The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins

Chapter Twenty-Two

Life. It rips through me.

As the air sucks into my lungs.

As the blood pulses through my veins.

Life. How it burns.

I open my eyes and see nothing. My arms are pinned to my sides, my knuckles pushed hard against solid wood. My fingers and toes are numb. I can feel movement beneath me, the roll and sway of a cart. We are travelling at a furious pace, hooves thundering on the cobbles, but I am held tight in the darkness. I try to move, and pain screams through my cramped muscles. I stop. Breathe. Take in the scent of wood, fine grains of sawdust catching my throat.

I am trapped in my coffin.

I kick out at the lid in a frenzy, crying for help. My voice is a thin rasp, my neck swollen and bruised. No one will hear me over the rattle of the cart. The memory of choking, flailing on the rope seizes me. I cannot breathe. I will suffocate alone here in the darkness.

Terror gives me back my strength. I kick harder and the wood splinters against my boot.

‘Quiet, damn you.’ A rough male voice. ‘Lie still. If you want to live.’

I fall back, panting heavily. I feel as if I have lain asleep without moving for a hundred years. I try to stretch, and my legs cramp again. It is torture, but I push through it, gritting my teeth. Sensation returns to my fingers and toes, a throbbing pain laced with a thousand hot needles. As if pain is the only proof of life.

Where am I? Am I safe? I concentrate on the sounds outside my narrow wooden box. I can hear drunken cries, the high squeal of street hogs, ballad singers and hawkers, and a low bell tolling my own death. The cart slows, caught in the crowds, then surges forward again. Someone curses the driver. The cart turns and the noise changes. Whispers, and the sound of a bottle smashing. A baby screaming somewhere high above our heads. The wheels of the cart rattling over broken cobbles. The driver coughs. ‘Damned dust.’ We roll to a halt, the horses snorting and chewing at their bits.

The coffin begins to move, sliding from the cart. It swings into the air and I roll inside, smashing my knee. What if I am to be thrown into the Thames? I take a deep breath, ready to fight, but the coffin is carried higher, resting on solid shoulders. Boots thump and voices curse as we tilt and turn up the stairs. I count four storeys. The men are grunting now with the effort.

A door opens. The coffin is lowered to the floor with a heavy thump.

‘Here he is, then.’ Someone kicks the side. ‘Ten pounds.’

‘We agreed five.’

Kitty.

‘Five to bring him here. Another five and I’ll keep quiet.’

‘A bullet in your throat will do that well enough.’ A sharp, metallic click. ‘Leave us. Now.’

A pause. The door slams shut. Hurried footsteps back down the stairs.

She starts to prise open the lid with an iron crow, nails groaning against the wood. I push hard from the other side and it starts to give. At last it splits open. I struggle free and roll on to my back, stunned and gasping for air.

Wooden rafters stretch high above my head. Daylight streams through an open window, casting blocks of dazzling light on to the bare floor. Curtains billow in a soft spring breeze. The room smells of gin and unwashed clothes. I sit up slowly, still dazed and uncertain. There are piles of rags stacked against the far wall ready to sell. The floorboards feel rough under my fingers; the breeze chills the sweat on my chest. Am I truly alive? Where am I?

Someone coughs loudly on the other side of the wall, hawking up thick phlegm.

Not heaven, then.

Kitty kneels down next to me. She has pulled off her mob cap. Her face is flushed pink from the effort of opening the coffin. It is the most beautiful thing. She is the most beautiful… The room fades and I begin to slide to the floor. She grabs hold of my shoulders. ‘You’re safe,’ she says. ‘Tom – do you understand? You’re safe.’

I try to speak through my bruised and swollen throat. ‘Kitty.’

Her bright-green eyes soften in relief. ‘Idiot.’ She kisses my forehead, my lips. Kisses me as though she is breathing the life back into me. I break away, staring in wonder at the face I have missed so much, touching clumsy, half-numb fingers to her cheek.

I don’t know how I came to be here, what magic she has wrought to bring a hanged man back from the dead. All I know is that my heart is beating, my pulse is racing, my skin is warm. I lean against her and weep with joy, like a child.

Later, we lie tangled upon the narrow bed, a thin sheet draped at our hips. My need had been wild, more animal than human. I would have devoured her if I could, teeth scraping her skin, fingers digging into her flesh. She had held me tightly, back arched, caught in her own frenzy. I spent inside her and collapsed, only to rise again twice more. My body, rejoicing in the simple truth – I am alive.

Only now, half dozing, do I ask how the miracle was accomplished.

She sits up, reaches for her wrapping gown. ‘We paid Hooper.’

I think back to the gallows, Hooper lying stretched upon the high beam, smoking a pipe. The last moments as he rolled the cap down over my face. Courage, sir. My breath hot and fast against the linen. The roar of the crowd.

‘There’s ways to tie a knot to finish things fast. Here.’ She coils her long red hair and slips it over one shoulder. Presses two fingers against her bare neck, below her ear. ‘And ways to make it slow.’ She moves her hand to the back of her neck, where Hooper had tied the rope. ‘You only seemed dead when he cut you down. You were still breathing. A little.’

‘You were there?’

She shakes her head. ‘I couldn’t…’ She glances about the room and I know she is thinking of that long wait, not knowing if I were dead or alive. I reach over and grip her hand.Tears brim beneath her lowered lids. At last, she begins again. ‘We paid Skimpy to smuggle you on to the wrong cart.’

I raise an eyebrow.

‘He works for the surgeons. Brings the bodies back for anatomising…’

My stomach turns at the thought – how close I had come. I remember the surgeons’ assistant from the gallows – a pale, thin lad with white-blond brows and lashes, arguing with the Marshal. I wonder if he will be in trouble with his masters for losing a valuable corpse. Most likely not – bodies often disappear on the road back from Tyburn, grieving families dragging the coffins away for a decent burial. Jack Sheppard’s body had been taken by his friends and buried.

‘Where are we?’

She smiles. ‘Phoenix Street.’

I sit up in alarm. We paid Hooper. We paid Skimpy. ‘Fleet arranged this?’

Her smile fades. ‘No. Wouldn’t trust that bastard to piss straight.’

It takes me a moment to guess. ‘Sam.’

‘He came to see me last night. Told me everything.’ She punches me once, very hard, in the arm. ‘You promised there’d be no more secrets between us, Tom.’

I rub my arm. ‘Fleet threatened to kill you.’

‘All the more reason to tell me, you stupid prick!’

I let her rage. She has every right. I had been so proud of my own martyrdom I had never stopped to consider the toll it had taken on Kitty. She had spent the last few weeks broken-hearted and desperate. Behind the arm-punching and curses I can see how much I’ve hurt her. Her cheeks are hollow, her sweet little belly stretched taut. So much for my noble self-sacrifice: it has almost destroyed her.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, when she is done, or has at least run out of breath. I lean in to kiss her and hear a soft, irritable sigh from the doorway. Sam has slipped into the room, God knows when. Best not to ask. Kitty tightens her gown and jumps up from the bed, crossing to him on tiptoes. She pulls him further into the room, clasping his hand in both of hers. The hero of the hour. I must confess I suffer a curious pang of jealousy at that. I’d felt some pride this morning, going bravely to my death. Now here I am, rescued by a boy of fourteen and a surgeon’s assistant called Skimpy. I am grateful, but…

‘You’re well, Mr Hawkins?’

There is a tremor in Sam’s voice, as if I might still be angry with him. I wrap the sheet around my waist and hobble to meet him. Hug him for as long as he will let me, which is not very long at all. He keeps his hands at his side and stays rigid. It is like hugging a short roll of heavy cloth. ‘You saved my life.’

He stifles a grin of pride. Better, is it not, to save lives than to end them? He hands me a broadsheet, warm from the press. Guthrie’s account of my life and death, curse him, printed fast for profit. ‘World thinks you’re dead.’

The world thinks I’m a monster.

‘We’ll stay here for a few days Tom,’ Kitty says as I sit back down upon the bed, still reading. ‘Let everyone forget all about you.’

‘A gentleman, hanged for murder? They won’t forget me in a hundred years.’

‘We’ll go to Italy, just as we planned. Sam will keep looking for the true killer.’

‘Alice,’ Sam says, as if the thing were settled.

The killer. My God. I had quite forgotten amidst all the drama of dying. I crumple up the broadsheet and toss it across the room on to the unlit fire, taking some small pleasure in hitting my target. ‘No. It wasn’t Alice. You were right Kitty. It was Judith.’

Perhaps it was because I had been so close to death. A flash of revelation as my soul prepared to escape its cage.

I had seen her through the crowds, dressed in her mother’s mourning gown. She had been granted a place of honour in the galleries, surrounded by powdered courtiers, a single jet-black stone in a flower bed of colour. She sat forward in her seat, lips parted, gloved hands laced across the folds of her dress, as if she were waiting for her favourite opera singer to take the stage.

She was so young. And beneath her composed expression, so very lost. A boat unmoored and drifting on the open ocean. Our eyes met and in that brief communion I had seen how much she wished me dead. Not out of malice, nor for revenge, but to be sure that suspicion would never fall on her. She smiled at me. Gave the tiniest nod of acknowledgement. Thank you, sir. I am most obliged to you.

Hooper prepared the cart, and still we’d stared at each other across the crowds; murderer and victim locked in one last deathly gaze. She clutched her gown in anticipation, fingers twisting and turning the black silk. Black for mourning. Black for death. A black so deep no stains of red would show upon it.

Hooper rolled the cap over my face.

‘Wait.’

But it had been too late. My feet slid from the cart and the rope pulled taut.

‘I’ll kill her. I swear it, Tom. I will fucking murder her.’ Kitty is prowling the room, all thoughts of exile vanished. ‘Turn your back,’ she snarls at Sam, and throws off her wrapping gown without waiting to see if he has complied. She tugs on her stockings, garters, petticoat, stomacher, then reties her gown. Decent, then – as decent as she can be. She catches me watching her and grins. ‘Beast.’ She hunts for her pistol. It takes her a while to realise I am holding it.

She lunges and I lift it high, out of her reach. There is a short tussle, Kitty pulling on my arm.

‘Dangerous,’ Sam warns, eyeing the cocked and loaded pistol.

I uncock it and throw it over to him. He catches it neatly and tips the powder onto the floor.

Kitty paces the room, annoyed. ‘You cannot stop me, Tom. Who saved you today? Do you think it was Fate that cut you down from the scaffold still breathing? Or God?’

‘No-’

‘No indeed. We saved you. Me and Sam. If he hadn’t come to me last night – and d’you know he had to steal his way in to avoid Alice and Neala…’

‘He enjoys stealing into places.’

Sam shrugs. This is true.

‘How can you jest?’ Kitty cries, fresh tears springing in her eyes. ‘They let you hang, Tom. They let you hang.’

‘We must find a way to make Judith confess,’ I persist. ‘She is the only one who can prove my innocence. She can’t very well do that if you shoot her first.’

Kitty wipes her eyes. ‘She let them arrest you in her place. She lied under oath in court. She sat in her room swigging poppy juice while I sobbed my heart out every night for you. Six weeks. And she never thought to speak out. She murdered her father and she let you hang for it. She will never confess, Tom.’

‘Perhaps. But I must try.’

Chapter Twenty-Three

Midnight on Phoenix Street and the city was alive, pulsing with revellers celebrating my death. It had been a good dying. I had shown pluck and a certain swagger at the end. That was something to admire, especially here in St Giles.

I stood with Sam, shielded behind a wall, waiting for a sprawling crowd to pass. His father was holding a vigil for me at home with all his gang. I’d kept my word and held my tongue – the greatest virtue among thieves. They honoured me tonight, now that I was safely dead. Sam had slipped away while they drank and sang and raised toast after toast to Mr Hawkins. They did not know that Sam had not killed Burden. How disappointed they would all be in him.

A few revellers straggled into a gin shop. When it was quiet enough, we stepped out into the street.

The night was mild and damp, a light rain misting the air. Sam had brought me fresh clothes to replace my suit of blue velvet – we had sent that to Hooper the hangman. A fair price for saving my life, I thought – along with whatever else Kitty had paid him. I had cost her a great deal these past weeks. I pulled the collar of my greatcoat around my ears.

‘They won’t see you.’

I understood. People only see what they expect to see, and no one expected to see a dead man strolling about the town. But still, I preferred to keep my head down and my collar up. I bent my neck low and felt the bruise around my throat, where the rope had cut deep. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

Sam held out a torch coated in thick black pitch. I took the tinderbox from my coat pocket and struck the flint, bright sparks flying from the stone. The torch caught fire and Sam raised it high. And of a sudden he was that young boy I’d met last September. The boy who promised to light me home and instead led me into darkness.

‘Well, look at you, Sam. A moon-curser once more.’

He smiled a true, broad smile. ‘No, sir. Not tonight. Tonight I’ll see you home.’

On Long Acre, the pavements were covered in broken glass, sodden broadsheets, and the occasional drunk. I almost tripped over an old watchman, dead to the world and snoring, his lantern burned out. It was always the same the night after a hanging. Tomorrow he would stumble into a coffeehouse, clutching his head and cursing my name.

In the Garden, a few whores limped beneath the arches, clutching themselves for warmth and looking for a fresh customer. Most were busy, on their backs in their meagre rooms, or pushed up against a wall in a back alley. Men needed to fuck after a hanging, to feel the blood pumping in their veins.

At Moll’s place, light glowed in the windows. Moll’s voice carried across the piazza, sweet and sad. A song of mourning.

‘Holding a wake for you,’ Sam said.

So, this was how it felt to be a ghost. Some part of me yearned to draw near. Was Betty there, and did she grieve for me? She must have known the pardon would never come, even as she promised it. Her visit had ensured my silence between the trial and the hanging.

Betrayal. Well. I had felt that sting before. I pulled my hat low and kept my eyes on the cobbles.

We were home soon enough. Home. My heart rose. I had not dared to dream of coming home again. I tapped softly on the door and it swung free at once, Kitty waiting anxiously behind it. She had hurried back from St Giles under Sam’s protection hours before, to prepare and to keep a close eye upon next door. She kissed me in silent welcome as Sam extinguished the torch, grinding it into the iron snuffer fixed to the wall outside.

‘Alice is asleep in Jenny’s old room,’ she whispered. ‘Neala’s in the kitchen. I slipped a draught in her beer. She sleeps light.’

Alice and Neala had kept Kitty company throughout my imprisonment, Neala standing guard through the nights. There had been threats from some of the neighbours, convinced that Kitty had been involved in the murder. Neala had kept them away. Felblade had spoken out for her too, it seemed. Strange to discover true friends in such times and in such unexpected quarters. I was grateful to them all and did not want them tangled up in tonight’s plan. Safer for them to think me dead, maybe for ever. Whatever happened tonight, I had not yet decided what should follow. There was, after all, a freedom in being dead. It could be a welcome chance to begin afresh, with a new name and none of the old ties I’d allowed to bind me. The thought of not being in the service of the queen, or James Fleet – of answering to no one but myself… Well, it had its appeal.

Kitty grinned, excited by the fresh drama. Perhaps I should have slipped opiates in her beer. No, no. I had learned my lesson. I had chosen Kitty – and she had chosen me. For good or ill, we would face our troubles together.

We tiptoed up the stairs, paying mind to every loose board. When we reached Sam’s room, I took out the pistol and handed it to Kitty. ‘It’s not loaded.’

She scowled, then turned it around in her hand, testing its weight in her palm. Mollified, she tilted her chin towards the secret door, hidden behind the hanging with its white cherry tree design.

Kitty went first, followed by Sam. I stood alone for a few seconds, the candle flickering in my hand, then plunged through to the other side.

Burden’s house was very still. Kitty had been studying the household these past weeks, while I languished in my cell. Judith hadn’t replaced Alice – perhaps she could not find anyone to join such a cursed household. No one had visited, either, save for one very stern lawyer who came almost every day, clutching a fat bundle of papers. Rumour was the business was in trouble. Even Mrs Jenkins had been banished since she’d served her purpose at the trial. It had left her suspicious, the way she had been used and discarded – and her sharp eye noticed things she had missed before. One of her customers had seen Ned visiting the Carpenters’ Company. ‘Asking for charity,’ she’d guessed, and that guess had been transmuted into fact about the Garden.

I took the candle and examined the gowns hanging in the cabinet, running my hands over the flounces and pleats. They smelled of campion. The heavy black mourning gown was missing.

On the day I searched the house, Judith had dressed herself in that gown. She had thrown a heavy lace shawl over her head that fell all the way to her waist. She had pinned it carefully with an ebony brooch, to cover the fabric beneath. Her appearance had struck me as strange and affected even at the time. Why not order a new gown, or have the older one tailored to a modern cut? No one would have expected her to be in full mourning dress so soon. I’d thought it a sign of her grief, or an unbalanced mind. I had pitied Judith then. I had thought her weak.

And so I had searched every corner of the house looking for bloodstained clothes, while Judith had sat primly in the drawing room, wearing the same dress she’d worn when she killed her father. Smiling on the inside while I searched like a fool for what was right in front of my eyes.

Clever, wicked girl.

Down on the next landing we paused, each drawing strength from the other. The plan we had agreed to on Phoenix Street had seemed simple enough. Kitty and I would coax the truth from Judith. Sam would stand watch. And we must be quiet. Ned would be sleeping downstairs in the workshop, Stephen across the landing in his father’s old room. If either woke we were all in trouble.

‘No blood,’ I whispered, for the hundredth time. I would not have another death on my conscience. Kitty and Sam exchanged guarded looks. I had the distinct impression they had agreed something rather different, out of my hearing. ‘Swear it.’

They complied, eventually, with a good deal of reluctance and head-shaking. I stepped closer to Judith’s door; reached for the handle and turned it slowly. The latch clunked and the door opened, creaking softly on its hinges.

The bed stood in the middle of the room, the canopy open to the night. I could hear Judith breathing softly. And this was shameful, was it not – stealing into a young girl’s bedchamber while she lay sleeping? I felt a prod in my back – Kitty urging me forward, most likely with the pistol. She was overly fond of that weapon. She closed the door behind us.

‘She murdered her father,’ Kitty whispered, catching the doubt in my eyes. ‘She let you hang, Tom.’

Judith stirred, legs swishing under the sheets. Her dark hair fanned out across the pillow, a few damp strands clinging to her cheek. Her pale-blue night gown lay unbuttoned at her throat, revealing a silver cross on a delicate chain. She had let me hang. And now she slept, peaceful and content.

Her eyes fluttered beneath closed lids.

Kitty hurried to the bed and covered Judith’s mouth with a folded handkerchief. Judith’s brows furrowed, then her eyes opened wide in shock. She tried to scream but the sound was muffled by the cloth.

Kitty clamped it harder to Judith’s lips. ‘Be still.’

She gave a slight noise in her throat then nodded slowly, watching Kitty.

I stepped forward with the candle held high. ‘Judith.’

She flinched at the sound of my voice and saw me at last. For a moment she lay senseless with shock, eyes bulging as she tried to understand what she saw. Then she began to whimper. I moved closer and her eyes rolled back in her head. She slumped back down in a dead faint.

‘That was obliging of her,’ Kitty said. She pulled out a couple of rags and tied Judith’s wrists to the bedpost. She used the handkerchief as a gag.

This did not sit well with me. I shuffled from foot to foot, the floorboards creaking beneath my weight.

Kitty gave me an impatient look. ‘Find the dress.’

I searched the closets while Kitty lit more candles about the room. I soon found the mourning gown and matching petticoat. I laid them out across the bed and lowered one of the candles over the skirts, tracing my fingers across the silk. It would have been drenched in blood the night of the murder. Judith must have spent many secret hours sponging it clean. There were still a few faint marks in the fabric. Some, caught in the stitched seams of the quilted petticoat, would be easily covered by an apron. The stains on the bodice were harder to discover, mere faded patches where Judith had scrubbed out the blood. I scratched a fingernail along a seam and a tiny dark brown fragment of blood flaked into my palm. A jury would call it dirt, an old smudge on an old dress, but I was satisfied. Judith had killed her father.

It was not just the stains; it was the defiance with which she had worn the dress during the search. At my trial. At my hanging. The tiny smirk on her face, as she enjoyed her own private joke. It was only now that I began to understand Judith and the depths of her sickness. We had all dismissed her as a poor, timid thing. And perhaps she was – her life smothered and ruined by her father, flinching beneath his hand, his sharp words. But something else had grown beneath that fragile surface. Something strong, formed of anger and bitterness. Alice had known the truth about her mistress – but only Kitty had listened. Kitty had suspected Judith all along.

Judith blinked, waking in confusion. Her face was pallid, her lips almost white. We had frightened her half to death.

Kitty tipped a jug of ice-cold water in Judith’s face.

She jolted with the shock, gasping beneath her gag. When she discovered that she was tied to the bed she gave a muffled cry and pulled at the ties, turning her wrists frantically as she tried to slip free.

I sat down upon the bed and she shrank back, terrified.

‘Be still,’ I whispered. ‘I’ve not come to hurt you.’

Kitty sat down on the other side of the bed, pistol resting in her hand. ‘Do not presume the same of me.’

Judith stared at her, then nodded her understanding.

‘I wish to speak with you, Judith,’ I said. ‘If we remove the gag, do you promise not to cry out?’

She nodded again.

I loosened the knot, then lifted the handkerchief free. She was trembling violently.

‘Are you a ghost?’

‘No, indeed.’

‘I saw you hang. I watched you die.’

I touched my throat, where the rope burns chafed my skin. ‘For your crime.’

For a moment she seemed almost ashamed. Then she pursed her lips and looked away.

I threw the mourning gown across her lap. ‘You did a fair job, soaking out the blood. But it’s still there.’

A long silence. She knew, now, that she was caught. A tiny, petulant shrug. ‘Well, it’s a maid’s job, is it not? Scrubbing clothes.’

‘It was clever of you to wear it. Easier to hide the stains.’

‘All those dresses,’ she murmured. ‘Turning to dust. He never let me touch them. They were for a woman, and I was not a woman. I was his daughter. I must never grow up. Have you seen all those fine silk dresses, sir?’ she asked, in a slow, dreamlike voice. ‘I shall have them unpicked and made anew, cleaned and restitched in the latest fashions. I shall do everything my father denied me. I shall walk about the town. I shall visit the theatre and the shops.’ She paused, a light smile playing across her lips. ‘I shall marry Ned.’

‘Is that why you killed your father? So you could-’

‘-So I could live. And to see his face. Oh… his face! He thought I was Alice. His filthy whore come to his bed again. Then he saw the knife. He was so shocked he didn’t even cry out. I stabbed him and I stabbed him and all he could say was, Why, Judith? Why? Croaking like an old toad. Even as I plunged the blade into his heart.’ She laughed. ‘Why, Judith? Why? I told him, when it was over. When he was still. He never let me speak. Always lecturing. But I could talk to him now he was quiet. I could tell him anything I wanted. I am not a little girl now, am I, Father? A little girl could not kill such a big man so easily.’ Her eyes flickered from mine to Kitty’s. She giggled. ‘I have shocked you both. The rake and his whore. How funny. You knew my father, how he treated us all. I was suffocating.’

‘You could have run away,’ Kitty said.

‘No! No… I had to stay here. For Ned.’

She didn’t know that Ned was her brother. I’d thought he might have told her by now – but then he had always worried about Judith. She was so fragile. I shook my head.

‘He loves me,’ Judith cried, mistaking me.

‘Quiet,’ Kitty warned.

‘Why do you not believe me?’ she wailed. ‘I told Father and he laughed at me. He called me a silly slut. He said that he would never let me marry Ned or anyone else. He said he would send Ned away. He pinned me down and he beat me. I thought he would kill me.’

Ahh… here was the Burden I remembered. And I had almost begun to feel sorry for him.

‘Then he announced that he would marry Alice. And I thought, Oh, no, Father. You shall not. You shall die and everyone will think it was Alice or Mr Hawkins.’ She laughed again.

I rose and walked to the shuttered window, loosening the catch. It would be light soon. I had the truth, from the lips of the murderer, but would she confess it in public, without a pistol to her chest? Of course not. I rested my head against the cool windowpane.

‘You let me hang, Judith,’ I said, turning back to the bed. ‘You knew I was innocent, and you let me die in your place.’

‘Innocent? You killed a man, when you were in gaol. The world knows it.’

Kitty began to laugh. It was a mean, dangerous laugh.

Judith pulled anxiously on the ties at her wrists. ‘Why do you laugh at me?’

Kitty smiled at her. ‘I meant to kill you,’ she said. ‘But this will be much better. To let you live and suffer. I thought I’d lost Tom for ever. It broke my heart. So now, Judith, I shall break yours.’

‘Kitty…’ I said softly, in warning.

She ignored me. ‘Has Ned asked for your hand?’

Judith fell still. ‘He will. I know he will. He must…’

Kitty laughed again. ‘Poor Judith. You have no idea, do you? Ned doesn’t love you. He can’t love you. Shall I tell you why?’ Kitty pressed her lips to Judith’s ear, soft as a kiss. ‘He’s your brother.’

Three words. Each one a blade.

‘No.’

‘That’s why your father refused his permission. Ned Weaver is your brother, Judith. He will never be yours.’

‘No!’ Judith screamed – a long, terrible wail. It tore through the room, a sound of desolation and despair.

Kitty slapped a hand across Judith’s mouth, but it was too late. There was a thud as a door opened wide, followed by a short scuffle. I jumped from the bed, Kitty still struggling to silence Judith.

Stephen burst into the room holding his father’s sword, closely followed by Sam. Stephen’s courage fled the instant he saw me, a living spectre standing over his sister’s bed. His legs buckled and he collapsed to the floor. The sword clattered from his hand. ‘Oh, God!’ he cried, hands clasped in prayer. ‘Protect me from this devil.’

I kicked the sword over to Sam. ‘I am not a devil, Stephen.’ I pulled down my collar, so he might see the burns upon my throat.

Stephen stopped praying. He raised his eyes to mine. ‘The Lord spared you,’ he said, in a dazed wonder. ‘He heard my prayers and in His wisdom He spared you. Oh, praise God!’

I frowned at him. Why would Stephen pray for his father’s killer? Why was he so glad to find me alive? I remembered his empty room, the portrait of his sister stamped into the floor. I remembered he had hit Judith that first morning, after she had cried Murder! Not to calm her down, after all – but in anger. In shame.

‘You knew I was innocent.’

He began to weep.

Stephen had guessed his sister was guilty the moment he saw his father’s body. The rage of the attack had convinced him. He’d lived under the same roof in the days leading up to the murder, and had heard them fighting. Watched as his father beat Judith for speaking out. Heard her crying in her room, tears of hatred and frustration. He’d seen her face when Burden announced he would marry Alice, and banish Ned from the house. When Stephen walked into his father’s bedroom and saw the blood and the knife, he’d known. But then he’d pushed the truth from his mind. It was too painful, too horrifying to accept. ‘She’s my sister. I couldn’t…’

‘You let me hang for it.’

Stephen dropped his head. ‘The jury found you guilty.’

‘But you knew, Stephen. In your heart you knew it was Judith.’

He began to cry again, great gulps. ‘I prayed for you, sir. Over and over in my room. I swear it.’

Judith glared at him from the bed, disgusted. She pulled again at the rags about her wrists, struggling to free herself. ‘So. What now, Brother? Will you betray me? Will you let me burn?’

A burning. The punishment for petty treason. The king rules his people, and a father rules his family. For a girl to murder her father was the same, in law, as murdering her king. She would be burned at the stake if she were caught. I had not considered this.

‘You killed our father, Judith!’ Stephen cried.

‘Well? What of it? How many times did we dream of it? How many times did we pray for it? Do you not remember, the last time he beat you for daring to speak against him? He would have killed you if Ned had not begged him to stop. I had to kill him, Stephen. I had to kill him because you were too weak.’

Stephen jumped up and ran from the room. Kitty ran after him. ‘He’ll wake Ned,’ she hissed.

‘Stay here,’ I ordered Sam. ‘Keep her quiet.’

Stephen had not run far – only back to his father’s room across the landing. He was crouched over a chamber pot, puking loudly. Kitty and I stared at one another helplessly. What now?

‘Where is Ned?’ I wondered. We had made enough noise to wake half the street. Surely he must have heard us by now.

‘He left us,’ Stephen sniffed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Kitty crinkled her nose. The air now stank of fresh vomit, laced with the usual bedroom smells of a fifteen-year-old boy. ‘Where did he go?’

‘I don’t know. In search of work, I suppose. The business is in ruins. Father spent all the money.’ He hung his head. ‘There’s nothing left but debts.’

Kitty touched my arm. ‘Tom. That’s why Burden planned to marry Alice. The debts.’

Of course. It had always puzzled me, why Burden would marry his housekeeper. Even more so once I’d heard Gabriela’s story. Now I understood. He had not loved Alice – of course not. But he knew his life was in danger. If he died, then all his debts would pass to his family – to Stephen and Judith. But if he married Alice and named her in his will, she would be forced to take on all the responsibility for repayment. Thank God he had died before Alice married him. She might have spent the rest of her life rotting in a debtors’ gaol.

‘We owe money to half the town.’ Stephen sobbed. ‘And my sister. My sister… What am I to do?’

I glanced at Kitty and could guess what she was thinking. Learn to fend for yourself, the same as every other wretched soul in this world. He had let me hang, after all. But I did not have the heart to hate him. He was a boy – older than Sam in years, but younger in so many ways. His father was dead, and all he’d inherited was debt. He might well be thrown in gaol now, instead of Alice.

So I said nothing, and the room fell very quiet. The whole house, indeed, was silent.

And then I thought of Sam and Judith, alone across the landing.

Something dark fluttered in my chest.

The door to Judith’s room had been closed. I stood outside it for a moment and prayed to God I was wrong. Then I turned the handle and stepped inside.

God had not listened to my prayers in a very long time.

‘Sam.’

Sam removed the pillow from Judith’s face and stepped back. Her wrists were still tied to the bed, her eyes staring up at the ceiling, empty of life.

‘No blood,’ he murmured. ‘I promised.’

Sorrow pressed against my throat, like a rope. I couldn’t speak.

He cradled her head and slipped the pillow back into place. Delicate. Gentle. Turned to face me.

‘Had to be done.’

No. No. Not in a thousand years.

He pulled a letter from his pocket. A confession, forged in Judith’s hand. He must have written it earlier, on Phoenix Street. He must have planned it all. And wasn’t that Sam’s way? He tucked it under the candlestick by the bed. Plucked a bottle of Felblade’s opiates from the table and poured the contents out of the window. Smooth and fluid as a dancer, well-trained in his art. ‘She couldn’t live with the guilt. Your death. Her father’s.’ He placed the empty bottle next to the note.

I said nothing. My heart was breaking.

Sam brushed a stray lock of hair from Judith’s face and stepped back. ‘Look. Is this not better? See how peaceful she is.’

I forced myself to look at her. Her dark lashes closed. Her lips tinged blue. The girl who just a few moments before had been so alive. Who had wanted so much to live. Poor Judith. Silenced for ever.

I spoke at last, the words heavy on my tongue. ‘Your father will be proud of you.’

He smiled up at me, black eyes shining. ‘I didn’t do it for him, Mr Hawkins.’