Now the convicted murderers were executed immediately but all those sentenced to die for offences short of murder were referred to the King in Council. This was the last chance for beyond this lay only an appeal to the Secretary of State and that required more money and influence than Peg’s friends — even had they been trying — could be supposed to have.
On the night of the 15th. of December a number of the company went to Newgate to wait for the news of Peg’s fate, for the Recorder came directly to the prison to report on the decisions of the King, arriving from Windsor late at night. The rest of us passed the time in eager anticipation while I imagined the scene that had been described to me: the anxious crowd of relatives and well-wishers gathered at the grim gatehouse, the approach of the carriage with its out-riders, the Governor going to meet Black Jack (the Recorder) accompanied by the Ordinary (the chaplain), and then the long wait while the latter went from cell to cell giving each of the condemned the decision for life or death. And then finally the Warden went to the gatehouse and read out the list of respited prisoners to the crowd of relatives and friends.
At about two in the morning Sally, Jack, Meg (weeping hysterically) and the rest burst in to say that Peg had not been among the fortunate ones. His execution was six days hence.
As soon as the hubbub that greeted this had died down, Barney, Jack, and Sam clapped their hands and Barney shouted: “Listen to this. Our little Christmas party in Henrietta-street. It’s to be brung for’ard by a few days.”
Amid the shouts of surprise and protest that arose at this, Barney and the other two smiled at each other.
“What day?” asked Billingsgate.
“Nivver you mind,” Barney replied.
“Why the change?” cried out Will.
“On account of the Cat’s-meat-man,” Barney replied. “For he thinks it’s going to be on Christmas-eve, so this way we can ketch him out.”
“No we can’t,” Will objected. “Not if one of us is spying for him.”
Barney, Sam and Jack were smirking at each other with self-satisfaction.
“But there ain’t nobody nosing for him,” Jack said.
A hail of questions flew at the three: “What do you mean? You said a-fore that there’s a spy amongst us?”
“There was,” Barney said. “But there ain’t no more.”
“Do you mean it was Nan?” asked Will indignantly.
“That’s right,” said Sam. “Me and Barney and Jack found out it was her. Arter that time all on us talked about it when the boy here brung the message from the Cat’s-meat-man, the three on us talked it over and agreed that it wouldn’t do jist to find out who Dan’el’s nose was and make ’em quiet because then he’d know he had to try another way to steal a march on us. We settled that we’d have to do it so as he wouldn’t smoke that we’d found out Nan was his nose. That way he’d stick to his design. So Nan will have told him she was drove out of the company on account of Sal put the mark on her.”
Jack broke in: “See, we agreed that I would tell Sally we knowed Nan was the Cat’s-meat-man’s nose and get her to let on as how she was jealous of her and me.”
There were good-natured roars and whistles at this. Jack glanced at Sally with a smile and she stared around with a bold grin in her pleasure at her own ingenuity.
“And Sally come up trumps,” said Barney. “So Nan thinks that Sally planted that jewellery on her out of pure spite, and that it don’t have nothing to do with her being Pulvertaft’s nose.”
As he was speaking Sally accepted gracefully the tributes that were offered to her play-acting abilities.
Only Will was not smiling. “I don’t believe Nan was no spy,” he said.
“Oh don’t you, Will?” jeered Barney. “Well Jack and me dodged her one night and she went straight to Dan’el’s crib down the Old Mint.”
Will flushed with annoyance at being so conclusively defeated. I remembered the occasion when I had overheard Barney and Jack immediately before Nan’s trial. Presumably this was at last the full explanation of their conversation, though I was still a little puzzled when I tried to make it fit.
“Now we haven’t said what the new day for the fakement is to be,” Barney went on. “And we ain’t going to until the very last moment. And so that nobody won’t tell the Cat’s-meat-man even by mistake, nobody ain’t ’lowed to go out alone from now until it’s done.”
“What?” jeered Will. “Not even you?”
“In course I can,” said Barney. “But nobody else. Not even Jack nor Sam. When we go out to work together, everybody will watch everyone else to see that nobody don’t meet nobody or pass on no message. And we’ll be guarding the door here to make sure nobody don’t try to sneak out.”
This was not well received but the necessity for it was acknowledged, so it was accepted with an ill grace.
So from that moment someone guarded the street-door — the only way of getting out of the house — day and night.
The next day — or, rather, after the next period of sleep — Sally met me in the hall and suddenly said: “Come on and get ready. We’re going up West.”
“What for?” I asked, believing it was late at night.”
’Cause Barney says so,” she answered. “Now hurry up.”
“I’m ready now,” I said.
She looked at me in distaste: “Is them the best togs you’ve got?” (She was in a blue silk gown and a cachemire shawl.)
“They’re the only ones I’ve got.”
“Then no wonder you need some more,” she said enigmatically. “Come on, Sam,” she called and when he had appeared from the Red Room we were let out by Will who was keeping the door.
I was surprised to discover that it was daylight. But even so, I almost felt frightened to leave the house after spending all that time there. It seemed that Sam was to accompany us, but as we walked through the half-built city in the direction of Vauxhall-bridge-road, I could get no answer to the questions I put, for Sam and Sally were too busily engaged in a flirtatious conversation to notice me.
We picked up a coach at the first stand and although the driver stared at my ragged appearance, his doubts must have been laid to rest by the magnificence of my companions, for Sam was also finely-dressed. Sam ordered him to take us to Shepherds-market and then wait there to take us on to Bond-street where, as he rather impressively expressed it, we had further business.
“What are we doing at Shepherds-market?” I asked.
“You can’t go into a respectable shop like that,” Sally remarked as we boarded the vehicle, without bestowing any illumination upon me.
They sat together opposite me and as the coach moved off Sam started trying to put his arm round her. At first she giggled coquettishly and urged him in the most provoking way not to be so silly, but after a time she grew irritated.
“Do leave off, Sam,” she said impatiently, and he grew sulky and stared out of window.
When we reached the entrance to the market we left the coach and went to a shop selling second-hand clothes. I felt a keen sense of disappointment that I was not to be clothed in the style of the rest, yet even so I entertained some reluctance to accept a gift from them. However, there was nothing for it and I helped Sally to choose me some decent clothes.
“Aren’t these rather dear?” I asked when I saw what she had selected.
She laughed: “Barney’s gave me more than enough.”
“Why should Barney spend money on clothes for me?” I asked Sally.
She and Sam exchanged glances.
“You want to look nice for going to Tuck-up Fair, don’t you?” she asked. “And, besides, you don’t know but that you might be able to return the favour.”
I was wondering what she meant by this when the shop-keeper showed me where to go in the back premises to try on the clothes we had chosen.
To my surprise, Sam left Sally and stationed himself by the back-door. Removing my rags, I attired myself in my new garments and reappeared before Sally wh
o pronounced herself satisfied — though in rather grudging terms.
“What shall I do with these, miss?” asked the shop-keeper, indicating my old rags.
Sally shuddered: “Burn ’em.”
We returned to the carriage and it moved off again.
Some way along Piccadilly Sam suddenly said: “I’ve got something to do. I’ll find you again at the shop.”
He stuck his head out and attracted the driver’s attention and when the coach stopped, jumped down and disappeared amongst the crowd.
“Why are we going to Bond-street?” I asked.
“To order your new togs,” Sally answered irritably. “Bless me, you are slow, Johnnie. How old are you?”
I told her and she answered: “You seem less, perhaps because you’re not tall of your age. I’ve a brother about your years, or a little younger. But he seems older than you in some ways.”
This was a very interesting piece of information, especially if Barney really were her uncle. If that were more than a figure of speech or a jest, then it occurred to me that Barney might be not the husband — as I had assumed — but the brother-in-law of Mrs Digweed. In that case, Sally’s younger brother might well be none other than Joey. I tried to remember if he or his mother had mentioned an elder daughter and if so, whether they had referred to her name.
“Where is your brother? What’s his name?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s living with my mam and dad,” she said. “I ain’t seen ’em, though, since I’ve been with Barney.”
“Is he really your uncle?”
I longed to ask her if his second name was Digweed but I remembered the undertaking I had given him not to mention that name.
She looked at me sharply: “We don’t arst each other no questions in the company. It ain’t businesslike, Barney says. So don’t you ever do it again. Is that understood?”
I nodded.
“And don’t answer none, either. Whoever arsts you,” she said meaningfully.
We had reached Bond-street by now and when Sally had paid the fare we entered a magnificent tailor’s establishment where I was measured for a complete costume. As this ritual was being concluded Sam returned, strolling into the shop as he lit a cheroot like any young buck about town.
“Don’t let on to no-one that I made off, will you?” he asked off-handedly.
As we travelled back in another hackney-chariot, I felt pleased with myself as I anticipated my appearance in my fine new clothes. But why had Sam broken Barney’s injunction?
All during the week that followed my companions speculated on Peg’s circumstances and state of mind and took pleasure in enlightening my ignorance by telling me about the customs and rituals that attended upon judicial death. We were all going to the hanging and had to be there early to obtain good places, so on the eve of the execution there was to be a “rantipole” at the end of which we would set off for Newgate. My new clothes had arrived the day before and so this was my first opportunity to appear in them on a worthy occasion. While the others danced to Sam’s fiddle, I sat beside Barney and he described to me how at this very moment Peg and the other condemned prisoners who were to hang with him would be attending chapel, and would be preached to on the subject of death, sitting in a pew painted black and with a row of coffins draped in black laid out before them in which their mortal remains would lie the following day.
“Poor old Peg,” Bob sighed. “Do you reckon he’ll die game or chicken?”
“Game,” Barney replied. “I’ll lay you a crown at six to four agin it.”
“How did Peg come to be working with the Cat’s-meat-man?” I asked Barney when Bob had accepted these odds. “I mean, if he suspected him of ’peaching on his brother?”
Jack and Sally, who had been whirling round the room, now threw themselves onto the sopha near us.
“Well, it’s like this. Ever since Sam and Jack and me gived over the sack-’em-up lay, the Cat’s-meat-man and Jerry Isbister has been fighting it out between ’em. Then about a year ago the Cat’s-meat-man outwitted him just like he got the better of me. It seems he made it up to Peg and told him he didn’t believe no more that he had a hand in ’peaching on his brother.”
There was laughter at this and Jack cried: “Fancy Peg being such a flatt!”
“And he bribed him, too,” Barney went on, “to lure old Jerry into a trap down the Borough. There was a fierce mill by all accounts and old Jerry was soundly thrashed. One of his men got pinked. And that was the end of Jerry’s company. He’s had to go back into the carting line, I hear. Peg started working with the Cat’s-meat-man but now he’s ’peached on him, in revenge for his brother, I b’lieve, for I’ll wager that was his game all along.”
“Did you say someone was stabbed?” I asked.
“That’s right,” Barney said off-handedly. “Who was it, do you know, Bob?”
“A cove called Jem, I heerd. Dead.”
I felt my heart pounding. I remembered seeing him lying in the gutter but I had never thought of this.
Without stopping to think what I was saying, I turned to Jack and blurted out: “Did you see who pinked him?”
There was a silence and the others looked from me to Jack in amazement. It was not so much my words that surprised them as Jack’s response: he turned quite white and stammered something. Barney watched us both closely and then said to me:
“Why, I don’t believe you’ve understood the half of what I’ve told you. Jack wasn’t working with Isbister then. That was years back.”
“That’s right,” Jack said, smiling in a rather uneasy manner.
Sally was staring at Jack in dismay and though I tried not to look at him I caught his eye a few minutes later and found him watching me narrowly. My slip had dispelled the earlier conviviality. We fell silent and I watched Sam fiddling furiously, his golden teeth glinting from the depths of his black beard as he smiled and nodded his head at the dancers while he threaded his way through them. I saw Barney glance at me and then at Jack several times.
“Time to be off,” Barney said after a few minutes.
While Bob hurried out to bring hackney-coaches from the nearest stand, I went to fetch my new great-coat for the weather was taking a frosty turn.
Jem dead. And murdered, in effect, by Peg who had been in league with Pulvertaft to lure his companions into the trap at Southwark. Perhaps oddly in view of what I had just learned, I felt a sudden revulsion at the thought of seeing him hanged.
Coming back down those dangerous stairs in the darkness I heard a sound on the upper landing and was suddenly seized from behind and my head banged against the wall. In the faint moonlight that came through the window I could just make out the face that was now thrust into mine — the features so unlike those of the habitually good-natured and handsome Jack.
“Why did you say that?” he demanded.
“It was a mistake! I didn’t see you.” Then, foolishly, I added: “They had masks on.”
“So you know what I’m talking about,” he said through gritted teeth and slammed my head against the wall for emphasis.
My answer had placed me in greater danger.
Now he whispered gently: “Say anythin’ about that agin and you’re dead.”
In a moment he was gone.
I remained on the landing reflecting on my plight. What was my life worth now? Why should he hesitate to make me quiet? I had to get away. I would refuse to accompany them tonight and seize my chance while they were all out of the house.
As my confederates assembled in the hall in all their finery, laughing and joking as if on their way to another rantipole, I said to Barney: “I don’t want to go.”
He looked at me in a manner that recalled the occasion when I had first come to the house, then gripped my arm and led me out to where the coaches were waiting for us. He pushed me into one of them and slammed its door.
As it moved off he brought his great head towards me, increasing his grip on my arm until it was agonizing. I was terri
fied that he would ask me what I had meant about Jack, but to my surprise he said:
“That was a wrinkle you told me about your mam! Her name and the paritch.”
How could he know that I had been lying? And why did he care?
With a smile that was more frightening than any grimace would have been, he said: “Tell us the truth.”
I shook my head: “That was the truth.”
He leaned back. “We shall see,” he said.
We arrived at Newgate in the middle of the night and yet we found a large crowd already gathered before the Debtor’s Door, stamping their feet and rubbing their hands against the bitter cold. As we approached we heard the sound of hammering. With considerable difficulty we pushed our way nearer and when Sam generously raised me to his shoulders I could see the New Drop — the ancient scaffold which usually stood in the Press Yard and which was now being erected in Newgate-street in front of the prison. While we waited, my companions joked about the price that various bits of the condemned man would fetch once his body had been dissected. Were they taking this tone in order to conceal the depth of their feelings? Were they really insensitive to the fact that only a few yards from us two men — for there was one other to be executed — were at that very moment waiting in their cells for the footsteps that meant the Sheriff and Under-sheriffs were approaching? That one of them had been the companion of several of them — even though he had betrayed them — and the lover of another of them?
Hawkers were already going through the crowd crying the “sorrowful lamentations” and the “execution-song” — both of them allegedly composed by the doomed man, though Sally assured me that Peg could not write his name. They were also selling a very fanciful life-story which, as further evidence of its lack of veracity, contained an account of the execution.