Regency Pleasures and Sins Part 1

Chapter Six

At three the next afternoon Katherine stood with her two supporters in a small spinney a few hundred yards from Mr Highson’s front gates. Would Black Jack Standon come after all? Was she placing her trust in the highwayman’s pride and arrogance too high?

Then there was a crackling of broken branches behind them and he walked out of the trees, the reins of a handsome bay gelding looped over his arm. Nick’s horse, Katherine thought. Now was perhaps not the best time to ask for it back.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Standon,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘May I introduce you to John Morgan and Miss Pilgrim.’

‘G’day.’ He nodded to the others. ‘You know what you’re doing, I hope, because if this is a trap I’m not going easily and who’s to say who will get in the way of these.’ He pushed back the edges of his greatcoat and Katherine saw the butts of two large horse pistols.

John stepped forward belligerently, but she put a detaining hand on his arm. ‘It is all right, John. Mr Standon, here is a plan of the house Miss Pilgrim drew after her visit yesterday. Mr Highson will be in his study, John will be with me, but will stop at the door so we are not interrupted. You have the article?’

The highwayman grunted and patted the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘Pity to hand it back to him.’

‘I have compensated you for it,’ Katherine said firmly. ‘We have a bargain, have we not?’

‘You’re a cool one,’ he said grudgingly. ‘What’s your lay, then? Gentry morts aren’t commonly found slumming with highwaymen.’

‘My lay, as you put it, is simply to get my husband out of Newgate, Mr Standon. I find it surprising how cool one can be when an innocent life is at stake.’

‘All right, all right, there’s no cause to rub it in,’ he grumbled, looking uncomfortable. ‘How was I to know the cove had no way of proving who he was?’

‘Then let us not delay. The sooner we do this, the sooner an innocent man will be free.’ It will work, she told herself fiercely. It must work—the consequences of failure were too awful. ‘Come along, Jenny, John. You, Mr Standon, need to be on the far side of the house.’

It was a distracted young lady who rang the bell at the magistrate’s front door a few minutes later. Katherine found she did not have to act. Sheer nerves left her pale and trembling and her voice shook. The footman, somewhat grey and bent, admitted that Justice Highson was at home and might be willing to speak to the young lady who was so eager to report yet another outrage upon the King’s highway.

He showed them through to a small, rather neglected salon, and returned a few moments later to announce that Mr Highson would be pleased to speak to Mrs Lydgate.

‘Thank you so much,’ Katherine said graciously, emerging from behind her handkerchief and bestowing a dazzling smile upon him. ‘Come along, Jenny.’

She swept into the study, Jenny at her heels and, as the door closed, faintly heard John’s voice announcing that he would stay just here outside the door in case his mistress needed him.

Mr Highson proved to be middle aged, rotund, somewhat choleric of complexion and neglectful of his dress. He brushed away a small cloud of snuff and surged to his feet as Katherine entered. ‘My dear Mrs, er … Lydgate. How may I serve you? My man said something about a highwayman, ma’am. You must not alarm yourself, we laid the notorious rogue by the heels very recently; he is awaiting an appointment with the hangman even as we speak.’

‘I fear … oh, dear!’ Katherine waved her handkerchief somewhat wildly in front of her face. ‘I fear I am about to faint! Some air, I beg of you …’ She sank picturesquely into Jenny’s waiting arms, carefully blocking the magistrate’s route to his desk as he hurried towards the window. It was very possible he kept a pistol in the drawer. ‘Oh, more, sir, throw it open, I implore you, I feel quite …’

She could feel Jenny’s suppressed giggles and kicked her sharply as Justice Highson threw up the sash with an effort and stepped back. ‘There, ma’am. What the devil!’

Jack Standon was over the sill and into the room before the outraged magistrate could do more than recoil from the window against Katherine. She threw her arms around him and clung.

‘Never fear, ma’am,’ he gasped, trying to disentangle himself. ‘I will save you from this ruffian!’

Katherine felt positively guilty; the poor man was bravely shielding her from the threat she had brought into his house.

‘Mr Highson, sir,’ she said, ‘do you not recognise this man?’

‘Of course I do,’ he snarled. ‘It is that rogue Standon who held me up …’ His voice trailed away as he stared at Black Jack, then twisted to fix Katherine with a shrewd look. ‘Black Jack Standon is in Newgate gaol. Just what are you about, young lady?’

‘My husband is in Newgate,’ Katherine said, clinging firmly to his arm. ‘This is the real Black Jack, the man who held you up. Please, sir, may we all sit down and I will explain everything?’

Reluctantly the magistrate allowed himself to be pressed into a chair while Katherine recounted the story as Nick had told it to her. She explained how she came to be married to him, trying to ignore the look of shock on his face at the sordid story.

‘Well,’ he grunted at last. ‘That is some tale, my dear. Now then, you, speak up. Is this the truth?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Black Jack dug into his pocket and laid a pocket watch on the desk. ‘I’ve sold the rest, but I took a fancy to this. Pretty thing, as you’ll remember I said to you at the time I took it.’

Mr Highson reached out his hand and picked up the watch. His fingers closed tightly on it. ‘This was my father’s,’ he remarked in a neutral tone before tucking it into his waistcoat pocket. ‘And what has this lady paid you to tell me this tale?’

Katherine stiffened indignantly, but Black Jack met the magistrate’s eyes with equanimity. ‘Just the price I put on the watch. No man goes to the gallows for Black Jack Standon. I have my pride. How was I to know the swell cove had no way of proving who he was?’

There was a long silence, then the magistrate said, ‘When is he due to hang?’

‘The day after tomorrow, sir.’ Katherine could feel the room swimming before her eyes. She had convinced him, she knew it.

‘Do not faint on me now, ma’am,’ he said firmly. ‘We have a journey to make tomorrow and I must get some paperwork in order.’ He turned a shrewd eye on the highwayman towering over them both. ‘I presume you have no intention of surrendering to me?’

The dark man grinned, showing a set of blackened teeth. ‘You have the right of it there, Mr Justice. I think I’ll go and rob a coach or two, just to let them all know that Black Jack’s back. Good day, ma’am—you tell your husband he’s a lucky man.’

‘You’ll end on the gallows,’ the magistrate prophesied grimly as the highwayman stepped over the sill.

‘Happen I will, sir,’ he responded equably and was gone.

‘You believed me, Mr Highson?’ Katherine demanded. ‘You will come to London with us and clear my husband’s name?’

‘Yes, my dear. I will write a deposition and get it sworn in front of one of my colleagues in town and we’ll be off tomorrow. Your young man will be glad to see you, I will be bound.’

‘He is not my young man—’ Katherine began, then broke off at the twinkle in Mr Highson’s eye. ‘I wish I could let him know now. He must be so—’ She broke off again and took a moment to compose herself.

‘Well, today is Sunday so he will have had the distraction of the Condemned Sermon,’ Mr Highson said. ‘That at least gets them out of their cells, although I doubt it could be characterised as light entertainment.’

‘Sunday! Oh my goodness, I quite forgot. I must go to evensong.’ Katherine gathered up her reticule and shawl, dropped when Black Jack had entered the room. ‘What is the Condemned Sermon?’

‘The Ordinary of the prison—that is the chaplain—preaches to the condemned awaiting execution, with a coffin in the centre of the chapel. It is intended to fix their minds upon eternity and to prompt repentance.’

‘How horrible.’ She shuddered, then resolutely pushed all thoughts of what Nick must be experiencing out of her mind. ‘I cannot begin to thank you, sir. At what hour shall I call for you? I thought to hire a chaise for ourselves and my maid. My man can follow with my coach, for it is old and slow.’

‘No need to hire. We will take my carriage. I have a good team and we will be in London by late afternoon, never fear. I will collect you at your inn at ten in the morning if you give me your direction.’

Katherine took a warm farewell of him and almost made it to the road outside before her legs gave way and she sank down on to the grass. ‘We did it! Oh, John, Jenny, he is not going to hang.’ And promptly burst into tears.

Nicholas Lydgate jerked upright on the hard pew where he had been attempting to doze and ignore the somewhat routine call to repentance the Ordinary was delivering. Sleep eluded him here as it did in his cell, but he had fallen into a pleasant half-sleeping dream involving freedom and Kat and broad acres under high moors. He straightened his back and looked coldly at the coffin lying in the centre of the chapel. Better not to dream, there was no hope to be had. To hope was to delude himself and he had never done that. The day after tomorrow his body would be tumbled into an open grave; he doubted that the prison authorities would go to the expense of providing a coffin.

If Kat was happy somewhere, so much the better. She would shed a tear for him, he knew. No one else would, and in a few years a better man than he would take what was his by birth. Robert would not disgrace the family name. He just wished he could be sure that Kat would be all right.

Katherine spent a sleepless night. What if the magistrate changed his mind or decided it was all some elaborate plot to free a guilty man? What if he was not believed when they reached London? What if the prison authorities changed the day of the execution and brought it forward?

As the clock struck three in the morning she threw back the covers, lit a candle and got out of bed to pace up and down the room. Her bare feet made little sound on the polished oak boards and the night was dark and still. Now she was moving, her frantic brain slowed and she felt calmer. Of course Mr Highson would not change his mind. He was a respected man of the law; even if Nick could not be freed on his word alone, it would be enough to halt the execution while further investigations could be made. And of course the date of the execution would not be brought forward, it was a public spectacle.

‘And surely I would know if you were dead,’ she whispered out loud. How strange that she felt so close to a man she had known for less than a day. But then they had shared an intense and strange experience—perhaps that had forged a bond.

Yet even before they had spoken, even while he had seemed a veritable ruffian, filthy and dangerous, there had been something as their eyes met. Katherine shivered and rubbed her arms. It might be mid-May, but three in the morning was no time to be out of bed wearing nothing but a thin night rail. She looked down and smiled. In her haste to pack and be gone from London she had thrown the same nightgown into her valise as she had worn on her strange wedding night.

‘That is a devilishly pretty nightgown, Kat.’ It seemed for a moment that Nick was in the bedchamber with her, his voice teasing with an underlying hint of sensual danger.

Katherine smiled again and climbed back into bed. She drew up the covers and blew out the candle flame, but stayed sitting up, her eyes unseeing on the darkness around her.

She was married to a very attractive man, she mused. Attractive in character as well as body and face. An honourable man. But for that sudden, hard kiss as they had parted he had treated her with respect and consideration. Katherine ran her fingertips over the swell of her lips. No one but family had ever kissed her, so she had nothing to compare it with, but somehow it had seemed that what he was wanting was not a simple sensual sensation but to imprint the memory of her upon his mind and body.

Had it given him what he wanted? It had certainly left a vivid impression upon her. She closed her eyes and the scent of him came back to her, the feel of his body hard under her spread hands, the taste of his mouth on hers. Katherine wriggled down under the covers and set herself to sleep again. Perhaps he too was lying awake, trying to distract his mind from the squalid reality around him by remembering that strange night.

It was torture to think of him there. Was that why she felt so strange inside? Unable to sleep, Katherine tossed and turned and tried to wait in patience for the morning.

Mr Highson was as good as his word, arriving promptly in a smart equipage somewhat at odds with his general appearance. ‘Now I know you will be anxious, my dear young lady,’ he said comfortably, helping Katherine into the coach, ‘but we will make good time and your husband will be safely out of that place by tonight, never fear.’

She smiled and thanked him for his assurance, but something in her appearance must have betrayed her for Jenny slipped her hand into Katherine’s and squeezed encouragingly. They set off at a brisk pace, leaving John and the old coach and pair far behind and, as King’s Langley and then Watford were passed, Katherine began to relax and feel that after all she had succeeded in saving her stranger of a husband.

Unconsciously her lips curved in a smile. How ridiculous that she, Katherine Cunningham, should find herself married. She had put the slightest hope of that out of her mind three years ago when she realised the depths of Philip’s fecklessness and the extent of his debts. Their acquaintances fell away as they were less and less able to go out into society and the few true friends that were left had gradually ceased to be frequent callers as Katherine sought to distance herself.

She could not endure their well-disguised pity, their attempts to include her tactfully in events where she might be able to afford to dress appropriately—and she dreaded any visitor coming across Philip in one of his drunken fits of moroseness. It was pride, she supposed, musing on it now. Strange that she had not realised it until she had recognised the same thing in Nick.

Well, she would not be married for long now, but she could not complain that it had been an uneventful experience.

‘Where are we now, sir?’ she asked, leaning forward to look out of the window.

‘Not far from—’

The carriage lurched, jolted and then tipped suddenly on to its side with a rending noise of breaking timber and the shrill scream of a horse. Katherine grabbed frantically for the hanging strap, was knocked away from it by Jenny’s helplessly tumbling body and then something came up and hit her across the forehead. The world went black with shooting white lights, then the noise faded away and all was still.

Chapter Seven

The jolt of the hammer on the anvil as the man struck off his irons jarred through Nick’s body until it met the thudding ache in his head that had seemed to clench his brain in its grip since noon the previous day.

He sighed in relief as the leg irons fell away, then stooped to place his hand irons on the anvil. It was a temporary relief, for they would tie his hands behind his back before he left this room. Then it was the short walk out onto the gallows’ platform along with his companions in death, who either huddled in front of him or who stood waiting their turn behind.

The stone-walled room was thronged with the condemned, the Ordinary, the Governor and Assistant Governor, the gaolers and the well-bred crowd who had paid to be admitted to this titillating glimpse behind the scenes. For perhaps the fourth time he let his eyes scan the room. No sign of her, thank God.

Not that Kat’s absence here gave him much comfort. He had believed her promise to return, which meant that if she was not inside, then she was outside with the crowd. Nick stood to one side as the hand irons were removed and the next prisoner stepped up to the anvil. A woman—no, hardly more than a girl. She was thin and wretched, but a fierce anger burned in her eyes as they met Nick’s and he nodded in recognition of another unbowed spirit.

His head thudded unmercifully and he put up a hand to rub where it hurt worst, over his right eye. Used to the weight of the shackles, he misjudged the gesture and hit himself a painful blow. Go home Kat. He tried to send the message but could sense no answering recognition. He hated the thought that she would see him die not some heroic death but merely a shameful, undignified, choking end.

The crowd of fashionable onlookers shifted, parted and he saw a face he recognised. It was that young lawyer. What was his name? Brigham, that was it. He seemed to be alone. His eyes met Nick’s and he nodded, then made a strange gesture with his clasped hands as though tugging.

Nick understood him. He had one friend in this mob at least, one person who was prepared to stand at the gallows’ foot and swing on his legs to make a merciful end come sooner. He raised a hand in silent acknowledgement and salute and the young lawyer nodded again, raised a hand in response and turned to burrow back through the crowd.

The ragged line of the condemned began to shuffle forward, the doors opening ahead. The roar of the crowd was suddenly loud in their ears. From behind he was suddenly elbowed in the kidneys and the thin young woman pushed past him. ‘Ladies first!’ she shouted in an unmistakeable East London accent. ‘I’m not waiting around while you deal with all these ‘ere coves. I’m going first while the audience is freshlike.’

There were sniggers and the gaolers grinned, pushing her forward to the front of the desperate queue. Had no one but he seen the tears on her cheeks? Nick wondered. She was desperate to end the waiting, terrified of having to see what was happening before her, that was all.

The next twenty minutes passed in a daze. He fixed his eyes on the head in front of him and on nothing else as they slowly shuffled forward, stopped, waited uneasily, then moved again. What was happening in front he ignored, focusing instead on the grizzled hair, the scarred neck and the occasional flea on the man before him.

Then he was out in the sunshine and his turn was next. He looked up, over the heads of the mob, over the top of the gallows and concentrated on nothing but the memory of a trusting, fragrant, soft body nestled against his and the passionate intensity in a pair of brown eyes locked with his. I promise.

There was a thud, sickeningly familiar now, and the crowd yelled louder. He shut his ears to the noise. Minutes passed, then he was pushed forward. Time to die, he told himself. Time to show them how a Lydgate dies. The trap gave slightly under his feet as he planted them firmly on it. He dropped his gaze and scanned the crowd with an impassive face.

‘Black Jack! Black Jack!’ The shout was a chant, the upturned faces a blur.

The noose was hard and rough around his neck and he made himself not resist as the knot was jerked tight under his left ear. Not long now, Kat.

With a crack and a jolt the trap gave way under him and he fell, to be brought up with a sickening wrench. The pain was incredible, stars spun in front of his eyes, the world went red, black, then red again as he gagged for breath, but there was none to be had.

Arms wrapped themselves around his legs and dragged down as a woman’s voice screamed ‘No!’ and another body hurtled through the trap beside him. The weight on his legs vanished and he was being lifted. Frantically he dragged air down into his lungs through his tortured throat.

The noose was jarring, moving, rasping at his neck, then suddenly gave way and he was falling, colliding with bodies. This was hell. He was dead and falling into hell. The blow as his head met the cobbles sent him spinning into darkness.

Darkness. Now they were trying to drown him. Nick coughed and spat as water trickled into his mouth and a voice he knew said, ‘Is he breathing?’

Katherine struggled against Arthur’s restraining arms, straining to see as the men clustered round Nick. ‘Let me go! Is he alive?’ She had been too late, too late by only minutes. Her lungs ached from the frantic race through the crowded streets, her head throbbed with pain and her throat was raw from that single scream which had been wrenched from her as she saw the trap open. Nick … I failedy you.

John, who was bending over the figure sprawled on the table in the anteroom, looked up and nodded. ‘Aye, Miss Katherine, he’ll do. He’ll have a powerfully sore throat for a while yet, though.’

‘Thank God. Oh, thank God. Arthur, will you please let me go!’ Katherine shook off the anxious lawyer’s grip and ran to bend over Nicholas. She took his filthy hand in hers and rubbed it. ‘Why does he not open his eyes?’