The Sweet Smell of Decay (27 page)

‘No, sir. For he then went to Epsom.’

‘Why did he do that?’

A better question would have been –
when
did he do that? Hill had the timings all wrong.

‘I think it was because I advised him, if you will recall.’

‘Ah yes! You had suggested to him earlier that he go to Epsom to make peace with the family of Anne Ormonde.’

‘Aye, sir, well now he did go. I don’t know why he decided to go at this particular time, but I think it may have been to deliver his account of the death of Anne Ormonde and the motives behind it.’

‘I see. That is logical.’

Very logical now that the order of events had been so neatly amended.

‘Aye, well, whatever the reason he went, he was not permitted audience. Neither William Ormonde nor any of his family was willing to speak to him. He was not of their family, of course, and they were in mourning.’

‘Understandable. So he came home again.’

‘No, sir.’

‘No?’

‘No. He went to see a woman called Elizabeth Johnson.’

‘Who is Elizabeth Johnson?’

‘She is an old woman who used to be nanny to Anne Ormonde, and Jane Keeling besides.’

‘Jane Keeling is the daughter of Lord Keeling?’

‘Aye sir, she was. She died of a fever ten years ago.’

‘I see. And why did the accused go to see Elizabeth Johnson?’

‘I don’t know what led him to her house, but once he made acquaintance then I fear that he allowed himself to be led astray once more.’ Hill paused, confident now. The Attorney General saw it, and let him have his moment. ‘She is a very old woman and is known at Epsom for being weak in the head. The accused would not know this, since he does not come from Epsom.’

‘Naturally.’

‘Aye, naturally. Well, she told the accused a tall tale that Jane Keeling took her own life because she was with child, and that the child was fathered by William Ormonde.’

‘How so?’ The Attorney General cut short the hysteria that threatened to engulf the court once more, his whole body proclaiming the absurdity of the idea.

‘Aye, sir – an absurd notion, but the woman is very old and, it is said, is prone to fabricating such stories. Those that know her humour her in this, because she is old and has given many years of service to some great families at Epsom.’

‘Indeed.’ The Attorney General bowed his head. At least they weren’t going to accuse her of being a witch.

‘Aye, well at this the accused became convinced that he had been misled. He became sure that it was Keeling himself that had killed Anne Ormonde, and John Giles besides, as revenge upon William Ormonde.’

‘Ludicrous.’ The Attorney General shook his head doubtfully. ‘That an old woman might peddle strange tales is one thing, that the accused should credit such tales is another. Are you sure it was so?’

‘Yes, sir. I am sure.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, what he did next was proof of it.’ Hill looked at me again. Black bottomless pits. Here we go. The coup de grâce. Keeling had asked me to puff out my chest that the sword would glide easily through my ribs. I had escaped then, but I saw no way out now. Hill kept his eyes on mine as he told the tale of how I had disinterred the body of Jane Keeling. The court exploded in a frenzy of collective rage. There were only two souls that stayed calm while the storm raged above our
heads – the only two that knew the truth of it – myself and Hill. Hill, my old friend and confidant, stood six paces from me, weaving with his tongue the web that would entrap me, watching me with steady black eyes while he did it. Seemed to me that moment lasted many minutes. It was a reckoning of sorts. Slowly the din subsided and the court was silent again, the audience awaiting the final act.

‘What then, Mr Hill?’

‘He left Epsom and returned to London in haste to find Keeling and confront him.’

‘How so, Mr Hill? If he disinterred the body of Jane Keeling then surely he must have been dissuaded from the foul notion he had heard from the lips of Elizabeth Johnson?’

Hill shrugged. ‘The body was ten years old. There is no telling what he thought he had found.’ Very neat.

‘So he flew to London?’

‘Aye, I think that someone at Keeling’s residence was unwise enough to inform him that Keeling was at the church of St Bride’s, praying for the soul of Anne Ormonde.’

‘God have mercy.’ The Attorney General put an arm across his chest and looked to the floor with his eyes closed.

‘The Lord preserveth the faithful,’ replied Hill, adopting the same pose. God have mercy indeed. On Hill’s worm-ridden, crumbly black soul.

‘What happened at the church?’

‘I arrived late,’ Hill shook his head mournfully. ‘I found them in the vestry. Just as I entered I witnessed the accused thrust a knife into Keeling’s heart. He died in my arms.’

‘In my house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord,’ the Attorney General whispered.

And so fell the curtain on a wondrous performance. Of
course the audience did not stand and applaud rapturously, they didn’t shout for more and refuse to cease until the players lined up before them to take a bow. But the effect was the same. The jurors began talking to each other, telling each other what wickedness lurked within the hearts of men, asking themselves if they could truly believe that one man could be capable of such sins, assuring each other that they had a God-given duty to make sure that these sins were punished in public, that the people should see what happens when man gives way to the demons that betimes may cling to his back. When Hill descended from the dock, helped by two clerks, the Attorney General stepped forward and put an arm around his shoulders and uttered sympathetic words. Me? I just sat there, a man condemned.

‘The jury will now retire to consider their verdict,’ announced the judge, in slow sombre tone. ‘They will consider that there are three possible verdicts.’

The jury ceased their pratings and listened to their instructions.

‘Acquittal is not a possible verdict, for the accused hath pleaded self-defence.’ The jurors nodded wisely.

‘To deliver a verdict of self-defence the jury must be of the opinion that Lord Keeling set about the accused with murderous intent. In this case it hath been established that the accused sought out Lord Keeling whilst of unsound mind and with the blood of Matthew Hewitt already on his hands. A verdict of self-defence would not be a wise verdict under such circumstance.’ The jurors all faithfully shook their heads.

‘A verdict of provocation doth imply that the accused was motivated to kill Lord Keeling because of the sins of Lord Keeling against his person. In this case there is no evidence
that the Lord Chief Justice was guilty of any such actions.’ The jurors smiled as if the notion was absurd.

‘We are left with a verdict of guilty. The indictment was for the wicked murder of Lord Keeling.’ The judge looked up at the jury. ‘In this case, though it is not usual, I am willing that you consider the other crimes that this man may have committed, namely the murder of Matthew Hewitt and the desecration of the grave of Jane Keeling. You will retire until you are all of one mind, without food nor water.’

They trailed out in a line, following one another across the bench to a door at the back of the court. Some of them looked at me as they passed, others would not. What I saw in their faces left me without hope.

‘Up you get.’ One of my guards lifted me gently by the elbow. I was led back across the court in the opposite direction, out towards the holding cells.

To my pleasant surprise they didn’t put the manacles back on my wrists and ankles. No doubt they didn’t think it worth the effort given that mine would be a short wait. One of the guards stopped on his way out, turned swiftly, and put in my hand a piece of paper, surreptitiously. Then he was gone and the door was locked.

Everyone stood.

‘Harry Lytle. Thou art condemned for the murder of Thomas, Lord Keeling. Thou art condemned for the murder of Matthew Solomon Hewitt. Thou art condemned for the wrongful desecration of the grave of Jane Bridget Keeling.’

Not surprising.

‘Ye will be taken from Newgate prison, tomorrow, to Tyburn. At that place thee will be hung by the neck then cut
down before thee have expired. Thine entrails will be drawn from your body and burnt before thee. Thy body will be cut into four pieces and thy head will be posted for all to see so that thy death shall be a warning unto others. May God have—’

‘Excuse me,’ I said very clearly, that all would hear. Then I read out the words on the piece of paper given to me by the guard. ‘I appeal to the King for a pardon.’

The judge looked at me as if I was mad and the Attorney General looked at me as if I was hiding some intelligent plan. Then the judge pulled a face as if to say, do as you will, and finished – ‘May God have mercy on thy soul.’

The manacles went back on as soon as we stepped out of the courtroom and back we went to Newgate. In the coach I wondered who it was had written the note, and why? I knew that any man might ask the King for a pardon, but I had not thought to do so since there seemed so little remedy. It was clear to me now that whilst I had been an instrument of Shrewsbury’s, part of the grand scheme of things to clear Keeling from his path, that I was always to have been sacrificed at the end of it. I suppose that is why someone had persuaded my father to write a letter. I suppose that is why Hill had been appointed as my guardian – a face that I would trust – to act as a conduit that Shrewsbury might easily wipe his hands clean. I was another Richard Joyce, a little fellow that none would miss. I say this without any self-pity – for I have no desire to be a big fellow that all would miss. My partaking of this journey
had reinforced my view that there was little good in the world, and that which did exist was pale, unformed and wriggling next to the doughty forces of the two selfs – self-preservation and self-advancement. So goodbye to Harry Lytle, I supposed. Yet the question remained – who had written me that note, and why?

At Newgate they led me not to the stone hold, but to a single cell on the ground floor. There was a barred window high up the wall casting a soft light onto a dry straw-covered floor. It was bare and almost clean. There was a table and on it was a plate of meat and a flagon of ale. This was something! Who had paid for that, besides?

Sitting at the table I ate and drank as best I could. It was not so difficult for I was getting used to the restrictions, and the sores on my wrists and ankles had begun to rub rough. So this was to be where I spent my last night? Unless my appeal was granted and I was to receive the King’s pardon. Would he not at least cast an eye over an affair that included the killing of his Chief Justice? But what if he did – the evidence had been so artfully caressed that to any man’s eye it would appear that I was guilty, surely? Unless Shrewsbury’s deviations were not yet fully unwound. Perhaps it was in his interest that I be condemned, yet then pardoned; that I might not be killed, yet still be restricted in the tales that I could tell. For had not the trial confirmed the official view of events and provided neat endings for all loose ends? If Shrewsbury had one ounce of a heart beating behind those bony ribs perhaps this was a way of expressing it. Perhaps it was a promise extracted by Hill in exchange for his damned testimony. I began to calculate the minutes and hours that it would take a man to ride to the King’s Palace and then back again to Newgate. It wasn’t
a long journey. What did they do if the King was indisposed or not at the Palace? I didn’t know, though I harboured a fear that in such cases the execution was never stayed. These were the thoughts that trooped in circles about my mind as I lay there in lonely contemplation as the light of the day waned and reddened.

Until just before dusk.

‘You has a visitor.’ The gaoler opened the door and stood there unsteadily.

I don’t know who I was expecting, but it wasn’t the Attorney General. He walked in briskly, eyeing my cell as if it were too grand for the likes of me.

‘Good evening, Mr Lytle,’ he declared, pulling the door closed behind him. ‘Please stay seated, I will stand.’ Dark curls tickled his forehead and his head was bare, no periwig now, concerned, no doubt, that it did not become lice infested.

I stood anyway. ‘Have you brought the result of my appeal?’

‘Hah!’ he snapped. ‘The road to Whitehall is long and winding. If you harbour hopes that a man may ride that way and back before your execution, then you are a fool. Is it not already plain to you that you are to die tomorrow?’

It was like a stab to the heart. He looked at me with curling lip, and the hint of a sneer, the face of a man that believes he has done a job well and will brook no argument with any man that would argue otherwise.

‘Why, then, have you come?’

He smiled at me with his shining teeth and fixed me with a stare that willed me to see the world through the same eyes. ‘To tell you that your appeal will not succeed. I would not have you wasting your time indulging in idle fantasy that you will live more than another twelve hours. I am sure that you
have many reparations to make with the Lord your God.’

‘That is very good of you. You must be very busy.’

He showed no signs of moving. ‘Indeed I am. It would make my journey worthwhile were you to show me the paper that you read from.’

So that was it. He wanted to know who had prompted me to appeal in the first place. He must be worried to come all the way here just to ask me it. Poor fellow. I fetched the paper from my pocket where it sat screwed up. Unfolding it, I read it once more, and held it out to this awful man. One arm snaked out, whereupon I placed the paper in my mouth and swallowed it whole.

His face froze, then relaxed. ‘No matter, Lytle. I will retrieve it from your guts tomorrow morning. Farewell.’ Turning on his heel, he was gone.

I really didn’t see why he had to be so mean-spirited. But that was his affair. I had my own affair to worry about.

Next morning it was raining and windy. I knew this to be so because it was a drop of rain that woke me, landing on my nose. It could not have made its way through the high barred window without some help from the wind. I was quite pleased, all things considered. A rainy day meant smaller crowds and that all concerned would want to hurry things along so that they may spend as little time possible outside getting wet.

It didn’t feel like my last day on earth.

I decided to be calm and reasonable, in the hope that everyone else would be calm and reasonable too. I didn’t want to spend the day wrapped up in tight knots. In truth, I was very tired, having lain awake all the night, contemplating the silence. As the sun rose so did the fear subside a little.

It was still several hours before the key turned in the lock.

‘Good morning!’ I didn’t stand, for fear they would assume that I was lunging at them, just sat with my legs and arms out straight, manacles to the fore.

It was the old cleric from St Andrew Hubbard that entered, a short, old man with white hair that stood up straight in untidy clumps. The same fellow that had attended to Joyce. He breathed into my face and I nearly died there and then – how much had this fellow had to drink?

‘Stand up,’ a dour-faced fellow ordered me. He wore a strange brown skullcap and a long, brown leather apron. Odd fish. His hand was as big as Dowling’s and he held me by the shirt with it while he looked into my eyes, as though he was searching for something. I looked at his eyebrows so he wouldn’t think that I was staring at him. Then he let me go, roughly, and marched out.

‘He is the executioner,’ the cleric slurred while fumbling with a large wooden cross tied to a piece of thick cord. ‘He is very good at his job. You are fortunate.’ He held out the cord around my neck and let the cross bounce gently upon my chest. So, I had been measured up. A day of reckoning, indeed.

There were four other strangers in the cell stood officiously, but I didn’t look at them. They were big and very ugly, ill-disposed towards me, I felt sure. The cleric drew out a Bible from his inside pocket and began to read out snatches from it. Either he had poor eyesight, else he had drunk enough to render him unable, for few of the words were intelligible. His two eyes worked as they would, rarely arriving in the same place at the same time. We all waited patiently for him to complete his task.

Then the time came to leave. They attached a chain to the manacles that bound my wrists and led me forward like a dog. We walked down the main corridor out towards the entrance. Men stood at the bars to the public cells staring out. Some watched seriously, perhaps contemplating their own demise. Others leered and shouted, a couple even spat at me, though thankfully they succeeded only in hitting the sleeves of my shirt. Someone else could wash that later.

It was a relief on climbing into the cart to find that I would not be making the journey alone that morning. Rain still fell, though not hard, and there sat on a rough cloth sack was my travelling companion. Younger than me, and very thin, he sat with his knees bent outwards and ankles together, leaning forward with his wrists against the cart floor in front of his feet. He looked up at me with dull eyes beneath oily, black hair.

‘Good morning!’ I greeted him, determined that we not sit morose. I calculated that we needed each other’s good cheer if we were to support ourselves through the abuse we would surely experience on the way to Tyburn.

‘Hardly that!’ he mumbled. ‘Why are you so happy this day?’

‘I think I might be released. Though they found me guilty, I asked for the King’s pardon.’

‘Many ask for the King’s pardon, friend. Not many receive it. None have received it that I know of while on the cart.’

‘Methinks it is necessary to look on the bright side.’ Which was true. Though it was but a silly notion, the longer I managed to stay calm then the shorter the time I would suffer.

‘Methinks it is the sign of a simpleton, the kind of nonsense spake by those that have not yet understood what fate beholds
them. When you see the scaffold and the crowds that surround it, then ye will start moaning and crying.’ He shrugged, ‘I have seen it.’

‘Are you complete with what fate awaits you?’

‘I will not know that for sure until I find myself standing there with the rope round my neck. If I ask the Lord God for forgiveness before I drop, then I will know that I am complete. If I shit my trousers and start panting like a dog, then I will know otherwise.’ He looked at me. ‘You will shit your trousers and pant like a dog.’

‘I wager I will not,’ I assured him.

‘I accept,’ he grinned.

I liked this fellow. I wondered what he’d done. ‘First to Sepulchras. To partake of wine, I believe?’

‘Indeed, though it is not a great vintage.’

The crowd was thin outside Newgate and at Sepulchras. We drank as much wine as they would give us, while the clerk read the prayers. A pale-looking fellow, weedy and yellow, he looked ill to me. He had a habit of snorting phlegm up his throat upon pausing for breath between verses. An unpleasant custom that rather spoilt the effect of his words. The small crowd didn’t appear to be disappointed, for their attentions were fixed upon us, regarding us with a hungry leer, keenly anticipating that one or other of us would lose control and give way to a bout of frantic pleading. The soldiers that accompanied us would be wishing for a quiet day. The one that walked closest to me frowned unhappily; nose and mouth bunched up like someone had tied up his snout with twine. He kept flicking sideways glances at me as if concerned that I would laugh at him. A strange idea under the circumstances.

We took our winter flowers and pinned them to our shirts,
like gentlemen. The cart made good time up the road towards Tyburn, with the rain giving way to a steady drizzle. The crowds that there were shouted and cursed, but the guard that walked with us almost outnumbered them. It was a quiet journey compared to some I’d witnessed, and by the time we arrived we had barely enough cabbages to open a shop. I’d seen men have to be carried to the scaffold barely conscious from the batterings they’d taken on the cart. We should have counted ourselves fortunate, I suppose, yet I felt a sudden wistful grief that somehow London was full of people that had woken up that morning, looked out of the window and said to themselves ‘Ah – Harry Lytle is to be executed this day. Ne’er mind – it’s raining – let’s to the Crowne instead.’ What would I have given to be in the Crowne that morning?

We talked all the way, a good way to take your mind off what was to come. His name was Roger North and he was condemned for robbing men on the road to Epsom. He was a tobyman, in other words, and I had never met a tobyman before. It wasn’t such a glamorous life he described, even without the unhappy ending. He had been betrayed by a colleague of his that had objected to his flowery tales of brave words and valiant deeds. They had contested a lady’s hand in a tavern one night, and North had won. Next morning he’d awoken with empty arms and a sword at his eye.

As we got closer to Tyburn, so the crowds began to swell and thicken. By the time we reached the foot of the hill they were five or six deep on either side of us. Now the guards had to earn their money, pushing and prodding with their long pikes to keep the road free. I found myself scanning the throng, seeking familiar faces, people that I knew. Not a fruitful way to pass the time, I knew; yet I could not help it. Quite suddenly
the prospect of death felt real. It was at this time that Joyce’s companions had lost their composure, so I recalled Dowling relating. The drink was all drunk, and it was time for repose. Roger North watched me carefully for sign of panic, I knew. He himself remained composed, though the veins on his face now looked very green against his marble-white skin.

At the scaffold the crowds were thick, swarming and buzzing. Galleries had been erected on either side and not a seat was to be had. I looked around for just one familiar face but saw none. Ugly faces, drunk and lairy. I ducked to avoid an orange. North was hit on the back of the head by a hard, young apple. He gritted his teeth and looked angry. All the faces I looked into were bleary and hard, impatient for the show to begin. No respect for death, I felt, and it was
my
death – surely it deserved
some
respect? I felt more like a player on the stage than a man about to reconcile himself with the Lord, unhappily aware of an expectation to perform – or be damned.

We stopped. I stood up and never had I felt so tall. The crowd were all looking at me. I scanned the galleries. Men sat forward with their elbows on their knees staring intently. Women sat too, heads stretched back over their shoulders to talk to their neighbours. They were out there and I was here, with Roger North, exposed and afraid. Stepping down off the cart was a relief. The soldier that helped me step down cast me a quick glance, assessing my state of mind with expert eye, no doubt. It was so damn noisy! No longer could we see above the heads of the vast gathering. It was like a tunnel opened up before us walled with people. We were pulled forwards by our chains, desperate to stay on our feet and not slide over in the slippery brown mud. No man wanted to die with wet brown filth on the seat of his pants. The scaffold waited for us ahead.
It looked so small from here. The horses danced next to it, skittish and nervous, ready to hold us beneath the gallows. A wall of people barred any attempt to flee.