Читать книгу Collected Works (Historical Novel) - D. K. Broster - Страница 110

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Thursday, the seventh of June, 1753, dawned just as those would have wished who were intending to make its forenoon a holiday—sunny and clear-skied, yet not without the promise of a cloud or two later on, whose shadow might be grateful if one had been standing for some hours in the heat. For many of the spectators would begin their pilgrimage to Tyburn very early in the day, in order to secure good places, since, though the great triangular gallows could be seen from almost any distance, the scaffold beside it, for what came after the gallows, was disappointingly low. Moreover, it was a thousand pities not to hear a last speech or confession, if such were made, and that was impossible unless one were fairly near the cart in which the victim stood before being turned off. So hundreds set off between six and seven o’clock, and hundreds, even thousands, more came streaming without intermission along the Oxford road all morning; and the later they came the more they grumbled at the inferior positions which they were necessarily obliged to take up; yet they grumbled with a certain holiday good nature. For though disgraceful scenes did take place at Tyburn, some at least of those who in this eighteenth century came to see a fellow-creature half-hanged and then disembowelled were quiet well-to-do citizens who were conscious of nothing callous or unnatural in their conduct. An execution, being public, was a spectacle, and a free spectacle to boot; moreover, to-day’s was a special occasion, not a mere hanging for coining, or murder, or a six-shilling theft. Of those there were plenty, with a dozen or more turned off at a time; but Tyburn had not seen an execution for high treason for many years, the Jacobite rebels from Carlisle having all met their deaths on Kennington Common.

And Ewen Cameron, as he sat in Mr. Falconar’s clothes in the shut carriage, which, with some difficulty at the last, had brought him to Tyburn a little before noon, was appalled at the density and magnitude of the crowd, and almost more at the noise proceeding from it.

Mr. Falconar had only agreed to the substitution with many tergiversations and much misgiving. He was afraid that he was turning his back upon his duty; he was afraid that the fraud might be discovered by one of the Tower officials, if the coach appointed to take him to Tyburn had to follow in its slow course the sledge on which the condemned Jacobite would be drawn there, a transit which would begin at ten and take a couple of hours or more. But while Ewen was closeted with the clergyman there had come a message from the Deputy-Sheriff of Middlesex, in charge of the execution, to say that, owing to the crowds which were anticipated on the morrow, the carriage was to fetch Mr. Falconar from his house at a later hour, and to go to Tyburn by a less frequented route. So Ewen did not follow Archibald Cameron in his sorry and yet perhaps triumphal procession through the streets of London.

But he was come now, by a less protracted pilgrimage, to the same heart-quelling goal; and he was come there first. He had not alighted nor even looked out. There was a sheriff’s man on the box beside the driver who would tell him, he said, at what moment his services would be required.

“Till then I should advise your reverence to stay quietly in the carriage,” he was remarking now. “There’s nothing to be gained by standing about, unless you’d wish to get used to the sight of the gallows, and seeing as you ain’t in parson’s dress, some mightn’t know you was the parson.”

“I will stay in the coach,” said Ewen.

“You haven’t never attended a criminal here before, sir, I should suppose?”

“No.” That was true, too, of the man whom he was impersonating.

The good-natured underling went away from the step, but came back a moment later. “No sign of ’em,” he reported. “The prisoner’s long in coming, but that we expected, the streets being so thick with people. But we hear he’s had a very quiet journey, no abuse and nothing thrown, indeed some folk in tears.”

“Thank God for that,” said Ewen; and the sheriff’s officer removed himself.

Faces surged past the windows, faces young and old, stupid, excited, curious or grave. Some looked in; once a drunken man tried the handle of the door; and the babel of sound went on, like an evil sea. Ewen sat back in the corner and wondered, as he had wondered nearly all night, whether he had undertaken more than he had strength for. He tried to pray, for himself as well as Archie, and could not. Not only was yesterday evening’s rebellion back upon him in all its force, but in addition he was beset by a paralysing and most horrible sensation which he had never known in his life. He seemed himself to be standing on the edge of some vast battlement, about to be pushed off into naked, empty, yawning space that went down and down for ever, blackness upon blackness. In this nothingness there was no God, no force of any kind, not even an evil force . . . certainly there was no God, or He could not allow what was going to take place here, when a life like Archibald Cameron’s would be flung into that void, and those other lives twined with his wantonly maimed. Of what use to be brave, loyal, kind and faithful—of what use to be pure in heart, when there was no God to grant the promised vision, no God to see? Archie was going to be butchered . . . to what end?

A louder hum, swelling to a roar, and penetrating the shut windows as if they had been paper, warned him that the prisoner’s cortège was at last in sight. And as it seemed to be the only way of summoning up that composure which he would soon so desperately need, Ewen tried, as his cousin had yesterday suggested to him, to imagine that it was he who was facing this tearing of soul from body. The attempt did steady him, and by the time—it was a good deal longer than he expected—that the sheriff’s man appeared at the window again he was tolerably sure of himself. And he had the comfort of knowing that Archie—unless he had undergone a great change since yesterday—was not a prey to this numbing horror.

“The Doctor’s just gone up into the cart, sir, so now, if you please . . .”

And with that Ewen stepped out from the coach into the brilliant sunshine and the clamour of thousands of voices and the sight of the gaunt erection almost above his head and of the cart with a drooping-necked horse standing beneath it. In the cart, with his arms tied to his sides above the elbows, stood Archie . . . and another figure. It was then about half-past twelve.

“You go up them steps, sir, at the back of the cart,” said the sheriff’s man, pointing. “Way there, if you please, for the clergyman!” he shouted in a stentorian voice. “Make way there, good people!”

There was already a lane, but half-closed up. It opened a little as an excited murmur of “Here’s the parson!” surged along it; showed a disposition to close again as several voices cried, “That’s no parson!” but opened again as others asseverated, “ ’Tis a Roman Catholic priest—or a Presbyterian—let him pass!” And the speakers good-naturedly pressed themselves and their neighbours back to make sufficient space.

Ewen made his way to the steps. They were awkward to mount; and when he reached the last two there was Archie, in what would have been the most natural way in the world had his arms been free trying to extend a hand to him.

“So you are come!” he said, and the warmth of greeting in his voice and the smile he gave him was payment enough to Ewen for what he still had to go through.

Doctor Cameron was newly attired for his death, smarter than Ardroy had often seen him, in a new wig, a light-coloured coat, scarlet waistcoat and breeches, and white silk stockings. Ewen looked at him with a mute question in his eyes.

“I am very well,” said his cousin serenely, “save that I am a little fatigued with my journey. But, blessed be God, I am now come to the end of it. This is a kind of new birthday to me, and there are many more witnesses than there were at my first.”

Still rather dizzily, Ewen looked round at the sight which he was never to forget—the sea of lifted faces, indistinguishable from their mere number, the thousands of heads all turned in the same direction, the countless eyes all fixed upon this one spot. There was even a tall wooden erection to seat the better class. Near the cart in which he now stood with Archie were two or three mounted officials, one of whom was having trouble with his spirited horse; not far away was the low wheelless sledge on which the Doctor had made his journey, the hangman sitting in front of him with a naked knife; each of its four horses had a plume upon its head. And on a small scaffold nearer still, its thin flame orange and wavering in the sunny breeze, burnt a little fire. Ewen knew its purpose. By it was a long block, an axe, and a great knife. Archibald Cameron’s glance rested on them at the same moment with an unconcern which was the more astonishing in that it contained not the slightest trace of bravado.

At this juncture the gentleman on the restive horse tried to attract Ewen’s attention in order to say something to him, but the noise of the multitude made it impossible for his words to be heard, though he beckoned in an authoritative manner for silence; he then tried to bring his horse nearer, but it would not obey. The rider thereupon dismounted and came to the side of the cart.

“I wished but to ask, sir,” he began courteously, looking up at Ewen, “—the Reverend Mr. Falconar, is it not?—how long you are like to be over your office?”

But it was Archibald Cameron who answered—to save him embarrassment, Ewen was sure. “I require but very little time, sir; for it is but disagreeable being here, and I am as impatient to be gone as you are.”

“Believe me, I am not at all impatient, Doctor Cameron,” replied the gentleman, with much consideration in his tone. “I will see to it that you have as much time allowed you as you have a mind to.”

“You are Mr. Rayner, the under-sheriff?” queried Archie. “I was not sure. Then, Mr. Rayner, as I do not intend to address the populace, for speaking was never my talent, may I have the favour of a few words with you?”

“Assuredly, sir,” replied Mr. Rayner. “And, for the better convenience of both of us, I will come up to you.”

And in a few seconds he had joined them in the straw-strewn cart. At this the clamour of the nearer portion of the crowd considerably increased, and it was plain from their cries that they imagined a reprieve had come at this last moment, and were not displeased at its arrival.

But Mr. Rayner had no such document in his pocket. Ewen heard the brief conversation which ensued as a man hears talk in a foreign tongue; though every word of it was audible to him it seemed remote and quite unreal.

“Although I do not intend to speak to the people, Mr. Rayner,” said Archibald Cameron very composedly, “I have written a paper, as best I could by means of a bit of old pencil, and have given it to my wife with directions that you should have a copy of it, since it contains the sentiments which, had I made a speech from this place, I should have expressed as my dying convictions.”

“If Mrs. Cameron will deliver the paper to me,” replied Mr. Rayner, “I will take order that it is printed and published, as is customary in the case of a dying speech.”

The Doctor inclined his head. “I thank you, sir,” he said with much gentleness, “for your civility and concern towards a man so unhappy as I,” he paused a moment “—as I appear to be. But, believe me, this day which has brought me to the end of life is a joyful one. I should wish it known that I die in the religion of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, which I have always professed, though not always practised. I know that I am a sinner, but I have no doubt of God’s mercy and forgiveness, even as I forgive all my enemies, especially those who have brought about my death.”

“You have the sympathy of a great many persons, sir,” said Mr. Rayner in a low voice. And after a second or two’s pause he added, “There is nothing further that you wish to say—no last request to make?”

“Yes, there is one,” answered the dying Jacobite; and Ewen saw him glance, but with no trace of flinching, at the little scaffold. “It is that you would defer, as long as the law will admit, the execution of the latter part of the sentence. I think you know what I mean,” he added.

“I know so well,” replied the under-sheriff gravely, “that I give you my solemn word of honour that it shall be deferred for at least half an hour. That much I can do for you, and I will.”

And, with a bow, he went down from the cart. His last words had lifted a great and sickening apprehension from Ewen’s heart . . . and, who knows, from Archibald Cameron’s also.

“I think there’s nothing now to wait for,” said Archie, and he suddenly looked rather weary, though he showed no other sign of the strain upon nerves which, however, heroically commanded, were only human. “And oh, my dearest Ewen,”—he dropped his voice until it was almost inaudible—“take my last and best thanks for coming and facing this with me—and for me!”

“But I have done nothing,” said Ewen in a dead voice.

“Nothing? You have come to the threshold with me. What can any friend do more?—And now I must go through.”

“But . . . you wished me to read a prayer with you, did you not? I think I can do it, and it would perhaps . . . seem more fitting.” In his heart, still a thrall to that dark horror of nothingness, Ewen thought what a mockery the act would be. And yet . . . would it?

“If you can,” said Archie gently. “We’ll say it together. You have a Prayer Book?”

Ewen took Mr. Falconar’s out of his pocket. And while the quiet horse in the shafts shook his bridle once or twice as if impatient, and the flame on the scaffold, replenished, shot up higher, Ewen read with very fair steadiness, and Archie repeated after him, the commendatory prayer for a sick person on the point of departure. Around the cart many bared their heads and were silent, though in the distance the noise of innumerable voices still continued, as unceasing as the ocean’s.

“O Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of just men made perfect, after they are delivered from their earthly prison. We humbly commend the soul of this thy servant, our dear brother, into thy hands, as into the hands of a faithful Creator and merciful Saviour. . . .”

And, as Ewen went on, the poignancy, even the irony of that prayer, read as it was over a man in full health and in the prime of life, was softened by the perfect courage and readiness of him who joined in it. The black void was neither black nor void any longer; and for a moment this parting under Tyburn’s beams almost seemed like some mere transient farewell, some valediction on the brink of an earthly sea, some handclasp ere crossing one of their own Highland lochs when, as so often, the mist was hanging low on the farther shore. . . .

He finished. “Amen,” said Archibald Cameron in a low voice. He looked up for a moment into the June blue, where the swallows were wheeling. “ ‘Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.’—Ewen, you had best go now. And do not fear for me—you heard what Mr. Rayner promised?”

Ewen was gazing at him with shining eyes. “I know now that there is a God, and that you are going to Him! May He give me grace to follow you some day.”

Then Archie held out his hands as far as he could, they kissed each other, and Ewen turned away.

Yet on the narrow steps leading from the cart he all but stumbled. And above him he heard the sound of his cousin’s voice for the last time. It still held the same extraordinary and unfeigned composure, even cheerfulness, in its tones.

“Take care how you go. I think you don’t know the way as well as I do!”

* * * * *

The press was now so enormous that though Ewen was able to reach the carriage again it was found impossible to drive it away. So he was there, on his knees, when Archibald Cameron died, though he saw nothing of it. Afterwards he was glad that he had been so near him at his passing, even glad that the long groan of the multitude round the scaffold told him the very moment. And before, at last, a way could be made for the coach, he knew by the length of time itself that Mr. Rayner had kept his word, and that the brave and gentle heart cast into the fire had been taken from no living breast.