The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins - [68]

‘… Mary Green.’

A deafening roar. Mary’s friends pull her from her cart and carry her along on their shoulders, shoving the constables out of their path. Strangers reach out to touch her gown. Lucky, lucky. She passes close to his cart. Her face is dazed with shock at the sudden reprieve.

His throat closes with fear. There must be another one. There must be a second pardon.

But the Marshal has jumped down from his horse. He is arguing with a surgeon’s assistant, a stringy lad with pale brows and bulging eyes. His master is expecting four bodies for anatomising, not three. There are costs to consider. The transportation. The guards. The coffins. ‘You will be compensated, sir,’ the Marshal assures him, patting the air with his hands. ‘You will be compensated.’

Hawkins collapses to his knees. He is lost. Now, at the end, he knows it. He will hang, marked for all eternity as a murderer. His family will be forced to bear the shame – his poor sister and his father, already sick and weary of life. The strain upon his heart – it will kill him for certain.

What a fool he’d been, to believe their promises. He curses them all as the constables guide his cart beneath the gallows. And he curses himself too. He should have listened to Kitty. She’d warned him.

Kitty. He stands quickly, searching the crowds for a flash of red hair. Pale freckled skin. She’s not there. Of course not. How could she be?

Chapter Sixteen

I had begun the day in the slums of St Giles. Now it was night and I was being smuggled back into St James’s Palace. A horse blanket again, and deserted back corridors. Up the servants’ stairs by torchlight to the queen’s antechamber.

Budge had sent a note in response to my request for more information on Howard. ‘No time. Mtng tonight. Await carriage.’

I paced the floor alone for a few minutes, longing for a pipe. It was not satisfactory, pacing a floor so heavily covered with thick silk rugs. I wanted to hear the stamp of my feet, to feel the jolt of it through my body. I would suffocate in this warm, quiet room with its tapestries and terracotta busts and marble furniture. I should pick up a gold-legged footstool and throw it through a window. At least the cold air would help me to think.

Damnation, I needed that pipe.

What was I supposed to tell the queen? My encounter with Howard had ended in disaster. Perhaps she would dismiss me and find another poor fool to resolve the matter. Yes, yes – and perhaps she would knight me and shower me with diamonds.

‘Mr Hawkins. How pleased I am to see you, sir.’ Henrietta Howard glided into the room in a dove-coloured damask gown, embroidered with a burst of silver flowers. The gown creaked a little as she moved, stiffened beneath with glue to push out the skirts. Her expression was serene, her lips parted in a half-smile of welcome. What did it cost to bury one’s feelings so deep? Was she not afraid she might lose them one day? Treasure sinking slowly to the ocean floor and nothing left but the surface, becalmed for ever. ‘You met my husband last night.’

I bowed my head.

‘He spoke of me.’ A statement, not a question. She must know the foul stories he spread about her around the town.

‘Nothing of consequence.’

She did not believe the lie, but seemed grateful for it. She paused, then added, ‘My son?’ Somehow she made the question sound quite casual, though no doubt she longed for news of Henry.

I bowed again, thinking of the young rake spewing vomit into the Thames. His dumb astonishment when I put a blade to his throat. ‘A good-natured young gentleman.’

She smiled. This she chose to believe. ‘He was always a merry child – and quite devoted to me. It infuriated Charles. He would abandon us for months in our tiny hovel. Henry and I muddled along together well enough, I suppose. It’s strange – I thought myself quite wretched, then. But perhaps I was happy.’ Her brow furrowed, as if trying to remember an old acquaintance.

‘It is very cruel of Mr Howard to keep your son from you.’

‘He is a cruel man,’ she agreed with a shrug. ‘D’you know, Mr Hawkins, I have not seen Henry since he was ten years old.’

I stared at her, aghast.

‘We were separated when the two courts split. I was forced to make a decision – to remain with Her Majesty, under her protection – or return to live with my husband. I couldn’t…’ she trailed away. ‘I had to leave Henry behind, with Charles. I couldn’t save him.’

And Howard had spent the next eleven years poisoning the boy against his mother. He had shaped Henry in his own image: a drunken brat with a fathomless, sprawling hatred of Henrietta.

‘I’ve always hoped that one day Henry would understand why I had to leave him,’ she added. ‘Surely reason would prevail and he would be released from his father’s spell. Even now – I still hope. But the reports I receive of him, his wild behaviour… I fear Charles has taught him too well.’

‘He’s just a boy – one and twenty. I’m sure I was just as wicked at his age.’

‘And now?’

‘Oh – much worse.’

‘I do not doubt it.’ She laughed, and I caught a glimpse of how she might look stripped of all her burdens – light and happy. A soul made for sunshine but lost in shadow.