The Architecture of Desire Page 18

  Winter cold bit his fingertips through his white gloves. The shadow of St. Sophia’s steeple momentarily fell cold on his face.

  Children bundled in black rags ran along beside the cart. A stone rattled from the wood. He lifted his head. Every snow-ledged tenement window here stood jammed with black-clad men and women, white faces solemn, none shouting, none cheering.

  Pollexfen Calmady took off his hat and held it to his breast, and bowed ceremoniously. Aware of how the skirts of his coat swung, flashing sunlight from silver trimming; how bright the paper rose gleamed against his bridal finery. He smiled as he straightened.

  A sharp stone stung his hand. He did not flinch.

  Bells clanged a muffled scale, tumbledown-notes: sound smashing the air, scattering up flocks of lean rooks and pigeons. The cart rumbled under the eaves of St. Giles in the Fields. Deafened, he threw his head back and laughed into the sea-wild, shaking air.

  The White Crow hung on, balancing on the coach's outside step, snow-wet air reddening her fingers. The sword-hilt jabbed her hip. Her tone provoked.

  "It's your area of expertise, sir, after all. Didn’t you publish On the Circulation of the Blood?"

  Sir William Harvey peered out irritably between the blind and the window-frame of the coach. "So must I have the Invisible College study a magia of the gallows?"

  "Of course it’s a magia. It’s death without spilling blood."

  One heel on the outside step, the White Crow balanced leaning back against the coach’s closed door, looking down across Tyburn field as she spoke. The horses plodded through the dividing crowds.

  "This all patterns around blood . . ."

  Her voice echoed flatly in her ears. Wind coursed the snowy fields. Makeshift booths crammed the paths, deserted now as people in their hundreds pressed down the slope towards the gallows platform. White copses gleamed in the distance. Men and women in bright, patched cloaks trod straw into the snow: fairground-rutted.

  "I came home to Roseveare: that’s family blood-ties. There’s the eye of the sun’s blood-sacrifice. Carola’s diseased blood-royal. Spilled blood, the war. The demons. Hot blood: the acts of passion. And innocent blood."

  Her teasing tone vanished. She turned her head sideways to catch sight of the man’s face.

  "No . . . No. What it comes down to is what he did and what I did."

  Wind whipped at her braids. The coach stopped some ten yards from the gallows in a press of bodies. Horse snorted; the driver tied up the reins.

  William Harvey put a white-gloved hand up to block his cheek from daylight. Disguising shadow moved across his features. He muttered acerbically, "It’s cost me six shillings for this coach, and a shilling each for men to help carry a body. Where’s your giant—what’s his name—Baltazar Casaubon?"

  She rubbed at a full breast, cupping her hand over her doublet. "With Jared and the baby."

  "You’ve left a man like that to protect your children? He looked nothing of a swordsman to me."

  "To tell you the truth, he isn’t much good with a sword. He’s not built for it. It’s like asking him to play tennis with a knitting-needle. Now if we still had battle-axes . . ." She chuckled, breath huffing the bitter air. "The times I’ve seen him in a fight, he’s usually hit someone with the nearest blunt object. Last time it was a seven-foot, six-inch mahogany dining-table."

  "I see." William Harvey blinked bead-black eyes.

  "If I thought anyone could touch my baby I’d . . ."

  "And Guillaime? The woman was something to you, you say, And you’re trying to free her murderer?"

  "I said once, I hurt her. Maybe this is to spite her. She dared to die. But I think . . ." The White Crow grinned fiercely. One hand hooked into the coach’s door handle; she reached up for the iron grip to pull herself up to the roof. ". . . I know I’ve stopped caring why. I’ll give you the signal. Be ready."

  Houses gave way to open fields. Mothers held up children for the touch of his hand.

  Bobbing heads and backs stretched out in front of the cart. Tall, rickety galleries jutted up in the fields where two roads crossed: south to Edgware, west to Oxford. Pennants unfolded into the cold wind. He gripped the cart-rail. Bright-painted coaches, shabby in this amnesty season, crowded the fiat ground by the scaffold; coachmen swearing as they sought to walk the horses against the cold, or else cover them in thick blankets.

  His head jolted up. He stared across milling crowds: royalist colour and Protectorate black, focussed on one face.

  The woman sat on a level with him, on the roof of a stationary coach. Her booted feet dangled down. Tan hose, brown leather breeches and doublet, with the studs glinting silver in the afternoon sunlight; a cloak bundled up where she sat. One tan-sallow hand, uncovered, pushed at her cinnamon hair.

  "I had her twice, you cunt!" He slammed his fist down on the cart-rail, voice booming. "She’d be a better fuck dead than you would living!"

  Cold or spite whitened Valentine Roseveare’s face, drew it into a scrunched contraction of eyes and mouth. Her arms folded about her thin body. Stubborn, silent, she held herself aloof from the men and women who shrieked drunkenly around the coach and team of four. The horses stamped.

  The note of wheels changed, from cobbles’ hardness to snow, trodden to ice and covered with thrown-down bales of straw. He gripped the rail again as the cart lurched from side to side. The old man moaned, stinking of fear and excrement. Phillip Nashe murmured compassionate, inaudible words.

  Tyburn’s three-legged mare stood stark against sun and sky.

  Stripped chestnut, knocked solidly together with iron nails—three upright posts, set at the points of a triangle, and three crossbars connecting them. The platform at the height of a man’s head. Two old-and-rotted ends of rope hung down from the nearer crossbar, the ends cut and frayed and weathered.

  The cart rocked, halted. Nashe leaped down, joined by his bearded assistant. Pollexfen Calmady stared up at the sky. Used to waiting, used to delays and substitutions; hearing finally the noise that four or five thousand men and women make. He lowered his gaze. Two more white hempen ropes dangled from the wood, each knotted into a noose.

  He climbed down from the cart, planks chill against him, as Phillip Nashe hurried back across the straw-covered slush; and walked up the wooden steps to the platform. The elderly thief staggered behind, the hangman’s arm under his, holding him up.

  One trap swung to and fro, creaking, open.

  The bearded assistant stepped back to haul it up. Pollexfen Calmady stared down from the platform at the front row of the crowd. Forty or so gentlemen-mercenaries of other companies reeled, drunken, at the elbows of his own troop. Lacey, Rule, Gadsbury, Linebaugh . . . one face missing. Piss-drunk; all their gear furbished up new for the spring campaign.

  A harvest field of faces beyond; hundreds, perhaps thousands for this one of the years eight hanging-days; some heads turned aside, talking; some chewing, shouting; vendors threading paths to sell hot chestnuts; young men and women clinging to the sides of makeshift stands; all taut, wild, anticipating.

  "Listen to me, my children."

  He raised his voice, pitching it to carry beyond the company. Quiet spread. He jerked his head at the branded old man vomiting over Phillip Nashe’s arm.

  "I am brought here with another, who is to hang after me, and you see what a sorry spectacle he is. Shortly I shall hang with him—and then you shall see a pair of spectacles."

  Crowd-laughter hissed: breath whitening the air, rising in the cold afternoon. His shoulders lifted, his spine straightening. Pollexfen Calmady: gruff-voiced, haranguing.

  "We say, wedding and hanging go by destiny . . . Here am I dressed in white, come to make a hanging-match with my bride. Commonly a man is stiff after the wedding ceremony, and certainly this day I shall be stiff after mine."

  Two or three dozen men cheered among the laughter. Pollexfen Calmady held up a gloved hand.

  "You all know I hang for congress with a young woman, afterwar
ds dead. She met the same death then that I meet now. And since it is because of her that I die, you may truly say when you see me: here hangs a man who died for love."

  Cold wind whipped his cheek, carrying their flood of sound to ebb and to high-tide. Exhilarated, he planted his fists on his hips.

  "I am brought here today to make a match. The bride has a something wooden look to her. Her embraces commonly prove fatal. Perhaps that is why the wedding-bells ring so dolefully yonder. I’ve heard it said: gain a wife and lose a life. So all take heed and love your single life while you have it."

  He swallowed. Cold air drying his throat, he reached a hand down and took the bottle that Gadsbury tossed up; drank, acknowledged the raw, baying cheer with a lift of that bottle, and threw it back.

  Phillip Nashe stepped forward. "You do them the honour of a good ending. They only want to see you kick on air and turn black now."

  "Let ’em wait one more minute." He drew breath. The same pit-stomach fear and excitement attendant on massacres after battles shone on the faces below the platform. Raucous shouts assaulted from all sides, prompts, suggestions; filling his sudden silence.

  "I see the hangman hankers to his trade, to make me one flesh with the cold clay, so I’ll delay no longer. It is no groom’s privilege to come late to his own wedding, and I fear this bride will not grant me that favour herself. But you may see, in plain view, the wedding-ring provided, although I’ll wager it’s a close fit."

  Clotted humanity filled up the spaces between coaches and stands, bare-headed or with hats pulled down against the cold, men and women with breath steaming; forgetting now that they carried bottles of spirit or hot pasties and chestnuts, mouths gaping, all their eyes on him.

  The noose, stark against the sky, danced at the edge of his vision. Phillip Nashe reached up. Calmady stretched out his arms.

  "I am not come here to marry but to die. I come in this suit because, led into gross errors as I have been, this is the day that makes me white and clean. This is my soul’s wedding day, wed with grace and justice and Judgement. And in the marriage bed I go to, I lay down with righteousness and I rise up with mercy. Of this, I have certain assurance!"

  Hemp rope scratched his cheek, its stiff strands drawing blood from skin fragile in the bitter air. Arms clamped around his shoulders and biceps.

  Phillip Nashe nodded, shooting a glance past his head to the assistant; his sallow hands stretching the noose with calm deliberation. Pollexfen Calmady jerked his head back.

  "I’m not finished!"

  The two men grabbed: he wrenched from side to side.

  "No!"

  The hangman’s arms passed under his flailing arms. Strong-fingered hands locked across the back of his neck. His scalp stung suddenly cold, periwig knocked off and kicked down from the platform, trodden into the slush. He struggled, dragged bodily back from the Tyburn ladder. Jeers and stones and snow flew.

  "No! Please!"

  Wood slammed the side of his face. A long splinter jabbed his lip. He slumped against Nashe, stunned, pain a solid taste of copper in his mouth.

  Tears leaked from his eyes. The wind from the north cut across the fields through white coat and shirt to shivering flesh; scalded his bare, shaved head.

  "No!"

  He shouted, bewildered, spittle flying; the two men gripping his body and dragging him back, heels hacking the frost-slippery planks. Bladder and bowel let go and he soiled himself.

  "Please, I’m not ready! Please, don’t kill me!"

  Scarlet: scarlet at the edge of vision: a boy whose yellow curls fall to the shoulders of an over-large red coat, who wears an apprentice-surgeon’s sash; standing whitefaced among a crowd on a knoll—

  His eyes lock with the boy’s. Bevil Calmady.

  * * *

  The White Crow hacked her heel twice on the coach roof: hollow impacts. She slid rapidly on heels, buttocks, and one hand; scabbarded sword clamped up under one arm; and let herself down off the back of the coach and into the saddle of the hired brown mare. Her gloved fingers fumbled the rein’s cold straps.

  She swore, hooked the second mount’s reins over her saddlehorn, and lay leather across the mare’s neck. The mount plodded sluggishly into the crowd. Men and women backed without looking, all their attention on the gallows-tree.

  The beast’s body rocked her: she clamped her knees tight. Over heads, bare or wearing low-crowned and wide-brimmed hats, the ragged plumes of the gentlemen-mercenaries bobbed. She felt in her breeches’ pocket, drew her arm back, and skimmed a pebble accurately.

  It struck her target. She dipped her hand. The cloak’s hood fell forward. She glanced back over her shoulder. The coach-blind snicked up to disclose Sir William Harvey’s powdered hair and small face.

  "Surgeons!"

  Gadsbury’s voice: hoarse with outrage and brandy. The mare backed a pace, another pace; the crowd surged, one man swore, and a child shrieked. Rule’s shocked voice bellowed: "Surgeons! Anatomists!"

  Bright metal gleamed: rose, dropped. A flurry of screams and shouting went up. People jerked back from the mercenaries.

  She wrapped the spare mount’s reins around her right hand, backing the mare away. Arbella Lacey stumbled, threw an arm across the Margrave Linebaugh’s shoulder; both forcing through the press towards Harvey’s coach. The coach began to back. A high voice screamed. One man, two, a dozen: all backing and pushing.

  Level now with the gallows platform, she raised her eyes to Tyburn’s three beams: stark against the blue, hazed sky. The White Crow leaned forward and took a long-barrelled pistol from the saddle-holster. Bodies banged against her legs. The mare whickered. The gunsight, soot-black, bobbed as she sighted along her arm: fired.

  Concussion deafened. Her arm and hand stung.

  Chips of wood spanged off the back of the coach.

  "Surgeons!"

  "Bodystealers!"

  She heaved on the mare’s mouth. The horse swung, pressing against the solid body of people, head tossing; hooves shifting uneasily on slush and straw.

  Crowd-pressure broke, one woman pushing past, a clear space, men running; ten yards away the coach dipped over with a scream of wood, one high wheel in a rut; whipshots from the carrier: the team heaving free, clattering, the coach bouncing up; fifty, a hundred men and women running towards it.

  "Riot!"

  The White Crow raised her head. Frost-dark steps went up beside her. Her knee banged the edge of the wooden platform painfully. Silhouetted against the sky, two men held Calmady in a straining, solid grip. A hemp loop swung.

  The elderly, branded man slipped down from the platform’s far side; threw himself into the crowd, vanished.

  "—arrest in the Queen’s na—"

  Screams and shouts deafened. Officers with staves spurred down towards William Harvey’s coach, hard on its way to Oxford Street. She sat calmly in the frosty air; the taste of gunpowder sour on her lips. Women and men running in pursuit, arms flailing; stones curving across the bright sky; the smash of breaking wood, children squalling.

  A short-haired girl of twelve screamed, pushed up against the platform steps. The White Crow locked eyes with her.

  The child’s mouth squared, screaming; tears ran down her dirty face.

  "Help me!"

  The White Crow dug heels into the mare’s side, pushing the barrel-body against the mass of women and men; easing pressure on the trapped girl. "Help for help. Give me your hand."

  "Help meee—"

  "Your hand: now."

  Seconds or minutes? Bobbing heads hid the vanishing coach; staves rose and fell towards Oxford Street. In the open spaces men and women milled about, shouting. She jumped at another shot, stark across the afternoon cold.

  The two men held Pollexfen Calmady bent over double. The blond-bearded man twisted both of Calmady’s arms up behind his back; the dark, smaller man wrested the hemp rope over his shaved head; made a grab for the trap-lever.

  Seconds. The White Crow grinned, fierce, riding i
t; riding the cessation of time that comes with action; all the time in the world now, if everything’s done on the instant, and so—

  Sir William Harvey and the decoy coach drawing off crowds, the riot well in progress, she leaned forward again to the open saddle bags. Paper rustled as she moved. A thin strip of parchment, inked over with hastily written sigils, wound around her wrist and thumb, pinned with a silver pin.

  With that hand she drew out a greasy playing-card.

  The winter sunlight gleamed on the oblong of pasteboard. Pale inks delineated the old image. A spear, whose iron tip bleeds stylised droplets of blood. Below the head, the dead wooden shaft sprouts a small green leaf. Ace of Lances.

  "I would do this myself."

  She edged the mare between bodies and gallows-steps. The yellow-haired girl in layers of black rags bawled squaremouthed, deep shuddering breaths racking her with hysteria. The White Crow leaned down from the saddle, grabbed one of the hands that clamped across her face, and dug her fingers in hard.

  "Ow!" The girl yelled.

  "I would do this myself, but I’m going to need both hands later. Hold this. No: hold it. Trust me."

  A shaking, chilblained hand gripped the card.

  The White Crow pressed the small hand against the side of the gallows-steps, the Ace of Lances flattened between the girl’s palm and the wood. She reached behind to her left hip, drew her Italian stiletto, positioned it, and slammed the thin blade down between bone and tendon.

  "Aaahhhhh!"

  Screams ripped out of the child’s throat. Her free hand lashed the horse’s belly, clawed White Crow’s boot. All around her eyes the skin showed fish-belly white. Shrieks split the air.

  The White Crow put two fingers against the back of the child’s hand, dabbling in the trickle of blood. She drew three short strokes on the wooden rail of the steps. She gripped the girl’s wrist, took the stiletto out with one pull, and slammed the knife back to pin the blood-stained card to the wood.