A Murderous Game Chapter One

A Murderous Game Chapter 1

London, June 1828

The crowd was horrible.

In normal circumstances, they would never come to something like this, never, and they could feel their shoulders contracting in revulsion. Beside them was a fat, self-satisfied woman in a let-out dress poorly cut to imitate the latest fashion, smelling of sweat and stale beer: she had her arm bound around a scrawny man who managed to ignore the stream of useless and erroneous gossip she was emitting. He spent his time yawning, sneezing, and swearing, in succession, wiping his reddened nose on his sleeve, as they shifted to avoid his energetic nasal projections. It would have been hard to ignore them, had it not been for the tall man on the other side who was giving forth in a voice of almost professional volume.

'Fourth woman that fellow has hanged this month, and no harm in that, when they're monsters like this one, eh? Getting to the day you can't hardly sell them chapbooks: nothing new to say in them, is there?'

They shuddered, and reached out to squeeze each other's hands briefly. This one was new to them, anyway.

'Though this one's a bit different, I suppose: this one didn't smother her baby, like the rest of them.'

No, she had not smothered her baby: there was no doubt of that.

'Stabbed her ruddy husband! That's the kind of thing ought to be put a stop to, and no mistake!'

It was enough to make anyone sick. They tried to move away a little, back towards the walls of the shops behind them. London was dusty and hot and out of season for the grand people, and those who were left, the not so grand and the downright humble, were happy for any distraction from their stuffy, sweaty work. The street was packed. They wriggled and shoved a little, not wanting to draw attention to themselves, but in the doorway where they sought shelter there was already a soldier, reeking of brandy, wrapped around a woman mostly, as far as they could judge, in place of her clothing. They met each other's eyes, disgusted. They longed for this to be over – but for this to be over, that would mean that it was all over.

He would not be here, of course. He would have moved on to other triumphs. He would not want to waste his precious time witnessing the outcome of some minor incident.

The crowd moved in some subtly different way and they stiffened. Was this it?

It was. They could hear the cartwheels, so heavy, such a contrast with her light form when they saw her at last standing there, her hair shorn, her hands bound in front of her with ropes that looked too heavy for her to bear. Their eyes swelled with tears but she was not crying: she looked as if every last drop of tears, and blood, had been drained from her, for she was whiter than the border of her shift. As the cart stopped, almost in front of them, they saw that she was shaking, and it was as much as either of them could do not to leap up and hold her tight.

The hangman guided her steps on to the gallows. The crowd were quiet now, every eye on her, waiting for a faint, a bid for freedom, a dramatic speech, a fervent prayer of repentance, some decent reward for their long vigil in the hot street. The hangman bent close to her, tender like a lover, and she seemed to whisper something. He nodded, half-shrugging. Whatever it was, he had heard it all before, the last intimate whispers of the about-to-die. A clergyman from the prison, a stranger, prayed familiar words that used to comfort, but now seemed bereft of anything of the sort.

They gripped each other's hands hard, now, though neither of them could remember reaching out to the other. They had promised, promised her they would see it through, though she seemed not even to know they were there. The crowd breathed slowly and heavily, like one large hungry creature, creeping softly on its prey. The crowd knew better than they did how these things happened, how the performance went.