faceless mass of people that stretched as far as he could see up Giltspur Street and along Old Bailey. The hangman was carrying a cloth sack. Pyke looked up and saw himself in the crowd: a scared, orphaned boy. He heard his own youthful sobs. The hangman pushed him towards the beam and put the sack over his head.