No, sir, he did not.
While the Judge was talking, he drifted closer to the railings and stared at the memorials they enclosed. I followed him. One of the inscriptions had been more recently cut than the others:
Erected in Memory
of
Francis de Lancey Wintour, D.D., M.A.
Fellow of Kings College, New York
Son of William Wintour, Esqre
Died 21 June 1776
Aged 57 years
When the rebels occupied this city at the start of the war, Wintour said, they inflamed the Republican riff-raff and sought out all the prominent Tories they could find. Age and infirmity was no barrier to them. My poor brother Francis spoke his mind to the Whigs, just as he had done before the war. He urged them to lay down their arms and return to their natural allegiance. Wintour gripped one of the spikes of the railings and turned aside. And then, he continued in a lower voice, the mob came to his house, and broke down the door, and dragged him in his nightshirt into the street. He cried out, God bless King George. They placed him on a rail and paraded him through the streets with loud huzzas. Yes, and there were soldiers there too, and city militia men who had dined at my own table, though afterwards they denied it. They were laughing, sir can you credit it? They were laughing while they persecuted an old, infirm scholar in the name of what they call liberty and the rights of man.
I took Mr Wintours arm. My dear sir pray, you must not distress yourself any more. Let us walk home.
No. He shook off my hand. No, sir it is better you should know all. They paraded my unhappy brother outside General Washingtons windows, and that gallant officer raised his hat to them and returned their huzzas. They had it in mind to plunge poor Francis in the Fresh Water Pond and then to run him out of the city. But God was merciful to my brother and permitted death to supervene. He suffered a rush of blood to the head and he died instantly of an apoplexy.
Let us go home, sir, I said. I am so sorry.
But I wish I could find the goat. He released the railing and stood straight. She was my brothers, you see, and a particular favourite. And Josiah too our father gave him to my brother when he was a boy. After my brother died, they both came to me with what was left of his estate. The man and the goat. And Josiah likes to bring the goat here sometimes to see her old master and his resting place. It is it is a harmless practice, is it not? I could not find it in myself to forbid it. Perhaps the animal has simply strayed. Josiah is most upset. I shall place an advertisement in the newspaper.
He allowed me to lead him away from the grave. Once we had left the churchyard, he released my arm and stepped out almost briskly in the direction of Warren Street.
I had some news today, sir, I said, hoping to steer the old mans attention to safer subjects. The court has tried the man accused of Mr Picketts killing. They found him guilty.
Wintour stopped abruptly. Really? So he will hang?
Yes, sir. Tomorrow morning.
God rest his soul. There is no doubt about his guilt, I suppose?
I attended the preliminary hearing, I said. He was wearing Mr Picketts shoes and had his ring.
Did he confess?
Only to theft, and only of the shoes. He claims that he stumbled across the body.
Mr Wintour shrugged. Well, the court must go by the evidence, not what an accused man says in his own defence. Though one can hardly call it a court in any proper sense, since the judges sit without a jury and none of them has more than a smattering of the law. Still poor Pickett an unhappy end to an unhappy life.
I thought perhaps that, in view of the acquaintance, Mrs Wintour and Mrs Arabella should be told.
You may leave that to me, Mr Savill. I take it kindly that you have given us a little warning. I should not have liked them to have come across it in a newspaper or from a friends gossip. He stopped and shook me warmly by the hand. I shall trouble you no further, sir. I am quite restored now.
We said goodbye. I resumed my walk back to my office. It was only as I was turning into Broadway that I remembered the goat.
On Monday morning, Josiah had lost his masters goat in Trinity churchyard. In the early evening of the same day, I had seen another goat not far away in the remains of Deyes Street. A mulatto boy had been leading it over a pile of rubble.
The same goat?
Chapter Thirteen
That night I did not hear the crying child. I turned this way and that on the overstuffed feather mattress, drifting in and out of a doze. I woke to full consciousness before five oclock and could not settle to sleep again.
I am going to see a man hanged.
When I rose, I stayed in my chamber. I took a little tea but did not eat anything, feeling that for some obscure but powerful reason one should not attend the death of another man with a full belly. I tried to pray but found that would not answer. I read a chapter or two from the First Epistle to the Corinthians. That was no use either. Next I took up The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which Augusta had given me when we parted. She believed it did a mans career no harm if he was known to spend his leisure hours engaged in serious reading of an uplifting nature. But the book irritated me so much and so quickly that I tossed the volume into the empty grate before I had read a couple of sentences.
I contemplated writing to Augusta. But I discovered that I had nothing to write that would be fit for her to read. I would much rather have written a line or two to Lizzie. But how could one say words like these to a beloved child?
In a moment I shall step out to watch a man be strangled on a string, and I wish to God I could do anything else in the world instead, even being seasick for eternity or having all my teeth pulled.
Why did this agitate me so much? It was almost as if I myself were the condemned man, as if I, not Virgil, had taken the life of another and deserved to die.
By seven oclock I could no longer stand the confinement of my chamber. I left the house and walked down to the North River, where the air was somewhat cooler. By a quarter to eight, I was in front of the Upper Barracks.
Despite the short notice of the hanging, a crowd had gathered on the level ground outside the wall of the barracks. People of all conditions were talking, laughing, eating, drinking, buying, selling, shuffling to and fro or simply standing in silence. There was nothing sombre or discontented about them. They were merely waiting and they were perfectly good-humoured about it.
As I pushed my way through the throng I glimpsed a familiar face: the negro with the scars on his cheeks, the man whom I had seen in Canvas Town. He was wearing the faded red coat he had worn on Monday when the soldiers had carried Picketts body away. He was playing a jig on a penny whistle with his hat on the ground before him. Beside him was a boy with a tray of raw meat at his feet. Flies buzzed above the meat.
Mr Savill! This way, sir.
Mr Savill! This way, sir.
Major Marryot was standing by the wicket set in the main gate of the barrack yard, waving his cane to attract my attention.
Cutlets and fricassees, chops and casseroles, shrieked the boy, his high voice cutting through the noise of the crowd. Fresh goat, tender and sweet.
I glanced in the lads direction. He was a mulatto with skin the colour of dark honey. The crowd shifted and the boy vanished.
We are pressed for time, Mr Savill, Marryot called, and he rapped the gate with his cane.
The sergeant of the guard ticked off my name on a list pinned to the guardroom door. Marryot took me through to a little parlour with a view of the gallows behind the barracks. The noise of the crowd was still audible.
They wont see anything, you know, Marryot said testily as we were walking along, slapping his boot with his cane. It was as if he took the crowd as a personal insult. This is a military hanging an entirely private affair. But still those damnable jackals gather outside the gates.
The Provost Marshal, a red-faced Irishman, was already standing at the open window and calling instructions to his subordinates. The scaffold had been built out from the main building, to which it was linked at first-floor level by a wooden bridge. He acknowledged us with the most cursory of bows.
He wont need that long a drop, he shouted to the sergeant who was arranging matters on the scaffold.
No one spoke after that. The Provost Marshal stayed by the window. Even at this hour there was a sour tang of brandy about him. Marryot sucked his teeth and scowled at the floor. I put my hands in my pockets and leaned against the wall, pretending an ease I did not feel.
My fingers felt the outlines of something small and hard-edged in the right-hand pocket. It was the ivory die I had found on Picketts body. A gentlemans die on a gentlemans corpse. I took it out and rolled it on my palm. A three.
Townley entered, with Noak like a terrier at his heels. Good day to you all, gentlemen we are not come too late, I hope?
Damned incompetent fools, the Provost Marshal said to the world at large. They cannot even manage to hang a rogue without assistance.
Somewhere a bell chimed the hour. Townley pulled out his watch and compared it with the clock on the wall.
Theyre late, Marryot said. Devilish unkind to the prisoner.
The miserable, waiting silence embraced us once again. Noak consulted his pocketbook, turning the pages rapidly. Townley massaged his nose, applying pressure to the left side as if trying to push it so it would stand at a right angle to the rest of his face rather than a few degrees out of true.
I stared out of the window at the gallows. It consisted of a crossbeam supported by an upright post at either end. Three black chains hung from the crossbeam.
At last, at eight minutes past eight, the door re-opened. One by one, half a dozen men emerged on to the scaffold. First came the Provost Marshals sergeant, strutting like a cock in his own barnyard. He was followed by two soldiers with the condemned man shuffling between them. Next came a youthful parson, whose limbs seemed too long for his body and not entirely under their owners control. Another soldier brought up the rear with a canvas bag swinging from his hand.
Marryot removed his hat. The other gentlemen followed suit.
It is quite a military affair, as you see, Townley observed to me in a low voice, fanning himself with his hat. The army usually handles this unpleasant necessity for us the Commandant prefers it so. Of course, the Provost Marshal has everything to hand here, so it is convenient for everyone. He is unhappily obliged to oversee a great many executions he is responsible for our rebel prisoners of war, you apprehend.
Virgils arms were bound together in front of him and his ankles were shackled with a chain. Once they reached the scaffold, his escort pushed him directly under the crossbeam. The soldiers released his arms, though they stayed close to him.
The little slave looked about him, his head turning this way and that. His eyes found the window of the room where the gentlemen were waiting for him to die so that they might have their breakfast. His head became still. He flexed his wrists. His hands flapped and twitched. His lips moved but no sound came from them.
Come along, come along, the Provost Marshal cried. We dont have all day.
Virgil stared at the window.
No one else spoke. I prayed silently, wordlessly and surely meaninglessly: for how could God be here?
The soldier with the bag came forward. The men in the room became still, watching the soldier take out a nightcap from his bag, which he placed on Virgils head. With surprising gentleness he drew it down over the negros face and patted him on his shoulder as a man touches a nervous horse to reassure him.
No one spoke, either on the scaffold or in the room that overlooked it. The nightcap had transformed Virgil from a person into something not quite human. It stripped the individuality from him. All that was left was a bundle of rags trembling like a shrivelled leaf in a breeze.
The soldier took the rope from the same bag and looped it through the end of the chain. He tied a knot to secure it. He lifted the noose at the other end of the rope, glanced at the Provost Marshal, and then placed the noose on the shoulders of the condemned man. He tightened it and stood to one side.
As if the touch of the noose had been a signal, Virgil cried out God, God, God. His voice was muffled and not loud but it scraped against the surface of my mind like a rusty nail. He would not stop. God, God, God.
The sergeant stepped forward and checked the knots. The clergyman opened his prayer book and began to speak, though his voice was too low to hear what he was saying through the open window. But I knew what the words must be: I am the resurrection and the life.
The slaves legs gave way. He would have collapsed if the soldiers had not seized him under the arms. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. The parson stood back.
All this time, Virgil was crying, God, God, God.
The sergeant turned towards the window. The Provost Marshal raised his arm and let it fall. The sergeant stamped twice. An assistant beneath the scaffold released the trap.
God, God, God
The planks on which Virgil was standing gave way. He vanished into the darkness under the scaffold with a violent clatter. There was an instant of silence, broken by the beat of an invisible drum.
Virgil dangled in the air, his feet kicking. His hands fluttered and then the fingers clenched into fists. He was dancing and twisting on the rope. He tried to raise his hands towards his neck but his arms were bound to his sides at the elbows.
The Provost Marshal leaned on the windowsill. Goddamn it. I told you to make this quick. I have not had my breakfast yet.
Two hands appeared from the darkness under the scaffold. They gripped the ankles of the hanging man and pulled sharply downwards. A spasm of movement rippled through Virgils body. And then at last he was still.
Chapter Fourteen
The air is a little cooler, I find, Mrs Arabella said. But we rarely sit here in the evening because Mrs Wintour finds it fatiguing to walk so far.